Nostratic-L yahoogroups update

After a slumber of several months, one of my old forums has finally awakened... or has it? In my blog entry entitled Nostratic and the curse of the online forum, I had merely explained that the topic of Nostratic Theory is bogged down by its own controversies and how online forums that serve to represent it need the maturity to strive continuously to cultivate balanced debate. That's all I said, as you can read for yourself.

Well, my exercise in free speech apparently provoked the Nostratic-L beehive and now the drones from the peanut gallery are needlessly attacking me once more. It's frustrating, it's infuriating, but they're just up to their ol' tricks again. Of course, their actions and the continued lack of mature moderation by Andy Howey are only validating precisely the criticisms I've just wrote. The moderator, to this very day, is merely biting the hand of contributors who feed him. Are these naive people for real?

What I avoided up to now, concerning Nostratic-L itself, was its added plague of racism and homophobia, but I've decided that this really needs to be discussed. Some very disturbed characters such as Patrick C. Ryan (owner of this site) purposefully misconstrue comments by others as a form of warped amusement. After I had made casual comments obviously intended to be light-hearted and poking fun at myself, Patrick never thought twice in masturbating these poignantly biggoted comments in return:

• I am not your friend in general, and in particular, not one of your homosexual friends. "Sweetie" is used among homosexuals. Use it for them, not for me.


• Since I am, myself, white, "White Trash" can only refer to social class as demonstrated by language and attitude. It cannot be racist.

(The original public record is found here.)

This is inane, if not absolutely offensive, for any educated person to be subjected to. This is why at that point I forever shunned all of these childish groups and left them to the yahoos, despite Andy Howey's disturbing requests to "get along with the depressing biggot". Like the character Archie Bunker in All in the Family, these fools have had their day in the sun and now it's over thanks to the growing democracy of blogs. Think of blogs as a Yahoogroups 2.0 perhaps where individuals are not at the mercy of demented trolls or self-important moderators who've lost track of the topic of their own forum. Bloggers, unlike oppressed Yahoogroups members, are free to be either as stupid as they choose to indulge, or as informed as they strive to be. We are also free to form are own online alliances by shunning the court jesters and linking only to the conscientious.

The best way to counter these negative trolls and the spiteful moderators who back them up is to frustrate their tactics at every turn by making their determined stupidity into a wonderful opportunity for shared discussion and learning.

So in the next few blogs I will be offering information and my own perspectives based on life experience on sexuality and gender issues throughout history, the cultural differences that exist, and how our own ethnocentric views of what should be "right" and "wrong" to us are *not*, nor have ever been, universal. In fact, these narrow-minded prejudices doom us to forever misunderstand history.

Another more immediate blog I'm inspired to do will be about Nostratic theory itself since I, for one, can easily access at least three books at the Elizabeth Dafoe Library at my University of Manitoba directly on the topic of Nostratic. If those on the Nostratic-L forum wish to discuss the topic of Nostratic intelligently, the least they could do is read any one of the authors who have written on this topic (Bomhard, Kerns, Dolgopolsky, Illich-Svitych, etc.) and refer to them, no? I hope this will be much more informative, enjoyable and positive for everyone than what Nostratic-L is thus far incapable of offering us.

Ignorance will always die a cruel death by the sword of Athena.