Comments

  1. Pteryxx says

    BOOM Portcullised!

    Hey Needles, care to go show off your A+ in Jen’s comments? (and/or link a bigger version? Neat…)

  2. One Thousand Needles says

    Also, congrats Pteryxx for suggesting the A+, which has really taken off!

  3. Ogvorbis: faucibus desultor singulari says

    Good morning. Happy Friday!!

    Boy has just accepted a job as an assistant manager at a Turkey Hill. The manager (of a different store) specifically recruited him. So he will be going to school full time and being an assistant manager full time.

  4. lexie says

    One Thousand Needles, would it be possible for you to link to the new A+ logo in a different format? It may just be my technical incompetence but when I follow the link I just reach a google drive website and I would rather not sign up. If possible, thanks very much.

  5. Lyn M: Necrodunker of death, nothing but net says

    No intention of spamming, but I hope to make it a little easier to send something to Love FtB. Got portcullised.

    Here is a link to the website.

    http://quequoi.tumblr.com/

    It only takes a second to send an email to quequoi at gmail.com. quequoi takes it from there.

    Thanks for reading again. Now please go send an email.

  6. carlie says

    More and more people are feeling the need to have a way to express that they are part of something more inclusive and don’t really want to go with plain ol’ humanist or secular humanist.

    Secular humanism doesn’t really have a requirement of critical thinking or using the scientific method, though, does it? This is more an unholy trinity (heh) of atheism, skepticism, and humanism.

  7. lexie says

    One Thousand Needles, thanks. It looks great, I just wish it weren’t necessary (as when I first became an atheist/skeptic I thought that the need for equality was self-evident).

  8. says

    Needles, that’s a nice logo. My only issue is with the colour scheme: The blue cross looks a bit like something from a medical or pharmaceutical logo.

  9. says

    Ok, I am using IE9 and imbedded videos only work sometimes despite my doing every god damned thing I could look up to help the situation. I’m done, I’ve never liked IE I just haven’t installed something else since my computer crashed a few months ago. I am up for a new browser. What do pharyngulites generally use?

  10. Louis says

    I use Firefox but I’ve been having issues with flash player recently (and have been too lazy to track them down since they are quickly rectifiable).

    Louis

  11. Beatrice says

    Jen’s comment thread has become too long to follow all the new answers on various subthreads.

    /whinge

  12. Pteryxx says

    obviously, a tenet of New Inclusive Progressive Atheism MUST be to ban nested comments. Nesters cannot be tolerated in our movement! Deep Rifts!

  13. says

    Am I seeing things, or does PZ already have an A+ logo in the lower right of the page, as the link to the Out Campaign? Has that always been there?

  14. Pteryxx says

    I was just about to ask that. Nothing ON the linked page has an A+ … and wasn’t the campaign that Dawkins Foundation used it for, something else entirely?

  15. jackal says

    Hey, folks. Technical question: I log in to WordPress blogs using my Google account. I changed my Google avatar 2 weeks ago, but the old image is still being used when I log in here. I have tried deleting cookies and logging out/in of both accounts, but no luck. Any suggestions?

  16. Ogvorbis: faucibus desultor singulari says

    Yay for your boy! It’ll be tough doing both at once, but so worth it.

    Good to have someone else with the ‘so worth it’ take. He wants to (eventually) get into museum work and will be going for his MBA or MPA (and hopefully getting TH to pay for some of it) with an eye towards getting involved in the management of museums. Being in management at TH will give him some very useful (and quite a bit not so useful) experience for the future. Tough part is, the new manager is taking over a failing store and specifically tapped Boy to help him out and try to rescue the store so if he can help get the store back on its feet that’ll be a feather in his cap (as well as the manager).

    We don’t expect to see him much this fall — between a full-time job and a 12-credit semester (and 9 of those credits are 300 and 400 level history courses with shitloads of writing), he’ll be rather scarce.

  17. says

    I use Firefox without much problem. Chrome was faster and less greedy of RAM and CPU for me, but I am addicted to the custom search engines available for Firefox.

    /me stares at empty coffee cup
    Gotta fix that. brb.

  18. Pteryxx says

    jackal: FTB isn’t a WordPress-linked site, it’s just using WordPress tools. The login’s completely separate here. Avatars on FTB come from Gravatar, which should be linked to your login email here. You can manually change your Gravatar logo at their site:

    https://en.gravatar.com/

  19. lexie says

    I thought that the A+ logo was used by the Richard Dawkins foundation for their non-believers giving aid charity and wasn’t a part of the out campaign. Am I wrong on this?

  20. says

    Oggie,
    I worked full time while going to school full time, too, and I don’t regret it one bit. At the time I was pulling my hair out (12 credits/semester, asst. manager of a video rental place, and involved with the school’s theater department) but I’m glad that I got all of that experience and I’m glad I did it when I was resilient enough to be productive with very little sleep. ;)

  21. thunk, erythematic says

    Okay…

    I’m evidently not caught up.

    Audley:

    I worked full time while going to school full time, too, and I don’t regret it one bit. At the time I was pulling my hair out (12 credits/semester, asst. manager of a video rental place, and involved with the school’s theater department) but I’m glad that I got all of that experience and I’m glad I did it when I was resilient enough to be productive with very little sleep. ;)

    *jealous*.

  22. says

    Also, that red zapfino A first appeared as an atheist symbol on — you guessed it — Pharyngula, back in the distant days before 2005 when it was hosted on my lab computer. It really is an atheist thing, not just a Dawkins thing.

  23. Pteryxx says

    While we’re at it, via Stephanie Zvan’s latest, a research-filled article debunking the supposedly research-based claim that discrimination doesn’t play a role in the gender wage gap.

    Just one counterpoint of many:

    The idea that women are paid less because they choose certain industries or occupations also doesn’t get us very far. Among the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s list of nearly 600 occupations, women make less than men in all but seven of them. And even in those where women make more, the difference is often as slight as a couple of dollars a week. They even make less in each industry: among the BLS’s thirteen industry categories, women make less than men in every single one. What this means is that even in “women’s fields,” men are going to rake in more. In fact, men have been entering traditionally female-dominated sectors during the recovery period, and as the New York Times noted, they’re meeting with great success—“men earn more than women even in female-dominated jobs.” Women can enter engineering all they want, but their pay still won’t catch up to men’s.

    Another, in response to rebuttal:

    There have been other studies along these lines, like one that showed people identical résumés but with some mentioning that the applicant was a mother and others mentioning the applicant was a father. Fathers were offered $6,000 more than non-fathers in compensation; mothers were offered $11,000 less than non-mothers. Studies like these expose our deep-seated ideas about women in the workplace, held by men and women alike, that impact hiring and salary decisions.

    http://www.thenation.com/blog/169400/yes-virginia-there-gender-wage-gap#

  24. One Thousand Needles says

    RDF has copyrighted the red A only

    Is it possible to copyright a letter from a typeface designed by somebody else? I wonder if RDF pays a royalty to Linotype for its use.

  25. ChasCPeterson says

    that red zapfino A first appeared as an atheist symbol on — you guessed it — Pharyngula, back in the distant days before 2005 when it was hosted on my lab computer.

    really? I remember pirate mode, but I don’t remember that. In fact, I remember at least one–maybe 2?–contests to design such a logo, and didn’t that happen on SB? Going to see if g**gle knows.

  26. says

    We had two contests to design a symbol, and there was no consensus at all. The zapfino A was one of the popular choices, but not the only one. I think a lot of people really favored Godfrey Temple’s “Affinity” symbol (an A with an infinity symbol for the crossbar).

    It was most definitely on pre-Sb Pharyngula.

  27. opposablethumbs says

    Congratulations to Boy, Og – sounds tough, but he should be able to handle a hell of a lot with everything he will learn! I’m very impressed, too – my DaughterSpawn is only working part-time while studying and I know she feels pretty busy so I really take my hat off to Boy!

  28. Pteryxx says

    Hey, I didn’t know that the Women in Secularism conference concept may have originated with PZ in the Woman Problem thread!

    I think what we really need is a Women and Secularism conference, organized by women and for both male and female freethinkers, where the women call all the shots and bring together all these great homogametic speakers — while the women are always the minority at these conferences, there’s still always great talent, and looking over the lists of past speakers it would be easy to put together a stellar female cast. All we need is some uppity women with ambition to make it happen, and the application of a little pressure to the staff at AAI.

    (No, the comments still aren’t up yet…)

    http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/06/29/the-woman-problem/

    PZ, you’ve been doing more for The Cause than I realized. Thank you. (and you’re only just now getting rape threats for it! Congratz. *blech*)

  29. Psych-Oh says

    This is my first foray into “The Lounge” since it has been formed as such. Good morning.

    Congrats, Ogvorbis! Hope the boy likes his new job.

  30. Beatrice says

    Made my morning: the twitter account of the first rock to be laser’d by Curiosity.

    Thanks for that link, One Thousand Needles. It’s fun to read the updates.

    I almost wish I had a twitter account so that I could send the poor little thing a hug.

  31. ImaginesABeach says

    So, I hear (read?) my virtual rat Zoe appears to be in the family way. Two weeks ago, when I told GirlChild that condoms should be used “the first time and every time until you are an adult wanting children”, her response was “I’m only 13. I don’t need to know that yet.” I will be pointing out to her that Zoe is only 5 weeks old and apparently didn’t listen when she got the talk.

  32. katchen says

    @Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven – re fruited goat cheese: if you have a sweet tooth, maybe something with filo pastry & vanilla sugar?

    I’m not a goat cheese fan, so couldn’t say how well it’d work, but I’ve certainly seen sweet goat cheese pastries.

  33. Ogvorbis: faucibus desultor singulari says

    Hope the boy likes his new job.

    Hope so too. And it’s not like it’ll be a new job. Boy is, effectively, an assistant manager at his current store (same company) — keeping up the planograms, ordering, etc. — but without the extra pay or a place in the command structure.

  34. says

    I was using Firefox, with AdBlocker and Pharyngula killfile, but after my last-but-one update videos stopped working. After my last update they still don’t work but I get an error message. So I’m using Chrome when I want to see movies.

  35. says

    PZ, the resolution on your Lounge pictures is bigger than you need for the size you’re showing. The full-size picture still loads, slowing down page loads for all. If you don’t re-size them to be small, you might as well leave them full-size on the page so we can enjoy their details.

  36. Sili says

    Why a blue cross? (Aside from that being the title of a teetotalling group.) I’d much prefer an all red version, I’m sure.

  37. says

    ImaginesABeach:

    So, I hear (read?) my virtual rat Zoe appears to be in the family way. Two weeks ago, when I told GirlChild that condoms should be used “the first time and every time until you are an adult wanting children”, her response was “I’m only 13. I don’t need to know that yet.” I will be pointing out to her that Zoe is only 5 weeks old and apparently didn’t listen when she got the talk.

    Ha! I’m glad she can provide a valuable teaching moment.

  38. says

    Beatrice, ratlets wean at 5 weeks and males/females must be separated by 6 weeks old. I was pretty sure I got them all separated quickly enough, but wasn’t early enough for Zoe, it seems.

    Opposablethumbs, yes, rats can have false pregnancies.

  39. Pteryxx says

    *nod* Rodents are such a time bomb because optimal weaning time *overlaps with* the onset of fertility. The only way I could manage my colony was by weaning strictly on the young side of optimal weaning age, even if that meant giving supplemental food, or stunts like weaning only the males. Even then, every so often genotyping would reveal that a mom had gotten bred by a not-yet-weaned son. Oops pups are just a fact of life with rodents.

  40. firefly says

    Markita Lynda – #50:

    I was using Firefox, with AdBlocker and Pharyngula killfile, but after my last-but-one update videos stopped working. After my last update they still don’t work but I get an error message.

    I had the same issue. Uninstalling and reinstalling Adobe Flash fixed it.

  41. thunk, erythematic says

    Imaginesabeach:

    So, I hear (read?) my virtual rat Zoe appears to be in the family way. Two weeks ago, when I told GirlChild that condoms should be used “the first time and every time until you are an adult wanting children”, her response was “I’m only 13. I don’t need to know that yet.” I will be pointing out to her that Zoe is only 5 weeks old and apparently didn’t listen when she got the talk.

    This reminds me of a story.

    I spent a day with some friends a while back, and my parents say to me “Don’t ever do *various euphemisms*”.

    I respond, “What? You mean sex?”

    They reacted somewhat strangely.

  42. Nutmeg says

    I know people have various privacy issues, and I prefer not to name my study species here in the Lounge. But when I read the little snippets that people write here about their research, I’m sad that we can’t all nerd out about these things together.

    It would be pretty awesome to have a conference with all the sciency types here, and to hear everyone give talks about their research. It would be such an interesting mix of fields.

  43. says

    A Moment of Mega Mormon Madness that is mostly hidden from public discourse. American Petroleum Institute President, Jack N. Gerard is one of Mitt Romney’s fellow mormons. Gerard is powerful and half-crazed with arrogance.

    He seems to think that the U.S. Government should be a lackey of the oil industry.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/jack-gerard-the-force-majeure-behind-big-oil/2012/04/06/gIQA1hjC0S_story.html

    Gerard runs API like a political campaign, with lots of campaign propaganda. He greatly inflates President Obama’s power over oil prices in order to make it look like Obama is manipulating prices for political gain. If that were true, Obama is manipulating them in the wrong direction, so that makes no sense.

    On the other hand, Gerard is a believer in one of the oft-told Romney lies that Obama is responsible all on his own for the price at the pump.

    Gerard also routinely inflates the number of jobs created by the oil industry. He advertises “the right facts,” which means, the facts he makes up. Reminds one of the “faith-promoting history” that the mormon church leaders tout.

  44. ImaginesABeach says

    Thunk –

    Just in case you missed the instructions I gave my GirlChild above, I’m repeating them as instructions for you.

    Condoms. The first time and every time. Unless you are trying to reproduce.

    /PSA

  45. says

    ImaginesABeach:

    Condoms. The first time and every time. Unless you are trying to reproduce.

    Also: never, ever keep condoms in a wallet. Unless you are trying to reproduce.

    Don’t allow anyone else access to your condoms. Unless you are trying to reproduce.

  46. says

    Condoms. The first time and every time. Unless you are trying to reproduce or are using a different reliable form of birth control with a trusted and tested partner.

    Expanded.
    But condoms ARE great. Although I imagine them to be difficult to handle with paws.

  47. thunk, erythematic says

    Beach:

    Condoms. The first time and every time. Unless you are trying to reproduce.

    Noted.

    Caine:

    Also: never, ever keep condoms in a wallet. Unless you are trying to reproduce.

    Don’t allow anyone else access to your condoms. Unless you are trying to reproduce.

    Also noted.

  48. David Marjanović says

    Josh, please check your e-mail. It’s about the Horde Hoard.

    *hugs for cicely and thunk*

    …That’s why there are Growers and Showers. *nodnod* Perhaps you have insufficient experience of penes…

    Yup, that’s what made me suspect that there were showers, as I was later told there indeed are. I’ve seen very few penes, and, uh, I have no plans to change that, not even FOR SCIENCE!.

    Okay, you Dexter are up on the list of virtual ratties. Dexter is a right…squirrel. (In the slang sense of the word.) He’s shy around people, incredibly fast, generally quiet but willing to squeak up a storm if you try to hold him for any length of time, quite skilled as a food thief and forever curious. The only effective ways to get him to remain fairly still are to put him up very high or let him burrow under very heavy towels or blankets.

    Ooh. We fit together pretty well. ♥

    If my child had been lost for over an hour, I would have LOOKED into the direction of the market for hir to be returned to me. If it had been my child I would have MOVED towards the woman carrying hir. […] As things were, I wouldn’t have guessed that the woman standing there indifferently had anything to do with the whole thing. Security led me towards her, she took him up, and walked away. Then she remembered to turn around and say “thank you”.

    *jaw dropping*

    3) Don’t worry, be happy!

    *facepalm*

    Louis… reconsider.

    David,

    Would you mind elaborating?

    Louis

    Were you trolling him or what? Where on the planet is he supposed to pull happiness from?

    “And out of the chaos a voice spake unto me, and said: ‘Smile and be happy, it could get worse!’ And I smiled and was happy, and it got worse.”

    Louis, there’s a new pic of Vasco on the virtual ratlets post (replaced this morning) and I must say, he’s so damn cute it’s sickening.

    :-) :-) :-)

    *chamomile tea*

    Just in the most recent threads I saw a creationist asserting that ribosomes proofread RNA (*headdesk*) even though they don’t have brains (*headdesk*)

    The point of this, of course, was to prove that you can have a mind without a brain, I’m pretty sure.

    It wasn’t long ago that I told people here to visit Sb Pharyngula. Back then, there was an antivaxxer (should be on the 2nd page now; the thread is probably dead).

    I didn’t think there was anyone in the world who used more garlic than my mom. I was wrong. You win some kind of prize…maybe mouthwash? :p

    It’s just two bulbs. :-]

    And the recipe is from chefkoch.de, and the Germans used to complain about how much garlic the Turks used…

    I’ve got a breaded and baked chicken that usually takes 40 to 60 garlic cloves.

    There’s a yummy southern French recipe called “chicken with 45 cloves of garlic”.

    this is now the rattie personality reference thread. *bookmarks*

    Good idea. :-)

    She doesn’t seem to realize that I am perfectly capable of handling social situations on my own, and that there’s nothing wrong with being quiet and letting others lead the conversation. And there is so much fucking gendered bullshit among the older generation, I feel like going on a ten-minute rant. Why do the men get to be quiet and reserved while I have to be a bleeding social butterfly every waking moment?

    Pull her aside sometime and give her that ten-minute rant. She’ll never learn on her own.

    My big problem has always been soda.

    I have no idea if I have a problem with it, because I don’t even try. The mouthfeel is horrible.

    wow. Pussy Riot has BRASS. They released a new anti-Putin single specifically to coincide with the verdict.

    …Wow.

    Rura Penthe

    X-D X-D :-D :-D :-D

    Does anyone cope with death well?

    Under some circumstances, yes: my mom. When she can convince herself it’s an end to suffering after a long, fulfilled life, she has little or no further trouble with it.

    However, she’s the most adult person I’ve ever encountered: no need to play, no need for body contact, walks fast but practically never runs, wants everything done as soon as possible, that kind of thing. Imagine our issues with each other… or, rather, don’t.

    Also, am I the only person who does not listen to music?

    No. In this generation, there’s also my brother and me (but not my sisters).

    That’s probably it, though.

    (…there’s a reason they call certain giant machines ‘breeder’ reactors. Rodent reproduction capability is freakin’ NUCLEAR.)

    At least some of them have a coelom fold around the ovaries and oviducts to prevent ectopic pregnancies. Don’t try to imagine the selection pressure that leads to that.

    I’m pretty sure about Zoe, though.

    Her very name means “life”… I’ll pour the gin Jules left here into the USB port. Want some tonic, too?

    I’ll go put this in the Thunderdome too so people can have a convenient place to call me silly.

    It’s not silly at all.

    (Except ;-) that once you mention “type” as used in biological nomenclature, “subtype” doesn’t make sense anymore.)

    Why is this OK?

    Because it irks you. Regularly, like clockwork. You’re as predictable as a worn groove in a record; you always know exactly what verse you’re going to skip on.

    ~:-| So you’re trolling Chas? Seriously?

    speaking of redheads, now that I’m dating one, I notice I’m more aware of them [in public]. I never really paid attention to redheads in the past (no more so than other hair colors), but now I do.

    Heh. Over here, red hair is so rare that I’ve always noticed it immediately.

    The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Seventh Level of Hell!

    …Wow. Congratulations.

    Is everyone prepared for my results?

    I’m scarily similar to a saint, only godless. I suppose I’m good without God :-)

    First Level of Hell – Limbo

    Charon ushers you across the river Acheron, and you find yourself upon the brink of grief’s abysmal valley. You are in Limbo, a place of sorrow without torment. You encounter a seven-walled castle, and within those walls you find rolling fresh meadows illuminated by the light of reason, whereabout many shades [ = dead people] dwell. These are the virtuous pagans, the great philosophers and authors, unbaptised children, and others unfit to enter the kingdom of heaven. You share company with Caesar, Homer, Virgil, Socrates, and Aristotle. There is no punishment here, and the atmosphere is peaceful, yet sad.

    That sounds a lot like life, actually. Only with more babies. ♥

    Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

    Level Who are sent there? Score
    Purgatory Repending [sic!] Believers Very Low
    Level 1 – Limbo Virtuous Non-Believers Very High
    Level 2 Lustful Low
    […hey, that’s from the way the questions were chosen…]
    Level 3 Gluttonous Moderate
    Level 4 Prodigal and Avaricious Very Low
    Level 5 Wrathful and Gloomy Low
    Level 6 – The City of Dis Heretics High
    Level 7 Violent Low
    Level 8 – The Malebolge Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers Moderate
    Level 9 – Cocytus Treacherous Low

    Best of all: it’s actually a dating site.

    Clicking on his nym leads to a Facebook page with the name of Daniel Haven

    :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D

    Trigger warning!

    Why do people laugh at creationists?
    Only creationists don’t understand why!

    Why a blue cross? (Aside from that being the title of a teetotalling group.)

    Heh. In German, “blue” means “drunk”.

    Even then, every so often genotyping would reveal that a mom had gotten bred by a not-yet-weaned son.

    …They must grow insanely fast.

    I spent a day with some friends a while back, and my parents say to me “Don’t ever do *various euphemisms*”.

    I respond, “What? You mean sex?”

    They reacted somewhat strangely.

    :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D

    It would be pretty awesome to have a conference with all the sciency types here, and to hear everyone give talks about their research. It would be such an interesting mix of fields.

    Oh, definitely. Maybe we can work that into Rhinebeck next year.

    Also, next year, the meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology will be in LA. That’s at least on the same coast as you, right?

  49. says

    Oh, and don’t save at the wrong end: If putting it on doesn’t work perfectly the first time, use a new one unless you want to reproduce.

    Also, still know where to get Plan B. Because condoms break (the arrival of my godson was announced with the setence “the damn condom broke”). Happens to smart people who do everything right. And finding out where to get it when you’re just threatened with a pregnancy is really stressfull.

  50. David Marjanović says

    *headdesk* Josh replied to my e-mail while I was still writing that comment. I forgot to take that part out before submitting!!!

  51. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    Also: never, ever keep condoms in a wallet. Unless you are trying to reproduce.

    Don’t allow anyone else access to your condoms. Unless you are trying to reproduce.

    Also, if you or your partner are an intact male, realize that condoms are considerably less miserable if you:

    1) pull the foreskin back
    2) unroll them over the penis and about 2/3 of the way down the shaft
    3) pull the foreskin up over the glans so the side of the condom gets folded up into it
    4) unroll the rest of the way.

    I found this tip on a sex information site about 3 years ago. Why isn’t it on every fucking single one? :(

  52. thunk, erythematic says

    Giliell:

    Oh, and don’t save at the wrong end: If putting it on doesn’t work perfectly the first time, use a new one unless you want to reproduce.

    Also, still know where to get Plan B. Because condoms break (the arrival of my godson was announced with the setence “the damn condom broke”). Happens to smart people who do everything right. And finding out where to get it when you’re just threatened with a pregnancy is really stressfull.

    Noted. Now just to do the latter without freaking myself or family out…

  53. thunk, erythematic says

    Azkyroth:

    Also, if you or your partner are an intact male, realize that condoms are considerably less miserable if you:

    1) pull the foreskin back
    2) unroll them over the penis and about 2/3 of the way down the shaft
    3) pull the foreskin up over the glans so the side of the condom gets folded up into it
    4) unroll the rest of the way.

    Noted, again.

  54. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    Condoms. The first time and every time. Unless you are trying to reproduce or are using a different reliable form of birth control with a trusted and tested partner.

