I’ll be hanging out at the Bellagio for the next few days, with a very busy schedule. You’re going to fill this thread up fast, aren’t you?
(Episode CCCII: Happy Lupercalia!.)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Oops, portcullised. Retry:
TLC
For eating, get the leaves young. After a quick parboil they are ready to be used in pretty much anything, like spinach (that tastes somewhat similar). Nettle soup and nettle pancakes (just add minced nettles to the batter) are perennial favourites.
Once more, this has to be done.
Viva Las Vegas-Not Elvis
Lynna, any fun stories about the LDS, the Mafia and Las Vegas?
is anyone else seeing problems with the Recent Posts/Comments/Archives widgets on the right? Or is there something funky on my end?
I don’t see anything under those three. Then on the FTB Recent Posts/FTB Most active, both are in single box. On the main FTB page, the recent posts box is totally empty for me.
ooh Las Vegas
@ James
I replied to you at the end of the previous version of TET. Direct Link Here.
………………….
{fix} The US is, for now, not a full blooded theocracy.
{One could argue that it is partially theocratic in that the religious right can and does sway legislation.}
Sorry about getting angry yesterday at people regarding the whole Virginia more or less passing a law sanctioning state-sponsored rape via medical proxy. I truly hope that one of two things happen: A) McDonnell vetoes the law (not likely to happen, it would be career suicide) or B) McDonnell at least re-attaches the amendment requiring the woman’s consent to the unnecessary ultrasound.
As it stands, the law is state-sanctioned rape via medical proxy. A doctor is going to be forced by law to violate a woman’s body with a vaginal probe possibly without her consent. In any other circumstance, that’s rape. In this circumstance, it’s state-sanctioned rape. It’s disgusting, it serves no purpose except to punish – physically, emotionally, psychologically – a woman for being a woman.
In the eyes of Republicans in Virginia, women ain’t shit. (Which makes me fear who else they think “ain’t shit”)
—
In less depressing news:
Cathemega! Relay! Non-nym blog post about the more populated island in the continent of the world of my novels.
Heaven Or Las Vegas
Wait, what?
They literally took away a woman’s right to say no and the legal obligation from the doctor to abide by it?
….
Un-fucking-believable.
I’m going to be sick now.
Well, it is her fault for
wearing that short skirtwanting that abortion.@Just a Lurker:
That’s why I’m so incensed about it. Also, the personhood bill (which again is likely to be passed) there was a common sense amendment attached that would make it so contraceptives were protected from the bill.
That got denied as well.
@SQB:
It’s sick. It’s Republican men slutshaming women who want to express a constitutional right.
I get to see Professor Myers tonight in Vegas–woo hoo!
Yeah, having a huge problem with the ultrasound laws. Medically unnecessary, violates women who are often already upset by the prospect of terminating a pregnancy, and I generally frown on laws that interfere with the physician-patient relationship. And anyone who’s had one will concur: transvag ultrasounds are NOT pleasant.
Katherine:
Yeah, when I heard this bill discussed on the Rachel Maddow show a couple days ago, that was my first reaction, too. I’d heard discussions of mandatory-ultrasound-before-abortion laws (IIRC in several states) before, but I guess I was thinking of the sort of cute, cuddly jelly-belly ultrasound you see in TV shows about happily expecting couples; once I realized they were talking about intravaginal ultrasound, I instantly wondered how an unwanted vaginal penetration for which “consent” is obtained by, essentially, extortion could possibly not be rape?
Of course, the less (physically) intrusive ultrasound I was imagining is still pretty horrific, since its purposes are ideological and punitive rather than legitimately medical… but at least it’s not rape.
The half-good news is that on that same show, Rachel’s guest opined that McDonnell might not sign the separate fetal personhood bill, because pols are finally starting to figure out that even in the most conservative places, effectively banning birth control is actually unpopular.
The forced
ultrasoundmedical rape bill, though, he’s apparently likely to sign. I’m sure it’s unconstitutional, but will that matter given the current Supremes? And in any case, that’ll be cold comfort to women affected by this while it wends its way through the courts.I remember eating nettle soup once. Really nice, actually. I should try making it myself sometime.
On a different note, shouldn’t we be talking about rabbits, just in case Razzlefrog comes back?
If I understand it correctly, if a woman under that law wanted to have an abortion, she would have to consent to the ultrasound. So, it hardly counts as consent if she is practically forced into giving it.
Katherine:
Point-of-procedure question:
In VA, the executive can “re-attach” an amendment that had been rejected by the legislature? Without the amended bill going back to the legislature? That’s unusual… an even more extraordinary expression of executive power than a line-item veto would be.
[Turns desk light sideways. Holds hands in front of light to throw shadow on wall]
I can do ‘deformed rabbit!’
State sanctioned rape. Yep, that’s exactly what this is. It really is a sick idea.
@Bill Dauphin:
I would hope that whoever argues before the Supremes about the unconstitutionality of this bill calls it what it is. I saw the last update on TRMS, and was surprised they never said “rape.” “Violation without consent” and “forced penetration” sure, but not rape. Should someone come up to the Supremes, I hope they say that this is indeed rape via medical proxy. The bill is making rapists out of practicing OBGYNs. (Which begs another question, can an OBGYN refuse to perform the unnecessary ultrasound?)
@Bill Dauphin:
Yup. The governor of Virginia can add amendments to bills that pass through the chambers.
An acquaintance of mine just told me in gmail chat that she’s drunk and “trying not to kill” herself. I have no idea how to handle this outside of giving her hotlines to call and prevention chat websites. I sent her a link to crisischat.org and haven’t heard back from her for a few minutes; I’m really hoping she’s busy talking to someone there but this has got me really worried. What else can/should I do here?
This Virginia bill is sickening. The only medical procedure in the US that requires the patient to view an ultrasound? That’s bad enough, but the only way to do the ultrasound is via vaginal penetration? These people are sick. And seriously sexist.
Er, rather it is a line-item veto. Misread the news article, wups.
beatrice
You need to explain that.
How did a crocodile spoil your afternoon.
That’s pretty irrelevant, isn’t it?
If she has to get the ultrasound to get the abortion, she has to consent to it.
Well, of course another effect could be that women delay the abortion until the ultrasound can be performed via the belly. I mean, that’s really going to improve the situation: More second trimester abortions instead of first trimester abortions.
@Ogvorbis:
Actually, only patients in the first trimester would have to have a vaginal ultrasound. which is when the majority of actual abortions take place.
—
Re: Governor Troglodyte’s powers:
He can make recommendations and amendments, but they must go back to the Senate and House for re-approval before they can be signed into law.
Fair warning, I’m talking about animal killing again, in some detail, because proper euthanasia is a very big deal to me. This is quoting from the previous edition of TET.
—
Wrong. Wrong in many ways. First, it IS possible to kill an animal quickly and cleanly by cervical dislocation, which is a specific form of neck-breaking that needs to be carefully learned. When cervical dislocation is done correctly, the animal’s brain activity stops after 13 seconds. (Research cited in AVMA euthanasia guidelines 2007, link here.) Short of a gunshot or captive bolt to the brain, cervical dislocation is the quickest route to unconsciousness. (Incidentally, blood flow to the brain doesn’t necessarily imply consciousness, nor is bleeding always a good way to induce unconsciousness – that also takes skill, which I’ll talk about if someone asks.)
It IS also possible to do neck-breaking incorrectly and not realize it because the person doesn’t know what to look for. In that respect I do agree with the statement I’m criticizing. To most people who don’t know any better, a limp animal looks just like a dead animal.
When cervical dislocation is done properly, the animal will not attempt to breathe. It won’t pant, gasp, or show lifting of the chest wall. Those are signs that would normally persist even in a deeply unconscious or anesthetized animal. Also, the animal won’t show normal aversive reflexes anymore – it won’t blink when its eyes are touched or blown on, the whiskers won’t twitch when brushed, and the paw withdrawal reflex won’t work (i.e. if you pinch its paw, the paw won’t try to pull away from you. This one’s tricky to learn though.) Any of these signs being present means the kill attempt wasn’t clean enough, so if it happens, you’d better have a backup method (a sharp knife will do) and be ready to use it immediately. (Exceptions: paw quivering, slight kicking, or gentle tail movement, all occurring spontaneously with no stimulus, sometimes happen with proper cervical dislocation and can be ignored.)
I’ve used cervical dislocation extensively on mice and rats, and in my hands, 98% of the time the animal goes completely unresponsive instantly with none of the reflexes I mention above. Once in a while my grip would be imperfect and I’d see one do a gasp, so I’d have to take that one immediately and re-break it or use the sharp scissors standing by.
Cervical dislocation is an acceptable euthanasia method under AVMA and ILAR guidelines for small mammals and birds; larger animals such as rabbits have stronger necks and require greater skill, care, and hand strength to kill humanely. If someone isn’t skilled enough to have a low failure rate, they should have a backup method and, in a veterinary setting, anesthetize the animal first. CO2 is one option for this. When I went through training for cervical dislocation, they started us on small, already unconscious animals, with a second tier of training for conscious ones. We had to demonstrate proficiency at each stage by properly killing a few animals while an experienced veterinary trainer watched our technique, after which we received certification and permission to use it unmonitored.
As far as hunting is concerned, I don’t know of any training in applying, much less verifying, humane euthanasia. It all seems to be mythology and word-of-mouth passed down from mentor to rookie, which is a great way to enshrine errors. Particularly egregious errors such as that kicking or gasping are “just reflexes” that can be ignored – this angers me to no end. Personally, I’m willing to put the information out there so that someone who needs it can verify for themselves whether they’ve killed an animal humanely or not.
Also, I can hardly believe that McDonnell is being seriously talked about as a VP candidate! I don’t know what to hope for on that: I think his extreme views would put off a large number of independent swing voters (to the limited extent that VP candidates’ views matter at all, that is), but he might also make a presidential candidate whose wingnut bona-fides are suspect (<cough>Romney</cough>) more palatable to hardliners, and thus shore up the Republican base.
Interesting times, eh?
It’s my favourite!
Giliell,
Not that krokodil, but a drug with the same name. As Rev. BigDumbChimp warned, you need a strong stomach just to read about it.
If you’re not up to googling it, the article that I read was this one : Krokodil: The drug that eats junkies
When they say “eats”, it’s not really metaphorical.
@Predator Handshake
Get someone else to check on her or do it yourself if possible.
@Predator Handshake: I suggest, stay in gmail chat with this person, and send a few gentle pokes like “is the link I sent working for you” and “how are you doing” and such. It’s not always enough to give a resource to someone who’s upset and expect them to follow it on their own; they might need some nudging and reminding. If they say “I’m talking to them now” then you’ve done about all you can. However, you might get vented at, so be prepared. For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re trying.
She said she’s too drunk to do the chat thing, and that she’s on hold with the prevention hotline. Unfortunately she isn’t in this state and I don’t have an address or know any of her friends, so all I can really do is try to get her to check in with me every few minutes. I really don’t care if she hates me after this, I just really don’t want her to die
She just said “sadly I don’t have a purpose here” and I don’t know what to say to that?
Predator, then do that… just go “I’ll stay in chat until they answer, okay?” Hotline workers are much better at this.
Adventures in home ownership: A couple days ago I had to come home from work early because the contractor removing trees from the yard next door had damaged (but not completely disconnected) my power and cable lines. Last night I had to go back to the office late in the evening in order to make up the missed time. Today I’m home (and thus posting) in the middle of a workday because the heating contractor had to come to do $2000 of repairs to my boiler system.
Oy!
But I mention all this by way of saying I’m mindful of (and grateful[1] for) how lucky I am to have a home (at least in part owing to privilege) and a job at which to worry about making up time, and what great good fortune (also at least in part unearned) it is that a $2000 repair is not a crisis for my family. It’s a good day.
***
[1] Note that a feeling of gratitude is not intended to imply any supernatural benefactor at its focus. Grateful for…; not grateful to….
She signed off chat. I’m sending her an email imploring her to talk to someone even if it’s not me, but I’m worried she won’t read it.
Predator, you’ve done all you can, unless you’ve got the fortitude to hang around with your chat open in case she comes back online. Consider letting it go for now.
Intercourse the rabbits.
Predator Handshake, I have no experience in these crisis intervention situations, and no substantive help to add… but I want to offer you another voice of support for what you’re doing.
Every time I hear people say the internet is isolating and dehumanizing us, I think of situations like this one. To my eyes, the ‘net is a powerful tool for good, and for community, contrary to the cynics’ views.
She came back online and said she got through to the hotline, but she’s having a lot of trouble typing coherently so I can’t tell what’s going on now.
Predator: the typing thing happens to me when I have panic attacks. It’s okay to let the hotline handle it, that’s what they’re trained for. If you want to stay online for additional support, just to say “I’m here for you” once in a while, that’s up to you; but consider your own stress level, too.
SQB (last thread):
I was really behind on my rent last month, but I actually finally had the money and paid what I thought was all of it. Apparently it was not everything that was owed, because now I owe much more than just this month’s rent. So, since I had a past due balance from a while ago, and they already warned me about it (last month), they’re allowed to evict me on what seems to me to be short notice.
Anyway, I’ll have half of the money by tomorrow. Beyond that, I’m not sure how I’ll get the rest. If only I weighted a 10 more pounds or so, then I’d be able to sell plasma :(
Time for a Tell Starstuff’s Landlord “Because f**k you, that’s why!” fund, perhaps?
I am not asking for money, my problems run a little deeper than a month of rent, but given the collections calls I have endured this week, I can easily identify with your stress Starstuff. Hugs are all I can offer, but I suspect the horde in general can help you out.
Last Thread:
John Morales:
and
It’s not necessarily mystic-speak, even if mystic-speakers use the same words. It can instead be a sort of counter to the casual human assumption that we are the Ultimate Reason For It All. Antihumanocentrism, if you will.
(And even if you won’t; I think it’s a perfectly cromulent word. I’ll have to see that it gets more exercise.)
–
I have actually known people who thought that meat was somehow manufactured, like plastic goods; and who thought that somewhere, in the back of the grocery store, was the machine that cranked it out. They completely failed to understand (and refused to believe) that formerly-live animals were involved in the process in any way.
It blew my mind.
–
Plastic tanks for cow farts: how do they work? I mean, how do you rig a tube to selectively collect the Noxious Vapors, without getting…by-catch?
–
With a side order of ZOMG They’re Taking Away Our Specialness!!!
–
Jeffrey, thanks for reading! *smile&hug*
*wince of sympathy*
After my hysterectomy-with-all-the-trimmings, but before it was entirely healed up, I accidentally rolled off the bed in such a way that I impacted the padded (or, in this instance, “padded”) side rail, just south of the navel. It was a breathtaking experience.
There may also have been some leakage of salt water.
–
–
StarStuff – what, no tip jar on your blog? <_< I could write a small check.
—
Natalie has a post up about InSite, the only (STILL the only) safe drug injection site in North America:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/nataliereed/2012/02/16/harm-reduction-and-evidence-based-drug-policy/
A teenager working as a hospital volunteer, here in Texas, asked what animal was in a photo on the wall. …It was a cow.
Apparently many kids now think animals mostly exist as cartoon images, CGI and logos on food cartons. I can’t really express how obscene I find this.
Since PZ is busy, I thought I’d point out there’s a poll that needs Pharyngulating:
Pledge to God
Do you believe ‘under God’ should be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance?
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/atheist-family-sues-god-stripped-pledge-allegiance-article-1.1023073#ixzz1mYYwMLUm
Honestly, the pledge of allegiance gives me the heebie jeebies.
Seconded
beatrice
Urgh, ok, that is stomach-turning. You’ve got to “admire” their response: They got into that shit by coming down hard on heroine, now they want to come down on the codeine. Have they ever thought about something like state sponsored methadone?
Predator
I hope she gets help and that you are OK, too.
+++
In Germany kids think that cows are purple
@Dhorvath:
It’s a patriotic expression of our duties to our country! What are you, a communist?! *shuuuuuuuuuuuuns*
Gives me the heebie jeebies too. Especially after seeing how it used to be done (see Bellamy salute.) I’d like to see the entire thing taken out.
I thought this was required only in American movies.
Yuck, over the top nationalism.
They can do that all their ownselves. They don’t need our help.
–
Starstuff, I wish I could help. All I can offer is *hugs* and sympathy.
:( :( :(
–
Katherine,
I might be, I might be. The verdict is out, but I am appalled at proscriptive chants either way.
@Dhorvath:
Too late, you’ve been shuuuuuuuuuuuuuned.
re Pledge of Allegiance: Nope it’s not just in movies. In my fundie school, we had to stand, salute the flag and say the pledge every morning. At the time I didn’t think much of it either way, but to this day I won’t lay my right hand over my heart for *anything*.
+++++++++++++++
John Morales and ChasC, I remembered you guys as being self proclaimed Aspies. I seriously don’t know why I remembered it that way. I apologize for getting it wrong.
+++++++++++++++
Am I the only one who heard that preceded by “Pinky, are you pondering what I’m pondering?”
I think it is ridiculous to pledge allegiance to a flag. Under god or not, it seems like a perticularly useless form of worship anyway.
When I was in high-school, I refused to participate, on the grounds that I had no idea what allegiance to the flag or republic even meant*. My religion teacher was also my home room teacher, and his response to this was “fair enough”.
He was fired two years after I left for failing to indoctrinate students properly.
*As surly as I was at that time, I dared not blaspheme openly.
