Moving On

[Alydar in California]

 David: Concerning what you wrote the other day about advocacy and the grassy knoll:

  I like Friedman very much, and I have defended him countless times, in the process dismembering more than a few people who made disrespectful and stupid comments about him.  When I posted on the Sheets board, I tried to be respectful toward him.

   When I started posting here, about two years ago, I thought that I was going to be arguing with JB constantly. My politics are MUCH, MUCH closer to Friedman\'s (and to Ragozin\'s) than they are to JB\'s, and JB made a few comments that bothered me. Then two things happened:

1: I started reading despicable comments from Ragozin customers and former employees.

2: I read about Ragozin\'s dishonest business practices. This subject is of special interest to me because a friend of mine, Frank, spends a lot of time in Florida, witnessed what was going on (it was happening to him), and sparked the sequence of events that led to the letter from JB\'s lawyer. I would like you to tell me what on earth justifies lying to satisfied TG users in order to get them to spend more money for a different product. I would also like you to tell me why you were silent while the legal and moral issues were being debated.

Over the last two years, JB and I have argued about many subjects, ranging from Friedman to figure making, from Ayn Rand to Kubrick films. Do you ever disagree with the Ragozin party line, David? Or was Friedman\'s putting that analysis of yours up on their site (see \"Patterns\" on the home page) sufficient to purchase your loyalty forever?

And now THIS: You promise to write a \"brief\" pointing out where JB and I were wrong, evasive, and cowardly, and then you say you changed your mind because of your wife and child. In addition to being hilarious (you couldn\'t have proved a damn thing; you would have made a fool out of yourself again, and you now know that), this is positively Kafkaesque: You have time for the accusations, but you don\'t have time for the proof. And you didn\'t withdraw the accusations.  David, like you, I made copies of the old strings. There are countless instances, now marked in red, of you writing something that could only have been written by someone who was doing an imitation of a simpleton (to use the word you used the other day). Did you figure that out while you were in San Diego?

   And finally:

On Monday, Patent writes: \"Keep in mind that you and Rag probably agree on 80-90 percent of the numbers out there (within a point or so) with the caveat that the TG scale is 2-3 points faster.\"

A few days ago, Patent wrote: \"[JB] has his variants going up and down like yo-yos on any given day.\"

As I said, David, you are an advocate.

[dpatent1]

Alydar,

I ultimately determined that exchanging a bunch of legal briefs was not going to be a good use of my time and wasn\'t going to \'move the ball\' forward on any of these issues.  I think just about everybody on this board would agree with that.

I have no idea what the facts are about the business practices you describe.  If people over there did what you and TG say they did then shame on them and you and TG should pursue whatever remedies you feel are appropriate.  It\'s not going to stop me from using the product, though, since I don\'t plan to punish my wallet for the acts of Ragozin employees.

Finally, those two statements you point out are absolutely consistent.  Use the Preakness Day as an example.  There appears to be agreement on 10 of 13 races (almost 80%) but TG\'s variant does indeed go down and then up sharply at the end (or vice versa).  The same would be true on any day where there was 1 or more \'disagreements\' about the variant.

[TGJB]

You know what? At this point it has become so clear that you are a joke that I don\'t even feel compelled to respond to your intellectual dishonesty. My guess is you will shortly disappear, and re-surface later as if the beating you and your \"arguments\" took never happened.

[Alydar in California]

David: You wrote three paragraphs:

1: Yeah, sure.

2: Do you care?

3: Absolutely idiotic. Your math could not be more wrong. Ragozin does every race at the same variant unless there is rain, a thaw, etc. How the hell could you write something like that?