    Also…I’m gonna have to say this was right the first time. At least for men. :/

  55. says

    Moar music news:

    “We’ve got a Muslim president who hates farming, hates the military, hates the U.S. — and we hate him,” Williams said. [Hank Williams Jr., speaking at the Iowa State Fair.]

    According to a Des Moines Register report, the comments elicited an enthusiastic cheer from the crowd.

    Link to full story in Salon.

  56. says

    Hallo folken! Just popping in to say hey before popping back over to my wife.This is the last Taco Sunday for awhile… if all goes well shes off to herThursady or Friday.w job Fr

  57. says

    I really like the Think Progress response to Mitt Romney’s dumbed down, inaccurate and generally off-putting White Board presentation.

    Scroll down to see the Think Progress White Board Face Off.
    Excerpt from text that accompanies the video:

    The Obamacare savings slow the growth of Medicare over the next decade by, in part: eliminating overpayments to private insurers in Medicare Advantage, reforming provider payments to encourage greater efficiency, tying reimbursements to improvements in economic productivity, and reducing fraud and abuse. The law does not impact patient benefits…..

    In case you have not yet suffered through Romney’s awkward presentation, here it is:
    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505267_162-57495179/romney-uses-white-board-in-attempt-to-clarify-medicare-stance/

  58. strange gods before me ॐ says

    I include “A+” in that indictment.

    Actually, I agree with you, however…

    I think this is something that people need on an emotional level. […] If the whole A+ thing helps to galvanize people and provides strength and attraction, eh, I say let them have it.

    Hey, I can’t stop them from having it. But that particular road leads to failure, and if I can convince more people to not go down that way, I’m going to try.

    I think the emotional need is more generalized. There isn’t a specific need for [adjective] atheism or atheism[modifier].

    There is a general desire to say “we are the future of change atheism and you can’t stop us!” And there are other ways to achieve this without isolating ourselves.

    We can become the mainstream, instead of setting ourselves apart.

    +++++
    rorschach,

    A few minor quibbles with Jen’s otherwise quite marvellous post.

    That’s exactly the kind of rhetoric we should avoid. I’m not surprised that years later you’re still parroting dictionary atheist talking points. (Though I can see that the whole “new wave” phrasing encourages you to do that, rather than discouraging it.)

    You’re setting up Dawkins as symbolizing pure atheism. There is no necessary reason to fall into this trap. Let’s avoid it.

    +++++

    This is a reminder of the website quequoi set up called Love for FtB and Skepchick.

    I’ve now linked it from the front page at http://pharyngula.wikia.com/

  59. says

    Also, hi everyone! I’ve been at my inlaws’ painting their house in full sun on the hottest day(s) of the year. (Yes, they paid me. I put it away for a truly amazing 15th anniversary celebration for me and Misterc next summer.)

    I’m almost completely threadrupt but holy omfg, Caine, MOAR BABIES. Wut. I honestly wish I could take some off your hands.

    Also also, while in the car with my very religious inlaws, my son exclaimed “Oh your God!” and made me spit my drink out and choke :D :D :D

  60. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    Azkyroth, not all women are assholes, you know?

    Of course not all women are assholes – and even the vast majority of women who are assholes aren’t likely to take this particular route, but the ones who are tend not to walk around with neon signs on their heads that say “asshole.”

    This sounds familiar, somehow.

  61. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    ….okay, let me rephrase that:

    Of the subset of women who ARE assholes, the majority OF them are not likely to be assholes in the sabotaging-birth-control way.

  62. Beatrice says

    Well, the end of that sentence was with a trusted and tested partner, so Giliell didn’t exclude the possibility of someone lying.

  63. says

    I’ll back Azkyroth here – there are a whole lot of asshole women out there when it comes to contraception and ‘accidentally’ getting pregnant or passing off a pregnancy by someone else. No, it doesn’t happen all the time, but it pays to be careful, at least until you’re at point you feel you can completely trust your partner.

  64. Beatrice says

    I should probably be embarrassed (being 26 and all), but I guess I should bookmark this thread for good advice on protection for any sex I might have in the future. Eventually. Maybe. :/

  65. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    Well, the end of that sentence was with a trusted and tested partner, so Giliell didn’t exclude the possibility of someone lying.

    Even people you trust and feel are tested can lie (and rationalize), and it’s very easy, especially when you’re young, to extend trust where you shouldn’t, for a variety of reasons.

  66. says

    Azkyroth

    Of course not all women are assholes – and even the vast majority of women who are assholes aren’t likely to take this particular route, but the ones who are tend not to walk around with neon signs on their heads that say “asshole.”

    This sounds familiar, somehow.

    Yes, but that doesn’t make it somewhat equal, especially in terms of numbers. And, well, if I turned the argument around it would be: don’t get alone with a man, ever. Not even the one you trust. At some point taking no risks means that you’re also ruining all chances.

  67. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    …I never said it was equal in terms of numbers. And…

    …..oh, fuck it.

  68. carlie says

    It’s not just trust – no type of birth control is 100% at preventing conception, so multiple forms at once are a good idea if you really, really don’t want a pregnancy to happen. I wouldn’t ever rely on just a condom, and I wouldn’t expect any man to rely entirely on me taking my birth control pills properly.

  69. carlie says

    How can someone who thinks what Todd Akin said even exist? He must have known he was being a dumbass as soon as he said it.

    Nope. It has that gut feeling of truthiness to it, so it must be true.

  70. says

    Josh, yeah, he’s a piece of work alright.

    Speaking to KTVI-TV, Akin justified his opposition to abortion for rape victims by explaining that pregnancy through rape is “really rare.”

    “If it’s a legitimate rape,” he said, “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

    He said his understanding of the issue came from “doctors,” though he did not specify what kind of doctors – or what, exactly, constitutes “legitimate rape.”

    I’ll just betcha this moron thinks women can absorb an unwanted pregnancy. He’s all against marital rape laws, ’cause someone could use those to be all mean to a man in a divorce case.

  71. carlie says

    Just saw an AT&T commercial showing a guy using his cell phone will all kinds of backgrounds changing behind him, trying to show that AT&T has the best coverage no matter where you are. What I saw was an idiot who kept playing with his phone and not even noticing all the cool places he was because he was so addicted to his phone service. Ah, unintended advertising messages.

  72. strange gods before me ॐ says

    There was an editing error:

    There is a general desire to say “we are the future of change atheism and you can’t stop us!” And there are other ways to achieve this without isolating ourselves.

    +++++

    Also…I’m gonna have to say this was right the first time. At least for men. :/

    Okay, that’s weird. Here’s the thing. “Condoms. The first time and every time. Unless you are trying to reproduce” is sufficient for anyone who’s having heterosexual intercourse. It isn’t untrue for women. Birth control pills alone aren’t as reliable as condoms plus birth control pills.

  73. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    I suppose that’s also true, but the reliability jump in that case is smaller.

  74. says

    Yes, multiple forms of birth control are more effective than only one. Condoms alone are sadly rather unsafe. Personally I really like condoms, I really dislike the pill (what’s the use of having a birth control that makes you lose your interest in sex?). But I find stating that men should always wear condoms because there are evil women out there more than problematic.
    Like many couples, we just used the pill for many years. Believe me, had Mr. always worn an additional condom because he couldn’t trust me to take the pill correctly or not to lie to him, there wouldn’t be an “us” today.

  75. carlie says

    Believe me, had Mr. always worn an additional condom because he couldn’t trust me to take the pill correctly or not to lie to him, there wouldn’t be an “us” today.

    I guess I don’t get that interpretation – doing so isn’t an accusation, it’s saying “I’m doing my part to take responsibility for not causing a pregnancy, too”.

  76. says

    carlie
    I’m not talking about interpretations, I’m talking about reasons. Saying “let’s do this really safe ’cause the pill can fail” is a different thing than saying “I’m going to wear this condom because I can’t trust you”, which was given as a reason above

  77. says

    because Atheism, Skepticism, and Social justice makes an otherwise poor acronym.

    Eh, just change the order and you have Sas. Actually, SASJ. Skepticism, Atheism & Social Justice. I don’t think you get to leave the justice out.

    As for the A+ I still don’t care for it. It’s already been used for something else and I prefer the Gnu A and I’ll stick with Jadehawk’s Feminist Gnu A.

  78. says

    Giliell:

    Saying “let’s do this really safe ’cause the pill can fail” is a different thing than saying “I’m going to wear this condom because I can’t trust you”, which was given as a reason above

    Ya know, there’s no need to say “I can’t/don’t trust you, therefor…”. It can simply be framed in “I’m more comfortable taking extra precautions” or “I like wearing a condom” or a dozen other things. Azkyroth was simply making the point that it pays to be careful and it does.

  79. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    I have a very hard time understanding straight peoples’ anxieties over condom use and the “message” they believe it sends to their partner. I came of sexual age in the AIDS era and condoms were culturally mandatory among all but a small subset of gay men. One didn’t even question it. No one wanted to take the risk and no one (in my experience) thought they were being insulted when their partner insisted on a condom.

    Treating it any other way—when the potential risks of pregnancy and disease are so high—is deeply weird to me.

  80. julian says

    Y’know, it’s a good thing that Pteryxx came up with the A+, because Atheism, Skepticism, and Social justice makes an otherwise poor acronym.

    O_O
    Oh my god… so… so many puns.

    Is it to late to change?

  81. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    I’ll back Azkyroth on this, too. He doesn’t need to apologize for a sensible and reasonable sense of caution. Again, this baffles me as a gay guy.

  82. says

    Josh:

    I have a very hard time understanding straight peoples’ anxieties over condom use and the “message” they believe it sends to their partner.

    A lot of hetro men will start pressuring a woman right away to agree to no condoms and women who might be looking to get pregnant will exert a similar pressure on men to go with no condoms.

  83. says

    Ya know, there’s no need to say “I can’t/don’t trust you, therefor…”. It can simply be framed in “I’m more comfortable taking extra precautions” or “I like wearing a condom” or a dozen other things. Azkyroth was simply making the point that it pays to be careful and it does.

    Uhm, not saying it but actually meaning it still doesn’t change the fact that he really distrusts the woman in the realtionship and thinks he has to protect himself against her unreliability or evil. That’s not a really good basis for a respectful relationship.
    Yes, contraception is something two people should care about. But to have my ability to handle something or my trustworthieness questioned by somebody I love and trust doesn’t say “equal relationship” to me but “stoopid bitches lie”

  84. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Thanks Caine. I just find the idea that one needs to in some way apologize for insisting on condom use for fear of censure so fucking outrageous. You wanna argue with me? Go fuck someone else. (Yes, I know I’m assuming consensual situations with equal power balance).

  85. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Yes, contraception is something two people should care about. But to have my ability to handle something or my trustworthieness questioned by somebody I love and trust doesn’t say “equal relationship” to me but “stoopid bitches lie”

    Gileill, I don’t mean this to sound like an attack but your perspective on this is seriously warped. It’s not all about you.

  86. says

    Josh
    I have no problem with condom use. We use condoms. And actually, why does nobody suggest that I take the pill, too, because he could manipulate them?
    I have no problems using condoms. I have a problem using condoms because women can’t be trusted not to steal some poor lads sperm and get rich on child-support. Or just to be too stupid to take a pill every day, because of their fluffy pink ladybrains.

  87. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Gileill—OK, but where are you getting all that? Whom are you imputing these motives to?

  88. says

    Giliell:

    Uhm, not saying it but actually meaning it still doesn’t change the fact that he really distrusts the woman in the realtionship and thinks he has to protect himself against her unreliability or evil. That’s not a really good basis for a respectful relationship.
    Yes, contraception is something two people should care about. But to have my ability to handle something or my trustworthieness questioned by somebody I love and trust doesn’t say “equal relationship” to me but “stoopid bitches lie”

    I think you are completely misreading what Azkyroth said and are being very unfair to him based on that misreading. He has every right in the universe to handle contraception as he sees fit. As I said earlier, there are a whole hell of a lot of untrustworthy people out there – I’ve known my fair share of them. You might not believe what some people get up to, but whether you believe it or not doesn’t matter.

    Some of us are extremely unwilling to end up with a pregnancy or other unwanted problem and as always, the person best responsible for such matters is yourself. If a partner is all of a sudden upset by my handling of contraception, I’d immediately be wondering why.

  89. says

    A lot of hetro men will start pressuring a woman right away to agree to no condoms and women who might be looking to get pregnant will exert a similar pressure on men to go with no condoms

    Oh, I absolutely agree. Yet that was not what I was talking about. This isn’t about condoms. It’s about condoms because women can’t be trusted.

  90. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Sigh. I don’t trust anyone enough to risk a serious health problem. Things break. Pills get forgotten. Pills may not work. What is so hard to understand about this?

  91. ImaginesABeach says

    Ok, that’s the 2nd time recently that I have been responsible for the start of a condom conversation. Which is really weird, because I rarely talk about condoms.

    Also, I’d like to note that my original comments was based on the fact that thunk has identified as male.

    Truly, what I should have said is “protect yourself and your partner. First time and every time.”

  92. carlie says

    I get what Gilliel means, but now I have dissonance in my own brain. Because my point was the same as Josh’s, but it just popped into my mind that it’s in some ways analagous to making a prenuptual agreement, and I’ve always thought if you need a prenup (for anyone who isn’t filthy rich with oddly family entangled holdings that are complicated), then you aren’t quite ready to marry a person. And… that’s saying the same thing, kind of? Now I has a confused.

  93. says

    Somehow I’m wondering whether there’s a general missunderstanding.
    But let me get something clear first:
    Azkyroth said that men should always wear condoms even in a relationship with a trusted and tested partner especially because asshole women will get themselves pregnant without the men’s consent. That’s a general statement about all men and all women, one that I find mightily unfair and treating all women, no matter who, no matter what’s the relationship as “potential spermjackers”. To pull the comparision with rape again: Should I still treat my husband like the stranger in the bar after all these years?

    He has every right in the universe to handle contraception as he sees fit.

    Absolutely. Yet he didn’t make a single statement about himself, but about all women.

    As I said earlier, there are a whole hell of a lot of untrustworthy people out there – I’ve known my fair share of them. You might not believe what some people get up to, but whether you believe it or not doesn’t matter.

    Well, you’re older than me, but I’m not a little girl. I was lucky in my partner-choice, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have friends and family who ran into truely shitty people. And yes, getting intentionally pregnant while claiming to be on birth control to keep the guy is not alien to me. There are assholes out there. I just don’t think it’s fair to treat all women like one of them even after years and years of trust.

    Some of us are extremely unwilling to end up with a pregnancy or other unwanted problem and as always, the person best responsible for such matters is yourself.

    I 100% agree.

    If a partner is all of a sudden upset by my handling of contraception, I’d immediately be wondering why.

    Ehm, yes. Like I would be wondering why he thinks that he needs an additional condom after we talked about using the pill and came to that conclusion together. And I’d be very worried if he felt it necessary not because safety was paramount for him but because he thought I was that potential spermjacking moral-free asshole.
    Again, I’m not talking about using 7+ contraceptives to meet your need of safety from accidential pregnancies. I’m talking about somebody not trusting women per se.

  94. says

    Yay condoms!

    As rough as things can get, my life has the silver lining of a complete lack of human children sponging off of me like leech creatures in a libertarian’s nightmare. And no diseases isn’t a bad thing either.

  95. says

    Giliell:

    It’s about condoms because women can’t be trusted.

    No it’s not – you’re the one making it into that. Azkyroth noted that many (actually most) young people, when first engaging in sex, very often trust people they shouldn’t. Azkyroth is absolutely fucking right about that – and that applies to both sexes.

    I’ve known women who have attempted to sabotage condoms, I’ve known men who have done the same. I’ve known men and women who happily and blithely lie about intimate matters. Look, this is not about you. It’s not about your relationship. It’s also not “oh, women stoopid!” or “bitches lie!” (although you could say it’s more “people often lie and are sometimes stupid”.) It’s about being damn cautious.

  96. says

    Giliell:

    Like I would be wondering why he thinks that he needs an additional condom after we talked about using the pill and came to that conclusion together.

    You seem to keep projecting your own relationship into this – it’s not about your relationship.

  97. carlie says

    I should probably disclose that I am speaking kind of out of my ass, because my spouse and I waited until we got married to have sex (like the cute little fundies we were), and I was on the pill for a couple of months ahead of time to be sure, so my experience with condoms is pretty much nonexistent (except for a short time after birth before the new hormonal control could kick in).

    I think it’s true that “I don’t trust anyone” is something of the flip side of “I trust myself most”, but the offense is all in how strongly a specific person in question is the target of accusation rather than it being a general principle.

  98. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    Believe me, had Mr. always worn an additional condom because he couldn’t trust me to take the pill correctly or not to lie to him, there wouldn’t be an “us” today.

    Meanwhile, I DID trust my ex to take the pill correctly and not lie to me, and that’s why there not being an “us” today is so complicated.

    Yay for anecdotes!

  99. says

    Josh:

    Straight World Problems:))

    Compleat with Drama. :D

    I will say too, that there are two different perspectives clashing – those of the ‘in a committed, trusting, long term relationship’ and those of the ‘hey, I have sex whenever I can, but not in a long term relationship’ / ‘casual sex’ / ‘dates now and then’ and so forth.

    A great deal of a person’s attitude depends on the type of relationship[s] they have going at any one time. And like everything else, contraception is personal and how it should be handled tends to be very subjective.

  100. says

    No it’s not – you’re the one making it into that. Azkyroth noted that many (actually most) young people, when first engaging in sex, very often trust people they shouldn’t. Azkyroth is absolutely fucking right about that – and that applies to both sexes.

    No, he actually didn’t.
    He said:

    Also…I’m gonna have to say this was right the first time. At least for men. :/

    No qualifier

    Of course not all women are assholes – and even the vast majority of women who are assholes aren’t likely to take this particular route, but the ones who are tend not to walk around with neon signs on their heads that say “asshole.”

    Still talking about “women”. And intentionally getting pregnant. Not even being too absent-minded to take the pill.

    Even people you trust and feel are tested can lie (and rationalize), and it’s very easy, especially when you’re young, to extend trust where you shouldn’t, for a variety of reasons.

    This is where young people appear for the first time. Yes, especially when you’re young. Not exclusively when you’re young.
    His statement wasn’t about young people and the mistakes they make, that’s what you are making it about.
    I understand that Azkyroth had a very bad experience and I understand his bitterness in some regards. I am actually impressed about the level of usual rational clear-headedness he keeps on those issues. That still doesn’t change his statements.

  101. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    (In anticipation of the inevitable response, the fact that she lied about it came from a drunken confession on her part to a formerly mutual friend, not an assumption on my part.)

  102. says

    Azkyroth

    Meanwhile, I DID trust my ex to take the pill correctly and not lie to me, and that’s why there not being an “us” today is so complicated.

    Yay for anecdotes!

    Yes, and it’s shitty. Don’t believe that I defend that action for a second. But I think to say that therefore men should never trust women about birth control is way over the top.
    Again, saying “I want to do my best to make this safe sex, therefore I always wear a condom” is really fine.

  103. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    Still talking about “women”. And intentionally getting pregnant. Not even being too absent-minded to take the pill.

    The only reason I singled women out is because, to my eternal frustration, male contraceptive pills or the like do not exist.

    In fact, insofar as one is invariably “just around the corner,” I probably erred in not including a preemptive cautionary note for young women not to assume that male partners’ contraception will be used reliably, once that situation arises.

  104. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    I just don’t think it’s fair to treat all women like one of them even after years and years of trust.

    I suppose that’s fair – my initial concern with your statement, now that I stop and think about it, wasn’t that trust would never be justified but how easy it is to jump to the conclusion that you can and should trust someone.

  105. Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain says

    Question for all of the MRAs, would I be declaring my hatred for all men if I said that Todd Akin is a horrid example of humanity?

  106. says

    I suppose that’s fair – my initial concern with your statement, now that I stop and think about it, wasn’t that trust would never be justified but how easy it is to jump to the conclusion that you can and should trust someone.

    Yes, I think that we can absolutely agree on that. Especially when you’re young and madly in love (hey, how many pregnancies started with the sentence: “trust me”).
    Unless they’ve invented anything better by then I would probably advice and help the girls to get the pill when sexual activity might be somewhere on the horizon. Just to avoid any heat of the moment 2 beers too much mistakes. And still give them condoms and instructions because there are more deadly things out there than pregnancies.

  107. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    Todd Akin is a horrid example of humanity?

    That’s excessively generous.

  108. Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain says

    Azkyroth, I could get more accurate about what I think of that shitstain on the panties of life but some upstanding people would start whining about my language. And swearing is so much worse than what Todd Akin had to say.

  109. Tethys says

    I could get more accurate about what I think of that shitstain on the panties of life but some upstanding people would start whining about my language.

    *sits down*

    Let er rip Janine. I can’t use enough expletives to describe my absolute loathing for the lifeform known as Todd Akin.

  110. Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain says

    The perfect rape testing device, pregnancy. A woman’s body will not allow a rape to produce a pregnancy. So if a woman become prenant, she really wanted and is a slut. And should have a baby to raise in order to kept her from her sluttish tendency.

    And a true woman would not want to bother others with her tale of woe that is her “legitimate rape”.

    So there is no need to ever talk about rape again. It is not a concern for the true human being.

    (Todd Akin World sounds like the lowest depths of Hell to me. Oh, wait, he is only reflecting what he thinks his big sky daddy wants for us. Oh, this sophisticated theology, it shatters the brain.)

  111. cicely says

    Well she’s just about perfect.
    ‘Cept for one liiiiiiiiitle round green thing thing.
    Given time, she will side with cicely and myself as we plot to rid the world of *[dramatic pause]* The P E A (and all of its pretty little friends *[cue maniacal laughter ]*

    Ah, Tony…apparently you missed the most recent Official Position Paper. The ratties are already on our side, working overtime to convert Evil Peas to Cute. Theirs is a holding action, destroying the peas already in play, while it is up to the rest of us to deny them the opportunity to fester and spread.

    Herbivores, Herbicides and Napalm. Words to live by.

    Where does that come from anyway? “It builds character”? How? You go through tragedy or loss and because of the experience (if you survive) you’re magically a better person in some ill defined manner? It feels like an attempt to put a positive spin on the shit we go through in life that feels unbearable. Wishful Thinking?

    Wishful thinking with a heapin’ helpin’ of What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger, I think; notwithstanding the flip-side, What Does Kill You Makes You Dead. But that’s okay; all those people who found themselves on that flip-side were weak. Not Worth Saving. Unlike Us.
    </cynicism>

    This is a vow I kept, unlike my other vow to always wash each dish and fork in my apartment as soon as I used them so I’d never have to “do dishes.”

    Is there *anybody* this works for? Sure as heck not for me.

    It worked for me, when I was in charge of the cooking&cleaning. Cook, washing each pan and utensil as I finished with it, then eat (usually The Husband was already well into the eating while I was doing clean-up because I was going to have to wait for the food to cool anyway, no reason for him to abstain). I instituted this in reaction to my deep, deep loathing of dealing with a sink-full of dirty dishes stuck on a negative feedback loop: aversion to dishes->neglect of dishes->nastier dirty dishes->stronger aversion to dishes->…..until, finally, the dishpile was unbelievably nasty and deep, and we had nothing left clean to cook with, or eat off of. The only way I could avoid the loop was to not let it get started in the first place.

    Now, however, I am no longer in charge of the cooking&cleaning, because I can’t stand there long enough. I can help with the chopping and other prep (we’ve got a little folding table and chair I use for that), but The Husband has to take it from there…and cleans to suit himself. Generally there’s a dishpile, but it’s his dishpile, and he accepts responsibility for it.

    […]unable to console me through this frustrating period of joblessness with a Tetris match)[…]

    Tetris FTW!!!