We didn’t have to say it in schools. We said it in Girl Scouts though. I just stood up quietly and didn’t say it, didn’t do the hand on the heart thing. Yes, I was a stubborn (and atheistic) eight-year-old. I’m also a stubborn grown woman. I still won’t do the hand on the heart thing for the anthem or the pledge. I’ll stand, but that’s it.
Heh. “particularly”
Too late!
http://www.enasco.com/product/C04572N
This poll is from the same paper:
Right now, it is running 94% for yes.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can I resign from the human race?
Thanks for the support, everyone. I’d be angry about my situation if I didn’t feel so defeated. How am I supposed to go to school and support myself at the same time, without something getting neglected? And how am I supposed to go to class and do my homework when I know that I’ll be evicted in 6 days? I’ve felt sick to my stomach since I got the eviction notice yesterday.
You wouldn’t believe how often I think this.
Only if I can join you, Ogvorbis.
Ogvorbis: Double arrrgh – this poll you linked
Is running alongside an article titled:
HPV vaccine does not promote promiscuity; Cancer shot does not alter sexual behavior: study
So they could’ve just run a poll saying “Will you flat out ignore evidence that proves your opinion is wrong?” YES/NO
*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*
At least it stays in Vegas.
Glen Davidson
And really, really, REALLY do not search for images.
Starstuff: I’m not sure what state you’re in so I won’t presume to offer legal advice (unless you’re in MN, in which case allow me to offer, as it’s one of my areas of practice!). But I will offer you this: get all your documents together (rent receipts, past due notices, etc) and take a visit to your student legal services, legal aid office, or tenants’ union. You may have some rights in this situation, depending on whether they’ve followed all their notice provisions and rules. LL-tenant law (again, at least here in MN) has a lot of little technicalities and procedures that can trip up an inexperienced landlord. It’s worth at least checking out; if you find a flaw, it’ll give you some leverage to negotiate a payment plan to get caught up, or at least negotiate yourself some additional time to move. Good luck!!
There are those who put their right hand over the heart during the national anthem, but I have always found it off-putting.
I stand up and stay quiet while it plays, but I will go no further.
Well, Janine, it’s a tangled web.
There’s general agreement that there is a mormon mafia in Las Vegas, but with most of the strings being pulled in Salt Lake City. For the most part the unethical dealings, whether they be of a political or business nature, depend on the same kind of affinity that fosters multilevel marketing schemes.
For example: You may remember the flapdoodle over seven US Attorneys being fired during the Bush administration for political reasons. Kyle Sampson, who was Chief of Staff for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at the time, was also a mormon bishop. Sampson gave up his Chief of Staff title, but didn’t quit, and he continued to draw a full salary from the Department of Justice.
Sampson’s champions in this rip off of taxpayer dollars were two mormon politicians, Chris Cannon (Republican Congress Critter), and Senator Orrin Hatch.
Sheldon Bradshaw, Counsel in the Food and Drug Administration, admires Sampson. Just coincidentally, Bradshaw is a mormon, a graduate of BYU, and Sampson’s “First Counselor” in the LDS Ward where Sampson serves.
Bradshaw’s wife, Corrine, worked for Orrin Hatch. Are you getting the mormon cabal feeling yet?
To make a long story short, mormons worked together to put other mormons into positions of power, and to push non-mormons out of jobs so that they could replace them with mormons.
Here’s an incomplete list of mormons, BYU graduates, and cronies orbiting within the US Attorney power spheres:
– Sampson pushed Paul Warner out of the US Attorney for Utah job, which was then gifted to Brett Tolman. This is the Tolman who inserted text into the Patriot Act that allowed Bush to appoint US Attorneys without congressional approval. Tolman is a mormon and a BYU grad.
– Taylor Oldroyd, another BYU grad, is a friend of Sampson, and is now with the US Dept. of Agriculture.
– Charles R. Christopherson, Jr. is a BYU grad that Bush nominated to be chief financial oficer of the Department of Agriculture.
– Timothy Flanagan, another BYU grad and friend of Sampsons, was appointed to the DC Circuit Court.
– Robert Clive Jones, a BYU grad, was nominated by Bush to the federal District Court.
– Jay Bybee, a BYU grad and member of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society (restricted to members of the LDS Church), was nominated for a judgeship in the Ninth Circuit.
– Utah District Court Judge Denise Posse-Blanco graduated from BYU, and she played a part in getting John Roberts onto the Supreme Court Bench.
– Dick Cheney has been a commencement speaker at BYU.
None of this affinity web would draw much attention if it hadn’t played a part in “Purge Gate” when US Attorneys were fired for political reasons. This is just one example of how a “mormon mafia” operates in the political arena.
You might like the book Happy Valley: Murder, Mafia, Mormons and More! by Cheryl Naugle.
In 2011, the mormon-owned and operated Zions Bank was slapped with big fines for “suspicious wire transfers of billions of dollars related to transactions that may have involved drug trafficking and other crimes.” The bank was caught laundering 12.9 billion dollars in 138 transactions. The mormon bank president blamed clerical oversights.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/51235852-79/bank-zions-suspicious-money.html.csp
Zions Bank is traded on the stock exchange, but the Board of Directors are mormons, their lawyers are mormons, Prophet Thomas S. Monson makes special field trips to bless the opening of new branches. The LDS Church is the bank’s largest loan client.
Zions Bancorp took 1.4 billion in TARP money, and still has paid it back as far as I know.
Link.
Zions Bank is the largest recipient of welfare from the feds in Utah history.
Mormon bankers in St. George, Utah were prosecuted last year for laundering money, most of which came from Las Vegas.
Old story, but Howard Hughes was said to have his own mormon mafia. Latter-day Saints served at Hughes Aircraft.
Many Las Vegas business owners are said to be backed by mormon financiers. I don’t have anything more than what is already available at Wiki to back this up.
I have seen enough background chatter to think that water rights in Nevada are being affected by a loose organization of mostly mormon politicians. Here’s one related article, but it’s from 2008. I haven’t had time to bring my water rights research up to date. http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jun/15/equation-no-water-no-growth/
Brigham Young was the first Las Vegas businessman. There are tales of mormons owning casinos, brothels, liquor stores, etc. In more modern times, Senator Harry Reid is connected to the story of how Frank Sinatra got a gaming license in Las Vegas. Mormon, and Reid associate, Richard Bunker was made head of the Gaming Control Board, and the Sinatra license went through. Richard Bunker was later made president of the Nevada Resort Association, the casino industry’s main lobbying organization.
Oh, reading was quite enough, I will definitely heed this warning.
Evidence is only valid if it supports the opinion you already have. Otherwise it is not evidence, it is a liberal plot to destroy gods, America, apple pie, and kittens.
I actually sing the Star-Spangled Banner, but (thanks to Asimov) I sing the third stanza, which was removed during WWII so as not to offend the British:
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country shall leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
If I’m lucky someone will go wide-eyed and ask me about it. I’ve had a few very good conversations that way, and never (yet) been beat up.
@Lynna
Out of curiosity and speaking of Vegas…any stories on Howard Hugh’s legion of Mormon confidants?
Apparently, nettlewhateverthefuck has decided that the Jabberwocky thread is his own personal playground and we are only to read comments directed to a commenter by ‘nym.
Here’s an interesting story from the Buffalo Beast that really should get more coverage (but probably won’t).
First , the Beast brought up the fact that JCPenney’s recent decision to have Ellen Degeneres as a spokesperson either makes JCPenney hypocritical or at very least not a true proponent of gay rights, since JCPenney has a small political action committee that has contributed 15 grand (out of its total 21 grand) to anti-gay Republican politicians. And the article also made casual mention of their sweatshops.
But this is the kicker : JCPenney actually responded to article because they thought it was the Daily Beast. Their defense? They contributed to Republicans entirely because it furthered their own financial interests, not because they don’t like gays. And right after that, the company mentions all the Democrats they’ve contributed to who are pro-gay, as if that makes JCPenney supporters of the gay rights cause when they mention it right after mentioning that their decision to contribute to politicians is entirely based on how the policies of that politicians will affect their bottom line.
So, yeah. JCPenney, with their heartwarming decision to fight for a lesbian spokeswoman, uses their small amount of politically allocated money to predominantly support anti-LGBT politicians because those politicians also support the awful economic policies that let them prosper. It’s not as much surprising that it happens as much as surprising that they are outright admitting it while simultaneously pretending that they are not admitting it.
I know a parody of our anthem, but that would probably be a bit much.
Hint : it’s about beer.
Hiring Elan ruined the right wing shoppers good will…and their defense here has probably dried up the good will of left wing shoppers.
So fail all around?
Bellagio sounds promising !
Did I miss anything ?
Of course. Who do you think you are, reading other people’s private messages in a comment thread on the internet?!
What? That comment wasn’t addressed to anyone so it’s fair game.
This thread is notably devoid of aspic, thus I propose foie gras in aspic with lard fried duck breasts.
A friend of mine got some serious shit her way as an exchange student in a high school in Utah, when she couldn’t understand why she, a Finn, was supposed to pledge allegiance to a foreign flag. From the teachers. From what she’s told I gather the kids were far nicer.
Her being an atheist didn’t exactly endear her to her host family, either.
To whom was that addressed that I may know whether or not I may read it?
Stop eavesdropping.
Corporal Ogvorbis,
you may read it.
Others, close your eyes.
Perhaps some Troll avec Aspic con argumentum absurdumb?
This is not unusual. Some of the host families in western Maryland (where I attended middle and high school) saw the exchange student as a blank slate upon which they could build the evangilization of Europe. According to rumour, one family got blackballed by one of the exchange student programmes because of their heavy handed proselytizing.
I’d love to be contributing more to the abuse of nettlesgraig in the jabberwocky thread but sadly I have the science chops of a turnip, so all I can contribute is snark.
Og @ 87: I saw the same thing when I was in High School. I’m not even from a particularly religious area either.
Hasn’t stopped me.
I just wish nettletroll would actually do something originally absurd rather than rehashing the same old tired bits.
Oh bloody hell. Another television set in about six months crapped itself.
Not that it’s entirely surprising, my apartment is like an elephants’ graveyard where my family’s old electronics come to die.
Hee! Katherine Lorraine has this great line in response to Ed’s post about being happy living alone:
Source
X>
Thanks to everyone for the support earlier. Current status is unknown, but gmail suggests she is active (green light next to her name) even though she isn’t responding to me currently. Hopefully this indicates she’s at least talking to somebody at the moment.
As for me, I was pretty stressed out about it earlier but I’ve been distracting myself with some line scan microscopy.
Re national anthem: I discovered in 9th grade that you aren’t actually required to do the hand over the heart. I kept getting bolder with it until the next year at a pep rally, a friend and I decided not to stand for the national anthem. Some teacher at my school tattled on me to my father and he grounded me for two weeks; this had the opposite effect from what was intended, because I felt punk rock as shit that I had bothered a teacher enough to rat me out for something like that.
Why wait for lab grown meat when we have the technology right now to do Matrix for chickens, satiate our lust for meat and forget all those pesky ethical concerns?
*shudder*
*clenched tentacle salute*
@Matrix chickens
Trigger warning on the pics for the squimish
Why on earthy would you photograph that with that heavy back lighting!? Were they trying to make it look sinister?
Wait, what thread is being all be-trolled? Which is the Jabberwocky thread?
Is it about Jabberwocks?
And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
…
Dammit, I used to have the entire poem memorized.
Do you have a recipe for that? ;)
re: national anthem
Got me into trouble at school as well: Teacher required us to write down and learn by heart all three stanzas of it.
Well, the last one is Deutschland, Deutschland über alles and the second one is misogynistic as hell.
I wrote down the “Kinderhymne” by Bert Brecht instead and 2 pages of explenation why I wouldn’t do the other task…
Oh, forgot to mention that I found my Black Flag Slip It In shirt in the trash the day after the teacher called my dad. Guess what became my favorite shirt for a few years?
Esteleth:
‘Tis this one: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/01/27/the-comparison-to-jabberwocky-is-inevitable/
A chemistry teacher is defending a theory of everything while accusing all of lacking intellectual curiousity because we are not skeptical enough to immediately believe it and accept it as Truth.
…Yikes. Mind blown. Extremely good post over at Libby Anne’s place:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/lovejoyfeminism/2012/02/16/the-end-times-part-v-signs-prophesies-and-current-events/
O_o
o_O
…Holy crap, is that why the US government kisses Israel’s collective arse every chance it gets? And why big industries have an interest in fostering religion and talking up the End Times as if it’s a thing? I thought it was just about profit-mongering! And learned helplessness is written into the belief system. It’s not just for abuse victims anymore. Holy CRAP. I’m not even halfway through the article.
I still have that shirt. I don’t really wear it, but I still have it. I listen to that album pretty regularly if I need some anger release. That and My War.
To which I call bullshit. He’s a chemistry teacher who doesn’t know chemistry allegedly.
Beatrice, anormalement indécente, oh …that’s horrific, that drug. I’m not even joking, reading that and my nerves are just on edge. I want to run. It’s utterly terrifying. You don’t need a strong stomach to read about something like that and get through it alright, you need to be able to shut down higher brain functions (I am not).
The warnings are fair, and I’m not sure anyone will be better for the knowledge, but do not read about krokodil unless you are prepared to be disturbed for a while.
re Matrix chickens:
…I call Poe. For now. >_>
Weed Monkey:
I prefer Zombie Chicken Honeycomb. It has more flair. It’s an interesting design, but not carniculture.
My biggest peeve with the national anthem is that the poetry is garbled as hell. Once, to prove this, I drew the sentence structure of the first sentence.
A refresher:
Oh, say, can you see by the dawn’s early light what so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
It starts with a pair of interjections. Problematic, but marginally acceptable due to “poetry.” It is a question, with the subject (“you”) coming early on, flanked by the verb (“can…see”). Okay, no problem, but the object (“what”) follows an adverbial phrase and is followed in term by a verbal phrase nested within an adjectival phrase that is.
So:
You (subject) → can see (verb)→ what (object) → we (subject of adverbial phrase) hailed so (nested adverb of adverbial phrase) proudly (nested adverb of adverbial phrase) → at the (conjunction, nested within object’s adverbial phrase) gleaming (object of adverbial phrase) → twilight’s last (adjective modifying object of adverbial phase).
It’s a mess. The rest of the first verse is no better.
Although, it is semi-fixed by the fact that it is a fucking filk of a (British) drinking song.
But still. Francis Scott Key could not write decent poetry to save his ass.
Glurg.
–
I still do; it’s one of my favorites. :)
I also still have the Mad Magazine version festering in my brain:
“‘Twas Brillo, and the G.E. stoves
Did Proctor Gamble in the Glade.
All Pillsbury were the Tasty loaves
And in a Minute Maid!”
–
I was a Lawful Good little kid. I did the Pledge, I sang the Anthem. I sang “How Great Thou Art” with real emotion. There’s no way I didn’t look like a success of the brainwashing program.
Rebellion came later.
–
Yes. I thought you knew?
It’s also a reason why they aren’t concerned about climate change, or pollution stacking up in the environment, or extinctions, or anything so forward-thinking as an asteroid watch.
–
Esteleth: I rather like that the US national anthem is badly done filk that some guy wrote and got randomly put to 19th-century karaoke. Historically, that’s a fine origin for the anthem of a country (supposedly) of, by, and for the people. Rather like Waltzing Matilda.
If it was like how I was as a kid it wasn’t that there was rebellion. There was the exact same loyalty to the ideals and values that were indoctrinated…it just became clear that the reality didn’t link up to the ideal.
@cicely: no, I didn’t know. I thought governments, big business and all that fostered religion just to encourage gullibility in general. I didn’t think it was to foster helplessness. You can fight gullibility with education, relatively easily in fact, and you can fight bigotry with storytelling, but it’s a lot harder to fight learned helplessness.
Pteryxx, you think that’s bad?
I cannot produce citations for this right now (hello, work internet network randomly blocking stuff!), but:
1. Many fundies saw the Iraq war as a prelude to Armageddon (Babylon is one of the armies in that battle, and Babylon was in what is now Iraq…). The fundies who believed this may or may not have included G.W. Bush, but almost certainly included some of the senior staff at DoD and NSA. The size of the invading army at the beginning of the Iraq war was deliberately scaled to match Biblical descriptions of the size of the army.
2. Many fundies (including those who are less batshit than those described above), are explicitly pro-Israel in general, and pro-Israel expanding its settlements because *ahem* the Apocalypse cannot happen until after the flowering of the Tree of Jesse. Which means, that the Apocalypse cannot happen until Israel is reborn (i.e. as a nation) in strength and rules its ancient lands – which includes, incidentally, not only it’s present borders, but much of Jordan and Syria. So, in order to lay the groundwork for the return of Christ, Israel must be encouraged to be aggrandizing. Of course, these folk also believe that the Apocalypse will feature the extermination (between literal killing and mass conversions) of all Jewish people. They tend to not emphasize that part when talking to Israelis.
3. A significant strain that runs through many (though not all) fundie circles is the idea that we can (and should) hasten the Apocalypse, by trashing the Earth.
4. A near-mainstream belief (i.e. in mainstream, non-fundamentalist Christianity) is the idea that God put exactly the right amount of resources in/on the Earth for humans. So, (1) we won’t run out until it is Time™ and (2) until it is Time™ we shall never run out (of course, we have to look for it).
