B. U. G. S.

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There is a place for you Bob!

In the year i have been a loyal reader, you have caused me to think more than all four years of high school.

Although i don’t have much to contribute to this seminar, unless you want to hear about my life, one day i will be able to join in the fun. All thanks to your basics.

Keep up the good work Bob!

and from one of your comments to me, enjoy this flower.

MY OBSERVATIONS:

Thank YOU, for making MY efforts worth while!

And for having the guts to SPEAK UP! If I’m lucky, you’re going to make me EARN that damned flower.

“Although i don’t have much to contribute to this seminar, unless you want to hear about my life,”

Don’t hit me with the Shari Syndrome. Shari makes excellent comments and then adds a sentence about how dumb she thinks it must sound. That ticks me off.

YOU don’t give YOURSELF hell. ***I*** give you hell. That’s your tuition here.

Got it?

Jokes aside, you are eighteen, so you can remind us what the BASIC questions are. You used that word a COUPLE of times here, and reminded us all that going back to BASICS is the point here. That is what I keep emphasizing most of all.

Real genius, real INTELLECTUALISM, is mostly going right back to the basics again and again and coming up with a new insight from the ground up.

You are NOT really a neophyte the way you think of yourself. You have already been through the paleos, the radicals and probably a lot more. When you say you are new at this, you have just testified against your own statement.

But you ARE new enough to keep my nose to the grindstone. Too many commenters may not understand what I am talking about, but they do not ask me to explain SPECIFICALLY what they don’t get. That ruins the whole lesson.

For example Mark asked me to explain my discussion with Shari about “judaizers” and how that related to Zionism.

That provides me with some welcome work. I am still working on it.

It also shows how Shari is advanced while she is always telling us what a newbie she is. She is talking at a level another commenter had the GUTS to tell me he wasn’t up to snuff on.

You are dead on point: BASICS, “What do you mean, Bob?” These are invaluable contributions you can make.

You are probably already aware that a good teacher learns more from going over basics, again and again, than the student does. Thinking about the exact place of Zionism and Judaizing gives me a whole new view of BOTH.

The simple fact is that I learn more from analyzing basics than you do because I already KNOW more than you do. If I don’t, then all I have is DEAD knowledge, ROTE knowledge.

If I don’t learn from this exercise, then there is something wrong with ME as a teacher. Today’s academic is NOT an “intellectual” precisely because they learn NOTHING from going over THEIR tape recorded orthodoxy again and again and again. That is why they are NOT the “intellectuals” they claim they are.

I keep telling commenters, including you, that you QUALIFY for my seminar because have outgrown a college education, WHETHER YOU HAVE HAD ONE OR NOT.

I am disappointed when you don’t realize that I don’t dish out compliments freely. If I give you a compliment, TAKE IT.

Mark doesn’t mind getting my nose, and Shari’s back into the basics because he knows he has already QUALIFIED to be here, so if he has a question, it is worth asking.

Another critical point: When I tell you this I am LEADING a seminar, not TEACHING a course, it is also a brag on ME. The reason a real, old-fashioned SEMINAR is out-of-date on campuses today is precisely because a COURSE is now just a set of hoops the teacher makes a student jump through. Today the teacher gets nothing out of what he calls a course or a seminar but a paycheck.

I am bragging that I am not just a teacher, I am an intellectual. I am going to try my stuff out on you, which is what a real professor does in a real seminar. I welcome best comeback you’ve got. Me being wrong is not only OK, it’s what I’m here to be TOLD. It is your DUTY to point it out.

Meanwhile I am going to pick your brain and SQUEEZE it, which makes it worth while for you.

But never forget that I am making the biggest brag of all: I am a dying breed, an intellectual, not just an average run-in-the-mill professor.

How conceited can you GET?

I PAY for this privilege. You OWE me more comments and less apologies.

I don’t do this just for the fun of giving picking on you.

Well, I don’t do this seminar ENTIRELY for the fun of picking on you.

Hell, the Old Man has got to have some fun, too!