[Thunderdome]
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Rodney Nelson:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:01 am
There’s something about a new, fresh, untouched by human hands, virgin thread that makes me want to say…
…oh look, shiny!
Beatrice:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:03 am
Sniny, Rodney, sniny!
michaeld:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:09 am
It’s too shiny in hear I paid for blood of trolls… rawr….. RAWR !!! O.O! flop….
Barkeron:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:15 am
Thesis: Agnostics are more rational than atheists.
Evidence: Empirical agnostics are of the opinion that the existence or non-existence of entities responsible for the creation of the universe cannot currently be proven, but think it’s possible to do so via the methods of science and rationality like empirical proof. Atheists, by contrast, insist on the ad hoc absolute that there aren’t any. Therefore agnostics are more sciencey.
(Note: I’m not a troll, I just want to wrap my head around this seeming contradiction in the atheist attitude.)
The Mellow Monkey: Caerie:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:20 am
Thesis: People who are neutral on the topic of fairies are more rational than unbelievers in fairies.
Evidence: Empirical people who are neutral on the topic of fairies are of the opinion that the existence or non-existence of fairies responsible for the dewdrops on roses and whiskers on kittens cannot currently be proven, but think it’s possible to do so via the methods of science and rationality like empirical proof. Unbelievers in fairies, by contrast, insist on the ad hoc absolute that there aren’t any. Therefore people who are neutral on the topic of fairies are more sciencey.
(Okay, really going to recover from this migraine now.)
Beatrice:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:20 am
Barkeron,
You don’t know what agnosticism is.
Rutee Katreya:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:21 am
[quote]Therefore agnostics are more sciencey.[/quote]
Because accepting, even provisionally, explanations that lack evidence is more, not less, science-y?
Beatrice:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:22 am
Hint: There exists such a being as an agnostic atheist
Barkeron:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:23 am
Beatrice,
stones and glasshouses?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weak_agnosticism
michaeld:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:25 am
@Barkeron/Beatrice
Or atheism. Atheism is a current belief on the subject of gods and says nothing about how convinced/certain one is or how provisional that belief is.
Beatrice:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:28 am
Words and meaning?
michaeld:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:30 am
Essentially Barkeron,
Agnosticism is about what you claim to know and atheism is what you believe. Similar but distinct ideas.
How most atheists view it: http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Atheist_vs._agnostic
Dick the Damned:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:31 am
Barkeron, i’m an antitheist, atheist, & agnostic. It’s possible to be an atheist without claiming that there definitely are no gods. I just don’t believe in any of the buggers, & think that those who do are sadly misinformed; dangerously so, sometimes.
Barkeron:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:32 am
Only because agnostics say there’s not enough data to completely eliminate the possibility that, say, a Star Trek-style “energy being” with the mental complexity of an amoeba pooped out the universe as the Big Bang or other creation scenarios doesn’t mean they’re convinced there’s an invisible sky daddy who want us to slavishly adhere to his rules as laid down in a 5000 year old book written by anonymous prophets.
Slippery slope, anyone?
Amphiox:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:33 am
Assertion without evidence. Specifics. Where were they tried and did not work? How was it ascertained that they did not work?
Assertion without evidence. Specifics. What more drastic measures should be used? How should they be implemented? WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE THAT THEY WOULD WORK ANY BETTER THAN THE LESS DRASTIC MEASURES?
Because there is ZERO evidence, ZERO, that dropping missiles on to sleeping children while targeting a suspected terrorist next door, or invading some islamic country somewhere does ANYTHING to stop future terrorist attacks. EVERY time Israel has tried it, it IMMEDIATELY lead to MORE rocket attacks on their territory. The Iraq War did NOT reduce the threat of islamic terrorist one iota.
YES YOU FUCKING ARE YOU FUCKING PATHETIC LIAR. It is your first assumption each and every single time you make this argument. You bring it up as justification your quasi-genocidal fantasies WITHOUT EVER EVEN MENTIONING TRYING LESS EXTREME MEASURES FIRST. You ASSUME that the more humane alternatives have already failed. That is the STARTING POINT of every single argument you have ever made on this subject. What else from this pattern can we conclude of you other than that these things are your first choice, your first assumption, the thing you immediately think about?
Get some FUCKING PERSPECTIVE on the actual magnitude of the problem and the seriousness of the threat. You know what is the actual reality? The reality is that the Islamic Jihadist are NOT an existential threat to western civilization. They will NOT march in and take over our governments. They will NOT institute sharia law on everyone. They would not have even THOUGHT about bothering us at all if we hadn’t decided to mess with their local governments in order to get cheaper oil. Go research your fucking history.
They are a few thousand armed with outdated rifles, crude home-made bombs, a collection of obsolescent short range rockets. We have STEALTH BOMBERS, BATTLE TANKS, NUCLEAR MISSILES, AIRCRAFT CARRIERS, SATELLITE GUIDED BOMBS.
We are talking about a threat that, even if we did nothing but passive border control measures, would at its worst result in a few thousand deaths a year. TEN TIMES more than that are killed by regular gun-related violence in the United States alone. TWENTY TIMES more people die world wide from malaria. And no one is even contemplated an extirpation of mosquitoes.
Only Israel faces a threat even remotely greater than that. And as for Israel, they have ALREADY TRIED pretty much everything you’ve ever suggested. How many wars has Israel fought with its neighbours? How many times did they in fact strike first, pre-emptively? How many times did they win those wars decisively? How many targeted assassinations have they done? How many smart missiles have they launched?
How much safer are they now than they were in 1950?
The gruesome, unconscionable things you advocate for were barely ethically acceptable as a response to a threat as big in magnitude as World War II. As a response to Islamic Jihadism, for the majority of the Western world, THEY ARE NOT NECESSARY. And for the only exception to that, Israel, THEY HAVE ALREADY BEEN SHOWN TO NOT WORK.
And yet here you are, still advocating for them. To what FUCKING PURPOSE? What do they do except create more carnage, more bloodshed, more death, and more BITTER, GRIEVING, ANGRY survivors for the terrorists to recruit?
When I do that, I apologize and then I SHUT UP. I do not continue repeating the same stupid things over and over again after apologizing for them. I do not try to weasel out of them by saying essentially the same thing later cloaked in what I think is slightly more acceptable cosmetic language. If others continue to criticize my original comments, which they have every right to do, I do not reignite the mess with puffed up indignant self-defence.
I am done talking to you StevoR. I don’t killfile people, but I am finished responding to your disgusting ass. When I found out about your other pseudonyms I thought I’d give you another chance, because I recognized them from other blogs on other topics and thought that they had sensible things to say, but you blew it. The utterly unforgiveable way you treated Ing was just one of many final straws.
I am done with you. I reserve to right to talk ABOUT you in the future, but don’t ever be deluded into thinking that I am conversing WITH you ever again.
janiceintoronto:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:35 am
Hey, don’t make fun of my ‘energy being”!
I’m being bullied.
michaeld:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:37 am
Barkeron if I tell you I have a Golden Tabby Tiger (very rare only 30 known to exist) that I’m keeping as a pet in my basement. Do you know that I do or don’t? Do you believe me?
Now if I told you I trained it to dance the Charleston do you know? Do you believe?
Are you getting some idea for the interplay of atheism and agnosticism.
Barkeron:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:38 am
Exactly, otherwise I must declare an agnostic crusade.
Barkeron:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:41 am
@michaeld,
the skeptical, inquiring mindset dictates I should take a look into your basement. But how do you look into the time (space?) before the Big Bang? Or does Dawkins withhold information about his time travel trip?
Josh, Exasperated SpokesGay:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:43 am
Oh jeezis christ. Another “I’m in junior philosophy school and I can’t see aaaannny difference in probability between the existence of a god and its non-existence! I just can’t say at all!”
michaeld:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:47 am
Nope can’t let you in my basement. Jones is busy training for his broadway debut (all very hush hush) and you can’t disturb him.
Dawkin’s in the god delusion doesn’t claim absolute certainty of god. On a 7 point scale where 7 is certainty no gods exist he put himself as a 6 point something.
frankensteinmonster:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:47 am
.
is that even necessary ? perhaps all the necessary information about the Big Bang is contained within the universe itself.
.
.
are we talking about a priori probability or a posteriori ?
Beatrice:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:49 am
“But I am going to talk about it a lot anyway. “
michaeld:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:50 am
From the new york times,
On a scale of 1 to 7, where 1 is certitude that God exists and 7 is certitude that God does not exist, Dawkins rates himself a 6: “I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.”
margareth:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:53 am
Barkeron: Agnostics are more rational than atheists? Seriously? That’s absurd for several reasons but let’s begin with the simplest: Since neither of us can prove or disprove the existence of “god”, then I’ll let Occam’s razor decide. Which is more likely; an omnipotent sky deity who created the universe and the human race in all it’s cruelty and pettiness for his/her, what? Entertainment? Or is it the suggestion that we ARE the universe, growing and learning to question it’s creation, it’s purpose and it’s future? I’ll take the latter and since the universe and it’s laws do not NEED a creator or a supreme being, I think that doubly indicates the no god idea. What is “more rational” anyway? Looking at things empirically and analyzing the evidence based on observation or inserting an extraneous and wholly unnecessary deity into the equation?
Bob Davidson:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:55 am
@Barkeron
The proposition, “god exists” is nonsensical. The antithetical proposition, “god does not exist” is also nonsensical. The logical statement you’re looking for is, “I have no belief in god.”
To restate:
god exists = theism
god does not exist = strong atheism
I have no belief in god = weak atheism
This book will guide you to what you seek.
vaiyt:
December 15th, 2012 at 12:01 pm
@15:
Molly! Molly! Molly!
Mind me quoting you when I see StevoR running their mouth again?
Rey Fox:
December 15th, 2012 at 12:02 pm
Ah, so it’s the tired old “gotcha” of “You can’t absolutely positively 100% be sure that there is no God!” Perhaps. But the notion of God, or any of the notions of gods are so fucking absurd that I don’t lose any sleep over putting forth the monocle-droppingly bold proposition that they don’t exist.
(And if a god or gods existed, the odds of them lining up with any of the human conceptions of it, especially the beloved 3O peeping tom Daddy, are exceedingly slim.)
Nepenthe:
December 15th, 2012 at 12:04 pm
The proposition “Zeus does not exist” is not nonsensical though. We know Zeus doesn’t exist because if Zeus existed he would be the cause of lightning and Zeus is not the cause of lightning and I’m not sure if I’ve properly done the specific logic-y wording to make the implications work but you know whatimean.
michaeld:
December 15th, 2012 at 12:07 pm
But Zeus is only responsible for 1 in every 100,000,000 thunderbolts. ha! check mate atheists ! ;p (jokeing)
Rey Fox:
December 15th, 2012 at 12:07 pm
In other words, I’m still on firmer ground saying that a god doesn’t exist than I would be saying that one does. It’s not the riskless proposition of “maybe, maybe not, we could never know”, but I don’t care for that wishy-washy stuff.