5. And then there is Dominionism, which Libby Anne has touched on briefly. It is horrifying.
And may have been (there is some evidence for it, but we most likely will not know until his Presidential papers are released (and assuming the crayon doesn’t melt)) part of the impetus for the invasion of Iraq. No one who wants to hasten armegeddon, or believes that armegeddon will usher in a second coming, should be allowed anywhere near the Presidency.
Kinda mordantly funny: the young man on the article about krocodil made me think, “Zombie!”, and lo, the Zombie Chicken Honeycomb followed.
–
Pteryxx: there’s no point in wasting money on education, when 1) it just makes people harder to manipulate, and 2) God is just gonna roll the whole thing up, anyways. Any minute now.
There’s also no point in worrying about depleting oil reserves and encouraging cleaner energies, because see 2 above, and anyway, that’s what He put the oil there for in the first place, and why would He have bothered in laying in more than just enough to last until the Boffo Finish?
–
Starstuff:
Would a quick infusion of cash stave off the eviction, or is it too late for that? Cuz if pennies from heaven would help, you know, we have the technology.
Email me at [formal version of my firstname] DOT [lastname] AT comcast DOT net, if you want.
*jawdrop*
…I’m seriously starting to think atheism should be a PREREQUISITE for holding government office. This is ridiculous. This is the entire fucking blue marble here.
Also, it shifts the Drake equation radically. All the science fiction I was raised on mentions nuclear war, disease or climate change as means of wiping ourselves out (excepting stray asteroids, gray goo, and singularity) but nothing ever mentioned religion of all things as an underlying cause. It was always humanity’s natural inclination to tribalism or short-sightedness. The hell with that! The whole setup’s been queered from the very beginning.
Geez louise, doesn’t anyone read RR anymore? Tells you all you need to know and then some. If you want to know how the scary idiots are thinking on any given subject, it’s your go to place.
As much as I love Black Flag, I don’t really like Henry Rollins as an artist. He’s somehow too controlled and holds back, even when shouting as loud as he can.
My favourite Rollins song must be Disconnect, from the Rollins Band album Weight. It’s awesome despite Henry, not because of him. What really drives the track is Melvin Gibbs with his marvellous, marvellous bass.
Just my opinion, of course.
Pteryxx, believe me when I tell you that there is a lot worse out there.
Those are just the most widespread.
—
(that last is from somewhere in Babylon 5.)
Regarding the mandatory ultrasound matter, someone tell me, please, why does any woman ever vote Republican? These socially conservative, woman-oppressing politicians keep getting elected. There aren’t enough male voters to do it on their own, so there must be a lot of women supporting the misogynistic throw-backs. What’s their deal?
Synfandel, the majority of anti-choicers are women. They are generally bound up in religious and/or patriarchal thinking and they are more than happy to attempt control of other women, one of the few places they have power and control.
BTW, re me @115:
It occurred to me after the fact that when I say we have the technology, some of you whippersnappers might not get the reference.
;^)
@Synfandel: because they’re supposed to have babies, defer to men and do what they say?
I admit I’m kind of new at this.
Synfandel,
Read this. That’s a major part of it.
Many women honestly believe that, if they obey a bunch of stupid rules, then that proves that they aren’t like those other women, but are worthy of respect and protection and won’t be punished like those dirty low sluts. They are wrong, of course, but they believe it nonetheless.
Synfandel: because they Know Their Place.
–
Synfandel, they are being good wives and daughters.
Pteryxx:
It’s the NY Daily News, the preferred news source for those who must wear gloves constantly to keep from dirtying their knuckles when they walk.
Relatedly, Charlie Brooker had fun on the subject of the Daily Heil trolling its readers with that “conservatives are stupid” study.
Ha! That’s a revealing string of cynicism if I ever saw one.
There are problems, it seems, that we can do little more than sneer at.
That’s not to say that anyone isn’t looking for a better way or a way to fix these problems, but that the near-term outlook isn’t so good …clearly.
Synfandel
Well, I live in a place where religion isn’t that big a deal.
Women who oppose abortion here often fail to make that crucial difference between personal and important.
And they are so arrogant to assume that they would know what they would do if the shit hits the fan.
I have a friend who, although she would not want to impose her will in law on other women just can’t comprehend that a woman would not want a child when this is the one thing she wants the most.
The loudest non-religious pro-lifers I ever met were women who had an abortion due to medical issues.
Howard Hughes made the mistake of believing the mormon propaganda that mormons are the most honest, and the most hard working people on earth. Mormons may be “honest” in their way, but many put “building the kingdom” first, and that priority may not jive with what we would think of as normal ethical practices.
Hughes never joined the LDS Church, but he did hire a bunch of LDS guys to take care of him. Maybe the LDS boys were so used to people being weird that Hughes did not freak them out. The LDS employees did things like ordering 200 gallons of ice cream for Hughes when one of his favorite flavors was scheduled for demise. In the final years, the LDS guys helped to store bottles of Hughes’ urine.
About three weeks after Hughes died, a will supposedly written by Hughes “was found on the desk” of an LDS High Mucky Muck in Salt Lake City. That right there sounds the “bogus” alarm. The church took the will to court, but it was eventually ruled to be a forgery. The church was supposedly going to get more than $150 million.
During the last twenty years of his life, Hughes had a crew of aides, security people, drivers, etc. that were all mormons. It all started when he hired one mormon, and that mormon replaced other employees with mormons. Some people say the mormons stood by Hughes and respected him. Others say the mormons ripped him off, played along with Hughes’s drug dependency, and withheld drugs after Hughes was addicted in order to pressure him to hire their relatives, increase their salaries, etc. There’s no definitive proof, either way. There is proof that, after Hughes died, his mormon aides took part in destroying evidence, like boxes of empty codeine vials. And it’s pretty obvious that the mormon aides did not arrange for proper medical intervention.
Direct quote from Maheu, given in an interview to the Nevada State Museum & Historical Society:
Link
Maheu died at age 90 in 2008.
On his deathbed, Maheu spilled some more details about the mormons in Howard Hughes’ retinue. Margulis, Hughes’ bodyguard reported that:
So you did see the pictures? Because I did and holy shit, I couldn’t believe some of those people were still walking! Then again, we’re talking about a substance that’s about 10 times stronger than morphine.
Because they are not Sluts! and therefore none of this will affect them or their loved ones, but only evil Sluts! who need to be punished because the are Sluts! but good women who vote Republican are good women and can therefore safely punish the Sluts! as gods intended.
======
Oi will be gone for a few days. Wife and I share two days off. Together. At the same time. So we are heading off to DC (Museum of the American Indian and (no, I am not kidding) the DOI gift shop)) and then off to the Shenandoah Valley.
SQB:
What matters is we’re talking about a home-made version, which is impure, toxic and corrosive.
I ignored the warnings and did a google image search of krokodil.
my mistake.
Ogvorbis
Have fun
++++
Hmmm, why doesn’t it feel like equality when the Dove advertisment targeted at men is as mindnumbingly stupid as those targeted at women
++++
Oh, remember that orchid I was supposed to draw?
I am rather pleased.
And no, that’s not cheating
This isn’t the one that says ‘Manhide’ instead of ‘Skin’, is it?
Because that one was so stupid it literally hurt. I thought it was a figure of speech, but no, it literally gave me a sharp little spike of pain in my forehead.
SQB, it’s the impurities in whatever they are injecting that is causing the devastation, not the potency of the drug.
Oh and also nice orchid. I really like that.
TLC:
Yeah, it’s very bad. I can’t even express how badly I feel for people who are willing to do that to themselves. It makes me feel very privileged indeed.
SQB, no, I think the picture being referred to is the one captioned in the article. That young man looked sickly and worse. I don’t want to imagine (which really is wishful thinking right now) what a search engine would turn up.
Don’t forget: the best guide to Vegas nightlife is Fear and Loathing. Perhaps there are some invertebrates out there than need liberating?
TLC:
Oh gods, me too. I generally hit the mute button when commercials start, but every once in a while, I’m slow to the remote. That ‘manhide’ business was one of those times. I could have lived my whole life without hearing that one.
Yeah, Krokodil is pretty horrible. I’m actually a bit surprised at how many people here hadn’t heard about it.
Gileil, that’s a very nice orchid.
Giliell, even. Sorry.
Pssst, I don’t know. It’s not like they’re showing the American version on German TV ;)
It compares the manly man skin to leather that dries out *headdesk*
I suppose that after the hide has been tanned the former owner couldn’t care less…
I mean, it actually is even more offensive that the lady-versions where they talk about quantum-7-layers-deep body lotion.
That at least pretends that the target audience has some knowledge about the world…
Ogvorbis – welcome to DC. Have fun in our city.
Nice embrodery Gilliel
Argh – excuse the typos Giliell
Giliell, that’s the manhide one. Serious facepalm material.
Giliell, the orchid is lovely. :)
–
No.
Being a whimpering coward, I made-do with just the one at the top of the article; but from the descriptions further in, I suspect that the “zombie” identification would only be strengthened if I looked for more pics.
I have a regretibly vivid imagination, am not a glutton for punishment, and like to be able to get a good night’s sleep, every now and again.
–
Do I get a share of the Tpypos offering for providing the nym?
;)
Ahhh, OK, so they were even slightly less stupid in German
Thank goodness, the rabbit conversation has finally died.
—
Nice job Giliell!
—
Mostly thread bankcrupt, just sitting down to take a little break from preparing for the arrival of little terror nephew TM. He just turned four and he was recently diagnosed as autistic/ on the spectrum. I’m trying to move any possible thing he could break or hurt himself with to a child-safe location, and hauling toys out of storage to keep him entertained. He has recently fixated on dinosaurs, so I am setting up a dino zoo.
—
Oggie
You may not resign from the human race. (nor any other horde members) I need ya’ll to keep posting snark and fire stories and taking down trolls. It helps to know that there are lots of like minded people on the planet, and they are just an internet connection away.
We had a little get together with my old fellow biology students from university this coming weekend, and now all of a sudden people start saying they’re not going to be able to make it. Goddamnit, I was looking forward to seeing all those people again.
http://i.imgur.com/QC4Fu.jpg
Yes, I understood that. What I meant is that if it’s also 10 times as strong as morphine, I can imagine that is how they are able to keep going, despite the devastation.
You know, Las Vegas is closer to the modern physical interpretation of reality than any other city in the United States. If God has a favorite hangout, it must be Las Vegas.
A lot of people have a problem with the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics – but I bet they’ve never been in Vegas, have they? S’not so bad, issit?
http://i.imgur.com/txf9U.jpg
Thought this was fairly entertaining, passing along. Going to kiss Hank’s ass now.
Crash required:
http://southend.patch.com/articles/chick-fil-a-might-be-coming-to-boston-but-is-it-welcome
I will not be kissing Hank’s ass. He is a jerk.
@Bodhi
It’s Hank’s ass. I remember that. I think they read that once on The Atheist Experience.
Hank is pretty old, been around on the ‘net for a long time now. My initial response long ago was “Hank can kiss his own ass.”
Awesomeness!
–
I’d kiss Hank’s ass for a dollar.
http://www.freethoughtblogs.com/bluecollaratheist
…What?
That’s a dangerous misconception. 10 times more potent opioids do not make one 10 times more high, they make them dead. Many times over.
Some people around here have died because they’ve been using Fentanyl, an analgesic that’s somewhere around 100 times more potent than morphine. The amount they would have wanted was so minute they had no idea.
Weed Monkey:
Woah…that’s powerful stuff.
How long would it take you guys to remove the words “In God We Trust” from your currency, if such a thing was to happen?
Us guys are global in nature, we don’t all live in the same country. You’ll have to be a tad more clear on whatever idiotic idea has made your brain seize up this time.
I guessed if I posted it here someone would be able to point out if it was old or new. Either way, I had never seen it before so I’m guessing others might have not as well. All that was missing from the ending was a fainting couch for that nasty mustard speak.
Kayhan Kalhor Persian classical music/improvisation on NPR’s First Listen.
The second and last songs seem especially wonderful to me.
Since it’s the First Listen program, the audio may be shut off any day, whenever the album is commercially released. According to the text, this album was supposed to be released on Feb 14th,so we’re already getting a few days of bonus free play. If you’re in the least bit interested, check it out right away.
Bodhi, it’s been years since I’ve seen Hank’s Ass do the rounds, so it’s probably past time for it to go around the net again. I imagine there are all manner of people who haven’t seen it.
evader:
Assuming you mean the USA, if the government instituted a re-design without the words (yeah, good luck with that), the new designs would gradually replace the old bills and coins that wear out and get taken out of circulation. I’d guess about five years for most of the paper bills, twenty or so for the coins.
No time at all, since it does not appear on the currency.
Yes, the “X is 10 times as strong as Y/as it used to be, therefore death/madness/whatever” meme is pretty daft: the danger, when there is any, is all in the user not knowing how much X to take for the effect they want. The meme was used in the UK to justify changing the classification of cannabis from a class C (to which it had been reduced on scientific advice) back to a class B (penalties depend on the class). But even if the meme had been true in that case (by and large, it wasn’t, according to the more sober* accounts) the effect would just have been to reduce the amount used (which in the case of anything smoked, has to be good), and probably, raise the price.
*Pun not intended originally, but I decided to leave it in.
Nah, I think your previous beliefs are mostly correct. The US government goes along with what Israel wants (a) because mostly it suits them strategically – an ally who has no alternative source of support is a reliable ally, and (b) because the Zionist* lobby is rich and influential, not because the government itself believes all the fundy crap. And big business probably just reckons to keep the plebs distracted with bread and circuses – and mostly circuses (sport and religion) when the supply of bread runs short.
KG:
Actually, a lot of people who make up the U.S. government do believe all that fundy crap.
Don’t forget C Street.
Oh sorry, was trying to be somewhat friendly with the ‘you guys’ (nothing unfriendly).
What I meant by the ‘you guys’ was roughly:
If such a decision was made, how long would it take the people who print the money (sorry don’t know the actual profession name) to take all of the current money back, and then reissue new money. So ‘you guys’ was the people who would be actually doing the money swapping, once again I have no idea who would be in charge of that. I suspect some form of heavy armed government officials.
I guess I don’t see America ever removing that from their currency… However, if it was to be removed from the pledge of allegiance, then it isn’t entirely impossible that removing god from money would be a possible future step.
But yeah, guess I’ll take my hypothetical brain over to the Team Liquid forums and theorycraft.
Oops. SC hasn’t killfiled cicely but chigau for not making original contributions. Similar names. Apologies all around.
Has anyone seen Mattir lately? I need an e-mail response from her.
Or, actually, has anyone encountered Liriodendron?
Have only caught up with the previous subthread. It’s fucking midnight, and I still haven’t left the museum. WTF.
I helped that same student translate a recipe for flamingo.
I’ve read very conflicting things about the existence of those bacteria in very good sources.
I ask because they are or were one of the very few cultures worldwide where the women participated in the hunt.
Unfortunately, that’s literally all I know about them.
How instinctive is it? How sure can you be of that kind of thing?
How high exactly? If you don’t want to make it public, find my e-mail address in Google Scholar.
ROTFL!!! I had forgotten about that one.
Yep, like a baleen whale, and for the exact same reason.
“There are people who believe that when you die you actually go to heaven”…?
*facepalm* How stupid of me not to have thought of this myself!
Clusterfuck!
Oh. So he’s another one of those people whose moral compass is better than that of their own god.
Religion as a source of morals? Yeah, right.
Specifically, if hawks & eagles don’t happen to kill their prey by the force of the impact (claws and all), they only kill it by eating it.
Falcons make sure to break the neck, using special corners in their beaks; makes it easier for them.
*hug* :-)
*nodnod* :-)
Mosquitoes.
I try to get them out the window, but that almost never works; when it doesn’t, I try to completely flatten them with a single strike.
Baby sister when she actually was little: “Is that meat from an animal or just meat?”
*eyeroll* Really, what good did you think could possibly come out of this useless nitpicking? You know full well the intended meaning is that SC is wrong because she disagrees with “this” completely.
All seconded.
Perfect response. :-)
:-)
*sigh*
I think of that kind of thing all the time anyway.
Perhaps because I had so much chemistry. :-)
Doesn’t that come across in any run-off-the-mill sanitized Serengeti documentary?
ROTFLMAO!!! Best fake etymology ever!
(I must share the joke. “Plane” = “Flying apparatus imitating the natural birds.” French.)
…Thanks, but… no, thanks.
Incidentally forbidden in Germany (don’t know where else) as too cruel.
Well, importantly, breadmaking does not involve fermentation. Sugar + oxygen → water + carbon dioxide. Fermentation is the inefficient fallback that yeast does when the oxygen runs out.
All falling out of fashion or having already done so – that’s my point. I even mentioned doves.
Just finished knitting my seventh sock since New Years. That’s pretty good, except I succeed by dint of excluding almost every other productive and necessary chore: folding laundry, paperwork, spring pruning (and I love pruning, really).
And I have enough yarn for about 100 more socks, so years worth, literally.
Any of the Horde want some yarn? I’ll mail it … reach me at leslierussellgreen at that yahoo thingie so many folks use for emails …
Mints print bills or press coins, and banks and credit unions bundle deposited currency and ship it to depositories where old worn-out coins and bills get removed and counted against the packets of new bills and coins going out. Only if a government replaces ALL its currency at once do the armed guards come out, usually.
FAQ: http://www.frbservices.org/help/coin_and_currency.html
You mean they join the space-program?
Remember Sky=heaven
I would need to start with “what some people believe heaven is as opposed to what the sky is”
Oh, btw, quails still seem pretty popular.
