Re: Stacking up on standard works

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <bm.brian@...> wrote:

>
> At 6:38:16 PM on Monday, April 16, 2012, stlatos wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister
> > <gabaroo6958@> wrote:
>
> >> No one ever said Trask was infallible, least of all him.
>
> > Then why'd you say: He was a scholar who never made a
> > pronouncement that he couldn't back up 100%.
>
> > I guess there's a distinction between being infallible and
> > never saying anything w/o evidence,
>
> You guess? It's obvious.

In reply to my counter to "He was a scholar who never made a pronouncement that he couldn't back up 100%", I proved it wrong by showing pronouncements he made that had no ev. to back them up, including some in which the ev. shows the opp. (evident not only to me, but to Carrasquer in the message I quoted, and others afterward). After that, I was greeted w "No one ever said Trask was infallible", an attempt to redefine the skills or greatness of Trask under question, when its his competence at Basque, not complete infallibility (which I did not attempt to disprove in particular), under question in the first place.


I am not a fan of attempting to be so particular, as you apparently are, that no knowledge can ever be exchanged or discussed due to an opponent making distinctions so fine, and making new ones after his first failed, to prevent the proponent from saying anything. I did nothing wrong by replying as I did to the first statement, or mocking the attempt to seem correct after he was proven wrong.

>
> > but that's what I tried to show was wrong.
>
> And you failed. 'Without evidence acceptable to Sean
> Whalen' is most definitely not the same as 'without
> evidence'.
>

As I said, others agreed. In fact, Rick McCallister said he disagreed w him about that very thing I wrote about (borrowings << non-Celtic IE).

> [...]
>
> > No one has ever done really good work on Proto-Basque, or
> > almost any proto-language, but me.
>
> Right. Not even the three Napoleons and two Einsteins in
> the ward down the hall from you.
>

I'm simply the best. Others are often so foolish or work against the known laws of reconstruction it's not worth my time to consider.