I think that certain theists and agnostics imagine that if the proof for a god of some sort were to ever come down (though they never say what that proof would look like), that us “strong” atheists would wail and rend our garments at our folly. Sure, being wrong would probably bum me out, particularly if there was enough reason to believe that this god was going to harm me for not living up to some silly standard of conduct, but I would probably adapt eventually. And I would figure that I couldn’t be blamed for not believing in that god before, given how flimsy the case for that god was.
Rey Fox:
December 15th, 2012 at 12:08 pm
In short, I’ve been wrong before. I’ll certainly be wrong again.
margareth:
December 15th, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Mathematics can support several different theories about the creation of the universe. It can predict things like multiple universes, string theory, brane theory, etc. What it cannot and does not predict or support is a god theory. I’m back to Occam’s razor. Inserting a wholly imaginary postulate into the mix is unnecessary and counter productive. Putting “god’ into the mix at all is to my mind, no different than the people who imagined we were on the back of an enormous turtle. It’s just something that was made up in order to comfort people who did not know the real answers. There’s nothing to base the concept of “god” on except some ancient superstitions of people who thought that the Earth was flat and the Sun revolved around it. We know better now than to just believe it or even to acknowledge the possibility just because scared, ancient people needed that comfort.
michaeld:
December 15th, 2012 at 12:24 pm
… did we break him?
Nepenthe:
December 15th, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Well fuck. I’m going to have to find some fatted calves to sacrifice now. This has ruined my (and at least one calf’s) weekend.
margareth:
December 15th, 2012 at 12:51 pm
Maybe he’s doing the math….
Fred Salvador - The Public Sucks; Fuck Hope:
December 15th, 2012 at 12:53 pm
The God Delugin’.
michaeld:
December 15th, 2012 at 12:54 pm
Math is hard….
(block quote fail? crosses fingers)
Rodney Nelson:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:00 pm
Barkeron,
I am an agnostic atheist. Since there’s no evidence for the existence of any gods (not just the popular ones but ANY gods) then I disbelieve in gods. As soon as some reliable, conclusive evidence is presented for the existence of a god or gods, then I’ll believe in them. But for now I’ll continue to disbelieve. That’s more rational then “I dunno if there’s gods or not so I’m not going to say one way or t’other.”
margareth:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:06 pm
Especially when trying to prove a fiction using it.
Fred Salvador - The Public Sucks; Fuck Hope:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:07 pm
Those agnostics need to propose some mechanism not contingent upon personal uncertainty or incredulity for such a being to exist within the universe for their “scepticism” (fuck you, that’s how it’s spelled) to be valid. We know that consciousness as a human experience is an emergent property of our animal neurochemistry and physiology – how does such a property exist in nature without having any equivalent circuitry to emerge from?
asttei:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:09 pm
soo… does anyone else hate the new webdesign..?
Naked Bunny with a Whip:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:12 pm
While you’re looking stuff up at Wikipedia, Barkeron, check out null hypothesis, and explain how it relates to space amoebas and energy beings, much less creatures existing beyond the reaches of space and time (whatever that means).
margareth:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:12 pm
Spot on. Especially since the only reason to even include a god in the list of possibilities is because a bunch of superstitious cave dwellers without refrigeration believed in such a creature. If the people who were the root of western culture believed in the flying spaghetti monster, would we include that into our reasoning by default? If course we would. But just because a bunch of people worshiped deities a long time ago because they didn’t know any better is no reason to feel obliged to seriously consider the idea in every conversation.
shripathikamath:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:16 pm
No one wants to discuss the latest Tea baggery in Tejas?
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:31 pm
Barkeron:
Why is your brand of agnosticism reserved for the Abrahamic god? By your reasoning, every single god humans have created should all be on the ‘maybe they exist’ column. Same with dragons, fairies, elves, and Xenu.
None of those things-including god-has any evidence of their existence. But please continue your wholly unscientific approach to imaginary creatures.
Ichthyic:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:34 pm
late, but:
there is no such thing as an empirical agnostic. There are no agnostics that think it is possible to prove the existence of a deity with science. “science and rationality like empirical proof” is gibberish.
run along.
Ichthyic:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:38 pm
hate? No. I kinda like that they can customize backgrounds.
but…
many of the links that worked previously are now broken (using the banner to link to the homepage seems to not function in many pages on many of the FTB sites, for example), and navigation has become more difficult in some cases. All of the banners need to be reworked to be consistent in design with the new page design, sidebar is too large IMO… many other niggles.
I’ve seen worse.
overall grade for design and implementation (coming from the fact i used to do this for a living once upon a time):
6.5
sc_d4e1ad9f8b2234f2307517e0f26175a6:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:50 pm
We allowed to be a bit, er, verbally aggressive? Allow me just to say this, with respect to the events of the last day: Fuck the NRA, and fuck gun fetishists who think that the compulsion to horde semiautomatic weapons is more important than a six year old kid’s future.
And let me also say, fuck people who participate in canned hunts, like Dick Cheney and Antonin Scalia, who think that blasting buckshot into birds for fun is fun. And fuck assholes who need to reaffirm their manhood by shooting wolves and other apex predators. Generally, fuck anyone who gets off on shooting slugs of hot metal through sentient flesh. And fuck the Republican extremists in this country who think teachers are the enemy, and who think that freedom means jacking off over a gun collection.
Nepenthe:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:54 pm
Jesus fucking Christ, you must be new here.
Welcome to the fold. :-)
Fred Salvador - The Public Sucks; Fuck Hope:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:55 pm
I took one look at the title and decided there was no point, although I would like someone on that side of the pond to answer some questions for me.
What is wrong with Texas? Was there some kind of super-moronising compound released into the water there or something? Why are Texans so ridiculous and awful and religious and odd?
Fred Salvador - The Public Sucks; Fuck Hope:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:56 pm
This.
michaeld:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:59 pm
I dunno those lots of other people I’d rather fuck O.O
Ichthyic:
December 15th, 2012 at 1:59 pm
Yes. It’s name is: Karl Rove.
I’m not kidding.
Rove nearly singlehandedly took a relatively sane state that was mostly progressive in the 80s, and used political hackery, media manipulation, and psychology to whip it into a froth of regression in less than 10 years.
Which is why, of course, he was given high placement in W’s administration.
Ichthyic:
December 15th, 2012 at 2:01 pm
many sources for that, btw, example:
http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/Rove_Karl
Rey Fox:
December 15th, 2012 at 2:06 pm
Now that we’ve got Times New Roman, and the Gumbys, and the rotating banners, and got rid of the pale blue background, I think this site looks nicer than it did before. And comment numbers being searchable again, thank heaven.
mobius:
December 15th, 2012 at 2:10 pm
Is Pharyngula expanding? Is it taking over the Digital Cuttlefish? Informed blog readers want to know.
michaeld:
December 15th, 2012 at 2:11 pm
And now that there’s a watery background my eyes don’t want to jump out of my skull in aesthetic protest. I hope everyone else follows suit in adding a back ground like million gods and pharyngula have.
Nepenthe:
December 15th, 2012 at 2:22 pm
I love the new webdesign. Except the logo and how one side of the bit where the logo is displayed is curved and the other is not.
I also like that Pharyngula has absorbed The Digital Cuttlefish.
chigau (Chiggers):
December 15th, 2012 at 2:22 pm
Once again, clicking on your ‘nym above the comment box goes to the Dashboard.
chigau (チッガーズ):
December 15th, 2012 at 2:24 pm
yay!
Dick the Damned:
December 15th, 2012 at 2:40 pm
Nepenthe, #50,
Is there any evidence in the bible for this activity? (Not that anything in the bible is evidence for anything significant anyway.
Nepenthe:
December 15th, 2012 at 2:51 pm
@Dick the Damned
Sadly, the fucking popes cut out all the naughty bits. Woof, you should have seen the woodcuts!
Ichthyic:
December 15th, 2012 at 2:54 pm
both pharyngula and DC have rotating banners. I’m guessing the code for that points to the same source for the images, and the new designer didn’t notice.
should be an easy fix.
Ichthyic:
December 15th, 2012 at 2:56 pm
He would have had to have a schlong like a Tapir to accomplish that, no?
margareth:
December 15th, 2012 at 2:56 pm
M’eh. I only ever lurked before and though the new design wasn’t what lured me out of my lurker status, I kinda like it. Though as a newb, my opinion in this regard is fairly valueless.
Ichthyic:
December 15th, 2012 at 3:00 pm
hmm, trying new icon for my pic…
testing…
Ogvorbis: Exhausted and broken:
December 15th, 2012 at 3:01 pm
He was as celibate as a modern Catholic priest.
margareth:
December 15th, 2012 at 3:11 pm
Now that might be compelling evidence of a miracle since in order to be like a Catholic Priest, Jesus the man would have to fuck Christ the prepubescent boy. That would require a tapir schlong going through a time portal.
otrame:
December 15th, 2012 at 3:13 pm
There are actually quite a few sane people in Texas. 41% voted for Obama. Demographics going the way they are, Texas will be a purple state very soon and blue soon after.
It wont be that easy for most of the rest of the south, though.
Ichthyic:
December 15th, 2012 at 3:16 pm
Demographics going the way they are, Texas will be a purple state very soon and blue soon after.
well, it was blue in the 80s, as I noted.
margareth:
December 15th, 2012 at 3:19 pm
Speaking as one of them, I have to point out that Rove isn’t the only reason this state turned red. It was reliably, deeply blue until the huge influx of rust belt refugees in the early 1980s. Now I’m not blaming them that the state has gone Republican since that event but that it changed the dynamic can’t be denied.
rwgate:
December 15th, 2012 at 3:26 pm
Ivorybill @49- Welcome to Pharyngula. I’ve enjoyed your posts on Daily Kos and others. Hope to see you here a lot more.
Amphiox:
December 15th, 2012 at 3:59 pm
Potential entities as yet beyond the reach of empirical inquiry that could potentially be responsible for the creation of a universe:
1. A quantum fluctuation
2. A super massive black hole in an older universe
3. Two older universes, colliding
4. Time traveling astrophysicists from the distant future
5. A pregnant space penguin (laying cosmic eggs)
6. Wizards on a disc shaped world carried by four elephants standing on a turtle, experimenting with creation a region of space absent any narrativium
7. A freak accident in a Warp Drive manufacturing plant, in another universe
8. An UltraMegaLarge Hadron Collider
9. Lisa Simpson
10. Xeelee
Innumerable other possibilities.
Let us be agnostic about all of them, for the sake of argument.