    You have stuff that’s stressing you out too. There’s nothing wrong with feeling despondent. Nor in sharing that with us.

    Indeed. “All for one and one for all! Damn the torpedos! Full speed ahead!”

    Ooh, I’m mainly a heretic and I get to go to the 6th level – the City of Dis :-D

    See you there! We’ll all have a hell of a good time.
    :) :) :)

  112. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    Wishful thinking with a heapin’ helpin’ of What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger

    Yeah. I don’t know what the people here listen to, but I’ve never met someone who was “metal” enough to actually strain-harden. ;/

  113. says

    The perfect rape testing device, pregnancy. A woman’s body will not allow a rape to produce a pregnancy. So if a woman become prenant, she really wanted and is a slut. And should have a baby to raise in order to kept her from her sluttish tendency.

    I like the comment over there that obviously if murder kills you, you must have really wanted to die, deep down inside.

  114. says

    Janine, that was more or less what I was inferring from Akin’s statements as well. The “If it’s a legitimate rape” clause gives away his rhetorical intent. And his lack of kinship with anything human.

  115. Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain says

    And his lack of kinship with anything human.

    Eriktrips, please do not do this, it is a very human thing to do and to say. I would suggest you say this instead.

    And his lack of kinship with anything humane.

    Todd Akin is fully human but he is in no way humane. His ideal is an inhumane monster that he calls love.

    (Now where the fuck did George Orwell come up with the idea of Doublespeak?)

  116. Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain says

    The scariest thing about the Akin story is that he’s still polling ahead of Claire McCaskill. WTF is wrong with people?

    And yet we are the mean bullies and the fascists for not showing his idea any respect. If we truly respected people, we would respect his belief.

  117. Wowbagger, Antipodean Dervish says

    Has anyone told PZ we’ve got a serious italics problem in Thunderdome? I’m posting here on the off-chance it’s more likely he’ll see it here than there.

  118. Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain says

    I get it. eriktrips, some of us would rather believe that someone acting human was a good thing. (I am one of those.) Which is why I felt the need to point that out

  119. says

    I like the A+ idea.

    I’m not keen on the Zapfino font – apart from the generally spindly and unaesthetic shape, it does seem a little doubtful to use the RDF’s version. I do like Jadehawk’s gnu very much, but I’m not sure we could sell it more widely. Sastra’s capital A in a loop (like an @ symbol) is quite nice, too.

    I do see SG’s point, but also I doubt that atheism is really a strong enough concept to hang a movement on. Social justice, now that’s powerful. Secularism is also wider and much more important than just atheism. I’m willing to concede atheism to the dictionary atheists, as long as that concession goes along with a strong recognition that “mere atheism is inadequate”. We need more than atheism: we need Atheism Plus, A+.

  120. cicely says

    Ogvorbis: *applause* for Boy. School full time plus assistant managering full time will certainly…build character.
    :D

    Psych-Oh! *hug*

    *hugback* for DDMFM.
    :)

    kristinc! *hug*

    I’ll back Azkyroth here – there are a whole lot of asshole women out there when it comes to contraception and ‘accidentally’ getting pregnant or passing off a pregnancy by someone else.

    Or lying and claiming to be pregnant, long enough to achieve a quicky registry-marriage. I know a guy this happened to in Real Life. Then, when it was obvious that she wasn’t, in fact, pregnant, she “must have skipped a period”, *teehee*. I’m guessing that the actual Plan involved her getting knocked up while the ink was still wet on the license, then claiming to be into overtime on the pregnancy, or that the baby would actually be early (enough to fudge the timing); but she didn’t end up pregnant. Bad timing.

    It made for a useful Teachable Moment for Son.

    I plan to vote against Todd Akin so hard.

    How can someone who thinks what Todd Akin said even exist? He must have known he was being a dumbass as soon as he said it.

    Wishful thinking. They’d like to think that “real” rape seldom results in pregnancy, because that removes a major stumbling block to solidarity with more compassionate Xians who don’t think the mother should be forced to bear a rapist’s child. And that spells VOTES.

    I came of sexual age in the AIDS era and condoms were culturally mandatory among all but a small subset of gay men. One didn’t even question it. No one wanted to take the risk and no one (in my experience) thought they were being insulted when their partner insisted on a condom.
    Treating it any other way—when the potential risks of pregnancy and disease are so high—is deeply weird to me.

    Josh, I think the difference may be that the men in the gay community were not wanting to risk a disease that, at that time, was considered tantamount to a death sentence; where as a hetero man is risking mostly diseases for which there is treatment (especially back in pre-every-damn-thing-is-drug-resistent days), or an unwanted pregnacy that an unfortunate number of men still see as Somebody Else’s Problem. She shoulda been on the Pill, she shoulda backed it up with a diaphragm or something. The Patriarchy strikes again.

  121. thunk, sour grape says

    I like the A+ idea.

    Me too, but undoubtedly some of my reservation is due to sour grapes. For some asinine reason, I’m jealous of Pt’xx/Jen/Needles/Jadehawk/etc coming up with this whole idea while I have little to offer.

    But that’s nonconstructive and bullshit.

  122. carlie says

    I like the idea of there not being an “official” logo of any sort, but any font/color variant of A+ being recognized as referring to the same thing. Diversity being good and whatnot. And also taking over all instances of A+ in the world. Heh.

    A woman’s body will not allow a rape to produce a pregnancy. So if a woman become prenant, she really wanted and is a slut. And should have a baby to raise in order to kept her from her sluttish tendency.

    And if she doesn’t drown, but instead floats, she’s made of wood, and therefore a witch. Burn her!

  123. says

    I wish acting human were always a good thing, but I have come not to expect it, necessarily. Which puzzles me all the more about why I said what I did. I actually feel quite strongly that trying to “other” those who do especially contemptible things is dangerous. Evil is so mundane we should regard our mirrors with suspicion.

    Well, that’s how I feel in my more pessimistic moments.

    On the plus side, NYTimes pollster Nate Silver believes Akin may have just torpedoed his own campaign. I hope he is as astute as all that.

  124. cicely says

    I can’t use enough expletives to describe my absolute loathing for the [ostensible] lifeform known as Todd Akin.

    (My addition.)
    I prefer to think of him as being literally a god-bot.

  125. strange gods before me ॐ says

    I do see SG’s point, but also I doubt that atheism is really a strong enough concept to hang a movement on.

    And yet, we’ve been winning already. As Jen says:

    «But the reason I’m not throwing my hands up in the air and screaming “I quit” is because we’re already winning. It’s an uphill battle, for sure – in case you’ve forgotten, scroll up and reread this post. But change is coming. Some national organizations accepted anti-harassment policies with no fuss at all. A lot of local or student groups are fabulous when it comes to issues of diversity and social justice. A number of prominent male leaders have begun speaking out against this surge of hate directed at women. I’m working with others to hopefully start an atheist/skeptical organization specifically focused on issues of equality. And although the response from the haters is getting louder and viler, they’re now vastly outnumbered by supportive comments (which wasn’t always true). This surge of hate is nothing more than the last gasp of a faction that has reached its end.»

    Social justice, now that’s powerful. Secularism is also wider and much more important than just atheism.

    And we’ve been advocating all those things already. With measureable success already.

    I’m not saying don’t involve these things in our movement, of course. (Wouldn’t that be a bizarre turnabout from me?)

    I’m only saying it’s a rhetorical mistake to start calling ourselves [adjective] atheists or atheist[modifier].

    I’m willing to concede atheism to the dictionary atheists,

    But there’s no reason to. It’s a totally unnecessary ceding of ground. Atheism is already correlated with progressivism in both fact and connotation. We can push the regressives out of the tent, if we keep up what we’ve already been doing, instead of setting up a new tent.

  126. Nutmeg says

    David M:

    Also, next year, the meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology will be in LA. That’s at least on the same coast as you, right?

    No. I haz a sad. I live in Manitoba, which is right in the middle of Canada. In general, people don’t come here. I’m going to try to do some traveling after I graduate.

    Josh:

    I don’t trust anyone enough to risk a serious health problem.

    Yes. The question is still academic for me, but that’s always been my attitude. If someone can’t understand that when I ask them to get tested, etc., it’s not about them, that’s a red flag.

    Of course, I am a giant control freak, hugely risk-averse, and I have some trust issues, so take that with a grain of salt.

  127. Socio-gen, something something... says

    Wow! I missed a lot the last couple days while out farewell partying, being touristy and changing my train reservation. Started a new & better movement, complete with symbol(s)? Awesome!

    Went to the Harriet Tubman house in Auburn NY with my daughter, mom, and brother, plus the brother’s girlfriend and the girlfriend’s mom, then paid our respects at her gravesite. Enjoyable and educational — and almost worth having to spend the 2 hrs each way in a car with my mother.

    Caine:
    Zoe, too? Oh dearz…..

    On a more positive note, all the adorable ratlet photos have begun curing my embarrassing scream and “ohgodohgodohgod” hand-flapping and levitation reaction to rats and mice. (Which, my children assure me, is quite fun to watch.) I’m down to mostly just mumbling the ohgod part and quickly closing the browser tab.

    I’m not anywhere near to wanting one of my own, even virtually, but this is progress of a sort.

    thunk:
    *hugs* and good luck for a successful year!

    Ogvorbis:
    Congrats to your son on his new job! I’m always impressed by those who can do work and school full-time. (Even more so by the ones who combine those two with parenting young children.) My first semester, I found out the hard way that more than 20 hrs/week plus school will end badly for me. I guess I’m just too old now to run on very little sleep.

    Nutmeg:
    I haven’t yet killed any family yet. But there are 72 hours or so until they’re completely safe.

    My mom was almost human yesterday (mostly a good show for the brother’s girlfriend’s mom) but couldn’t resist getting in a few digs at me throughout the day.

    I very much regret not taking my original train.

  128. ImaginesABeach says

    Just to pile on the condom train – I heard on NPR (National Public Radio for you non-USAians) that we are pretty close to having drug resistant gonorrhea available worldwide.

  129. says

    @Janine:

    And yet we are the mean bullies and the fascists for not showing his idea any respect. If we truly respected people, we would respect his belief.

    Quite so. It’s not like we’re showing any respect for humanity when we call out hateful dumbasses on their dangerously stupid ideas.

    RESPECT for hateful dumbasses and their dangerously stupid ideas!

    It’s what’s for breakfast.

    Also: I’m with carlie on the “any font/color variant of A+.” Working it into my blog header as we speak.

  130. ImaginesABeach says

    I don’t know who exactly holds the patent on the new gonorrhea, but they are welcome to ALL the gonorrhea so USE A DAMN CONDOM!

  131. ImaginesABeach says

    (addendum to my 178) or other appropriate barrier…

    My apologies to those among us for whom a condom would be as useful as a church.

  132. strange gods before me ॐ says

    I’m hoping the new NPR gonorrhea is better than the old gonorrhea.

    I’m sure it will be, all things considered.

  133. Tethys says

    I’m sure it will be, all things considered.

    :D

    Though I did nearly aspirate the bite of food I was eating when I read this.

  134. says

    Janine:

    Todd Akin World sounds like the lowest depths of Hell to me.

    Between his whole “legitimate” rape and his dislike (and disbelief) of marital rape, I’d say he’s a person who refuses to believe that rape can actually happen. He’s old school bitches be property.

    Cicely:

    Or lying and claiming to be pregnant, long enough to achieve a quicky registry-marriage.

    This too. I knew a woman who did this, which shocked the hell out of me because I knew for a fact she’d had a hysterectomy some years before. I told her brand new husband, because I simply had no idea of how far she might try to take this nonsense. A rapid divorce was the result and she actually tried to sue me for telling her husband!

  135. says

    Socio-gen:

    On a more positive note, all the adorable ratlet photos have begun curing my embarrassing scream and “ohgodohgodohgod” hand-flapping and levitation reaction to rats and mice.

    There’s no obligation to gaze upon rattiness, but I’m glad for your, um, desensitisation.

  136. says

    SG:

    Atheism is already correlated with progressivism in both fact and connotation.

    It’s this part that I disagree with. Most people I know, including many actual atheists, think of people who call themselves atheists as tedious socially-incompetent possibly-libertarian up-themselves self-important smug white male gits. We’re shifting that, but atheism-plus still allows the shift, while asserting immediately that there is more.

    I don’t think that your point is stupid; but I think that reasonable people can disagree on this. It may be location-dependent.

  137. Tethys says

    she actually tried to sue me for telling her husband!

    Wow, that’s industrial grade asshole behavior. I can’t imagine
    what she thought her legal rights were when her lie was exposed.

  138. Socio-gen, something something... says

    Caine:
    Peer pressure gets me every time. LOL Everyone else thinks they’re adorable and cuddly, so I talk myself into looking.

    They are winning me over, ever so slowly.

  139. carlie says

    I’m sure it will be, all things considered.

    Now now, don’t go making any snap judgments.

  140. says

    carlie:

    And if she doesn’t drown, but instead floats, she’s made of wood, and therefore a witch. Burn her!

    That’s exactly what I first thought.

    Ing:

    Well regular gonorrhea causes gross discharges…NPR gonorrhea causes Terry Gross discharges.

    I just snorted. NPR puns are a breath of fresh air.

    Caine:

    she actually tried to sue me for telling her husband!

    For what?! Defamation? I hope someone quickly told her truth is an absolute defense… (in the U.S., anyway).

    Tony: (belatedly)

    sounds like someone likes ice cream

    …I can quit anytime I wa–oooooh moose tracks… /brb.

  141. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    …I can quit anytime I wa–oooooh moose tracks… /brb.

    I fucking love moose tracks. The closest thing to it I’ve found in AZ is the Blue Bunny Bunny Tracks version. I still miss real moose tracks from MI. Goddamn that shit is good.

  142. broboxley OT says

    its interesting that the dems in missouri worked hard to ensure akins would appear on the ballot to ensure the senate seat. I really dont want McCaskill to win but to replace her with someone that ignorant would be wrong.

    (dont want her to win because of her hate of native americans)

  143. says

    JAL:

    I still miss real moose tracks from MI.

    Huh, I’m so Midwest-insulated that I didn’t even know that was a local Michigan thing. It is good, but then, I’m obviously not terribly picky about flavor. Consistency, though, that’s where I get finicky. Another great Midwestern creamery has the unfortunate joke-prone name of “Whitey’s” but dang it’s delicious.

  144. says

    Caine:

    She went to a bunch of lawyers, who all, from what I heard, tried to explain to her that she couldn’t do that.

    See, not all of us are that bad :-| but jeez that’s ridiculous. Some people will go to preposterous lengths to blame other people for their totally self-inflicted wounds.

  145. says

    Broboxley:

    but to replace her with someone that ignorant would be wrong.

    No, Akin isn’t ignorant. He knows damn well that it’s perfectly possible for rapes to take place, he knows they do take place, and he knows they can result in pregnancy. He just prefers to take a biblical view of such things, which makes him more despicable in my eyes. He’s dangerous and he shouldn’t be excused on the grounds of ignorance.

  146. broboxley OT says

    Caine, ignorant was the wrong adjective. Willfully indoctrinated with stupid may be better.

  147. says

    Caine, ignorant was the wrong adjective. Willfully indoctrinated with stupid may be better.

    I’ve stopped trying to differentiate for a while now. I’m not sure if that’s fair to people who are quite as vile, but I don’t have the patience to ferret it out anymore. And, for certain sets of people, I don’t understand how they could be ignorant of such basic facts. But then, I don’t understand a lot of things.

  148. cicely says

    Akin is not ignorant, and is playing to the fundies in their often-deliberate ignorance and carefully-cultivated stupidity.

  149. says

    Portia:

    And, for certain sets of people, I don’t understand how they could be ignorant of such basic facts.

    People can be honestly ignorant. Growing up old school catholic, I saw kids who were so sheltered their ignorance on many matters was nothing short of stunning.

    That said, I do think it’s important to differentiate between actual ignorance and willful ignorance. I don’t want to see Akin characterized as stupid a/o ignorant. He reminds me of Huckabee, who is very intelligent. I imagine Akin is intelligent enough and is well aware of the actual reality of things, it simply doesn’t conveniently fit his preferred world view, so he sets out to distort and create his own ‘facts’. It’s deliberate dishonesty and I do think it makes these particular politicians much more dangerous than one who was honestly ignorant about a subject.

  150. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    We wound up using the blueberry goat cheese in omelets. My parents liked them, but I thought it was too rich. O.o

  151. ChasCPeterson says

    WAIT WAIT DON’T TELL ME!

    ex-wife #2 actually has Carl Kasel’s voice on her answering machine.
    No shit.
    She was 3 for 3.

  152. Lyn M: Necrodunker of death, nothing but net says

    Yeah, there’s sheltered dumb, there’s I-don’t-want-to-know-about-stuff dumb, but the prize-winner in my books, is the I-don’t-want-to-know-because-it-will-totally-upset-my-cozy-little-world dumb. And THAT is impervious to any known education.
    At least as long as it’s illegal to beat them with a dead laptop.

    And no, I don’t know if that would work, but there are entire weeks when I long to find out.

  153. says

    Chas:

    ex-wife #2 actually has Carl Kasel’s voice on her answering machine.
    No shit.
    She was 3 for 3.

    I love that show.

    Caine:

    I saw kids who were so sheltered their ignorance on many matters was nothing short of stunning.

    I grew up with those kids. I was one of those kids. I’m still recovering (Not Catholic school, like my SO, but Christian homeschooling for me). And I’m still figuring out how much leeway to give people who grew up like me but never tried to figure things out after they “grew up.” (Which is why I added the qualifier “certain sets”).

    Lyn M:

    there’s sheltered dumb, there’s I-don’t-want-to-know-about-stuff dumb, but the prize-winner in my books, is the I-don’t-want-to-know-because-it-will-totally-upset-my-cozy-little-world dumb.

    But how do you tell the difference, sometimes?

    I’m off to bed, have a good night, all. (Or whatever your time of day is about to be). Will catch up tomorrow.

  154. Lyn M: Necrodunker of death, nothing but net says

    portia

    The ones with a lot of privilege, about which they profess total ignorance, tend to fall into the last category. I do not accept that if you have a trust fund so large that you need not work, that you truly do not know that it is unusual. I feel the same about people who announce, “The poor want to be that way because they are too lazy to work. So I don’t give to charity.”

    THAT kind of person.

    But truly, some are just dumb. Usually takes time and observation to separate them. Also, the middle ones will change an opinion if you give them facts. Sometimes. A bit.

  155. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    …oh. I stumbled across the term “jorts” in an image macro and googled it. Apparently there is now a vocal segment of culture which decrees that denim shorts – I mean, fucking denim fucking shorts are simply unacceptable to wear all of a sudden.

    Has anyone else encountered this? Is this some sort of tasteless internet prank? Is there actually a sizable segment of the population that thinks this way? And if so, what future does a species capable of such idiocy have?

  156. theophontes (坏蛋) says

    [A+ Logo]

    If anyone is looking for an A+ logo to use as a gravatar, you can download here: Linky. You will need to download to see properly as it is a transparent GIF. Good for gravataring, but poorly presented on the skydrive.

    With regard to not adding to our “Atheist” title with adjectives, I fully agree. But we can also use the plus (without ever saying “plus”) as an online emphasis that it’s the whole deal. And the more the merrier.

  157. says

    Good morning
    Little sleep, still too hot

    she actually tried to sue me for telling her husband!

    Wow, that’s industrial grade asshole behavior. I can’t imagine
    what she thought her legal rights were when her lie was exposed.

    She could marry Vacula next, they’d suit each other.
    Hey, after we were sued for the damage to a car that drove backwards into our baby stroller, I believe everything. And my BFF is a lawyer. I know stories (you wouldn’t believe how many people think it a good idea not to pay a lawyer’s bill

  158. theophontes (坏蛋) says

    Ibis3

    It’s the symbol for an intersection. How cool is that?

    And a fertility symbol, and a xtian cross…. ;)

  159. strange gods before me ॐ says

    But we can also use the plus (without ever saying “plus”)

    Warblgarbl! ;)

    I sure can’t. I’m subvocalizing it right now. It might as well be a word.

  160. theophontes (坏蛋) says

    @ SG

    I sure can’t. I’m subvocalizing it right now. It might as well be a word.

    Damn! And there I was, patting myself on the back for coming up with a new A+ variant!

  161. says

    Uhm, not saying it but actually meaning it still doesn’t change the fact that he really distrusts the woman in the realtionship and thinks he has to protect himself against her unreliability or evil. That’s not a really good basis for a respectful relationship.
    Yes, contraception is something two people should care about. But to have my ability to handle something or my trustworthieness questioned by somebody I love and trust doesn’t say “equal relationship” to me but “stoopid bitches lie”

    well then I guess I’m not capable of a “respectful relationship”. because fuck if I’ll ever rely on a man to protect me from a pregnancy I don’t want. I am always going to insist on being able to control that. And, sure, it’s less visceral a problem for guys, but why shouldn’t they also have the right to be/feel in control of their reproduction?

  162. says

    And, sure, it’s less visceral a problem for guys, but why shouldn’t they also have the right to be/feel in control of their reproduction?

    I give up.
    Since apparently I’m so bad at communicating my argument that everybody needs to argue against something I didn’t say, I should simply stop.

  163. says

    I’ve always thought if you need a prenup (for anyone who isn’t filthy rich with oddly family entangled holdings that are complicated), then you aren’t quite ready to marry a person.

    O.o

    getting married with the idea that of course you’re not going to get divorced is dangerously naive. it’s garbage left over from religion. as such, making sure that you and your spouse agree on what would happen if you split up seems kinda essential, before signing a legally binding contract.

  164. dianne says

    Little sleep, still too hot

    I think it hit 40 here yesterday. The little one and I snapped and snarled at each other until we finally said heck with it, went to the Hbf and bought some diet coke and mentos. We made like juvenile delinquents for the rest of the afternoon. Fortunately there’s a bit of grass without obvious owner not far from our apartment to spray diet coke all over. Sprayed it down with water afterwards in case there’s something toxic to grass in the soda. Plus the water fight got us cooled off as well.

  165. says

    actually, Giliell, it was me who wasn’t communicating clearly. I was trying to get the point across that as a general rule, women shouldn’t ever give up control of BC. And therefore, I think men shouldn’t, either. Even with people you think you can trust.

    Men are sort of fucked in this situation, because a pill for them doesn’t exist, and this isn’t sufficiently widespread, so they’re stuck with insisting on condoms. And I have to say, if I were a dude, I would. Always. I cannot understand dudes who ever agree to give up their reproductive rights, to anyone, no matter how trusted.

    therefore, I cannot get behind the idea that saying all men should retain control over their own reproduction is somehow equivalent to “all women are liars”

  166. Tony •King of the Hellmouth• says

    Somehow, I don’t think Paul Ryan’s mother will be needing Medicare.

    Republican vice presidential pick Paul Ryan sought to reassure Floridians over his controversial plans for senior healthcare on Saturday, relying on his 78-year-old mother to lend a hand.

    “Mom” Betty was introduced to a cheering partisan crowd at The Villages, a gated retirement cluster in the state, as her son looked to counter claims that his budget proposals would see America’s cherished Medicare provisions turned into a stripped-down voucher system.

    Going on the offensive over the issue, Mitt Romney’s running mate said President Obama’s healthcare reforms would see “one in six” hospitals go out of business and force 4 million seniors to lose their current Medicare advantage plans, which are provided by private insurers.

    Moreover, a Romney-Ryan administration would not allow a “board of bureaucrats” to “mess with my mom’s healthcare, or your mom’s healthcare”, the VP hopeful said.

    His comments got a parental nod of approval from Betty, who sat beside him as he campaigned in Florida, a key swing state.

