That goddamn fucking cheating cripple!

Pistorius was born without fibulas in both legs due to a congenital condition. Before his first birthday his legs were amputated below the knee. At school he competed in rugby union and water polo. After a serious knee injury, he was introduced to athletics while undergoing rehabilitation. His first major competition was the 2004 Summer Paralympics in Athens. He came 3rd overall in the T44 100m event, which includes single amputees. Despite falling in the preliminary round for the 200m, he qualified for the final. He went on to win the final with a world record time of 21.97 seconds, beating single amputee American runners Marlon Shirley and Brian Frasure.

Pistorius harbours ambitions of competing in able-bodied events, specifically at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. In 2005 he came sixth in the South African (able-bodied) Championships over 400m. At the 2005 Paralympic World Cup he again won gold in the 100m and 200m, beating his previous 200m world record. In July 2005 he became the first disabled athlete to compete at an IAAF Grand Prix event, running in the 400m in Helsinki.^[1]

At the 2006 Paralympic Athletics World Championships Pistorius won gold in the 100, 200 and 400m events, breaking the world record over 200m.^[2]

Pistorius has been the subject of some criticism. Disabled and able-bodied athletes have both claimed that him being a double amputee gives him an advantage. Another criticism is that the "blades" he uses are longer than is necessary, allowing him to cover more ground in each stride.^[3] Pistorius rejects both these allegations. He is currently studying business management at the University of Pretoria, while training for the 2008 Summer Paralympics.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Pistorius

Jimbo Wales, folks

However, he also warned that “It's always inappropriate to try to win an argument by flashing your credentials, and even more so if those credentials are inaccurate.”

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essjay_controversy


If anything, the whole "wikipedian with fake credentials" just proved how idiotic credentials dickery is. Citing your credentials is just a way of curtailing debate. Real or not, who cares if it was learned in grad school or from reading the minutes of the 1938 jewish anti-fascists committee meeting?

If you've got the degree, surely you've also go the data. If you tell everyone you're an eastern european studies professor, but I can prove the official data reported grain yields in 1933 were lower than those in1913 in ukraine, and you say it wasn't, I win.

The Moment the words were spoken they were assured eternity

Molon Labe! (Greek: Μολὼν Λαβέ, modern (IPA): [molon lave], Erasmus pronunciation: [molɔːn labe]) means "Come and take them!"

Μολὼν λαβέ was the response of King Leonidas I of Sparta to Xerxes I of Persia at the onset of the Battle of Thermopylae. Xerxes, whose forces vastly outnumbered the Spartans and their allies, offered to spare the lives of Leonidas and his few thousand defenders if only they would lay down their weapons. Instead, the Spartans held Thermopylae for three days and, while they died to the last man, they inflicted serious damage on the Persian army, delaying it and essentially preventing the conquest of the Greek Peninsula.

The first word μολὼν, is the aorist active participle (masculine, nominative, singular) of the Greek verb βλώσκω, meaning "having come."^[1] Λαβέ is the aorist active imperative (second person singular) of the verb λαμβάνω, translated "take [them]."

The two words function together in a grammatical structure not present in English called the circumstantial participle.^[2] Where English would put two main verbs in two independent clauses joined by a conjunction: "come and take", a strategy sometimes called paratactic, ancient Greek, which is far richer in participles, subordinates one to the other, a strategy called hypotactic: "coming take." The first action is turned into an adjective. The English speaker can understand it with a little thought, but he would never use it. In this structure the participle gives some circumstance attendant on the main verb: the coming.

The Greek has a nuance not present in the English: aspect. The aorist participle is used to signify completed action, called the perfective aspect. Moreover, the action must be completed before the time of the main verb. The difference in meaning is subtle but significant: the English speaker is inviting his enemy to begin a process with two distinct acts or parts—coming and taking; the Greek speaker is telling his enemy that only after the act of coming is completed will he be able to take. In addition there is a subtle implication: in English "come and take it" implies that the enemy might not win the struggle—the outcome is uncertain; in Greek in the implication is that the outcome is certain—"after you have come here and defeated me, then it will be yours to take."

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molon_labe