How many of these could even remotely be considered something akin to a god? (What is a god anyways?)
So, taking all that above, what then is your agnostic a priori probability that a god exists and precisely how much greater is that number than zero?
The Mellow Monkey: Caerie:
December 15th, 2012 at 4:03 pm
But we aren’t all Lutherans.
John Morales:
December 15th, 2012 at 4:13 pm
rwgate:
It’s not Ivorybill @49, it’s a sc_mess — or so the nym proclaims.
David Marjanović:
December 15th, 2012 at 4:23 pm
*sigh* I guess I have to be happy the dromaeosaurid in the OP picture has feathers at all, even though there don’t seem to be any on the head. The head shape is too simple, too geometric. The tail is probably too supple. The sickle claw might be a bit too small (!). The wing feathers are in the wrong place – they’re on the upper arm and the forearm, but if you look at a bird, including a chicken wing on your table, you’ll find they’re on the forearm and the hand, specifically the index finger (the middle one of the 3).
Hey, Thunderdome.
consciousness razor:
December 15th, 2012 at 4:37 pm
The future in our universe? How could that be right? All the other sciencey ones are also a little sketchy, but this one really sticks out to me.
Lisa Simpson and Xeelee are fictional, so those definitely aren’t possibilities. Call me a dogmatist, but I’m just not so impressed with cartoon characters that I think they can do stuff, much less make stuff, much less make a universe.
Also, you didn’t really cover one possibility: this universe* always existed (in some form), meaning it never was “created” in any sense of the word. That by itself takes the wind out of the argument that there must be a “creation of the universe” to even talk about, which would be why we’re coming up with all these possibilities (including a god).
*Not other, “older” universes.
It could be extremely small and non-zero, or it could be exactly zero. Infinities make this one pretty hard. I don’t know.
That’s why we should withhold judgment? … And what? Call it 50/50?
chigau (違う):
December 15th, 2012 at 4:39 pm
Hey David.
It needs it’s fingers naked for all the rending and tearing.
onychophora:
December 15th, 2012 at 4:56 pm
A note about the school shooting business. I am so tired of the “ban teh gunz!!” arguments. I am so tired of the “We needs teh Jeebus in schoolz!” arguments. I am so tired of the “dude was cray cray” arguments. I’d really like to plant the blame toward toxic levels of privilege and entitlement in our kyriarchy. This is an epidemic of suburban white dudes, and I think that’s rather telling. It is an epidemic of control–they are exerting the ultimate form of control over another person’s life. We’ve all seen this gradient of abuse, ranging from microagressions, sexism, racism, then to assult, pedophilia, rape, and murder. The video someone posted a few days ago showing one of Tim Wise’s lectures on racism from 2002 got me thinking about this.
I blame all those that support and abet entitlement and control of one person over another.
I blame the kyriarchy, whose toxic emissions produce this.
It’s not a bug; it’a feature.
onychophora:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:01 pm
When I hear “let’s ban teh gunz”, I hear, “well, dudes are dudes, and we can’t help them from killing people, so let’s take away their toys.” When I hear “We need Jeebus in schools”, I hear “We just need to control them harder; then the natural order with white dudes on top will be restored.” Hyperbole, I know.
consciousness razor:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:05 pm
Uh… why? What’s wrong with banning guns?
John Morales:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:06 pm
David,
Hey, where’s your gravatar?
Beatrice:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:07 pm
onychopora,
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/14/newtown-murders/comment-page-1/
Enjoy the reading. It might prove educational.
consciousness razor:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:09 pm
Well, okay… so you’re tired of your own hyperbole?
Wouldn’t taking away their toys prevent some of them from killing people, or from doing it so easily? I mean, there’s no assumption in this at all which corresponds to “dudes are dudes;” but even if there were, wouldn’t it still be a way of preventing murder?
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:13 pm
Dear Horde,
I want to propose that it’s good to not tell trolls that “you belong in / would fit in at / are just like people from the slimepit”.
I see no clear benefit to us in saying this, as opposed to “you are a misogynist / racist / terrible person”. The latter gets the point across fine.
Telling them all about the slimepit may encourage them to go there and band together. We’ve always had our independent, unaffiliated misogynists trickling in at Pharyngula, but I think they’ve become more annoying, and possibly more dangerous, since they’ve had a place to congregate and egg each other on.
They organize harassment campaigns out of there, and it is not in our interest to grow their numbers.
We should talk about the slimepit when it’s relevant, but I’m suggesting it’s not yet relevant when a “lone wolf” misogynist stumbles in here unaffiliated with the pit.
(I’m saying this now because I was spurred by a comment from theophontes, but I’ve been wondering about it for a while.)
What do others here think?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:13 pm
Ah, a David Marjanović sighting. Most welcome.
John Morales:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:13 pm
onychophora:
I blame gun culture, the which causes many, many more deaths and injuries* than just the mass-shootings that headline the news.
–
* A significant proportion of which are “accidental” — funny how tools made for killing often accidentally kill or severely wound.
michaeld:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:16 pm
@ Consciousness razor 78
Suddenly you have me thinking back to Number of the beast….
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:16 pm
SG:
I don’t say this. I don’t reference the slymepit unless it’s necessary (such as pointing out certain discussions, frinst., Stefanelli.)
I do say these things.
John Morales:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:21 pm
ॐ:
I think if you want to propose it, go ahead and propose it.
(Shan’t affect me in either case)
John Morales:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:23 pm
michaeld @89, you allude to Heinlein’s pantheistic solipsism?
consciousness razor:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:24 pm
Yeah, I already try not to do that. Besides potentially provoking them to band together, it invites them to search for any dissimilarity in their shitheaded views, no matter how superficial. Then discussion becomes about whether that difference is in anyway relevant, rather than how fucking shitheaded they are in fact being (even if it’s not as shitheaded as the slimefucks, or not in the same way or for the same reasons, etc.).
Paul K:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:24 pm
I would love to ban most of the guns currently available. I have nothing against hunting, or target shooting, or other uses. But there is no argument that will convince me that anyone needs, or should even want, the kind of killing machines we have now. Semi-automatic handguns that can hold 17 rounds? I’ve read that the killer yesterday had one of these, plus more. What possible excuse could there be for owning one of these, other than the fantasy of one day killing a large number of people at close range?
The problem is that we do have them, and the nutjobs who somehow seem to be winning on so many fronts are never going to give them up. The SCOTUS will need to have major changes, and the other branches will need to actually think gun control is a good idea before we can ever hope they do something sensible about this.
I’m another one who has little hope that this will see real progress in my lifetime, and I’m probably too old to ever get out of here, but I can dream, and maybe help my son find a way to get somewhere sane. In the meantime, I’ll keep beating my head against the wall of exceptionalism and entitlement fantasies of asswipes.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:25 pm
As someone who has said “go back to the slymepit”, there is merit in SGBM’s suggestion. In fact, I I agree. Will do my best to avoid comments like that.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:25 pm
Anybody who has/had the Secret Comic Sans script, version 6.0.1, has it automatically updated to 6.0.2 yet? If not (since it might take up to a week before an automatic check), can you force an update by going into your Greasemonkey scripts, right-clicking on Secret Comic Sans, and choosing “find updates”? The new version is functionally identical, but I am curious about whether the update mechanism will work with Wikia-hosted scripts at all.
For instance, some people were asking for FTB Recent to be the default tab in their sidebar. There is now a Greasemonkey script to do that.
Nick Gotts (formerly KG):
December 15th, 2012 at 5:25 pm
Well that tells us you’re prone to mishearing, but nothing else. Try comparing the rates of gun death in the USA with that in other rich countries with less permissive attitudes to gun ownership (see here). Interesting to note that the second worst rich country is Switzerland, often used by gun-nuts as a “refutation” of the idea that more gun ownership means more gun deaths.
Beatrice:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:29 pm
sgbm,
Makes sense. I don’t think I ever mentioned the slimepit in relation to someone I don’t know for sure is from there, so it will be no extra work to refrain from doing it in the future as well.
onychophora:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:29 pm
Banning guns does not address the underlying problem. It is at best an stopgap solution which may prevent death in the interim; my argument is not there.
Rather, one issue is with what seems to be the underlying idea that “boys will be boys and they’re just going to act like that!” (sorry my shorthand ‘dudes are dudes’ did not work here. Fail.)
I agree there are underlying cultural issues that must be addressed.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:30 pm
Paul:
Your mention of exceptionalism has me wondering…what do proponents of American exceptionalism mean when they use that phrase?
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:32 pm
theophontes,
Did you decide whether you need this password or not? No hurry, just wondering.
Beatrice:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:33 pm
There is also the underlying issue of a whole nation being raised to believe owning something primary use of which is to kill is some kind of a right.
But hey, that’s not the real problem.
onychophora:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:35 pm
Yup, the issue that “we” are raised to believe it’s our God given right (bygolly!) to control others, the nation, the ecosystem, and the world, using force if necessary.
And if someone takes that away, To Arms! We’ll make them pay if it’s the last thing we do!
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:39 pm
@99:
A measure that prevents people from dying, stopgap or otherwise, is much better than continuing the path the USA is on.
Nick Gotts (formerly KG):
December 15th, 2012 at 5:39 pm
This is drivel. There are over 30,000 gun deaths per year in the USA. The “stopgap solution” you denigrate would save a large proportion of those lives, as well as far greater numbers of injuries. Moreover, in working for a gun ban, you would automatically be fighting the toxic masculinities you point to.
michaeld:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:44 pm
John Morales
Yup. Heinlein’s a guilty pleasure of mine.
vaiyt:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:46 pm
You’re the only one making the automatic association of guns with dudes, and then projecting it on other people.
Paul K:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:46 pm
Tony:
Even as an American, to me, the very idea seems bizarre and without any foundation at all. People who make claims about it seem to think we are somehow blessed; special in some way that truly makes us better than other peoples. Beyond criticism because, hey, we’re the Greatest Country in the World!! I think it goes back to some of the original colonists who were looking for ‘religious freedom’. Which meant freedom to oppress everyone who didn’t agree with your sect. It might have been Cotton Mather, of the Massachusetts colony, who started it, with the whole ‘shining beacon on a hill’ sentiment. America was going to be the place everyone looked to as a model for how to be, because god’s blessing.
I’m not a historian, but there’s always been a real arrogance about American destiny among Americans, and we’ve used it to justify a lot of terrible actions. Hey, everybody who isn’t us, we can piss on you because, hey, we’re better than you. Come on, deep down you know it. And don’t you dare even criticize our ‘freedoms’, because, duh, America! And, ho ho ho! None of you can have any good ideas about, well, just about anything, compared to us.
chigau (違う):
December 15th, 2012 at 5:47 pm
ॐ #86
I don’t know that I have ever recommended anyone to the slmpt but I won’t in the future.
onychophora:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:49 pm
Sorry, I did not make myself clear. Gun bans are a stopgap solution which may prevent death. I’m not arguing about their utility.
