John, everybody knows you sell jump cues. There's no way to spend any time on these forums and not know that.
My reference to your non-sequitur on chalk and your precious jump cue brand was in the Earl's Right Again
thread . There's nothing "empty" in my allegations. Your driving need to mention your brand of cue and/or case reminds me of a current trend in movies - subtle advertising through product placement. Mention it enough times and maybe you'll make a sale. The only difference in these forums is you can do that all you want and you don't have to spend a dime on the advertising.
Perhaps I should not have mentioned the brand of jump/breaker that I use but the comment I made about chalking was certainly on topic and addressed the question at hand exactly.
If you want to sell cues, that's fine. May I humbly suggest taking that agenda to the Wanted/For Sale sub-forum where it belongs. Hijacking a thread so you can relay your OPINION on jump cues and mention your brand of jump cue every chance you get is tiresome to the point of ridiculousness.
If I have something to sell then I put it there. If I have a point to make then I put it where it is appropriate. If someone in any discussion that I am participating in makes a statement that I feel is categorically false then I am probably going to say something about it. Where you and I agree is the repetition of the same arguments, the same red herring statements bring about the same methods of disproval. I have often thought about just creating a web page with all of the jump cue debates presented with the pro and con sides and simply posting that link when appropriate. It sure would save me a lot of time and keep the threads from turning into jump cue debates over and over again. But once again I have to say that your characterization of me is wrong. I don't cruise the boards looking for opportunities to freeley market my products. I do interject my opinions about them wherever it fits the discussion. I am sure that there are many threads that have comments about Instroke cases or jump cues that I don't respond to simply because I don't open every topic nor follow every thread. You opened this can of worms with a statement that is not true and while you don't feel that making an untrue statement about me is grounds for expecting an apology, I do.
You can talk all you want about how you use "facts", but the only fact is that you have an opinion about jump cues, nothing more, nothing less. No one can prove that you're wrong since you simply have an opinion.
This is untrue. Not only do I have facts, but I prove them time and again at each show I attend where I do jump cue demonstrations and instruction. That is why I am very careful to clarify what is my opinion and what I present as fact. For example, it is a fact that you made an untrue statement about my posting content and it is my opinion that you should apologize for that.
The converse is also true - you can't prove anyone wrong, either. That's the great thing about opinion, NOBODY is wrong.
Well, I disagree with you here as well. If it is my opinion that murder is okay then most people would be able to cite factual reasons why it is not. Thus my opinion can be proven to be wrong. I am still entitled to it. As I am also entitled to change my mind if presented with convincing evidence. If someone says that pool cues are just silly circus gimmicks, that we would be better off without them, we would have a plethora of people proving that statement to be false. So why should you expect me to let false statements stand without rebuttal?
Anyway, the next thing you know, you and other people get locked in a debate that can never end, each believing in their own rightness and sincerity.
Or, you get into a debate where one side runs out of logical arguments and then that side gives up defeated. It is when the debate turns into an ad hominem brawl that neither side can "win" and the potential exists for endless rhetoric.
I'm weary of seeing the same arguments over and over in threads that don't even have anything to do with the argument of the day.
I am with you on this one. Frankly, if I were a regular poster who is not involved in the debate then I would just skip the posts mentioning jump cues when I saw them start up. The truth is that I don't write for you, the regular poster, I write for the newbie who doesn't have the benefit of having heard all the previous debates. I refuse to let a statement such as "jump cues are worthless gimmicks" stand without rebuttal. The form of that rebuttal however could use some serious condensation, I agree. And by now it's own website 
)
See any thread with CW or the UPA mentioned and watch Manlyshot go to town. See any thread with certain WPBA stars mentioned and watch Gremlin go to town. See any thread with jump cues mentioned, and watch John Barton go to town. Maybe Mike should set up a sub-forum so people can repeat their arguments endlessly there instead of hijacking threads.
Well I don't know abou the UPA stuff. I can tell you that there are two things that I am an expert in, pool cue cases and jump cues. If I can contribute on either of those topics I usually do unless someone else beat me to it with a better answer. I also don't consider a thread hijacked if the discussion drifts. If anyone had anything to add about the altercation between Earl, Sally and JR then they would have by now. A thread starts and goes where it will. All that is required to bring it to the forefront is a new post, a new question, or a restating of the original question. Hijacked would be when someone post something completely off topic in the thread, something not in any way related to any other post in the thread and thoroughly ruins the thread with unrelated posts. For real examples go to rec.sport.billiards on Google Groups. Responding to the normal course of discussion is just that, normal. How often are you in conversations that start on one premise and end up completely somewhere else? The more people in the discussion the more likely this is to happen.
My point, as stated before, was to get the hijackers out of this thread and return to the topic at hand. If you want to voice your opinion on jump cues, start another thread. I check this thread to see if there is a resolution to the JR, Sally, and Earl saga, not to read about jump cues.
Noted. May I suggest that you simply ask a question if you want an answer? Although the thread, unfortunately, includes a lot of extra information about jump cues it was still relatively on topic, in that we, or at least I was trying to frame my responses as to how they related to Earl's behavior. Now you have made posts that are discussing my behavior which is itself a sort of hijacking of the thread as it has nothing to do with Earl, Sally, JR, Earl's preferences, his quirks, why he is the way he is and so on.
This will be my last post about non-JR/Sally/Earl matters in this thread, so John, as we've done
before, let's consider this settled.
Sure. Just apologize for the false statement you made about me ) Be a gentleman and we can continue our civil ways. Or do you want me to send Sally to your house to take notes........
-djb