    “My mom is a snowbird … she comes down here or the winter just like so many families around the country,” Ryan added in a further bid to win over an already partisan crowd.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/18/paul-ryan-mother-medicare-florida

    So he brought his mother as an appeal to emotion, and then didn’t discuss anything substantial about his health care plans?
    That was his way of “going on the offensive”?

  167. says

    That was his way of “going on the offensive”?

    well, I personally consider his lies about the AHA offensive. does that count?

  168. dianne says

    Ah, privatizing Medicare. uch a wonderful idea! We already have a version of that in place. It’s called Medicare part C and basically is an HMO version of Medicare. And most people on it do surprisingly well. Many plans say their enrollees’ survival is higher than average for the age group. And, of course, they don’t discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. That would be illegal. If their offices always seem to be on the fifth or sixth floor of buildings without elevators and they require a yearly in person renewal of enrollment, that’s totally coincidental. Nothing at all to do with making sure that people with their insurance don’t have CHF or severe anemia or conditions that confine them to a wheelchair or drop their insurance if they develop such conditions…Nothing at all.

  169. dianne says

    Does Atkin’s statement remind anyone else of Newt’s statement about how women shouldn’t be in combat because men are naturally made to “roll in mud” but women would get “infections”? Same sort of biology fail and sexism.

  170. says

    You’re setting up Dawkins as symbolizing pure atheism.

    You misread. I said he was the face of the current atheism movement, not that of all atheism ever, or of nothing but atheism.

    I will say this again, sharing the lack of a belief in something is not enough social glue to build a cohesive movement. A lot of atheists do not automatically apply the skepticism and critical thinking which they apply to the supernatural also to issues of social justice, just as skeptics too often are only skeptical about their personal pet peeve and nothing else. What’s needed is a movement that is a “best of”, where atheism is but one part.

  171. says

    Dawkins is still receiving criticism from religious bigots for agreeing to attend a Highlands book festival, but not to debate the local fundies, apparently called the “Wee Frees”. Article here

    Love one of the comments under that article in response to a commenter accusing secularists of attempting to rewrite history:

    The King James version
    of the New Testament was completed in 1611 by 8 members of the Church
    of England.

    There were (and still
    are) no original texts to translate. The oldest manuscripts we have
    were written down hundreds of years after the last apostle died.
    There were over 8,000 of these old manuscripts, with no two
    alike.

    The King James translators used none of these, anyway.
    Instead, they edited previous translations to create a version their
    king and parliament would approve.

    So, 21st
    century christians believe the “Word of God” is a book edited in
    the 17th century from 16 century from 16th
    century translations of 8,000 contradictory copies of 4th
    century scrolls of lost letters written in the 1st century.

    Do you still want to talk about rewriting history?

  172. birgerjohansson says

    When reading about a Baywatch actor loking for the Ark at Mt Ararat (wich is not necessarily the same meountain mentioned in the bibble) I came up with an ehvil(TM) idea.
    Let’s get some really old logs that have been preserved in peat bogs. Carve out some crude planks and plant them on Mt Ararat.
    .
    When the fundies do C14 tests they will go crazy with the “proof” of some ancient ship remains.
    .
    Wait a bit…then publish the video of how the planks were made. Isotope analysis will confirm they came from Not-Middle East (they can pinpoint the place where a tree grew these days).
    .
    BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!*

    We can name the operation after the asshole who smeared ACORN with edited recordings.

  173. theophontes (坏蛋) says

    @ Tony

    [aRyan] “My mom is a snowbird … she comes down here or the winter just like so many families around the country,”

    Amirite?: “a snowbird” – This means his mom flies around the country chasing the sun? Not really representative of those people Obama is trying to provide with basic medical services anyhow. (Does her private nurse fly with her on these little jaunts?) They are positively quivering with blind privilege.

  174. theophontes (坏蛋) says

    @ birger

    Mt Ararat

    Woah Safari! If you really want to take the piss, plant the planks in Kurdistan – on Mount Judi. (Proving Mohammad was right… ;)

  175. Amblebury says

    Oh FFS, Ryan cites his Mom’s having the resources to take annual flights to a warmer climate as being, y’know, just what folks do? As an appeal to the common folk?

    Bleargh.

  176. Amblebury says

    Mt Ararat

    Make sure someone carves an inverted pentagram somewhere on the timber. Just fer the lulz.

  177. says

    Not much happening here tonight. I just realised I’ve never watched “Inherit the Wind”, so I’ll do that now. The 1960 one, with Gene Kelly as Mencken. Anyone seen that?

  178. John Morales says

    birgerjohansson @231:

    Let’s get some really old logs that have been preserved in peat bogs. Carve out some crude planks and plant them on Mt Ararat.

    Been done already.

  179. theophontes (坏蛋) says

    @ rorschach

    Inherit the Wind

    Definitely worth watching. IIRC it is in the public domain and so anyone can download it for free. (Also, more IIRC, it is not quite 100% historical but gives a good sense of what was happening back then.)

  180. says

    Dianne
    We just stayed inside. House is well insulated and if you close the windows at the right time it limitis the heat. But yur idea sounds fun, too.

    Jadehawk
    No, I simply disagree with the absolute statement that men/women should never ever do that.
    Your personal risk-management is yours and fine. It just doesn’t mean that other people who run different risks for different benefits are stupid or careless.

  181. Beatrice says

    I don’t know if I’ve said something wrong for Ophelia to ban me :(.

    I tried to post a comment and it didn’t appear, but when I wanted to repost it I get the duplicate warning.

    Then I added a bit at the front and tried to post that, but again nothing.

  182. oolon says

    @Beatrice – I had posts swallowed when they had lots of links in… Dunno about Ophelia but here it is up to 5. Tried posting a simple textual comment with no tags?

  183. Beatrice says

    There were no links, the most it had were quotes and italics which I see in other posts.

    I hesitate to try again, in case three almost identical comments eventually make it out of moderation.

  184. Beatrice says

    Giliell,

    Don’t bother. I hope it’s just some technical glitch. I think I had a problem like that on some other FTB blog a couple of weeks ago and then later posted again with no problem.

  185. says

    Don’t bother. I hope it’s just some technical glitch. I think I had a problem like that on some other FTB blog a couple of weeks ago and then later posted again with no problem.

    Yes, that happened to me, too.
    Sometimes there are just weird combinations of words that trigger spam-filters

  186. carlie says

    getting married with the idea that of course you’re not going to get divorced is dangerously naive.

    Oh, of course divorce is a possibility. I’m talking about the idea that you don’t trust that the person isn’t going to turn into a selfish irresponsible person who can’t be reasoned with.
    If you think the person you’re marrying might be like that, why are you marrying them?

    “My mom is a snowbird … she comes down here for the winter just like so many families around the country,” Ryan added in a further bid to win over an already partisan crowd.

    Sure, because everyone can afford to have a second home for the winter.

  187. opposablethumbs says

    I wish I knew how to do all that mind-over-matter stuff. Right now, by merely thinking about the fact that in a few hours we’re dispatching Spawn#2 to travel on his own for the first time in his life, I am causing my pulse to race wildly and my stomach to clench unpleasantly with that adrenaline-rush feeling. Even though he’s being met at the other end by a lovely family who will be looking after him for a few days.

    Now if only I knew how to control my pulse and tension levels in the opposite direction …

  188. dianne says

    To be fairish to Ryan, a fair number of upper middle class and even middle class people do the snowbird thing and I doubt his understanding of the world includes people of less than middle class so he’s probably being as inclusive as he possibly can be. Which is to say, not very.

  189. carlie says

    opposablethumbs – I empathize. He knows how to call home if something gets messed up though, yes? He’ll never be in the middle of nowhere, and he’ll always be able to contact you. Anybody would loan a traveling kid a phone.

  190. thunk, sour grape says

    Audley:

    Its that you did lots of activities during your time in school, yet I can’t be arsed to. I need to work on that.

  191. Beatrice says

    I shouldn’t argue with entitled sexist assholes when I’m already angry.

    Urgh. I know I can be a bit too needy and boring, but my own father could probably stand to listen to me for fucking two minutes without saying that I “don’t need to talk about this any more” and changing the topic into something he can blather about for half an hour. Without needing my input, of course. It’s not like I would have anything intelligent to say.

    Argh. And if I show that I’m insulted, then I’m the one who can’t be lived with. I’m the reason we can never talk normally. I’m the one ruining his every day.

    Because talking normally is talking about things he is interested in and me shutting up or agreeing with him enthusiastically.

  192. thunk, sour grape says

    Beatrice:

    Urgh. I know I can be a bit too needy and boring, but my own father could probably stand to listen to me for fucking two minutes without saying that I “don’t need to talk about this any more” and changing the topic into something he can blather about for half an hour. Without needing my input, of course. It’s not like I would have anything intelligent to say.

    Argh. And if I show that I’m insulted, then I’m the one who can’t be lived with. I’m the reason we can never talk normally. I’m the one ruining his every day.

    Because talking normally is talking about things he is interested in and me shutting up or agreeing with him enthusiastically.

    Sounds awfully familiar. Maybe not quite to that extent though.

  193. says

    Carlie:

    I’m talking about the idea that you don’t trust that the person isn’t going to turn into a selfish irresponsible person who can’t be reasoned with.
    If you think the person you’re marrying might be like that, why are you marrying them?

    I’m baffled that the thought of being sensible and cautious is taken to be an automatic negation of trust. I think this is why so many marriages/relationships end up in the trash, suffering from over-romanticizing and not enough sense.

    Simply accepting the reality that things may, at some point, go haywire (or simply be a matter of growing apart) doesn’t mean you don’t trust your partner. It does mean you recognize the fact that people can and do change.

  194. says

    Beatrice:

    Because talking normally is talking about things he is interested in and me shutting up or agreeing with him enthusiastically.

    Oy. I’m surprised you can breathe, with an ego like that sucking all the air out of the room.

  195. birgerjohansson says

    WOW! “PayPal founder bankrolls 3-D printed meat” http://phys.org/news/2012-08-paypal-founder-bankrolls-d-meat.html
    The raw material is lab-grown meat.

    So you could eat synthetic panda beef without a bad conscience.
    And the phrase “body of Christ” might get a new meaning.
    — — — — —
    So, instead of cattle, we use labs. And the remaining farm animals would get a photosynthesis app, to save on fodder. (see @ 30)

  196. blf says

    I am, however, out of ratlets.

    Being somewhat north of twenty-five of the forty-foot high killers, I’d have thought you be more like to out of house, home, yard, neighbourhood, and come to that, neighbours.

    Very similar to what happens when attacked by peas.

  197. Socio-gen, something something... says

    opposable thumbs:
    Even with three, I never managed to figure how not to worry myself sick when they traveled solo the first time. Heck, I still go through it when they fly or make long road trips. My brain knows they’ll be fine, but the rest of me is a wreck until they arrive safely.

    It never really worked for me, but some folks claim box-breathing helps calm the heart rate. (inhale to a count of 4, hold 4, exhale 4, hold 4.)

    carlie:

    I’m talking about the idea that you don’t trust that the person isn’t going to turn into a selfish irresponsible person who can’t be reasoned with.
    If you think the person you’re marrying might be like that, why are you marrying them?

    Because divorce is often a highly charged, very emotional process. People can do things during one that you would never imagine them capable of. Rather than wait until you are dealing with someone you never knew existed, it is better to spell things out when you are both in a rational (and generous) frame of mind. Particularly if there are, or will be, children involved.

    I see it as no different than making out a will and having advanced directives in place in the event of incapacity.

    Beatrice:

    And if I show that I’m insulted, then I’m the one who can’t be lived with. I’m the reason we can never talk normally. I’m the one ruining his every day.

    Because talking normally is talking about things he is interested in and me shutting up or agreeing with him enthusiastically.

    That perfectly describes my mother. My sole job in conversation with her is to say, “Yes, okay, right” while she expounds. Even if (or especially if) the topic is me and my fucked up life.

  198. opposablethumbs says

    Giliell

    Want a sweetie to suck on?

    Yes please! Can I take three?

    He’ll do it just fine

    Hope so!

    carlie

    I empathize. He knows how to call home if something gets messed up though, yes? He’ll never be in the middle of nowhere, and he’ll always be able to contact you. Anybody would loan a traveling kid a phone.

    But we’ll be so far awaaaaaaayyyyyy ::wibbles::
    We’ve gone over it a bit, what to do if X or if Y happens … and the other family sent their Spawn to us last month (also first time travelling alone!) and it went just fine. I’ll be happier when I get a text saying the eaglet has landed, though :)

    thunk

    Best of luck for the spawn.

    Thank you, thunk!

    Beatrice

    Because talking normally is talking about things he is interested in and me shutting up or agreeing with him enthusiastically.

    Fuck but those symptoms sound familiar … I really hope there’s a cure. But until the time when (or if) a cure is found, you take care of your own blood pressure and sanity and tension levels (and tooth-grinding). One day it will eventually stop being a problem that he imposes on you, and will just be his problem. I really feel for you on this.

  199. opposablethumbs says

    Socio-gen,

    My brain knows they’ll be fine, but the rest of me is a wreck until they arrive safely.

    Exactly. We set out in about half an hour to see him off, and I am definitely wibbly just now (though I know I’ll be fine tonight once he’s safely there). Thank you for the breathing advice, I may just try that when we wave him out of sight!

  200. dianne says

    I know I can be a bit too needy and boring

    Can’t say I’ve seen much in the way of needy and boring out of you. Try harder. Or don’t. We like you as you are. (If the horde will excuse me for speaking for it.)

  201. says

    beatrice
    My comiserations. It must be horrible to be stuck there at the moment. I know what makes life bearable for me is having my own flat.

    I’m baffled that the thought of being sensible and cautious is taken to be an automatic negation of trust. I think this is why so many marriages/relationships end up in the trash, suffering from over-romanticizing and not enough sense.

    And others fail from too much control and too little trust. There’s sensible precautions and there’s paranoia. No average person in Germany needs a prenuptial (unless there’s some property that should go a certain way, say to a first-marriage child or something like that). So, somebody insisting on a prenuptial who’s you know, just the ordinary person with an oridnary job and ordinary property is probably a paranoic control-freak. If your ex wants to split up with you peacefully they’ll do, if they want to hurt you they will.

  202. Pteryxx says

    I’m talking about the idea that you don’t trust that the person isn’t going to turn into a selfish irresponsible person who can’t be reasoned with.
    If you think the person you’re marrying might be like that, why are you marrying them?

    As someone abused for over a decade by the person I thought would be my partner for life, do you REALLY want an answer to that?

  203. Beatrice says

    Sharing the pain feels somewhat better, but I’m sorry to hear so many other parents are also terribly self-centered/domineering.

    The person I feel even more bad for is my mum. When I move out and they both retire, he’s going to drive her out of her mind. She already had a domineering mother of her own and now my father… and I’m afraid I sometimes take after them both, even though I try not to and try to make it up by defending mum when he’s an asshole to her.

    Family drama

  204. dianne says

    @260: I wonder if it uses FCS in the culture medium. Also, ew! to the “Body of Christ” thing.

  205. says

    Giliell:

    no average person in Germany needs a prenuptial (unless there’s some property that should go a certain way, say to a first-marriage child or something like that).

    How do you know this? You can speak for every single person in Germany now? Don’t quote “laws”, either. Laws don’t cover everything and relationships are not fucking static – they change, just like the people in them. Money changes, circumstances change, amount of children changes, and so forth.

    So, somebody insisting on a prenuptial who’s you know, just the ordinary person with an oridnary job and ordinary property is probably a paranoic control-freak. If your ex wants to split up with you peacefully they’ll do, if they want to hurt you they will.

    No. You have this overly romantic view that you don’t want challenged. For you, it’s all or nothing. The fact that other people are capable of having a more pragmatic view does not mean they don’t trust or love their partners, Giliell.

    As for “peacefully splitting up”, again, you make no allowance whatsoever for people changing.

  206. Louis says

    {Sigh}

    I fear this Hunstoddard person is a self obsessed fool. I know, I know, meanness in the lounge, someone threadcop me (and if anyone does, here is a prearranged “fuck off!”, I am expressing moderate frustration, not character assassination). Why, why do I try to treat people vaguely sensibly on occasion? WHY!!!!?!!?!!?!?!?!? I might as well fart reason into a hurricane of stupid for all it’s worth.

    Don’t mind me. I think I may have to start drinking early this week.*

    Louis

    * Actual frustration may be being exaggerated for comedy benefit.

  207. Esteleth, Who Knows How to Use Google says

    Hooboy am I threadrupt.

    I am also angry at myself.

    Protip: if you intend to do an assay where you ask the question, “How many of these are alive?” try not to dump paraformaldehyde all over them. This will guarantee that your answer will be NONE.

    (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

  208. Louis says

    Caine,

    Pancreases and livers are hugely overrated. Both are evil and deserve to be punished.

    What’s your poison?

    Louis

  209. says

    Time for me to whine some more…

    My wife is really freaking out about our money situation. Like really bad, and apologizing for “screwing up” because she got fired from the job that caused us to move here in the first place and then not being able to keep a job since then. I don’t know what to say other than to be reassuring and stuff, but then I don’t get to panic or freak out or show any negative emotions because one of us has to keep their shit together… fuck.

    Also in sadly shameless plugging, over on my blog I’ve started the Great Guitar Selection Thingy 2012! Help me pick a new guitar, which will forever be know as… Something-something, SpokesGuitar?

  210. Esteleth, Who Knows How to Use Google says

    Anyway! I posted about this on FB (i.e. my FB), meaning some who are on FB know of this, but I’m saying it again:

    Saturday, September 22. My place.

    I am celebrating 5 years of being cancer free.

    Hordelings who are in the Northeast of the US (or in the Southeast of Canada, I guess) are invited to come by. Those who are too far away are invited to raise a glass to me.

  211. Louis says

    Improbable Joe,

    Ahhhhh yes, I know THAT feeling.

    My answer to the guitar thing, without even going to your blog, is “custom Les Paul”. It always will be “Custom Les Paul”, it always has been “Custom Les Paul”. Unless you are feeling like a ridiculous Steve Vai Flying V or Ibanez.

    Yes I favour a certain era of metal, what of it? ;-)

    Anyway, dude, I sympathise with your money worries, we have to find a month’s overlap for two mortgages + bills etc as we are moving house (fingers crossed) in the next month. I know it’s a bit of a “#firstworldmiddleclassproblem”, so I am not comparing levels of stress and hardship. Just that I get it. I hope you get through it all unscathed and I wish I could be of more use than a virtual shoulder punch to cheer you up.

    Louis

  212. says

    Caine

    How do you know this? You can speak for every single person in Germany now? Don’t quote “laws”, either.

    Legal advice.
    Really, if all the legal experts (who’d profit from drawing them up) agree that no, really, they’re not necessary, that’s good enough for me.

    Laws don’t cover everything and relationships are not fucking static – they change, just like the people in them. Money changes, circumstances change, amount of children changes, and so forth.

    That’s evidentially true, only that you can’t provide for that in a prenuptial either. Because, yes, things change. So, either you change your contract with every single thing that changes, or you’re no better off than people with normal legal regulations.

  213. drbunsen, le savant fous says

    Interesting. Killfile doesn’t work on nested threads. It appears on the top comment of each sub-thread, but not on replies.

    Yeah, I’m back. /waves tentacles. What problem? I can quit anytime.

  214. Beatrice says

    I am celebrating 5 years of being cancer free.

    Raising a cup of coffee right now, but I’ll remember you on the 22nd too.

  215. Louis says

    Drbunsen,

    Welcome back! Good to see you.

    What problem? I can quit anytime.

    Me too! What a coinkydink!

    ;-)

    Louis

  216. zulu says

    Not sure this is the right place for this, but. A friend of mine became a Mormon in the last year or so and we’ve been having a bit of an e-mail joust.

    Now however he’s called in some big gun from church, who sent me a letter “Atheist challenge”.

    I’m not up to taking this appart yet, so would anyone like to have some fun. I would greatly appreciate it.

  217. Louis says

    OH THE HORROR! THE CAFFEINE!!! IT JUST ISN’T WORKING!!!! ADMINISTER THE DIRECT INJECTION OF ADRENALINE TO THE HEART!

    Louis

  218. carlie says

    Whew! I was getting some bad errors across all of FTB for awhile there. Glad it’s back.

    I’m baffled that the thought of being sensible and cautious is taken to be an automatic negation of trust. I think this is why so many marriages/relationships end up in the trash, suffering from over-romanticizing and not enough sense.

    I guess I assume too much faith in the divorce court system, that in general things would end up being distributed fairly even if the players were being nasty. That is a definite environmental bias on my part, which I see I need to work on.

  219. says

    Esteleth, fucking congrats!

    Louis, it would be “Les Paul” except I’m expecting to get my Les Paul back from the pawn shop, and two Les Pauls feels like overkill. There are Ibanez guitars in the list although no Steve Vai guitar (I want the PINK ONE!), I’ve got a similar 80s affection/affliction. And except for the fact that my financial cliff is really really steep, I’m still in the first-world problems category. My wife’s first full paycheck will have us caught up completely, the second one goes in the bank, and the third one buys me a new guitar and still leaves enough for to pay the bills.

  220. blf says

    My guess is the “atheist challenge” is this boiler-plate crap, which has dazzling insightful questions such as:

    4. If we are ancesoters/descendants of Apes, then why are there no transitional fossils or species to support this theory?

    The remainder is just as inane.

  221. zulu says

    Sorry for the wall of text guys, my computer foo ain’t that good. Have fun.

    “The concept of a beginning or end of matter and energy, space and time is preposterous as a before and after are inescapable and ipso facto all energy and matter(which appears to be organised energy) have obviously always existed.

    The magnitude of the range of complexity of living organisms does not prove a beginning but rather suggests an evolutionary procession which, given infinity, would be one of an infinite sequence of such processions. It seems rather puerile for science to deduce and teach an ultimate beginning or life by chance as fact or even the predominant theory.

    Man has repeatedly fallen into this same trap in the sequence of scientific discovery, from an earth centred universe to a solar universe to a galaxy filled universe to a multidimensional multi-verse, always teaching new ideas as fact. As with the ever-expanding cosmological vision, so with the ever-expanding microscopy of our view into the components of existence. Man keeps on making his bold deductions about atomic structure, quantum mechanics, string theory, etc.

    Evolution is just another of man’s interpretations derived from glimpses of the greater complexity of existence, which glimpses he has managed by virtue of his latest technologies which are backward by contrast with those he has set his mind to.

    Man’s need for a beginning drives him to conjure such ideas as life by chance or a beginning of the primary dimensions. If eternal existence, which seems the only plausible theory, is embraced, man can stop expending himself on his obsession with origin.

    A race which has mastered the science and forces of the Universe (where universe is used in its original context, everything) or at least of a cosmos(the area of our visible universe), could certainly be regarded as Godly to the likes of humanity as we know it.

    Such a race claims to have put us here by means which are not clearly defined. This race claims to have organised existing building blocks to provide an environment suitable for our existence. This race claims to be our parent race.

    Modern science most certainly covets these powers, believing them attainable. Why then do so many seemingly intelligent scientists decry the idea of God?

    The closer we come to understanding how life and the universe work, the more plausible the idea that we might some day be capable of most of what God claims and hence the more plausible the idea that God is who he says he is, so long as we can accept that the information provided us is limited and progressive for reasons beyond our grasp.

    Despite the obvious, so many see most every scientific advance as supporting atheism.

    The most intriguing of the rejections by so large a sector of scientific thought is that of spirit. Spirit is rejected as nonsensical while dark matter, dark-energy, antimatter, anti-energy, the uncertainty-principle, time-travel, black holes, god-particles and a universe for every thought option for every situation for every mind on the planet seem plausible to these same individuals. Its as though they’re all tripping.

    If matter and energy, space and time, spirit and intelligence have always existed, which is what makes sense, then we can obviate the God problem, evolution and the origin problem along with our identity crisis and develop an eternal perspective and focus on real progress.