Rather, while reading various places around teh intarwebs, I saw very little “other” analysis through a social justice lens besides kneejerk reactions. I lament this. So I came here because y’all understand social justice issues, reason, etc., and that all these contribute and add to patterns we see. This problem is multifaceted, and there is not just one cause (but from reading facebooke, that’s all I hear).
michaeld:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:49 pm
As to banning guns vs fixing underlying causes, can’t we do both. Maybe not banning outright but frankly guns should be at least as well controlled as cars (licences, registration, insurance, liability, training etc etc).
onychophora:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:52 pm
vaiyt: Are the perpetrators of these massacres not all male? This seems to be an epidemic amongst white males. I wonder what is wrong, sociologically, that the majority of them would fit this phenotype? Is this a symptom of a backlash? Or is it coincidence? I only have guesses.
consciousness razor:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:57 pm
I’m not sure I did it the way you asked. I went to the Greasemonkey icon on a toolbar, clicked “Manage user scripts…” and it had found the update (maybe right then), so then I could update it to 6.0.2 (from 6.0.0).
Let’s see if it works. I will now prove pantheism:
But of course we should all remain agnostic about this.
Okay, so we agree that banning guns isn’t intended to solve that problem, so what’s the problem? Is the idea that boys will be boys the only problem in the world?
caveatimperator:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:58 pm
consciousness razor
Especially since space and time are intertwined according to GR, can we really say that there was a time “before” the universe? Unless the universe is nested in another layer of universes, in which time is also a meaningful concept. This “explanation” reminds me of the justifications for panspermia; doesn’t truly provide a satisfying or conclusive answer and it’s hardly an “end” even if it’s true, but it feels more sensible than presupposing a godlike being for one simple reason. We are explaining a phenomenon that we know exists (life, universe) by positing an entity that more or less resembles it (life from elsewhere, another layer of universe,) instead of a timeless, transcendental entity that we can’t compare to anything we’ve ever observed before.
John Morales:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:59 pm
onychophora, the vast majority are male, but not all.
Jennifer San Marco
caveatimperator:
December 15th, 2012 at 5:59 pm
Also, how in the nine hells do you do line breaks around here?
Paul K:
December 15th, 2012 at 6:01 pm
onychophora:
I think there’s got to be something to what you say. We hear all about these terrible mass shootings, but there are plenty of shootings of ‘just’ a wife/girlfriend/children that happen all over the country every day, and they also seem to be primarily the work of white men, though definitely not always.
onychophora:
December 15th, 2012 at 6:02 pm
consciousness razor:
Do I have to choose just one? There are so many to choose from! How about a hierarchical social order predicated on abuse and domination?
John Morales:
December 15th, 2012 at 6:05 pm
caveatimperator, in the usual way: with the enter key.
If you want to get a bigger gap between paragraphs than the rendering shows by default, you can space them with non-breaking spaces <nbsp;>.
Like I have just done.
John Morales:
December 15th, 2012 at 6:08 pm
[erratum]
< >
John Morales:
December 15th, 2012 at 6:09 pm
[FFS!]
cicely (Possibly Too-Easily Amused):
December 15th, 2012 at 6:11 pm
Me, too.
:( :( :( :( :(
StevoR, coddling you along is looking to be an expensive luxury. Are you worth it? Tell us why we should bother.
*stomping right back out*
-
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 15th, 2012 at 6:14 pm
Oh good. Thank you, consciousness razor. That answers my underlying question of whether updating from Wikia will work at all.
Pteryxx:
December 15th, 2012 at 6:21 pm
a point: as far as I know, *white* men are more likely to own guns, because of the social entanglement of black men with the criminal justice system: they’re more likely to have a criminal record (not necessarily a violent one) which makes them ineligible for licenses, and less likely to have or use guns casually because just possessing a gun, or possessing one when a crime goes down nearby, leaves them liable for increased sentencing (and suspicion and blame, etc).
Personally I have a suspicion that young black men who exhibit even slight tendencies towards becoming gun-obsessed aggressors get quickly snatched up into the criminal justice system, warranted or not, while the same behaviors tend to be tolerated in young white men.
caveatimperator:
December 15th, 2012 at 6:23 pm
Let’s try that here. That’s the html tag I was looking for. My html-fu is not so strong.
New line is three lines down. Excellent. Thanks John!
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 15th, 2012 at 6:26 pm
cicely:
I don’t think he is worth it. Like a few others, I have no intention of responding to anything else from him. Losing Ing was the last straw.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 15th, 2012 at 6:28 pm
Obviously didn’t come across the liberal lesbian gun lover in the other thread.
As for the “it’s only dudes!1!!” nonsense, Amy Bishop comes to mind. There was another woman in Sacramento, I think, went on a shooting spree in a shopping mall. San Marcos, of course. There are more. Interestingly enough, female mass murderers don’t attract much attention.
It’s almost as if people are all stuck in this gender stereotype groove…
onychophora:
December 15th, 2012 at 6:33 pm
@124
Even the tendency toward becoming just simply “aggressors” seems more tolerated–the strong, dominant and powerful.
Paul K:
December 15th, 2012 at 6:35 pm
Pteryxx @124:
Makes sense to me. Violence is certainly not the realm of just white men, but gun violence seems to be more often their method of choice. Opportunity would lead to that. Firing a gun is not much more difficult than pushing a button, so why not go for that, if you can, when you’re enraged and it’s there?
(Just typing that made my stomach turn.)
The Mellow Monkey: Caerie:
December 15th, 2012 at 6:47 pm
As terrible as mass/spree/serial murders are–and yes, white males do dominate in these cases and most especially in the cases that get heavy media coverage–this is not how most murders are committed. Anyone can be a murderer. The young white male pushed to the edge who goes to a public place and takes out a bunch of people is not the archetype for the 30,000 gun deaths we see every year in the US.
The “angry entitled white male” problem is a real issue, but it has more to do with toxic ideas about masculinity, privilege and fear than the fingers on specific triggers.
Paul K:
December 15th, 2012 at 6:48 pm
I heard an interview on NPR last night with a reporter from Mother Jones. After the Aroura shootings, he did an in-depth article on mass shootings, and found that, by his definition, only one woman in the last thirty years had been a mass killer (Jennifer San Marco). His definition limited the events by requiring at least four deaths, other than the killer. Even with that limitation, there have been 61 in the US in the last thirty years.
This is where I got my understanding that it was mostly men doing these things. It left out Amy Bishop, for one, since she ‘only’ killed three people. 43 of the killers were white males.
Paul K:
December 15th, 2012 at 6:50 pm
Sorry, borked the link again.
consciousness razor:
December 15th, 2012 at 6:56 pm
I don’t understand the math or the physics, but I don’t think it’s been ruled out. Inflation could go in the past forever, like you said, so we could talk about time in terms of what is happening in a multiverse. There isn’t any need for an end-point of some kind.
Another ideas it that there could be an origin in our past, from which time symmetrically “goes forward” in both directions. That basically amounts to another part of our universe which goes on infinitely in the past, relative to the direction of time for stuff in this part of the universe. You could say there’s a finite amount of time since the origin at t=0, but there’d still be infinite time beyond that, because it’s in this other half which is just “moving” the other way.
If time somehow ends in that other half’s “future,” then the “past” for us is finite no matter how you construe it, but in that case it’s hard to tell how we could be talking about what caused stuff to exist, or what is supposed to explain everything, anyway. It would just be a question of how you measure time. That is, unless we toss time traveling designers or retro-causation into the mix too, which is about the time I would say that theory is really getting fucked up.
If all of that is ruled out with some real physics, then it may not make any sense to talk about time before the big bang.
I don’t see how it would be any more unsatisfying or inconclusive than the alternatives. What would it be leaving out?
consciousness razor:
December 15th, 2012 at 7:00 pm
“Another ideas it that” -> Another idea is that
John Morales:
December 15th, 2012 at 7:02 pm
CR,
They’re not intertwined, they’re a manifold.
But that’s irrelevant; leaving aside that without a time dimension, the concept of ‘existence’ is moot, the concept of existence before time is incoherent no less that the concept of time ‘beginning’ to exist.
jose:
December 15th, 2012 at 7:05 pm
I humbly submit this neato study (pdf) for the horde’s consideration.
caveatimperator:
December 15th, 2012 at 7:07 pm
What I meant is that neither a multiverse nor panspermia provide true answers; they just push the question back farther. We still have to come up for naturalistic explanations for whatever the “original” universe or life was, whatever that may be. Both explanations are, of course, far more parsimonious than gods.
consciousness razor:
December 15th, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Sure. I was trying to say I don’t really understand any of it: neither how to do the math, nor how physical stuff happens which is what the math is … modeling (or whatever the term is).
cm's changeable moniker:
December 15th, 2012 at 8:04 pm
I am but a small thinker from an island which harboured an American who seemed to pick up what we instinctively feel.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/lexington/2012/12/gun-control
rwgate:
December 15th, 2012 at 8:06 pm
John @ 76- Ivorybill is a regular commenter and diarist on Daily Kos. He lists Pharyngula on his blogroll list, and his post here is the same as his post on Daily Kos today around 10:15am. When I read his comment here, under a different nym, I knew I’d read it earlier today.
John Morales:
December 15th, 2012 at 8:12 pm
rwgate, yes, I figured something like that. Nonetheless, what I wrote is true.
(Conclusion: he either doesn’t know how to or does not care to bother to change his display name when commenting here; neither alternative is admirable to me, nor does your little encomium predispose me to think otherwise)
Ichthyic:
December 15th, 2012 at 8:19 pm
no, actually banning guns would solve the problem. long term.
as you note, this indeed IS a cultural issue. It’s like america has become addicted to guns and violence.
take away the guns, and the next generation will grow up without thinking guns were an automatic privilege and solution to problems.
the generation after that will be wondering why in the fuck guns were ever so ubiquitous to begin with.
Paul K:
December 15th, 2012 at 8:29 pm
Ichthyic:
But ‘cold dead hands’ is pretty real to too many folks here; including Congress and maybe the SCOTUS. I would love your generational solution.
cm's changeable moniker:
December 15th, 2012 at 8:46 pm
I could always tell my 10-year-old, if you could tell me? (Yes, that a skip-generation thing.)
Ichthyic:
December 15th, 2012 at 8:48 pm
yeah, never said it was a politically viable solution, just thinking that theoretically, it would in fact work.
cm's changeable moniker:
December 15th, 2012 at 8:53 pm
the generation after that will be wondering why in the fuck slaves were ever so ubiquitous
And I’m out.
