The fact that nobody takes enough notice of engineers to call 'em scumbags is little surprise. Try "nerd engineer," Poindexter: 411.

And Mitch, you're only tired of "grinding animus" that you don't initiate. How many times have you ascribed the basest of motives to the press, to other bloggers and - this really hurts - to members of the angry circus community?

"And Mitch, you're only tired of "grinding animus" that you don't initiate."

Nah. I like a debate more than the next guy.

I'm tired of rehashing the same argument, in virtually the same words (millions of them, in this case), over and over again. It grinds you down after a while; sort of like telling a certain redheaded texan that the sky is blue on a day that she's decided the sky is fuzzy.

I'm especially tired of it getting personal.

"How many times have you ascribed the basest of motives to the press,"

The press can take care of itself...

" to other bloggers and - this really hurts - to members of the angry circus community?"

[pacino on] It's nothing personal. It's just business...[/pacino]

241 hits for "scumberg."

Mirror, mirror on the wall...who's the richest nerd of all?

In the larger scheme of things, it's the nerd engineer who can afford to buy a fleet of 58 foot yachts, fill them full of scumbag lawyers and sink them for the amusement in it.

ALso, let us not forget that it is the nerd who has made it possible for us to know in just .021 seconds that there are also hits for "f*ckwad lawyer"...(Results 1 - 10 of about 10,800 for f*ckwad lawyer, which is a faster (and more satisfying) result than the .25 seconds I had to wait to scrape 58 thousand "dipsh*t lawyers" off the web's shoe....Results 1 - 10 of about 58,500 for dipshit lawyer.

And when we tire of learning that people have come up with innumerable depreciating descriptions for lawyers in less than 1/4 of 1 second, we may sooth ourselves to know that for every rhetorical loogy spat at some lawyer, a laughing nerd had ten dollars tossed his way:

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,830,000 for rich nerd. (0.20 seconds)

Heh.

77,400 for scumbag clown. That's quite respectable.
(Written with only the best of intentions and zero animus)

AC: "And Mitch, you're only tired of "grinding animus" that you don't initiate."

Highly ironic, coming from the guy who initiates so many of the personal insult sprees.

AC: "How many times have you ascribed the basest of motives to the press..."

Again, highly ironic coming from someone who enjoys trolling so much. In mythology trolls are described being thick skinned, but not so much in reality, eh?

A bit more seriously, what passes for debate or discussion in much of this comment section is snark, of which AC is a prime example as shown in this thread. Sometime over a week again, he'd tamed it a bit, but nature will tell and he's back to form (yes, it can be fun to troll the trolls, I admit it, and I'll have to buy you a beer sometime Mitch).

The snark here mirrors much of what the Democrats are selling these days, though. They're offering critisism and not realistic alternatives, proposing "solutions" to Iraq that are worse than what's being done there now, solutions that down the road would be disasterous for the US.

Would I like a credible opposition? Yes. The Dems of 1960 would be credible opposition, but the Dems post 1968 aren't.

only one hit for scumbag bus driver? gee the way most kids talk to their bus drivers I would have guesses much more. I wonder how many you'd get searching busdrivers who run for office? heh

Mitch, you get animosity and angry trollers only because they recognize that there are voices that should, for the sake of their own ideological movement, not be left unanswered (or, more correctly, un-responded-to, as "answer" implies on-point rationality.)

Wear them as a badge of pride. To the extent that they have points we should consider, it's cool that we see those points on your blog. To the extent that they are mindless blogbots who simply need to counter rational argument with "but Bush sux, and Rethuglicans eat babies!!", just remember why it is that they want to say those things to you. It's actually flattering when you think of it that way.

"Stoopid and incivil people dislike me."

Not a bad motto.

Part of the problem is that you’re using two different methods for a google search – looking for pages with the word “scumbag ______” as a phrase as one method (which nets fewer hits) or looking for sites with the word “scumbag” and the name of whatever other occupation you’re looking for where they appear on the same page but not necessarily even in the same sentence.

When Swiftee did a search for scumbag lawyer and claimed to have gotten 196,000 hits, he obviously didn’t use it as a phrase (“scumbag lawyer”) because doing so only nets 708 hits. The 196,000 hits comes from sites that have the word “lawyer” and “scumbag” on the same page.

All of the other searches you’re alluding to (“Scumbag bus driver,” “scumbag babysitter” etc.) are using it as a phrase which naturally yields fewer hits than if you looked for the number of sites where the word “scumbag” and whatever other occupation you’re listing appear on the same page.

Pretty weak.

OK Thorley, I'll play; how many sites have the word “engineer” and “scumbag” on the same page?

It doesn't follow does it?

But "laywer" fairly leaps off the tongue unbidden at the heels of "scumbag" doesn't it?

Just sayin'.

Heh.

Hey Swiftee, what about the fact that Thorley, a lawyer, just schooled you on a rudimentary computer logic problem? Guess you're not so much one of them yacht-owning nerds as an I-don't-know-how-Google-works nerds.

Just sayin'.

Heh.

Actually, Thorley was a geek before he was a lawyer. He's sorta the Geoff Brown of the Twin Cities blogosphere.

So he's got a leg up on Swiftee when it comes to that sort of thing.

Again, just saying. And, in closing; Heh.

"So he's got a leg up on Swiftee..."

So does my dog. Swiftee's my kind of pee-pole.

Heh.

So much for ending animus.