The blurry line between religious and crazy

Yes, well, acting out metaphors is in fact a bit crazy. If a man knows some weighty secret that he must reveal, and instead he blows a whistle, releases a cat from a bag, and spills some beans, we would not form a high estimate of his rationality. If he also said that God told him to do these things, we'd think he'd gone completely bonkers.

Well now that would be foolish.

My favorite line from a doctor "Come in, what seems to be the trouble [looks up] OH MY GOD!"So I'm guessing that in med school he got poor marks for Bedside Manner 101.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Well, was it efficient? We have these stereotypes of German efficiency, but in fact organizationally Nazism was a complete shambles. I think the real moral is that a bunch of crass bungling morons can do a lot of damage if they have enough idiots with enough guns.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

And did they do that efficiently? They killed a lot of Jews, but we would judge their efficiency by how many got away, what it cost per Jew, and indeed whether that was a good use of their resources rather than fighting the Allies. They were ruthless in pursuit of their stupid half-baked half-assed objectives, but that doesn't mean that they were efficient.

Well, yes. I might as well say that. Moreover I can and I will.Michael Q. Furterburger inherited his father's office supply business. Instead of spending his time on reducing overheads or increasing sales or anything else that might have made his company more profitable, he decided instead to visit each one of his clients personally and hit them in the face with a fish. Was that an efficient use of his time? I say "no", because he drove down his profits. Would you say "yes" because he successfully hit a lot of people with a fish? "What they did"? THEY LOST.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

They suffered a crushing defeat. Just sayin'. Well, in the first place, did they in fact get their money back? How much did the Nazis make on second-hand footwear? This is one of the things that the Nazis did to convince themselves that they were being efficient, but do we have figures on the success of their used-shoe-shops? How much did they get for second-hand Jewish teeth? In the second place, it is usual, when carrying out a pogrom, to steal the goods of one's victims. Who knows --- not I, not you --- whether it was cheaper per murdered Jew to let loose a bunch of Cossacks on horseback. How much did the Rwandan genocide cost the Rwandan government? Did they have to build camps and railroad tracks? And in the third place, we may still question, as I have questioned, whether it was efficient to do the thing at all.Discussing this is making me very depressed. To cheer us all up, here's the story of Goering's brother Albert.

Of course they thought they were doing the right thing, operationally and indeed morally. People rarely think of themselves that they're a bunch of slapstick buffoons and also the epitome of evil to boot. You say the Nazis tried to be efficient? Yeah, they also tried to be the good guys. And they tried to win WWII. They failed in all these aims because of being dumbass fuckwits who didn't know a good idea from a bad one, or right from wrong. I am sorry that I've disgusted you by suggesting that the Nazis were, amongst their other obvious mental defects, also halfwitted incompetents. It was not my intention to disgust you, and if saying so has that effect on you I shall press the point no further. I shall however continue privately to think that the Nazis were not all that bright.

I could argue that killing six million Jews was not, in fact, a "huge success". But apparently not without disgusting you. I'm gonna let this one go.

A dark chapter in the history of Wales.