From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 11:11:55 +0800
To: cypherpunks@Algebra.COM
Subject: Re: Tim plans to kill a federal judge
In-Reply-To: <v03102814b092a6fc7e52@[207.167.93.63]>
Message-ID: <v0400274eb0993f5cca5b@[139.167.130.248]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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At 8:10 pm -0500 on 11/14/97, Tim May, Weatherman, made the wind blow again:

> This is really rich. Hettinga hates "ad hominae."

Awwww, poooor *Timmy*. Did I decline a latin noun you didn't under*stand*?
I'm soo sorry...

(Hey, speaking of ad hominae(?) I'v got this great list of informal
fallacies... You've seen it? Oh. Okay. No, that's not one. I'll show you
later.)

> This from the guy who started this latest flame war with such choice
> phrases as:
>
> "Tim's Way Cool Latter-Day Farnham's-Freehold in the Santa Clara
> mountains.... a bunch of "freedom fighters" like the one you fancy yourself
> to be these days... instead of shoving your favorite Mac-10 up the nose of
> every statist treehugger you bump into out there in lotusland.... you won't
> have to clean the snot off the end of your
> gunbarrel so often..."

Hey, there's an echo in here! At least I have the common courtesy not just
to cut and paste my replies, Tim. :-). You wouldn't want me to cut and
paste my previous reply to your snappy synopsis, would you?  I didn't think
so.


Actually, I don't see a *single* ad hominem in up there. Let's fix that,
shall we?

Let's see if I can use a few choice ones here, just to give you a flavor
for what a *real* ad hominem looks like:

1. Tim just hates PGP because he's invested so much in RSA and he's a pal
of Jim Bidzos.

(Hey, Don't look at *me*, I only know what I read from anonymous character
assasinations posted to cypherpunks. Besides, RSA's cool by me, they're
FC98 sponsors, and I've even talked to Ron Rivest a couple of times...
They're sponsors until they read this, anyway. =:-O. This is probably an
unsubstantiated rumor, anyway. Can't possibly be true. I mean *I* don't
believe it, do *you*?)

Anyway, notice that the reason I gave, Tim's investment in RSA and his
friendship with Bidzos, has nothing to do with his stated reasons for
disliking PGP these days, whatever those reasons are. Thus this argument
has no merit because it doesn't address Tim's points about the usefulness
of PGP's software, say.

2. Tim just hates Japanese because he's a white european male.

Not because, of course, any direct refutation of Tim's stated reasons in
his discussions of Japan, whetever they were. I, um, skimmed them and then
threw them away. ;-).

3. Tim hates Latin because he doesn't know any.

Not, because, as evidently stated above, he finds it pretentious
("hoity-toity" is something he says a lot that might apply here) enough to
mock with quotation marks. Or whatever. A correct refutation of Tim's would
be what terrible mockery of a fine old dead white language his comments
are, and why would Tim be so crass as to insult it, etc.


> Hettinga, heal thyself.

Um, take a pill?

(See? There *is* an echo in here... Isn't there?)

Meanwhile, Tim's duping text this time, some 30 ignomineous lines of it
:-(, which he ends with a single sentence:

> Hettinga has admitted basic ignorance of Foucault, just as he backpedalled
> furiously on the "Aurora" claims he made.

Ah, there's that, isn't it? Actually, I don't have basic ignorance of
Foucault, though my ignorance of Foucault *is* quite close, and by choice,
Tim. And, I would wager, if *you* actually read Foucault, *you'd* wish you
had quite close to basic ignorance, yourself... :-). (Anyway, this is all
handled in another post, so I don't want to let the echo get too
recursive... Wait... There's that echo again. Isn't it?).

But, from the above quoted reasons, Tim concludes,

> (about Hettinga's repeated, and loud, claims in recent days that I have
> called for the death of a federal judge)

Which doesn't exactly follow from the last sentence, does it? Sort of like,

If a, then b
if b then c,
therefore d,

which is about the grade I'd give for this kind of logic...


> Hettinga shows his true colors by repeating these lies over and over again.
> I would not be at all surprised if he has forwarded carefully excerpted
> fragments to his friendly FBI offices, hoping they'll make a move to
> investigate me.

I would not at all be surprised if Tim really wished I would, so he'd end
up in the morning papers, or, or test out his "sensors" and his AK,
something.

Nope. Sorry, Tim, I'm not your co-star this Dog Day Afternoon...