++++++
Oh, things are getting interesting in Germany: State attorney is trying to get the president’s immunity revoked so they can investigate.
May you live in interesting times.
KG, you must have misunderstood me. Sorry, I failed in communicating what I meant. I’m actually hoping for a more relaxed drugs policy in Europe, and the deaths I mentioned are, in my opinion, caused by the demonisation of drug users.
Giliell:
Oh, you really should have read the numerous threads at RR for “what heaven is and what I’ll be doing once I get there”. Basically, it’s a giant wish factory/amusement park with Jesus!Jesus!Jesus!
Then you have the New Jerusalem peoples, who believe that heaven will be here on earth, in the sniny New Jerusalem, life will be perfect with added Jesus!Jesus!Jesus! while the rest of us poor, deluded slobs will have the rest of the earth and be devastatingly separated from Jesus!Jesus!Jesus!.
IRT: http://i.imgur.com/txf9U.jpg
That’s the biggest hairball I’ve ever seen. And it’s not even covered by puke. Yet.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Lotteries in my state were supposed to fund schools (think about the children!) but of course they immediately diverted the
vig & graftto the deficit crisis they caused. Because if we actually educated the children on probability they wouldn’t gamble.Fuck me if it didn’t work.
+++++++++++++++++++++
Giliell, that’s a beautiful orchid representation for embroidery!
Not really. The old money would still be valid and it would circulate normally until it gets used up (which takes less than a year on average). Whenever paper money ends up at a bank, if it’s too worn/torn/thin to continue being used, the bank sets it aside and bundles for return to the Treasury where they shred it (recycled into roofing and insulation, isn’t that great!). At any time, someone who had “old” bills which they had kept in the attic, which were still physically sound, could spend them – so you would never expect the “In God We Trust” money to be completely out of circulation. It would get rarer and rarer, though, as the years went by.
There wouldn’t be any specific time or place where they would “take all of the current money back, then reissue new money”. At least, not for a little change like engraved plates with “In God We Trust” being swapped for plates without. New money could start circulating within a few working weeks of the passage of the law removing “In God We Trust” – just needing enough time to engrave the new plates and get the first printed batch from the Mint to the nearest Federal Bank. It would spread out from there to other, local, banks and businesses.
Caine,
That sounds pretty good.
Heya David M
Replying to various animal-related comments:
Komodo dragon spit: Dragons having venom is new research, so the bacteria hypothesis is still slowly being displaced. Zimmer covered it in 2009:
Source
Re how instinctive is hunting: It’s easy to see that some cats or dogs have higher prey drives than others, and some of that variation is bloodline-based. I figure in humans, having a drive to hunt comes from similar cognitive systems that give us pleasure and vary among individuals. Just as folks have different preferences and behaviors – I have creative, competitive, physical, and social interaction drives, which among other things manifest through sports and gaming. I’m not sure I’d like hunting as much as TLC does, because while I’m great at chasing and catching, I’m terrible at patiently stalking. Many humans do enjoy searching for, chasing, and catching things, and getting rewards for it: see just about every MMO or twitch game out there.
Re mosquitoes: I figured we meant potential meat animals, silly. I’m all for swatting mosquitoes but the drumsticks really aren’t worth saving. ~;>
Dhorvath:
It sounds fine to me, too. I once got into a very long argument with a NJ believer, who kept trying to tell me just how sad and despairing the afterlife would be for me, being separated from god. I just don’t see a downside there, after all, there would be other people, a whole world to explore and the time to do it. No god and no goddists is a serious plus.
Because how I live right now is so devoid of pleasure. Goddists, eh?
Caine
I think I’ll safe comparative religion for when she’s stopped wetting her bed *gg*
Personally I think that this whole afterlife is badly thought out anyway. What do people do there for all eternity?
At the moment, they’re simply free from religion, but they’ll need to learn.
I think we’re doing a good job at differentiating between reality and make-belief, between phantastic books and what is actually possible.
I hope to get critical thinking installed first so when the “religion talk” comes, it will just not make sense to them (religion, not the “talk”).
But I think that pointing out that people all over the world believe vastly different things and that they just believe what their parents believe in is a good point.
I am caught up! You all have posted far too many interesting links. :p
Anyway, just thought I’d share the Syd the gerbil decided to ride around on my shoulder while I fed the cats and cleaned up the kitchen after work today. :)
Audley:
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaw.
Pteryxx:
I think most people hunt in one way or another. I hunt with a camera, law enforcement hunts people, scientists hunt for answers, antique dealers hunt for antiques, and so on. There’s a reason the word hunt is ubiquitous in every day language, like being a bargain hunter.
Syd the gerbil decided to ride around on my shoulder while I fed the cats
I think your gerbil may be a thrill seeker.
Dianne:
Pretty normal, really. My rats shoulder ride all the time, they don’t care about the cats.
Caine:
Right, and thank you – I keep thinking a word means what it means in the immediate narrow conversational context. I was thinking that “hunting drive” didn’t necessarily mean “going out in wild-ish areas to pursue animals for food” but that distinction never made it out of the imagery in my mind.
Dianne,
He got precariously close to the turtle tank, too. :)
Seriously, though, my gerbils aren’t at all bothered by my cats– they’ll just stare the cats down until the cats get bored and leave.
Pretty normal, really. My rats shoulder ride all the time, they don’t care about the cats.
Either it’s pretty normal or all your small mammal pets are thrill seekers who enjoy taunting predators from the shoulders of even larger predators. Whichever. Or it’s pretty normal for small mammal pets to be thrill seekers, etc.
I want a pet rat too, but travel too much for it to be practical.
Audley:
Ash was very aggressive with the cats, but I loved Alfie’s way of dealing with them – a cat (or cats) would be following him and he’d turn around and barrel straight towards them, which always makes them run away. Cats don’t like it if it can’t be stealthy and stalkery.
I think most people hunt in one way or another. …
A friend of mine claims that the way New Yorkers obsessively seek the best route from point A to point B is a variant hunter-gatherer behavior. Instead of seeking the ripest berries under all the bushes or patiently stalking the wild buffalo, New Yorkers search out the least traveled subways and patiently stalk the mythical empty seat at rush hour…
Dianne:
Your friend is probably right. Hunting is a highly satisfactory activity and humans can be very inventive in how they hunt these days.
dianne:
Being “an even larger predator” means nothing to my lovely kittehs. They know that they’re the only apex predators around here– hell, they’ve even trained a couple of stupid humans to open cans of cat food for them.
Ooh – and have y’all SEEN what people will do to get the best parking space? They’re like a pack of hungry crocodiles, it’s rather entertaining.
I’m tempted to make a parking lot where the two best spaces are just inside a giant causeway to a distant dead-end parking lot, just to see what they do.
Pteryxx:
A prime example of predatory hunting behaviour (in the U.S.) is Black Friday.
David, Mattir & Liriodendron are in a better place these days, and I don’t mean they went to a nice farm in the country. I’ll forward your request. And light the Mattir Beacon.
Good news, everyone! I have internet access again, and you’re reading this in Professor Hubert Farnsworth’s voice.
But yeah, just so everyone knows: I didn’t die of unforeseen complications or anything. My grandma just doesn’t have internet. My healing is going nicely, as I’m mostly just using the crutches to steady myself at this point and my leg is no longer horrendously swollen. Hopefully the stitches will come out Tuesday, and I can start classes again next week or the week after next.
Pteryxx,
I find parking lots incredibly stressful and park far out to avoid all that shit. Walking an extra thirty seconds to save me minutes suits just fine.
‘Parently not. See, to me, watching that, they’re biting the animals (which are dead, but still animals and not meat) and hurting them (even though they’re dead).
I’m aware that my brain is a strange place sometimes.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to fucking deal with all of the shit I have to.
On top of the threat of being evicted, I have to deal with stupid needlessly stressful shit. Tonight I went to BioCalc lab (which I dread going to more than any class I’ve every taken; or really more than anything else I’ve ever done). I tried to stay behind to finish my assignment (because you can only do the labs in class, even though it’s an online program that could be used on any computer if they would allow it). I didn’t even finish, was told to come to “make up lab” (on days/ at times that I can’t make), and then kicked out of the lab. I thought I was lucky enough to catch the last bus, but when it got to a few stops before mine (about 3/4 or more of a mile from my house), the bus driver said I had to get off because he had to go back to the shop for the night. It was already dark out and I don’t even feel comfortable walking in this area during the day, so I told the bus driver that I was nervous about walking home, and he was nice enough to drive me the rest of the way to my stop. And now I’ve got to finish more frustrating assignments before midnight, so I can’t even take a break to cry for a bit.
Sir Shplane:
God damn it!
It’s good to hear that your cybernetic upgrades are healing well. I hope you’re not in too much pain. :-/
Eww… I wouldn’t call that predation or hunting behavior. Any actual predatory animal that behaved like that would starve. That’s just a mob turning on one another due to overcrowding and (perceived) insufficient resources, like a mouse plague.
Oh Starstuff :( I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to be under a fuckton of stress and not have time to cry. It’s miserable. Under those circumstances, I always seminonsensically quote Buffy to myself: “We can all have ourselves a good cry after we bag us a werewolf.” *hugs*
Pteryxx:
I would. The reason people line up all night (hangin’ at the waterhole, so to speak) and rush in, fight off other hunters and all is to claim the choice
preyprize. It’s ugly, but it’s still hunting.Starstuff,
I would just shut down and do something useless. I don’t know what to offer, save admiration at your tenacity.
StarStuff:
YES YOU CAN. Trust me on this, please. This is too much stress for one person to just gut their way through. Take a break, and you’ll work faster and more efficiently after. It’s the half-hour now; I say, until the top of the hour, cry or rant or eat chocolate or listen to music or whatever it is you do. I’ll write you a permission slip:
___________________
Redeem for 30 minutes without shame on demand, to the bearer, one StarStuff! because f**k you, that’s why –
Signed, Pteryxx
_____XX_____
*caught up with prevthread*
Well.
There was this family* of mallard that used to frequent the garden. One day they wandered into the kitchen.
The kitchen.
With the sharp knives and the chopping board?
They were hustled out. All we got out of it was duck poop on the kitchen floor. ;)
—
* And by that, I mean breeding family. One Mummy Duck. Two Daddy Ducks. (I know, scandalous.)
Very depressed tonight. Have to meet paternal unit for lunch tomorrow. Relationship is strained (divorce while i was a freshman which pretty much was a divorce from me as well) and this semi-hanging on while it’s more and more clear that he went from being really involve din my life to being almost literally a stranger just makes the whole thing painful.
People encouraging me to make the effort (I do) and try to keep some connection because of the importance of family don’t help me either. The whole thing is just one big fart cherry on a shit Sunday of issues from childhood and being guilted into not being “over it” or being “vindictive” just makes me want to cry.
Sorry to hear that, Ing. All the best with the lunch tomorrow.
Ing:
There’s a reason the friend who used to constantly bug me about getting in touch with A is a former friend. Sometimes, walking away is the only solution. As for “getting over it”, no, that doesn’t happen. You learn to cope and you move on, but there’s no “getting over it”.
In a previous thread there was some discussion on the blue-ribbon dad who shot up his daughter’s laptop. I wondered what would happen if it was reported to child protective services, so I contacted NC child welfare and described the video and the information I had about the family. I pointed out that surely this is not an example of the kind of parenting North Carolina encourages or sees as normal and that investigating it might be prudent.
I didn’t expect much to come of it, but I was willing to be that crazy lady. As it turns out, they’re taking it seriously and investigating the incident. It would be very interesting if we saw Tommy Jordan in the news again in the future, this time because he’s in trouble. I live in hope.
If anyone else would like to encourage North Carolina authorities to view this as a public incident of abuse, this is the North Carolina Department of Social Services: http://www.ncdhhs.gov/dss/local/index.htm You can select Stanly County from the dropdown menu and proceed from there.
Ing, you shouldn’t feel forced to have a relationship with someone if you don’t want to. I’m sorry you have to go through that.
I haven’t seen my own father in 5 years. I can imagine how uncomfortable it would be if he suddenly wanted a relationship.
Thanks for the kind words everyone. I really needed them tonight.
On a slightly lighter note, I think the TAs for my lab might be a little afraid of me (I haven’t been mean to them or anything; I just look a little crazy and panicky when in that class).
Hmmm, it’s been 50 years since I’ve seen my father and 37 years since I’ve seen A or any other family.
Hi,
– This reminded me of TET discussion about animals. I would die of shame if I had to the same stuff Wyatt Cenac did in this clip
– Paul Krugman reads Languagelog. Turns out that Mitt Romney successfully put yet another foot in his mouth undermining his message by saying “I’m severely conservative” http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3768
– heard on the radio that the German Federal Labour Court had ruled that it was permissible to ask employees if they were disabled. After a WTF moment it turns out that this applied only to current employees, when the employer wants to make a decision about whom to fire (firing rules in Germany are highly restrictive).
– Yay, get the President out of his Wulfschanze!
– BTW, Giliell, Deutschland über alles is the first stanza. According to convention established by the first chancellor Adenauer and the first president Heuss, only the third stanza is sung, while all three stanzas are considered to form the national anthem. Maybe David will know better, but apparently the melody was the Austrian Imperial anthem, “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser” or sth.
– But apparently this is quite normal, that lyrics and melody were not matched originally. The Japanese anthem is also some centuries-old poem likening the Imperial family to moss on a rock. The melody was commissioned in the 19th century I think.
– also, “May you live in interesting times”. Some people think it’s a Chinese proverb. It’s not. The English speakers who came up with it, claimed it was a Chinese saying, but never mentioned the Chinese. (Wiki speculates it might come from One theory is that it may be related to the Chinese proverb, “It’s better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a man in a chaotic period” (寧為太平犬，不做亂世人; níng wéi tàipíng quǎn, bú zuò luànshì rén), but that’s probably farfetched)
wrt explaining to kids about heaven, I told mine that there’s an old story about our bodies having a special magic part. In the story, you can’t see it or anything but it magically makes you who you are. The story says that when you die the magic part of you keeps going and goes to a magic place.
I told them some people think this story is so nice that they actually believe it’s true, but I don’t think it is because everyone knows there’s no such thing as magic. They know magic is in their stories of things that are pretend, so they correspondingly consider souls and heaven pretty ridiculous concepts for people — grownups no less! — to believe in as if they were real.
gah, cut and paste error:
(Wiki speculates it might come from the Chinese proverb, “It’s better to be a dog in a peaceful time than be a man in a chaotic period” (寧為太平犬，不做亂世人; níng wéi tàipíng quǎn, bú zuò luànshì rén), but that’s probably farfetched)
BTW, theophontes, have you heard of Big River, Big Sea by Lung Ying-tai? Basically it’s about what happened when the Nationalists lost the civil war and fled to Taiwan, told through the experiences of individual families, including her own. Her parents were from Hunan and Jiangsu, and fled to Taiwan. Lóng 龍 is her father’s surname Yìng 應 is her mother’s, and Tái 台 means that she was the first child to have been born on Taiwan. Her brother who was born en route to Taiwan, on Hainan, was called Lung Ying-da, where 達 dá stands for “arrival”. The oldest brother was left behind and became a communist official later, even though the father was KMT. Quite interesting.
While I don’t like Lung Ying-tai the politician, I rather like Lung Ying-tai the writer, she has quite a way of making scenes come to life. She also lived in Munich for some time, because she was (is?) married to a German. Also studied in the US, used to be a professor in HK until last month, she’s now become Ma Ying-jeou’s new minister of culture.
One of the advantages to being an ‘adult’ is you don’t actually have to do shit you don’t want to.
Oh, sure, there are lots of pressures, and some seem insurmountable, but you really don’t have to do it. You just have to understand what complying and not complying have consequences attached.
I tend not to take it well, when somebody tells me to “get over it.” Too often it’s a silencing tactic, and in my experience the person telling you that just wants you to forget some wretched thing they did.
It’s just dismissive.
Another one that’s pissed me off in the past is “we need to move on.” And “we need to look forward.” I heard those a lot at my former place of employment (a cooperative, which I owned a piece of) after some people had basically shot the whole cooperative concept, possibly illegally, and doomed the company’s future.
The Camels With Hammers guy recently told somebody to “get over yourself.” It kind of set me off. I think maybe that’s a button I need to deactivate.
Starstuff, your story reminds me of my last year in college, when I felt like I was just lurching from one disaster to the next. I got to a point where I felt like God (still had some vague belief at that point) had it in for me. I took rain personally, and once refused to get out of a downpour because “fuck you, God.” Sometimes you just have to get off the crazy train for a bit.
In my case I dropped out of college. Pretty clever, huh? Hope you find a better solution.
of interest to at least one person here (sorry if repeat, no time to read entire thread): Petition in support of an Ivanpah Valley ACEC, to save desert tortoise habitat
Thanks, Jadehawk. Signed.
O_o
JT’s liveblogging the Cranston prayer banner decision:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/wwjtd/2012/02/16/live-blogging-cranston-decision/
Sir Shplane – Glad to read it. Best wishes for a speedy and uncomplicated recovery.
“Fucking bullies and their religion of love.”
Yeah, they ‘love’ you to death.
Ing – after ten years with little contact, I finally went to my father’s funeral just to make sure he was really dead.
I would have been nice to have had a Disney ending, but sometimes you just have to walk away.
Hugs if you want them.