    If God and his requirements are real then rejecting them is the biggest mistake possible”.

  222. blf says

    THE CAFFEINE!!! IT JUST ISN’T WORKING!!!!

    All-CAPITALS and seven exclamation points suggests it is working. Rather too well.

    Another hint of nominal caffeine functioning: Most people don’t type whilst jumping up-and-down. (Unless there is an invasion of peas swarming across the floor.)

  223. says

    Carlie:

    I guess I assume too much faith in the divorce court system, that in general things would end up being distributed fairly even if the players were being nasty.

    :snort: Um, did you grow up watching those cheesy eps of Divorce Court? Unless a divorce is completely no contest, no fault with both people signing, divorces go through both party’s attorneys, to be battled out as to how things get distributed. Child custody is a separate pursuit. It’s all terribly costly and all too often, highly acrimonious. A lot depends on what state you’re in, when it comes to the U.S., too. Laws vary.

    From my point of view, it’s people who tend to have a harlequin romance take on relationships/marriage who end up being the least able to cope if things go south. I have nothing against a bit of romance, however, when the stars in your eyes blind your ass, it helps no one, least of all yourself.

    I don’t care for people (in general) assuming I could not possibly trust my partner or that I’m a control freak who can never know the full joy of a relationship simply because I’m pragmatic and reality based when it comes to relationships. My marriage has seen a lot of…interesting times over 33 years and not being all swallowed up by a romantic view has worked well for me. (Mister is the romantic, not me, and he had two very fucked up relationships prior to us becoming an item – he’s too romantic and trusting for his own good.)

    If a seriously romantic view works for someone, great. When it comes to relationships, whatever works for you works and I’m good with that. I simply don’t care for the notion that relationships must or should be this way or else the people in them are all fucked up.

  224. Esteleth, Who Knows How to Use Google says

    4. If we are ancesoters/descendants of Apes, then why are there no transitional fossils or species to support this theory?

    1. You fail spelling.
    2. You fail grammar.
    3. There are transitional fossils and species, fuckwit.

  225. Psych-Oh says

    Esteleth – Congrats! I will toast to your health!

    Cicely – *hugs* back at ya!

    Zulu – I am guessing that the challenge would be a giant waste of your time and the biggest facepalm ever recorded in history.

  226. carlie says

    Caine – yeah, like I said, environmental bias. Plus maybe a little class bias – I’ve always thought of prenups as a way to deal with large sums of money and property (not kids or specifics like who gets the one family heirloom in existence), rather than being a matter of course for everybody.

  227. Socio-gen, something something... says

    Giliell:

    So, somebody insisting on a prenuptial who’s you know, just the ordinary person with an oridnary job and ordinary property is probably a paranoic control-freak.

    Hardly. In many states in the US, including mine, there is no common property in marriage. You get a percentage of the marital assets based on what you are considered to have contributed to acquiring it, and often, your share is decided at the whim of the judge.

    When I divorced in 1996, my share of our assets (a $38K house& everything in it, plus two vehicles) was determined to be 5% — because I was a stay-at-home mom. His income (~$26k/yr at the time) was the “sole contribution” to our net wealth, but I got brownie points for having raised our children.

    I got to keep my kids’ furniture and toys, our clothing/shoes, and gifts received, and that was it. I got to keep my vehicle because I agreed to waive payment of my share of the house in return for his signing over the title to me. I was required to be escorted by a sheriff’s deputy to retrieve my stuff to make sure I didn’t take anything not explicitly listed in the settlement. Not so much as a freakin’ spatula from the kitchen.

    And this is not unusual at all. Women are particularly affected in divorce and asset splits, usually because they work lower-paying jobs or are the stay-at-home parent.

    Esteleth: Hooray and congratulations!!

  228. says

    Following up on Tony’s comment @224:

    So he brought his mother as an appeal to emotion, and then didn’t discuss anything substantial about his health care plans?
    That was his way of “going on the offensive”?

    Carefully crafted deception, backed up by Paul Ryan’s mother, and apple pie.

    Think Progress bothered to go throught Ryan’s Florida speech to right-wing elders. They presented Ryan’s claims, and the opposing facts.
    Excerpts:

    RYAN: “The President raided $716 billion from the Medicare program to pay for the Obamacare program.”
    FACT: Obamacare’s $716B in Medicare cuts, which Ryan included in the GOP budget, would slow the growth of Medicare over the next decade (2013-2022) and would not affect seniors’ benefits. Instead, the savings would eliminate overpayments to private insurers, reform provider payments to encourage greater efficiency, tie reimbursements to improvements in economic productivity, and reduce fraud and abuse. As a result, the solvency of the Medicare trust fund is extended by 8 years.

    RYAN: “He puts a board of 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats in charge of Medicare, who are required to cut Medicare in ways that will lead to denied care for current seniors.”
    FACT: The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) is tasked with making binding recommendations to Congress for lowering health care spending should costs increase too rapidly. The panel’s plan will modify payments to providers but cannot “include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums…increase Medicare beneficiary cost- sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co- payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria” (Section 3403 of the ACA). Its members are appointed by the president but confirmed by the Senate. Ryan himself proposed two IPAB-like structures in a 2009 health plan.

    Fucking Death Panel argument? Really? Paul Ryan just threw any shreds of integrity he may have had out the window in order to run on the Romney ticket.

    RYAN: “One out of six of our hospitals and our nursing homes will go out of business as a result of this. Four million seniors are projected to lose their Medicare Advantage plans that they enjoy and they chose today under this Obamacare plan.”
    FACT: Far from destroying Medicare Advantage, the choices available through the program are “stronger than ever.” Premiums for the program are lower and enrollment has increased since Obamacare became law. Studies have also shown that the provider cuts in the law will lead doctors and hospitals — who will see an influx of new patients enter the health care system as a result of reform — to improve productivity and efficiency, resulting in substantial savings throughout the health care system.

    More here.

  229. Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain says

    Lynna, I do not give a flying fuck about Paul Ryan’s integrity. What he espouses when he is not bending to the narrative of the lacking in integrity Mittbot 3000 is awful enough.

    So what that he is selling out his principles. I have no sympathy for the zombie eyed granny starver.

  230. Tony •King of the Hellmouth• says

    For any cat lovers out there:
    What is the deal with cats and canned food?
    I’ve had cats much of my life (from the age of 16 when I snuck out and brought a little black cat-Cleo-home from the Human Society through today, when I have two wonderful cats, Kayta and Cassie), so I’m aware that many cats like moist cat food.
    Cassie has rarely liked canned cat food, and Kayta only likes it sometimes. T’s two cats (Ike and Woo) don’t like moist cat food *at all*. Yet all four of them will line up at the edge of the kitchen whenever I’m opening a can. Of anything. A few minutes ago, I was opening a can of kidney beans and there they were with those dastardly feline eyes. It’s like they think it’s canned tuna. While I can certainly understand cats loving that, I’ve rarely given my girls tuna. It’s just so odd to have them drop what they’re doing (lounging around in the sun, napping, running around high on catnip, playing with each other) and rush to the sound of a can being opened.

    ****
    rorschach:

    I will say this again, sharing the lack of a belief in something is not enough social glue to build a cohesive movement.

    I didn’t realize this until Elevatorgate. That’s [social glue] why I find A+ to be so appealing.

    ****
    theophontes:

    They are positively quivering with blind privilege.

    Yep. Their privilege is dripping from their buttocks. Exactly where Ryan pulls his facts!
    It’s surreal that people like Romney and Ryan think they represent the American people.

    ****

    Joe @277:
    Hopefully-very soon-this stress you and your wife are feeling will be a thing of the past

    ****

    Esteleth:
    Can we start congratulations now on you being cancer free?
    Yippee!

  231. dianne says

    Caine, my little one is making a nest for our virtual rat, complete with shredded newspaper to sleep on, a waterproof roof, and a mat for when he wants to lay on something other than paper. I think there may be lobbying for adoption in person coming up…

  232. says

    Janine is right about Paul Ryan. (Comment #300.) I don’t know why, but I am still astounded by the disconnect between the portrayals of Ryan as really smart, really serious, an intellectual heavyweight for the right, etc. — between that portrayal and the real Paul Ryan there are great rifts indeed. He’s a fucking airhead, only with Catholic flavor instead of mormon.

    There’s news on the voter suppression front. Another Republican accidentally said what he really thinks:

    “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine,” said Doug Preisse, chairman of the county Republican Party and elections board member who voted against weekend hours, in an email to The Dispatch. “Let’s be fair and reasonable.”

    He’s talking about Ohio’s plan to delete early voting the weekend before the election. Early voting worked really well in 2008. Obama won. And in urban areas people didn’t have to wait in line for nine hours before voting.

    http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/20/13375605-accidental-candor-in-ohio

  233. Beatrice says

    Plus maybe a little class bias – I’ve always thought of prenups as a way to deal with large sums of money and property (not kids or specifics like who gets the one family heirloom in existence), rather than being a matter of course for everybody.

    That pretty much sums up my thoughts on prenups, or at least what they were before reading this thread.

    Now I feel like I was terribly naive, especially after reading Socio-gen’s account.

  234. Richard Austin says

    Regarding divorce…

    At its essence, marriage is a contract. Well-written contracts *always* include terms and descriptions of how the contract will be dissolved, amicably or otherwise. Why should marriage be any different?

    Most people either think it’ll never happen or rely on the government to provide the terms for dissolution, but neither option is really going to protect the interests of the parties involved.

  235. says

    Dianne:

    Caine, my little one is making a nest for our virtual rat, complete with shredded newspaper to sleep on, a waterproof roof, and a mat for when he wants to lay on something other than paper. I think there may be lobbying for adoption in person coming up…

    Oh my. It does sound like there will be serious lobbying going on. That’s freaking adorable!

  236. says

    @zulu

    The concept of a beginning or end of matter and energy, space and time is preposterous as a before and after are inescapable and ipso facto all energy and matter(which appears to be organised energy) have obviously always existed.

    This sounds like he’s saying that because he personally can’t imagine a beginning, there couldn’t possibly have been one. I’d stop him right there, deliberately ignore everything else he said and drill on this. If his very first statement is suspect, then why listen to anything else?

    Honestly, this seems like a guy who’s more interested in sounding smart than he is in actually making a point. This entire load of crap is designed not to form a coherent argument, but simply to intimidate.
    I mean, this whole bit

    Man has repeatedly fallen into this same trap in the sequence of scientific discovery, from an earth centred universe to a solar universe to a galaxy filled universe to a multidimensional multi-verse, always teaching new ideas as fact. As with the ever-expanding cosmological vision, so with the ever-expanding microscopy of our view into the components of existence. Man keeps on making his bold deductions about atomic structure, quantum mechanics, string theory, etc.
    Evolution is just another of man’s interpretations derived from glimpses of the greater complexity of existence, which glimpses he has managed by virtue of his latest technologies which are backward by contrast with those he has set his mind to.

    Can basically be summed up as “science has been wrong before, so clearly it must be wrong now.” Obviously that’s bullshit and phrasing it nicely doesn’t change that.
    This isn’t an argument. It’s a sermon. Tell him to shove his preaching where it belongs and start talking sense.

  237. theophontes (坏蛋) says

    @ birger

    …remaining farm animals…

    This is intriguing. What will happen to the farm animals if the 3D meat comes up to scratch? They are very expensive in the upkeep. If the new source of protein is maggots (for printer ink), I don’t see them lasting long and doubt they will do well as feral animals.

    @ blf

    Surely you exaggerate. I for one would like to welcome peas into my diet.

    @ Caine(Louis)

    [Louis drinking] I might join you, pancreas be damned.

    Joined you, already I have. (Here a litre of Tsingtao costs a mere 80 pence.)

    PS: Please give scritches to virtual rodent.

    @ zulu

    ZEF ‘k se? Welcome anyway! (And what Psych-Oh said.)

  238. says

    Theophontes:

    PS: Please give scritches to virtual rodent.

    I shall do so. Theo is currently in the rat pile napping, after a long night of heavy wrestling and a nice breakfast of steamed peas, salad and Ensure.

  239. says

    Tony,

    I don’t know what the deal is with your cats. I’ve avoided feeding wet food to three out of the four so they don’t care about cans. The fourth one eats a combination of wet and dry, which keeps her weight up and the cost down. My cats like to eat the dog’s food though, don’t ask me why.

    Lynna,

    Janine is right about Paul Ryan. (Comment #300.) I don’t know why, but I am still astounded by the disconnect between the portrayals of Ryan as really smart, really serious, an intellectual heavyweight for the right, etc. — between that portrayal and the real Paul Ryan there are great rifts indeed. He’s a fucking airhead, only with Catholic flavor instead of mormon.

    It is for the same reason that people keep portraying Obama as an extreme liberal: there’s a predetermined narrative and people are slotted into their character roles regardless of their actual behavior in order to preserve the narrative. Michele fucking Bachmann would have been painted as a serious, bold thinker with important ideas, because that’s a role that the media narrative desires. Obama has to be liberal to balance the extreme right-wingers, and Ryan has to be a serious thinker to balance Obama’s academic credentials. Then of course the “ideal” solutions to all problems is to split the difference between two “extremes” that are really Obama’s moderate Republican policies and batshit regressive Romney/Ryan.

  240. ChasCPeterson says

    If the new source of protein is maggots (for printer ink)

    non, no. The source of cultured meat, when it exists, which it doesn’t yet, and for a long time after that, will be animal muscle cells grown from muscle cells taken from actual animals. The trick >is will be to get cultured cells to join together (goosed with the proper nutrients and probably growth factors) in just the right way to form the tissue we call ‘meat’. That’s the role envisioned for 3-D printing.
    But it’s like the Woody Allen line: “Right now it’s only a notion, but I think I can get the money to make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea.”

  241. theophontes (坏蛋) says

    @ Caine

    [whisper] It can wait, if rodents are sleeping already… Save up all teh scritches for the morrow.[/whisper]

    We have also sorta adopted an alley cat in the alley outside our building (in an alley no less). The cat has endeared itself to a lot of the neighbours too. The local chef puts out a big bowl of boiled beef and noodles for him a couple of times a week. A big Lexus ™ arrives every now and again and sets out a kitteh buffet. The cat’s name (to us at least) is Patches. And it enjoys scratches.

  242. theophontes (坏蛋) says

    @ Chas

    I must be a little old fashioned. (I was already creeped out by reading “The Island of Doctor Moreau”.)

  243. AndrewD says

    Excuse me,
    If I might interrupt for a moment,
    Oi,PZ, What’s happened to your book?
    Amazon UK have just told me it is delayed and they have no release date.
    Andrew

  244. carlie says

    Beatrice – same here.

    My previous cat hated wet food, and wouldn’t touch it. Late in life she had a desire for fresh meat come and go; for a month or so she’d beg at the table (!), then suddenly wouldn’t have anything to do with it, then would be back on. But wet food we only got her to eat by force with a syringe when she was in really bad shape.

  245. Socio-gen, something something... says

    Tony:
    The two cats we had were only given dry food, but they still came running every time someone opened a can.

    Beatrice:

    Now I feel like I was terribly naive…

    I think it’s one of those things that we only hear of when it’s celebrities and the like, so we think it’s not really something the average person needs to consider. I certainly didn’t before my own experience with divorce court. I just assumed there were systems in place for fair and equitable distributions.

    dianne:
    That’s so cute! And yes, I predict there will be some serious lobbying going on.

    Chas:

    The source of cultured meat, when it exists, which it doesn’t yet, and for a long time after that, will be animal muscle cells grown from muscle cells taken from actual animals.

    *shudder* Even though I can see the benefits, particularly in reducing food scarcity, I would seriously consider vegetarianism before eating cultured meat. Even though I know it would (eventually, when it exists, and mass-production is possible) be indistinguishable from “real,” it squicks me out.

    Which, come to think of it, is just strange. I’m perfectly comfortable with an actual animal dying to provide my steaks and chops (and yummy bacon) but not with culturing those things.

  246. carlie says

    So I finally went to write a syllabus for next week. I’ve been putting it off for weeks.
    Went to pull material from an old syllabus, opened the folder, and found one called “fall12”. Eh? Opened it, stared awhile, finally remembered that I had written it in May right after classes were done so I wouldn’t have to now.

    I can’t decide if I’m happy to have a surprise present for myself, or gravely worried about the state of my brain. Sigh.

  247. Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain says

    Carlie, at least you found it.

    I find that I have a tendency to forget thing. So I try to leave reminder to myself. Or set up packages beforehand.

  248. Beatrice says

    carlie,

    This is one of those situations where I think it can be safely said : Don’t worry, be happy.

  249. Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain says

    Has anyone ever had the desire to do a nonlethal version of the St Vitus Dance?

    Or is that just me?

  250. Beatrice says

    26-year-old here and I regularly store things in a safe place where I won’t forget them… Only to completely forget about them, let alone where they are.

    And it wasn’t any different when my age started with 1. It’s just one of those things you can’t avoid, but they occasionally amount to a nice surprise.

  251. says

    Oh, my kitty-boy comes running every time there’s a sandwich handy, he loves sliced meat including salami of all things. My office kitty hooks chicken nuggets off my plate when I’m not looking… and sometimes she eats her wet food with her paw, catching one piece at a time on a claw.

  252. says

    Socio-gen:

    *shudder* Even though I can see the benefits, particularly in reducing food scarcity, I would seriously consider vegetarianism before eating cultured meat. Even though I know it would (eventually, when it exists, and mass-production is possible) be indistinguishable from “real,” it squicks me out.

    I’m just the opposite. I think carniculture is a great idea and I’d probably eat more meat if it was cultured. I eat very little meat now.

  253. Janine: Fucking Dyke Of Rage Mountain says

    Because I quoted from The Ruling Class in an other thread, I now present to you a lecture about fear and Dem Bones.

  254. strange gods before me ॐ says

    rorschach,

    You misread.

    No, I understood the implications of your arguments. More than you typically do, my friend. ;)

    I said he was the face of the current atheism movement, not that of all atheism ever, or of nothing but atheism.

    And the current atheism movement, to you, is nothing but atheism. Your Venn diagram shows your understanding.

    I will say this again, sharing the lack of a belief in something is not enough social glue to build a cohesive movement.

    I’ve been telling you this for years.

    You’re the one who’s wanted a big atheist tent that includes racists, misogynists, Islamophobes, and heaps of other irrational morons, because “The more atheists, the better. We don’t have to put every one of them through the inquisition, to check them for rationality and moral values.”

    Now you’ll be able to defend the integrity of the MRAs and misogynists by saying “but they’re not atheist+! And they don’t claim to be! Why don’t you give them the chance to learn and adapt?”

    Atheism+ gets them all off the hook.

    A lot of atheists do not automatically apply the skepticism and critical thinking which they apply to the supernatural also to issues of social justice,

    And we should require them to do so. Not cede them their comfortable zone.

    just as skeptics too often are only skeptical about their personal pet peeve and nothing else. What’s needed is a movement that is a “best of”, where atheism is but one part.

    We already have that movement, right here — we’ve had it for years without making up a new word for it. Nobody can fail to notice that we’ve been quite successful; that’s what the misogynists mean when they say we’ve already “usurped” the atheist movement.

    A lot of atheists are failures at being atheists. There’s a lot of implications which should follow from being an atheist. For instance, since there is no god to impose inequality upon women, and no other empirical justification for inequality of women has been shown, the only rational thing left to do is support women’s equality. This isn’t something added to atheism — it’s a logical and empirical consequence of the lack of gods. Atheism per se therefore includes women’s equality. Saying that we’re adding it means that women’s equality does not actually follow from the lack of gods, that it’s something we’re choosing to mix in and other people therefore could coherently choose not to add women’s equality to atheism.

    And that’s wrong. Atheism per se requires women’s equality. It’s not value added.

    This whole atheism+ thing is an acquiescence to the false claim that we’ve been adding unempirical, unskeptical values to atheism, which we could not have derived from atheism. It’s an acquiescence to their insistence that it’s perfectly coherent to be a sexist racist atheist.

  255. strange gods before me ॐ says

    *sigh*

    I fear this Hunstoddard person is a self obsessed fool. I know, I know, meanness in the lounge, someone threadcop me (and if anyone does, here is a prearranged “fuck off!”, I am expressing moderate frustration, not character assassination).

    Louis, it doesn’t matter. “Self obsessed fool” is a personal attack. There are no personal attacks against other Pharyngula commenters allowed here. At all. There isn’t an exception for “no personal attacks unless you are expressing moderate frustration”.

    If huntstoddard reads this and wants to defend himself, where’s that argument going to happen? It’s going to happen here, because you started it here.

    There is a place for you to express all the frustration you want. Please use it.

  256. says

    I am really hoping I’ve just been paranoid and Zoe isn’t pregnant. She and Carrot are the same teeny size, less than half of the other ratlets and both have been stuffing themselves silly. If you look at Carrot, (and ignore his balls), he looks pregnant too. They are both ultra tiny everywhere except their bellies. Oh I hope, I hope, I hope…

  257. ChasCPeterson says

    it’s perfectly coherent to be a sexist racist atheist.

    uh.
    It is.
    People have (and I suspect have never had) any problem being racist with or without god or gods.
    I also doubt that god-concepts are the root of sexism.

  258. ChasCPeterson says

    preview
    always preview

    People have (and I suspect have always had) no problem being…

  259. says

    Markita Lynda:

    I would like a virtual ratlet, too; I’m not going to have a real one. Any one would be fine but I think the brown ones are prettiest.

    I am so sorry, I’m actually out of ratlets. They’ve all been virtually adopted.

  260. Louis says

    SGBM,

    I cordially refer you to the aforementioned response, very much in the manner of the reply given in Arkell vs Pressdram.

    Louis

  261. strange gods before me ॐ says

    People have (and I suspect have never had) any problem being racist with or without god or gods.

    That they do it doesn’t make it perfectly coherent.

    Chas, there are atheists who believe in reincarnation. There are lots of incoherent atheists.

    I also doubt that god-concepts are the root of sexism.

    I agree, and haven’t indicated otherwise.

  262. strange gods before me ॐ says

    Louis, instead of getting personally defensive, please think about what I said. This isn’t the place for personally attacking other Pharyngula commenters, and there’s a reason for that — it tends to drag contentious arguments from other threads into this one.

  263. says

    Louis:

    I cordially refer you to the aforementioned response, very much in the manner of the reply given in Arkell vs Pressdram.

    Heh. I wouldn’t worry, last time I looked, no one died and appointed SG moderator of the lounge. ;)

    As for huntstoddard, that one is a piece of work.

  264. strange gods before me ॐ says

    no one died and appointed SG moderator of the lounge. ;)

    Indeed, I am only making the same request others have made numerous times — don’t drag arguments in here from other threads.

    That is not an unreasonable request, and I am not out of bounds to note this.

  265. says

    Strange gods, a polite question:
    Since the establishment of the new rules, have you posted in the [Lounge] anything other than reminding others what the rules are?

    The only one I’ve seen is #335 in this thread, but I’ve not been following all that close lately.

  266. strange gods before me ॐ says

  267. says

    What’s fascinating, SG, is that my phone won’t recognize your ‘nym (or any part of your ‘nym) when I use the quick search option. Seeing as though I do not have the time to wade through thousands of comments at the moment, I guess my curiosity will just have to wait.

  268. strange gods before me ॐ says

    Your curiosity isn’t already sated by the eight links I just gave?

    How about #79, #85, #106, #169, #180, #215, #345, in this current thread?

  269. says

    Markita Lynda:

    I hope Zoe’s not pregnant–is she five weeks old, already?