Ichthyic:
December 15th, 2012 at 8:57 pm
…and we call that “white privilege”
Paul K:
December 15th, 2012 at 9:20 pm
I agree, and I can dream of someday. It’s still a huge problem, but look how far we’ve come with, for example, drinking and driving. When I was in school, thirty years ago, many — most? — people I knew did it without a thought. (I never did, but probably only because I didn’t drive until I was nearly 30). I know it’s an analogy full of holes, but things can change, and I don’t wan to stop hoping.
Amphiox:
December 15th, 2012 at 9:32 pm
Firstly one needs to stop equating “reasonable gun controls” to “banning guns”.
Secondly, the underlying problem is a culture of guns and violence. Notice that first part of the description?
Ban guns, and you solve half the problem right there. No guns, no gun culture. So it does address the underlying problem. Half of it.
Now you’re left with is a culture of violence. But then we ask, given a culture of violence but no guns, what would be the effect? Violence would seek to express itself, but how? Given a choice between a culture of violence by fists and knives, and a culture of violence by guns, what is better?
Consider the analogy to drug addiction to a very dangerous drug, say heroin. The underlying problem is an addictive personality. Remove the heroin, what happens? Perhaps the individual will seek another addiction. So the net effect of removing the heroin will be positive if the addiction that replaces it is a safer one, and negative if the addiction that replaces it is more dangerous. And that is why one common treatment for heroin addiction is methadone. Methadone is a nasty drug, but it is safer than heroin. Net win.
Let’s go back to guns. Remove the guns, what’s left for the underlying culture of violence to resort to? What’s worse than guns? If you can give me a good argument that banning guns would lead to an increase in bazooka and tank violence, then I would say you have a valid point about “banning guns not addressing the underlying problem”.
(Incidentally, I am not actually in favor of a ban on guns. I believe in reasonable gun control, not gun banning. I do not think blanket curtailments of individual liberty should not be preferred over reasonable controls that still allow access unless it can be demonstrated that reasonable controls would not work to solve the problem, which to date on this issue it hasn’t been, and I don’t think a blanket ban on guns is actually enforceable from a practical point of view.)
John Morales:
December 15th, 2012 at 9:39 pm
Amphiox:
Hm.
Let me try a straight substitution: ‘No gods, no god culture’.
(Nope, it doesn’t work :) )
Paul K:
December 15th, 2012 at 9:41 pm
John Morales:
But I think we’d be much better off if guns were imaginary, too.
John Morales:
December 15th, 2012 at 9:49 pm
Paul K, as you note, it is an empirical fact that we can have X without having X culture, and we can have X culture without having X*.
(Conclusion: the problematic factor is the existence of the culture, and not the X, when the X culture is problematic)
–
* I blame the pram culture — damn you, Rebecca Watson!)
Ichthyic:
December 15th, 2012 at 9:59 pm
ayup.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 15th, 2012 at 10:12 pm
John:
Damn!
Pteryxx:
December 15th, 2012 at 10:16 pm
…So, does overblown entitled toxic masculinity have anything to do with mass shootings? Dunno, but a handful of MRAs seem intent on trying to demonstrate a connection:
http://manboobz.com/2012/12/14/trigger-warning-a-voice-for-men-commenter-claims-that-the-newtown-shooting-is-evidence-of-the-oppression-of-men/
*rolleyes*
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 15th, 2012 at 10:19 pm
Amphiox:
People often opine that back in [whatever] day, disputes and such were generally settled by what is now considered an old fashioned fist fight. Of course, that still takes place, but all too often, people are now bringing guns to the fight and you get a lot of dead people.
This has been discussed a lot around here lately, because of the huge influx of people to work the oil fields. Most of them have been amazed that the majority of people here aren’t packing guns.
John Morales:
December 15th, 2012 at 10:29 pm
[belated via Caine's comment]
Amphiox:
Code duello comes to mind.
Esteleth has eaten ALL the gingerbread! Suck it!:
December 15th, 2012 at 10:30 pm
Caine,
Growing up as I did in the country (70 people per square mile in the county, natch), guns were a constant fact of life.
And, thinking back, I observe that the culture said that there were three times when it was appropriate to be carrying a loaded gun:
1. You were a cop on duty, and
2. You were actively engaged in a hunt.
3. You were a farmer out on the sections of your property where predatorily wild animals (coyotes, in these parts) were seen.
At any other time, if you were a “proper” person, your gun was unloaded and secured in its case.
Esteleth has eaten ALL the gingerbread! Suck it!:
December 15th, 2012 at 10:32 pm
And the people who weren’t “proper” were derided. And dismissed as being “not from here,” a meth-head, meth-cooker, meth-dealer, a generally bad person, or all of the above.
Ichthyic:
December 15th, 2012 at 10:42 pm
I do recall really liking West-Side Story.
John Morales:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:05 pm
Rev. BCD elsewhere:
.
Claiming that is one thing, demonstrating it is another. :)
(Post hoc rationalisations are not predictions, though tiresome I surely am to those who cannot cope with my simple truth-speaking)
onychophora:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:23 pm
@158
I also grew up in rural America. It always fascinates me how divergent my background and conception of firearm usage is from people that grew up in large cities; I still struggle with it. Guns were just there, and they were just tools. Like a tractor or a chainsaw or something.
Owlmirror:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:39 pm
hm
testing:
What does this look like?
John Morales:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:45 pm
Owlmirror, it looks like PZ hasn’t yet tweaked the code to do what it did in the past; that is, it looks to me much like it looks to you.
(Nonetheless, I have used
qtags in the expectation that he will at some point)Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 15th, 2012 at 11:51 pm
Esteleth, I’m in Norf Dakota. This state is bristling with guns. Almost every household has at least one, including us. Rifles here, two of them, living rural as we do. Ours don’t make an appearance unless it’s pheasant season and even that hasn’t brought them out for several years.
The difference is still remarkable to those from elsewhere. There are a number of people here to work the fields from inner city life, where most people have a gun on their person and not a lot of reluctance to use it.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 16th, 2012 at 12:12 am
Ivorybill, you can change your display nym here. You may have to first change the “Nickname”, then click the “Update Profile” button, then change “Display name publicly as” and click “Update Profile” again.
And here is a killfile script, to save you the trouble of John Morales. :)
John Morales:
December 16th, 2012 at 12:19 am
ॐ:
Such as I have no need for a killfile script; for we need not limit our perceptions to appease our insecurities.
Amphiox:
December 16th, 2012 at 12:23 am
To make the analogy work, you have to alter it slightly to:
“No belief in gods, no god culture”.
Because what is it, exactly, that produces “god culture”, extends it, elaborates it, perpetuates it? It’s not the existence of gods, but rather the belief in gods.
If gods existed but no one believed in them, there would be no god culture (only small talking turtles, maybe).
If gods did not exist but people believed they did, there is god culture.
But gun culture is a little different, because it is centered around the object and, crucially, the effect of the object working. Whether it is “criminals” you’re self-defensing against, or animals you’re hunting, whatever, the heart of gun culture is about aiming the object at a target, pulling the trigger, and in so doing effecting physically destructive change upon that target.
One could perhaps envision a “gun culture” centered about solely belief in guns without the actual object, wherein enthusiasts point their fingers at each other and yell “BANG!”, but somehow I think that will turn out to be something very different than what we currently consider to be “gun culture” today.
consciousness razor:
December 16th, 2012 at 12:26 am
Doesn’t everyone like “simple truth-speaking”?
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 16th, 2012 at 12:28 am
@ SGBM
I just assumed, perhaps too impulsively, that because slow17 is of such like stripe to jstcr xe would know of it already. I take your point though: We should admit impediment to marriage of false minds.
[Re: TeeeOhhhAre.]
I have not had the chance to get into this properly. I have run it a few times, without success (mainland at least, no problem in HK). I am also having other problems with the PC (I suspect something dreadfully wrong with the graphics card). I’m wabbing a bit in getting it all fixed properly.
@ cicely
[Ing]
Ing stay, StevoR go!
consciousness razor:
December 16th, 2012 at 12:28 am
Of course, it couldn’t be about disliking something (for some unstated reason, which I’m sure is reasonable). It’s about appeasing insecurities.
chigau (違う):
December 16th, 2012 at 12:32 am
John Morales
I regret to inform you that I have had hushfile for a few months now.
and I sometimes engage it.
You have never been in it.
[except for that one time I put everyone except me in it.]
[I have yet to hush myself.]
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 16th, 2012 at 12:34 am
John:
You misread. It wasn’t intended for you:
And here is a killfile script, to save you the trouble of John Morales. :)
John Morales:
December 16th, 2012 at 12:35 am
Amphiox:
There was no analogy, there was a substitution.
Nonetheless, let me apply the inverse of the very same substitution to your amended claim: “no belief in guns, no gun culture”. ;)
(Wow — it works! — though it still remains a straightforward substitution of terms and not an analogy ;) )
John Morales:
December 16th, 2012 at 12:36 am
Caine, I didn’t misread; I was noting the type of people for whom a killfile is desirable, and contrasting them to those for whom it is not.
(The needy vs. the less-needy)
John Morales:
December 16th, 2012 at 12:38 am
PS Evidently, ॐ is of the opinion that Ivorybill is likely to be one of the needy people.
John Morales:
December 16th, 2012 at 12:56 am
If only killfile could be ported to audio and to input, people could become wise monkeys!
(O happy monkey!)
Crissa:
December 16th, 2012 at 1:13 am
Chris fucking lying about my posts and fucking letting Caine throw transphobic slurs is beyond the pale.
I know when to stand up and leave the fucking computer. But apparently they don’t.
Nepenthe:
December 16th, 2012 at 1:17 am
Well I’m impressed with John, are you impressed? I’m impressed.
*eyeroll*
John Morales:
December 16th, 2012 at 1:20 am
Nepenthe, nah, it takes more than that to impress me. :)
–
Crissa, you might have noticed that Chris’s tolerance level is order of magnitudes lower than PZ’s in most categories.
(If not, I hereby draw your attention to it)
Crissa:
December 16th, 2012 at 1:29 am
Chris let a poster completely misrepresent what I said, to the point of letting her blare obscenities at me. Another poster used a specific transphobic slur that I have explained in detail why it is a slur to said poster – which is quite likely why they used it. They continued to yell at me for several more posts after I had left.
Each of those are supposedly violations of the new rules. That’s just not fucking cool.
chigau (違う):
December 16th, 2012 at 1:29 am
Crissa #178
Using xe is not transphobic.
It is an attempt to stop using gendered pronouns.
—
So far, Chris Clarke makes bunny-substitutes.
PZ will prevent you from commenting on Pharyngula.
be careful
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 16th, 2012 at 1:31 am
Crissa:
Oh FFS. You are such a fuckwit. Gender neutral pronouns are not a slur, full stop. They are often used here when there’s uncertainty. You flatter yourself in regard to what I know about you. Generally, I ignore you and don’t bother reading your posts because there’s only so much idiocy I willfully inflict on myself.
