They get They Might Be Giants to write songs about them, after all.
Episode CCLIX: Fictional serial killers are more aware than Christians.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
They get They Might Be Giants to write songs about them, after all.
Episode CCLIX: Fictional serial killers are more aware than Christians.
Nice sniny new thread. And me with no profound thoughts to fill it with.
Birger,
check out the “Steve Jobs is dead” thread. Also search the last TET for mentionings of the name “Steve Jobs”
I love the implication here:
Jumping in – ugh. Have been reading Grey Lining. Time for a limoncello and several hours of sleep to reset some neurons (specifically, those concerned with wallowing in sweet sweet alcohol and pretending filthstains like that don’t exist) and catch up on Iain Banks.
Reality? Bah!
My kids (5 & 7) love that song! They sing along word for word in the car :)
…reading comments on the “Occupy Wallstreet” movement.
Really? This from the guy that has been cheering on the Tea Party?
“Here Comes Science” is a wonderful CD/DVD. Those with toddlers (like me) who also happen to be TMBG fans (like me) will also want to check out “Here Come the 123s” and “Here Come the ABCs.”
I made it on a new thread! Yeeehaawwww.
I need a recommendation for a book on South African history, if anyone knows of something really great.
That’s just not (fully) true.
Rupert Murdoch isn’t American.
NPR’s Fresh Air program has added to the recent exposure of the means by which Art Pope bought North Carolina for the Republicans.
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141078608/the-multimillionaire-helping-republicans-win-n-c
The bit about Art Pope’s negative effect on North Carolina’s state-funded university system does not appear in the text summary, but is well-covered in the podcast. Basically: Pope got Republicans elected who drastically cuts funds to education at all levels. When the University was hurting the most, Pope stepped in and offered half a million dollars for a course on Western History and Free Markets. IIRC, there was one other course with libertarian leanings that Pope paid for, including a lecture series for which only rabid right-wingers were invited to speak.
Pope has arranged it so that education that goes against his worldview cannot be effectively taught, and institutions are so broke that they will accept money from him to teach courses that do align with his worldview.
*second try*
Uh…OK. I think I’ve been banned from Historiann.
Frankly, her posts of late haven’t been anything to write home about, but her response to challenges and criticism here was pathetic.
I think that’s my first banning. Do I buy the next round of grog or something?
Rey Fox,
of course he is. He took on American citizenship so he could own Fox…
I want to see his papers.
No, your next grog is on the house.
Er… perhaps I’m missing something, but what’s so especially terrible about pitting Americans against Americans? Is everyone who happens to have been born within the same arbitrarily-defined national borders supposed to agree about everything? :-/
well there is a US law networks can only be owned by Americans (I don’t recall the papers) so presumably at some stage he had to provide proof to the relevant authorities
Excellent! I’ll be by tonight.
I am happy to report that this is my 5 year-old niece’s favorite song.
That’s a right generally reserved for the blog owner.
or the killfiler
I don’t think he means Americans against Americans. I think he means “Americans” against Americans. I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t consider the Occupy Wall Street protesters to be Real Americans™.
That’s who posted it.
@Walton:
Well, you see… they’re pitting Americans vs Americans, and it’s terrible (to his funding sources)… because one of the groups is corporate America…
Eric Cantor wants to pretend that we’re all in this together, and that it’s impolite for the peons to complain about having to bail out bankers, about still having no job, and about bankers now riding high again while millions of people have no jobs and fewer services.
Eric Cantor thinks its unamerican to be rude to rich people who have screwed you.
Walton:
In his world, yes.
@lynna
Eric Cantor isn’t the only guy that makes me want to vomit. I am pretty sure you saw the American media’s reaction to Occupy Wall Street. It is revolting, I have never been so disgusted at politics in my life. I can’t believe how much of a garbage the media of this country is.
@ Psych-Oh
I don’t know of a single book on the complete history, if that is what you are looking for.
A great book is “The Washing of The Spears”, by Donald Morris. Subtitle:”The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation” (Interesting aside. My grandfather wrote to the author to contest a statement he made concerning the ammunition boxes in the Battle of Isandhlawa. I won’t spoil your fun as to why this was so important. If you get the book I can mail you the exchange.)
Another excellent book is “Long Walk to Freedom”, the autobiography of Nelson Mandela. Definitely a “must read”.
I will try and remember some more. If you want any info on more recent history, I can try and help you.
Important fiction to get a look into SA: Check out Zakes Mda, Marlene van Niekerk and on a lighter note Deon Meyer, who is very popular right now.
Check these too: Freshly Ground, Gito Baloi (actually Mozambican, but very famous in South Africa, murdered in Jo’burg in 2004), The Parlotones
Furthermore, if you are a member of the 99%, it’s likely that you do not even know the name of the particular manner in which you were screwed, and that, in Eric Cantor’s mind, automatically disqualifies you from being allowed to object.
Ignorance of complicated derivatives does not exempt you from the economic fallout, but it does exempt you from the worthy-of-being-heard by the Screwers in Charge category.
With regards South Africa, anything by Donald Woods is also well worth reading.
Woods was a white South African newspaper editor of English decent who in the atheism wars would have been called an accomodationist. That is until he started became friend with Steve Biko, and after Biko’s death began questioning what happened.
PS: Just had to post this: Freshly Ground (“Nomvula”, in Xhosa)
Oh, recently, I finished watching this anime called Paranoia Agent. I loved it. It was an entire series dedicated to dismantling the idea of living in delusion. Plus, I loved the horror aspect of it.
Note to self: work on communicating jokes.
Ah – I get it. And it’s funny. Perhaps if you’d left off the “Buh-bye!”…?
Eric Cantor on the issue of jobs and the economy:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#44842441
Basically, he wants us not to “take money from those who have been successful,” and he says that health care entitlements are the big problem when it comes to the deficit. It other words, medicare, medicaid and social security should be on the table. Closing tax loopholes and making people who make more that a million per year (or $250,000 per year) pay more in taxes should not only be off the table, but is a means to punishing job creators. “We want everyone to be successful.”
Other Republicans and talking heads discussing on the protestors on Wall Street: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#44842362
Herman Cain, “Jealousy is a driving force behind the demonstrations. The business sector is the engine of growth.”
Eric Cantor calls the protestors out for class warfare. “…Mobs who are pitting Americans against each other…”
There’s a lot of talk about having too many regulations.
There’s also a lot of talk about how much better it would be to move all the protesting to Washington D.C., about taking the protest to President Obama, and that protestors should stop harassing the banks.
Bloomberg defends banks.
One conclusion of the Republicans: if you are going to reform Wall Street, you need a Republican administration to do it.
And by the way, stop calling Tea Partiers terrorists or nazis.
FWIW, I got it.
:)
—
Walton, I’m not saying you’re wrong to be vegetarian or to want to do better, but it worries me personally that your desire for ethical purity is causing you a lot of guilt when you eat, considering the ways you’ve talked about eating before. And considering the fact that you seemed before to be having some trouble getting yourself to eat sufficiently and healthily.
So I guess what I’m saying is, please take care of yourself first *hug*
—
I’ve got to see a doctor soon but I’m dreading it :/ It’s always something, with me. Now I’m skipping heartbeats. Lots. (Not in a row.) Mostly while I’m eating, or right after I’ve eaten. My guess is they’re going to tell me to cut back on the caffeine or get off it entirely, though I’m not really using that much anymore. I’m hoping it’s just an anxiety thing, because the internet seems to think that happens, but I suppose I’d better check it out anyway :(
oh, heh.
Yeah, I think I would have gotten it without the ‘buh-bye’.
@CC:
*raises hand* It does. Anxiety can cause or exacerbate a LOT of medical issues. Good luck, and I hope for good news and safety for you.
True. I have been plagued by obsessive-compulsive disorder throughout my whole life, and it’s always been a problem for me. The problem has always been that things which are not irrational in themselves can easily feed into my OCD and turn into harmful obsessions. (When I was a child, for instance, I ended up washing my hands obsessively, to the point where I caused myself skin problems. That’s a good illustration that anything, however reasonable in itself, can end up becoming compulsive and harmful as a result of OCD.) As regards ethical issues, I often catch myself falling into an irrational purity-based mode of thought (wanting to dichotomize everything into “pure” and “contaminated”), and wanting to punish myself for failing to live up to unattainable standards. I have to fight that impulse. But sometimes it’s difficult to know how to balance sincere ethical convictions against the desire to avoid feeding my OCD.
I am seeing a psychologist at the moment, FWIW, and am conscious of my mental problems and am more-or-less in control of them. I’ve lived with this problem for my whole life, and am normally able to cope with it well enough to be functional.
Hey looky! A poll to pharyngulate, if you’re so inclined. It’s already been well and truly fucked with since it seems to be making the rounds in socialist social media circles (socialist social media, heh), but we may as well have fun with it too.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/10/07/do-occupy-wall-street-protests-represent-your-views-economy/
Fox News asks: Do ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Protests Represent Your Views of the Economy?
-Maybe. I am not even sure what they want.
-No. They have no idea how jobs are created or how a free-enterprise system works.
-Yes. These folks are right about corporate greed and what’s happening to the little guy.
-Other (post a comment).
Right now the “yes” option is at 65%.
:-( That’s not good. *hugs* I gather that there can be many different causes for heart issues; it’s definitely wise to see a doctor.
I was happy to learn that this TMBG is played quite often in my spawn’s 4th/5th grade classroom. They’ve been singing, “The Sun is a Miasma of Incandescent Plasma” for a solid week now.
I noticed today that Al Jazeera has a few interesting articles on #occupywallstreet, including interviews with several Egyptian immigrants who work or live near the area where the protesters are.
I’ve missed the last two (three?) threads, so thought I ought to check in to let everyone know I’m still around. At least for a moment.
We’re making nukazuke 糠漬け.
That is, we have just started the nuka-bed.
Can anyone share some first-hand experience?
And Happy Thankgiving!
Walton,
I think the biggest problem is knowing when something crosses from “inconvenient” to “harmful”. Decisions that make you tired for an afternoon or day are inconvenient; decisions that make you chronically tired are potentially harmful.
I’ve had issues on my end with that, though less than most (my OCD is relatively mild; most of my issues stem from the ADHD/AS side). But friends can be a real lifesaver (sometimes literally) with this kind of stuff. Hope you make some friends out in your new digs, but you’ve always got the horde here for a reality check if you need one.
Hey there
I just sent an e-mail to my university’s counselling service (psychological, not spritual) to make and appointment.
Now I need to find the courage to write my husband a letter telling him that I’m afraid I’m fucking up big and I’ll have made a painfull step towards a solution of my problems.
TMBG
Got the CD/DVD for the kids and they love it.
Only criticism I have is that they’re unforunately gender-stereotyping a lot.
Oh, good! Sounds like you’ve got stuff under control :) Yay for Walton.
—
Since Mom-NOS has been busy lately, I’ve started reading Diary of a Mom. Also great – you’ll notice a little godtalk, but it isn’t pervasive. Reading over there, something that had been worrying me a little since I started classes finally clicked into place and I now a.) feel much better about it and b.) am working on strategies to ameliorate it. (I had noticed myself behaving in a certain way that I didn’t like, and it turns out her daughter does the same thing at the beginning of school years. For her, it’s because of the giant changes in her routine, and structure is important in controlling it. So now I’m trying to figure out some way to establish new routines – even relatively minor ones – rather than sort of just trying to get to places and finish stuff before I’m late.)
On the less-bright side, I just found out I’m not eligible for either the student health clinic or the counseling office.
So that’s… not awesome.
You can do it. *hugs* We’re here.
Hmmm, I never really thought of it that way, Dianne, and am still unsure. I look at the increase in tuskless african elephants, for example. On the other hand, perhaps the only reason the tuskless elephant thing bothers me is because I think elephants are just more awesome with tusks… still a somewhat anthrocentric position.
Walton:
That’s pretty much how I see it.
WRT to dating, no one is obligated to date anyone, and any reason not to date someone is ‘valid’ no matter how stupid and trivial it may seem to someone else. I think that’s an important one to remember, myself.
So I hope that Dick the Damned doesn’t turn out to be a chew toy over on the red pill thread, but I’m swear I’m starting to hear dog whistles.
Muse: I have a bad habit of going a bit soft on them sometimes. It wasn’t very long ago at all that I was an MRA asshole who was completely unaware of his own privilege. I keep hoping something will ‘click’ in THEIR brains too.
I don’t seem to see it happening much though, sadly.
@ TLC – vain hope. My ears an ringing from the dog whistles. “old fashioned society” my left ass cheek…
Muse: Yeah, something smelled stinky to me when he basically said “I don’t like makeup, but it makes my wife look hotter and we both prefer that”.
What does he mean he ‘doesn’t like makeup’ then? Does he mean he doesn’t like wearing makeup himself or something?
That’s not good at all. :-( How come you’re not eligible? Do you have health insurance through your university, or are you on a separate plan?
And speaking of paleontologists….
Would the pharyngulites currently at GSA want to go get together? Maybe lunch on Tuesday (since there are so many things happening in the evenings)? I would really like to meet some of you in person.
Peter King thinks OWS protesters are a “rag-tag mob” and that the media shouldn’t report on them, lest they gain legitimacy, like the DFHs did in the ’60s.
Oh, and they are “anti-American.” No report on his lack of self-awareness and hypocrisy IRT teabaggers.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
I’m starting to regret my moral sense that doesn’t allow to see people as a food source. Wall St Fat Cats, now them’s good eatin’.
SC, see if you can beat my record at the FREEP. I lasted two whole posts there before being banned. My personal best was one post on the Thrid Iggle of the Apocraplypse‘s YouTube videos (plus he deleted my post).
Walton
Well, “wrong” is probably the “wrong” word here. It’s not a very healthy decission to start with, but so are a lot of other things (like eating too much, or drinking too much, or freeclimbing).
People’s worth doesn’t depend on whether they are smokers or not. Some of the best people in my life are smokers. They aren’t those wonderful people because they smoke nor does smoking make them less wonderful. They are wonderful people and they are smokers. None of us is perfect, so, yeah, meh.
Thing about smoking isn’t that other people find it distasteful, problem is that it objectively hurts other people.
Therefore I don’t think that they have to put up with it in their workplace, public transport or places where people socialize especially since this can be solved with giving smokers the opportunity to go outside for a cigarette.
I understand that this deprives smokers to have a cigarette and chatting inside, and it denies them to have a cigarette after dinner in the restaurant. I understand that this is a sacrifice that’s being asked of smokers for the sake of the rest of us.
But often smokers, once they have to accept those rules, find that it improves things for them, too, like the joy of a good meal in a restaurant, or an evening out with friends without being disgusted of the smoke themselves, the red inflamed eyes and the coughing (few smokers manage to smoke as much as they get in a crowded pub)
CC
Thanx
I think I’ll do it tomorrow morning. I need to write it, I need to get everything out at once without being interrupted (or starting to cry) and I can’t bear to look at him when I’m telling him.
Perhaps he means that makeup is for tarts and whores, really, so he can’t approve of it, but given that it does its job of making his female property more appealing to him it’s a necessary evil amirite?
(Disclaimer: I have not even read the thread in question yet.)
Catching up on Maddow.
Xeni Jardin annoys me as much in interview as her name lead me to assume. I recall some amusingly ironic story about her disappearing a bunch of posts a coupla years ago when she had a falling out with a former friend, but does anyone know more about her? What kinda woo is she into? She sounds very ‘holistic’.
Giliell
I’m shocked to learn that smoking in public places is legal. Its been banned for a long time here in Minnesota.
I’m a smoker who doesn’t even smoke in my own home. (ewww)
I also try to be aware and considerate of others when I do smoke and stand well away and downwind.
There was a missing word (I can’t even claim typo (All Hail Tpyos)) in my comment @ 56. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which & where.
I was attempting to use humor to tie the hunting and Wall St threads together. (Note to self: humor is not your strong suit; people have repeatedly said “oh, that’s Sailor, he thinks he’s funny” is a clue-by-four.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Speaking of makeup (which we weren’t but I thought posting it on the “Someone Took The Red Pill” comments would be igniting OT flames:”“I want to be your sweetheart here in New Hampshire,” [Michelle Bachmann] told a meeting of about 50 Tea Party supporters.”
Am I the only one who still keeps the Chicken Paper reference in a tab? A couple of times a day I look at it and cackle all over again. Part of that may have been the pressure of prepping my colleagues for the last 2 weeks of 2 peer-reviewed paper submissions and 2 conference papers. I can haz co-author? I can!
I forget who posted it (and said they cited it). It’s brilliant. I so want to GREP it with “squirrel.”
I’ve forwarded that paper to many colleagues.
The Dead Sea isn’t so dead.
We have a nice division of labour in my household.
I inform the SO of the dead mouse and he disposes of it.
But the Salton Sea is.
chigau, my ex-GF and I had a similar division of labor on the boat. She killed the spiders and I disposed of them. But I could use a hose.
Grrrrrr. Now my daughter tells me there’s a kid in the grade below who chases her down at recess, kisses and hugs her, and he won’t stop and the teachers apparently completely failing to take it seriously. She wants to change schools to get away from him.
There has to be something in the water at this particular school, right? Elementary schools can’t ALL be this horrifyingly retrograde and sexist, can they?
Antiochus Epiphanes, last sub-thread:
Ah, I see. As you said, that seems to apply to pretty much any ethical criterion. The only exceptions I can think of which are objective would be things like logical validity and soundness. If those aren’t components of your ethical system, then your system is broken.
Yep, it’s a very nebulous concept. As to whether it’s a “real thing,” in the same sense that a nation-state is a real thing, I’m fairly sure it makes sense to say it is. But we’d need to study it much more to have a good, rigorous definition. Lot’s of ink has been split there, so I’ll leave it at that.
Anyway, I meant to refer to the (alleged?) sentience of an agent in general. There is of course variation between individuals even in a normal, calm, alert state. And, as you note, it varies for a single individual from moment to moment. If you’re asleep or in some altered state of consciousness, obviously that’s different from your state under normal conditions. Indeed, it doesn’t seem possible that it could remain exactly the same, because even if nothing in your environment changes, you wouldn’t be aware of the passage of time if your mental state was fixed. So, I would say changing constantly (according to some fairly well-defined parameters) is necessary for anything to be sentient. This is a feature, not a bug, but it sure does complicate things. [Here I’ll mention the wacky idea of a god being a conscious entity “outside of time,” whose essence is perfect and thus never changes. If gods had legs, they’d be walking contradictions.]
However, as a general property of a thing (an organism, a computer, a hyperintelligent shade of blue, etc.), it either has the potential for some conscious states or it doesn’t. No? Maybe “potential” is the wrong way to put it. One might argue an embryo has the potential to be conscious, like it has the potential to be alive (and a red-blooded patriot, and a virtuoso concert violinist, and a member of NAMBLA), yet I wouldn’t claim embryos can be conscious as embryos. If they survive to whatever stage of development, then it has less to do with mere potential and more with varying degrees of actual consciousness … while in some cases being entirely absent again. (Ugh. It’s a confusing issue.) Then you die.
As long as we agree with the Limbaugh/Palin/Cantor/Rove/etc. cabal, yes. Otherwise we are not real ‘Mercuns.
Actually, I think he means Americans against Nazicommunistmuslimliberaldestroyersofchrist’samerica.
What growth? The only growth since supply-side economics became the driving force in US economics has been for the wealthy. For everyone else, stagnation or worse. Asshole.
If they were real ‘Mercuns, they’d be attending political rallies while holding automatic weapons. See, peaceful marching in the street is anti-American. Threatening to shoot politicians with whom you disagree is American.
————
Wife and I shared a day off today (it being a holiday, she doesn’t have to work her street corner). So we went for a drive in the Catskills to look at the fall colours. Incredible. And the evidence from the flooding (Irene in the Catskills, Lee as we worked up towards Oneonta) was amazing.
Of course, there were political signs up everywhere. Including one sign at a church which read:
I had no idea he was running. Or that the office was even on the ballot. I wonder whether it is ‘hippyJesus’ or ‘TeaPartyJesus’ running?
CC,
You’re going to think I’m incredibly stupid for saying this, but I’m going to anyways: I had the same problem a couple of years ago, right around the time I began having trouble with anxiety. The problem turned out to be indigestion, not anxiety, or my pre-existing heart murmur. I’m not kidding. Effing heartburn made me feel like I was skipping heartbeats. And it genuinely felt like my heart was skipping beats.