    She’s six weeks tomorrow. I dearly hope she isn’t pregnant. I really, really hope. It’s not just that we don’t need more ratlets, but Zoe is extremely small and I don’t think she’s up to birthing a litter. Zoe and her sisters aren’t eligible to be spayed until Sept. 4th, when they are 8 weeks. Even then, our vet might be unwilling to work on Zoe unless she does some serious growing.

  270. says

    SG,
    I like said, it’s my phone– specifically the mobile Chrome browser. I cannot for whatever reason search your ‘nym and it will not direct to a particular comment, only the top of the linked page. I can always look later when I’m at a real computer.

  271. Paul says

    I think it’s worth noting that SG’s pointing out “personal attacks” in the lounge is an active attempt to subvert the problem that precipitated PZ’s recent strike. That is, the lounge getting contaminated with fights because of insulting comments directed at people who didn’t normally participate in the lounge, which dragged the fights into the lounge itself (unsurprisingly, since that was where they were being started).

    Whatever you may think of him personally, if you value this space as a lounge you really should treat it as such. I don’t understand the hesitation to take insults and issues to the Thunderdome, treating the suggestion as an attack when it’s what our host has asked us to do.

  272. strange gods before me ॐ says

    Chas, here’s another way of putting it.

    If, for instance, refusing to extend equal rights to gay people is prima facie irrational, not coherent with reality,

    and if the only justifications for doing so are appeals to a reality we can’t verify — the moral commandments of a deity which is only alleged to exist —

    then if that god isn’t believed to exist, then because the homophobic value isn’t coherent with observed reality and no god can be called upon to supply the value from a super-reality,

    there’s no coherent way to be an atheist who wants to deny equal rights to gay people.

    (And it’s trivial to extend this to racism and sexism.)

    +++++
    Louis, thank you for your reply. I’ll go read it in a moment.

  273. opposablethumbs says

    I am really hoping I’ve just been paranoid and Zoe isn’t pregnant.

    I’m keeping my fingers x’d for you.

    Joe, hope you manage to scrape by until your wife gets paid. Fingers are x’d for you also!

    SonSpawn is in transit to Nice Family on his first solo trip … should be with them in maybe about another hour or so … bet he’ll have a great time. Meanwhile I’m stuck at home. Jammy sod. Well we’re having home-made pizza tonight, so there.

  274. says

    Happy times in Casa Improbable… wife is off to fax her signed contract with new employer. It would have been done over the weekend, but the original contract was a little “light” in the compensation department by about $400 a week. One step closer to solvency, and we couldn’t have done it without the Horde, so thanks a million!!

  275. David Marjanović says

    1) pull the foreskin back
    […]
    3) pull the foreskin up over the glans so the side of the condom gets folded up into it

    *blink*

    No comment.

    holy omfg

    That’s even better than Watergategate!

    Also also, while in the car with my very religious inlaws, my son exclaimed “Oh your God!” and made me spit my drink out and choke :D :D :D

    :-) :-) :-) :-) :-)

    Well, that was exceedingly ignorant and misogynistic. How can someone who thinks what Todd Akin said even exist? He must have known he was being a dumbass as soon as he said it.

    No, StarStuff. No. He actually believes in magic.

    That’s because he doesn’t know any better.

    He also has six children. I have no idea how many of them were planned.

    I have no problems using condoms. I have a problem using condoms because women can’t be trusted not to steal some poor lads sperm and get rich on child-support. Or just to be too stupid to take a pill every day, because of their fluffy pink ladybrains.

    I’m pretty sure Azkyroth is talking in the abstract, about the general case, while you are talking specifically about your experience and extrapolating from it. I don’t know if he’d actually be so cautious with a specific, real-life, known and trusted partner.

    After all, that’s something I’m prone to, and he’s further along the autism spectrum than I am.

    Conversely, the fear that a woman might have forgotten to take her pill isn’t necessarily about fluffy pink ladybrains at all. In my case, it would be simple projection: I’m pretty sure I’m capable of forgetting about such things, so I’d start from the assumption that other people are, too. Therefore, I suppose, I’d ask twice (“are you sure?”)*, and if the other person got upset, I’d sigh and try to explain the above two sentences. I see no evidence that Azkyroth is any different.

    * Unless, of course, I forgot about that. It drives my mom crazy, but how important something is has a low correlation to how likely I am to forget about it.

    *hugback* for DDMFM.
    :)

    ^_^

    I’m jealous of Pt’xx/Jen/Needles/Jadehawk/etc coming up with this whole idea while I have little to offer.

    <condescend>
    Kid, life advice: get used to being jealous of some or all of those.
    </condescend>

    I like the idea of there not being an “official” logo of any sort, but any font/color variant of A+ being recognized as referring to the same thing. Diversity being good and whatnot. And also taking over all instances of A+ in the world. Heh.

    In French, A+ is short for à plus, which basically means “see you later” (more literally “to more”). It’s a very common way to end e-mails.

    I live in Manitoba

    :-(

    That said, I do think it’s important to differentiate between actual ignorance and willful ignorance. I don’t want to see Akin characterized as stupid a/o ignorant. He reminds me of Huckabee, who is very intelligent.

    Intelligence is orthogonal to knowledge. There are know-nothings that are very good at drawing logical conclusions from the nonexistent contents of their heads.

    Sometimes I read a quote by an ancient or medieval philosopher and almost cringe because it’s so obvious they drew their conclusions from way too little data, even though they drew them in brilliant ways.

    The person I always think of in this context is this one (very short article in English, long one in German) – everybody said he was so intelligent and so well educated, and yet he kept saying seriously and obviously wrong things. (…Though I do think it was not at all intelligent of him to argue “but we must pick something as absolute truth and then proceed from there”.)

    Men are sort of fucked in this situation, because a pill for them doesn’t exist, and this isn’t sufficiently widespread

    Also this, which I recently read about in everyone’s favorite German science news service.

    And, of course, they don’t discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. That would be illegal. If their offices always seem to be on the fifth or sixth floor of buildings without elevators and they require a yearly in person renewal of enrollment, that’s totally coincidental.

    :-o

    HULK SMASH

    First evidence for photosynthesis [well, no, but still phototrophy] in insects http://www.nature.com/news/first-evidence-for-photosynthesis-in-insects-1.11214

    *pretending to be able to raise one eyebrow*

    Fascinating. However, read the comments. Do any cells other than the epidermis profit from this? ATP doesn’t get out of cells (well, apart from necrosis).

    paraformaldehyde

    :-o

    *hug*

    [wall of text]

    Next comment.

    4. If we are ancesoters/descendants of Apes, then why are there no transitional fossils or species to support this theory?

    1. You fail spelling.
    2. You fail grammar.
    3. There are transitional fossils and species, fuckwit.

    Grammar?

    However, there’s a failure on the meanings of words here: “ancestor” and “descendant” are opposites.

    Janine is right about Paul Ryan. (Comment #300.) I don’t know why, but I am still astounded by the disconnect between the portrayals of Ryan as really smart, really serious, an intellectual heavyweight for the right, etc. — between that portrayal and the real Paul Ryan there are great rifts indeed. He’s a fucking airhead, only with Catholic flavor instead of mormon.

    I guess he must be portrayed as smart and serious because he’s less female and less blond than Sarah Palin.

    carlie,

    This is one of those situations where I think it can be safely said : Don’t worry, be happy.

    Seconded.

    Has anyone ever had the desire to do a nonlethal version of the St Vitus Dance?

    Or is that just me?

    There do seem to be other such people, but I’m not one of them.

  276. ChasCPeterson says

    ATP doesn’t get out of cells (well, apart from necrosis).

    and exocytosis. Weirdly, it’s used as a CNS neurotransmitter.

  277. David Marjanović says

    Argh. I’m already too tired to go back and edit what I wrote instead of just clicking “submit” when I’ve reached the end of the page.

    I’m pretty sure Azkyroth is talking in the abstract, about the general case, while you are talking specifically about your experience and extrapolating from it.

    Though actually, so was he.

    I don’t know if he’d actually be so cautious with a specific, real-life, known and trusted partner.

    He wasn’t last time, which is his point… I don’t know if he’d do it again, but obviously he’d be a lot more careful about letting that much trust build up.

    Apologies all around.

    [wall of text]

    Next comment.

    Really, this time.

  278. David Marjanović says

    and exocytosis. Weirdly, it’s used as a CNS neurotransmitter.

    :-o

    Wow. That’s the stupidest design I’ve ever heard of.

    …No, wait, actually it isn’t. It probably costs more than 1 molecule of ATP to make 1 molecule of another neurotransmitter… well, unlike it’s a ready-made one like glutamate…

    OK. If those aphids also have a way of getting ATP into cells, and I suppose its use as a neurotransmitter implies that, photoheterotrophy works just fine!

  279. Esteleth, Who Knows How to Use Google says

    Why the :-o for paraformaldehyde? I use it all the time. Usually, though, not on stuff I want to keep alive.

  280. ChasCPeterson says

    I’ve been too lazy to try to figure out just how carotenoids are being linked to ATP synthesis, i.e. the biochemistry. AFAIK plants just use carotenoids as ‘sntenna pigments’ and the captured energy has to be passed on to chlorophyll to get the light reactions going. carlie?

  281. ChasCPeterson says

    a way of getting ATP into cells, and I suppose its use as a neurotransmitter implies that

    Apparently the receptors (there are a couple of different ones) are membrane-surface receptors and the ATP never enters the target cell. Unless it’s somehow scavenged. I guess all cells must have inward adenosine transporters but I don’t know about ATP.

  282. David Marjanović says

    Heh. I was wondering if I have a sunburn. Nope, my unexposed belly confirms I’m whole-body blushing because it’s so damp!

    Now for the wall of text. I’ve addressed everything to its author, so you can simply forward it if you think that would help.

    “The concept of a beginning or end of matter and energy, space and time is preposterous

    If reality is preposterous, too bad for you. Deal with it. :-|

    The magnitude of the range of complexity of living organisms does not prove a beginning but rather suggests an evolutionary procession

    Yes, except I wouldn’t use “procession”, because that sounds too much like it implies progress.

    which, given infinity, would be one of an infinite sequence of such processions.

    …what?

    It seems rather puerile for science to deduce and teach an ultimate beginning or life by chance as fact or even the predominant theory.

    Wrong, see above.

    Man has repeatedly fallen into this same trap in the sequence of scientific discovery, from an earth centred universe to a solar universe to a galaxy filled universe to a multidimensional multi-verse, always teaching new ideas as fact. As with the ever-expanding cosmological vision, so with the ever-expanding microscopy of our view into the components of existence. Man keeps on making his bold deductions about atomic structure, quantum mechanics, string theory, etc.

    “Science has been wrong before” is a logical fallacy. Plus, if it’s been taught “as fact” to you, you’ve had bad teachers that failed to explain how science works – probably they didn’t know it in the first place.

    Evolution is just another of man’s interpretations derived from glimpses of the greater complexity of existence, which glimpses he has managed by virtue of his latest technologies which are backward by contrast with those he has set his mind to.

    Again the “science has been wrong before” fallacy. Google for “the relativity of wrong”.

    Man’s need for a beginning drives him to conjure such ideas as life by chance or a beginning of the primary dimensions.

    Bullshit. If that were “Man’s need”, why have things like the steady-state theory ever been proposed?

    A race which has mastered the science and forces of the Universe (where universe is used in its original context, everything) or at least of a cosmos(the area of our visible universe), could certainly be regarded as Godly to the likes of humanity as we know it.

    Such a race claims to have put us here

    Show me the claim.

    A book written by humans obviously does not count. And I wouldn’t even know how you’d choose one of the many options.

    This race claims to have organised existing building blocks to provide an environment suitable for our existence. This race claims to be our parent race.

    What?

    Modern science most certainly covets these powers, believing them attainable.

    I think you’ve overlooked Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

    the idea that God is who he says he is

    Evidence that God 1) exists and 2) says anything?

    Again: a book written by humans obviously does not count – not even if you’ve somehow resolved the contradictions between the books that claim to be divinely inspired or dictated (…let alone the contradictions within those books…).

    Despite the obvious, so many see most every scientific advance as supporting atheism.

    Well, every scientific advance is compatible with atheism. That makes religion a useless hypothesis.

    The most intriguing of the rejections by so large a sector of scientific thought is that of spirit. Spirit is rejected as nonsensical while dark matter, dark-energy, antimatter, anti-energy, the uncertainty-principle, time-travel, black holes, god-particles and a universe for every thought option for every situation for every mind on the planet seem plausible to these same individuals. Its as though they’re all tripping.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

    If matter and energy, space and time, spirit and intelligence have always existed, which is what makes sense,

    nope

    then we can obviate the God problem, evolution and the origin problem

    Uh, the evidence for evolution and the Big Bang won’t just go away.

    along with our identity crisis and develop an eternal perspective and focus on real progress.

    You have an identity crisis? Speak for yourself, then. ~:-|

    If God and his requirements are real then rejecting them is the biggest mistake possible”.

    Oh? Then what are his requirements?

  283. David Marjanović says

    Why the :-o for paraformaldehyde? I use it all the time. Usually, though, not on stuff I want to keep alive.

    That’s what I mean. It’s very effective for that kind of mistake.

    AFAIK plants just use carotenoids as ‘sntenna pigments’ and the captured energy has to be passed on to chlorophyll to get the light reactions going.

    Yeah, that’s plants – as opposed to halobacteria, IIRC.

    Apparently the receptors (there are a couple of different ones) are membrane-surface receptors and the ATP never enters the target cell. Unless it’s somehow scavenged.

    I think it must be, because otherwise it’d just stay there and occupy all receptors forever.

  284. David Marjanović says

    Oh? Then what are his requirements?

    Interesting that I completely failed to address the assumption of a single and male god.

    What I was thinking of when I wrote that specific line was this; my much longer, more carefully put-together version of that is somewhere on Sb Pharyngula and may not be up yet.

  285. David Marjanović says

    the assumption of a single and male god

    …which is especially bizarre when the claim is of a whole “race” of Q-like superbeings.

  286. ChasCPeterson says

    Chas, here’s another way of putting it.

    i guess I’ll reply in the dome; that puppy makes my stomach hurt.

  287. Esteleth, Who Knows How to Use Google says

    David:
    I was very pissed about that. I had this plate of cells, carefully treated with a library of compounds, and then I wanted to assay (1) how much they grew in n days, and (2) how many of them were still alive.

    So, I set up two wells per sample: one to stain with Ki-67 and DAPI, one to stain with calcein and ethidium homodimer.

    And then went and fixed the whole damn plate. I realized what I’d done after 10 minutes, but 10 minutes in 4% paraformaldehyde is plenty long enough to make a viability assay pointless.

    *facepalm*

  288. says

    Caine
    No, I’m not taking a romantic view on things. I’m very aware of the fact that marriages can end by divorce rather than dead, that’s why I’m trying to work my relationship every day of the week.
    I’m also not naive. But I looked into the laws and the legal advice and found that for our situation (and in most situations of people like us) a prenup is actually just a waste of money.
    Yes, people sue each other to ruin over a piece of furniture that was 100$ when it was new. They sue each other to ruin over custody (something you couldn’t even arrange in a prenup).
    Please remember that I’m living in a very different country. What happened to Socio-gen couldn’t happen to me under normal divorce laws (ironically, it could happen with a prenup). There’s a reason why German celebrities practise divorce tourism to the USA. That’s why I explicitly said “in Germany”, where shared property is the default. Minus the stuff you owned when you entered the marriage or personal gifts and inheritance. So, we didn’t need a prenup to say that I couldn’t just walk away with half of Mr.’s hard earned penion-savings and we didn’t one to make sure that I wouldn’t be treated like Socio-gen while I was still at home with the kids.
    I think that prenups are handy things when you have something where the current law would hurt you disproportionally or just mean that things don’t pass on as intended (as in cases of inheritance). BUt my ideas about them being unnecessary here when this is not the case doesn’t stem from the romantic idea that divorces never happen or that you’re going to be BFFs forever. I just don’t think that they can prevent your ex from hurting you as much as they can, especially not when there are kids

  289. ChasCPeterson says

    I think it must be, because otherwise it’d just stay there and occupy all receptors forever.

    yeah. I’d bet there’s an extracellularly active ATPase of some kind and then adenosine transport.

  290. David Marjanović says

    I’d bet there’s an extracellularly active ATPase of some kind and then adenosine transport.

    Gah! That’s likely, and it’d be really stupid design.

  291. says

    No, I simply disagree with the absolute statement that men/women should never ever do that.

    well, I agree with that absolute statement, and I do think that people who hand over control of their fertility to someone else are literally not careful, AKA careless.

    I’m talking about the idea that you don’t trust that the person isn’t going to turn into a selfish irresponsible person who can’t be reasoned with.
    If you think the person you’re marrying might be like that, why are you marrying them?

    schroedinger’s asshole. besides, a prenup would guarantee that it won’t matter whether they turn into one or not, I still won’t end up homeless and penniless.

    mind you, I do’t think everyone needs them. If I ever end up in a situation in which I’ll need to marry again, I probably won’t bother with a prenup either; because I’m never going to own much of anything anyway, and won’t ever be the stay at home or even part-time spouse. So, marriage and divorce carry little risk to me. But for middle-class people? People who want children and want one spouse to stay at home for at least part of that, or work only parttime? And for the sake of the partner who gains residence via marriage? Yeah, I’d totally suggest a prenup. Relying on the government to get your situation right is naive. Even in civilized countries.

    No average person in Germany needs a prenuptial

    because all German divorces of course end amiably.

    If your ex wants to split up with you peacefully they’ll do, if they want to hurt you they will.

    but with a prenup, they lose a lot of means to make me destitute.

  292. says

    Up-thread we discussed the reputation of Paul Ryan on the right — that he is almost scarily smart and serious and beyond reproach.

    Here’s another right-wing nutter faking intelligence, and doing so in a nifty British accent, Niall Ferguson. From the Republican perspective, I think the accent guarantees the assumption of 20 more IQ points. Dude is a tenured professor of history at Harvard, which brings up the question, “WTF, Harvard?”

    James Fallows, a Harvard alum, finds Ferguson so embarrassing that he apologized in general to everyone for Ferguson’s existence, and for his preaching from a position that should be reserved for persons of more than a little brain.

    A tenured professor of history at my undergraduate alma mater has written a cover story for Daily Beast/Newsweek that is so careless and unconvincing that I wonder how he will presume to sit in judgment of the next set of student papers he has to grade. It’s by the irrepressible Niall Ferguson, it is headlined “Obama’s Gotta Go,” and its case rests on logic of this sort:

    Certainly, the stock market is well up (by 74 percent) relative to the close on Inauguration Day 2009. But the total number of private-sector jobs is still 4.3 million below the January 2008 peak.

    Hmmm, what might possibly be the flaw in this comparison? Apart from the fact that Obama did not take office until January 2009 and that private sector jobs have recovered better in his first three-plus years than they did under George W. Bush. …

    I do wonder how a criticism of a president, based on a benchmark a year before he took office, and about 16 months before his main “stimulus” effort began taking effect, would be assessed in Harvard’s history or economics departments. …

    [Ferguson writes] In Tokyo in November 2009, the president gave his boilerplate hug-a-foreigner speech… Yet by fall 2011, this approach had been jettisoned in favor of a ‘pivot’ back to the Pacific, including risible deployments of troops to Australia and Singapore. From the vantage point of Beijing, neither approach had credibility.

    The “from the vantage point of Beijing” assertion is based on no adduced evidence, and based on my experience and interviews there is more or less the opposite of the truth. Again, note that a Harvard professor of history uses the phrase “boilerplate hug-a-foreigner speech.”…

    http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/08/as-a-harvard-alum-i-apologize/261308/

    More put-downs of Ferguson to come.

  293. David Marjanović says

    schroedinger’s asshole.

    Oh yeah, that’s what I wanted to mention but forgot at the last second. :-)

  294. says

    though granted: if I can avoid it, I won’t get married again at all. and if I have to anyway, I’ll divorce again the moment that’s possible (so: the moment my partner can stay with me in whichever country we end up in without the need to be married to me). So any advice on marriage from me comes from that perspective: marriage is a legal contract, and an unfortunately designed one, too.

  295. says

    Noah Smith nails Niall:
    http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/niall-british-empire-is-over-accept-it.html
    Excerpt:

    …much of the rest of the article [Newsweek article written by Niall Ferguson, Hit the Road, Barack] is devoted to a hagiography of Paul Ryan, which I will not touch on other than to mention that, surprise of surprises, Ferguson utterly ignores the deficit-ballooning aspects of Ryan’s budget plan, repeating the – can I call it a lie? pretty please? – mantra that Ryan is a fiscal conservative and deficit-cutter.

    So basically, what we have here is a pedestrian, poorly written, poorly-thought-out, self-contradictory, often counterfactual anti-Obama screed….

    Niall Ferguson wants the United States to be an empire. An historian, Ferguson has always been enchanted with the British Empire of his forebears. He has also long been enchanted with the notion that the United States can and should become the successor to the British Empire…

    Matt O’Brian fact-checks Ferguson:

    [excerpt] Ferguson: “Welcome to Obama’s America: nearly half the population is not represented on a taxable return–almost exactly the same proportion that lives in a household where at least one member receives some type of government benefit. We are becoming the 50-50 nation–half of us paying the taxes, the other half receiving the benefits.”

    O’Brian: It is true that 46 percent of households did not pay federal income tax in 2011. It is not true that they pay no taxes. Federal income taxes account barely account for half of federal taxes, and much less of total taxes, if you count the state and local level….

    There’s much more at the link. It’s hard to represent O’Brian’s thoroughness without creating a wall of text.

  296. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    David Marjanovic-please check your email. It’s somewhat time-sensitive.

  297. says

    Ezra Klein not only takes down Niall Ferguson, he takes down Niall’s defense/excuse in response to Paul Krugman.

    … Ferguson responded to Krugman’s critique by saying, in effect, that he wasn’t wrong so much as he was very carefully trying to mislead his readers.

    The sentence in question is straightforward enough. Ferguson wrote:

    The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period.

    The intended meaning is pretty clear. Ferguson is saying Obama “pledged” that the Affordable Care Act would reduce the deficit, “but” the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Tax Committee now say otherwise.

    The problem, as Krugman pointed out, is that the CBO and the JCT do not now say otherwise. Ferguson is simply wrong. … if you actually read the report, it said that the Affordable Care Act was going to cut the deficit by more than the CBO initially thought, not by less.

    But Ferguson says he wasn’t confused. Rather, he phrased his original comments very carefully in order to deceive his readers. You see, Ferguson specified that he was only talking about the “insurance-coverage provisions,” and so, if you happen to be an employee of the Congressional Budget Office and you’re aware of the difference between these [two] reports, you would’ve understood that when Ferguson wrote —

    The president pledged that health-care reform would not add a cent to the deficit. But the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation now estimate that the insurance-coverage provisions of the ACA will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period.

    — that the first sentence and the second sentence had nothing to do with each other. Of course, most people are not employees of the CBO, and so they just got tricked. In the pages of Newsweek. Bummer for them….

  298. says

    Paul Krugman fries Niall Ferguson’s ass:

    …We’re not talking about ideology or even economic analysis here — just a plain misrepresentation of the facts, with an august publication letting itself be used to misinform readers. The Times would require an abject correction if something like that slipped through. Will Newsweek?

  299. says

    Steve Benen puts Niall Ferguson’s lies and deceptions in perspective. Benen points out that political journalism has been allowed to sink to Fox News entertainment levels (my comparison, not Benen’s).

    …The problem, however, is that in the course of launching his lengthy, 3,300-word attack, Ferguson publishes a series of claims with no foundation in reality. I’m not talking about errors of judgment, I’m referring to transparent errors of fact — Ferguson wrote easily-checkable claims about health care, the stimulus, China, job creation, Paul Ryan, and taxes, all of which completely fall apart after minimal scrutiny.