When you do come to my notice, I tend to mix you up with a crisskentavwhatever, who I seem to remember identifying as male at one point. That was one or two years ago. So, I err on the side of caution. *shrug*
And no one lied about your posts, Cupcake. Every pixel of your fuckwittedness is there for all to see.
John Morales:
December 16th, 2012 at 1:32 am
chigau:
True; it is merely insulting and rude when applied to a self-identified female, in that it’s denying their expressed gender identity.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 16th, 2012 at 1:34 am
John:
Which was not my intent whatsoever, in spite of what Crissa believes. I don’t have a perfect memory.
John Morales:
December 16th, 2012 at 1:35 am
Caine,
Fair enough, I should qualify my previous thus: “when knowingly applied”, which I believe you did not do.
(But then, intent ain’t magic has been mentioned before)
John Morales:
December 16th, 2012 at 1:36 am
Caine, your #185 and my #186 crossed.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 16th, 2012 at 1:39 am
John:
No, it sure as hell isn’t. I do remember being thoroughly yelled at, along with Sally Strange and several others, by crissakentavwhatever for making the assumption of female gender, given the crissa part of the nym.
Now I’ll remember this Crissa identifies as female.
chigau (違う):
December 16th, 2012 at 1:43 am
John Morales #184
Using an ungendered pronoun ‘denies’ nothing.
Using ‘he’ on an identified ‘she’ denies the identity (or vice versa).
Nepenthe:
December 16th, 2012 at 1:49 am
@Crissa
Someone used naughty words at you? Boo-fucking-hoo.
Asshole.
John Morales:
December 16th, 2012 at 1:50 am
There you go, Crissa — it was not meant as a transphobic slur, rather it was a gender-neutral pronoun properly used when referring to a person whose gender is unknown to the respondent.
(Don’t give up on this place; we may be contentious (as are you! :) ), but transphobia is foreign to the ethos here and there is no tolerance of it)
–
chigau, I once again admit you have a point — it doesn’t deny, but it fails to acknowledge one’s gender.
(Surely you see how this is a sensitive issue for transgendered people)
John Morales:
December 16th, 2012 at 1:52 am
Nepenthe, different people have different triggers.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 16th, 2012 at 1:57 am
theophontes,
Okay. I think that my
beer.7zwill help you. (By now it might have lost its fizz, but if so, I can brew up another batch.) Try downloading it, request the password, and see if what you find inside isn’t helpful.Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 16th, 2012 at 1:58 am
John:
Yeah, but you see, Crissa doesn’t like that. It’s fine to cuss at anyone except her, it’s fine to criticise anyone except her, and so on. And she was damn offensive and insulting to Nepenthe.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 16th, 2012 at 2:02 am
John:
So you’re assuming Crissa is transgendered? Or did I miss something again? (A lot of people protest gendered/homophobic/transphobic slurs on principal). C
chigau (違う):
December 16th, 2012 at 2:03 am
I’m going to bed.
Nepenthe:
December 16th, 2012 at 2:03 am
@John
People who don’t like being cursed at (shock! horror!) when they’re acting like fuckbrained assholes can scamper off to the parts of the internet where fuckwittery is tolerated but naughty words are not. And maybe let the door hit them in the ass on the way out.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 16th, 2012 at 2:06 am
theophontes,
It’s text, by the way. So you don’t have to download it to your computer inside the mainland. You can write down the contents and secret them across.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 16th, 2012 at 2:06 am
Crissa is trans. No assumption, memory.
John Morales:
December 16th, 2012 at 2:09 am
[Third time is enough for now]
Caine, Nepenthe: you have a point, again. (grr)
I should have written “Don’t give up on this place because you imagine it’s transphobic“, up above.
I’m not about to re-read the thread in question, but my impression was that Chrissa got triggered and it went downhill from there.
(Not that I don’t trust both your instincts (and respect you) — but I have to go by my feeling; we’ll doubtless see whether I’m being too generous here)
–
Caine,
If that is to what she took offence, then that’s the implication; again, it’s an impression, not an assumption.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 16th, 2012 at 2:09 am
SG:
Oh shit, I had no idea. I’m so sorry for the gender neutral pronoun being taken as a slur, fuck, I’m sorry.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 16th, 2012 at 2:18 am
chigau,
Surreal.
Like Garfield Minus Garfield.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 16th, 2012 at 2:19 am
borked:
Garfield Minus Garfield.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 16th, 2012 at 3:23 am
@ SGBM
Thanks.
I’ll be back in Shenzhen on the morrow and keep you updated.
vaiyt:
December 16th, 2012 at 3:39 am
About gender pronouns: I’m used to “they”.
It does not follow from the shooters being all male, that the anti-gun argument relies on shifting responsibility from men. Especially since the anti-gun argument is not directed just at spree shooters. Numerically, they’re just a tiny part in the problem of gun-related deaths.
An argument in favor of gun control relies on the practical idea that reducing the availability of guns to the common schmuck reduces the opportunity for schmucks to shoot at other people when it’s not warranted. No gender assumptions required.
It’s worked in other countries – granted, other countries don’t have large segments of the population who view the possession of guns as a basic human right (for people like them, natch – if those other different people have guns, they’re criminals and should be preemptively shot).
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 16th, 2012 at 3:48 am
I like Dinosaur Comics.
In Thursday’s strip, read Utahraptor’s lines in the voice of consciousness razor.
JohnnieCanuck:
December 16th, 2012 at 4:43 am
If anyone cares to be counted in, the Atheist Census is back and racking up the numbers.
Okay, I used preview and that is weird. Think I’ll just leave it as is, in case it helps in debugging. For the moment I am going to assume that it isn’t my screwup.
JohnnieCanuck:
December 16th, 2012 at 4:44 am
Oh, so it’s only preview that was screwed up. Still weird.
opposablethumbs:
December 16th, 2012 at 4:53 am
Oh, snap @ JohnnieCanuck – I just posted in the Lounge about the census being back up and was coming over here to see if anyone had mentioned it yet and you had :-)
Maybe PZ will post the update?
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 16th, 2012 at 8:50 am
Crissa:
Is it possible you’re assuming that Caine is aware that you are trans? If someone doesn’t interact with you on a regular basis they might have forgotten. Heck, she may not have known to begin with.
cm's changeable moniker:
December 16th, 2012 at 2:13 pm
I just got back from church! :-)
Kid #1 soloed the first verse of Once In Royal David’s City. And nailed it.
*proud*
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 16th, 2012 at 2:56 pm
To Crissa/Charlotte/Whoever: feel free to threaten me right here on Pharyngula – leave my blog out of it. That’s for my work, not your little threats. Thanks.
coelsblog:
December 16th, 2012 at 3:16 pm
Dear Horde,
I gather that there has recently been some kerfuffle over whether atheism is a “guy thing” or not. Just registering at the atheist census I see that the gender balance is currently 75:25. You may want to click the link to balance it up a bit.
atheist census
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 16th, 2012 at 3:22 pm
coelsblog:
I can’t, because I registered the first time around. Doing it a second time would be cheating, eh?
chigau (違う):
December 16th, 2012 at 3:29 pm
Caine #212
????
Nepenthe:
December 16th, 2012 at 4:19 pm
I’m just going to leave this here because I’m incoherent with disgust and rage. A conservative friend of mine on facebook, in a discussion about gun policy, explicitly states that, while uncontrolled gun ownership will lead to both mass murders like the Sandy Hook massacre and the obscene murder and suicide rate in the United States, he values the right to own guns more than the utility of banning or controlling them. He states, correctly, that conservatism and liberalism are inherently at odds because of our respective conflicting values.*
I just can’t believe that anyone would say, out loud, that repeated incidents of dead schoolchildren are an acceptable trade off for the “right” to own machines designed solely for killing people without restriction. And this is not an ignorant yokel, he’s both a life-long urbanite and one of the most rawly intelligent people I’ve ever met.
*This is a paraphrase because the friend who started the discussion by posting the “wait until they’re buried” gambit and asked for people to justify their insensitive discussing gun control cowardly deleted the post after I pointed out that silence is as useful as praying.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 16th, 2012 at 4:24 pm
Chigau:
Some fuckwit going by ‘Charlotte’ quoted the exchange between SG and myself (Crissa is trans and my not knowing and being sorry about the pronoun) and said:
I’d prefer they keep their slimy tactics here.
chigau (違う):
December 16th, 2012 at 4:37 pm
Caine #217
huh.
Weird.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 16th, 2012 at 4:46 pm
Chigau:
A nasty little attempt at intimidation.
*shrug*
Janine: Hallucinating Liar:
December 16th, 2012 at 9:27 pm
Said before and I am afraid that I will repeat it for the rest of my life.
There are times that I really hate my species.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 17th, 2012 at 12:14 am
@ SGBM
I went and reloaded the original TeeeOh!(Are?) that ixchel sent. It now gets no further than:
It just sticks there. This is the same as the new one. Further, a little bird told me that Teh VeeePea-En’s here no longer function. (But strangely a string of ates in the deee-EN-ehs seems to work on sell fone. But not Mr PC.)
Something afoot (there always is) I wonder?
Ichthyic:
December 17th, 2012 at 12:22 am
dear coelsblog…
no.
in fact, the argument was why there weren’t more female SPEAKERS.
did you intend yourself to be ignorant of what the “kerfuffle” was actually about, or just intend to be an ass?
rorschach:
December 17th, 2012 at 12:51 am
theo @204,
I’ll be in Hanoi and Da Nang mid-January, we should go for drinkies!!!
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 17th, 2012 at 1:11 am
@ rorschach
A stopover in Hong Kong is called for!
rorschach:
December 17th, 2012 at 1:18 am
hm, I think the flight is via Ho Chi Minh from here….:-( but HK is in the pipeline, maybe in April….
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 17th, 2012 at 1:39 am
@ rorschach
We can guzzle all the beers I owe SG.
I desecrated the landscape nearby, in Vung Tau. The trip there is best taken on the old Soviet era hydrofoil – that looks like a spaceship out of Flash Gordon.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 17th, 2012 at 1:45 am
There is a pic on teh interwebz:
Pic.
rorschach:
December 17th, 2012 at 1:49 am
What is it down there, oil industry or something?
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 1:56 am
theophontes,
Don’t do that. Use the new one. I assure you the old one is never going to be better. You might as well throw the old one away.
I’m sure. Did you download
beer.7zyet? I keep asking because it is intended to deal with precisely these kinds of problems.theophontes (坏蛋):
December 17th, 2012 at 2:03 am
Vung Tau:
It is the main holiday town in the area. Playground for the wealthy, many weekend apartments etc. It is a rather quirky place, long beaches, good food,…, gambling, kitsch and history.