On another note:
1. I hate that I have to be a season behind on Doctor Who. :(
2. I hate that I’m also a season behind on Merlin.
3. What do I watch now?
Lynna @ 34 – Basically, he wants us not to “take money from those who have been successful,”
I’d sure love to hear who he thinks is going to be funding his future paychecks, since trying to tax the UNsuccessful, who don’t have any money, seems problematic.
Giliell @58
As a smoker myself, this doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Granted, I’m younger and have lived in California where smoking indoors in public places hasn’t been legal since I was about 10, so by the time I picked it up I never thought about smoking indoors. Just the thought of smoking inside is gross to me. Granted, there are some bars I’ll go to that allow for smoking inside, and I’ll participate, but it’s a really weird felling for me to light up indoors.
Whew. Been toilin’ on the resume, job applicating, patent applicating, and proposal writing, rather than the thread readin’, inane comment makin’, food-n-beer shit-shootin’-n-stuff, and will continue to do so.
I think I will now have 1.5 servings of microbrew. That is, there are two bottles in the fridge, probably Titan IPA but I actually forget.
I a few weeks or months (depending), I hope to de-lurk again as an employed person.
One interesting fact: I did just inoculate some logs with mushroom plug spawn. It’s important to have logs whose freshness you are sure about – which I do, Irene having passed through these several weeks ago.
cannabinaceae: That IS interesting. What kind of mushrooms? I’ve always been partial to oyster mushrooms ever since I learned to identify them, and they tend to grow on logs.
I lost track of stuff on some other threads, so I ask here:
do people who get tattoos generally shave body-hair?
or do some folks incorporate their hair into the skin-art?
The Laughing Coyote, I inoculated with two kinds of oyster mushrooms, blue and white. From what I can make out, the blue ones have more of a cult following. A friend of mine used to grow oyster mushrooms in bags filled with hay.
Now I wait a few months for the mycelium to develop, spritzing with rainwater to keep the logs moist, then force fruiting by soaking the logs overnight in rainwater. Supposedly you can go through several cycles of mycelium growth/fruiting before you exhaust your logs.
If it works out, I want to make a whole bunch of logs to give away as presents.
Cannabinaceae: That’s so cool…. I think mushrooms are gorgeous, and not just the edible kinds.
I never knew there were ‘blue’ oyster mushrooms either.
cannabinaceae: I see what you did there.
Ö
As it turns out, I have enough plug spawn for a few more logs, so I will have to visit F.I.L.’s house and take back some logs I gave him for his fireplace.
Cannabinaceae – fascinating. Do you have to use any special reaping tools to harvest the mushrooms?
I see what you did there.
Supposedly, the mushrooms will sprout out of the logs and you can just cut them off with a knife.
To inoculate the logs, you drill holes every couple of inches for the plugs, which are short dowels that are themselves infested with mycelium. Then you pound in the plugs and pour wax over them and that’s that. Keep them out of the wind in cool to cold temperatures.
In fact, if you’re interested in the mushrooms, just go to Amazon, like I did.
Did people link to this several months ago and I just missed it?
***
:). The thing is, I really don’t comment on fundamentally hostile sites (as soon as I realized ERV was that, I stayed away). Some people have deleted (Zuska) or blocked (Coyne) my comments unexpectedly – whatever; I have my own blog – but it’s strange to be banned like that by someone who’s generally reasonable. It was a stupid post, and I wasn’t the only one to note it. The funniest part were the assumptions that I’m an Obama cheerleader and parenthood fetishist.
Pete, re-pete. Meh…
I had a crap day. Some times it seems so unfair, and I suppose that’s because it is… and life is… and that’s that.
But are the knives, you know, scary?
Scary to the mushrooms! A razor blade would probably work just fine. Maybe they’ll just snap off!
Well, can’t stay long. W.U. just uttered the word “popcorn” with a rising inflection at the end. Phrased as a question, yet delivered in imperative mode.
*sigh*
I’m no good at this.
WRT Teabaggers, Wall-Street Occupiers and the patriarchy:
Class warfare–it starts as soon as the lower classes start shooting back.
Oh, FFS. Now she’s claiming that CPP’s point that she’s bought the shit media line means that he’s a Platonic media thinker:
Because Amy Goodman so wishes she could be better “placed” like the chattering court reporters. Never read Chomsky and Herman, that one. And it’s completely fine to accept their narratives uncritically because there’s no perfect source. I hate when people pull the Professional Scholar card. Please mock me the next time I try it.
Carlie, I finally see what you did there. Not your fault.
I attribute my slowness to being burned out and thus inattentive. Don’t be like I am.
*Goes off to iTunes to spend some money in penance*
Bah, I’m dense. I totally missed the joke.
I’m just too far behind the curve, and too obtuse. :)
May be generational. Were you around in the 70s? (That’s 1970s you damn whippersnappers!)
Hey, if I can dish it out, I’ll take it, even if you hit me upside the head. You did well.
With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound
He pulls the spitting high tension wires down
Helpless people on a subway train
Scream bug-eyed as he looks in on them
He picks up a bus and he throws it back down
As he wades through the buildings toward the center of town
Oh no, they say he’s got to go
Go go godzilla, yeah
Oh no, there goes tokyo
Go go godzilla, yeah
Rinji news o moshiagemasu!
Rinji news o moshiagemasu!
Godzilla ga ginza hoomen e mukatte imasu!
Daishkyu hinan shite kudasai!
Daishkyu hinan shite kudasai!
Oh no, they say he’s got to go
Go go godzilla, yeah
Oh no, there goes tokyo
Go go godzilla, yeah
History shows again and again
How nature points up the folly of men
Godzilla!
Terrrists have knives.
—-
Historians must publish?
Terrrists have knives.
No. Box cutters.
Well, I was banned from Rapture Ready and got my only two comments deleted. It was completely expected, but after reading a thread with filled with homosexual bigotry SIWOTI overtook.
I pointed out on Ray Kurzweil’s site that he contradicted himself, and got that comment deleted. Seriously, it wasn’t even that critical. Not sure if I was banned because I never bothered to try to comment again.
Besides that, I only got comments to fail to go through at The Intersection and Rosenau’s blog. None of them contained swearing (since I knew the monocle droppers didn’t like that), but what comments did and didn’t go through seemed almost random. Oh, and I got a comment deleted at USA Today for ridiculing the author of a silly piece.
sorry my bad posted over on the wrong entry
Sounds silly but–
couscous with cheese, yes or no?
(Cath, your opinion would be welcomed.)
I had no idea those were the lyrics.
***
:)
awesome
And knitting kneedles.
and darts (those ones you throw at a target on the wall in bars).
I remember all of the froufraw as talking heads wondered how they got the blades onto the airplanes. Oddly, prior to the September 11, I had no trouble at all taking knives onto airplanes. I remember (in August of that year (on my way to the Taco Fire in Idaho (fires are usually named for a local geographic feature but, in the midst of a huge dry thunder storm, the dispatcher (who gets to name the fires) was working a double shift and was very hungry and, thus, there was a Taco Fire, an Enchilada Fire, a Burrito Fire, and a few other ones (he got yelled at, was told not to do it again, and to show up for another double shift in 16 hours (he spent a month working 16 on, 16 off)))) showing up at the local airport. I put my knives in my carry-on back pack and told security that there were four knives. “Why do you need four?”
“Well,” I said, pointing on the x-ray, “that one is for eating, that one is for cutting safety belts in an emergency, that one is for whittling, and that one is for boxes and other stuff that kills knives.”
“Cool. Have a good flight.”
And that was it.
Father Ogvorbis: No, just being slow on the uptake. As soon as I noticed it, I was kicking myself for having missed it.
I was born in 1984. But I look like I should have grown up in the 70s.
Lucky u Coyote, I’ve got the opposite problem, no one ever believes I was born in the 70s.
I don’t know anything much about her, and I won’t comment on the topic of your post, but I just want to say: I really appreciated Goodman’s coverage on Democracy Now! of the tragedy of Troy Davis’ death. I’m glad someone’s drawing some attention to the screwed-up criminal “justice” system in this country, even if most people seem to be ignoring it.
Oh, Walton – I sent you an email mate.
I was genuinely surprised when I had to check my nail files and nippers.
TMBG is my absolute favorite band. Danny Weinkauf, the one singing in this song is super nice and cool in-person. :)
You bet. Got my degrees and married the Redhead. Good decade.
Last fire I went to, they objected to the date nail I use as a pipe tamper. On the return flight, not the outbound. Sheesh.
You got me there. I was 3 when it started and 13 when the decade came to a close. I remember the current music from the late 70s, but the earlier stuff is only through albums (and then cassettes, and then cds, and now mp3s).
I just saw a GREAT icon over on Live Journal. It said:
You are the end result of four billions years of evolution. Fucking act like it.
sandiseattle, I was mildly amused to see you at that salty droid place.
That was very awesome.
i love paleontologists
TMBG. I love them so much it hurts.
I experienced an Enchilada Fire once, about 12 hours after eating a real enchilada (as opposed to TacoBell).
—
I finished the 1970s at the age of 24.
Y’see Chigau, that’s exactly how I look. Like I should have been this age in the 70s. Like a hippie frozen in a glacier and mysteriously thawed in the 21st century.
…but we aren’t the end result…
MrFire – sorry I missed your email earlier. I’ve replied now.
My first experience with a habanero pepper was a green salsa I slathered on a pulled beef burrito in Kanab, Utah. I was impressed.
The Taco Fire was hot. I was working nights and sleeping in a tent during the day. Or trying to sleep. It was hitting 115F in the shade. With a dewpoint down around -20F (at this fire, the WX recorded a humidity of zero — he could not get a wet bulb reading), I woke up so dehydrated that it took seven litres of water before I could piss. After that, the night shift got a hotel room in town (about 20 miles away) where we could sleep in air conditioning during the day.
JM@118, yeah it was mildly amusing over there..
For my part, I was having a great time being mostly scattered about the biosphere, possibly as part of one of Carl Sagan’s neurons here (exciting), and as part of one of Ray Comfort’s turds* there (humbling).
(*His books, of course. What were you thinking?)
A recording of one of the Digital Cuttlefish’s poems. Beware, there may soon be more.
Huh. Sandiseattle, follow your own tastes. I sometimes do when I’m using couscous as a quickie meal rather than cooking something proper-like.
And now I am going to buy some of the best bread in Canberra, as long as I can get my arse off the couch in time. One of those days. I should be at work but can’t summon up the energy. Oh well, what’s another day of LWOP?
Meh…
I was planning on a quiet evening of Civ V. But an other sexism thread was opened and I allowed myself to be sucked in.
Alethea,
Around $250?
And off to bed. To read. Kinda afraid of actually sleeping. G’night, all.
Fr.Og. g’night
Tonight my bed-reading is Everything You Know About God is Wrong ed. Russ Kick
It has increased my “for later” list at my library by … a lot.
This is truly one of the sickest things I have ever seen.
Not a hyperbole.
Well, this should be interesting. Looks like Deepak Chopra threw a temper tantrum about Dawkins’ children’s book on HuffPo. I would love to see PZ or someone do a public take-down of this. It’s so long and rambling. Full of the same old stupidity: Dawkins is close-minded, he’s intellectually arrogant, he thinks data are superior to experience, how can you scientifically prove I’m in love with a beautiful woman, and so on.
Blergh.
Janine
Have you ever seen one of those in meat-space?
or it is just something they do because it is so fucking funny™ on the interwebs?
Chigau, I have not seen such a thing in meatspace. I would like to think that even the evil shits who find that funny are too ashamed to be that public about it.
SallyStrange, even the open sentence is pure shit.
No, even that is not a critical challenge.
I was at karaoke at a bar and someone sang this:
lyrics:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/bloodhoundgang/alapdanceissomuchbetterwhenthestripperiscrying.html
I haven’t quite recovered.
Bleagh!
@ Sally
hoomins 68.4% , idioots 28.23% … time to clear cache and vote again.
@ sandiseattle
The answer is a most definite yes. However be careful what cheese you select. (My guess is that most cheeses won’t go so well, but then I’ve never tried.) My recommendations are halloumi and feta.
The halloumi should be grilled just before serving. (delicious, but tends to be expensive.)
Crumbled feta goes well with finely chopped tomato/onion/greenpepper/olives mixed with either cilantro or fresh mint. Finish of with some fresh roast pine-nuts and a “squeal of lemming”. It works well both hot or as a cold salad and is super quick and easy to make.
Generally couscous can be used to replace either pasta or rice in a dish. You can also experiment with chopped apricots, cashews, pistachios and feta. No reason that couscous couldn’t carry a sweeter dish too.
Damn. Missed the bread, they were sold out. I bought croissants instead, and had a “fish & chip” pizza for lunch, though, so it wasn’t a total loss. (That’s potato & anchovy pizza bianca, now renamed thanks to theophontes.) And now I have more exciting medical terms to google. Subsegmental alectasis, subpleural nodules, hiatus hernia, what fun!
@ Inane Janine #134
Eeeuw, gross. Is there no such thing as hate speech in the US of A?
@ Alethea
Really nyummy, no? Next up is a bacon & banana Bianca… ;)
There is, indeed, plenty of hate speech. There are also few restrictions on it. Though this one clearly crosses the legal line into openly advocating violence against women, USians are in general slow to act against such things.
@ Sally
If you know how to start a petition against these people, you can gladly sign me up.
EWWWW, Jaine, that shirt is terrible. I haven’t seen that shirt specifically but I’ve seen others like it in real life. How sad. =(
Maybe that’s because I’m in AZ?
Sad realization I just had when I saw that shirt was that my most recent ex would love it but be too ashamed to wear it. A very bad discussion we had once after I went off on some sexist shit on TV, he didn’t defend it but he said he didn’t like feminists and feeling guilty about stuff that isn’t his fault. He was surprised that I was a feminist. I said well, you think women are people too, right? And support endeavors to help correct society on that score right? He said yes, but didn’t want to feel guilty, or be called a feminist or actually do anything about it. He’s black and tried to explain it by comparing but that didn’t help since I have white privilege, but am female, while he’s a minority with Male privilege.
Somehow that feels so much worse than him being a straight up asshole.
Because he’s not helping, but he’s being hurt by it too.
I’ve tried talking to him about the damage it does to men too, like his insecurities about his penis (which was just great but of course my opinion didn’t matter) and feeling like a loser for not banging a lot of women. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Oh, shit he’s a Nice Guy(tm). How did I not see that?
Ugh. Now I feel sick. Too many realizations in one night.
Janine:
And here I thought the “Don’t trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die” T-shirt was bad. It’s always worse than you think, ennit?
J_A_L:
Because they’re all over the place and not always easy to spot?
Too true. I guess I’m just shocked since we were together for so long and I thought I knew him. Love is blinding. heh. It just makes me feel bad since I didn’t realize he was lying & cheating too…
Sigh. Oh well. Knowing and realizing is better than being ignorant.
Though I’m human and it still hurts like hell all the same =(
Am I the only one who feels like they broke the thread when no one comments for awhile after them?
…..
No. It’s late for most USians and a little to early for those on the other side of the pond. It’s 3 am for me and I should be in bed.
@ J_A_L
I am (supposed to be) working. Heading back home soon.
PS: Hugs if you want them…
PPS: Press ribs against USB port for cybertickle ™ [beta version only]
1:30 am here. I’m terrible at setting normal sleeping habits for myself.
Thanks, Pelamun
— — — — —
“Two Americans share economics Nobel” http://www.thelocal.se/36652/20111010/
What is the point of economy as a science if policy makers ignore the accumulated economic experience of the last century?? We see the absolute triumph of ideology over knowledge in how US economy is run.
— — — — — —
“Jesus Christ
for
King of the World!”
There is a precedent. Kim Il Jung is still president of North Korea despite being dead for more than ten years.
TLC:
I’m nocturnal, but I’ve been very short on sleep lately. And I’m still not in bed…
@ Birger
Snap! I was just reading that on BBC News. I had thought they understood these mechanisms before. What a wunch of bankers… They either understand what is going on and lie, or they lie about their ability and screw it up for the rest of us anyway.
Seriously, Scream 4 marketing team, fuck off with the stupid pop up faux-‘screamer’ ad. It’s only making my already low opinion of your movie even lower.
Sigh.
In local news: Filmmakers ‘appalled’ by Iran sentence.
(Bravery has its price)
TLC, don’t you have AdBlock? Or Firefox, which comes with a handy dandy pop up killer?
Ichthyic,
Thank you for the introduction to this meme. I see a strong future for it.
I’m probably behind the curve here, but this made me giggle: feminist Ryan Gosling. (which apparently has nothing to do with Ryan Gosling except that the person who made it likes him)
5 am here, and I’ve been up for over an hour. Decided not to try and go back to sleep, in the hopes that I’ll actually fall asleep tonight. I’m going to be really short on sleep this weekend (I assume! Woo!) so I should stock up…
JustaLurker, it sucks to realize you spent so much investment into someone who wasn’t good for you, but at least now you know the signs to watch out for next time. Cold comfort, but at least something.
Iran… the brownshirts are firmly in power. What do you expect of a country that has executed 120 000 people for political reasons.
— — — — — — — —
Kill it with fire!!!
“Mega beats Mimi for world’s biggest virus” http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-mega-mimi-world-biggest-virus.html
Seems like co-evolution of humans and canides:
“Evidence of domestication of dogs during Paleolithic period found” http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-evidence-domestication-dogs-paleolithic-period.html
— — — — — —
Is there a term for “dozing off for a couple of hours during the night, attending to cats, dozing of half an hour, attending to cats, unsuccessfully trying to sleep for the rest of the night” ? Punctuated nocturnalism?
I used to sleep five hours a night. Now I consider that a luxury. And if I am not disturbed by the cats, I wake up because of something else.
I remember that when the crisis hit first in 2008, suddenly a book was in the bestseller lists (I can’t remember the exact title) about the “financial crash”. It was a point blank analysis of the reasons and mechanisms.
Only that it had been written one or two years before.
So, yeah, people knew what went on, they knew what was coming, they knew why. They kept lying. Those who told the truth were shouted down as lefty-liberal doomsday-sayers.
Now in Europe, everybody is fed up with bailing out the banks. Greece, Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, they ruined themselves bailing out the banks.
They ruined themselves being tax havens.
You can’t sell bailing out the banks anymore. But you can, to a degree, sell bailing out Greece, so we got the Euro-Safety-Net.
And just one week after most countries got it through parliament, they are now talking about changing the thing to bailing out the banks again, those very banks they told us were stable and well-funded about half a year ago when went through a stress-test.
Truth is: they don’t have any solutions in which they don’t cut the interests of the big banks and corporations drastically. But they will use the crisis for a massive class-war before they admit that.
We will not get our public property back if we manage to get a more democratically and socially minded government in some years. What’s gone is gone. If they destroy the public healthcare in Germany it won’t be easily possible to rebuild it again.
Oh, and it’s half past 11 here, in the morning.
Just had the workers here, changing the clocks on the radiators (those little devices that tell our housing company how much heating we actually used.)
Yay! Mobile website!
Thanks for pointing that out, it’s quite well hidden. -.-
Hoookay
I only saw today on Jadehawk’s blog that the only city in Germany where the fucking “40 days for life” pro-lifers were protesting in Germany was my state capital and the protest was already last Saturday.
But I sent the medical centre they targeted an email telling them they’re awesome and that we really need and value them. I hope it helps a little.
*142 Atelectasis. Not Tpyos’s fault this time, entirely mine.
I just have to highlight this because it’s so good:
My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit
Carlie @#167:
Thanks; that’s a fantastic blog. Her preceding post, In the name of safety: the multi-national anti-immigration industry and their billionaire profits, is spot on.
I’m glad people are paying attention to this. Immigrants’ rights need to be seen as a basic social justice issue. The oppression of undocumented migrants by the state and its hirelings is deeply grounded in racism; and it’s also a feminist issue, since irregular migrant women face special problems (many are victims of sexual violence and abuse in their home countries, and many in the West end up being exploited as domestic workers, sex workers, or some other form of informal labour), and an LGBT rights issue (many LGBT migrants come from countries in which being gay is illegal, and in which LGBT people are stigmatized and regularly beaten by gangs or by the police).
ARRGH WALTON
Sorry I have to cancel on you. Came in today and found a bunch of meetings on my plate. I’ll send you an email too.
