Killarney is here

To settle scores, thus nicely

Proving briar's point

Shintaro,

I must say I'm impressed by the way you are using haiku as a discipline for your posting!

It might not work for every post in these threads, but you are illustrating what we could all do to find the essential point of our message and word it as succinctly as possible.

Well done, Samurai!

Thank you Shadow Minister, you make some good points.

It is rather unreasonable, however, to expect an author to respond in depth to wide variety of comments in 350 words, only four times in a 24 hour period.

I would be very happy to go into a great deal more detail in my replies to questions, as I learned to do as a PhD candidate and university lecturer, however the format of forums and comments spaces doesn't lend itself to much, if any, in depth analysis. At least not as I understand the term.

As I recall in the tussle to which you are referring, I refused to engage with you until you provided something other than your personal opinions and personally arrived at statistics with which to argue against me.

Apart from one reference to a government department, all of your posts were entirely bereft of sources other than yourself, and as I pointed out at the time, you are anonymous.

The article I wrote, which was very specific, was not the topic you wanted to argue with me about - as I also pointed out several times. From this I've learned to refuse to engage with anything off -topic. Thank you for that.

Killarney you seem to be working yourself up into a froth.

Please don't stop being mean on my account, if being mean is what you enjoy.

But if you are going to accuse me or anyone else of hypocrisy in this matter, you really need to inform yourself about the ad hominem fallacy, otherwise you will sound silly.

BTW I have just checked the flesh eating coffins thing and I find no ad hominen arguments by myself or my friends in it.

As you will agree when you discover just what the criteria for an ad hominen argument are

Jennifer,

I was hoping not to try and rehash the discussion, but firstly the debate was on several of the issues raised in the article and as such I would not have considered them off topic. Your answers were in most cases not in depth or even direct answers, but a stated disagreement followed by a restatement of your position. (A Kevin Rudd typical tactic)

In none of your rebuttals did you attempt to support or reference your opinions at all. My link to the government website was to provide proof that the figures I had provided (that showed clearly that Abbott with a return to the pacific solution, was perfectly capable of stopping the boats) were legitimate and not made up.

Secondly after showing (with reference to the UNHCR charter) that the pacific solution complied, you claimed not to be legally literate, and that while the pacific solution might comply to the letter of the law, it did not comply with the spirit.

Finally, as far as the propaganda was concerned, I showed a dictionary definition of the term "illegal immigrant" as someone who has entered the country illegally, which makes no judgement as to the legality of their entrance to the country. Likewise if I used the term "blow job" the act that springs to mind seldom includes actual blowing or employment.

Thank you for your feedback, Shadow Minister.

Jennifer Wilson,

If only you were a bit modest and talked with your readers rather than at them, your posts would meet with an audience ready to evaluate your pronouncements seriously, irrespective of agreement or otherwise.

So far the expression of your opinions has induced a self-protective reaction in me and once I urged you to wake up to today’s realities.

As you resorted to ancient Latin in ‘Argumentum ad hominen’, I dare suggest you read Wittgenstein’s ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’ and save a lot of ink.