Fun fact: I meant to read the rest of the thread after making my post, but then I got so happy about having internet that I dicked around all over Facebook and annoyed all my IRC friends and forgot.
Reading a few past me, though: That sounds really shitty, Starstuff. I’m pretty happy that all my programming professors let me work from home. If you don’t mind me asking, are the labs just an anxiety thing, or is it something more specific?
Oh My Sweet Lord! That video was horrible. (I never watch the videos upfront.)
If you want something classical, this turtle implores you to listen to K488 (old Ks).
Non-contact internet hugs for all those going through difficult times right now with school and/or family. I’m glad that my parents are, by and large, cool people.
Jessica Ahlquist needs a couple Nation of Islam bodyguards.
And now I read more…
Ing, that sounds awful, and I hope that whatever you decide works out for you. If you do decide to cut all ties or something, though? I don’t blame you, and I don’t think any rational person would.
I hope I’m being supportive right, and not out-and-out hallucinating new sentences into anything I read here. I know I woke up and started having a conversation with my mom while I was still on the REALLY crazy stuff. Like, started having the middle of the conversation, because I already hallucinated the first half.
which is why a lot of organizations that do student exchanges/study abroad programs are withdrawing more and more from the US, and/or cautioning students about going there.
and because if/when they’ll need an abortion, they’ll of course be excepted from this, since they’re not Sluts!, and these laws only apply to Sluts! (seriously, one of the things the interviewees in the “the only moral abortion is my abortion” article mention is that anti-choicers who get abortions demand to be excepted from the onerous shit they voted for and just be allowed to get their abortion on the spot without any fuss)
StarStuff and Ing: warm and friendly vibes for both of you. I wish I could help.
***
I never heard of Issa before today, and now he will forever be the misogynistic asshat who shat all over women to fawn over religious dudes. It might not be ladylike, but I hope many horrible things happen to him for the rest of his life.
And that’s about as mild as I can put it, because what I’d really like to say is making me feel bad about myself. I’m very angry; let’s just say that.
@Sir Shplane
I normally don’t freak out over stuff like that. But BioCalc has a way of getting to me. I panic because I don’t know what I’m doing, and the TAs and professor ‘help’ in a way that’s supposed to “guide us through the problem”, but just frustrates me more. And then I always have the clock ticking down in that class (they just don’t give us that much time to begin with) and I know that if I run too late, I’ll miss the last round trip bus (like I did tonight). And all this stress for one credit! (I put more work into it and it causes more anxiety than my 4 credit hour class.)
PZ Myers has made quite an impression on the blogosphere, as you can see from these actual quotes from some actual real people (and since you’re reading this on the internet you know it has to be 100% true):
One day I was browsing the web when I came upon PZ Myers’ blog. Before I knew what had happened, PZ had entered my brain and spray-painted his atheistic graffiti onto my personal thoughts. He’s a militant thought vandal! And a communist!
–Richard Weed
PZ Myers is a total crackpot. Who needs science when we have the bible. Everything scientists claim to have discovered can be found in the infallible word of God (except those parts where our Lord was speaking metaphorically).
–Ignatius Pendleton Freely
PZ Myer’s militant atheism is tainting the minds of our impressionable youth. Just the other day my adolescent son came home from school and told me about the crude, stereotypical PZ Myers jokes that have been going around the playground. Like this one: After going through the entire bible, what eye-opening realization did PZ Myers finally come to when he reached Revelations? He was running out of toilet paper.
–C. Moore Butts
I have it on good authority that PZ Myers likes to spend his free time pulling the wings off flies, drowning kittens, kicking puppies, and tying young damsels to railroad tracks while twirling his handlebar mustache and laughing maniacally. Or maybe I’m thinking of Richard Dawkins. Frankly, I can’t tell one communist from another.
–N. E. Anderthal
Who’s PZ Myers?
–A. Toole
TMI warning
First time I have been able to listen to David Wilcox since November 2007. Eye of the Hurricane. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP1MNdpw0rE
Yeah, still made me cry, but not as painful as I had feared. NO idea why I am even sharing this right now. Seemed like a good thing for me to do for me.
piranhaintheguppytank, I might have found that amusing when I was, oh, 10 years old. Now, not so much. Seriously, don’t you think those pun names are more than just a bit fucking old?
Jeffrey:
If it’s a good thing for you, then it is. I’d watch, but I’ve used up my video allotment for the month (caught up with the latest The Big Bang Theory eps), but I’ve bookmarked it.
Caine: Old indeed. But it got me wondering about his Richard Weed crack.
Is ‘dickweed’ a gendered insult? Or is it similar to ‘douchebag’, in that hypothetical weeds growing upon one’s penis are almost always a ‘bad thing’?
I was reading the clinic escort blog and was literally stricken speechless by this exchange: an escort asked one of the anti-choice nuts what she would do if she were pregnant and two or three different doctors all told her that continuing the pregnancy would kill her. She replied, “Well in that case it wouldn’t be an abortion, and they wouldn’t do it here, they would do it at the hospital.”
!!!
Via one of my new favorite blogs.
TLC:
I don’t think it’s generally used as a gendered insult, however, it does use a body bit, so I think it has to go in the gendered insult bin, along with prick, dick, etc.
I’m suffering from a terrible (diethyl) ether headache. Do any of the chemistry people here have any ideas on treatment? I’ve tried ibuprofen to little avail. (In case you’re wondering why I have an ether headache, the answer is minor laboratory incident)
A.R, I’d think copious amounts of fresh air might help.
I don’t think there is one other than time. One reason to avoid ether if possible.
@Starstuff
Ah, fair enough. I wish I knew enough about your school to inform you of someone to talk to about it. Do you have a friend who would be willing to drive you home, so that the whole bus thing is at least less of an issue?
Caine: Yeah, I’m sitting outside right now, enjoying the 30 degree temperatures. It usually helps when I’m accidentally exposed to something nasty.
A.R., I’m not familiar with diethyl ether. But I find Excedrin very effective for headaches that ibuprofen won’t fix. It’s 500mg acetaminophen plus 60mg caffeine. You could simulate it with Tylenol and a cup of coffee.
Also, ice packs on the back of your neck work wonders.
Hope you feel better soon.
Forgot to say that I’m extremely sensitive to caffeine, so higher doses might be required for most people.
…Buh. Okay, so hypocrisy and lies aren’t sufficient sacraments anymore – true Christians doublethink. An abortion isn’t an abortion, a prayer isn’t a prayer, people aren’t people, and bullying isn’t bullying.
(from JT)
Nerd: Yeah, I try to avoid it, but when you’re trying to make a Grignard reagent to make a rather unusual sulfide you need for your research, you haven’t much choice. (It’s odd that even biology research can end up in an organic lab).
A.R:
Yikes. I gotta say, your initial post gave me a bad moment because I recently read The Poisoner’s Handbook.
oops, meant thiol, not sulfide (can you tell I haven’t been in orgo for awhile?)
Nutmeg: I’ll try Excedrin, I think I have a bottle around here somewhere.
Caine: I need to read that book.
more from JT:
*sob*
A.R:
I highly recommend it, an excellent read. One of those books where you’re left with “damn, that was too short, I want more!”
Yeah, Grignards can be tricky, and sometimes solvent dependent. At work, we avoid diethyl ether if at all possible. Usually THF or MtBE can substituted.
gendered but not sexist.
Is…
Is a Grignard like a Grognard?
Nerd: I’ll see if I can nick some THF from the chem department.
StarStuff,
sorry to hear about your problems. :(
Caine,
I read that recently too. Great book, I especially found the description of how Prohibition caused so many people to die from drinking wood alcohol (and other dangerous stuff) illustrative. Like many repressive laws, instead of solving the alleged problem, it disproportionately affected the poor, the rich could still afford the good stuff, smuggled in from abroad.
You’d think that not being shit would be a good thing. Unless it’s
“women ain’t _even_ shit”?
But it makes perfect sense, don’t you see? Abortion clinics are for Sluts! who have abortions for Selfish Reasons. You can tell they’re Sluts! having abortions for Selfish Reasons because if they were Decent Women having surgery for Good Reasons they’d be at the hospital. Duh.
Shplane: nope, it’s a chemical reagent used to add assemble molecules. Particularly useful for larger alcohols.
Pteryxx:
Well, what exactly were you expecting from the moron who called Ahlquist an evil little thing*?
*We have proudly worn our evil little thing shirts out and about.
Also best wishes to A. R.
Curse you, Starstuff! I’m going to be up all night reading that blog!!!!!
pelamun: Thanks, I’m starting to feel a bit better. I’m just glad I didn’t faint (though there are usually a lot of fainting couches on Phayrngula in that room where we keep the clutching pearls for the tone trolls.)
@ Illuminata
Hahahaha! That was my plan all along!
(But yeah, I love that blog.)
Okay seriously:
Anonymous asked: Who should I invite to my birthday party?
Rick Santorum? He seems fun.
I am never def not going to bed tonight.
Chas:
Yep.
Pelamun:
Actually, the bulk of the deaths were deliberately caused by the government, via The Chemist’s War. That handily illustrates what happens when the government decides to go into the morality business.
StarStuff – my suggestion would be to email all of tomorrow’s class professors tonight and tell them you won’t be in class tomorrow because you’re trying to avoid being evicted next week. Don’t go into detail, just make it clear that it’s extremely time sensitive. Then tomorrow morning go to the student services office and find out what they can do to help you. If it’s a big enough school there should be someone who can find out something, whether it’s a name of someone who deals with rental agreements or someone who always has a room available to rent or what have you. You may get bounced around campus for a few hours, but see what you can do. There may even be small pockets of money to find in various places – some college associations and foundations offer small hardship loans to employees and students.
In inconsequential news, the curry was a success! It’s not the best thing I’ve ever eaten, but definitely passable. recipe here. I am highly annoyed that the segment is in something called “women’s hour”, though. Thanks for being so sexist, BBC!
Oh, in a bit of an aside, I’ve decided to make an aspic this weekend. I’m thinking steak and kidney.
…I’m starting to hallucinize that the epidemic of Aspie folks with their (our) social clumsiness and literal interpretations is merely human evolution’s desperate production of a substrain resistant to the decimating religious mind-plagues…
Caine,
oh right the extra poisoning of industrial alcohol. Nonetheless it predominantly affected the poor.
JeffreyD, good to hear from you.
Ing, you never have to see your father again if you don’t want to. Lance Armstrong calls his “the sperm donor.”
StarStuff, sorry you are having such a hard time. Can you terrify the TAs into helping you get started faster so you can finish?
Anyone notice “Colbert Report off the air with no explanation“?
Crap. I hate being a new commenter on a blog and getting moderated because I haven’t posted before.
Come on, Crommunist! My post was almost funny!
Scattered post:
Krokodile – EW! and AAUGH! and “How the fuck are they still moving when so much muscle is gone?!” I’m…urk, dinner is coming back up again.
[i]Evil Little Thing[/i] shirts arrived today. The best part is that no one knows the whole story so it’d be like kids wearing “Trouble with a capital T” shirts. I can wear them without fear of being verbally castigated or shot at (unless some local nutbar happens to be wandering around…)
After several days of relative peace due to new medication, the kindergarten kid who’s been in detention way too many times got his first suspension. After a day which was, for him, fairly uneventful, he snapped during cleanup time post-recess. First he slapped a classmate, and then when the college student who helps out tried to get him to calm down, he slapped her. My initial reaction: “What, are you kidding me? He was so close to going another full day without a visit to the office!” Secondary reaction: “Way to go. If this doesn’t lead to people labeling you as a jackass, I shudder to think what will.” *sigh* Two steps forward, one step back…
I still don’t get how people can shove you to play nice with toxic parents. So what if it looks like you got no respect for your elders? Why waste time with people who drain you emotionally when life is too short to do so?
Pelamun:
Yes, it did.
Markita, Lance Armstrong is hardly a person that should be used as an example.
In the past four days, I have done:
-four workouts, three of which were new or things I don’t do regularly
-a Spongee tournament
-a physio appointment
This seemed like a good idea at the time. Now every muscle in my body hurts, and I have a bunch of bruises from injuries I can’t remember.
I have compensated for aches and pains by eating copious amounts of cheap post-Valentine’s chocolate. Yay, chocolate sales!
***
Starstuff: *Internet brownies*. I hope you can find a way to stay in your apartment. Keep us posted.
Yeah, boingboing mentioned it briefly too. Trying not to have nightmares about what might be going on in there.
Janine:
I’ll second that. Besides, it’s not as if there aren’t a lot of people here who have had to deal with toxic families. Each person needs to find their own way of dealing with it.
A. R:
Be careful with the THF. Some people find THF to be worse than diethyl ether in terms of exposure sickness. Also, why are you working in an environment where you can be overcome by ether? Are your fume hoods not working properly?
I
uh
well I want to say something here
but
um
ok
wtf
There’s speculation that Colbert’s show is on hiatus due to his mother’s illness.
–
via JT, the Cranston school board voted NOT to appeal the prayer banner decision. Cheers for Jessica!
Bobby Fuller Four – I Fought the Law (And the Law Won)
Family emergency.
Jessa: The hood was working, but a two liter sep funnel full of ether crashed onto the bench in the hood when the ring clamp failed, and, since for some godawful reason the lab was quite warm, the ether fumes must have overwhelmed the hood until I hit the emergency vent button and slammed down the sash. Still got a nasty dose though.
Fucking hell, is my screen frozen or is TET really this fucking quiet right now?
Bah.
Thursday is generally quiet, probably even more so with PZ being absent.
TLC, it’s just that quiet. If you want I could say things… I’d having to think of some thing to say first, though.
TLC: I’m partying over on JT’s blog, yar! (FTB has got HUGE.)
FTB IS TOO BIG!
Also, I’m sitting here drinking coffee and eating chili chocolate. I had free pizza today. Very exciting. Also got four extra credit points. Now I just have to, you know, do my work, and everything’ll be good.
Also, TLC, if you want TET to be more active, you have the option of talking/starting a conversation yourself. It’s not up to other people to tailor it for you.
Comment threads on FTB do fail to load fairly often, at least for me. Even with a good connection, sometimes I refresh them and nothing new shows, then ten minutes later I realize I missed a half hour’s worth of comments… usually when I just posted something, too.
For the sake of noisemaking: dinner was organic tomato soup with fresh rice (made with stock yesterday), turkey sausage, and some broken-up dried seaweed snacks that I got as a gift. …It sort of worked. The seaweed would go better with mushroom soup, though.
Pteryxx: Was it kelp? I actually quite enjoy dried kelp. One does need to be careful to remove the small shells though.
Pteryxx:
Yeah, FTB is still very buggy. I was having a hell of a time getting the last incarnation to fully load, usually took 3 tries. Also, ever since the first “upgrade”, the recent comments have been borked and there’s apparently zero interest in fixing them.
Dinner? What’s that? Kidding, sort of.
My professor told me today that she got the Playmobil Colosseum set. She also makes very frequent Harry Potter references, including translating vernula as “house-elf.”
Awesomest professor ever.
So I introduced her to TVTropes.
CC:
Oh my. That might backfire on you, ya know. ;p
That’s happened to me once or twice Pteryxx.
As per Caine’s advice, I’ve spent the last ten minutes trying to think of something to talk about.
I failed and came to the conclusion that I don’t actually want to talk about anything, I just want to watch other people talk about stuff.
I’m in one of those frustrating moods tonight.
YOU MONSTER! ;>
A.R: I dunno what this seaweed USED to be, but now it’s dried, flattened, square-cut, flaky little sheets packaged in single-serving units in way too much plastic. My folks really have no idea what I eat, or what food is. I’m trying to invent uses for it rather than throw it out.
I so hope not… It’s because in the text we were reading, there was the lead-up to some sex, and then suddenly the text stopped with the describing and moved on to something else, and I called it a Discretion Shot. And she was like “Wait, is that what that’s called?” And then I had to explain why I said that.
Here, TLC:
http://breadfish.co.uk/
Be entertained.
I’m looking for a therapist and I hate it. I hate how anxious it makes me. I hate seeing long lists of therapists in my area that rapidly get very short when I weed out the ones without a sliding fee scale. I hate seeing “energy workers” in those lists. I hate getting back replies that say “wow, you have a lot of parameters for therapy” . Well, no shit, Sherlock, that’s because I have to ask separately about things like “are you feminist friendly” and “does your therapy model work without spiritual or religious faith” instead of those things falling under a general umbrella of, you know, “fit to practice”.
Starstuff: Ha, at first I heard ‘motherless breadfish’.
Also, my father in law is a jerk. When he was here today my sweet three-legged cat sat right in front of him and cried to be scratched (he can’t scratch himself behind his right ear due to the missing leg) and my father in law ignored him. Honestly couldn’t conceive that an animal could have a desire worth paying attention to.
Apparently I’m pissy tonight.
TLC:
In that case, it might be a good time to explore more of FTB.
CC:
It’s just that a lot of people find TV Tropes to be a major time sink…if she ends up hooked, well, she might not be happy about it. From what you’ve said about her, though, I think she’ll probably love it!
TV Tropes? Meh. I am not in the right age group for that place.
Kristinc:
I am pissy tonight. It’s been one of those days.
Pteryxx: Sounds like Nori.
I’m not pissy tonight, just low and cynical. More so than usual.
I am having a severely difficult time believing I’m anything more than one of natural selection’s more spectacular failures right now, even intellectually knowing that this isn’t true.
