Martin Goldstein : Design Argument
. . . . . . . . NOT JUST ANOTHER WHODUNIT
I like it and think it is true. It is also reasonably original.
There is only one way to change because the ego makes change impossible. Keep your heart open for a miracle. Why a miracle? Because miracles are impossible. So allow for the impossible to become possible. From the sayings of Martin Goldstein.
Spiritual Ad Age
With feeds from Ronn Torossian, 5WPR and Aish Hatorah – The Design Argument readership is hitting dramatic new heights in readership size but it seems to be coming at a price.
David Hume consultants have been brought in to analyze the foremost teleological blog in the known and seemingly designed universe. David Hume determined that the quality of writing has decreased by a stunning 37%. The analysis is based on several factors including originality of content, readability level, cogency, and genre-appropriateness.
“In almost every conceivable area Design Argument is failing to deliver decent content,” said the 17th century Scottish philosopher David Hume. “The fact that readership levels are soaring within the same time cycles as the shameful drop in writing quality may be akin to the same social forces that led to Avatar becoming a box office smash. There is no content in that film at all or if there is I missed it while I was sleeping.”
Hume went on to give a blistering criticism of the argument for design. If a well-ordered natural world requires a special designer, then God’s mind (being so well-ordered) also requires a special designer. And then this designer would likewise need a designer, and so on ad infinitum. We could respond by resting content with an inexplicably self-ordered divine mind but then why not rest content with an inexplicably self-ordered natural world? Often, what appears to be purpose, where it looks like object X has feature F in order to secure outcome O, is better explained by a filtering process: that is, object X wouldn’t be around did it not possess feature F, and outcome O is only interesting to us as a human projection of goals onto nature. This mechanical explanation of teleology anticipated natural selection.
“I am chagrined by the low calibre of content in recent posts on the Design Argument Blog,” remarked Martin Goldstein who is also falling behind on his “720 apologies in 3 days” project. “I am in such a tizzy. I am so sorry.”
There are some Design Argument observers that are concerned that the site is repeating itself and is losing its relevancy.
“How many times do we have to hear about how vulgar and unethical Ronn Torossian and 5WPR is? How many times do we have to read about how Aish HaTorah plays fast and loose with the truth? I mean it is all true but so what? I liked the post with the monkey playing the piano and the three cute dogs and what not. That was a quality post. I just don’t need to hear anymore about how Aish deceives people with their phony bible codes,” said an anonymous Design Argument fan.
Another Design Argument fan said that the stress on the weirdness of Chabad outreach and Jews for Jesus “is beginning to bore me. But I did like all that Ed Sullivan stuff.”
Martin Goldstein, taking time out from his apology tour, stated that he was going to personally see to it that the quality and originality of the blog content will be improved “as of this very post. However I still want to get my keywords in,” he chuckled.
It appears that Martin Goldstein has offended or increased the suffering of at least 720 people over the past year and 2 months.
The world, thank God, continues to exist owing to the deeds of lovingkindness performed by perfected souls who have had to work harder than usual to offset the mess that Goldstein has made on an interpersonal level.
Goldstein’s apology will include the following statements:
- I have rushed to judgment
- I have been reckless in speech
- I have spoken ill of others
- I have been insensitive
- I have not listened to constructive criticism
- I have been arrogant
- I have shunned beggars
- I have not honoured others
- I have wasted other people’s time
- I have lashed out at people
- I have used the names of certain organizations (such as Aish HaTorah, Chabad, 5WPR – Ronn Torossian) primarily for content generating purposes and only secondarily for the brainless things that they do
- I have farted loudly and at great length while generating lively bird sounds on an experimental sound device in the middle of a speech at a wedding reception
For whatever one of these things I have done to you and for any way in which I have increased your suffering, please accept my sincere apologies and understand that I recognize it as a problem for which I take complete responsibility and am in the process of rectifying at this very time.
The 720 apologies will be given orally and in person and all within a 3 day period. All logistical issues will be handled by a mystery spokes-animal.