    Remember, this isn’t some randomly-published piece of commentary, featured on an obscure conservative website; this is the cover story of Newsweek — which ostensibly has editors….

    In order to publish this lie [that the Affordable Care Act “will have a net cost of close to $1.2 trillion over the 2012–22 period”], Ferguson counted up the costs, ignored the savings and receipts, and presented a bogus net total. It’s like saying the Patriots won the Super Bowl because they scored 14 points. But didn’t the Giants score 17 points? No, no, that doesn’t matter. The only thing that counts is that the Patriots scored 14 points. If you ignore one side of the scoreboard, the argument makes perfect sense….

    Dylan Byers presents a pithy assessment of Ferguson’s right-wing assholery:

    Ferguson cut the CBO excerpt off mid-sentence and changed the meaning entirely….

    Deceptive editing by right-wing idealogues? Oh, say it ain’t so.

    [Dylan Byers continues] So, one more time: The Oxford-trained, Harvard-employed, Newsweek contibutor Niall Ferguson just edited the CBO report to change its meaning.

    How is the run-of-the-mill voter supposed to sort this shit out? Newsweek is supposed to be a semi-responsible source for information. Fucking propaganda machine is more like it. Print tripe for the right. I despair.

  300. Nightjar says

    AFAIK plants just use carotenoids as ‘sntenna pigments’ and the captured energy has to be passed on to chlorophyll to get the light reactions going.

    Yeah, that’s plants

    Also algae, cyanobacteria, purple bacteria, and green bacteria. (Except it’s bacteriochlorophyll in the last two.)

    – as opposed to halobacteria, IIRC.

    Yeah, halobacteria use retinal, which is a carotenoid derivative.

    So, um, I dunno, but now I’m curious enough to go read the whole paper and try to figure out what, if any, kind of light harvesting mechanism the authors are proposing. I’ll report back if I find anything interesting.

  301. cicely says

    Tree Lobsters!
    Also:
    National GOP pulls funding from Todd Akin’s Missouri race

    Jadehawk, your bouncy twerp looks very much like a kitteh named Arioch that I had years ago.

    drbunsen! *waves tentacles in response; changes pattern of chromatophores*

    Most people don’t type whilst jumping up-and-down. (Unless there is an invasion of peas swarming across the floor.)

    And that’s what the flamethrower is for. Otherwise, you just get ichor all over your shoes. (Unshod stomping of peas is particularly contra-indicated. Those things have a nasty sting to ’em. Don’t risk it; there is, as yet, no reliable pea antivenom.)

  302. says

    Oh, Newsweek, shame, shame, shame on you. The publication did not fact-check Niall Ferguson’s propaganda piece:

    We, like other news organisations today, rely on our writers to submit factually accurate material/ — Newsweek spokesman Andrew Kirk

  303. says

    Yeah Newsweek, wouldn’t want your editors to strain themselves by fact-checking or knowing things or whatever. Just sit still and collect your paychecks for proof-reading and leave it to your readers to figure out if you’re publishing factual stuff or not. Here’s the million-dollar question though: if I have to read a bunch of other sources to know if Newsweek is lying to me or not, why bother reading Newsweek?

  304. opposablethumbs says

    Um, intrepid lone traveller Spawn2 arrived safe and sound – thanks for the kindness during my moment of Unreasonable Wibbling :-)
    (didn’t even lose his wheelie-bag or anything)

  305. Tony •King of the Hellmouth• says

    Socio-gen:

    The two cats we had were only given dry food, but they still came running every time someone opened a can.

    Interesting.
    There’s this part of me thinking “it’s in their genes”. Then the rest of my brain smacks me around.

  306. cicely says

    Esteleth, I raise my foam cup of Diet Rite™ preemptively, in your honor.

    My sister walked away from her second divorce with her clothes and books, her daughter’s clothes and books, and a junker car. That was all. He got the other car, the cats, the house and all furnishings. And she thought that, with a firm eye on the mistakes she’d made the first time, she had vetted him very thoroughly. Turns out that under the stress of constant legal nonsense with the ex, in regards to the daughter, he flipped to an alternate mindset. “Callous, self-righteous, controlling bastard” was not what it had said on the label.

    Surely you exaggerate. I for one would like to welcome peas into my diet.

    They are not only venomous, but virulently toxic. Leave the peas to the rats; they know what they’re doing.

    The response to the sound of the can opener is an instinct fast-tracked in for their modern role as Domestic Hunters. You’ll never catch the gooooshy food by waiting for it to come to the watering hole in the evening to drink, and listening for a rustling sound in the undergrowth of the kitchen is only useful if the prey is dry kibble in a bag.

    I can’t decide if I’m happy to have a surprise present for myself, or gravely worried about the state of my brain. Sigh.

    If’n it ain’t broke….

    26-year-old here and I regularly store things in a safe place where I won’t forget them… Only to completely forget about them, let alone where they are.

    Fifty-*pauses to do math*-four, here (as of last week), and I do the same thing. It is the ultimate in “putting it somewhere safe“.

    Here’s hoping that Zoe is merely pleasantly plump.

  307. broboxley OT says

    zulu, question for your friend “damn thats a good looking monkey” and progeny ensues, is that evolution or design?

  308. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    Turns out that under the stress of constant legal nonsense with the ex, in regards to the daughter, he flipped to an alternate mindset.

    Shiiiit.

  309. carlie says

    So, what separates Newsweek from being a printed out collection of random blog posts? Nothing, it seems.

  310. Nightjar says

    It wasn’t long ago that I told people here to visit Sb Pharyngula. Back then, there was an antivaxxer (should be on the 2nd page now; the thread is probably dead).

    It annoys me that there is no Recent Comments side bar anymore (at least I can’t see it). It’s bad enough there isn’t one on Tet Zoo, but on Pharyngula? How I’m supposed to know when an interesting discussion pops up in an old thread I’m no longer checking? Gah.

    ***

    Chas, re aphids:

    The polyenic-conjugated structure of carotenoids (C = C alternated with C-C leading to π delocalised electrons) appears an efficient mode to transport electrons across the lipid bilayer, putatively funnelling them to the mitochondrial redox machinery. This might end up with another level of regulation of ATP synthesis. The electron transport chain might partly use the electrons from photo-activatable pigments. The linear polyene motif of carotene might act as a “molecular wire” in electron transfer to acceptors across the bilayer membranes. Furthermore, aphids synthesize other pigments like the aphins for which the physiological roles are little known. Their redox properties based on a polyphenolic structure and the inherent π delocalized electrons make them solid candidates to fulfill the same functions as those attributed to carotenoids

    So they’re saying light excites these pigments and as a result they transfer their higher energy electrons along to the mitochondrial electron transport chain, thereby helping with the production of ATP. OK. I get how the excited carotenoids can reduce NAD+ to NADH, but I was wondering how they get reduced back. As far as I can see they don’t say what the electron donor is supposed to be, and I’m not sure the oxidised carotenoids/aphins can have a high enough redox potential to get reduced by water. Hm.

    Interesting stuff, though.

  311. Socio-gen, something something... says

    Since we have so many cooks here… does anyone have a recipe for yellow (straightneck) squash? I usually just slice, baste with olive oil, sprinkle with herbs and a dash of salt, and grill or bake. I’ve done that a little too often lately, so something new (and quick) to do with the last two would be much appreciated.

    opposablethumbs:
    Glad to hear he and his bag arrived safely!

    Tony:
    They were odd little guys who had no notion of normal feline behavior. One actually liked going in the tub with DaughterPerson. Not in the water, mind you, but he’d perch on her shoulder.

    Improbable Joe:
    Ouch!! *ibuprofen* *heating pad* *ice pack* and *booze*

    Starstuff:
    I like the tag line on the FB page!

    carlie:
    High advertising rates?

  312. says

    I need to talk to at least one organizer of the Rhinebeck thingy, because I need to finally buy the train tickets and therefore need to arrange some things. Like which station I’m supposed to get off at, and whether there will be volunteers to drive boyfriend & me to and from the train station, and on which days. but I forgot your e-mail addresses. e-mail me plz?

  313. Lyn M: Necrodunker of death, nothing but net says

    This is intended to be information about how pre-nups, etc should work. I always told folks who asked me to get advice specific to them.

    Here is the general rule:

    If you have no agreement before you marry, and you divorce, then you end up with the “agreement” the state wrote for you. This “agreement” is called the law governing separation and/or divorce. I urge anyone getting married, and particularly those thinking of moving with spouse to a new country, to get some advice. You may be completely satisfied with what happens on separation and/or divorce. You may not. If you are not, a marriage contract or pre-nuptual contract, may help you.

    The state also writes you a Will. If you don’t like what it says, you need your own Will. I urge everyone to research their own state’s Will and decide if it fits you.

    One other benefit to the advice and, I hope, discussion of it with your potential spouse is that you get this stuff into the open. You may be surprised to find that you two do not agree at all. On the other hand, you may completely agree.

    Further note, it is no longer necessary to marry to experience financial entanglement arising out of cohabitation. One of you may be responsible for spousal support, even if you did not marry the other. There may be other obligations. Once again, doing research on this will give you an idea, but the idea may not be accurate. To get advice that fits you personally, you need to talk to a lawyer. Many jurisdictions provide a phone number where you can get the names of lawyers who have volunteered for the program and who will give you good clear information for free. For details of that in Ontario, as an example, try http://www.lsuc.on.ca/faq.aspx?id=2147486372
    Note: they do have an online request form, but you have to be in Ontario for this to help you.
    .
    .
    .
    tl;dr Can’t hurt to know stuff, then you decide.

  314. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    Many jurisdictions provide a phone number where you can get the names of lawyers who have volunteered for the program and who will give you good clear information for free.

    California family courts have a “family law facilitator’s office” where you can wait for 8-9 hours to be not helped with your questions by a pompous, rude, and dumb-as-nails clerk. You can also get a list of attorneys…possibly online, but definitely at the counter after waiting 8-9 hours.

  315. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    Ah, even better. I was thinking of the list the family court had.

  316. Lyn M: Necrodunker of death, nothing but net says

    Which often blows. That list is usually a list of lawyers who will take clients who have legal aid. If they told you it was of lawyers who will give free advice, etc, it was probably wrong.

  317. Lyn M: Necrodunker of death, nothing but net says

    And another whoops. A bar association may not be the place that licences and governs lawyers. In Ontario, there is the Law Society and also a bar association. Not the same thing.

    I’m sorry for being nit-picky here, but usually contact with a bar association OR the licencing body will steer you to an appropriate referral agency. I think a simple google of [state name] [bar association or licencing body] referral service, should get you there.

    The courts themselves avoid referrals because you can end up favouring some lawyers and not others. That isn’t something lawyers want to see coming out of the court system. It could be oppressive.

  318. ImaginesABeach says

    Well, I had forgotten just how lucky I am. Family stuff on my side of the family is my godless liberal parents and my liberal-almost-to-the-point-of-excommunication Catholic brother and sister-in-law. Family stuff at my mother- and father-in-law’s home rarely veers near anything approaching politics, and when it does, it’s mostly moderate.

    Had dinner at my sister-in-law’s home. Her mother-in-law said she was voting against Obama because the country can’t survive another 4 years of him, and ObamaCare is evil and destroying Medicare and what we really need is a good Christian man as president. I left the room.

  319. Rev. BigDumbChimp says

    The wolves are in Nunavut.

    Nice. What are you doing up there? Mrs. BDC and I have been thinking of going to Baffin island for a few years but things keep coming up.

  320. StevoR says

    Poll to possibly Pharyngulate here :

    http://ninemsn.com.au/?ocid=iefvrt

    ***

    VOTE

    Do you believe in the Big Bang theory?

    Yes = 649
    No = 1114

    ***

    Via Nine MSN. These polls tend toonly be up for a day or so, so vote quick or risk missing out.

    Of course its matter of accepting the science based on evidence more than “belief but I think we can guess what is implied.

    Based on this article :

    http://news.ninemsn.com.au/technology/8519215/aussie-researchers-rewrite-big-bang-theory

    apparently. “Quantum graphity?” Wonders if they mean quantum gravity instead?

  321. says

    Does anyone have a favorite place for estate or vintage jewelry? After 14 years of marriage this month, I’m on Misterc to give me a long-term ring.

    I don’t want diamonds or anything expensive, I’m thinking under $100, and I would be happy with a modest little silver antique or vintage ring with a semiprecious stone or two just to have a twinkle above my self-bought stainless steel wedding band. I’m checking eBay and etsy but I figure more sources cannot possibly hurt.

  322. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Since we have so many cooks here… does anyone have a recipe for yellow (straightneck) squash? I usually just slice, baste with olive oil, sprinkle with herbs and a dash of salt, and grill or bake. I’ve done that a little too often lately, so something new (and quick) to do with the last two would be much appreciated.

    I was going to suggest you cook it down with herbs and mash in some soft cheese and salt, then stuff ravioli. But you said you wanted quick. Two ideas:

    1. Treat it as taco/sandwich filling. Julienne the squash then sautee it in a very hot skillet with oil, garlic, onion, cilantro, cumin. .that sort of thing. Roll up in a tortilla and slather on your favorite sauces.

    2. Grate it roughly along with some potato and any other veggies you have on hand. Add lots of grated onion. An egg, salt, pepper, and enough flour to thicken it up a bit. Fry in oil in a cast iron skillet and serve as vegetable fritters. This really is quick, even if it doesn’t sound like it.

  323. lexie says

    Esteleth, lifting my cup of tea to you.

    ImprobableJoe, ouch, wheat bags and analgesia to you.

    Caine, firstly virtual tea and hugs to Chester. Secondly, could I please print a photo of him? Also when will you know if Zoe is pregnant or not (fingers crossed that she isn’t)?

  324. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Point of clarification on legal bodies in the US:

    1. Bar associations are never officially regulatory bodies. They are trade associations for lawyers. They may sometimes have referral services.

    2. State-based regulatory boards for lawyers usually never make referrals.

    In practice, the two can be difficult to tell apart. As in most industries, the state regulatory boards are largely captured by the trade and its associations, turning the regulatory apparatus into a protectionist whitewashing arm for the profession. But it’s good to know the formal distinction between the two.

    Rule of thumb: Anything called an association, regardless of the trade/occupation, is never a government regulatory body in the US.

  325. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Best to call a jeweler, Kristin. I’m guessing softer metals (high gold content) are easier to resize, but stone settings probably play a role too. That is a charming ring.

  326. thunk, sour grape says

    First day of classes was today. That was fun.

    Then played some games. Also fun.

    Day well spent. Just 9 more months of this.

  327. says

    Lexie:

    Caine, firstly virtual tea and hugs to Chester. Secondly, could I please print a photo of him?

    Yes, of course you can. :)

    Also when will you know if Zoe is pregnant or not (fingers crossed that she isn’t)?

    If she is pregnant, I’ll know right quick. Rats gestate for 3 weeks and they don’t show until their 3rd week.

  328. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Clarification 2:

    1. Regulatory/standards-setting bodies for lawyers are usually called the [State] Bar. The difference is the lack of the word association

    Example:

    California State Bar—a government arm of the California Supreme Court

    Bar Association of San Francisico—a non-government, local, voluntary association.

  329. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Caine, since there’s a limit to how many ratlets a body can handle at once, is it possible for you (if there’s another pregnancy right now) to give the newborn ratlets a quick euthenasia, or delegate this to someone who’s willing?

  330. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    I know it’s a tender thing, Caine, don’t get me wrong. But a quick dispatch before their eyes are open might be the best thing of all, and minimally cruel/stressful.

  331. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Are there any rat abortifacients?

    Well, if it had been a legitimate rape this wouldn’t be a problem, would it?

  332. says

    Oh, and I have thought of another reason (or possibly the same one phrased differently) for liking Atheism+. It’s the social glue factor. It’s not quite a guaranteed creep-free space, not much can be, but at least it would be a creep-not-encouraged space.

    I was looking at meetup groups just recently. And I found that I would feel quite wary of going to an atheist meetup, but I would be extremely happy to see an atheist+ meetup.

  333. Alukonis, metal ninja says

    Hey everyone, I am dropping in for advice yet again.

    I’m thinking of auditing quantum chemistry this fall, but I am unfamiliar with bra-ket notation. The quantum chemistry I’ve seen before was in a physical chemistry class, and we just did everything with PDE’s.

    Can anyone recommend a good math textbook to teach myself this stuff? I did take linear algebra in undergrad but it was just kind of a general “look, matrices!” and didn’t use the words “bra” and “ket.” Probably, anyway, I sort of stopped going to lecture after the first exam because it clearly wasn’t necessary in order to pass the course. (Younger me was kind of a slacker.) I just want something a bit more basic-explanation-style since quantum books tend to be more on the application part rather than the “how to figure this notation out” part.

  334. says

    I haven’t posted here in a long time, and I think I used a different name, but here goes:
    I recently shared a link on facebook, http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/08/19/debunking-anti-abortion-arguments/, which I though was pretty clear and straight forward. However, I have a facebook friend that’s a hardcore, ultra-right, fundamentalist christian that always responds to slightly liberal posts with many of the bad arguments you would expect. I will henceforth call him The Ruiner for the effect he has on most conversations.
    Unfortunately I’m generally too busy (or lazy) to properly respond to every logical fallacy and falsehood thrown out by The Ruiner, so could those of you in community that are better at this help me out? I’m tired of his BS and I just want something incontrovertible to get him to shut up (though I doubt he would). His response to the article is below. Can you help me with solid responses?

    On #1, the author fallaciously jumps from “the mother and child’s life have different value” (true) to “the child’s life is less valuable than the mother’s suffering” (false).

    On #2, I agree it is not a government plot, but it remains that the effect of our current abortion policies is that they systematically harm those in poverty, blacks, and the disabled more than any other social group. The article’s claim that this can be explained merely by other factors such as birth control access and income level is unsupported and false in practice – the rate of abortion among blacks has been higher than the birth rate 2-to-1, so high that the birth rate is lower than the death rate. We don’t see this among the white demographic in comparable socio-economic circumstances. On the disabled, several studies have shown that the rate of abortion for those with Down syndrome diagnosed prenatally is 75-85% – far far higher than most other demographics. Finally, if we jump around the world and look in Asia, we see that abortion is being used to commit “gendercide” – the abortion of girls based on prenatal identification in China is extremely high. All of this shows one important fact: That abortion in practice is a tool for enforcing society’s prejudices by preemptively eliminating or reducing social groups who are disfavored. This shouldn’t be surprising, but it certainly does carry significant moral value and can’t be ignored as a mere incidental side-effect. Just like gun abuse can be curbed by good gun control policies, abortion abuse can be curbed by good abortion regulation, on the premise that unborn life should be treated with dignity rather than as a tool for eugenics.

    On #3, there are multiple points to be made. Firstly, because the cells the fetus is composed of are of a completely different DNA than the parent’s, there seems to be little argument for inherent “ownership” of them like one owns one’s own body parts. Secondly, the argument for why to treat the fetus as a developing human is the same argument as to why to treat children as such: because maturity doesn’t define humanity, our biology does. Thirdly, because in prenatal screening we already identify human social constructs as applying to the fetus: it is a “boy” or “girl”, it is “black” or “white” or whatnot, it is “special needs”, “healthy”, etc. It is incoherent to say we can apply social labels to the unborn and yet we cannot consider them to have the dignity and value that comes with those social labels.
    I don’t see #4 as relevant so I don’t have a problem with it, and I don’t have any objections to #5.

    On #6, while we’re at debunking myths, let’s debunk the myth that abortion is a more healthy option than carrying a baby to term and adopting. While women who carry a child to term and adopt are known to deal with grief comparable to a loved one dying, women who have abortions have psychological damage more comparable to that of combat veterans, including a high rate of PTSD, suicide attempts, long-term substance abuse, etc. (http://afterabortion.org/2011/abortion-risks-a-list-of-major-psychological-complications-related-to-abortion/)

    We don’t see comparable mental health problems among mothers at large or mothers who give their children up for adoption. There’s no evidence to support the notion that the correlation is due to another cause, this is psuedo-scientific hand-waving. Surely correlation doesn’t imply causation, but the psychological issues are explicitly linked to the act of abortion and the trauma experienced therein in the studies conducted.

    On #7 and #8, again I don’t really see any reason to disagree.

    On #9, the fact that “many women have gone on…” does not invalidate the research. There’s plenty of research on this topic, some of what this article says is true, some is false, see: http://www.deveber.org/text/chapters/Chap5.pdf. The conclusion from research is that “…women who have abortions, especially single young women who have never carried a baby to term, risk experiencing greater difficulty in conceiving and carrying future pregnancies to term.”

  335. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    Alukonis: I think bra-ket notation is specific to quantum stuff.

    My (horrible) Modern Physics professor used it quite a bit, but I never really understood it. The book didn’t explain it at all. I’d be interested in seeing a good explanation as well, though a combination of that course and financial aid intransigence has already put me off of the BS/research-track physics program.

  336. theophontes (坏蛋) says

    @ Caine

    [rattie wrestling]

    Video!!! (Lawdy, the virtual parents are more work than the ratties themselves.)

    @ Alethea

    atheism+

    Ionised atheism?

  337. Wowbagger, Antipodean Dervish says

    Alethea wrote:

    Oh, and I have thought of another reason (or possibly the same one phrased differently) for liking Atheism+. It’s the social glue factor. It’s not quite a guaranteed creep-free space, not much can be, but at least it would be a creep-not-encouraged space.

    And if the large number of people who’ve shown up to tell Jen they support it – when before they wouldn’t even consider getting involved – is anything to go by, this is a really important factor.

    That alone is probably driving the slimepitters into previously unmatched levels of desperation – knowing that they’re even more outnumbered and recognised for what they are (and despised for it) than they had previously realised.

  338. lexie says

    Caine, thanks so much. Now there will be another cute photo on my fridge (other photo is of my dog). Re Zoe I hope she’s just pot bellied or has a pseudo-pregnancy.

    Alethea, I totally get where you are coming from re A+ meet up groups. I looked into some local atheist groups recently but without knowing anything about them I’m too scared to go, I know that I shouldn’t be but the fact that I am young and female does impact my decision not to go. A group that identified as A+ I would feel safer at.

    By the way on atheist meetup groups does anyone know if the ones in Adelaide are good?

  339. says

    Alukonis,

    I don’t know what quantum mechanics textbooks you’ve tried, but if you get one that’s sufficiently introductory, you might not be as badly-off as with more advanced ones. The one I used in my intro quantum mechanics was, I believe, an earlier version of this one by Liboff, and I seem to remember it not being too bad, if you do the problems at the ends of the chapters (look for the section on Dirac notation — that’s when they start in on bras and kets). I believe the most commonly used one is Griffiths, which I’ve never personally been subjected to, but which as far as I’ve seen tends to be used in slightly gentler intro to quantum classes than the one I took. So it might be either more or less useful to you than Liboff, depending on your disposition. In my experience, those slightly gentler classes tend to be more targeted towards people who just want applications, rather than explanations, so you may actually prefer Liboff for your purposes.

    I *would* recommend actually looking at the specific applications they use the bra and ket notation in, because many of those will probably be relevant as the elementary building blocks of what you do in quantum chemistry. If they’re assuming knowledge of the bra-ket notation, they may also assume knowledge of some of those elementary examples, so it’s worth having at least skimmed through them in the past.

  340. Wowbagger, Antipodean Dervish says

    lexie wrote:

    By the way on atheist meetup groups does anyone know if the ones in Adelaide are good?

    I’m a bit embarrassed to say I’ve never actually been to one in Adelaide. I couldn’t even tell you which atheist groups we have here.

  341. Rey Fox says

    but I would be extremely happy to see an atheist+ meetup.

    Me too. I’m not a lady, but it would be awfully nice to join an atheist and be reasonably sure it wouldn’t have a bunch of Dwight Schrutes in it.