ARRRGH
MrFire: No problem. We can meet up next week instead (after I’m back from Rhinebeck).
I have another shirt that says “Paleontologists Do It In The Dirt.”
Happy National Coming Out Day, everyone!
I don’t know. I may carry one to throw at men who hit on me near elevators or as I’m trying to go to my car. Maybe they’ll get the point, maybe not… but the distraction might give me time to get away from them.
Their other shirts aren’t much better, either. The worst part? I already knew that
jokeline.Actually, I think that one is worse, though I can’t quite articulate why. Perhaps it’s the wholesale dismissal of all women vs the threat of violence against one single woman? I’m not sure. They’re both pretty bad. And the rest of their T-shirts stink as much.
Every time I see a T-shirt with “I Fuck On The First Date”, I get the urge to slap on a “You Wish” sticker.
So totally unrelatedly – I think that it’s going to be a while before “We are Veterans of the United States of America” doesn’t strike a chord for me. The Occupy Boston folks have a video of Veterans for Peace* being arrested (pretty physically) as their flags are hitting the ground and being trampled on, and the crowd is crying “Shame”. I’m not one generally for flag worship, but it’s a hell of a symbol. Video is at http://t.co/C22hrGVM
*The Vets for Peace took up station between the Occupy Boston folks and the police when the police were coming to tear down the second camp/arrest the occupiers.
No, that’s actually rather violent too. 1. women are “things” not people. 2. women should die
That being said, I don’t mind shirts like that. They let me KNOW I need to avoid that person. If only most assholes were kind enough to wear a sign, life would be simpler.
Muse etc. – here is the official statement by Veterans for Peace. It is beautiful in its sentiments trying not to vilify the police.
here
Good morning, too many awesome posts on FTB later and it’s already lunch time.
Why do alt-med fuckwads piss me off so much? The comments here have a persistent moron.
1. The guy uses ad hominem attacks (in the original sense). So far he’s attacked James Randi for associating with someone who has been accused of identity theft (Jose Luis Alvarez), and attacked the CDC because one of their researchers was arrested for child porn.
2. He’s a True Believer: thinks the CDC and FDA are government conspiracies, thinks vaccines are intentional poisons, etc.
3. He keeps using the same nonsense table of supposed iatrogenic deaths, even after I posted a refutation. (In fact, I posted the refutation *before* he posted the table.)
*headdesk*
*headdesk*
*headdesk*
*CRASH*
*headfloor*
*headfloor*
*headfloor*
“So Benjamin, when the unconstitutional CDC’s Lance Rodewald makes UN-scientific, slanderous statements against a WHOLE population of innocent people, then yes, I would consider it an ATTEMPT at dictating to us slaves: “Lance Rodewald, director of the CDC’s Immunization Services Division, says the measles outbreaks show a problem with state policies allowing home-schooled children to escape vaccines.” – http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-10-21-home-school-vaccinate_N.htm -”
*facepalm*
Uh
The 25 Best Eats at the Texas State Fair
“Best”
RevBDC:
The “kraut balls” sound pretty good, as do sweet tea pickles and fried cheesecake.
@Rev BDC:
Fried, fried, fried, sugary, fatty, fried, fried.
About the only thing on that list I’d eat would be the dolma (save that it’s non-vegetarian and visually unappetizing.) The frozen Arnold Palmer looks pretty good, however, bet it’s highly sugary though.
I’m planning on going to the fair this weekend (I can finally go somewhere yay!)
I may try the fried kraut. The giant dolmas sound good too, although I’d prefer a platter of not-so-giant dolmas. Tamale balls are basically like kibbeh. Pretty good.
Yeah the sweet tea pickles were about the only thing that caught my interest.
Though I’ve had fried chicken skins before and when done right they’re good as hell.
I don’t really mind fried food. If you don’t eat a ton of it, don’t have stomach issues, and actually walk or ride things there.
Last time I was at the fair I ate something fried, but I actually walked off nearly 800 cal.
So really, I earned that thing :)
My days of food snobbery are soooo over.
Quick informal poll:
1. Do you think that humans evolved from
a) apes
b) a shared primate ancestor with apes, but not apes, or
c) neither
2. Do you think that apes evolved from
a) monkeys,
b) a shared primate ancestor with monkeys, but not monkeys, or
c) neither
3. Which of the following is probably least closely related to most Asian monkeys
a) an African monkey
b) a South American monkey
c) a gorilla
d) a human being
Please, quick answers only for the moment, not explanations… and don’t go googling. I’m curious what the people here will say off the tops of their heads, based on what they’ve been told (and whether they believed it), rather than what they can figure out once I ask the question. I want to know what you thought five minutes ago.
Fried dough. I can’t resist fried dough. And I always pay around $5 for the privilege.
No love for the chocolate-drizzled strawberries and bananas on a skewer? I think you guys are just being contrary.
Paul W: bbb
@ Gilliel
As I recall, there where a number of people calling them on the looming financial crisis. In the end people where selling short in expectation of a downturn. Essentially they where calling the bluff of the bullshitters. And also got accused of causing the problems.(Thats like accusing the firemen responding to a fire for causing it.)
If it cheers any, there s a long history of this kind of mindless greed, going back before the medieval robber barons, via the tulip mania, the Mississippi Company of John Law …. Yup this same bullshit has a long history. It is greed all the way down. (John Law was a card shark who created modern finance.) “Money is a means of exchange, unrelated to underlying value…” We have now learned that the hard way.
Wealth comes from making shit, not talking shit.
Link to Cartoon of Mr Law (Rather apt for the contemporary financial fiasco. I’ll translate some of the text: Title” Who wishes to rationalise is [going] wrong.” Monkey:”Who can see the end?”,”Copying human trade is our way.”, [fat?] cat:”If the wind does not move me, I’ll still fall back on the land [country] on my feet.” windmill:”I work with …”, investor:”I first thought I was a [wiseguy], but I burnt my hand in the end.” duck:” Misuse of all you started is much worse than smoke and wind.” duck 2 :”The End carries liabilities.” The animals explain what the humans are too stupid to see.)
Well I auto-pass on most sweet things so they don’t even register on my “would I eat that” list.
And I love fried food, just not all fried food.
The shrimp corn-dog was interesting except the probably sickly sweet sauce on it. There’s a place here in town that does small shrimp “corn-dogs” served with their own made mustard and spicy ketchup. Pretty damn good.
Paul W – bbb, promise no googling, no lengthy chewing over (not that it would do me any good) and also promise that was my answer before seeing Rey Fox’s :-)
I’ve been horrified, but not at all surprised, by the police brutality at the protests. Sadly, this is pretty standard. Police brutality and power-abuse in this country has long been out of control, and there are usually few or no repercussions for police officers who abuse citizens. (See Ed Brayton’s and Radley Balko’s blogs for about a million examples.)
@Paul W:
bbb
Of course I’ve been reading Ancestor’s Tale, sooo…
People, are we certain that Bryan Fischer is not a Poe:
Paul W; b,b,b
Resorted to *lite* reasoning on 3.
He has a point. The ritualistic singing of “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” has ensured that the Lord has blessed us with the continued existence of baseball for going on 150 years now. I’ll have to start going to every baseball game I can now and singing a composition of my own, “I Sure Would Like an iPad” in the middle of the seventh (divine) inning.
Wait, it’s October now? Fuck.
Speaking of bad food, last night I had a hankerin’ for a chili-cheese-dog. With fries smothered in ketchup. And a Coke.
I couldn’t finish most of the bun, but that’s OK, you can’t actually pick the concoction up. Me and my fork went to serious town on that beef frank, cheese and chili.
Nom. nom.
Belief in rituals that need to be done often in order to strive off disaster or bad events.
Isn’t that like a hallmark sign of a serious mental illness?
AMERICA FOR THE SAKE OF NATIONAL SECURITY EVERYONE MUST TOUCH EACH LAMP POST THEY PASS EXACTLY 3 TIMES!
PaulW, bbb.
Doesn’t it qualify as a Poe if you can’t tell the difference?
+++++++++++++++++
BTW, the T-Shirt mentioned above isn’t funny. I don’t mean that in a ‘I’m offended’ way, it just isn’t funny. The Bloodhound Gang was funny. Kinda South Park funny, but funny.
I can be offended and still think something is funny.
Tho I do like the idea that you can pick the T-Shirt wearers out of a crowd and know who to avoid.
It strikes me as what would be funny is if there were an overhead shot and gradually all the people in the crowd around someone wearing that T-Shirt would just sidle away as soon as they read it. Final shot is of clueless guy standing alone at the fair with a foot-long corn dog in one hand, a giant cotton candy in the other, wondering WTF just happened.
PaulW: AAB
and if ‘ape’ and ‘monkey’ have any meaning whatsoever, those are the correct answers.
Paul W:
(Keep in mind, I’m an historian): b, b and b.
No google and I didn’t peek at the smart people’s answers.
@Sailor
I would have possibly laughed in a “That’s so wrong” way if a comic character like Black Mask or Joker wore it.
Theophontes – Thank you!!!!! I am going to get those books! Really, I am just interested. It is amazing how little I know about South African history, especially given that I grew up right in the midst of the antiapartheid movement. The hubby and I were discussing how little we learned in high school, and about how African history in general was given quite minimal time and weight.
Ing – “AMERICA FOR THE SAKE OF NATIONAL SECURITY EVERYONE MUST TOUCH EACH LAMP POST THEY PASS EXACTLY 3 TIMES!”
I laughed out loud. I feel safer already.
ChasCPeterson,
Now that the tide’s going the other way, I’ll go ahead and agree with you, to keep it from getting too unbalanced. :-/
a, a, b
Paul W: I said bbb before seeing other answers. #3 is the one I really feel like I am guessing at- I picked it only because I have been reading about old world vs new world monkeys with my daughter and humans and apes seem more like old world monkeys.
Paul W,
bbb
Humans are apes.
Ah, that explains why I came out as a total failure today.
Well, I’ve written the letter to my husband, sealed and posted it and now I feel like total shit.
If I’d hoped for any kind of relief that I got it off my chest, it didn’t happen.
As an ape, I want my tree now so I can curl up in it.
Chigau, I think so too, but you’re supposed to answer the questions asked. Explanations come later.
Hey, We had Thanksgiving up here. Much simple fair was produced and shared with our friends, good times were had, and the kids played each other into the ground. For you Canadians, hope yours was as good as mine, and the rest of you if you happen to have some sort of harvest fest coming up, just remember that the less you eat the day of the more left overs your have, take that how you will.
___
Giliell,
I am sorry to read that, but glad you are taking steps to address the problem. Hugs if you need ’em.
___
Paul W,
1)a
2)a
3)b
Giliell, I have some understanding of the history with your husband and child you are writing about. Can I please relate it to my rescue swimmer training? People are sometimes ashamed to ask for help. That accounts for a lot of people dying when help is in sight.
I know, I know, it’s a simplistic model of all the complicated interactions that happen.
You are not a total failure, you just may have fucked up at one/some of them. We all do. All of us do. Fucking up is what humans do the most often. Realizing this is what makes us shine.
{hugs:chocolate:no rum for you:bacon 6 ways from Sunday; is on your USB port.}
Paul W.
I got that.
But being me, I immediately thought, “What do you mean by ape? What do you mean by monkey? I’m confused.”
So nothing came off the top of my head.
@ Paul W.
1. b
2. b
3. b
Why?
@Paul W. @#188: b, b, and define “closely”.
That ringing sound is the exam board phoning to rescind my Biology O-Level, I guess. :-/
Thank you, I take hugs and chocolate
Well, it’s not about him and me and the kids*, it’s about me and my professional career, or the lack thereof.
*If there are three good things in my life, it’s the three of them. Wouldn’t have done better if i wished for them via the traditional fairy godmother
Giliell,
I find myself at a crossroads and I have a great deal of sympathy for anyone coming at it from the opposite path to the one I have trod so far. What to do? It’s a consuming question, I hope you can find a good answer.
Sally:
It’s partly because the subject came up of what it means to “be” a “monkey” vs. an “ape,” or to have “evolved from monkeys,” and partly because when I was googling relevant things, the first thing I came up with was an FAQ about evolution at pbs.org that struck me as seriously wrong. (Maybe defensible on some interpretation, but clearly factually wrong on what I consider the reasonable interpretations of terms, and very misleading.)
I went looking for a similar FAQ at NCSE, and didn’t find one, but they link to the same one at PBS.
I’m still scratching my head about why they’d say such apparently (to me) patently false or effectively meaningless stuff in the way they do, and I have a couple of theories that I suspect are more or less true. One has to do with annoying ambiguities common to category terms of all sorts, and the other has very much to do with politics and accommodationism. They’d rather say stuff that’s fundamentally false on the right interpretations than to risk being “misinterpreted” as saying something the creationists could mock.
But maybe I’m misunderstanding something—and I’m not a biologist—so after I get some more answers to my little quiz, I’m going to ask people what they actually mean by their answers.
While I was googling, I came across this video by AronRa, which expresses my own understanding of the issues pretty well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWUNk3228nk
(Nobody look at that before answering the quiz, though, and please hold off discussing it here for a while. I will be interested in discussing it tomorrow, especially with people who understand the subject and disagree with AronRa and me.)
Paul W: b) b) b)
I’ve missed having time to keep up to date; spouse and I spent Friday-Monday painting our house and I’m exhausted/very sore. (And we’re still not finished.)
On the plus side, we seem to have perfected a really tasty pork chile verde recipe, although I’m not certain of its authenticity. It may very well be my favorite chile verde of all time.
chigau,
OK, I certainly understand that response.
I do (currently) think my own answers are “best,” in the big picture, but what bugs me most about the PBS Evolution FAQ is that it makes it sound like there are simple and clear yes/no answers, and proceeds to give the (IMO mostly) “wrong” ones, rather than saying “yes, in one important sense, but no in some others,” and explaining why some people say “yes” and others say “no.”
changeable moniker:
define “closely”
You know, until you asked that, I had entirely forgotten about the issue that small monkeys typically have much shorter generations than big apes, so the monkeys are going to be way further from other things—and from most other monkeys, even fairly “close” relatives—by that standard.
Pretend that you forgot about that too, and are looking at something like a cladogram of extant species and maybe a comparable number of extinct intermediaries and outliers. Then pick the answer that “sounds right,” even if you know it’s not that simple.
It’s that kind of fucked-up forced-choice quiz, partly because I’m trying to get a handle on why some people say certain simple-seeming things that they say, and whether even fairly informed people actually understand them the way they’re meant to be understood.
Occupy Boston update: “Civil disobedience will not be tolerated,” Boston Mayor Thomas Menino
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/11/at-least-100-arrested-at-occupy-boston-protest/
Rough recipe for this weekend’s chile verde:
3 lbs. pork butt
10 tomatillos
3 largish (green) poblano chiles
1 (green) anaheim chile
a bunch of garlic
an onion (assuming you don’t forget to buy one like I did & resort to onion powder)
one bunch of cilantro
1.5 limes
~ 1 Tbsp of chicken bouillon granules (warning, I just guessed on all the dry spices and such)
~ 1 tsp oregano
some ground pepper
small dash of ground cloves
Preparation:
First step is to halve the tomatillos (once you’ve pulled off the papery outside and washed the fruit) and chop up your onion roughly. Toss these with lots of chopped garlic and some oil. Broil in the oven until the tomatillos brown and soften up a bit. Put the tomatillos & onions in a food processor with the cilantro leaves until nicely pureed.
Put this in with the dry ingredients in a pot (we use an enameled dutch oven) and set heat to low. Juice your limes. At this point we also added some leftover green enchilada sauce we’d doctored with fresh tomatillos as well as approximately half of a 17 oz. container of a locally made fresh tomatillo salsa that has some jalapeños (local Costcos sell it for lots less than its listed online). You can add a favorite green salsa or the like to taste.
Now you roast the chiles. We usually use our toaster oven to broil them. Turn them until the skin is nicely blistered all around. Then pop them in a glass bowl and cover with plastic to for 15 minutes or so. Once this is done, the skins should peel off cleanly. Clean out the peppers of seeds and cut up enough to fit in a food processor. Puree the peppers and add to your sauce. The sauce is quite liquidy at this point, so you want to cook it on low uncovered to reduce down to a nice thickened mixture before you add the pork. We cooked ours for about five hours (I think) stirring occasionally to ensure it doesn’t stick.
Once your sauce is looking thick enough, cube up your pork roast and season as desired. We used a premade carne asada shaker. Then brown in a separate pan and add to your pot. Leave uncovered as the mixture will get soupier after adding the pork.
Cook for an additional three hours. This should be long enough that the pork is tender and will fall apart in your mouth.
@PaulW: abb
I’ll be interested to see your discussion.
@Rev – argh, almost everything there looks horrible to me. Though I do love a pineapple fritter, but with cinnamon sugar, not whipped “cream” and cherries. (The fruit skewers would be good if not for the dreaded banana; the greek salad is spoiled by grated cheese instead of nice chunks of fetta.)
Is the Boston Mayor aware that he may instead be inviting UNcivil disobedience?
Going on three hours in the waiting room at the ER. Glad my issue’s not as urgent as the poor guy who is over there bleeding. Must feel really bad to be that guy :(
I don’t want to be here, but the triage nurse at the student health center and the admissions person both told me to come here. So here I am.
I’m missing class and feeling pretty shitty about everything right now.
So of course I’m reading the Red Pill thread, which has a really excessive amount of Indeterminate Me vomiting incoherently all over the place. Cos that’s going to help the stress level.
From Carlie’s link:
It’s a tangential point, but in Latin America it’s called a “Marcha de las Putas” (I’m reminded of this almost every day because I posted about the one in Tegucigalpa and people are finding my blog through search terms that probably aren’t directing them to what they’re looking for.)
***
I like sweet things and I like fried things, and I’d probably only eat the Greek salad and maybe a strawberry or banana from the kebob. I can’t remember the last time I had fried dough, but it’s yummy. I could never decide whether to have it with sauce and parmesan or butter and cinnamon…
CC: On the upside, I.M. appears to have completely shut the hell up since we started talking about makeup and eyebrows and sich.
Yeah, I would miss the feta. Don’t know what blend of cheeses they use, but you shouldn’t mess with cheese. I also don’t care for cucumbers much (though I love pickles). So it wouldn’t be anything to look forward to.
NPRs first listen: GIANT SQUID five-song album “Cenotes”.
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/09/141112891/first-listen-giant-squid-cenotes
It’s not for me – too much metal – I expect there are horde members who will love it.
I noticed that…
Hello, I haven’t read TET. This is to post my experiences with approaching strangers who are crying, as begun in the Red Pill thread.
————-
Crossposted from here: my original comment
——-
Usually, a crying stranger is on the street or in some random business where I’m a passerby. I’ll stop about a car-length away and ask if they’re hurt or stranded, do they need a ride, can I call someone for them. Most of them say no, sometimes yes. If there’s an angry guy hovering nearby, just me speaking at all tends to make the guy self-conscious. I’ve given several crying strangers rides, some to homes or friends’ homes, twice to medical centers, and once to where they worked. I also carry extra business cards from the shelters so I can hand them out at need. I have never had *the person crying* get upset at me for intervening.
Three cases where I have been snapped at:
Once I stood outside a car in which a man and woman were screaming at each other. This was outside a restaurant I frequent, and I stopped in plain view by the front door and watched. After a few minutes, the woman rolled the window down and said “What do you think you’re doing” or some such. I said, Nothing, but if I see a weapon or if someone gets hurt, I’m going back in this restaurant and calling 911. She rolled the window back up, they talked intensely but quietly for a few minutes and then drove away.
Once I pulled my car over on a residential street where a woman was sitting on the curb crying and a man was pacing back and forth around her, yelling and bending down to yell in her face. Kids and residents were half-watching and half-ignoring the commotion while they sort of migrated further away. (People had lots of guns there.) Eventually the man saw me watching and came across the street screaming at me to get out of his face. I drove away, a block or so around the corner and waited. After a while, the couple appeared walking down the street, fortunately away from me. I tailed them at a couple blocks’ distance until the man went into a house. The woman stayed outside in the yard, crying. Then I drove up, a few car-lengths away, and asked if I could give her a ride somewhere; “Do you have a safe place to go if you need it”. She said she did and she’d be okay, and she didn’t want me to get into trouble. So I left. I wish I knew whether calling the police would’ve done more good than harm.