I see on google earth that they have not implemented my designs (makes sign of cross, *pheeuw*)
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 17th, 2012 at 2:06 am
@ SGBM
Aaah, OK. I have downloaded that. … It is shouting at me for the password now…
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 17th, 2012 at 2:24 am
I tried: “beer”.
(That is probably too obvious.)
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 2:42 am
rN9)Tp6h;i
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 2:43 am
Sorry about the delay, afk.
Crissa:
December 17th, 2012 at 2:47 am
PS, Caine has only has this argument about gender neutral pronouns almost every time he’s deemed to reply to me.
When PZ reset the rules, I stopped complaining.
I thought we weren’t supposed to be using coded words anymore. And we’ve had the ‘I’ll remember Crissa is female’ apology before, too.
*grumble*
But I’ll take the oh fuck apology. It shouldn’t take me being outed, tho, should it? Maybe it’ll stick this time.
Crissa:
December 17th, 2012 at 2:48 am
PPS, I’d love to be seeing Shenzhen. My favorite packages come from Shenzhen. I have a huge pile of photos from my friend’s business trip there this summer.
I don’t think my wallet could take me being there, tho.
Crissa:
December 17th, 2012 at 2:50 am
Oh, and I have no idea who wrote on Caine’s website, although that should kinda go unsaid. I didn’t even mention this argument to anyone. Why stress about it?
rorschach:
December 17th, 2012 at 2:52 am
Maybe there is your problem and source of misunderstanding.
John Morales:
December 17th, 2012 at 3:04 am
Crissa:
On the contrary, it needed to be said.
Because you’ve been used as bludgeon to criticise Caine on her personal blog rather than here, where you two had words; this is both nasty and cowardly.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar:
December 17th, 2012 at 3:14 am
Caine is not “he”.
And you were complaining that she was using gender neutral pronouns.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 3:20 am
That’s really a non sequitur. Their mistaking each other’s gender are two independent events.
Rodney Nelson:
December 17th, 2012 at 3:28 am
But there’s a difference. Caine used a genderless pronoun because she was unaware of Crissa’s gender. Crissa, who got all upset about the genderless pronoun, used a gendered pronoun because she was unaware of Caine’s gender.
If anyone has a grievance then it’s Caine because Crissa made an erroneous assumption whereas Caine didn’t.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 17th, 2012 at 3:33 am
@ SGBM
I tried the beer but seem to get the same problem of hanging. “10% handshake” in log. I’ll look at my machine in HK to see what I did differently, this PM. :’(
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 3:48 am
Caine wouldn’t have apologized if Crissa didn’t have a grievance.
Crissa has several times expressed her desire to not be referred to with recently contrived gender-neutral pronouns (she is okay with singular they). Sometimes regular commenters here have responded by deliberately misgendering her to taunt her. She is probably still sensitive to that history, which she remembers since it was stressful and personal for her, which others have more easily forgotten.
Caine apologized, Crissa accepted this. If Caine wants to talk about Crissa calling her “he”, Caine will.
John Morales:
December 17th, 2012 at 3:58 am
ॐ:
Indeed, and if others wish to, they too will do so.
I do so now: alludes to multiple interactions; I find it hard to believe that Crissa had not yet fathomed Caine’s gender at the time of writing that, in particular when Crissa seems very sensitive to gender issues and Caine hardly hides her gender identity.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:03 am
John Morales,
You, more than other commenters, seem to have a habit of producing
blockquotes that do not contain aptag; i.e. the text node inside is a direct child of the blockquote.If you know how you do that, would you please do it right now and add a
cite=creationistattribute to the blockquote? If you don’t know, would you just do your usual thing and addcite=creationist?Thanks in advance, for trying at least, even if it doesn’t work. (Might have been an older WordPress feature/bug.)
Beatrice:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:04 am
Uh, I guess I’m the only one whose first thought after seeing Crissa calling Caine he was that it was done intentionally, in order to provoke a reaction such as the one it has successfully provoked, possibly using it as evidence of a double standard.
John Morales:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:10 am
ॐ, I do?
Sure, and here it is:
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:13 am
Perfect. Thank you.
John Morales:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:14 am
Beatrice, oddly-enough, I tend to be generous at first, because I think Hanlon’s razor is a good heuristic absent sufficient prior knowledge.
So, no, that was not my first thought .
Beatrice:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:19 am
John Morales,
We can just point to this when I tell people I’m actually an asshole quite often, and they answer that I always seem nice. A suspicious asshole.
kate_waters:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:26 am
I just want to point this out, because I think it’s important that it does not become forgotten:
Crissa LIED. Crissa was called out on that lying. Crissa doubled down and lied some more. Crissa was called out, yet again, for lying. Crissa threw a hissy fit for being called a lying liar who lies. Crissa made ableist remarks. Crissa then threw a hissy fit that they were being labeled as an ableist asshole for being an ableist asshole and then did some more ableist fuckwittery.
Crissa is a lying, ableist asshole.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:27 am
PZ, this CSS for commenter-accessible Gumby should be specific enough to work. Instead of that kludgy code+p+blockquote trick, this is legit.
div.comment-entry blockquote[cite~="creationist"] {background: url("http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/files/2011/08/tiny_gumby_trans.gif") no-repeat scroll 0 0 transparent; font-family: "Comic Sans MS",MarkerFelt,MarkerFelt-Wide !important;}div.comment-entry blockquote[cite~="creationist"] p {font-family: "Comic Sans MS",MarkerFelt,MarkerFelt-Wide !important;}
I’ll crosspost to the “hey it looks different” thread.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:32 am
Hm. That overrides the Secret Comic Sans script. I suppose some users have been using both, selectively. Maybe to keep them separate instead, replace
creationstwith something else, likegumby.div.comment-entry blockquote[cite~="gumby"] {background: url("http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/files/2011/08/tiny_gumby_trans.gif") no-repeat scroll 0 0 transparent; font-family: "Comic Sans MS",MarkerFelt,MarkerFelt-Wide !important;}div.comment-entry blockquote[cite~="gumby"] p {font-family: "Comic Sans MS",MarkerFelt,MarkerFelt-Wide !important;}
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:36 am
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:43 am
PZ,
qshould have already been specific enough on its own, but, to future-proof:div.comment-entry q {font-family: "Comic Sans MS", MarkerFelt, MarkerFelt-Wide !important;}Or you could keep plain
qunaltered, so that people familiar with other blogs don’t accidentally ComicSans someone. Instead:div.comment-entry q[cite~="gumby"] {font-family: "Comic Sans MS", MarkerFelt, MarkerFelt-Wide !important;}John Morales:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:47 am
Code hacker’s in flight. Evening delight!
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:57 am
Crissa:
That is a flat out lie, Crissa. I use gender neutral pronouns fairly often and I only use them when I am uncertain about someone’s preference. If I make a mistake, I own up to it and try not to repeat it. As I’m sure you’re aware, I comment quite a lot, so mistakes will happen once in a while. You really do flatter yourself in thinking that I pay so much attention to you. I don’t. Most of the time, you reside in my killfile. I don’t particularly like telling you that, as I tend to think killfiles are private business. Sometimes I may respond to something you wrote that another person has quoted, which may have led to fuck ups on my part. That’s sloppy and stupid on my part and I won’t do it anymore.
You not complaining. Right.
Coded words? What are you talking about now? If I have done the ‘Crissa is female’ apology before, I damn well don’t remember it. I don’t really consider you terribly trustworthy in this regard, Crissa.
Yes, yes, this is about all you ever fucking do.
Oh FFS! You scream, cuss, yell and have a fucking temper tantrum over me using a gender neutral pronoun on the basis you take it as a transphobic slur (which it is not), so I try to find out what the fuckety fuck is going on and you’re going to accuse me of causing you to be outed? Could you possibly be more godsdamned annoying?
For what it’s worth, Crissa, I was appalled when I did find out about you and felt absolutely terrible about hurting your feelings. It was not intentional and despite you holding the grudge of the century against me, I would not deliberately do that to anyone.
I don’t like you, you’re a nasty piece of work. Notwithstanding, I am not in the least transphobic and have never once in my life done anything to knowingly hurt someone on that score and that includes you.
Why on earth should that go unsaid? You’ve had a hate-on for me for a long time, Crissa, because I dared to criticise what you have said. You certainly couldn’t manage to let one gender-neutral pronoun slide and you raised such a stink about it, I think it’s fairly clear you “mentioned” the ‘argument’ a great deal.
Did I say I was stressed? Here’s the thing, Crissa – I don’t care for being threatened. I realize you’re happily handwaving this away because it’s happening to me. Why don’t you picture the screaming tantrum you’d have if it happened to you? Might give a clue or three.
One more thing, Crissa. Did you notice how I didn’t have a fit over you using an incorrect pronoun when you referred to me?
coelsblog:
December 17th, 2012 at 5:13 am
Dear Ichthyic
The original question to Shermer and Shermer’s response were indeed about female speakers. The subsequent commentary, such as Ophelia Benson’s article, certainly did broaden the topic to atheism overall being “a guy thing”.
Neither.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 5:16 am
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/10/18/if-only-hed-been-a-good-christian-he-might-have-gotten-away-with-murder/
Rodney Nelson:
December 17th, 2012 at 5:16 am
Crissa’s “grievance” was based on Caine being unaware of Crissa’s gender and using a gender-neutral pronoun. To me, and this is strictly my opinion, Crissa didn’t have a grievance, she had a whine. Caine, being a polite person, apologized for her ignorance. Crissa has yet to apologize for her assumption of Caine’s gender.
But the real reason why SGBM is bringing the whole thing up is that SGBM likes to play thread cop. Caine is his target this time.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 17th, 2012 at 5:27 am
SG:
Yes, and? Gee, I explained about GNPs and I see that was Crisskentavr whatever the fuck, who had a massive fit at one point because people used she/her. I’ve explained GNPs in a lot of threads, SG, to a lot of different people. Crissa claimed I only did it with her, ever.
Christ, I am done with this. Crissa, you are fucking killfiled. SG, if you have a problem with me, just get it out already. I am not climbing on a cross over someone who has a serious grudge nor will I do it to appease you.
John Morales:
December 17th, 2012 at 5:29 am
Rodney:
Bah. ॐ may or may not like playing “thread cop”, but what he’s done here is what you yourself have done: expressed his opinion on the issue in response to another’s opinion on said issue.
(Nor was Caine his target, you were his target, if by target you mean the person to whom he addressed his comment and who he was disputing)
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 17th, 2012 at 5:31 am
Yes, silly me, receiving a threat. The fucking nerve, eh?
*eyeroll*
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 5:43 am
I didn’t bring up shit. Read for comprehension and then either have the decency to apologize to me or go fuck yourself, Rodney.
