330 definition by Fearman

1. Ready to accept on firm evidence that one's most cherished beliefs may be hogwash, but bearing in mind that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

2. Politically correct synonym for "gullible" used by New Age quacks who want to sell you a bill of goods.

A woman with enough good taste not to be interested in guys.

1. In Ireland, someone who wants the Six Counties back. Typically votes for Sinn Fein, although in the 26-county republic the centre-right majority party Fianna Fail have tried to steal the mantle.

2. In general, someone who supports democracy and dislikes monarchies, even as figureheads.

3. In the United States, someone who screams about persecution of a minority when the minority is very rich and the "persecution" comes in the form of taxation. The symbol is an elephant, presumably because the trunk hoovers up all the money. Someone who is staunchly pro-life ... at least if the life in question can afford a good lawyer. Will fight the terrorists du jour with every nigger/spic/piece of poor white trash they can scoop off the streets, but not themselves and not with their Johnny. You don't have to be an imbecile to be a Republican, but it certainly helps. Living proof of the falsity of their own cherished belief in the pseudoscience of Creationism. You'd think that in three billion seconds, never mind three billion years, God would have gotten it right.

Charming Middle American country gentleman who lives with his family in a nice big house/church and preaches hatred of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, liberals, most of America and pretty much most of the planet. For some esoteric reason only his relatives want to stay in the church, and you have to be a member to marry a member, which keeps their straight teeth fluoridated and their fingers on their banjos. Fred has at least one 69 session with Satan every night, and hopes that if he does it well enough long enough he'll get his soul back. Ya gadda have faith.

Postmodernism: pseudo-intellectual Trojan Horse of tyrants everywhere in the western world. Began in Arts faculties in various universities under "thinkers" like Derrida, Baudrillard, Foucault and Irigaray, and spread like a cancer into at least the "soft" sciences, if not further afield.
Works insidiously by establishing in the minds of the faithful that there are no ultimate truths in either a moral or a scientific sense, and dressing up bullshit in flowery language. Postmodernism pretends to be a guarantor of pluralism (a concept far better served, btw, by rational debate), and is in love with concepts such as the "transgressive" and the "paradigm shift". Unfortunately these matters are brought up in the midst of reams and reams of tendentious twaddle which constitute a dreadful waste of perfectly good trees, and the most notable effect of postmodernist (un)thinking is not the freeing of anyone's mind from conservative tyranny, but the scrapping of the very idea of objective truth. Once this happens, of course, what follows (outside the ivory towers of academia) is that the game goes, set and match, to the fellah with the biggest guns. Many conservative factions claimed that September 11 spelled the end of postmodernism. Ohhhh nooo, postmodernist twaddle was only just getting its boots on.

To take an (admittedly anachronistic) example of what is essentially the same thing:

"A new and magical understanding of the world is on the rise, one based on will rather than truth. There is no truth, in either the scientific or the moral sense."

- Adolf Hitler

1. 22nd letter of the alphabet.
2. Biochemical symbol for valine.
3. Chemical symbol for vanadium.
4. Roman numeral rendered in Arabic numerals as 5.
5. Cool 1983 TV miniseries about an invasion of the Earth by aliens who are not as friendly as they at first appear.
6. Symbol of victory, used by the French resistance in the Second World War.
7. Main character in V for Vendetta, a graphic novel by Alan Moore, who dresses in a stylised Guy Fawkes costume and sets about tearing down the totalitarian government of Britain.
8. The same character as played by Hugo Weaving in the movie based on Moore's graphic novel.
9. Thomas Pynchon's first novel.
10. As the V sign, a hand symbol indicating either "we've got this under control" or "up yours", depending on the direction the palm is facing.
11. Sexual symbol; first letter of vulva or vagina, and the shape of the figure echoes the folds at the split in the groin. As related in the pop mystical tale of The Da Vinci Code, the letter is a symbol of the female principle or the womb, with an inverted V as that of the phallus.
12. With a full stop, informal shorthand for the word very.
13. Short for versus.
14. I could go on ...,

Institution which, with a bit of luck, can just about manage to undo half of a percent of the damage wrought by school.