The third time was the woman I held at the game center where I worked, as I mentioned above. A co-worker came up to me, stood over us and asked why was I getting involved… “What do you think you’re doing” was the attitude. I said I wasn’t on duty right then, which was true, and she wasn’t doing me any harm that a change of shirt wouldn’t fix. I vaguely remember something about “this isn’t a shelter for every upset girl that comes along” and I said since this is the first upset girl that I’ve seen come in since I started working here, it isn’t a big problem. And if the owner had a problem with it, HE could tell me to take her outside. So he stomped off. I don’t know if anyone ever complained to the owner, but I was never disciplined or even had the incident mentioned again.
I do think my Aspie tendencies play a big part in how willing I am to bluntly approach strangers and not care about how it looks socially; in fact I think that’s always been part of who I am, and that’s why I got harassed as a child for talking back about stupid religious rules and gender roles.
—
@Dhorvath in the other thread, who said “I fear I would trigger more anxiety than assistance”:
I’ve been told that I come across as aggressive and threatening, to the point where I’ve almost been fired from two different jobs. I don’t make eye contact properly, mirror body language properly, or regulate my conversational cues. And, strangers often can’t assign a gender to me right away.
I honestly have no idea why strange women who are upset or crying DON’T see me as an immediate threat. Until the last few years, when I started studying abuse and feminism, I didn’t even realize that was an issue. Based on my experience, though, I think I can say that almost anyone who approaches a crying woman with consideration for her wishes and the situation would be welcomed. So, maybe you should go ahead and try, next time you have an opportunity.
—
Sally Strange in the other thread:
As an adult, I’ve lived in two urban areas, three suburban, and two rural, for more than a year; west coast and central. Currently I’m in Dallas, and the last crying woman stranger that I spoke to was earlier this summer. She was sitting outside a Half Price Books, and she didn’t need a ride but she accepted a card from the local shelter. The last crying stranger I gave a ride to was in spring; she was at the gas station where I was filling up when someone in her car slammed the door and drove away. She said that was her boyfriend.
Also, I’ve handed out about a dozen cards to the local shelter. That’s just in the last three years, since I started seeking abuse counseling and got wind of the resources out there.
—
@TLC:
Y’know, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if that’s the case.
Paul W:
a
b
b
Pteryxx,
I am big, not tall, not fat, big. I don’t know if that’s the root, but I am frequently told, much to my surprise, that I am intimidating. I can only assume it must be so based on the diverse people who have mentioned it to me in the past. If I knew what causes that and knew how to turn it off I would feel more confident in approaching such a situation. Still, a kind word is certainly not beyond me and should the opportunity present I will reconsider my general rule of not approaching strangers when they seem vulnerable to offer some kindness.
Pteryxx: Fascinating, since it runs completely counter to my expectations.
I always feel like I come across as aggressive or threatening, though no one has told me such in a long time. I suspect it’s a defense mechanism against the bullying I recieved as a child… I tried to become the “Whoah, don’t mess with him, he’ll literally eat your face!” type scary. It sorta worked. Maybe too well for a while, but that was years back.
Anyways, that said…
I likewise, have no idea why so many women (both women I’ve dated and women I’m friends with) have trusted me with their secrets and stories. I’m the guy with heavy eyebrows, long wild hair, muddy moody wild-dog eyes, and a bit of a snarl. Maybe my defense mechanism isn’t so impenetrable, maybe I have a self image that’s completely different to how others perceive me, but regardless: Their trust feels sacred to me, and I’d not betray it.
Shit. What a day.
Boy calls, a half hour after he left to drive to college. His car (which he has had for four months) died on the shoulder of I-81. He caught a ride home with a cop he knows. Wife and I drove back up there and the car started but had no power. So we got it towed. His Oldsmobile Alero has thrown a rod. So we spent the evening at a car dealership and Boy has now bought his first car (I did cosign) on credit. A 2009 Hyundai Accent with really low miles. Of course, now he needs to learn to drive a stick shift, but that can be fixed. So now Boy has an Accent. He’s tried Slavic, Germanic, Gaulic, Irish, Scottish, coastal Carolina, and Cumberland Valley but hasn’t settled on which Accent will be his.
Waitwaitwait. I must’ve missed something. Classical Cypher, why are you in the ER???
CC: I hope you are okay. The ER is a good a place to be low priority (unless you are a male nursing student :) ).
Tangent: Whoa. Important pingback from Cath Elliott on the “Someday social media will apply their rules consistently” thread that Caine just linked in the Red Pill thread:
http://toomuchtosayformyself.com/2011/10/11/schrodinger%e2%80%99s-rapist-and-the-banality-of-evil/
Hey, you may see me crying on the street some time then (but it will probably just be from stress or depression).
Once, a long time ago a homeless woman helped me during one of the worst times of my life after I’d walked into a *really* bad part of an area trying to get away from the guy who pretty much wrecked my life. It’s amazing how much one human being can help another. My life was bad, but it probably would have been shorter if I’d hadn’t gotten back to expo park. It was interesting. She said something, we actually had a pretty long conversation, like “but your kind of people need to stay over there” which looking back on it was kind of true. It’s strange how two worlds can literally live across the street from each other some times.
Just the stupid heart palpitations :) Which turn out to be exactly what I thought, namely stress and caffeine, according to the doctors there. My EKG looked great and apparently everything else checked out! Best waste of four hours ever. (Sincerely. I’m really glad that nothing appears wrong with my heart, and although I would rather not have spent all that time in the ER, I’m glad that I know now and can stop getting frightened out of my wits every time it happens. I just feel bad for wasting their time, but everyone else I’d talked to had been kinda freaked out about it, so I thought it might be urgent.)
—
Two things great happened :) My awesome professor loved my statement of purpose and said beautiful things about it and made me get all choked up. And my classmate sent me a very nice email response to my effort to help him out – apparently he needed it. :) Yay.
That experience definitely put my problems into some perspective.
P.S. I was crying on the street yesterday. :) Better now.
Classical Cypher:
Good news. On both fronts.
Paul W – trick questions (although that way because badly worded).
We evolved from apes, but not the same apes that are modern apes. We share a common ancestor with the other modern apes.
Same with the other questions – they conflate “share a common ancestor with” with the category, not specifying that it’s the modern representatives of the category they mean to say.
Hey, from one palpitation sufferer to another I’m glad yours were stress related! I’ve had an increasingly bad problem with them throughout my life, but my EKG is messed up to match. Yay!It feels like a fish jumping in my chest, flipping into my lungs so hard it almost makes me cough. Sucks :( Sorry you were feeling anything like that.
Perhaps inappropriate for here, but : is anyone else here on firefox and having trouble getting the RSS feed to load ? It’s only happening for this blog, out of all the Free-thought Blogs.
(big smile)
Classical Cypher, I’m relieved to hear it. (Not that stress is necessarily my favorite thing, but better than a heart attack, no?)
A few years back, I went to the doctor in a panic, thinking I might be having a heart attack. EKG said otherwise. Just an exceptionally vicious (and somewhat unusually placed) case of heartburn, on a level I’d never had before.
And I’m glad to hear that your “Social Interactions” excercise went well. :)
–
adding to the congratz, CC. Great news.
CC, I’m glad it was good news, but WTF kind of ER is it when you go in with heart complaints and you are triaged that low!? (Yes, I know ‘triaged’ isn’t a word.)
++++++++++++++++++++
I’m pretty goddamned sick of the Israeli gov’t:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/11/israel-to-legalise-outposts-on-private-palestinian-land/
Ohaigaiz,
Thanks for the invite. If it helps, I have a cigar and some brandy ;)
Also, I’m 31, a Marine Corps veteran, work in Desktop Support and live in Virginia. Eric Cantor and George Allen are asshats, and that’s all I have to say about them. That goes double for Bob Goodlatte, my local rep, whom I’ve spoken to personally and he’s such a self-serving vote-chasing slumlord of a politician that I wanted to smack him last time I saw him.
I recently volunteered for HRC at my local Pride festival, which was a LOT of fun. I’m learning about ze feminizm slowly, but I’ll get there. I’ve been a reader of Pharyngula for a while, but just started lurking the comments a couple months ago. I also lived in Japan for a year. Fun times.
So, how’s it going?
I’ve honestly never gone to an ER for them, but I would guess that palpitations in a person without a known heart problem who doesn’t have other visible signs of a heart attack get classed lower than people who have other symptoms that point to a heart attack?
re Algernon:
Thanks for reminding me… I forgot, or more likely spaced for my own protection, that I’ve been that person crying in a hidden corner on many occasions. Usually I hid very well, sleeping in locked rooms on campus or at work, or in my car.
Once I had a panic attack in an open hallway on campus. Some total stranger, a woman younger and smaller than me, came and sat beside me and politely fended off the inquiries of passersby until I could talk again. I thanked her, I think, but I barely even opened my eyes the whole time. I never saw her face.
I’d helped strangers before that, and since, and barring incapacitation, I will again. There’s nothing particularly unusual about it, either way.
Pardon me but I may be taking a break. I burned everything I have tonight in my crying-strangers comment.
eta: I also owe some couple in an apartment, who let a crying stranger (me) come in and call the cops from their phone.
Another heart story; my ex-GF went in to the ER with classic signs. A bit of sodium bicarbonate later she burped and felt fine. My Dad was medevaced once for a ruptured aorta … it was gall stones.
(I do not endorse or recommend ignoring these signs. And the decision go/no go should never be about whether you think you can afford it.)
+++++++++++++++
In related news (good news everyone![/Farnsworth]), I just got back the results of my blood work last week. Those folks think I’m normal. Silly them. (HDL = 47 (good); LDL = 113 (good); triglycerides = 156 (slightly elevated)).
Stress test OK, (except for the bruise I got falling off the treadmill. I am kinda clumsy but I think it keeps me from getting really hurt because I’m used to falling;-)
Welcome to TET, James.
Rorschach, I take it you’re also smiling for CC, not just because you’re on holiday.
—
jamesemery, welcome and all that.
(Nice to know you’re a REMF)
BTW, you might want to check out Assassin Actual and Rock Beyond Belief here on FTB.
jamesemery:
You have my sympathy. If I could drink, I’d down a cognac in your honor. Though I suppose a veteran – especially a Marine – is probably better suited for that than the average techie.
(I’m kidding. Mostly. Well, somewhat, anyway.)
Lots of us techies here. I’m on the left coast, but we’ve plenty of people in that area. Welcome to TET.
Oh, and .. . CC, glad to read you’re not dead. Dying sucks. They’ll have to Kill Me, before I die!
Have a good night. Try not to get stuck in Dallas! Though I just finally found a place to buy violet liqueur so I’m feeling better about life here for the moment.
*twitch*
Thanks, John. Really. You must be a friendly neighborhood grunt, I take it?
I’ve not read Assassin yet, but I do keep up with Rock and I’m planning on going next year :D
Richard and Caine: Thanks! I actually really, really love my job. I got through the burnt-out phase about two years ago. Now, life is working on being goooooooood.
Nah, James. A civvy all the way, I.
jamesemery:
Do you know why they put Marines on naval vessels?
Welcome jamesemery!
+++++++++++++++++++
On an unrelated subject:
I’m guess I’m done with using gendered insults. I got pissed off tonight about other commenters on Raw Story using them IRT Bachmann & Coulter. It wasn’t a big step, I’ve been reconsidering them for awhile. The last step was why we could use ‘being a dick’ & ‘dickish’.
We can, but we shouldn’t.
I think I’m growing up, not just getting older. I could be wrong.
The Sailor:
Yep. They don’t help anyone.
No one has risen to the bait.
They put Marines on Navy ships because sheep would be too obvious.
G’night all. Off to bed. Fresh sheets. And goats.
Ogvorbis, you are a very impatient fisherman.
Here’s how you do it:
Q: What is the difference betwen a duck?
^e
Welcome in, jamesemery. :)
–
‘Night, all.
–
‘taint funny McGee. (Yeah, even I’m not that old.)
I’m trying to get the joke.
I strongly suspect that it is denigrative of both Navy sailors and Marines (of The Corps)(Semper Fi!).
I also suspect that it tars both with the charge of buggery…but not that there’s anything wrong with that.
And it’s not very nice to sheep either, though that’s fine by me; I’m no Welshman.
Unless I’m not getting it at all.
Ogvorbis:
Oh, hardy, har-har!
When are we allowed to talk about apes & monkeys? (Aron Ra is right on).
@ Psych-Oh
[South African history]
It is actually amazing how complex, fascinating and diverse the history of South Africa is. Through high levels of media attention to the history of the apartheid struggle (as momentous as it was) I am guessing there is quite a distortion in most peoples’ perception of the whole.
What Shaka achieved in just a few years was completely mind blowing. Also the scale of the Anglo-Boer and the Zulu wars. The British sent a million men out to South Africa. And not to speak of the innumerable twists and turns and quirks of its history.
Realising that books cost money here is a free book, written by Deneys Reitz, about his experiences as a Boer commando (at the age of 17!). You will struggle to find more suspense and adventure in a work of fiction. (Link to free e-book: Commando.)
Tiger Beatdown (previously linked to by Carlie) has the best comment moderation in the world. I mean, if you must moderate comments, this is how it should be done.
Sally:
Holy shit, I can die now after reading that. My life is complete.
I’m hearing Hektor’s comments in a less growly version of Triumph the Comic Insult Dog’s voice.
Glad you liked it, James Emery.
Also, the series that came out in, what, the late 80s, about Shaka Zulu, and titles Shaka Zulu, is on netflix and is excellent. I mean, I was totally unfamiliar with South African history apart from vague general outlines (Boer War, apartheid), but this did an excellent job of bringing the whole panoply of politics in southern Africa during colonial times into focus. The acting is amazing, as is the cinematography and staging. It inspired me to look up and learn more about South African history; it truly is fascinating.
Well, if you’re going to Hector someone, that’s the way to do it.
PaulW: aab
CC: My mother went for years having random heart palpitation “attacks” (often having to be rushed to emergency and medicated to slow her heartbeat down). I don’t know that the doctors identified the cause & believe it was someone else who suggested it to her, but it turns out it was a reaction to palm oil and to a lesser degree other tropical oils. She took them out of her diet and hasn’t had an attack since. Not saying that’s your problem, but it could be something to check out.
Thanks for posting that Sally. I have Tiger Beatdown open in another tab for later perusal, but that was classic. It would be kind of neat to have a squidly version of Hector to put down all the jerks and douchehats who come around here.
Oh, and welcome jamesemery.
This isn’t at all relevant to any current discussions and probably not the best place to be bringing it up, so I apologize in advance. Those that have/currently suffer from depression did you know you had depression before actually being diagnosed? Or was it more like something was just ‘off’? My wording is incredibly clumsy, sorry.
Vanshee, there’s no need to apologize, and everything is on topic in TET.
Thanks, Caine. :)
Today’s batch of wacky in the local paper is grade-A stuff.
“Women and Their Husbands”
“There Is No Neutral Corner in the War Between Good and Evil”
“Foreign Aid”
It’s accompanied by two short letters, one supporting Obama’s jobs bill, and one supporting Planned Parenthood. But those letters are short, not the missives from the crazy factions.
[Evil]
So, another call-centre operator rang me, just now.
This time, “Mary” transferred me to her supervisor, “Harry”, due to the questions I posed.
(Alas, they only lasted 5 minutes before they hung up on me)
Chas,
When they’re happy monkeys!
OMG, Hector the Dog is magnificent!
@vanshee: the first time I was diagnosed, I had no idea. The second time, I recognised it very late. After that I knew better. The trick with depression is that it seems so very reasonable at the time. Life really does suck because of XYZ… The second time, I had the really big tells down, so a series of waking at 4am and feeling suicidal sent me off to the professionals. The third time, I had learned enough from my CBT that I could observe my thoughts and spot the distorted thinking before I got too deeply into the really distressing stuff.
@Alethea I appreciate your reply. It’s really confusing for me right now, so I was asking to see if anyone might have had a similar experience to what I’m going through now. Probably, the best course of action is really to just go seek professional help. >.>
@ jamesemery
Welcome on board, Arrrrrrrr….
@ Sally Strange
That was an amazing series, even if I did not get to see the whole thing. It is quite important to read up a bit about the real history of Shaka to put it into the correct historical perspective though.
In playing the game of “what if”, I always wonder how South Africa would have turned out if his (indirect) successor, the brilliant Cetshwayo had not been removed from power by the British.
IIRC you where working in transport/infrastructure. You might find it fascinating to google around about “The Apartheid City.” It is quite shocking quite how far the tentacles of the system wove themselves into the very urban fabric of South Africa’s cities. The same is true of the architecture. Apartheid is something you can actually feel walking through the city. (eg: Link- The “ideal” apartheid city.)
*Sigh*
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/10/04/someday-maybe-social-media-will-apply-their-rules-consistently/comment-page-1/#comment-95638
Good morning
Urgh, I’m tired, exhausted, annoyed and it’s not even 10 am
Welcome jamesemery
Is it OK to call you just James?
You know, if there’s one good thing about all the sexism threads, it’s that they usually leave us with more cool people on the ET.
CC
I’m glad your heart-problems turned out to be harmless.
Say about karma what you like, I’ll just say this : Love interest has a large dragon tattoo on her back.
*off to the pool*
Rorschach:
Oh ho. I know someone who’s a happy camper. :D
Rorschach,
Remember the movie!
Oh my non-existent gods, I did it, I made it, I called, I got an appointment. Now I would cry if the little one wasn’t around.
And unfortunately it’s only in November.
But I got it.
Why can’t they just do those things by mail?
Now I can totally not look forward to a conversation with my husband this week-end.
Oh damn, I want to crawl into a hole and never come out again.
@ Rorschach,
Hugs to LI.
Do we say “good luck” or “break a leg” with chasing the dragon *?
(*The drug I refer to begins with L, not H.)
……………………….
[meta]
What happened to super/sub script?
theophontes,
(Not meta)
They’re not implemented here (yet, I suspect PZ has ways and means), but then we do have LaTex.
(Fair trade, I reckon)
Giliell:
Er, pardon me for being so hopelessly behind, but what? What’s going on?
Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m currently fucking up big. I fear I might be failing to ever finish my college degree and do something out there in this world.
Yeah, the me who had high hopes and dreams and stuff.
This has gotten me into a vicious cycle where the thought causes pain, so I didn’t think about it (and much less do anything about it), which made thinking even painfuller.
By now I suffer bodily whenever I only see the logo of my university somewhere, it makes me wanna throw up, literally.
I’ve managed to make the first step to break the cycle. I’ve made an appointment with the student counselling, I’ver written a letter to Mr. telling him what’s up.
And it’s painful because hiding doesn’t work anymore and yes, I’m basically about to cry all day long.
Fuck.
Giliell:
Go ahead and cry. Rant, vomit, do whatever you need to do for right now. You have made that first step, and things are going to get better. Remember that in between tears. {Hugses}
Giliell, hugs for you if you want them. I flunked twice, in part due to not asking any help whatsoever. You’re doing the right thing.
Giliell,
sorry to hear that. I might be going through something similar. Let’s see how it’ll all turn out. Best of luck…
Giliell, you can do it. He loves you, and will be supportive of you. And if you need to take a semester or two off, and/or switch to a lower class load, or switch schools or majors or whatever, all of those are just ways of adapting to what you need, not failing at anything. The fact that you know you need help and are asking for it is the best thing you can do.
Giliell:
Sorry to hear about all that :/
And, yes, James is just fine.
ChasCPeterson,
I’d like to hold off on actually discussing the monkey/ape/human thing until 4:30, the time I posted yesterday, to give people who only catch up on TET during the day a chance to reply to the poll.
(For latecomers who missed it, it’s at comment 188.)
Wow. I don’t know your circumstances so I’ve kind of stayed out of it because I don’t want to say anything stupid based on misunderstanding. But I’ve felt exactly that way for exactly that reason, and I just want to say that it gets better. Not fast, and not always…
I still have bad days. But you start to move on and get over feeling so inadequate at least 70% of the time.
Well, I’ve never been sure whether I suffer from depression in a clinical sense; I’ve never been officially diagnosed with it, and though I do have intensely depressive moods and feelings sometimes, they tend not to last for more than a few days at a time, so I’m not sure that my experience fits the diagnostic criteria for clinical depression. I do have OCD / anxiety disorder, though.
