AQATSA Update, No April Fools' Joke!

[inverarity]

I feel like staying off the Internet tomorrow. I know this makes me sound like a humorless grumpy-pants, but I hate April Fools' Day. Yes, it's just so cute when every web site covers their home page with monkeys, tells us they've been bought out by the Russian mafia, changes their color scheme to pink and chartreuse, announces that they've sold your personal information to a finance start-up company in Nigeria, or whatever other clever idea they come up with. Hah hah. So I have to spend all day going "WTF?" and then remembering "Oh yeah, it's April 1."

So anyway, I guarantee this post is 100% April Fools Free.


Current word count: 186,392.

Below is preliminary line art for the cover of Alexandra Quick and the Stars Above. I made a few change requests (like holding her wand in her right hand, and pointing out that Alexandra should be a little bit skinnier), but I like it and am looking forward to the full color painted version.

Comments

[kerneyhead.livejournal.com]

{b}YOU DO NOT ASK, WHETHER STRAIGHT OUT OR BY IMPLICATION, "WHO THE HELL ARE YOU TO SAY SO?"{/b}

Well, up above I asked you, STRAIGHT OUT, whether your religious studies background covers a number of subjects. I've asked you whether you have any background in the Archeology/Anthropology of history. Since you are supposedly a history expert these are areas you should have at least passing knowledge of.

So your who the hell, is utter nonsense. I've asked you exactly what you know, which I've received little but childish tirades.

At the same time, when I've brought my knowledge to bear, you have dismissed it without consideration. Based on the evidence I've seen, it is because you are out of your depth.

As for your interpretation, it is just that, an interpretation and as Inverarity has tried to point out to you, you take offense when none is given way to often.

{b}I said almost nothing of what you ascribe to me.{/b}

Let's see.

I know you have gone batshit crazy several times when someone, not me, has questioned your views or questioned you.

I know that you've made some absurd statements, for example, in our very first conversation I advised someone else about learning history. I recomended Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel.

I gave an example about competing the geography of China and Europe. You said geography had little to do historical outcomes. I eventually shut up, because I didn't want to waste time with someone who would say something so absurd.
Gee, the English Channel and the vastness of the Steppes of Russia had nothing to do with the outcome of WW2 in your world.

I made a half serious comment about the world seems to be going down the {i}Battlestar Galactica{/i} route for a positive future.
Anyone with half a brain would know this was an off the cuff remark blog opinion from someone who had a bad day.

You cited it as bad scholarship. The fact that you thought it was somehow scholarly speaks ill of your ability to 'get' context.

I have asked questions, politely and reasonably and had you come back with tirades. You have refused to answer mine, or anyone else's questions. While that might be reasonable, it is no reason to be rude.

In conclusion, I say to you stop wasting oxygen. While you will probably read this as a desire for you to commit suicide, it is something different. It is an invitation to stop taking offense when none is given. It is an invitation practice some humility, charity or decency i.e. actual Christian virtues. It is an invitation to try to understand were someone is coming from and why. It is an invitation, in short to practice plain human decency.

In a word. I don't give a shit about your degrees. I do care about your manners. In a word either SHUT UP or GROW UP.

Now you've finally been insulted.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

The English Channel was an open road to anyone who had more ships than the British. The Dutch treated it with contempt in the Anglo-Dutch wars, and successfully invaded England in 1688 (the grotesquely misnamed "glorious revolution"). Ditto the steppes of Russia: ask the Mongols, or for that matter the Poles in the 1590 (what? you didn't know that Muscovy collapsed in the 1590s, and that Poland held Moscow for some years?) or the Germans in 1917, whether they gave them any trouble. No geographical feature is worth a damn unless people have technology and organization - and organization trumps technology - to exploit it. One century after the Dutch had treated the English Channel like the front gardent of their own home, Napoleon, wiht all the resources of Europe at his feet, could not cross it; why? because military realities, not geography, had changed. I have nothing but contempt for determinist views, and physical determinissm is one of the dumbest.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As for the rest, the fact that you are so leaden-fingered, blind and deaf as not to realize that you are being fucking offensive is not an argument in your favour. Incidentally, your attempt at "real" insults is much less successful than your oridnary behaviour. Invective, my dear man, is an artform, and your very lack of sensitivity and insight makes you thoroughly incompetent at it. (Get the point?)