Weird boxing is a major cause of apology binging.
Aish HaTorah and Chabad have been spreading misinformation and lies for years in an effort to “save souls”. In a sense that is the norm since, if you analyze it in a harsh way, most businesses are involved in some form of lie, exaggeration, or enticement in order to grow their revenue. Chabad and Aish HaTorah in their cult like behaviour are businesses in a very real sense. They have a product, they market that product and they are concerned about their bottom lines.
Atheism is also a business, particularly for entrepreneurs such as Richard Dawkins who used to be a scientist. He is selling atheism products in his store and using the cute tilted red “A” symbol as his new branding image (nice brand Ricky!). Just before Christmas he was selling holiday bundles! And I thought he didn’t believe in Santa! His wares include: various DVDs and DVD sets, t-shirts, baseball caps, sweatshirts with hoods, books, audiobooks, , mugs, stickers, tote bags, and lapel pins with the cute “A” on it.
Martin Goldstein is very pleased that Richard Dawkins has managed to use his atheism as a springboard for greater recognition and financial success. “Dawkins, Chabad, Aish HaTorah, Jews for Jesus, etc. all feed off each other and keep each other going,” said Goldstein, Chief Evangelical Leader of Goldstein Subaru and Goldstein Auto. “They don’t know how closely linked they are and I find that to be just so cute and adorable.”
Martin Goldstein predicts that Dawkins, Chabad, Aish HaTorah, and Jews for Jesus will put aside their differences and form a strategic alliance to promote their ideas and increase their revenue flows. “The secret is that they are already doing this without knowing it,” says Goldstein. “What on the outside seems like opposing theistic/atheistic/messianic views, is really all just something I like to call “Theatre of the Brain.”
Members of Chabad, Aish HaTorah, Jews for Jesus, with Richard Dawkins.
Most of you are already familiar with Suzy Poppins, famous for her work in repairing feather quill pens, teletype machines and princess phones. Poppins is a very busy girl and her company, Oblique Phalangeal Fractures, is growing at a pace congruent with the increased popularity of these three communication tools. Her dedication to the repair of these items is unquestioned among her peers in the industry.
Due to the extraordinary success of her organization, Poppins was recently honoured with an Outstanding Business Achievement Award from the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. Poppins is also proud to have been nominated for a Canadian Award for Excellence.
What is the secret of her success? It is her rock steady focus on these three areas rather than branching out into other growth industries such as the Underwood typewriter or the overnight success atmospheric steam engine. If you are over 25 then you will remember the Twitter fad of of the early 21st century. Where is Twitter now, for goodness sake? We all know what the teenagers are into these days. Princess phones, feather quill pens and teletype machines.
Suzy Poppins loves to give back to the community by offering to immigrants of British and Irish descent food, shelter and the self esteem that comes with having a low-paying job repairing feather quill pens. The immigrants have to provide their own tools and pay for their room and board as well as the purchase and laundering of their company uniforms.
Suzy Poppins is a great lover of all sorts of cheeses and enjoys sending her employees on unpaid errands to pick up the lists of cheeses that she provides them with. “I know that they love to please their employer,” said Ms. Poppins, “and it is my pleasure, my honour really, to provide them with the opportunity to please me in the faint hope that their living conditions or work position would improve.”
“Although they are not able to earn very much, and the living conditions that I provide them with are rather rustic,” said Ms. Poppins cautiously, “I know that any one of them could one day become the President of Canada if they have enough gumption and political and financial support. Bloody unlikely, but possible nonetheless.”
A barber’s pole is a kind of sign barbers use, traditionally a pole with a helix of colored stripes (usually red, white, and blue). Suzy Poppins is an avid collector of old barber poles.
The origin of the barber pole is associated with the practice of bloodletting. During medieval times, barbers performed surgery on customers as well as tooth extractions. The original pole had a brass basin at the top (representing the vessel in which leeches were kept) and bottom (representing the basin which received the blood). The pole itself represents the staff that the patient gripped during the procedure to encourage blood flow.