PaulW, don’t wait for me. I’m stupid about these things and don’t even understand your question. I thought a human being *was* an ape so I don’t see how we couldn’t have evolved from apes.
For the second question it seems like I’ve heard b before so I guess I’ll go with that. I guess it depends on whether you’re talking about contemporary monkeys or ancient ones? When does a monkey cease to be a monkey? A monkey by any other name?
I have no clue about Asian Monkeys so I couldn’t even begin to guess what other animals are more or less closely related to them. Maybe South American just because I know a lot of animals on this side of the world are referred to with the same names as “old world” animals but are completely different. If that’s the case than even a human would be closer.
So uh…
abb
@ Giliell
Shit Giliell that sounds really bad. I would like to share a story with you, in the hope that you don’t feel too alone in this.
I had a similar experience with one of my mathematics courses. I really became my own worst enemy. I became so nervous that I was practically shaking and just couldn’t focus. Even the work I new so well seem to dart about my brain like a flibbertigibbet. I failed. Badly.
In order to continue with my degree I had to pass the exam and was given a supplementary exam (bye-bye holidays). This time I was totally beside myself the day before and almost in tears of frustration and panic. A friend of mine came round and made me go with him to a bar, “just to chill the fuck out for an hour or two”. As it was, I ended up mindlessly drunk and woke up to the alarm in a bed full of vomit. I staggered to the exam hall and wrote the exam – still drunk. I passed.
@ Paul W.
bbb
I haven’t checked the legitimacy of this, but I have no reason to doubt the overall accuracy.
Marry your partner or your cousin? Pick a state.
PaulW, my first reaction was bbb.
Rev. BDC:
I did some searching. Here in ND, it’s illegal to marry your first cousin, but okay with first cousins once removed gettin’ hitched. Arkansas, Delaware, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, New Hampshire, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Oregon, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming have the same law.
What in the hell is wrong with recent comments? It has not been right for days. It’s damn near impossible to keep track of things.
Topeka City Council has repealed the law making domestic violence a crime under city regulations. D.A. acknowledges that this means that his office has to keep prosecuting as domestic violence remains a crime under state law.
Link
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/12/us/topeka-moves-to-decriminalize-domestic-violence.html
Mini-squee ™ of the day: I took an electric taxi to work today. The future is now.
Hi everyone! No I’m not dead (yet) though I’m swamped at work and have been too depressed to post, though I have kept up with the reading. Mostly.
I’mma jump right in, hope that’s okay.
@Vanshee
No need to apologize, I think I get what you mean. I have been diagnosed (BiPolarII or BPD, depending on who you ask and how much of an asshole they are ;0), but yes, I did know that something was wrong WAY before it got bad enough to actually look for help which led to the diagnosis. I couldn’t explain what was wrong, although after a while and after some reading (but still before diagnosis) I started to suspect that it might definitely depression, but I couldn’t explain how the world just seemed… grayer. Dimmer? Muted? Hostile and/or uncaring? Bright for everyone but me? Also a very strong “What’s wrong with me!?!?!? Why can’t I be happy that XYZ happened?!?!? XYZ is great, it’s what I’ve wanted, and yet…
Of course, I was an avid journaller (I wrote in my diary all the time as a teen, especially in classes. I really think I talked to an average of 3 people that’s not me a day!) so I could literally track the progress of the disease afterward and see my thoughts along every step of the way.
See, I still can’t explain it. Not even to myself.
So before I tealdeer all over the place again as is my wont, the short answer is: Yes I did know something was wrong, “off”, from very early on and yes, I had a reasonable suspicion that it was depression or depression-related.
@theophontes and On South African history in general: SO fascinating and really incredible. When I look at the histories of other countries and I look at what happened here with the ’94 elections and how literally incredibly well it went (I wouldn’t have believed it if I wasn’t here to see it, I would have said that it was a pre-arranged scam or something, being so very historically unprecedented!) it always make me feel a little teary. That’s not to say it’s heaven and paradise now, of course. There are still huge issues to be addressed especially with regards to poverty, racism, sexism and corruption, but I have never been more optimistic about any country than I am right now of my own. <3
Also, WOW on the "Apartheid City". I'd never even heard rumours or hints about anything like that. I'm absolutely agog and astounded (though sadly, not surprised. The banality of evil and all that – it's sometimes so hard to look at the older generation and remind myself "YOU did this, older person who I still love but can't always respect. You actively DID this kind of atrocity and you called it "normal" and "right".)
@Clasical Cypher: Glad to hear you're okay!
@ Giliell:
This resonated with me SO HARD. I’m in a similar place. I’ve been struggling for five years now to just finish ONE YEAR of studies, but I STILL can’t do it – and I freaking work here! I’ve always seen myself with at least one PhD by the time I’m thirty. It’s just always been a certainty in me that I will get there, get to that post-graduate level, obviously, since I’m such a infophile.
I’m turning 30 this year and can’t even finish my honours year.
I’m really glad you made the appointment. It really will get better. I know how difficult trying to do assignments and studying while having a little one afoot is (I have 3 of them!), so please, be kind to yourself. What you are doing is so far beyond hard that it’s incredible. Whatever you decide, just remember that you’re doing the best you can with the resources (financial, mental, emotional) you have and that it’s more than good enough.
I hope that your conversation with your husband goes well and that he gives you the support you need. Just please, don’t cancel that appointment, no matter how tempting it may seem!
Gen, it’s great to have you back. :)
Thanks Caine! You’ve been doing excellent work, I’ve never seen more shiny teeth!
THIS. Asking for help can be the hardest part. Heck, how badly I miss counseling appointments is a symptom that I track.
folks have covered depression… what’s useful for me is evaluating the classic symptoms of 1) can I enjoy things that I KNOW I should enjoy, like music or chocolate, and 2) can I be social when I KNOW I like being social, such as at my sports bar, or posting here. Sometimes being stressed or distracted can sap enjoyment (and those tend to coincide with depression) but when there’s no particular reason for enjoyment not to work, that’s a strong indicator of depression. Reviewing a diary or calendar helps find patterns and trends.
re performance anxiety (which can be fear of failure, fear of success, or both at the same time…) in my experience, fighting it has been sort of a snare, or finger-trap experience. The more pressure, the higher the stakes and the mental “Oh no, not AGAIN” that goes on, the worse it gets. …That doesn’t sound very helpful. It’s sort of a meta-battle or Zen thing where the way to win is to stop fighting. That’s why something like being drunk, which lowers inhibitions, can actually help. My counselors (for disability, not abuse) tell me that performance anxiety, like a phobia, self-reinforces and can scar a kid all by itself.
It’s cracked by tricks similar to how you’d gentle a traumatized animal: gradual exposure with lots of reassurance in a safe place. (That’s why I study in a sports bar.) Dealing with the work in five- or ten-minute blocks might help, or visualizing being calm while working, or using music. Those 15-minute self-affirmation exercises that counter stereotype threat might work here, too… I’ll have to try that.
Anti-anxiety medication or beta blockers can also help: see the off-label use of beta blockers for performance anxiety in musicians, for instance; or in treatment of PTSD, which is another self-reinforcing disorder.
Hope that’s of some help, coherent or not…
Sally Kern says something stupid and bigoted.
I know, it is the same as if I claimed that I just exhaled carbon dioxide.
From a recent WallBuilders Live hosted by David Barton. (Now there is a name you can trust.)
Apparently, there are roving gangs of LGBT people who go around and kill truth speaking people like David Barton and Sally Kern. They are only acting in self defense.
@ John Morales
[Latex]
Thanks.
@ Gen
Bakgat, ‘k sê !
(Fried arse, I say!)
@Vanshee, for me it’s a gradual slide that I’m coming to recognize sooner. Consult w/ 2 professionals if you can afford to. When you’re depressed you might just go with the 1st one, even tho that therapist may not be a good fit for you.
Anyone who tells you to ‘just get over it’ must be ignored. It doesn’t work that way and only adds to the guilt I already feel for being depressed, which is depressing.
Meds and therapy work better than just meds.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
@ Giliell, I don’t remember all the timeline, but do you have a faculty adviser you can talk to before your November appt? I’ve known other people who did and Uni’s generally have a whole lot of options. Having an adviser who’s engaged with you can help navigate a difficult time.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
I haul my boat for the season in one hour. I feel like shit, my BP meds are working too well again today, and I really hope my trailer tires are inflated (no, I haven’t checked yet, why do you ask?) and that I nail the approach to the trailer and stick the landing on the first try.
I’m in no mood or shape to spend an hour fucking around in chilly water up to my waist.
Janine:
Oh? Then why are Barton and Kern still yapping?
Idiots.
In the “religion is the reason we can’t have good things” category, a student gets expelled for a blasphemous typo.
It’s not like it was a good poem anyway.
Nigel:
:Sigh: I’m running out of things to say. There’s too much shit.
One would think it would be the fault of the language, that there’s only a single dot separating the words “curse” and “hymn”.
nigel,
there have been crazy things going on in Pakistan… There was this doctor who got arrested for throwing away the business card of a pharma rep whose name was Mohammed… Not to mention the other blasphemy cases with potential death penalties (and a popular pro-religious minorities governor killed for his opposition to said law)
Carlie, not that I know Urdu, but in the Arabic writing system, vowels are usually not shown. In the adaptation for Urdu, to show vowels mainly dots are used. So I’d say the writing system would be the problem.
What did one BlackBerry user say to the other BlackBerry user?
Today?
nothing.
vanshee, have I welcomed you in, yet? I don’t remember…. Any way, welcome in! *chocolate and beverage*
I don’t currently have depression, but I remember it as if it were an incredibly vivid, nightmarish flashback; and mine was a side-effect of medication, so YMMV, but it crept up kinda gradual, so I can’t tell where/when it began. Eventually, it became fuckin’ obvious.
When my every waking thought was constantly circling the drain of despair, when I couldn’t fall asleep for obsessing over low-probability Epic Catastrophic Outcomes of virtually everything going on in my life, and hated to wake up because even though the nightmares were spectacular, sometimes the dreams weren’t nightmares, and that was better than the run of my waking thoughts….I knew I was depressed. It gave me a whole new appreciation for why people sometimes try to self-medicate their heads into silence.
–
What time zone is Pharyngula timestamped in?
(If it was the same yesterday, I guess my little poll at 188 has been up for 24 hours and we can get to the discussion phase.)
@theophontes, feu d’artifice du cosmopolitisme
Lekker lekker, bly Zef my China.
(English translation: Great, great, stay “cool” my dudebro.)
Also, RevDBC: LOLLERSKATES. That is all.
Let’s see if this works:
$\LaTeX \mathrm{is awesome.}$
Oh, PaulW: Looks like GMT? My initial thought was also B, B, B.
pelamun:
Y’know, with all the religious fervor around us, it’s a wonder I don’t think this is the end-times.
I used to be a person who believed that we should all just let people have their faith. What’s the big deal? I know lots of folks who quietly go on about their life, believing in a god and working to make the world a better place.
Then I realized religion is like the school bully. They’ll taunt and hit, and when you hit back, they say shit like, “Hey, what’s that for? I was only playin’!”
I just wish I knew what my part is in fixing it all.
To start off the monkey/ape/human thing, here’s something I wrote for RationalWiki:
—
There’s unfortunate ambiguity in the terms “monkey” and “ape,” because (in English) the term “monkey” is typically used to exclude apes. (In most languages, it isn’t, or is ambiguous.) We often use the term “ape” to exclude humans, as well, though scientists generally regard humans to be apes, biologically speaking.
Modern humans did not evolve from modern apes—we didn’t evolve from gorillas, or the modern form of the chimpanzee, for example—but we did evolve from a common ape ancestor, and humans are generally considered to still be apes.
Whether we apes “evolved from monkeys” is a somewhat trickier question, because “monkey” is not really a scientific term in the same sense as “ape” or “human”—it doesn’t correspond to a single group with a common ancestor whose descendants are all called “monkeys.” (Technically, the “monkeys” are not a “monophyletic group” or “clade”—a single subtree of the evolutionary Tree of Life.)
What we typically call “monkeys” in English include two rather different groups, the Old World monkeys of Africa, Europe and Asia, and the New World monkeys of the Americas. Their nearest common ancestor was a monkey-like primate, which is also a common ancestor of us apes.
That common ancestor is the common ancestor of all the monkeys, and of all the apes as well, forming a subtree (“clade”) called “simians.” (“Simian” is just Latin for monkey, but not excluding apes.)
One of its descendant species evolved into the New World Monkeys, and another one evolved into the Old World monkeys and the apes.
Because that split came after the split between the New World simians and the Old World simians, we apes are more closely related to Old World monkeys than the Old World and New World monkeys are to each other.
Arguably, that makes us all still “monkeys,” in the sense that “simian” is Latin for monkey—apes are in the monkey group, if you call the original simian a “monkey,” and follow the lines of descent and don’t exclude the apes. We are only “not monkeys” in the sense that we use “monkey” and “ape” as mutually exclusive terms.
In the English sense that “apes are not monkeys,” we are not monkeys, by definition. In the “cladistic” sense that an ape is biologically a kind of monkey—a descendant of the nearest common ancestor of all monkeys—apes are an atypical kind of catarrhine (Old World) monkey, and we are an atypical kind of ape.
It’s not generally considered “correct” to say that we evolved from “monkeys” in English, because we didn’t evolve from the nearest common ancestor of the modern Old World monkeys, or the nearest common ancestor of the modern New World monkeys. Outside those two groups, the term is inapplicable.
We did, however, evolve from the nearest common ancestor of all of those monkeys, which would probably be called a “monkey” if it had magically survived into the present, unchanged—it would clearly be very monkey-like, and not be sufficiently ape-like to exclude it from the monkeys by the “apes are not monkeys” rule.
Many scientists think that we should therefore call apes a kind of monkey, as we now call humans a kind of ape. Many others think that we should just call them all “simians”—which captures exactly the sense of “monkeys (not excluding apes)”—and continue to reserve the English term “monkey” for non-ape simians. Most think it doesn’t matter much, as long as people understand that we are descended from an ape-like common ancestor of all apes, which descended from a monkey-like common ancestor of all monkeys.
This to me is problematic. I didn’t have the first problem because I do think in terms of the two monkey groups (old and new); I can see where that might be a problem, but calling apes a kind of monkey doesn’t help. If you want to go that route and call them the next level down, at some point you would have to call everything a kind of amoeba. I think that calling apes a kind of monkey erases the information that we do have that they are a derived group that are different from the old/new world monkey groups.
I hate every ape I see
From chimpan-a to chimpan-z
Janine, I just baked a fresh organic internet for you.
For Walton, a story about cooking well in a college dorm with links to blogs that have recipes for same.
Friggin’ a, the link is login blocked.
Blog about cooking in a dorm:
http://www.biggirlssmallkitchen.com/
and just about cooking from the article:
http://smittenkitchen.com/
http://www.seriouseats.com/
@Janine:
Bravo. Have a cookie – (>^_^)>o
Bloody hell.
I keep trying to download iOS 5, and the download is incredibly fast… until about 2/3 of the way through. Then it slows to nearly dialup speed.
What gives?
Here’s an update on the latest news out of the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints polygamist colony on the border of Utah and Arizona: one of Warren Jeffs’s 78 wives has escaped. One Moment of Mormon Madness may be erased by this escape. One down, 77 to go.
As you will no doubt remember, Warren Jeffs is in jail in Texas, having been convicted of raping a 12 year old and a 15 year old girl under the guise of marrying them.
Some of his wives are now living with their parents at the polygamist compound in Hilldale/Colorado City. One 25-year-old fled, barefoot, to the home of a rival (prophet-wannabe) and that guy called the police. The police had some sort of standoff with local FLDS men (a group that included local FLDS police officers, according to one commenter-in-the-know), and then they escorted the young woman off the property.
Being held prisoner by one’s parents is not uncommon in that community. In this case, the parents were acting for the absent Warren Jeffs.
Dunderheaded readers, commenting below the article, are claiming that since the young woman ran away, that proves they are free to go.
Meanwhile ten-foot fences have been added to enclose more houses and yards — that’s more fences than when Warren Jeffs was free and living there — and there there were plenty of fences before.
Other readers have commented that FLDS men are already claiming the young woman is mentally unstable, or even mentally ill. That’s an excuse that has been used often in the past. In fact, the polygamist colony used to have an FLDS doctor on call at the nearest psychiatric hospital, and his job was to declare runaway women mentally ill, and to lock them up. (Don’t know if this is still true.)
Other readers familiar with cult tactics pointed out that FLDS men will use the young woman’s remaining family as leverage to force her to return. Threats to a young woman’s sisters and brothers are common. God will remove his protective hand from the younger sisters, etc.
*hugs* for Giliell.
I never finished college; Out Of Money Error. I always hoped to go back and finish later, but by the time we were able to look at the possibility, tuition prices had gone up to an unreal degree, and we couldn’t afford both that and raising Son; and now that he’s all raised and everything, the cash-gap has only gotten wider, so….
And the world failed to end.
(That’s scheduled for next Friday, isn’t it?)
–
cicely:
I never finished college either, but for the exact opposite reason. My student position (electronics repair in the library) turned into a full-time position (network/PC tech in the library). I thought I was making great money, having been a poor college student. Thought they said I could continue to take classes, it never turned out that way. I’d sign up for classes, but there’d invariably be an emergency during the day.
“Oh noes! Dr. Clickenspitz tries to launch his email, but MS-Word comes up instead!”
That’s because Dr. Clickenspitz is double-clicking in the same location, rather than on the nice picture of Pegasus. Someone re-arranged his icons. He thought it was the location on the screen that launched it, never associating the picture with the action. For some reason, he never associated the picture of Pegasus with the name of the email program. Pegasus Mail. Which shows a big picture of Pegasus when you launch it.
Great. Class is half-over. What’s the fracking point?
So much for my physics degree, and my fantastic job at CERN.
I watched the whole series with StrangeBoyfriend. It was an awesome way to get inspired to get educated. It is faithful to events, I think, it’s just a bit myopic in its focus. But there’s also the sense of immersion the series gives you: with the hundreds, if not thousands of South African extras performing dances and songs for every occasion, from weddings to warfare to funerals, and the architecture rendered in such loving detail, and the fact that the Zulus and other Africans spoke to each other in their native language at the beginning of the series, and switch into accented English as the British characters begin to understand the Zulu language, all in all it did a wonderful job of bringing the viewer into the world of the series.
There’s a number of African leaders one could say that about, yes? More if you count others besides the Brits.
Oh Theophontes, thank you for reminding me why I went to school and why I must go back to school. Ah, maps. Beautiful maps.
Paul W, could you re-post the original question just to refresh everyone’s memory?
I’m afraid I went with the assumption that unless explicitly spelled out to the contrary, the question was to be understood in terms of “everyday” (for want of a better word) non-specialist use of all the vocab so my response was [intended as] “not descended from (a) modern ape(s)”, “not descended from (a) modern monkey(s)”. Which just goes to show that one should request definition of terms before answering questions from strange pharyngulites :)
Gilliel – *hugs* Not everyone takes the “typical” path through college (my hubby failed out miserably before 1)taking time off 2) transferring, 3) finding a fantastic mentor, 4) finding his passion, 5) graduating with highest honors). You will persevere. *more hugs*
Theophontes – I can’t wait to start reading!!!!
Sally Strange – I am definitely renting Shaka Zulu. Ugh, Netflix can’t tell me when it will be available.
PaulW: yes, I think you have it exactly right. Actually, here’s a minor point where I would go further:
If old-world and new-world monkeys are both monkeys, then their common ancestor was also a monkey. Not just a monkey-like primate. A monkey. And humans too evolved from this monkey.
This is true even if you choose to exclude apes from ‘monkeys’. The common ancestor of OW and NW monkeys—itself perforce a monkey—was also an ancestor of apes. Humans are apes, therefore humans descended from monkeys. (At least one monkey).
But we are less different from OWMs than we are from NWMs in many important respects.
I actually have no problem with keeping the word ‘monkey’ in colloquial English for a paraphyletic assemblage that excludes apes. It’s the same as ‘algae’ without plants, ‘wasps’ without bees, ‘lizards’ without snakes, ‘crustaceans’ without insects. Big deal.
Again, though, even if you like things that way colloquially, humans & the other apes are nested deeply within the assemblage of animal lineages that are collectively called ‘monkeys’. It’s a single evolutionary lineage whatever we call its parts.
gah.