I’m not going to bring my Facebook arguments here, but tonight I managed to get myself called a socialist, and told that “Its obvious … you enjoy taking other people’s money.” So I figure my work there is done!
One thing, though: This assfog (someone I went to HS with, but who wasn’t a particular friend; I discovered too late it’s a mistake to FB-friend those types) has the habit of referring the president as “Obamie”; is that a thing? I’m trying to convince myself he doesn’t intend for it to be a rhyme of mammy… but I very much fear that’s it exactly.
***
Starstuff:
I know they were aimed at TLC, but the breadfish made my literally laugh out loud. Thanks.
If you really have dried seaweed, the next time you make a pizza you can soak some in water for about five minutes and then cut it into “matchstick” strips for an interesting texture and contrasting colour.
Or you can always make sushi.
If anyone’s been following the case of the school prayer banner in Cranston, Rhode Island, the school board has decided not to appeal the ruling that it’s unconstitutional.
I’ve started using Ecosia as my main search engine.
What else could that possibly be? I know what to do! Ask this guy.
Markita:
If you bothered reading the comments, you would have seen Pteryxx’s posts on the subject.
Interesting premise, I don’t think I’ve ever clicked on a sponsored link though.
I should add, unless it was to intentionally cause a charge against said company. Sponsored links are rarely what I’m looking for.
*shrug* I wasn’t particularly clear in my comments exactly what was going on over at JT’s, was I? Now I forgot.
I should open up my own School of le Trolling. I’ve found that most trolls are of less than satisfactory quality. I mean, really? Can anyone just call themselves a troll these days?
Starstuff: Yeah well… I find most ‘trolling’ these days consists of:
“Herpderp hay u guyz I R idiot!”
“Fuck off, idiot.”
“LOL Jokes on u i was just pretendin YHBT”
If you’re talking about strictly ‘For The Lulz’ trolling.
StarStuff: I would be willing to teach remedial English and Grammar.
Therrin, well, I loathe google and I’m forced to deal with them more than I like (such as having to allow them in NoScript for FTB to function) and it looks like they’ve successfully killed off Scroogle, so…Ecosia it is, for now anyway.
I don’t click on sponsored links myself on any search engine. There’s a critical article on Ecosia here and basic info here.
Pteryxx:
Actually, you were crystal clear.
Ya’ll remember when Yahoo was a thing?
Now they’re a pathetic buttsniffing malware company that’s been reduced to bundling itself with other stuff and trying to trick you into allowing it to install itself?
I deleted everything yahoo off my computer years ago, and there’s still something trying to forcibly change my search engine to Yahoo.
TLC, yahoo is still a going concern, especially with sites like Flickr.
What do you mean, Caine?
TLC:
Yahoo bought Flickr ages ago. They’ve bought out a lot of sites and their basic search engine software is used by a number of search engines, etc.
@ Jeffrey (previous)
Not a Labradoodle by any chance?
@ pentatomid 13
That would just be cruel.
@ Razzlefrog
@ Esteleth 112
Read up a bit on the Twelvers in Iran. They believe the last Imam disappeared as a kid to wander around in the desert until his return (soon, always soon) as the Mahdi (who will reappear in the last days). Same crap as xtians but in a slightly different guise. If you want to communicate with the Mahdi, simply write him a message and leave it in a well. Ahmadinejad believes in this crap, hook-line-and-sinker.
Godbotherers and nuclear capabilities do not mix well.
@ Lynna
Apropos the above, are there similar “end times” quirks in Mormonism?
@ Tethys 153
That is because the movie is about to start. Shhhhhh!
@ Weed Monkey 154
Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…..
@ hotshoe 170
Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…
(Amazingly, I can actually play that in China. Takes a while though as it tries to go through a facebook link thingy.)
@ David M 179
Sadly not original, my French friend with the rabbits told me this. I see it is also on teh interwebz.
@ kristinc 222
Bravo kristinc! I hope more people call out that shit.
@ pelamun 228
Thanks for linky, will look out for it.
Theophontes:
Enthusiastically seconded. I meant to comment on that earlier, I must have gotten distracted by something. It’s good news that they are taking the incident seriously and looking into it.
Okay, this is too good to not share with someone. This is the most random message I’ve ever gotten from an online dating site, and that’s saying something.
It’s from a guy in Pakistan (!) whose profile lists his religion as “Islam and very serious about it” and says that his favourite book is the Koran. And somehow he thought an atheist in Canada, who has specifically stated that she’s looking for people near her, would be a good person to email?
Message follows:
“hi i jst saw ur profile n i like it bcus u look vry beautifull n vry vry cute jst like a fairy frm fairy-Land ….. do u wanna be my friend ???”
OkCupid: free entertainment and creepiness provided by people who don’t read your profile
I tip my hat to you, Kristinc.
I was kind of hoping something like that would happen.
OH GOD THE RABBITS ARE BACK
To whomever mentioned The Dresden Dolls a few days ago: thanks! They are awesome.
My, my, I missed this earlier. The rapturoids sound off about the evil Superbowl halftime show…
Don’t worry, I’ll take care of th…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KsfZLqYblY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIBQe0g2asc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDW2ZYbZTHY
OH SHIT!
Rumour has it that the German president will give a personal statement today. MPs from the government coalition are reported to be hoping that it’ll be his resignation statement, while opposition MPs are gleefully declaring they will vote to remove his immunity.
GOOD RIDDANCE.
theophontes,
oh the book hasn’t been translated yet.
Here’s a blog that has translated the first 10 chapters, it could give you an impression. However, it has a number of mistakes, like making a sister out of a brother, etc (being a translator’s child, that kind of thing irks me).
http://bigriverbigsea1949.blogspot.com/
Rumour has it that the author is having the book translated into English and French.
nutmeg,
I ran across this article about adventures related to OKCupid dating:
http://gawker.com/5883035/the-montauk-grifter-how-one-con-man-used-okcupid-for-fun-fraud-and-profit
Also:
Xi Jinping, heir apparent of the Chinese Communist Party, is in the US, the first Chinese leader to visit Los Angeles in 13 years. Saw a video of the press conference with Obama, who pronounced his guest’s last name correctly. Glad to see a US president who cares about foreign languages.
…wait, Oklahoma’s racing Virginia to pass a personhood bill? Argh – it passed their Senate today.
oh another thing:
did you hear that library.nu shut down? The content industry’s investigators found some links to the upload site ifile.it .
This site was very popular with college students as it had a lot of textbooks. Some posters on reddit, somewhat hyperbolically, likened this to the Library of Alexandria being burnt down http://www.reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/ppfwc/librarynu_admin_the_website_is_shutting_down_due/
What I’m wondering is why this is so much less reported on than the Megaupload thing…
That would of course be the family name, not the last name.
…Someone was kind enough to point me to #GOPWarOnWomen. *whimper*
In an attempt to be LESS horror-inducing, here’s a hissing cockroach having babies:
BB – here is a thing
@ Rey Fox
XDDDDD I didn’t even think of that, but yes.
@ Pelamun I think I will wait for the book if it is coming soon.
By the way, have you got around to reading “The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters” yet? I think the horde would be fascinated by the tale, but I don’t want to spoil the story for you.
The whole psychology is also fascinating, as it maps the religious experience so well. (Lynna: Big recommend here.)
This reminds me of the Xeroxed paper my aunt and uncle used to have hanging on their fridge. It said “Teenagers! Leave home now while you still know everything!”
I’m thinking of a freeway-billboard sized one reading: CHRISTIANS! GET RAPTURED NOW WHILE YOU CAN STILL FEEL SMUG AND SUPERIOR!
Ooops.
Linky to NY Times for above book: Excerpt ‘The Cleanest Race’
When it comes to the constant pleas for Jesus to “please, please take us home!” at RR (which are in damn near every post), I have a suggestion about them getting home. It’s on the highly rude side.
Can’t these rapture people just get helpless enough to stay home praying for Jesus to save them, and not come out to vote? It’d be so much easier…
Pteryxx:
It would at that, especially as they see Satan and the end times in every single fucking thing that happens and every single place they go. Every time I read there, I find myself wishing Jesus did exist, just so he’d come and take these people away.
This one is for Giliell, ’cause it has to do with how the rapturoids view heaven. They have a another heaven poll and thread going, this time about hobbies and pastimes they’ll have in heaven, which goes on for pages.
That morphed into another thread, which is just getting started, which uses scripture to back up the whole hobbies and possessions in heaven.
Some tidbits from the 2nd thread:
See, heaven is a giant wish factory where all your wishes come true, really, really true!
@ Caine
{theophontes tries to read the saccharine sweet list, but starts to feel uneasy}
*brainpuke*
…Sooo, unlimited free perfect sex toys? So far so good!
Like I was saying…
I wonder if heavenly animals just come when you call if you want to eat one?
Pteryxx: When you eat an animal in heaven, does it come back? Or does it go to a really meta heaven-heaven?
Theophontes:
Uh oh. Don’t click on the first link then, you’ll get a saccharine overdose for sure. There’s pages of that crap.
TLC: I figure the prey animals go to a heaven-heaven where humans don’t exist. The *predators* go to a heaven-heaven-heaven where HUMANS are docile and tame, and all of them live in harmony with each other while eating the humans. *nodnod*
Pteryxx:
I think that would depend on whether Milliways is in heaven or not.
Looking at RR website (yeah, I’m a glutton for punishment) I came across a new word: Maranatha (“O LAWD, Come!)
It is amazing how these guys go through the babble looking for obscure words to prove to mere mortals how fucking deserving they are. Real shiny feathers in their chthonic caps. “Look at me, look at me,… a real ghecko!”
Other words are things like Yashua and Yahwe instead of jeebus and Gawd. “Look at me, look at me … I can haz Aramaic!”
Big.fucking.wank. (Which brings me back to “Marantha”. How soon before it appears in pron?)
From the first thread:
Marantha? I always thought ‘Mara’ meant ‘bitter’ in that biblical language?
I like to use Yahweh myself when I’m blaspheming. It just feels so much more personal when I use ‘his’ first name.
@ Pteryxx
Aux contraire! When I get to heaven, my hobby is going to be breeding rabbits…
Theophontes:
Oh, that’s an old one! Used to hear that at the tent (Calvary chapel, Costa Mesa) all the time. There was an affiliated Christian store called Maranatha Village.
I freaked when I realized “Deseret” was a Mormon code-word, and therefore a charity that I’d thought was just a charity was actually religious. Gaaaah, now there’s several years of donations I wish I could take back. Can we push for religious disclosure laws so these folks have to have little religion hazard symbols on their charities? They could have diamond stickers: Proselytizing 4, Male supremacy 3, Politicking 3, Special: Risk of polygamy.
TLC:
I prefer El Shaddai.
Caine: El Shaddai is a new one on me.
Most christians around here tend to be more familiar with ‘Yahweh’. And what’s the point of taunting and pissing on their stupid nonexistent God if they don’t know what I’m talking about when I do it?
TLC:
It’s Maran – atha, the lord cometh.
@ TLC
A bit different according to Pfffft:
…
YHW is the name of the tribe thought to have given rise to the jews (actually the area that they came from). YHWH is their tribal totem god who later divorced his wife (Ashera) and ended up taking to pron.
/obscure
TLC, El Shaddai was the name of god in Genesis and Exodus, the name of god known to Abraham, Jacob and Isaac.
Caine, Theophontes, you are vastly overestimating the research and critical thinking abilities of the local christians.
But thanks for the new info just the same, I have a feeling it’ll come in handy in the future.
It’s not easy, upholding a pledge to kick the shit out of something that doesn’t exist.
I cannot believe how childish those RR people are. Their minds are so tiny that even their grandest, most adventurous imaginings of their god only amount to superficial, unchallenging, easily digestible pabulum.
They’re like children in a foster home: “When my dad picks me up he’s going to buy me ice cream.” “Oh yeah? Well MY dad owns a whole ice cream store!”
TLC:
I’m not. Most xtians don’t have much of an idea of what the bible actually says. I’ve used El Shaddai to good effect, because it makes people curious. “What’s that, some pagan god?” “Nope, it’s yours. Haven’t you actually read Genesis? The reason El Shaddai was such an asshole to Adam & Eve is because he was the youngest god among his siblings and he desperately wanted to be perceived as a bigger, badder god than he was.”
I’ve always preferred the idea of rebirth and/or reincarnation to ‘heaven’.
I kind of like living. Despite the occasional downsides.
Rebirth even has the attraction of being literally true, in a sense… I’ll be ‘reborn’ in the forms of whatever takes nourishment from my rotting carcass.
Which is why I’d much prefer a ‘sky burial’, too bad it’s pretty much impossible in this western society.
Caine: I stand corrected.
The animal doesn’t go anywhere. You just sit there eating him forever.
Wait–that doesn’t sound good…
How many species of animals are there in heaven? Are there representatives of every species that ever existed?
The bible tells us that the lion shall lay down with the lamb, but I’m more interested in knowing if the Tyrannosaur will lay down with the Triceratops.
kristinc
The emphasis on childish. This is the parallel with the book I refered to in #354.
They seem to exist, like the people of North Korea, in a permanent state of intellectual neoteny, unable to think for themselves as fully fledged adults. They are “children” to an all powerful (in NK “pure”) leader figure. It is a really sad form of arrested development. Makes one want to scream “Grow the Fuck Up!” But unfortunately it is an EBIL WORLD ™ out there, so skyDaddy must look after the snookums.
(In NK the Kims are mommy figures. Bizarre.)
“I’m sorry, the only thing we have open right now is pushing this rock up that hill.”
Bill,
I lack much context, but it could well be an attempt at a diminutive, so as to express disdain and seem patronising.
—
David,
I don’t know it, I only strongly suspect it; it’s not out of the realm of possibility that SC previously made some comment wherein she expresses at least partial agreement.
As to what good it does, responding literally of the ways in which I take someone to task. Call it an opening salvo.
Haven’t you been paying attention, TLC? Every time period ever will be in heaven. That way we can have dresses from all of them. *nodnod*
Bah.
“responding literally is one of the ways”, above.
Well, I was told in school that imagining any animal other than the ones God created was sinful. Including dinosaurs, which never existed and were only fake fossils planted by Satan, remember. So in my fantasy-heaven, I’d say screw all of that and populate it with every alien and fantasy creature out of fiction there’s ever been.
Ah I see, Kristinc.
I wonder if the actual time periods will be anything like the many movies she’s doubtless seen of them?
Oh well, I’m sure the dresses will be extra pretty.
It *is* really sad, not least because it makes me strongly suspect these people don’t have much joy in their real lives to spend so much time and energy spinning juvenile fantasies about the magic fairyland waiting for them. They’re wasting the only life they’re going to get, and they’re wasting it on the intellectual equivalent of Little Golden Books.
@ feralboy12
That sounds like the pigs in Schlaraffenland, that walk about pre-cooked with a knife and fork stuck in their buttocks.
(There is no need to work or worry in Schlaraffenland. It is like heaven without the overbearing Celestial Parent. Link to image. (Yeah, it looks just like The Land of TET.)
There’s a japanese Yokai monster whose name escapes me, that’s basically a man with an eyeball where his anus should be. He doesn’t do anything but pull down his pants and make people look at his weird gross browneye.
This better figure into your plan.
Kristinc:
That is perfectly expressed. +1
Ooops. {Warning TLC} Don’t look at the pic!
Good Morning
Those RR people: Yes, childish is the right word, only that it’s insulting to children who are not to blame for their rather simplictic views.
It’s interesting to see that everything is about Me!Me!Me!
Lots of their fantasies involve other people, yet obviously god would make it happen that those other people would like nothing more than comply with their wishes.
The craft-master would like to go fishing after a long life of teaching? No chance! You must go on teaching so I can have my way. And my family members will be happy doing what I like to do, even if they simply hated it.*
kristinc
Hattip for contacting the authorities. At least that guy is guilty of theft and destruction of somebody else’s property.
I like your heaven explenation.
pelamun
Hey, I said I refused to do the task!
Seriously fuck that shit. The stanza they sing is at least bearable, but an anthem that lists women as possesions to be praised alongside wine and song isn’t fit for the 21st century.
re:meat and animals
I think the English language is especially helpfull is separating the animal from the food: you have two sets of words for those things, it’s flesh and meat, pig and porc, cow and beef. Eating pig-flesh kind of reminds you of the animal.
I remember reading an article written by an American living with his German wife in Germany: He somehow thought meat to be much more present here and he was simply grossed out by the word “Fleischwurst” (flesh-saussage)
*I am completly convinced that a marriage between a camper and a hotel-holidayer can only work if they decide to spend their holidays apart
It’s not just lack of joy… they also have never learned how to imagine properly, because everything involving imagination or self-expression is evil. Books, music, everything is sanitized. Even choice itself is sanitized… Libby Anne just linked this post from another Quiverfull survivor about being unable to choose anything for herself, even to decide what to eat or what movie to see. How are people like that supposed to imagine better fantasies for themselves?
I’m horrified, because I’d assumed until very recently that *my abuser* was the one that abused me. Noooo, I was pre-conditioned.
Too late, theophontes. What am I not supposed to be looking at in the pic, specifically?
I like the headless, plucked, roasted bird flying around in the background myself.
Errrr. Only TLC mustn’t look. ;)
TLC: ABSOFUCKIN’LUTELY!
@ TLC
Obviously there is no hunting in Schlaraffenland (it smacks too much of “work”), so it might seem like a frighteningly dull place to you.
Giliell:
Oh yes, that was so precious: “and family members will get along famously!” Uh huh.