Suzy Poppins uses toilet paper herself when appropriate and is an advocate for the use of this paper for its intended function amongst the members of her industry. As part of her charitable work she has retained Ronn Torossian, head of 5WPR and Aish Spokesanimal, to help her promote the use of toilet paper in western culture.
Poppins notes that, in earlier times, wealthy people wiped themselves with wool, lace or hemp, while less wealthy people used their hand when defecating into rivers, or cleaned themselves with various materials such as rags, wood shavings, leaves, grass, hay, stone, sand, moss, water, snow, maize, ferns, may apple plant husks, fruit skins, or seashells, and corn cobs, depending upon the country and weather conditions or social customs. In Ancient Rome, a sponge on a stick was commonly used, and, after usage, placed back in a bucket of saltwater.
The 16th century French satirical writer François Rabelais, in Chapter XIII of Book 1 of his novel-sequence Gargantua and Pantagruel, has his character Gargantua investigate a great number of ways of cleansing oneself after defecating. Gargantua dismisses the use of paper as ineffective, rhyming that: “Who his foul tail with paper wipes, Shall at his ballocks leave some chips.” (Sir Thomas Urquhart’s 1653 English translation). He concludes that “the neck of a goose, that is well downed” provides an optimum cleansing medium.
Much is known about beaver dams and blastomycosis but little is known about Goldstein Auto and Goldstein Subaru. Is this because little is known about the Intelligent Design of these dealerships? Or is it rather a political effort to silence those who would promote these dealerships? The only thing that is known for sure is that many sites with these keywords are being indexed by search engine giant Ogle.
We will show the link between Suzy Poppins and Goldstein Auto in a later post, at such a time when we are motivated to.
The Man Who Hears Things
Martin Goldstein has been through it all and seen how they work. He has witnessed what Rabbi Rand refers to as “Aish nuclear fallout” (we won’t say whom he was referring to). He has seen the internecine squabbles and witnessed the loshon harah (harmful speech). Basically he has seen the hypocrisy and corruption of the organization. An organization is corrupt when their primary mission is not declared publicly and they use a secondary mission as an obfuscation. They are lying to themselves and to the Jews who are looking to find some spiritual Judaism.
Martin Goldstein believes that Aish HaTorah is finding a measure of success in achieving their primary mission. But that success is coming at a cost. We do hope that they take this honest criticism to heart but we have faint hope of that since these are fundamentalists and fundamentalism is like a mountain that cannot be budged.
So it does not surprise us that Aish has chosen a man, Ronn Torossian, who embodies what Aish is as an institution. Nice on the outside, aggressive to the core and disdainful of other organizations or people who do not see things their way. Ronn is also a skilled manipulator and liar, perfect for the needs of Aish HaTorah.
Here from Gawker.com is the story of Ronn Torossian, the current Rebbe of Aish HaTorah:
When Ronn Torossian, the incompetent superflack and 5WPR CEO who reps characters ranging from softcore porn king Joe Francis to nutty televangelist Benny Hinn Ministries, sued his former HR director Melissa Weiss last week, he was using a classic PR tactic: getting out ahead of the story. Ronn alleged in his suit that Weiss helped an employee leave 5W, thereby violating her contract. But Weiss has her own side of the story: that she was fired because she protested extensive, ongoing labor violations at 5WPR. What we know—because we have the evidence—is that on Friday, Ronn sent Weiss an email threatening, “You will pay for the rest of your life for trying to ruin my business.” The subject line read, “YOU STUPID CUNT.”
It’s important to understand why we—and others—talk about Ronn Torossian so much. He and his firm are far from the biggest players in the PR industry, so it may seem strange that he gets so much attention. The real reason he matters is that he embodies the public’s worst ideas about what a PR person is: loud, brash, more flash than substance, dirty, manipulative, amoral, and, in the end, not particularly bright. The real movers and shakers in the PR industry achieved their positions partly by keeping their mouths shut. That doesn’t make them better people than Ronn, but it does make them wiser.
