<i>You've now tied yourself in the curious knot of [...]</i><p>You keep saying things like this (here and in earlier threads) as if that must make them true. But you haven't shown anything of the kind.<p>"Unsurpassed" means ≧, not ﹥. You're critiquing as if PG wrote ﹥, which would have been a much stronger claim (indeed, one everyone agrees is silly). When PG says he chose the word "unsurpassed" precisely because it means ≧, you respond with accusations of disingenuousness. Exactly what part is he supposed to be lying about: what he wrote, or what the word means?<p>Your curator's quote (<a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=984644" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=984644</a>) doesn't fit what you claim either. It's clear that he's refuting ﹥, not ≧: he says that paintings after 1500 "don't represent a decline" (i.e. ﹥ is wrong), not that they <i>do</i> represent an improvement (which would be the negation of ≧).<p>Meanwhile you point to authority left and right while claiming that the other guy is doing it and make all kinds of personal attacks ("weenis"? really?) while accusing the other guy of arrogance. It makes the reader (this reader, at least) wonder what your problem is.<p>Incidentally, I appreciate most of what you write. It's smart and incisive, and when it's funny it's often damn funny. That's what makes this thread and its predecessor so weird.