TLC:
That was my favourite bit.
As of now, it’s figuring into mine. I’m definitely asking God for an eye in my butt.
Ah, I see Theophontes.
I dunno though, I’d like to at least think hawking a loogie into the open mouth of that sleeping guy would be good for a lark.
My eye keeps going back to the undead headless bird.
re Schlaraffenland: Ooh, but at least there you can eat meat without killing any animals! They’re all sort of Schrodinger’s carcasses. …I wonder if you want to hunt, can you tell some animals to act wild and afraid of you?
Hey, I’ll have you know when I spent a week in a park cabin with no running water, I brought a television and Xbox. *grin*
feralboy12:
Oh, why not go full court Argus Panoptes?
A friend of a friend made a parody video of that guy who shot his daughter’s laptop:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLnbLbF39jc&feature=youtu.be
Also: What’s so terrible about Lance Armstrong?
Now I want an eye in my insides. I’ve always wanted to know what my intestines are up to when something randomly hurts. Also, it’d be fun to watch my own lacteals flush white after a meal.
And a star-nose mole snout. And Argus eyes down my flanks, gills and lungs, cormorant wings and indeterminate genitals of my own devising.
And according to the rules, EVERYONE WOULD BE FINE WITH THIS. *snicker*
I also like to think that ‘meat tree’ starts to smell really bad if no one harvests it for a while.
@ TLC
IIRC, cooked birds will fly into your mouth. Likely that is a morsel-sized, deboned pigeon in the picture. (The fish jump into your hands and the grass is made of peppermint candy and the rivers are lemonade. Oh, and those are breadroll bushes behind him.))
@ Pteryxx
I’m afraid that the place really is a TLC-ian dystopia. The subtext is that no effort is even allowed to be made.
There’s just something so wonderfully… restrained about a monster with an eyeball in his butt that does nothing but pull his pants down and gross people out.
I just like is as a concept.
And I’m thinking that with enough people in heaven, doing everything they ever dreamed of, there will be very strange shit indeed going on up there.
After seeing what they did just in Second Life? OH YEAH.
*opens umbrella for rain of strangely shaped penis-creatures and promptly inverts it*
KG, what you described is the laughable media attention towards cannabis. Opioids are not like that. There’s some amount that will make one high, and some higher amount that will make one dead. Using more potent substances does not result in a more powerful high, it means one needs less.
And if you don’t believe me about fentanyl, just go ahead and google it.
feralboy12:
Not in Rapturoid heaven, oh no. In Rapturoid heaven/MK*, everything and everyone is wholesome and as noted, there will be no injuries, no fuck ups with tools or whatnot, making it a bit like kindergarten. There’s no strange allowed in Rapturoid heaven.
*I think that stands for Millenial Kingdom, but I always read it as Magic Kingdom.
@ feralboy12
The concept of Schlaraffenland pops up all over Europe. In the Land of Cokaygne (The Irish equivalent), nuns flash their (sadly, eyeless) arses:
You remember that that was the point in the original story? The people got all so bored they wanted to go back to a life of work and purpose.
We are animals after all. And we recognize that, no matter how well we feed them, animals need more than that, they need something to do.
So obviously verybody else just exists in the form I’d like them to exist. Only me remains unchanged because me is perfect.
Those things are verboten on my holidays (also, no laptop). But running water and toilets. But a hotel would annoy me to dead. Those meal-times and the indoor location and somebody else deciding what’s for dinner and so on…
Okay… then I’ll wish for a hermetically sealed heaven-within-a-heaven inside which I can make all my weird things, and just connect it up with conjugal wormholes to TLC’s hunting-heaven and whoever else is too weird. All those Raptoroids can just THINK we never made it in. >_>
…Hang on a minute, is this the same heaven that has observation lounges where the good normal people can go to watch the sinners writhe in agony forever? Or is that some other version?
In rapturoid heaven, everyone’s farts smell like frankincense and myrrh with a faint hint of righteousness.
err, that should be Raptur-oids. Though I kind of like my version better…
In Dutch you have “Luilekkerland” (literally: Lazy-lovely-land). Here the painting by Pieter Bruegel Snr. Linky (Look out for stuck piglet.)
Yeesh, theophontes, at least the pigs in the other painting looked like they didn’t mind having those knives and forks stuck in them. That one, quite frankly, appears to be screaming in horror but unable to die.
@ Giliell
I don’t remember that part, but I did gather that the point of telling the story was that children would come to that conclusion.
The Pinocchio version of this story really freaked me out as a child.
I dunno, maybe it’s the harsh lighting.
The google image search for Schlaraffenland is interesting…
Here’s another one, kid’s book illustration style:
Image link
I am now going to sneak out of the office and head across the border to Hong Kong (Translation from Chinese = Lazy-lovely-land)
Pteryxx: Good call. Check this shit out:
http://www.thinkspacegallery.com/2010/05/works.php
An entire gallery.
Holy shit, breadfish!
There is officially nothing funnier than breadfish!
So Schlaraffenland is basically what we in dutch call luilekkerland, right?
Okay, never mind…
No, I must have failed to make clear I was agreeing with you!
Mwoo-ha-ha-ha
Bill – I’ve gotten cantankerous enough that I’d ask directly.
“Wait, are you trying to rhyme with “mammy? Really????
(bonus points for anyone who figured out what that link was before clicking on it)
theophontes, –
Nope, both the Labrador Retriever and the Doofus parts are pure bred in and of themselves.
Caine: Yeah, it seems like God has had more names than certain rock musicians… It’s like there were multiple Canaanite gods that god merged into one for ease of mental enslavement…
The rapturoid heaven fantasies are so sad (playing dress-up and Happy Families and kindergarten with the plastic scissors, forever? And that’s what you’re abandoning your actual, finite, one-time-only life for? Oy). But considering the way they treat others, I can’t really feel sorry for them.
.
Many many hugs to StarStuff. I hope to dog that you can get through this, and that your uni has a competent advice centre with people who can help.
.
I seem to be always threadrupt, always too late to comment – I am reading, though. Just the existence of the Horde makes me feel saner and more hopeful sometimes.
Want to know what desperation and panic sounds like?
Reminds me of this.
aladegorrion:
While they’re very good, I find that almost anything sung by Amanda Palmer is very aurally vermicular, so I always need to listen to something else to evict it.
Nutmeg:
In this case I suppose his first language probably isn’t English, but it reminded me about that OKCupid analysis of their users which showed that religious convictions and writing proficiency are correlated (scroll down for the graph).
TLC:
The bible says that the lion shall lie down with the lamb, but note that it doesn’t say they both get up again afterwards.
Theophontes:
I can’t read those RR discussions without feeling embarrassed for those infantilised believers. Seriously, it makes me squirm.
Since you enjoyed the Myers book, you might like Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick. Demick is an American journalist who interviewed a number of North Korean defectors when she was based in Seoul, and the book is a somewhat novelised account of the lives of a small number of these. It’s particularly harrowing reading of the ‘Arduous March’ (the 1990s famine). I was always in mind that these were North Korean experiences seen through the lens of an American journalist, but it’s a worthwhile read.
Pteryxx:
If there were a hell, it would surely have a circle reserved for people who tell children that using their imagination is a sin. Absolutely disgusting.
carlie:
I didn’t anticipate that you had posted that song, but I have been trying to kick the thing out of my head since I read the words upthread.
Seconded. I don’t know that much about him, besides him being a cancer surviving, divorced, Sheryl Crow dating, Tour de France winning cyclist. With yellow bracelets, of course… Ah, I see.
No, but seriously?
From JT’s live blog:
Isn’t that pretty much in the fucking definition of ‘prayer’?
Ok horde, time for some conjecture wrt the arrested development (neoteny) of goddists that we discussed above:
I saw an interesting documentary on TV a while back that concerned the work of a scientist called Dr. Belyaev, who spent many years trying to select for the trait of “tameness” in Siberian foxes.
(Link here, be careful of teh cute overload: Sibfox ™ )
This covariance of characteristics, here “tameness” with other characteristics such as colouration, tail and ears, is called pleiotropy (Pfffft).
My question would be if a similar effect would occur in humans under selective pressures brought on by religious repression. Each of the abrahamic religions have gone through long periods of extreme repression. why should this not select for certain traits?
For example, in many Muslim countries, after the first few hundred years of relatively easygoing Islam, they became extremely intolerant and repressive. In countries like Saudi Arabia this repression has continued unbroken for over 900 years. Free thinkers that broke cover could be killed, or at very least become extremely distressed. Anyone with an obtuse, unquestioning disposition would have a major advantage in surviving and thriving.
If selection for a particular trait in foxes can have such massive effects on the isolated population within a mere 35 generations, why should we not have very noticeable effects in {900y/(25y/generation equals} 36 generations or more?
What traits would I imagine? Childishness, lack of imagination, aggression, authoritarianism, lack of empathy, selfishness … the list goes on.
It does not matter which religion it is, but if it is one that bears the hallmarks of abrahamic religions with enough vehemence and for a sufficiently long time – especially in a closed community -there must surely be a marked effect?
(Merkin goddists are even more interesting in that the above (real) pressure has been taken off, and selection occures within religious communities more spontaneously.)
/conjecture
well, it’s called ‘genetic correlation’. This can be due either to pleiotropy (a general term for one gene affecting multiple traits) or to linkage.
In your human conjecture, any genetic response to selection will of course depend on the heritability of the traits mentioned.
I am relieved that I am not the only one. :)
evader, re. changing the currency:
A billion dollars that no-one wants (they’ve stopped it now).
And it might cause a Ron Paul freakout:
—
@Lynna, if there should have been a “not” in “has [not] paid it back [AFAIK]”, if it was under TAF, it has been. Last paragraph here.
—
Giliell: “pig and porc, cow and beef”.
Giveaway! Animal words are Old English and Germanic; food words are French (see also: sheep/mutton).
TLC, did EyeButtMan appear in the 1960s Yokai Monsters movies? I used to have them on DVD but don’t remember that one. I remember the snake-necked woman and the haunted umbrella though.
Lance Armstrong cheated his way to those titles. Not really a surprise, competitive biking is home to the cutting edge of blood doping. About the only honest thing that Armstrong did was beat cancer. Livestrong appears to be more interested in raising awareness about Livestrong than in donating to cancer research. And Lance Armstrong and his associates are very much like Scientologists when it comes to legally harassing anyone who questions his blood doping and what his charity does.
SQB, tell me, what do you see?
@ Chas
Thanks for response.
If “tameness” is heritable in foxes, I could imagine that “obsequiousness” or some such thing would be a heritable trait and also seen as desirable by those defining religious doctrine. Other traits might follow through genetic correlation. (The problems we discuss wrt the religious sensibility might be more dyed-in-the-wool than we might generally realise, if genetics are brought into the mix.)
I am just thinking out loud. I was so intrigued by the foxes, I was wondering whether humans under similar extreme conditions might not evolve extremely rapidly too. Highly repressive and extended religious pressure might just be able to do that. Religion is at odds with the average set of human traits and so could have the effect of moving the mean off its natural (relatively stable) equilibrium.
Sounds strangely familiar. Have they started suing other charities for using yellow?
I know a guy who used to be a competitive cyclist back in the day and was Lance’s roommate for a while. He says hands down Lance is the biggest asshole he’s ever met. I’m sure to become the best at what you do there’s going to be a lot of that, so whatever.
Anecdotes and all that.
For a lot of reasons, including foremost what Chas said—low heritability. The traits that you indicate are likely under complex genetic control, continual gene flow likely maintains high levels of heterozygosity in human populations over the last 10,000 years, and lots of variation in these traits is probably attributable to environmental effects. All of these decrease heritability, which defines the efficacy that selection has in changing trait norms in populations. Even under strong selection, traits with low heritability will be very slow to change.
More importantly:
These traits don’t seem generally applicable to monotheists.
theophontes,
As your own link shows, the foxes were subjected to extremely strong selection pressures, with only the tamest 5% in each generation allowed to breed. IIRC they also have a population bred from the least tameable, which will tear your throat out as soon as look at you, reminding me of Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons.
theophontes,
Sorry, I missed out my main point: it seems unlikely that even the most authoritarian religious or political regime has ever come anywhere near this degree of selection pressure, even assuming the traits concerned are indeed heritable.
ARGH. Just graded an entire set of test answers, with extensive comments, and then at the bottom of the page accidentally clicked “cancel” instead of “submit”. Why did they put a self-destruct button in there? ARGH.
RE genetics of religion: I personally favor a memetic approach, 10,000 years is a somewhat short time period for selective pressure on low-heritability genes to result in significant phenotype changes. Memes can induce major changes in behavior in a short time, and they can evolve toward relatively high virulence in a short period of time.
The ‘I see’ was meant to reference those obnoxious yellow bracelets. Sort of like pink ribbons — sometimes used honestly by companies who actually donate, but often (says the Pft!) just for pinkwashing.
When it comes to cycling, doping seems to be pretty much a given.
Other than that, he doesn’t seem to be too bad. I mean, he’s no PZ, but no Santorum either. As far as I know.
Carlie, are you saying that the system does not even add the step; “Are you sure you want to cancel?”.
I can tell from your post a few hours ago that you were up very early, I am assuming that was so you could grade.
And yet, he comes down hard on anyone who dares to question the image that he was “clean”. Witness the feud between him and Floyd Landis. Lance Armstrong’s image is that of a clean dominating champion in a very dirty sport.
[sibfoxes]
Here s an interesting article in “Current Biology”: Selection for tameness has changed brain gene expression in silver foxes
They are rapidly turning into dogs? Analogously, would the beneficiaries of religion (priests, mullahs etc, themselves also affected hereby) be turning their acolytes into “domesticated” humans?
….
Gratuitous picture of fox.
I always wondered if memes would evolve something like Mayr’s gene diffusion model; memes under strong selective pressure would quickly diffuse through a metapopulation connected by significant meme-flow and for the most part unaffected by memetic drift.
[OT: I hope your ether poisoning has subsided. I had xylene poisoning once—worst head and neck-ache I ever had.]
German president is gone. Maybe now it’s the time to nominate a woman as president. Rumour has it that that was Merkel’s plan last time around (not that I would have liked any candidate from her party), but that the conservative party establishment could not have tolerated ALL TWO of Germany’s top positions filled by women. Though to be fair, the opposition also doesn’t have the best track record in this.
North Korea
I also have another book on North Korea, Alla monster måste dö “All monsters must die”. But it’s more like a travel report, probably theophontes’ book has more substance.
Lance Armstrong
I stopped watching the Tour de France due to the rampant doping, but seriously, the way the tracks have become harder and harder over the years, it’s hard to imagine how riders would not resist the temptation to dope. And in fact many cycling fans do argue like that.
But if one is looking for reasons to hate Lance Armstrong, wasn’t he also chummy with W.?
janine,
are you talking about Armstrong’s self-image? That might be like Jan Ullrich’s, who keeps insisting he’s clean too.
But I don’t think many cycling fans believe their protestations.
First of all, a correction: SC has written to me to clarify that she has never had a killfile and has never pretended otherwise. I must have misremembered something.
Now we’ll see if I can catch up without staying till midnight again! What’s the traffic-inflating topic this time…
AE: That would make sense. We know that many aspects of genetics can be applied to memetics, for example, the rapid flow of the Christianity meme in the past two thousand years, and the effects of prolonged isolation on memes (the formation of the various North American versions of Christianity), mutations of the meme (Mormonism), rapid response to selection pressure (Catholicism during the reformation) bottlenecking (the loss of various sects during the counter reformation), and dead-end memes (Shakerism). I would love to see some long-term studies, or historical research using these concepts to analyze the development of the various Religion memes.
(I’m feeling quite a bit better, thank you for asking)
janine – nah, that’s around my usual get-up time. I like to start off the day with my internets. :)
Nope, no “are you sure”. Save or cancel is the only option, and it’s a pretty instantaneous response. There are a lot of things about my course management system for which the defaults do not match average human behavior (like defaulting the tests to “full immediate review by students as soon as they submit” rather than “do not give them the answers until I say so”).
Re selecting for obsequiousness… also, let’s not get too evo-devo in the theorizing. Religious populations generally don’t just expand by breeding within the group, but by actively hunting down outsiders to convert them, whether by proselytizing, forced conversion, or re-educating the children from other traditions. They also *lose* members who convert TO other traditions, though I don’t know if that’s been as significant historically as it is here-and-now. If anything, I’d guess that generations of religious-based purging would have selected for humans’ vulnerability to brainwashing. Believing whatever you have to believe to survive and expressing it convincingly seems to be the most useful human social trait since language. I’m mildly jealous.
(rampantspeculation) …I sort of wonder if we’re only seeing an epidemic of aspieness nowadays because it’s become almost unacceptable to take troublesome, socially clumsy kids like myself and purge them or let them die. So many kids died from diseases, would anyone really have noticed if a bunch died from neglect or from having the demons beat out of them, too? (/rampantspeculation)
—tangentially related:
Moggie:
For what it’s worth, I don’t remember ever being flat out told that imagination or thinking were sins, or if they did I was too dense to realize. I was just frustrated and confused that the rules made no dang sense. They kept telling us stories from the Bible that we WERE supposed to imagine in great detail, because the actual text was so sparse. We were supposed to imagine talking to God, listening for his voice, feeling held and loved by him (or maybe that was Jesus, I never did figure that one out) not to mention imagining the horrors of hell and Satan hiding in every rock music album and bottle of mustard. Yet I couldn’t ask questions, at least not interesting questions, while certain other questions that other kids asked got happily received – I assumed I just wasn’t explaining myself clearly enough.
