Good job, Phil Coates

[Rich Engle]

She's an Ice Princess. Maybe use that.

Thanks for the translation, Roger. But don't you like the hissing cockroach so much more?

[Robert Campbell]

I don't speak Chinese, but when I was in grad school, a friend who was getting his degree in Linguistics put it this way.

What's variously rendered "hs" or "x" in different transliterations of Chinese is a retroflex "s." The tip of the tongue momentarily curls back toward the roof of the mouth while enunciating it.

"You know," he said, "like the 's' in "sweetheart'."

Granted, the example won't work unless you like Humphrey Bogart movies

Ms. Hsieh and her husband pronounce the name with a short "e," so it doesn't really sound like "Shay."

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

Ms. Hsieh has continued to insist on what she did not mean, when she delivered her dictum on homosexuality.

She has yet to explain what she did mean.

I gather she rejects any role for innate goal structures in human sexuality because she accepts (or has more recently adopted) the doctrine of tabula rasa. According to Peikoff, there are no "innate ideas" in human beings, which he takes to mean that there are no innate values. I think the no-innate-goal-structures view is false, but that's a topic for another thread.

She still hasn't said what's unfortunate or less than optimal about being gay.

Since Ms. Hsieh is rarely at a loss for words, one of two hypotheses would seem to apply:

(a) She has no clear rationale for thinking that being gay is unfortunate or suboptimal.

(b) She has one, but won't enunciate it for fear of alienating her ally Lindsay Perigo.

Robert Campbell

[Robert Campbell]

Ellen,

At first I assimilated Boaz Simovici to Mike Mazza. But that was not fair to Mr. Simovici.

In the thread that Phil started, Mr. Simovici has made some distinctions that most of the other participants seemed incapable of making.

Robert Campbell

[Philip Coates]

I agree that Chris and Boaz were better than the rest of the wolfpack. But that's not saying a great deal. It's like saying I saw a summer action movie aimed at thirteen year old minds which didn't totally suck. Even they didn't read or didn't fully address my original analysis. I made a lot of rebuttals with regard to each accusation which they as well as everyone else simply ignored.

One example out of many of a point that everyone simply ignored: DMBH is new and doesn't know all the ARI scholars and can't say that they all deny having corresponded with Chris in the manner discussed.