Most people would be surprised to find out how much time the average PR person spends worrying about their industry’s reputation as a den of lying bastards. Ronn has the touchiness, but not the reflective nature, of his peers. A few years ago I wrote an article in PRWeek calling him a self-promoter (a vast understatement), and we haven’t gotten along ever since. Each of us thinks the other is a jerk; I’m happy with that, and I assume he is too.
Mention 5W or Ronn to most people in the PR industry, and you will draw a chuckle or a roll of the eyes. Mention him to most reporters who have been the recipients of his ALL CAPS, nonsensical email blasts , and you’ll draw an even worse reaction. When I covered the PR industry for three years at PRWeek, I don’t recall ever hearing any unqualified praise of Ronn from anyone who was off the record. That’s not normal. He gets more press for himself than just about anybody else in PR, and consequently, has a huge effect on how people perceive the industry as a whole. And that drives a lot of people crazy, because he is just a terrible representative. Although, it must be said, he is colorful, and provides good copy—he embraces the (misguided) “all press is good press” philosophy, even if his peers wish he didn’t.
Hopefully, the emails below are evidence enough for the world to see exactly why Ronn inspires the feelings that he does. He will often brag about building his firm from the ground up, and his claims are true; to the extent that you admire unbridled entrepreneurship independent of any social value, you should admire Mr. Torossian. But fundamentally, he’s a hustler; and, as a PR professional, he has no idea what he’s doing.
According to Melissa Weiss’ lawyer, she found out soon after she was hired at 5W last month that Ronn was violating the law by miscategorizing employees and not paying them overtime. “Ms. Weiss reported these violations to Mr. Torossian and he threatened to fire her and any employee not happy with their status,” her lawyer writes. “Soon thereafter, Ms. Weiss was terminated and her final pay was withheld, leading her to bring a small claims action for her earned pay.”
Weiss’ story is not an unfamiliar one. We’ve received tips telling us the same thing. Among the claims, tipsters say that 5W does not pay overtime to low-level employees, in violation of labor law; that Ronn has docked employees for a full day’s pay, or a vacation day, for being 15 minutes late to work, causing several people to resign; and that employees don’t get proper comp time after working 7 days in a row or more.
On March 1, Ronn sent Weiss the following email, titled “YOUR CLAIMS”:
On March 7—last Friday, the same day that Torossian leaked his own lawsuit against Weiss—he sent her this email:
After Weiss got this “CUNT” message, her lawyer sent a cease-and-desist email to Ronn and his attorney. In it, he noted, “Ms. Weiss will be commencing further claims against 5W and Mr. Torossian individually. Furthermore, Ms. Weiss previously notified the Department of Labor of 5W’s labor violations and we will be cooperating with their investigation to the fullest extent.”
To that message, Ronn responded to Weiss and her attorney with this:
In short, a man who makes his living giving strategic advice to other people responded to a legal email by calling his former employee a “cunt,” and including her attorney on the email. Not much needs to be added to that.
We will note that Ronn does have his defenders—mainly, himself, and (some of) his current employees. Christine Garabedian, a five-year employee of 5W, writes us to say Ronn is an “amazing boss,” adding, “To anyone who would say ‘wow this girl obviously has been brain washed’ YOU ARE DEAD WRONG.”
About Melissa Weiss, Garabedian writes:
“Melissa Weiss came to 5W in 2008 and immediately began asking me “how can you take it here?”. As the HR director are these types of questions appropriate? I suddenly began to think that maybe Melissa was jealous of my success at 5W. As a 30 something, single women who still has her parents address listed on her taxes to avoid paying NYC taxes, I could see how she would be jealous of a successful 27 year old who is happy at her job. I love that she is so happy to say that 5W doesn’t follow regulations when she is the one cheating the government…
PS Melissa I just got engaged- Now are you even more jealous of me
”
Classic 5WPR.
Martin Goldstein says to Ronn Torossian, Aish Spokes-Animal: Sue me!