I may have said before, among other things I tried finessing the rules about what animals were okay to draw. I could draw a horse (okay), sketch a horn on it (sinful), erase the horn (okay). Then I found out unicorns were mentioned in the Bible, so they must have been real and therefore okay to draw, right? Dragons are mentioned too, so THEY must be okay – nope, dragons are sinful because they’re sinful creatures, not because they’re imaginary. (?) Fine, but snakes were sinful real creatures and THEY were okay to draw? What about skinks? What if I drew a skink with its legs hidden in the grass?
Basically I got sent to detention a lot, and harassed a lot, but I never did figure that anything was wrong with the rules. I just kept thinking I was missing some underlying principle that would make everything clear.
In retrospect, I’m very lucky *I* wasn’t sent to a re-education camp.
@ AE, KG, AR
{theo should have refreshed before last post}
The answer looks to be a resounding “No!”. Actually, this is quite a relief. On the other hand the indefatigable meme might be just as big a hurdle to overcome in itself.
In this thread alone we have discussed childishness,lack of imagination, lack of empathy, selfishness wrt RR. Am I using the term “trait” incorrectly? If “tameness” is a trait of foxes, surely “obsequiousness” or some similar term must be a human trait?
Almost certainly not, for the reasons several of us have already given. What is the point of this kind of unsupported speculation? I can see it being used as a justification for anti-Arab racism, but I’m assuming that’s not where you’re going.
Oh dear, so it wasn’t that SC couldn’t see some questions, just that they were ignoring them?
That’s a shame. And it’s midnight here so will be sleeping soon.
On the currency front I must admit here in Australia I love our multicoloured, washable, different sized currency notes, though I am told that industrial dryers can be a bit hard on them.
Which CMS are you using out of interest carlie? We’re changing from a blackboard type one to Moodle I think in about a year or so.
So we’re talking about artificial selection here. Very interesting. That would work much faster than natural selection, and it would also select against anti-religious memes. Essentially, at that time, rational thinking about religion reduced reproductive fitness. With the removal of selection pressure, the genes and (perhaps more importantly) memes facilitating anti-religious behavior and thought re-emerged, much like the color of the fish taken from the pike cichlid pools, and placed in predator free pools.
Angel, going to Blackboard once they stop support in two years. Possibly changing altogether depending on what the univ. system decides. I know they all have their little quirks, though.
Oops, there goes the German President !
A.R:
Right – and unlike selection FOR docility, there’s no need for only the most obedient 5% to do all the breeding. Purging just needs to remove the 5% who are LEAST obedient.
Well, not rational thinking alone, but in combination with an inability to shut up about it and thereby stay “in the closet”. (That’s kind of personal with me, you understand.)
That wasn’t one of the options we evaluated (Angel). I had issues with all of them (I use it a lot so was on group of evaluators). The conditionals had better get a lot more flexible. Or I’m going to have to learn how to program in Moodle and I don’t have time.
yes, rorschach,
already the second president Angela Merkel chose who turned out to be damaged goods.
Nominally, the government still has a thin majority in the Federal Assembly (the body whose only function it is to elect the president and is 1/2 composed of Bundestag MPs and 1/2 appointed by the state parliament acc to their respective party delegations), she probably will have to agree on a candidate who is acceptable to all major parties (as it should be, having a partisan ceremonial president kinda defeats the purpose)
state parliaments, of course.
This is where they appoint all these celebrities to be delegates to the Federal Assembly to cast their vote for the president.
The Lance is dirty, as are the vast majority of the peloton. Ulrich has all but admitted to doping, after a huge amount of exposure due to the Fuentes operation. Riis came out as dirty (after the possibility of prosecution was up) and he still manages one of the larger teams. Contador just got banned and lost his titles from the past two years, including the TdF. Landis admits and even points fingers. Hamilton was caught out and out. Dare I go on?
Watching pro cycling is not about what people can do, but about what science can enable people to do, anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded. These are athletes whose blood profile exhibits nearly identical profiles over two and three week grueling exertions, they are not playing solely with the cards dealt by their genes.
@ KG
No, my comments apply equally to all religions of abrahamic ilk. All you require is an extremely repressive system for a very long time (it does not need to even be religious.) The specific reason I used the Islamic (as opposed to xtian) example was that we have a reasonably clear 900 year period -of the same order of magnitude (measured in generations)-of repression, … comparable to the fox-to-sibfox experiment (measured also in number of generations).
@ AR
Of course we are discussing artificial selection! Religions are artificial. And selective. They kill off people who are genetically predisposed to speak their minds (and cause endless stress for all people who think for themselves). This still is very extreme. Look at Saudi Arabia (today) that is trying to kill (the muslim) journalist Hamza Kashgari for having the proclivity to question authority.
Even if the problem is only memetic, the carrier of the meme (in the above an innocent thinkers brain) is at risk of being selected against with a sword. Both nature (genes) or nurture (memes) are in serious danger of being destroyed in this instance.
Stefan Raab. Only one who can pull it off.
And just to be clear, most of the cyclists I know who do watch pro cycling have no delusions about this and still watch. I don’t get it myself, I am not really into competition, but I can’t help but be exposed to what is going on and it baffles me.
Still, that alone is insufficient for me to hate on Armstrong. He is a bully in his every interaction regarding a poison in the sport that made him and he has a charity that promotes awareness, but offers little indication of concern for curing cancer. These two things convince me that he is not worth any admiration outside of being a canny competitor, and given my general distress at that type of ‘worth’ I cringe at every mention of his actions or legacy.
Obviously no one has measured these traits seriously, but there appears to be far too much variation in these traits to be explained by selection. Selection by itself can only decrease variation.
Also: while religions may demand that followers behave childishly, lack imagination and empathy, or are selfish*, it is my experience that most religious people are not like this. YMMV.
*This one not so much. Religion is all about denial of the self, innit?
@ Pteryxx
All evolutionary selection proceeds by purging.(Successful genes and memes are still with us.) In the case of the foxes (say) 95% where purged. In your example 5% where purged. The remainder are “selected” (whether naturally or by husbandry) in an evolutionary sense.
With the goddists we must also consider that those who stuck to the Text and played the game would receive even further advantages in an intolerant religious community (obviously the more tolerant, for example early islam, the less the effect that we are discussing).
It is important to realise that the conversion from one religion to another is of little consequence to the outcome (ideal monotheistic religious acolyte).
Where in the fuck did all the hate on Armstrong crap come from? All Janine said was that he wasn’t a good example to use when it comes to toxic family and I agreed.
FFS.
Well, so we’re out of president again.
What I can’t understand is why are they all so stupid?
I mean, yes, he’s a little bit corrupt, as are all the others (politicians and professional cyclists, the main difference seems to be how nice their butt looks).
But what finally breaks their neck is always the lying.
I think had he owned up to all of it (and probably even a few crimes he didn’t commit) and begged for forgiveness, people would have forgiven and even loved him more.
And, well, he didn’t have the right friends. He commited suicide with the conservatives for having a muslim minister while still in Niedersachsen and for stating the obvious that Islam was already a part of Germany, and the opposition didn’t care about him when they saw a chance to deal another blow to Merkel.
changeable moniker
I know. 1066 and all of that ;)
Those who raised the lifestock spoke English, those who ate it French. But I still think it makes you forget more easily about the fact that porc-meat is pig-flesh.
Artificial selection just means it’s imposed by direct human intervention. Even if a culture led all its participants to prefer only mates who did the best job of adhering to a contradictory set of dogmatic rules, I think that would still be considered natural selection, because humans are cultural and culture informs their mate preference. Artificial selection would apply equally to setting up marriages among the most devout as it does to culling the least so they can’t breed. It’s fuzzy though, because the definitions weren’t intended to apply to humans themselves, and culture is part of human nature.
Also, any DOGMA that produces purges or severe disadvantages to non-adherents would work here. Religion, nationalism, fascism, whichever. I get the feeling that religion has a uniquely powerful anti-evidence argument though in appeals to unanswerable authority. When Lysenkoism failed, it couldn’t be excused by saying some god or other was displeased.
Caine,
I hate Lance Armstrong. Maybe you didn’t catch that. And it came from my being involved intimately with the sport of cycling, both at a professional and enthusiast level over the past two decades and being exposed to his brand of hero over the past ten years. He has acted in a fashion that consistently decreased my ability to tolerate discussion of pro cycling, hardly alone in that respect, but he has done so in prominent fashion. Still, until I learned how little effect Livestrong actually produces, I could have just left him as part of the pro peloton with the general disgust they engender in me. Livestrong exists to make the Lance brand stronger, I hate that cult of personality shit co-opting a serious problem.
theophontes:
That’s not true. Selection proceeds by differential reproductive success, which in turn affects the frequency of genes in the overall population. It’s not just breed/no breed (though killing a creature does reduce its subsequent breeding potential to zero). Shifting the odds so that fringe individuals have few offspring while important ones have many is still selection.
However, purging individuals who express a certain trait is a very efficient way to reduce the frequency of that trait. So is selecting only those who carry a trait.
…Also, genes in a population can arise from nowhere by mutation or fusion events, and change frequency or disappear through sheer random chance. No selection necessary. /populationgenetics *cough*
genesalleles. ALLELES. Gah, I really need an “edit post” button this morning…Via Patrick commenting at B&W: the testimony of Sandra Fluke, who attempted to speak at Congress’s all-male, all-religious contraception hearing yesterday.
The testimony Issa doesn’t want heard
@ AR
I will happily settle for obsequiousness as a trait (not necessarily that different from “tameness” which was quite distinctly regarded as a trait in the links I posted. It is a relative concept anyhow… as described in the link.)
For Eastern religions this might generally hold true. Apologists, such as William James, have gotten all starry eyed describing xtianinty as denial of self (what he would call the “twice born” xtian.) In my experience such people are quite distinctly in the minority. As much as evangelicals speak of “born again” this appears to be all fart and no shit compared to James’ descriptions. YMMV.
As Hitchens once remarked (jokingly articulating a xtian attitude): “I suddenly realised the Universe is all about me!”
What, a xtian is in a personal relationship with the creator of everything in existence and it is not all about their ego?
In reference to #444
The news above is dated October 7, 2011.
http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/morning_call/2011/10/regions-zions-banks-face-hurdles-to.html
So, has Zions Bancorp’s status changed? Have they paid back the TARP funds?
Here’s an excerpt from an article posted on January 24, 2012:
Link.
And here are some comments from David Benoit of The Wall Street Journal:
Dated January 24, 2012, see http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2012/01/24/zions-bancorp-exposure-to-bank-cdos-is-awfully-expensive/
Giliell,
agree about his not owning up being the major problem. Every time he tried to clarify something, it was not 100% correct, even when he had his lawyers write up stuff. That destroyed his image. Former president Johannes Rau did have some trouble while in office too, and handled it better.
I disagree about him being hated by the conservatives. Or it depends on what you mean by it. His statements about Islam and so forth were still in line with the new Merkelian mainstream which has moved the party closer to reality.
One thing should be changed:
a federal president receives a full pension (which means salary until their death, effective immediate, also provision of official car, office and secretary) ONLY if
– they completed a full term
– or resigned for political or health reasons, not personal ones. Resigning because of scandals related to one’s former office counts as personal, according to a legal review by the Bundestag’s Research Service.
The assessment of what counts as personal or political is basically up to the federal government, i.e. Merkel. This made the president even more dependent on the chancellor, and would have continued to be a major conflict of interest if he had stayed on.
@ Pteryxx
I stand corrected.
Tardigrade bedtime. {theophontes puts down overly large brush and heads off to brush teeth.}
rorschach,
Stefan Raab only if Merkel agrees to appear on his show and beat him up black and blue… LOL
theophontes, also:
If we’re talking about selection for religious adherence, oh yes it is. Members of religions also purge devout followers of OTHER religions, so merely being devoutly religious won’t save you. Only if you’re capable of being devoutly religious, and switching belief systems convincingly when they come for you, could you survive being targeted in someone else’s purge. However, anyone who questions dogmatic belief systems in general and can’t at least fake adherence is going to get purged by the followers of any dogma.
(preview) Whoops, I didn’t see you were going to bed. Aw. *shelves*
Speaking quite formally, then, selection can’t purge alleles from a population by itself*. That requires drift. And while mutation and recombination produce variation on which selection can act, they are themselves separate mechanisms. Selection itself only reduces variation.
*Except in the case where selection is absolute and an allele is lethal.
Hexanitroisowurtzitanverwendendes_Bärtierchen:
I see your point. Religion simultaneously seeks to decrease autonomy while elevating cosmic importance. I have never understood that very well.
Re: Lance
My employer has a (very small) grant from LiveStrong directed at teaching survivors of cancer what to do next. I have to admit that survivorship of most major diseases is a sorely missed aspect: the medical establishment tends to be largely focused on getting you to the point of being a survivor, but then turns to focus on the next person who needs such help. This is obviously important (we can’t have cancer survivors if we can’t cure cancer), but it means that we’re ending up with a lot more people who have been through medical hell, come out the other side, and then say, “Now what?” Granted, having a lot of cancer survivors is a “good problem to have”, but it’s still a problem.
[I have no idea about the effectiveness of the methods (our program is still in the early phases), and even if effective it doesn’t mean the individual or the organization has any larger merit; as I said, it’s a very small grant, and while there are a large number of participating institutions, I can’t imagine the total investment is more than a few hundred thousand dollars. The information I’ve come across on their site, mostly regarding nutrition and exercise, seems mostly accurate (or at least consistent with information I’ve gotten from more peer-reviewed sources), but that doesn’t mean it’s accurate as a whole.]
This isn’t just about cancer, either: we’re approaching, for example, the first generation of long-term seropositive seniors; 25 years ago, the idea of having someone live so long with HIV would have, in and of itself, been amazing. However, we’re just now starting to learn about some of the long-term effects of the “cocktails” on human biology.
Even moreso, the effects of having been through major medical treatments or long-term medical care build up psychologically. For example, the caregivers of people who have gone through lung cancer treatments have been shown to have PTSD up for five years after the treatment finished (successfully or otherwise) (caregivers themselves are a largely underserved population in cancer treatment; the social and emotional burden on the caregiver is often as severe as the one on the patient); one can imagine how bad the effect on the person receiving treatment must be. The medical estabishment generally offers a certain amount of post-treatment care and counselling, but even that tends to taper off after a couple of years.
All in all, I can’t fault LiveStrong for focusing more on survivorship than on curing cancer as it’s a legitimate (and often underserved) need, but that doesn’t bear at all on the organization’s overall worth or that of its founder.
In case PZ wants to make a few side trips to mormon shrines in Vegas, here’s a photo of the LDS temple in Las Vegas: http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/lasvegas/images/las-vegas-mormon-temple.jpg
PZ can’t go inside because he’s not temple worthy … and he doesn’t have the requisite sacred underwear and green apron. But he can enjoy the well-landscaped surroundings. And I’m sure there are some missionaries who would love to talk to him.
Someone up-thread asked about mormon beliefs about the End Times, these Latter Days if you will. As with most mormon beliefs, revisionist history obscures the picture, but here are some bits and pieces of end-time beliefs that I’ve personally heard from mormons:
– Zion is in North America, and Armageddon will bring about the reestablishment of Zion
– Gentiles will murder the prophets
– Food storage is very important in these latter days (my personal interpretation of this: a lot of mormons are making a lot of money from this concept)
– Obama is the anti-Christ
– One sign of the beginning of the End is that “even the elect shall fall away.” (My personal interpretation of this: a very convenient way to explain all the sheeple leaving the mormon church.)
– The best mormons will “remain strong and endure to the end,” and many of them will travel to havens of safety, like Missouri or Alaska or the new City Creek Mall in Salt Lake City.
– The rock that was cut without hands will go forth and fill the whole earth (meaning that the mormon church will roll like a big rock over everything, and everyone will be converted to mormonism — presumably, this happens after the elect fall away).
– All of the history of the USA, played out according to god’s, was just a way to set up a mormon takeover. If Romney were to be elected, they would see this as fulfillment of prophecy.
– When Jesus comes back he will buy new clothes at City Creek Mall.
– Each new generation of mormons seems to think they are the ones that will see the Second Coming
– guns will be needed, and faithful mormons should stockpile ammunition
– “The prophecies do not name the modern nations which will be fighting for and against Israel, but the designation Gog and Magog is given to the combination of nations which are seeking to overthrow and destroy the remnant of the Lord’s chosen seed” (Mormon Doctrine, p. 298, Elder Bruce R. McConkie).
– Jerusalem will be protected by two mormon missionaries for awhile, but eventually these two prophets of the Lord will be killed by the wicked — but don’t worry about the missionaries, they will be resurrected by Christ
– There will be earthquakes
– A whole bunch of Jews will be killed
– Somehow the effectiveness and accuracy of the Last Judgement will depend on genealogical records kept by mormons
I can’t imagine that the sort of thing that passes for thought in RR would break any terrestrial speed limits. When reading RR, am I the only one who thinks of Stepford Wives?
No comment; this is far too easy…
Let’s just hope the tigers didn’t get that particular memo from El Shaddai.
Nasty! Fancy walking around half-eaten, with your bones showing. And so we come back to Krokodil…
I was wondering about that. From a little searching, I gather you need to sport the right gear and you need a recommend. Are those hard to fake? Is there anything else to it?