I know you know better than to use this sort of Great Chain of Being verbiage. It’s not ‘calling them the next level down’, it’s correctly acknowledging the next more-inclusive group of which an individual lineage is a part. By the rules of phylogenetic taxonomy, we are apes, and ‘simians’, and primates, and mammals, and therefore synapsids, and amniotes, and tetrapods, and, yes, sarcopterygians, which is normally translated as ‘lobe-finned fishes’, and therefore osteichtyes (bony fishes), and gnathostomes, etc. In that formal sense we are fish.
However, I am not a proponent of forcing colloquial English to conform to the rules of phylogenetic taxonomy, and when somebody talks of ‘fish’ I know they don’t mean to include aardvarks and boa constrictors.
As for the amoeba thing, no. We are not amoebas in any sense, formal or colloquial. But we are opisthokonts (with our sistren, the Fungi) and therefore unikonts, and amoebas are also unikonts.
Hey, I dropped out of college and was a lazy traveling bum for a few years, then a working bum, then I went back to school and graduated when I was 31. Now I’m looking at grad schools. If you have to take time off, Gilliell, or transfer, whatever. You’ll make it work eventually.
Prych-Oh, you don’t do streaming movies?
Carlie,
I’m not sure I understand your argument. To the extent I (mis?)understand it, it seems to be somewhat circular.
You seem to be assuming that the right “level” for “monkey” to refer to is the “level” of Old World monkeys or New World monkeys. (Which aren’t the same level, as I understand it.)
The alternative is to do what most people around the world do, and what people did in English before it became “incorrect by definition.” They used the terms “monkey” and “ape” in overlapping senses, with monkey as the more inclusive term, including the apes.
Until the early 20th century, even English speaking scientists studying simians often used “monkey” as the more general and inclusive term.
IMO, that was not wrong. The vernacular recognition that apes are “basically monkeys” was borne out by the science.
The mistake was not in that vernacular usage, but in defining it to be an error when the terminology was standardized.
When common folk saw something very much in common between apes and other “monkeys,” and that apes were the more specific group, they weren’t wrong. They were correctly perceiving cladistic a subset relationship, and using “monkey” to mean something very close to simian.
That was good—that vernacular usage turned out to be consistent with the crucial phyletic facts.
If we’d standardized on that—telling people that it’s fine to call an ape a monkey, but it’s good to know that apes are different from other monkeys—that would have been better IMO than the mess we have now.
Whenever you have ambiguous and overlapping category names, you get weird linguistic pressures.
For example, it used to be “wrong” to call a human “an ape.” Apes were by definition nonhuman “animals” with interesting similarities to humans.
To call a human an ape was thus an error in the sense it seems you’re getting at—apeness and humanness were both at a “lower level” than human-or-apeness. It would be wrong to call humans apes.
But if you don’t care much about that—and why should you?—you can change the definitions to fit the phyletic facts, as we did. Calling humans apes doesn’t change any scientific facts—they’re still just as derived from their nearest common ancestor as they ever were. Calling that common ancestor an ape rather than an “ape-and-human ancestor” with a special Latin name doesn’t really change anything, either, so long as you realize that “ape” is inclusive of “human.”
To me, it only makes sense to use the term “monkey” exclusively for New and Old World monkeys is if they all have something very important in common, and very much in common, which all of the apes don’t.
I can imagine an argument that “monkeys” are like “vultures,”—a paraphyletic group that makes very good sense.
It turns out that (IIRC) that vultures don’t form a clade, because the vulture body plan and behavioral traits are an attractor that multiple kinds of not-very-closely related birds have converged to—different kinds of birds evolved to make a living the same way, using the same tools—hooked beaks, bald heads, big wings for soaring, etc. and behavioral traits that use those for finding and scavenging carcasses.
My impression is that there’s no similarly strong argument that “monkey” is a functional and morphological attractor. “Monkeys” are diverse, and in most basic ways overlap with the apes—e.g., in body size, degrees of arboreality or omnivorousness, taillessness, ratios of arm to leg length, or whether they live in big troops or mostly isolated pairs, etc.
For it to make sense that “monkeyness” is a derived state, it seems to me that you need to show important shared characteristics that were gained in the convergent evolution of monkeys away from the ancestral state—i.e., that the first simians were not very “monkeylike” and that “monkeyness” came later, twice, independently, like “vultureness.”
What crucial characteristics of monkeys did apes fail to evolve?
It seems to me that apes gained apeness, but didn’t particularly lose monkeyness, or fail to develop monkeyness, in the process of becoming apes. (I admit I have no idea how to talk about that in any clear way.)
In lieu of such a very good argument, I don’t see any reason not to call the shared common ancestor a “monkey,” and use “monkey” in the cladistic sense.
I do see good reason to do that—the usual cladistic reasons.
The nearest common ancestor of all the monkeys is arguably the monkeyest of all monkeys—it is more “closely related” to all extant monkeys than they are to each other, in the sense of being the actual center of the radiation of all monkey species.
If that makes apes monkeys too, what’s wrong with that? I don’t have a problem with “being a monkey” any more than I do with “being an ape.”
Even if there’s something very important that New and Old World “monkeys” have in common that I’m missing, it’s hard to see what it could be that would make me not a monkey—it’d just make me a very atypical monkey, in the same way that my ability to use the Internet makes me a very atypical ape.
If we call all simians “monkeys,” any special derived characteristics of New World and Old World monkeys will still be there—we just won’t say that they’re essential features of monkeyness, just of those clades. Where’s the problem?
And specifically, where is the problem for non-specialists?
For specialists, maybe it’s convenient to have the Latin word “simian” for all simians, and a separate English word “monkey” for talking about those two particular nonoverlapping clades, and not the apes.
It’s not clear to me that other English speakers should care about whatever peculiar distinctions the specialists are trying to maintain, unless those distinctions are very scientifically basic, e.g., common descent and resulting important homologies.
Words…
ChasCPeterson:
I think you can have different X’s whose common ancestor is not an X—that’s what I was addressing by talking about “vultures” and convergent evoltion. (Before I saw your comment.)
The nearest common ancestor of all vultures was not a vulture. There are at least two clades of vultures. (Or maybe I’m thinking of raptors, like eagles and hawks. It think it’s actually true of both, but I’m not sure.)
I can’t see how monkeys are like that, though, at present.
Tangentially, I’m surprised and interested that people interpreted the word ‘monkeys’ to mean only extant monkeys. All extant groups have extinct relatives that certainly belong(ed) to the class by any definition. Is it because most times the topic gets raised in these terms it’s by creationists? Do folks generally similarly interpret ‘birds’ or ‘fishes’ or ‘arthropods’?
That’s correct. Old World vultures are modified storks, and New World vultures are modified hawks. (Or is it the other way around?)
huh.
‘kipedia informs me that I had it a) backwards; it’s the OW vultures that are hawks (family Accipitridae), and b) wrong; apparently more recent data has placed the NW vultures not with storks but elsewhere (separate family) within the larger group (order Accipitriformes) containing the sensu stricto hawks. You learn something new every day (or things; apparently there is recent data placing falcons as closer to parrots than hawks…?).
Paul W.,
Ook!
I have a lot of trouble understanding other people’s words, and tend to interpret them very narrowly. Therefore, when people say “monkey” I assume they mean the animals right now that people call monkeys and nothing else.
Since I don’t often talk about anything else, and no one I really talk to much talks about anything else when they say “monkey” this is what I assume is meant unless otherwise indicated.
I assume a monkey is a contemporary thing we create when we call the animals we see and identify as monkeys by that name so that we all know what that animal is.
To understand something more is meant, my contemporary, rather stupid and extremely literal mind needs an overt linguistic indicator.
Yes, I interpret all animals this way, and all things this way. Thus birds mean contemporary birds unless some one defines the context. I don’t talk much about science or biology ever, so more specialized uses of words would need to be explained in detail much as you would with philosophical terms or other specialized usage. This may be wrong, in that these animals really *are* whatever they are which is also whatever they were. However, identifying that concept clearly doesn’t happen for me since I have trouble actually understanding the words being used because they are too low context for me.
IOW a “monkey” can mean too many things so I default to the most likely colloquial meaning.
Sure, but then you lose the granularity of the next level, is all I’m saying. I’m a splitter rather than a lumper.
Pfft. Single-celled whatever. :p
I agree with you on this.
No, not for this – apes and humans are at the same level, which makes them both types of apes. As far as I know, there still isn’t any real clarification between the chimp/bonobo/human clade split to know which came earlier or later; they’re still an unresolved node, right? So from that, it’s entirely possible that we’re nested further down in the apes than either the chimps or bonobos.
Well, thank you all for your support.
Now it’s setteling in, so my stomach starts uncurling (carrot-lentil-potato-mushroom-coconutmilk-soup helped, too).
My husband should get his letter tomorrow and come home on Friday, so, yeah, that’s going to be hard.
Carlie
That’s the one thing I am sure of. I think he’s been guessing that something is up already.
He would probably even be OK if I became a SAH-soccer mum, it’s just that it would kill me.
It’s going to pain him and I hate that. Who wants to cause pain to the person you love the most?
Ehm, that’s where the problem starts, I’ve taken off already a lot of time.
I think what I need is a structure, a plan, real deadlines. It’s not that I was afraid of intellectually failing, I never ever failed a stupid single exam in my life.
I’m in one of those liberal humanities arts classes where nobody gives a fuck if you live or die.
theophontes
Hehe, I once showed up half drunk for a translation exam (end of the “Irish literature” class), that went well, too.
Gen
No, it’s not. I really don’t have the “objective circumstances” excuse, at least not to that degree. I have support, I don’t have to worry about money. The problem isn’t that I’m failing to keep up, the problem is that I’m failing to even start anymore. I feel like paralyzed.
No, I won’t. I have an appointment and I’ve told my husband that I have, so I have a “control”.
The Sailor
Nah, that’s part of the problem, like mentioned above. You swim or you sink. I hope the counselling can help and actually, I don’t think I could manage to call them anyway. Writing is OK (it also seems easier to be doing this in English), but actually talking is bad.
Meh, sorry for using you all as my personal agony aunts, but I really value your input. It helps me think and sort my thoughts.
Interesting – as I think about how I interpret it, if you say “monkeys” I assume you’re talking about extant ones, but if you said “monkey clade” I’d automatically include all of the extinct ones as well. Not sure why.
crossing messages…
Yeah, ‘vultures’ is an interesting example of a vernacular group that is polyphyletic instead of paraphyletic (‘monkeys’). I agree that in contrast to vultures (and, say, ‘algae’), all extant monkeys certainly inherited their monkeyness from a common ancestor that was a monkey. That statement could be formalized by defining ‘monkey’ by the shared-derived traits (morphological and genetic) shared by all monkeys, but there’s already a formal name for that clade (Simiformes, or the old Anthropoidea)(which of course also include apes).
Keeping it colloquial, a monkey is a non-lemur, non-tarsier, non-ape primate. The common ancestor of extant NW and OW monkeys fit(s) that description. Therefore monkeyness in congenital, except of course for apes and humans and Yetis.
jamesemerey,
Welcome. Pull up a comment or two.
___
Vanshee,
Please, likewise. If you feel like saying something, but don’t know where, this is the place to start.
___
Nigel,
I am sickened. I shouldn’t be surprised, but something like that starts with incredulity and then descends into mystified.
Is this supposed to be a slippery slope argument?
If so, it’s not valid, but I’ll address it anyhow.
I can tell you where we’re going to stop on the slippery slope of making vernacular terms correspond to clades—at “reptile.” We’re not going to say “mammals are reptiles.”
There are much better reasons for making an either/or distinction between mammals and reptiles (or birds and reptiles) than for making such a (mutually exclusive) distinction between apes and monkeys. Think about how obviously far the extant mammals and birds have evolved away from the extant reptiles. There’s a conveniently enormous gulf there, and a good reason to have a word like “reptile” that excludes the ones who evolved into mammals or evolved into birds.
Reptiles tend to have a lot in common with each other that they don’t with mammals or birds, so it’s great to have a word for talking about reptiles without having to say “non-avian, non-mammalian reptiles.”
The case with monkeys vs. apes is dramatically different. The difference between a gibbon and a macaque is orders of magnitude smaller, by any reasonable metric. It’s just tiny.
And in any event, the non-cladistic terminology of reptiles vs. birds vs. mammals is just hopelessly entrenched in vernacular language. We can’t change that. (We’re doing good to substitute “mammal” for the wildly ambiguous “animal.”)
It’s not like that for the distinction between monkeys and apes, any more than for the distinction between apes and humans.
We now say that “humans are a kind of apes,” and it doesn’t hurt anything.
We can say that “apes are a kind of monkey,” and that won’t hurt anything either.
The overwhelming majority of people—even pro-science, educated people—don’t understand what a “monkey” really is, anyhow. All they know is that they’re not supposed to call apes “monkeys,” for some reason that they do not understand and likely never will—and that they wouldn’t care much about if they did.
Telling them it’s okay to call apes monkeys would not hurt them a bit.
It would help them.
They can understand a simple subset relationship—and many did, before we started telling them they were “wrong” to call an ape a monkey.
They can also understand subset relationships that result from branching phyla, which is what they most need to know about evolution and monkeys and apes and us.
The old popular understanding of apes as “a kind of monkey” was much closer to the scientific truth than the opaque and mysterious rule we get people to memorize now—“apes are not monkeys,” which is only “true” by definition, i.e., because we say so.
a_ray:
Ook!
But wait… I think of “ook!” as a “monkey noise” and especially as an orangutan noise. (Too much Terry Pratchett?) But orangs are apes…
Perfect.
Ook! Ook!
Wait, if humans ARE apes, then how can we NOT have evolved from apes (a) but only an ape-like common ancestor (b)? Did I misread something?
@Gen, #322
“Of course, I was an avid journaller (I wrote in my diary all the time as a teen, especially in classes. I really think I talked to an average of 3 people that’s not me a day!)”
When you were writing in your journals did you ever feel disgusted? Like everything you were say was just a filthy lie or an excuse. That you didn’t really feel that way; you were just making it all up cause you were bored at the time. And afterwards did you feel ashamed that you even wrote about it?
I hope that isn’t too personal/insensitive; I’m just projecting.
__________________________________________________
@The Sailor, #328
“Anyone who tells you to ‘just get over it’ must be ignored. It doesn’t work that way and only adds to the guilt I already feel for being depressed, which is depressing.”
Likewise, this could probably be insensitive/offensive and most likely influenced by being in a place of privilege, so I apologize if anyone is hurt. But I honestly wish I had people telling me to “just get over it” rather than feeling like I’m telling a lie every time I open up to someone.
Thanks to all of those who have replied I appreciate it.
Off-topic: Does ‘Tealdear’ mean ‘tl;dr’? Or does it have a different meaning?
I think I just failed out of grad school.
And, of course, they all cook.
*runs fast*
Wow, I got source-undetermined Christian spammed today (clearly not from my Grams, etc.). For everyeone’s giggles I present making-shit-up-to-pretend-the-bible-says-something-it-doesn’t.
That’s right, folks, it was the Roman’s fault that divinely inspired godwords in Teh Babble said slavery was still okay and good.
Have the Mollys been discontinued?
Benjamin, If I had a dollar for every time I had thought I had flunked out of grad school, I wouldn’t have had to worry about flunking out of grad school. And yet they still call me “doctor”.
arids:
I took a Digital Image Processing exam today. Out of a possible 30 points, I made a *maximum* of 15, probably less.
I don’t think they’ll kick me out for getting a C or a D… but they will discontinue my assistantship, which will have the same practical effect. (Unless someone wants to send me about $5k (tuition waiver) plus $1500/mo (stipend), in addition to the loans…)
Oh, and those 30 points?
That’s 30 points ON THE FINAL GRADE.
Seriously. So, if I made a 15, I can’t earn higher than an 85.
SC,
PZ put them into Mary’s care, since he was being slack about it.
(Apparently, a misguided move)
Ah shit Benjamin, sorry to hear your day went so poorly. Give it some time, see what you actually got and take it from there.
Benjamin,
Reality is harsh.
What’s the overall context. I remember a physics grad student who only got a 10/100 on a test. That as an “A”, as the test was that hard.
Also, catastrophising. So far you haven’t had your exam result so you don’t even know and already you’re imagining flunking out of uni. Maybe you underestimated yourself. Maybe everyone else did badly and the instructor will grade on a curve.
Benjamin, related to getting 15 out of 30, I concur with many of the others – put a damper on the catastrophism until you know more.
My all-time favorite professor ever repeatedly and clearly stated that he felt that part of his job was to assess the students, and thus he aimed to make his tests such that the average score was 50%. Plus, if too many students got 90% or better, he wasn’t able to assess his own teaching.
This did not stop the people who got, say, 60% or 70% (essentially, B’s and A’s), from having some kind of palpitations or little strokes or something.
I think I managed a 79% on one of his tests, perhaps 69% as a worst score. I once went to office hours and he asked me, “why are you even here?”.
Talk to the prof. It’s almost always a good idea in any case.
In other news, The Poodle Has Landed.
That is, we just brought home our new family member, whose life actually overlaps the Noodle Poodle by 10 days. OK, now I will weep again for the Noodle Poodle, whose name was Daisy, because until now she was the Best Of All The Poodles.
Carlie,
Yeah, that is interesting, especially since I don’t think your reading is at all uncommon—I think that’s why so many people answered “b” to the first question (apes evolved from a common primate ancestor, but not an ape).
I strongly suspect that this is mostly specific to discussions of simians.
If suspect I’d asked about whether birds evolved from reptiles, I don’t think that people would have read it that way—they’d have said “reptile, without worrying about whether birds evolved from extant reptiles, or some vague “common tetrapod ancestor, but not a reptile.” Of course it was a reptile. An extinct reptile, obviously, but surely some sort of reptile all the same.
I think that indicates that there’s something wrong with the way we talk about simian evolution, especially with noobs and especially given the political loadings.
Our side is often so intent on making it clear that we didn’t evolve from modern apes, and absolutely not from modern monkeys, that we make it sound like we didn’t evolve from apes at all—just some indeterminate “primate ancestor.”
Here’s an example, from the first evolution FAQ I googled up, which is at PBS and also linked from NCSE:
This is the very first question and answer, I suspect because it’s so commonly asked and people are so damned confused:
Note that it explicitly says we “didn’t evolve from apes, either.” We’re just vaguely “related to” them. (But not so much to those filthy monkeys.)
We fucking are apes, dammit, and so was grandma. The common ancestor in question was a fucking ape.
I’m pretty sure they’re consciously or unconsciously shying away from the “monkey” question so hard that they end up denying that we’re even apes.
And IMO they’re 99 percent wrong about monkeys, too. There is no sense in telling people that “humans didn’t evolve from monkeys” without saying that we evolved from something very, very monkey-like that scientists would probably flatly call a monkey if it was still around, and which many scientists would earnestly say was not just a monkey but the definitive example of a monkey—the nearest common ancestor of all the monkeys, more closely related to the extant monkeys than they are to each other.
But that comes way too close to agreeing with the creationists that our side says we “evolved from monkeys” and “are just monkeys.” (The former is basically true, and so is the latter, just not in the way they mean it.)
The writers are staying as far as they can from that hot potato, at the cost of denying the very most basic and interesting facts about simian evolution.
That’s destroying the village in order to save it.
Given the political loadings when trying to defend evolution to a mass audience, I have to guess that this was written by accommodationists, consciously framing their asses off, who were more interested in not giving the fundies red meat than in telling the very interesting truth.
I could be wrong, of course.
Either way, it’s disturbing to me how framing things that way can get so many of us to give the wrong answer to such a basic question, even when we obviously know better, as most people don’t.
How can we expect anybody else to get it right if our side talks that way?
Benjamin, there will always be one or two bad days or bad tests. I’d suggest talking to the professor about it.
But it’s not the same thing, phylogenetically speaking. If you look at a tree of apes, humans and chimps and bonobos are at the same node. Apes and monkeys, however, are on different nodes. Using a very strained analogy, the comparison would be that saying humans are apes is the same as saying my brothers and I are all Joneses, and saying that apes are monkeys is like saying that my brothers and I and our uncles are all Robinsons because the uncles’ last name is Robinson, and we’re descended from their group. It’s technically saying something that is true, but in a way that can easily lead to confusion.