> I have, over the years, expressed my constitutional opinion about many
> people whom I think have committed capital crimes.

Ah. Speaking of backpedaling. And, on the central point, no less, whether
or not you made a threat on a federal judge. "Constitutional opinion",
indeed. Too bad you're not using coaster brakes, Tim. You might have come
to a complete stop, by now...


Notice that this is not simply whether Foucault is a moral-relativist,
namby-pamby-candy-assed, politically correct socialist resenter, who you
yourself would line up and shoot (constitutionally, of course) at the first
opportunity. If you read his stuff.

Nor is it simply whether Monty knows how to read a book he's reading and
type it into mail messages. (At least *I* have the courtesy to do my own
book reports at length -- and at more length :-) -- in my own words without
having to play human xerox machine. Ooops. I am. I do. With e$pam, I mean.
Well -- never mind. Can I, um, backpedal that?)

The point is that Tim, here, is equivocating on that very um, evocative
statement he made which started this whole episode to begin with. The very
central fact of this whole argument.

Which, in case you haven't noticed, I'm winning. :-).


> OJ, of course. And Lon
> Horiuchi, the shooter at Ruby Ridge. And, if you check the archives, Tim
> McVeigh. Fact is, many people have committed capital crimes. And I don't
> particularly feel like paying my share of the $50-100K a year to keep them
> well fed and housed at Club Fed, so I'd just as soon spend a quarter on a
> rifle round and be done with them.

Yup. Okay.

So, Tim, why don't you tell me exactly how a sitting federal judge, who
made a decision he's legally entitled to make, silly or not, under the
constitution you liked so much as little as a year ago (or less, if memory
serves), is the same kind of person, deserves the same $.25 round in the
head, as a rich guy who slit his wife's throat and got away with it because
he has the best lawyers money can buy, or a government goon who shoots a
woman holding a baby in probable cold blood, or a, um, Freedom Fighter ;-),
who blows up a few hundred people one sunny morning?

I'd love to hear this. Constitutionally, of course.

Oh. Right. One more thing. This is also a far cry from someone who, as
little as a year ago, was disgusted and appalled when someone here made the
offhand remark "let's put a round in the head of this discussion"...

The ganglia, um, twitch...


> I don't have a clue who "Monty Cantsin" is, but his clear thinking makes it
> kind of a shame he will remain a nym forever, unless he declares himself.

Especially since he's your number one apologist and lapdog these days?
Spare me. I expect he'll go away once he pisses you off. Or vice versa.
Given your lack of command of your tongue these days, which see this whole
discussion, it shouldn't be too long...

> (No one, not even Vinge or Card, ever said nyms would carry the same
> reputation capital True Names do. Maybe someday. But not in the foreseeable
> future.)

Shades of the e$ rant I was writing at the very time Tim wrote this. Short
answer: They can if they just spend money, Tim, but they have to be
careful. Wow. Content. I'm having so much *fun* tonight...


> Indeed. Hettinga keeps quoting this "Tim plans to kill a federal judge"
> mantra so much that I'd better rename the thread to this just to keep
> Hettinga happy. There, it's done.

Why, thank you Tim. I'm honored. While you're at it, why don't you post the
LAT/LONG of your house in a reply to this exact message, so the Black
Helicopters don't have any trouble finding you on Thanksgiving?


Actually, Tim, I think you think of yourself as Helen of Corralitos, the
man who launched a thousand conspiracies. ;-). "Will no one rid me of this
judge?", which, constitutionally or not, looks like a threat to me.
Especially if I was a certain judge...

See other posts in this vein that I've written tonight. I won't repeat
them, as you are wont to do.

So much for all this new posting you're supposed to have done, Tim. Looks
like the same old same old to me...


> Hettinga doesn't bother with research. He just shoots from the hip. He
> concentrates on _style_ over substance. Must be his liberal arts training.

May doesn't bother with style, much less Latin. :-). Must be his physical
science training.

See, Tim? Both yours and mine are ad homin*ae*. Very *good* Tim.

I'll boot your D up to a C-...

Though, ah bet yew cain't boss yer meskin help fer shit with a command of
ro-mance language like the one yew have...


Take heart, however, you've still got me beat. At least you *have* Mexican
help. I mean, I've got all the education, and you've got all the money,
right? But, that's okay.

Because, when the revolution comes...

;-).

Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/
Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>