  342. Wowbagger, Antipodean Dervish says

    lexie wrote:

    Wowbagger, why embarrassed?

    I’ve gone all the way to Melbourne for two GACs and yet I’ve not managed to seek out any atheist gatherings in my own city. I admit that that’s a bit slack on my part…

  343. broboxley OT says

    spag squash is good diced thin raw in salads
    cook until soupy then add tomatoes, onions garlic and make an awesome spag sauce
    cook until soupy add oxtails and lentils
    cook until soupy (see a pattern here) add navy beans and salted pork

  344. ibyea says

    The bra-ket thing, brings me back bad memories of Linear Algebra class. Don’t get me wrong, I passed it with flying colors, but for the first time in my life, I didn’t get it. I knew the process and everything, but I felt like the mathematicians were making things up as I went along the subject. I felt like there were no logic at all as to why the matrices worked that way, or what was the point of determinants and finding the basis of the matrix.

  345. Lyn M: Necrodunker of death, nothing but net says

    does anyone have a recipe for yellow (straightneck) squash?

    This is not so much a recipe as an attitude, but I often micro-wave squash, then scoop out the insides, leaving the rind. I use the insides as a soup base, by mashing or blending the squash, then adding either a bit of water or milk or butter, depending on the diet of the soup eaters. You can then add to this quite a bit, such as putting in finely diced other vegetables including raw or cooked ones. I like to add diced and sautéed yellow peppers because orangey squash with yellow squares or shreds added looks nice. Some put in a dollop of sour cream or similar, which also looks nice with a swirl. Sometimes I just sprinkle on some nutmeg. Salt and pepper to taste.

    It is really fast and works with pumpkin and other squash types. I have eaten it cold, which is refreshing on very hot days.

    Sorry if this is too late.

  346. Lyn M: Necrodunker of death, nothing but net says

    Josh,

    Thanks about the association points.

    In Canada, the Law Society is the regulatory body and will make referrals if you contact the lawyer referral section. This is actually a service to the public in that it nearly never pays off for the lawyer. I was on the list for 20 years, and got one file, I think out of many calls. The file was legal aid, and represented a net loss under the payment regulations of the day. But hey, poor people deserve decent lawyers, too.

  347. Menyambal --- Sambal's Little Helper says

    My housemates are squabbling for the goofiest of reasons–they are both wrong in the same way–and one of them is having a crafty smoke, not realizing the smoke is coming out under the door, so I’m up late running a fan to drag the smoke out, partly because I hate it, and partly to keep the quarrel from flaring up again.

    I stayed quiet as a mouse through all of it, then got snarled at to not try to patch things up, even though I feel I should, and that I have every right and duty to. Neither of them can communicate with the other coherently—that’s what the earlier mess was. Not that my record with either is the best, but at least I set them off more slowly than the other one does.

    I think I go into discussions with the goal of avoiding trouble, they both go in with the intention of winning. And since neither has anything but a giant chip on the shoulder, it goes to hell fast.

    And I’d done favors for both of them today. And they both had for each other.

    I hope they both get some sleep.

    At least I can play some music I like, quite-like. I had an idea today to make a mountain dulcimer that was played by a bow, and Googled it. Sure enough, somebody has already done it, and it sounds nice.

    Bass Bowed Dulcimer playing Amazing Grace http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG-b65SDgIA

    My design would be easier to make, I think, than a regular dulcimer. It might not sound as good, though.

  348. says

    ibyea, I can’t speak to why mathematicians developed matrix math in the first place, but it’s unbelievably useful across pretty much every area of engineering and science.

    Anything that does data mining uses linear algebra, which means Google, bioinformatics, voice/facial recognition algorithms, probably stock market predictions, and who knows what else. Of course it’s all over quantum physics, which means modern electronics requires it. Hell, even if you’re just solving a classical electrical circuit with more than a handful of components, you’ll be doing linear algebra. Controls uses it (e.g. robotics applications, swarm intelligence). Mechanical and civil engineers use it to solve complex mechanical problems — if you’ve ever seen a finite element model, that’s full of linear algebra. Computer graphics (CAD software, all those cutesy 3-D movies, videogames, etc.) uses linear algebra like crazy. In fact, a ridiculously large fraction of anything anybody does with a computer these days has ginormous amounts of linear algebra at the bottom of it.

    Basically, if you can’t do linear algebra, you’re cut out of understanding or contributing to a vast swath of the coolest modern creative endeavors. So it really sucks that you had such a lousy experience with it. I hope you’ll get a better opportunity someday.

  349. Alukonis, metal ninja says

    Anne-

    Thanks for the book suggestions! I’ve requested Liboff and the other should be returned to the library in a couple days, or I’ll look at the reserve copy.

    There’s so many books on quantum at the library that it’s pretty daunting to find a decent one, hence my quest for recommendations. Once you find a good one it’s hard to let it go. I’m pretty terrible, I can check out books for six months at a time and renew indefinitely – I’ve had the same inorganic electrochemistry book for like two years straight now. (It’s the one by Zanello and it’s awesome, btw, if anyone in interested in that topic)

  350. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    atheism+

    Ionised atheism?

    Worse, it’s a CATion.

    There goes PZ’s support ;(

  351. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    GYAH.

    I just had a fairly hard cardio workout and I feel a little weird (I think I strained my lungs slightly) so I’m keeping my heart rate monitor on and an eye on it, just in case.

    It just jumped from 105 to 200 more or less randomly, in steps of about 40. I didn’t feel any different, and it settled down once I put the watch closer to the transmitter, so I think it was just interference or something, but that was scary.

    And, oh, great, apparently I really should go back and take Introduction to Linear Algebra at some point. >.>

  352. says

    SGBM:

    And that’s wrong. Atheism per se requires women’s equality. It’s not value added.

    Aren’t you confusing is and ought here? What you say would be desirable, but it is hardly what we are observing. That’s the same problem that I have when PZ argues that atheism implies all these other values. Yes, it would really be great if it did, but if you look around that’s not what’s happening. Btw, I’ve had quite a change of thought about this issue in the last few years(since you linked to an old blog post).

    but I would be extremely happy to see an atheist+ meetup.

    Good luck with that in Australia, at least through official channels. I’d love to see the faces of the clowns from the Atheist Foundation here if someone was to suggest that.

  353. says

    Alukonis, I hope one or the other of those helps. There’s a lot of lousy, confusing crap out there about quantum mechanics, much of it written by people whose job it supposedly is to know better. I can’t promise those two books will be perfect, but they’re at least in sufficiently heavy usage that the authors and publishers have smoothed out many of the worst flaws.

    By the by, if you *do* happen to grok linear algebra, it’s sometimes helpful when looking at Dirac notation to keep in mind the analogy of bra = row vector, ket = column vector, operator = square matrix. In addition, when you deal with things like position basis vs. momentum basis, it can help to think of it as analogous to a Fourier transform (assuming that’s something you’re familiar with), because it basically *is*. Bra-ket notation looks funny, but if you’re careful to keep track of what the things you do actually mean it will start to make more sense over time.

    As for library books, I too am a serial offender on that front. I have about five books out from my school’s library that I’ve been renewing every four weeks for more than a year. But *shrug*. If somebody else wanted them, they’d put a hold on them. The reality is, these books are sufficiently obscure that probably I and the people I’m working with are the only ones who will have any interest in them for a good long while yet.

  354. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    What does it matter whether “atheism” (for whatever values of ‘atheism’ you decide) “requires” women’s equality? We get to decide that any coalition or movement we back requires certain things. Who cares if the faces of the Atheist Foundation in Australia (or the US, or Canada, or Germany, or wherever) don’t want to show up for that?

    Who cares?

    Fuck them then. Bye.

  355. says

    Azkyroth,

    And, oh, great, apparently I really should go back and take Introduction to Linear Algebra at some point. >.>

    Heh, sorry. I will try to froth at the mouth slightly less the next time I evangelize for my favorite bits of math and science. :-P

  356. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    By the by, if you *do* happen to grok linear algebra, it’s sometimes helpful when looking at Dirac notation to keep in mind the analogy of bra = row vector, ket = column vector, operator = square matrix.

    Wow…where the fuck were you back in April? ;/

  357. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    Heh, sorry. I will try to froth at the mouth slightly less the next time I evangelize for my favorite bits of math and science. :-P

    Eh, I was already thinking about it, but I was kinda thrilled at getting an A in the last math course I took (Advanced Mathematics for Science and Engineering II) and had some LA exposure in a couple engineering classes as well as the first semester of the above. I’m pessimistic about the chances of that at the community college level, just based on history.

    On the other hand, the last time I took a math course at the community college level I was married to a raging alcoholic…so it might make a difference. >.>

  358. lexie says

    Rorschach, that attitude you refer to is one of the reasons why I don’t go to any local meet ups because I don’t feel like it would necessarily be a friendly environment. I think if anyone was going to set up an A+ group perhaps bypassing official channels would be a good idea, we don’t need their approval.

  359. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    I think if anyone was going to set up an A+ group perhaps bypassing official channels would be a good idea, we don’t need their approval.

    Very. The largest atheist group in the Sacramento area was started by a couple of friends basically on a bet, via meetup.com. Which might be a really good tool; I’m not actually sure if it’s US-only. O.o

  360. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    perhaps bypassing official channels would be a good idea,

    And we get to construct our own “official channels”, or unofficial channels, or affiliations of whatever sort we deem necessary and expedient. I’m no longer impressed with the “weight” of large, name-brand atheist or skeptic organizations. If they want to get on board with pro-feminist, pro-humanist goals, that’s awesome, and they’ll get my volunteer labor and my money.

    If they don’t, then I don’t care. I’ll abandon them and move on to something more productive and welcoming.

    Skeptics Incorporated (TM)—as a generalization—need to understand this. We don’t feel beholden to you. We’re not afraid not to have you backing us. Really. You’re not thatimportant.

  361. Alukonis, metal ninja says

    I haven’t done Fourier transforms since that class on that thing, what was it, some crap about systems… I didn’t really pay attention. We actually didn’t do transforms. I think. It was some kind of sensor feedback and control class? I don’t know.

    I think it’s safer to say I know nothing about Fourier transforms except that I do FTIR a lot.

    The vector thing is useful though! Most of the matrices I use are for group theory (symmetry operators FTW!) so I’m mostly used to spatial transformations. That might not be the right term for it, but hopefully you know what I mean.

  362. ibyea says

    @Alukonis
    Fourier transform is a really cool piece of math. It is pretty much adding a gazillion waves to make an approximate shape of any graphs you want.

  363. lexie says

    Josh, exactly. Sometimes I feel that skeptics incorporated think they are the new church. Even though I’m an Australian atheist I do not belong to the AFA. I will support them if I agree with what they are doing but I do not need their approval. When I was religious I would have needed the approval of a priest to set up a group or do anything but when I became an atheist I lost my rulers and am not going to acquire new ones.

  364. strange gods before me ॐ says

    rorschach,

    And that’s wrong. Atheism per se requires women’s equality. It’s not value added.

    Aren’t you confusing is and ought here? What you say would be desirable, but it is hardly what we are observing.

    That Y follows from X does not mean everyone will notice Y follows from X.

    Chas rorschach, there are atheists who believe in reincarnation. There are lots of incoherent atheists.

    And no, I’m not confusing ought and is here. But maybe you are. You’re recognizing that some idiots don’t notice (that’s an is, their lack of noticing) that equality follows and you’re taking that to imply that it doesn’t follow.

    That’s the same problem that I have when PZ argues that atheism implies all these other values.

    I doubt it’s the same problem, since my stance is quite similar to PZ’s, but probably not identical.

    Yes, it would really be great if it did, but if you look around that’s not what’s happening.

    It would be really great if there were no atheists who believe in reincarnation, but if you look around that’s not what’s happening.

    Nevertheless, reincarnation is incoherent.

    You cannot be a coherent atheist who believes in reincarnation.

    You also cannot be a coherent atheist who wants to deny equal rights to gay people, for instance.

    Btw, I’ve had quite a change of thought about this issue in the last few years(since you linked to an old blog post).

    Great. Your “MRAs and misogynists can learn and adapt, and they should be given the chance to do so” line in your post two days ago is still total hogwash.

    They may indeed be able to learn and adapt, but don’t tell anyone that we should be giving them a chance to do so (your “should” means at least some action we’re not now doing, or else it doesn’t mean anything).

    +++++
    Josh,

    What does it matter whether “atheism” (for whatever values of ‘atheism’ you decide) “requires” women’s equality?

    Since I’m saying women’s equality does follow logically and empirically from atheism, do you want me to answer this? Thing is, the answer would not be related to the rest of your comment, which of course I agree with. So I’m not sure if it’d be relevant to what you’re really getting at.

  365. says

    SG, I believe that you’re arguing an abstract point, which (whether I agree or not) is not very relevant to many of us.

    I don’t care to be involved in the effort to stage coups to take over existing organisations run by idiot libertarians*. I don’t care to spend my time educating those who have, by now, proven themselves ineducable. I don’t care to spend my time trying to work out which people in my organisation are going to assault or insult me or my friends, and setting up defenses against that. I want people in my organisation to be my allies. If there’s a flag they can wear to distinguish themselves from my enemies, I’m all for them wearing the flag.

    But by all means go preach “atheism implies equality” to the slymepit if you wish. Personally, I’m not setting foot eyeball there.

    * oops tautology

  366. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    Alethea, I think SG is arguing for a particular…um, there’s no better way to put it than “framing,” is there? rather than a substantive difference in approach.

  367. says

    Only 3 more days of this midnight shift. Lots of work, and 2 overtime with night differential hours a night!

    For the people not on PET, my sister is pregnant. I’m fairly unenthused about it, given that she’s living with our parents, she and her husband can’t afford a kid, and my parents really can’t, either. So I figure it’s a huge mistake. And I can’t say anything about it cause of the fact I don’t want to be THAT person.

    *sigh* I can’t bring myself to be all ‘yaaay, squeee, baby’ with her, cause I just want to shout at her about how big an idiot she was.

  368. strange gods before me ॐ says

    SG, I believe that you’re arguing an abstract point, which (whether I agree or not) is not very relevant to many of us.

    I’ve put forward my argument and now I’m responding to people who’ve responded to me. I will continue replying to people who reply to me. You can ignore me if you like.

    I don’t care to be involved in the effort to stage coups to take over existing organisations run by idiot libertarians*

    I definitely haven’t said that anyone should.

    I don’t care to spend my time educating those who have, by now, proven themselves ineducable.

    I definitely haven’t said that anyone should. (rorschach is apparently saying this; I’m clearly arguing against him.)

    I don’t care to spend my time trying to work out which people in my organisation are going to assault or insult me or my friends, and setting up defenses against that.

    I definitely haven’t said that anyone should.

    I want people in my organisation to be my allies.

    I definitely haven’t said otherwise.

    If there’s a flag they can wear to distinguish themselves from my enemies, I’m all for them wearing the flag.

    I definitely have said that visual indicators (as opposed to verbal) are awesome for this. I specifically mentioned that same icon that Caine uses.

    But by all means go preach “atheism implies equality” to the slymepit if you wish.

    I preach it when they show up here. I haven’t said that anyone here should go do that work — I’ve always argued against people who say that crap — and I don’t appreciate your absurd implications.

    Azkyroth grokked me well enough. I refer you to this comment — please don’t misrepresent me again without reading it.

  369. StevoR says

    Plus another poll here :

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/20/1121963/-Why-Climate-Literacy-Matters

    ***
    Poll

    An initiative to substantially increase society’s climate and energy literacy should be a national priority

    Absolutely! Should be major priority
    82% 47 votes
    Couldn’t hurt, but not top of my list
    10% 6 votes
    Meh- lukewarm at best on the idea
    0% 0 votes
    Not sure it would make any difference, so why bother?
    0% 0 votes
    A real waste of time
    7% 4 votes

    | 57 votes | Vote | Results | Vote
    ***

    With a good article there too.

    On a related topic via NineMSN online news site :

    http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8518792

    Australia needs to investigate novel ways of protecting the Great Barrier Reef, such as giant shadecloths, a leading climate change scientist says. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute, says the time for saving the reef through global action on climate change may be running out.

    Whuilst for something totally different :

    The InSight mission, which aims to launch in March 2016, will send a device to Earth’s next-door neighbour to measure seismic activity and a subsurface probe to measure the flow of heat from the interior.

    Source :

    http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8519643

    Again Ninemsn.

  370. says

    You cannot be a coherent atheist who believes in reincarnation.

    You also cannot be a coherent atheist who wants to deny equal rights to gay people, for instance.

    I’m afraid Russell Blackford or Hoggle or any atheist believing in reincarenation don’t give a damn whether you think they are coherent in their atheism or not.
    This coherence you keep mentioning implies an active intellectual or mental process on the part of those who are meant to be coherent, it’s not included in the atheism starter pack.

    The bit you quote above from my post(MRAs and misogynists…) refers to those who may be amenable to changing their views. I think they exist.

  371. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    PZ, a question for (mainly) you as a biology educator:

    I am a not-even-remotely-biology major, but I am finding myself wanting to have a good grounding in and more comprehensive understanding of exercise physiology and related health concepts, mainly for my own benefit. Due to a combination of time, money, majors-only statuses, and enrollment priority issues, there’s no reasonable way for me to take actual courses in these subjects that I’m aware of, so I’m thinking about, when I have a bit more money, picking up textbooks for my school’s Exercise Physiology class and the prerequisites (a general physiology class, whose prerequisite is any of the introductroy bio courses) and studying on my own time.

    Do you have an opinion, as a biology educator who’s taught physiology courses before, on how much I’m likely to miss/lose if I get the cheap out-of-date editions of those books?

  372. Azkyroth, Former Growing Toaster Oven says

    I’m afraid Russell Blackford or Hoggle or any atheist believing in reincarenation don’t give a damn whether you think they are coherent in their atheism or not.

    Why should our self-definition be subject to a heckler’s veto?

  373. blf says

    Since we have so many cooks here… does anyone have a recipe for yellow (straightneck) squash?

    Cover in concrete and toss into the deepest part of the ocean. Then prepare something edible.

  374. says

    Why should our self-definition be subject to a heckler’s veto?

    Self-definition is fine and necessary, that’s what we’re doing right now with Jen’s post or PZ’s article. It’s the existence of all these implied values that are alleged to be part of the one true and coherent atheism that I disagree with. They differ with who you ask, too.

  375. Pteryxx says

    Azkyroth: when I took anatomy/physiology, they let us get whichever of the last several versions of the text we could find, because 99% of it hasn’t changed. (Mostly they want to sell new interactive tools.) I’d say go for it.

  376. McC2lhu saw what you did there. says

    NOOOOOO! Not Phyllis Diller! She was only 95, dammit!

    It’s a shame when time takes away someone who made me laugh.

    Couldn’t the reaper have come for Mark Russell instead?

  377. lexie says

    Azkyroth, in my experience of biology textbooks it depends how old they are. If they were produced in this century I haven’t had too many problem but I’ve had friends who’ve bought really old books and they have had problems.

  378. strange gods before me ॐ says

    I’m afraid Russell Blackford or Hoggle or any atheist believing in reincarenation don’t give a damn whether you think they are coherent in their atheism or not.

    I’m afraid you think you’re saying something clever here.

    Any Christian believing in Jesus may not give a damn whether or not Christianity is coherent — but the fact remains that it’s not coherent and I will therefore argue against Christianity (when I have the energy to do so).

    This coherence you keep mentioning implies an active intellectual or mental process on the part of those who are meant to be coherent,

    Well, it doesn’t apply to dead bodies. Living people do have mental processes, though.

    it’s not included in the atheism starter pack.

    Where can I buy the atheism starter pack? I never got one. :(

    Does it include a cracker and a nail?

    The bit you quote above from my post(MRAs and misogynists…) refers to those who may be amenable to changing their views. I think they exist.

    «They may indeed be able to learn and adapt, but don’t tell anyone that we should be giving them a chance to do so (your “should” means at least some action we’re not now doing, or else it doesn’t mean anything).»

    You might benefit from quoting the person you’re disagreeing with more often, rorschach. Seriously. It might help you clarify your thoughts. I know it helps me.

    It’s the existence of all these implied values that are alleged to be part of the one true and coherent atheism that I disagree with.

    There is a coherent way of understanding reality. That’s my claim.

    I’m not surprised that you would disagree.

  379. StevoR says

    .. Earth’s next-door neighbour ..

    Which isn’t actually the nearest planet to Earth – Venus.

  380. says

    There is a coherent way of understanding reality. That’s my claim.

    It just depends on who you ask.

    Anyway, enough nitpicking with you for one day I think…:-)

    Hey Lounge parents, does anyone have any bright ideas of how to discourage a 5-year old from using swear words? Anything from “fucking” to “son of a bitch” can be found in my son’s(and apparently any other kindergarden kid’s) vernacular, and I’m not amused. Ex has chosen the strategy of threatening him with calling Santa, which is not very successful, to put it mildly. I was thinking of explaining to him what those words mean and why they are rude language, but not sure how to go about explaining to a 5-yo what a bitch is, or what fucking entails. Any tips?

  381. blf says

    The martian rock that was fried by Curiosity’s laser is a bit nonplussed:


    The big metal creature was scary at first, with the rockets and noise, but I’m sure it’s just curious. Maybe I should say hello!

    Oh, I think I’ve got the big metal creature’s attention now — it’s looking right at me! Maybe it does want to be friends!

    My new robot friend really does have quite a steady, intimidating stare. I guess it’s a cultural thing.

    Um, @MarsCuriosity, what are you…. hey! … HEY!

    OW OW OW! STOP IT!

  382. StevoR says

    @493. strange gods before me ॐ wrote :

    “This coherence you keep mentioning implies an active intellectual or mental process on the part of those who are meant to be coherent,..”
    Well, it doesn’t apply to dead bodies. Living people do have mental processes, though.

    Although some of us living people are more *coherent* than others!

    (Must admit I’m often fairly incoherent myself!)

  383. opposablethumbs says

    @ noahhopson-walker #445, there have been a lot of threads on the issue of restricting women’s bodily (and specifically reproductive) autonomy here on Pharyngula, in which people have eviscerated probably all of these “arguments”. I’m enough of a klutz I don’t know how to search the site really effectively, but you’re probably more online-sussed than I am! Still, I just typed “abortion” into the search box at the top of the page for a start – probably worth trying with “autonomy” and “reproductive” etc. etc.

    You could try this one:
    http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/08/01/the-only-abortion-argument-that-counts/

  384. says

    Strange gods, please do not suggest that I’m misrepresenting you. If you want to pick fights, don’t do it here. If you think that I have mistaken something, please explain how politely.

    I argue that whether it is true or not that “atheism implies equality” does not matter. It may be true. I’m not arguing. However, its truth is not relevant to the argument that A+ is a valuable concept. That is what I take the actual topic of the discussion to be.

    In my discussion, A+ acts as the flag. If the flag is absent, then all those things that I DO NOT WANT become requirements for me to join an “atheism” group. So I probably won’t. Nor will very many women or minorities. (Also I didn’t say that you wanted me to. I present this as a logical consequence of your position, whether you want it or not.)

    If you wish to appropriate plain vanilla unflagged atheism to become the default for people who care about social justice, then you need to go and have that fight in the places where it isn’t. You have to wrest it away from them. Unfortunately for you, that fight is located in the slymepit and among their fans and fellow travellers. It’s also a consequence, not a personal dismissal.

    I think that A+ does a nice run around them, leaving them behind to sputter futilely in their own obsolescence.

  385. says

    Say about Piers Morgan what you want, but this one is quite funny, wrt Todd Akin not showing up for his scheduled interview:

    “Congressman, you have an open invitation to join me in that chair whenever you feel up to it,” Morgan said. “Because if you don’t keep your promise to appear on the show, then you are, what we would call in Britain, a gutless little twerp.”