Oh, and I wanted to mention that when I went back to school after a two-decade absence, the policy in essentially all of my classes was to “curve” the grades – the word “curve” meaning to simply give everybody free points to bring things up a bit.
Oddly, this was in everything – including computer science – except the physical sciences such as biology and biochemistry.
OOooohhh, I think I see what you’re trying to get at now. I’m going at it from a purely phylogenetic descriptive angle, and you’re trying to say how that has screwed up the way it’s communicated to the public. I’m a little dense sometimes.
Rick Perry thinks the American Revolution was in the 16th century.
***
Congratulations on the poodle pup!
Except that’s not an actual curve. I tell my students what one of my professors told our classes – you don’t want me to curve the grades. A curve really means to fit the class distribution to a bell curve, which means that a certain percentage of the class gets each grade. So, if an A is the top 10%, then only the top 10% of the grades get As even if 50% of the class scored, say, over 90 out of 100 on the test.
And yes, I am still bitter about the class I got an A- in even though I had a 93% for the semester because it was a small class and based on the curve only 3 students could get an A an I had the 5th highest grade.
Carlie: You recapitulate what I was trying to achieve with the scare quotes around “curve”. Probably in a way that communicates better than my own attempt.
Also, in my latter-day college interval, math was not “curved” either. Thank goodness my 20 year old calculus credits transferred, and I only had to take discrete math.
OK, so I’m gonna be a monkey then.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMuY-bAxGec
hooray for primates!
Ah, I missed the quotes. I think I need more sleep.
Tim McCarver must die.
I had a professor who added enough points to everyone’s grade so whoever had the highest grade got 100%. Which drove people nuts in a few of the clases when I got a 97 or 98 out of 100 possible. So the “curve” was only 2 or 3 points rather than the 20 or 30 points which was normal.
*clenched-tentacle salute*
I learned to teach in a department where there were guidelines for curved grades: 15% (of students) A, 30% B, 45 % C. I once mentioned this to my mother, a teacher, and she said “oh, the Indiana Curve”. So I guess it’s a thing, or used to be.
Nowadays I tell students I’ll figure their grades both ways, the straight scale (90% (of total points)=A/80%=B/70C/60D) and the Indiana Curve, and report to the regisrar the higher grade. I find it generally makes little difference for A or B students, but the curve saves a lot of C students from Ds.
SC,
To be fair, the European invasion got going around that time.
(So very easily confused, those)
DWTS update:
Chaz remains, despite low scores. Yay fan support!
Ricki Lake is a surprise front-runner. She seems to have gotten over her body insecurity pretty well.
The other person to watch is JR, the former soldier with burn scars all over his face, who’s also been on some soap operas and stuff.
Further surprise: the two most recent eliminations have been of skinny blond bombshells! I kinda liked Chynna Philips, but I’d rather have Chaz or JR on the show than her. They’re both far more interesting. The only sad part is that Chynna’s pro partner, Tony Davollani, is one of the sweetest guys on the show, and really deserves to win someday.
The latest “results” show features performances from one of my favorite artists, Raphael Saadiq. He’s like a modern-day reincarnation of the Motown stars of the 60s. He even wears bow ties. He’s truly awesome, but don’t take my word for it: check this out.
Interesting – I’ll have to look up the Indiana curve. What I do is what a professor of mine does – start with the standard 90/80/70/60/50 division, but then look for natural breaks. The difference between up to a full percent or so is a small number of overall points, so if there’s a cluster right near the break then the whole cluster gets into that level. Example: the grade distribution is 92, 91, 90.5, 90, 89.7, 89.3, 88. Then everyone to the 89.3 gets the A cutoff, and the Bs start at the 88. I’ll dip down to cover an entire cluster, but I won’t force up so that someone who would have one grade with the standard division gets cut the wrong way and gets the lower score.
Of course we’re not. Mammals are synapsids, the sister group to ‘reptiles’.
Both synapsids and reptiles are amniotes.
And reptiles includes birds.
Ectothermy. And anaerobic exercise metabolism.
Kingdom Animalia is monophyletic and well defined. It includes sponges and jellyfish, though.
No. The correct answer is A. We evolved from apes. We evolved from monkeys. We evolved from fishes. And we evolved from deuterostome bilaterians.
with gas, baby
gah. It’s simply wrong, in my view.
you’re right, man
no. Chimpanzees and bonobos are more closely related to each other (= share a more recent common ancestor) than either is to humans.
So, humans do not share a common ancestor with apes. Humans share a common ancestor with chimpanzees. This common ancestor of humans and chimps shared a common ancestor with apes.
On the Putnam Mathematical Competition exam the median score each year is about 1 out of a possible 120 (i.e, half of the participants finish with a score of 1 or less). Those questions are insanely hard. My second year I got 10 out of 120 and it was enough to put me in the top 25%.
If I don’t stop arguing with that Indeterminate Fool in the red pill thread, I’m going to have to pith myself with a knitting needle or something.
I’m hopelessly behind in TET, but Laughing Coyote, what happened with the hunt with your brother?
Can anybody remind me of a good css add on for google chrome?
I need to killfile IM before he bores me to death with his blather and special theories.
Mattir: We bagged three more grouse, one we roasted and ate in the field, and then just as we were going to smoke a joint on a hilltop, there it was.
Standing in full view was a deer. I knew instantly something was different about this one, it was larger than the does we were seeing, but its ears were up. These are Mule Deer, and they’re named for their huge ears.
My brother had to confirm through the binoculars to see the little two-prong antlers, but I already had a ‘feeling’ just from the way the animal was built. It was a young buck, and my brother was not letting this one get away.
Two surprise shots with the slug, and one final shot in the neck to make sure it wasn’t suffering, and the hunt was successful.
I’m a modern primitive, and I can’t call myself an atheist. When on the hunt, I pray. To the same gods the Neanderthals did, I like to think. I consider myself an agnostic critical thinker, but hunting is ‘different’ for me.
I had some blackberry wine with me, of my own brewing, and the first thing I did was splash some on the deer’s head, you know, to ‘propitiate’ them hunt-gods and all that. (Hey, at least my own private irrationalities don’t involve torture or genocide in their 26 year history), and then we both took a swig to seal the deal.
The deer was skinned and butchered that night in this basement. I used my survival sword of my own making (pic if anyone wants it) to do a lot of the heavy work. The skin I saved and did my best to brain tan. I know it won’t rot, but the hide is barely supple enough to be called leather (I left the hair on, if that makes a difference). It’s hung up above the fireplace in my brother’s room. The skull was defleshed and is now in the process of rotting out. The meat has been cut up and frozen, and I’m proud to say we wasted as little of the beast as we possibly could. The scraps that accidentally got a bit of stomach matter on them were thrown to the dogs, who never seemed more interested in anything we’d done before. It’s easy to see the dingo breeding in a cattle dog, when it stares at a hanging deer carcass.
We roasted a hint leg for our ‘thanksgiving’ dinner, and it was absolutely delicious. I thought lamb was my favorite meat, but it is now second.
Tethys, do not worry about it. Ninety nine percent of humanity is too stupid and closed minded to appreciate IM. It is our collective lose.
I have to go back to cleaning the house for the Rhinebeck-bound guests tomorrow night. Which is a good thing, because IM is going to cause me to develop seizures or something. He’s like the intellectual version of a strobe light.
TLC, I totally understand. I’ve slaughtered domestic animals (chickens, sheep) and had the same sort of atavistic impulses. And I help field-dress the deer taken in our community deer management hunt, which somehow manages to keep the deer population at “only” 7-8 times what ecologists say would be the healthy population for the ecosystem.
Night, all. And if you see me respond to IM any more, please instruct me to use a bigger knitting needle on the pithing project.
Janine, but its totally our fault for not ascribing to his mythical power model versus the privilege model.
And of course when asked to back up his claims he can’t because thats just not how he wants to discuss things and only Louis understands him.
My goodness, look at the time. Hell, I’m still going to make cookies.
I just made a large pot of white bean, sausage, carrot, kale, cabbage soup. It is spicy and tasty. The sausage was spicy, plus I added chili pepper. Yum!
TLC
I am totally getting your hunting rituals. I can’t believe in any god/bible nonsense.
But I’ve always felt the need to honor life/nature as sacred.
Sally
That sounds delicious. Now my belly is demanding cookies.
From the christian views on slavery
i.e. kick them out when they couldn’t win their bread anymore. Jep, sounds like christians.
Is that because Louis is a self-identified male poster?
(Haven’T read up yet)
@ Gen #338
You can not even imagine how appropriate that comment is.
@ Sally #353
Definitely. I think immediately of Patrice Lumambo (murdered) and Samora Machel (Not all good in the early years though. He later moved his orientation towards the West, but was killed in an air crash. Possibly murdered. His widow, Graça, is married to Nelson Mandela).
Although removed from power, Cetshwayo was very popular (even in England) and was in fact (partially) put back in power later, though too little too late to do much good. (This time his tribal enemies and Boer mercenaries put him out of power.) He had the intelligence and vision to carry through and establish a modern Zulu state, but was let down on every side.
@ arids #364
Translation from Afrikaans: “Me too!” (lit: “Also!”)
Louis did manage to somehow take IMs hopelessly muddled and confused post, and put it into a point by point list.
But IM then proceeded to ignore and/or insult just about everybody who tried to engage him, perhaps it was just a coincidence that most of them are self-identified female. Probably not, but it is possible.
Pteryxx was demolishing his (IMs) poor arguments last time I looked in.
Cookie anybody? I made ’em with chocolate chips, oatmeal, coconut, and pecans. Also I used only brown sugar, so they’re very chewy. I just ate 4 of them. With milk. Fresh from the oven. Yummers.
I’m going to put some in a care package for StrangeBoyfriend.
Today I made an appointment with a therapist. Also I went to the gym. Baby steps!
@ Sally
*drools*
@ Audley
I see Emery’s African cousin has joined the NTC loyalists…. Linky: EpicLybianTurtle
@vanshee, 374
Yes, a teal deer is for tl;dr or “too long; didn’t read”.
About feeling like you’re lying and policing your own thoughts and feelings for absolute objective verifiable accuracy at ALL TIMES, NO SUBJECTIVITY ALLOWED IN HERE!:
Yes, I do something that sounds like what you described too.
It’s difficult, to have to constantly justify to yourself “listen, I’m not just making this up, this really is a problem in my life right now and I don’t have the resources to deal with it myself and I’m worth dealing with it!” can be impossible sometimes. Learning to recognize the unproductive self-talk and challenge it is really tough, and would probably necessitate some deep digging into why you feel that
a.) you can not trust yourself to be truthful about something as inherently subjective as feelings
and
b.) you have to be able to verify and justify, preferably with objective data and evidence, why 100% of your thoughts and feelings and what you say MUST be ALL OBJEcTIVELY PROVEABLE TRUTH ALL THE TIME.
For me, having a compassionate but straightforward/blunt therapist who doesn’t hesitate to challenge me when she thinks I’m bullshitting helps A LOT. In fact, I would echo The Sailor and say that therapy is extremely helpful and for some (like myself), absolutely necessary either in conjunction with or even in stead of medication alone.
Of course, YMMV and not everyone has the resources to be able to access a therapist – I’m extremely lucky in that the place I work for has a health center with a fantastic therapist and the employer bears part of the cost and that this specific therapist luckily offers the exact blend of compassion and challenge I need.
And also, what helps on the long run is consistently seeing a therapist even when my ass isn’t bouncing off the walls *right now*. Which I haven’t been good about, as Pteryxx (I think) noted (not about me specifically, but about it being a traceable symptom).
@theophontes
LOL @ “ook”. I never even looked at it that way!
I feel like watching Godzilla ’54 tonight.
In many ways, my favorite Godzilla movie (though I love G. vs Destoroyah almost as much if not more, its really hard to say.) True fans say this is where Godzilla’s soul resides.
Godzilla is one of my favorite monsters ever, and a powerful metaphor.
Maps, beautiful maps: Noise mapping of London.
Did I ever post about my urban spatial mapping using turtles?
No, please do!
Though it’s well past bedtime for me. I’ll check in the morning/afternoon.
Okay, the homebirth thread on DrIsis has got me really, really depressed and upset now.
I mean I get that some of the research says that the risks increases if you birth at home, but since when is it okay to decide on behalf of other women what level of risk they must deem as an acceptable level for loss of bodily autonomy?
Do factors like previous sexual assault play no role in how a birth goes and what choices a pregnant woman make with regards to birthing? So now, just because a babbee may be slightly more (SLIGHTLY) more at risk, the incubator’s trauma doesn’t matter?
I mean, women already get held responsible if anything happens to a precious babbee during pregnancy and/or birth whatever they do or don’t do, so do we now get to pile on those women because, unlike “us”, they didn’t make the “right” (right for ME, that is!) choice?
My feminism will be intersectional or it will be bullshit.
Gah, going to smoke and clear my head.
@ Sally
I have been meaning to write a blog post (me.blog. hahaha) about this to do it justice. I’ll try and dig up some of the old ideas and post here. The “turtles” are not real turtles though (*sniff*) they are autonomous agents within a massive parallel programming routine. It is easier to describe by calling them turtles (a la “Starlogo”).
Imagine a big maze that turtles can walk about. It is covered with white tiles and approximates the streets of a city (yup, it can be huge!). Now the turtles wander about randomly according to a turtle’s wont. The turtles are rather dirty and rub off on the tiles, so that the most intensely turtled parts are darker than the less turtled parts. The darkness of the tiles after a few days, gives you the intensity of use of the various parts of the “turtle city”. This (*TADDAH!*) corresponds as a function of the spatial structure of the city. (ie: Use corresponds to the underlying structure! The turtles essentially plot the spatial hierarchy of the city. The results correspond to Hillier’s space syntax methods, but should be much simpler to process (hence cheaper).)
(The turtles are pseudo-random in their antics, rather than purely random. This is a problem with computers not cities, but I don’t think it makes that much difference anyhow.)
Cool – when did that come out? The textbook I use has them as unresolved, and I haven’t seen any updated info.
On monkeys, humans and apes:
In Dutch, they’re all called ‘apen’. According to the Dutch Pft, this corresponds to the Simiiformes or Simians.
Apes are called ‘mensaap’, which literally translates to ‘human monkey’.
with the other extant apes, yes.
{orangutans [gorillas ({chimps+bonobos} humans)]}
Carlie, ‘kipedia sez
and the 2 citations are from 2004.
Dig Hillier’s space syntax work. Tried to get my state agency interested in it last year, but like you said, it’s complicated. I’d love to read that blog post.
Wait, you mean life “Affe” and “Menschenaffe” in German?
What a coincidence!
;)
I’m wondering: How much trouble does that mean for creationists, having a population that has the connection between humans and the other great apes in the very word itself?
Just checked the text I was thinking of – it does have chimp/bonobo as sister groups to the humans, but the two are one branch on a clade with gorilla, so I must have been thinking of the edition prior and also mixing that with humans/chimps still being together.
I think part of the linguistic problem is that it’s not a good idea to call an entire clade by a name that is identical to one of the members of the clade (or vice versa). Although each clade would have a type group, using the same name for the entire clade and a smaller member of it might be where the problem lies.
For your amusement: “Noah’s Ark by NonStampCollector, part I and part II. Or have these been featured somewhere on Pharyngula already?
Here is a well-meaning retired bishop that attacks the literal reading of the Bible that fundamentalists do (of course, I would go a bit further and attack “the whole shebang”)
Retired bishop: “Why We Must Reclaim The Bible From Fundamentalists” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-shelby-spong/why-i-wrote-re-claiming-t_b_1007399.html
…” Other facts well-known in the academy, but seemingly unknown outside by either believers or critics, are that scholars can find no evidence that miracles were associated with the memory of Jesus before the 8th decade of the Christian era, that there is no mention of the virgin birth anywhere before the 9th decade and that the narratives of the ascension and Pentecost did not appear until the 10th decade.”
— — — — — — —
Congress Approves Questionable Trade Pacts http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/free-trade-deals_n_1008237.html
Congress — if you listen to pundits and Washington politicians — is completely broken. But when multinational corporate interests are at stake, suddenly the institution figures out how to get to work.
-Study: growing up in bad neighborhoods has a devastating impact http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-10-bad-neighborhoods-devastating-impact.html
Mega Church
Yeah but Rev, Jebus said “the poor will be always with us, so pimp that shit up”, or something.
@ Birger
Rev. Spong has been around for quite a while and has always appeared completely off-the-wall to the goddists. He is what could correctly be called a religious person. Religion is, to paraphrase him: “about expanded life, heightened consciousness and achieving a new humanity“. Essentially a noble endeavor, even if his approach differs so radically from ours. And at least he is honest, even if a little misguided.
The types of goddists we see trolling here and in meatspace aren’t worth being called religious. They are either superstitious fools or charlatans.
It is good that he raises this important distinction.
Hrm, surprised Lynna hasn’t posted this yet, but maybe it qualifies as a Moment of Mormon Sanity (or desperation at least):
One of Warren Jeff’s wives escapes polygamist community
Lede and second paragraph:
So not looking forward to the stories we’re eventually going to hear about life “back home.”
I have a secret fantasy where all the crazed anti-abortion Republicans in Congress are smothered in their sleep. That way, the House of Representatives will stop advancing let-women-die abortion bills.
It makes me indescribably frustrated that our Congress can’t even approve basic infrastructure improvement bills, but they can find time to push message bills showing just how much they hate women having reproductive rights & autonomy.
I don’t want to disrupt our monkey discussion too much, but I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days.
There are quite a lot (alot) of songs out there about a bad or even evil woman, like Kate by Johnny Cash, or You’re So Cruel by U2, or possibly Prayer To God by Shellac. I’m sure you can come up with your own examples.
Now I think that by themselves, these songs aren’t misogynistic per se, especially if written about a real woman and a real relationship, but each contributes to the myth of the evil heartbreaking woman, which I think is a misogynistic stereotype.
What do you think?
I don’t want to disrupt your monkey business neither, but apparently Unix creator Dennis Ritchie has died at the age of 70.
:(
@Richard, I’m pretty sure that Lynna brought it up in another thread. Was it the red pill thread? I’ll look.
SQB:
There are probably close to an equal number of songs about bad men – an easy one is Tracey Chapman’s “Fast Car” (one of the first songs I can recall hearing about a responsible, capable woman), but list to pretty much any of the Lilith Fair performers for a sampling, or most country songs sung by women. Heck, half the time when I’m in the gym lately I hear Carrie Underwood’s “Before He Cheats.”
I don’t necessarily think it’s an issue, but I could be wrong.
I still have my copy of Kernighan and Ritchie’s C Book.
@ Sally
Space syntax is one of a whole set of tools to optimise the urban built environment. The idea is that it is cheaper to resolve issues through analysis rather than screwing things up in the real world. I definitely think such tools are most needed in American cities, which are so insanely inefficient and wasteful of resources. Perhaps this economic downturn wakes people up, but I doubt it. USAian cities need open heart surgery and everyone is talking band aids.
You mentioned grad school. Are you planning to take it further? (This stuff is quite big at my Alma Mater.)
@ Richard Austin
Lynna did.
theophontes:
Yay, my faith is restored. I couldn’t imagine it got missed, but I somehow missed that. Thanks.
SQB:
All generalizations are wrong. :-P
Seriously, though: I have noticed that trope. I’ve also noticed the counterpart trope: a guy is either a ‘player’ or an abuser/murderer. And even the ‘happy’/party songs have issues. The most obvious example I can think of.
But I’ve also noticed that there’s more outcry when the roles are reversed. For instance, compare “Wake Up Call” (Maroon 5) with “Goodbye Earl” (the Dixie Chicks).
Oh, and I hate “Before He Cheats” with the burning intensity of a thousand white-hot suns. Retribution based purely on suspicion is baaaaad juju.
####
Teapot:
Apropos.
Trying to figure that out. I’ve been saying grad school, grad school for the past two years, but it’s hard to really put it together when I’m living from paycheck to unemployment check. I’ve got a degree in environmental science but I’m really interested in geography (I was one credit away from a minor in geospatial technologies when I graduated). I love maps and I love landscape architecture but the things I want to design, like large scale living machine wastewater treatment landscapes, may require more expertise in environmental engineering.
There are many things I have to do before I can get to that point, though. Among them, take the GREs and also get a job.
Yes. And even a lot of the songs that are presumably about bad men are men who are that way because of another woman (he’s cheating on me with some floozy, etc).
And in a lot of the ones about women, they end up dead at the end, or desired to be dead.
(Mama’s in the graveyard, Papa’s in the pen)
(if I could move, I’d get my gun and put her in the ground
Oh Ruby, don?t take your love to town)
I think there’s a continuum there. Folks can have legitimate grievances against deceptive romantic practices. But oftentimes it does spill over into outright misogyny (or misandry, I mean, how often is an entire sex blamed for the actions of one individual?). And of course, “evil” is rather an exaggeration.
Well, at least he’s killing the cheating man rather than the cheating woman.* That’s progress, right? *sigh*
* See “Hey Joe”.
Even a Flat Footed one
That’s a horrible recording, this is better.
Sally: They don’t love you like I love you
I could have gotten into geography too, but I’m in wildlife, and I’m trying to approach it from a landscape perspective with GIS.
I’ve just been informed that I make too much money to qualify for free health care.
That’s right. With my before-tax income of $328 a week, I’m expected to pay a premium on my health care coverage.
This is insane. This whole therapy thing is dependent on me having Medicaid. I can come up with $49 dollars before the end of the month, but that’s going to be $49 less that goes towards my rent money. Or car insurance or something else. I don’t know. Fuck.
@Sally Strange, that is fucking unconscionable. It’s bad enough that we have such disparity between mental/physical health care, but being denied it for making a small income is madness.
Sympathetic beverages on their way.
@ Sally
Aah. Perhaps you should look into studying town planning. Usually a two year post-grad course that can be started on completion of any degree. It is a very large church.
Depending on your personal circumstances you could consider doing your study outside of the US. (eg: You can get a world class postgrad degree in South Africa for a fraction of the price. It is also very USAian friendly.)
Forget Pharyngula or FTB tip jars, I want OMs to have tip jars.
theophontes:
I just had horrible flashbacks to an interview I once had. Around 2000, I was thinking of leaving my job due to idiot bosses and no advancement. One place that liked me wanted me to do “roving contract work” – 6-month jobs at various locations, usually banks or major institutions, and almost entirely internationally (hey, $65k a year tax-free, plus benefits, is hard to pass up).
Unfortunately, the first place they wanted me to work was Johannesburg. The terms of the contract were as such:
1) Paid living expenses in a hotel across the street from the bank.
2) Armed escort services from the hotel to the bank and back.
3) In-hotel catering and grocery delivery.
4) Monthly armed escort service to the airport and back for trips home if desired.
I, of course, immediately flagged, “Er, armed escort service?”
“Oh, yes, quite a few caucasian foreigners in the area disappear or turn up dead. Your safety is our primary concern.”
I passed on the job (and kept the one I had until 2011): any place I couldn’t cross a street without an armed guard was not somewhere I wanted to be.
I sincerely hope it’s a lot better now than it was then. I think this was during the height of the Arpartheid backlash, so I can’t imagine it being worse.
I agree, but this is health care coverage, PERIOD, that I’m talking about. If I can’t pay the $49, I lose it all.
I have been looking into studying planning! It’s a top candidate. I would love to study abroad, but South Africa hadn’t occurred to me. What is your alma mater, may I ask?
Of course, with my current financial situation, unless South African universities are lining up to pay airfare for international students, that’s probably a long shot.
I just have to keep reminding myself that my financial situation isn’t permanent. Eventually, I will find a job.
GOOD NEWS!
I posted yesterday about how terrible (really, truly terrible – I’m talking HIV/AIDS denial) the SourceWatch “Alternative Medicine” article was. The Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy/SourceWatch placed the article under review a few hours later and commented on my blog letting me know. I’ve put out a request for people to contribute or make suggestions. It would be great to have good information about CAM getting to the people who use SourceWatch.
What’s a Pentecost?
If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
[ducks, runs]
++++++++++++++++++++++
There are a lot of songs about bad men. But there has been a bias toward male performers, and they’re talking about their heartbreak.
++++++++++++++++++++++
I didn’t get my boat out yesterday because I was helping other people haul theirs. It’s only fair, we all help each other out.
One boat, an S2, had a new trailer and it took a lot of time to adjust the trailer rollers in balls-deep water. (The water level was higher for the rear rollers, but once it reaches your balls you don’t really care how much higher until it reaches your nose;-)
This is great motivation to not drop teh wrench. I dropped the wrench. The one wrench from our collectives tool boxes that fit.
I could see it well enough to see it go over the edge of the ramp. My friends tell me I hit the water like a bear going after a salmon. I got the wrench.
They thought I was brave, I think I was just trying to avoid anymore time in the cool, clear water. Water.
++++++++++++++++++
TLC, sounds like a great hunt.
I think the fur may act as an array to stiffen the hide. (Think fiberglass with the aligned fibers sticking thru the amorphous glop.)
Guilty secret: I bless my boats at every launch and name change.
There’s been a small update to the Topeka, Kansas domestic battery story, covered over at Dispatches.
Turns out the county DA will happily prosecute batterers (and other misdemeanors, so long as the city of Topeka cuts him a $350,000 check.
I’m really sick of not being shit.
Sorry – that was the link to yesterday’s post. The review/request one is here:
http://saltycurrent.blogspot.com/2011/10/success-at-sourcewatchand-request.html
Cannabinaceae,
Yay noopoodle.
___
Janine,
Cute.
___
SQB,
I suspect, although I have no actual data to support this, that the reason there are more songs that you know about female exes is because you know more songs by people who would have a female ex. I am quite certain that I know more male musicians * than female, and although little of what I like has themes related to love and loss, I cannot help thinking that would transfer to me knowing more songs about wicked women than about malevolent men.
I think there is a feedback between music and the problem of demonizing people for leaving, whatever the reason and whoever they may have been. I get that loss hurts, and that sometimes the other person really was a lout, but trying to rebuild oneself by tearing another down is shitty and I wish no one played that game. So the songs that are about evil exes seem to me to encourage the notions a: That a break up is because the other person has caused it. and b) That you can’t trust those you are with because sooner or later they will break up with you. This leads to the next generation of songwriters viewing their exes through a lense tinted darkly and they go on to write more music that adds to the pile.
_
*(this is something I am aware of and seek to redress, but I take in new music slowly and as such it’s a work in progress)
___
SallyStrange,
328 a week is too much for a subsidy? Can you find work in a country with healthcare?
SBQ, the evil person in Prayer To God is the singer. (And not because he is Steve Albini.) That is because he is calling upon an other to bring pain and death to his ex and her current partner.
OMG, what a slimy piece of shit Erick Erickson is.
Did you guys hear about this? Erick Erickson, smarmy right-wing pundit, has started a website in response to the 99% movement, called “I am the 53% so shut up and stop whining you stupid poor fucks. I don’t want to hear about your lack of health care, you don’t pay income tax so you deserve to die in the street!” Well, he doesn’t come right out and say the last part but it’s pretty much implicit in the concept.
A lot of the people on the site are, as someone has actually part of the 47%, and all of them were part of the 47% at one point in their life, as is obvious from their self-confessed life histories.
FUck I want to smash something right now.
This definitely calls for some hardcore satirization.
Shit. Shit! SHIT!
I recent got a new computer and I barely know what I am doing. I was just sliding my finger over the mouse (My computer informs me that my wireless mouse is detected but I cannot get it to work.) and the screen for this blog shrinks by one third. I do not know why and I cannot figure out how to get it to normal size. A quick look on other tabs shows other sites to be normal sized.
How can I get this back to normal size so I can read with too much strain?
(In case it is relevant, my computer is an Acer Aspire.)
With what beverage?
Janine,
What browser? IE has a zoom function in the bottom right corner by default. Click on that until you find a zoom factor you prefer, or hit the arrow and select with a little intent.
I touch the outer skin of every airplane I board and give thanks to all the inventors, engineers and techs that made human flight possible.
Also, I bow like one does to a tatami (martial arts mat), but to any playing field where I’m about to participate in a competition. I bow to the ice before hockey, to the field before softball, and to the arena before a robotics competition. Sometimes I call myself a Sportarian.
Dhorvath, I am using Firefox.
Janine:
I assume by “ran my finger over the mouse” you’re referring to a trackpad.
Many trackpads now allow multi-touch-type gestures – such as pinching or spreading for zooming out or in (respectively). I assume you accidentally did that.
I do it all the time, no worries :)
No worries? I can barely see the screen as it is. How do I make it normal sized?
I am beginning to think that using the track pad is like playing a theremin. I started moving two fingers over the thing and it became normal sized again. I wish I knew why.
Janine:
Make sure you’ve got the browser window selected.
Hit Alt, then under “View” go to “Zoom”.
Alternatively, Ctrl-0 should reset the zoom level to 100%.
Moving two fingers together is a “pinch” – it zooms out (shrinks). Moving them apart is a “spread” – it zooms in (magnifies).
Common accident is to have part of the hand touching the right side of the trackpad when you move your finger to the right, which causes a “pinch” and a zoom out.
Oh, and that’s ctrl-zero, and it works in IE as well as Firefox (haven’t tried Chrome).
Thank you, Richard.
I see you were rescued. I have Firefox on my netbook which is not handy for me to check.
Rey; red wine & evergreen boughs. I also put a penny under the mast step.
[start woo] I like honoring sailing traditions, it think it gives me a connection to sailors & sailing that came before me. I look up at the trim of the sails, I adjust the sheets, and I find a peace that escapes me on land.[stop woo]
@ The Sailor
I am fascinated by human rituals and the power they hold for us. I regard it as a form of making art.
I think it’s usually a good idea, and it’s very common. Biologists do it all the time.
For example, think of the “gourds.” Turns out squashes are gourds, and so are cucumbers. Go figure.
Now, of course that’s just false in terms of vernacular words and popular stereotypes. Gourds and cucumbers are mutually exclusive categories, like monkeys and apes. If somebody asks you to fetch them a gourd, and you bring back a cucumber, or a zucchini, they’re going to think that you don’t know what a gourd is. Or if they try to dry it out to make a water jug or a maraca, they’ll be sorely disappointed.
Even so, I think it’s a fine thing to tell people that a cucumber literally is a funny kind of a gourd, really. They’re not going to try to make a maraca out of it, because they’ll immediately know you’re talking about gourds in a different, broader sense than they’re used to.
You’re telling them that there is a larger, biological category of things, which you’re calling “gourds,” independent of human interests. Some of them are good to eat, and some of them make good maracas, and some may be surprisingly different in other ways as well.
There’s usually no real harm in using a subclade name as the clade name, because it’s obvious on its face that you’re using the term in a broad sense.
Usually people try to pick a representative subtype for the clade name—a typical or close to basal one. So maybe we call the gourds “gourds” because the thick-rinded, seedy types are most common and/or the earliest, from which the others evolved. So there’s a hint of typicality, or prototypicality, or something… but you shouldn’t overinterpret it, because often there’s no really good exemplar, because all the subclades vary in significant ways.
Even when the clade name is countinterintuitive, based on a clearly atypical exemplar, it usually works fine.
Consider the nightshades. Eggplants and tomatoes and potatoes are all nightshades. But the only particular species called a “nightshade” that most people are familiar with is the dreaded deadly nightshade. Yikes.
From just that name, you might naively guess that “nightshades” are all more or less poisonous, and some are just flat deadly. But once you’re told that potatoes are nightshades, you know that’s wrong. Once you’re told that eggplants and tomatoes are nightshades, too, you know that nightshades include a lot of food plants, and it’s just kind of interesting that some of them are deadly, too. (That interesting fact helps you remember the name, too.)
That reinforces the diversity of the nightshades—it’s a relatively large and diverse group.
The same thing happens when you tell people that humans are apes. Humans are plainly not apes in the earlier vernacular sense, which defined apes as nonhuman animals that just resemble humans in certain respects. The stereotype of “ape” included being like us, but also being not us.
When we started saying that “humans are apes,” we were saying something obviously quite false by the old definition, which immediately told people several things about the new definition—that it’s new, that it’s broader than the old one, and in particular, it’s at least broad enough to include humans.
The obvious falsity by the old definition is good—it’s what tips people off to the fact that it’s a different definition that they need to learn, and a broader one. (And that it’s interesting—why would you call a human an ape, anyhow?)
I think that applies perfectly to generalizing the term “monkey” to include apes, and thus humans.
If you tell people that apes are monkeys, they’ll immediately know you don’t mean that in the traditional, stereotypical sense that apes are by definition not monkeys. If you remind them that humans are apes, and thus monkeys too, they’ll certainly know that not all “monkeys” (by this broad definition) are small screechy animals that hang by their prehensile tails eating bananas in the jungle. They know they can’t do that, and that they themselves do a lot of things that don’t fit the monkey stereotype.
That’s good.
I don’t see a big problem here. When we started telling people that they were apes, they immediately got it that not all apes are gorillas. They know they’re not gorillas.
It was immediately obvious to everyone that we were moving the term “up a level,” somehow, which is great.
Similarly, if we tell them that all of us apes are monkeys, they’ll know that we mean something different by “monkey” than they’re used to, and that will be good too.
I think “monkey” is an exceptionally good word to promote to a clade name. It’s pretty useless where it is, and we desperately need a word where it’s not.
We need a popular name for “simian”—people are exceptionally interested in simians, specifically, not just “primates.” They want to know about monkeys, apes, and humans much more than about tarsiers or lemurs or lorises—those are only kinda interesting because they’re kinda like simians. (But some of them are really cute, too.)
If there’s one more primate clade that people should have a handy vernacular name for, it’s got to be “simian.” (It would probably be better that they knew “simian” than “primate,” and way more useful than “orangutan” or “gibbon” or “great ape,” which they generally recognize, but aren’t sure how they relate.)
That’s the level they’re curious about, and which we can’t give them clear answers about, because our terminology is exceptionally fucked up right there at that crucial clade.
When people ask “what’s a monkey?” (or just what we mean by “monkey”) we can’t give them a sensible answer, because actually there’s no sensible reason for calling platyrrhines and some catarrhines but not others “monkeys.” It’s just an obscure, poorly-motivated, archaic convention.
Because of that, we can’t answer any of their other basic, common questions sensibly and straightforwardly either—are apes monkeys? Did apes evolve from monkeys? Did humans evolve from monkeys? Are humans monkeys?
The answers to all those questions should be a straightforward and very interesting yes.
And it could be, if we just go back to the old (but still intuitively obvious) sense of “monkey” as being inclusive of apes.
We already redefined “ape” as inclusive of humans. That was the hard part. Redefining “monkey” as a kind of ape is way, way easier. It’s exactly what people tend to think anyhow, if you don’t tell them they’re wrong.
Everyone will immediately “get it.”
What confuses people is telling them they’re wrong when they’re not really wrong—they’re just not using an obscure, fucked up term “correctly.”
We’ve been telling people they’re wrong about apes being monkeys for about a century now, and they still regularly call apes monkeys.
We should stop telling them it’s wrong to call an ape a monkey, just a bit vague—it’s more specific and informative to say it’s ape, if it is.
Then we’re done.
If we just let them be right about that obviously sensible naming convention, the answers to all of the interesting basic questions people ask about simians are dead easy, and dead easy to explain.
That’s way easier than teaching them that humans are apes, or that squash are gourds, or that eggplants are nightshades.
We elevate specific vernacular names to clade names all the time, and it’s usually much harder. Most people don’t already tend to think that squashes are gourds, or that potatoes are nightshades, and almost nobody really cares much at all.
If there was ever a good candidate for naming a clade with a vernacular name—and I think there are lots—it just doesn’t get any better than this.
Janine, go into Control Panel and KILL WITH FIRE everything that is not what you want to with your mouse/track pad.
Maybe my advice is because I have essential tremors. I tend to hover over the trackpad and randomly hit areas and it does shit I don’t want. Disclaimer: Just because I make my computer less sensitive does not mean you should.
The Sailor, glad you got the wrench. And thank you for making me laugh.
opposablethumbs, you’re welcome. Even I thought it was funny … a little later. And by little, I mean ‘shrinkage!’
It’ll get better, right?
Cosmic Teapot:
I was shocked and saddened when I saw the news. And then shocked again when I told my co-workers, and they didn’t know who he was. Damn kids.
I don’t usually succumb to fanboyism, but when in 1990 I got to meet some of the Bell Labs and Berkeley crowd – Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Brian Kernighan, Rob Pike, Kirk McKusick – it was such a thrill. Still got the conference T-shirt, though sadly I’ve expanded a little since then.
People talk of how Steve Jobs shaped their world, but relatively few understand just how much we owe to Dennis Ritchie and his colleagues. Maybe those of us who do remember should dig out our fraying bootleg copies of the Lions book and read some source, for old times’ sake.
/* You are not expected to understand this. */
When I got away from my ex, he sent that album to the person I was seeing on his birthday.
I was at his house when I heard that song, and I sat there listening to the lyrics thinking “does this count as a threat?”
Funny but sad privilege moment:
I was sitting with the now-estranged one and we were listening to a song by Will Oldham. I said something like, it’s so hard for me because I start to relate to these songs and then there’s a line that makes it really clear that a woman isn’t allowed to relate.
He said: “but there are plenty of songs like this for women that are just for women, men need their songs too.”
I said: “There are plenty for me like this? Name one!”
We’re separated now.
Sally, I know exactly what you mean. I once remarked to a fellow atheist friend when we were last in SoCal that I sometimes feel like a bad skeptic because of a lasting affection for certain rituals (I still love “the sign of peace” from Catholic mass), and religious art mediums that have some pretty negative connotations.
It’s a little odd to reconcile.
Thanks to everybody for the congrats!
Algernon, your fish-jumping analogy is perfect. It is a truly terrifying feeling, and I’m sorry that you have it too :( Did they figure out what was causing yours?
I woke up this morning far calmer than yesterday, and I barely rocked back and forth during class, and I didn’t break out in hives at any point, and yes, my heart is still doing that, but it’s okay. I think it was because I got something out of my system. I sat down and tried to write yesterday, a brief explanation of issues I was having with the bit of fiction I’m writing, and instead I sorta poured my heart out, saying horrible things that I hated to read, but that were true. I freaked out afterward, went home, barely held it together for a while, then talked to my mom (about my brother! He’s learning Mandarin!) and was able to calm down enough to do my translation and go to sleep.
This morning, I woke up with a tentative solution to my problem, plus a character backstory filled in overnight. Then I got to campus and someone awesome(!!!) had given me some comments on my problem, and I talked to my classmate, and I got an A on my exam that I was unprepared for, and I have the rest of the day to study/do whatever I want.
Yay.
:)
The only block to perfection is that I really want some coffee and I really ought not to have any so I’m trying to convince myself to settle for something else. I’m okay with that.
Oh yeah, and another fucking sexism thread. Heh.
Benjamin, *hugs* if any consolation, I’ve walked out of exams feeling like that and been very wrong before. :/ I know it’s really hard not to worry about things when you can’t do anything about them. I’m sorry.
—
Also, Rorschach, regarding love interest’s lovely tattoos, eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, lucky both of you :)
@CC, this thread is starting out with lots and lots of patriarchy-hurts-men-too.
I see people like Sastra trying to say something that could lead to a nuanced discussion of gender conformity and internalized norms, but no, we have to have a bunch of people who want us to say that sexism against women isn’t so bad, because men are really constrained too.
Good evening
*sigh*
I kind of wished PZ wouldn’t post any feminism threads for a while and we could have some sensible stealth discussions here.
The stupid again, it hurts
Sally
Tell us if we can help out.
Please don’t be shy.
I’m pretty sure that there are 5 people here who can part with 10$ and not feel poorer for it (me included).
When your financial situation becomes better, you do it for somebody else. Or just continue to be awesome.
I think the main reason people write love songs is because that’s what hurts so good/bad. (I think people also paint and dance for this reason, &c. I could be wrong.)
A lot of times you could switch genders and the song is just as true.
@The Sailor, I can’t help but think of this:
I’d argue that music and misery made each other. Ever care for a baby? They sing to themselves. Babies, being what they are, have very limited views of the world and of what things mean.
And yet they sing.
@Esteleth, I agree. I’ve just always loved that little monologue in High Fidelity. Actually, I’ve always loved High Fidelity, despite the main character being an asshole and having a strong male-only narrative. Hell, it’s the only think I’ve ever liked Jack Black in.