What I said to you is that Caine apologized and Crissa (at the time appeared to) accept the apology. There is nothing wrong with me saying this. I believe you are trying to start a fight with me.
It’s a link.
Lawd. Can I *eyeroll* gently?
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 5:45 am
Rodney:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/15/thunderdome-12/comment-page-1/#comment-514757
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/15/thunderdome-12/comment-page-1/#comment-514784
Check carefully whether 199 comes after 178.
Beatrice:
December 17th, 2012 at 5:51 am
Well, after this, I think no one reading Thunderdome will ever forget that they need to refer to Crissa using female pronouns.
I try to be sensitive about people’s desired gender expression, so I use “they” when I’m not sure about someone. I find Crissa’s argument about using “invented” pronouns really stupid, but that’s just me. They are all invented, some are just newer than the others. If the new ones get used often enough, they’ll become standard. I usually use “they”, but the non-standard pronouns can sometimes make sentences sound less awkward.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 5:55 am
Rodney,
I think you have the luxury of feeling that way because you are cis. I think John groks the issue:
I think Caine grokked the issue too and apologized accordingly:
That’s not simply a “polite” apology. That distinctly appears to be the apology of someone who realizes they may have unintentionally hurt someone and they regret doing so.
If you can’t appreciate that, that’s not my problem. Don’t start a fight with me about your callousness, Rodney.
That’s true.
Beatrice:
December 17th, 2012 at 5:59 am
Oh, and I do realize that for Crissa, the neutral pronoun can be especially hurtful and she should be addressed as she asked to be addressed.
My disagreement in 266 is about her general statement.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 17th, 2012 at 6:01 am
Beatrice:
I suppose not. As far as I’m concerned, Crissa can keep her pronoun persecution complex and SG can hold up her halo. I don’t need threats over it or any more grief. I’m out of here.
Happy holidaze to all.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 6:04 am
So far as she argues that no one should call third parties by those pronouns, I find that argument sort of hopeless, since there are a considerable number of trans and genderqueer people who prefer them.
So far as she insists upon not being called by those pronouns herself, end of discussion. I quote SallyStrange from June: “general rule of thumb: follow people’s suggestions for how they want to be addressed, whether you think it’s bullshit or not.”
Eh, they’ll never get used enough, because singular they is already standard. That niche is already occupied.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 6:07 am
Caine, you are dreaming.
Certainly I’ve done nothing wrong to you here — I’ve explicitly defended your intentions. I don’t know what you want, but you are wildly misrepresenting me and I don’t like it.
Crissa:
December 17th, 2012 at 6:19 am
Caine apologized twice. What gives?
Anyhow:
Not exactly an assumption on my part. Sure, someone could choose a name with a gender aside from the one they prefer, but at that point they should probably tell me which pronouns they want. But they chose the gendered name, it’s up to them to disabuse me of the assumption. It’s part of what one chooses as their appearance.
Personally, I find third-gender pronouns horribly offensive. I’ve seen them used as such; and it’s harder to turn ‘they’ into an invective – it’s not a novel word, for instance. Calling someone cutesy diminutives can also be seen as a horrible affront. We’ve had this discussion several times, so while some people may have forgotten – they were informed at some point in the past.
I did not intend to dismiss Caine’s receiving a threat. What I meant was that I would not ‘stress’ and go off and tell others or pursue it beyond this board.
Crissa:
December 17th, 2012 at 6:25 am
PS, Kate can call me a liar, but at no point did I lie. I didn’t even mistype. I read it dozens of times to be sure. If Kate wants to prove me a liar, that’s fine. I may have mistyped or wrote a bad argument. It happens. But I have yet to see a single point where Kate has posted my contradictions.
If I recall, the error is on Kate’s part. It is a logical fallacy to assume because any proportion of set A fits into B that set B fits to A in a specific proportion.
Crissa:
December 17th, 2012 at 6:39 am
PPS: Caine’s gender isn’t in the icon (not that is common) nor on the attached blog (a little bit more common) and hasn’t been mentioned by Caine directly as far as I can tell anywhere on this page. Caine has used french words with female tenses to refer back to themself if I do a web search, but that’s about it. Hardly wearing it on your sleeve.
Then again, I don’t refer to myself directly, either, aside from using a female name and a icon of a female figure. However, as has been pointed out, I’ve repeatedly – more than once – expressed my position on the topic.
And that’s way more than needed to be said.
Matt Penfold:
December 17th, 2012 at 6:42 am
How do Americans and Canadians cope with recipes where the amount of other ingredients depends on the total weight of the eggs being used ?
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 17th, 2012 at 7:55 am
@ SGBM
I am typing this from my laptop, connected to Teeh-0-are. I got the following error in the log:
Solution: Pour libations (strawberry and apple daiquiri) to the Doublepape.
(Real Solution: Added as many bridges as I could get my claws on.)
Slow, but it works…
kate_waters:
December 17th, 2012 at 7:59 am
Crissa:
You lied. You know you did. You were asked to leave a thread because you lied, and here you are, lying about lying about lying.
You’re a nasty, disgusting liar.
You lie. You get caught lying and try to lie your way out of it even though the evidence of your lies is there for all to see.
If you like, I can go back and quote the specific lies to which I am referring in the “got you kicked out of a thread” example.
…or you can just cop to your shitty behaviour and quit being such an asshole. (I highly doubt, however, that you’ll stop being an asshole. That seems to be all you know how to do.)
kate_waters:
December 17th, 2012 at 8:06 am
@Matt Penfold # 275
Use a scale? Most scales have both metric and imperial measurements. Otherwise you just do some quick math. 28 grams equals one ounce. 454 grams equals one pound. It’s not hard.
kate_waters:
December 17th, 2012 at 8:09 am
Also @ Matt:
You’d be surprised at the number of Canadians who use imperial measurements in cooking and baking. I use cups, pints, quarts, pounds and ounces almost exclusively. It’s what I grew up using, and it’s how most of the recipes I use are written.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 8:10 am
I was offended by everything I quoted in my #264, but in retrospect, I should have taken into consideration how Caine had had a stressful exchange here and then received a message on her blog that she found threatening. This could account for her feeling beseiged generally and thus misinterpreting something I said as an attack against her. I regret that I did not think of that when I replied. I figure this a misunderstanding and I wish I had responded with more kindness.
Nothing similarly accounts for Rodney’s response, so I believe he was attacking me maliciously. I am tired of being a convenient scapegoat, and I hope for a retraction.
opposablethumbs:
December 17th, 2012 at 10:58 am
Hushfile and comic sans have both just disappeared for me today (I mean they’re gone again, after having been successfully restored since the change of appearance); could you tell me what I need to do to get them back? I’ve got hushfile 6.0.1 and comic sans 6.0.2. Many thanks for the help!
cicely (Possibly Too-Easily Amused):
December 17th, 2012 at 11:10 am
Cannot agree with this; ‘they’ is used at least quasi-invectively all the time…
“They don’t feel things the same way we do!”
“They should just shut up about “what they are owed” and get a job, dammit!”
…in other words, to “other” others.
-
cicely (Possibly Too-Easily Amused):
December 17th, 2012 at 11:15 am
All words are meant to be used for communication.
I’m not sure there is any word you can use, that can’t be used (with malice a-duringthought) to communicate something nasty.
-
ChasCPeterson:
December 17th, 2012 at 11:32 am
True. But that’s in its usual third-person plural.
The discussion was about using ‘they’ as gender-free third-person singular.
(About which: blah blah Chaucer blah Shakespeare. It grates. I don’t like it. But it’s better than ‘xe’. That’s my personal opinion. I sort of prefer ‘s/he’–and ‘her/his’ to ‘hir’–but I’m a stick in the mud. Are there more than two genders? Not in the English language. [Of course, I include myself in one of those two; I understand it's not so easy for some.])
carlie:
December 17th, 2012 at 1:35 pm
That doesn’t even make sense. Either it was a conscious swipe at you because of knowing you’re trans, or your complaint requires being outed to understand, which necessarily means she didn’t know your status when making the statement. You can’t have it both ways.
Again, you’re trying to have it both ways. You can’t airily claim not to know Caine’s gender after all of the times she’s posted explicitly about it and claim that everyone should remember every comment you’ve ever made. You’re not a special snowflake we should all have burned onto our memories. This is especially true when you’re taking offense to a term that is, in its most common uses, not being used as a pejorative term.
md:
December 17th, 2012 at 1:41 pm
Rare instances of violence make bad cases for policy. The raw emotions do make it irrresistable for some, though.
http://reason.com/archives/2012/12/15/4-archetypally-awful-reactions-to-sandy/singlepage
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 3:39 pm
md is linking to a right-wing libertarian site, if you want to save yourselves the trouble of clicking on it.
+++++
opposablethumbs,
That’s weird. Is your monkey turned on? In Firefox’s Tools menu go to Greasemonkey and see if Enabled is checked.
Or in your Navigation Toolbar at the top of the screen (where the URL bar is) or the Add-on Bar at the bottom (where a link’s destination URL preview pops up when you mouseover the link), look for the monkey’s head. Click on it and see if the colors get brighter. It may have been grayed out, indicating that Greasemonkey was turned off.
Try refreshing the page once you’re certain it’s turned on. But if you’re using Chrome, sorry, I can’t begin to guess.
Crissa:
December 17th, 2012 at 3:40 pm
carlie, there’s no reason to continue the argument. A previous incarnation of the argument has been posted; if I recall there’s several more, I’m not sure how much is retained since some of it was on second-page-comments. It’s unimportant, the argument is over. Caine apologized to me, and did not seek one from me. I’m not going to passive-aggressively use pronouns not requested… Something which has happened here.
And no, it shouldn’t take being outed to get an apology – merely pointing out that the word is seen as a slur. It doesn’t matter if someone is the whatever being slurred, does it? It still hurts if it hurts.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 3:43 pm
Though I suppose if I were to begin to guess, I’d say, ask somebody who knows Chrome whether there’s a way to toggle all user scripts on and off.
Ogvorbis: Exhausted and broken:
December 17th, 2012 at 3:47 pm
META
Some phrases that show up on Pharyngula look really, er, strange? out of context. Even in context, sometimes.
/META
Crissa:
December 17th, 2012 at 3:57 pm
Now a different topic: Kate is very angry with me, but never, ever links back to this lie I supposedly said.
Even if every murder in the country were due to clinical depression (this is just using actual numbers, not that I’m suggesting that any proportion let alone a majority) http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm they would be vastly outnumbered by those diagnosed with the most severe form of depression: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/depression.htm In fact, there were 383,000 hospitalizations (2009) for depression and only 17,000 murders (2008), assuming the two years are typical. And that’s just depression, and just hospitalizations!
Violence is atypical. And probably should be. It’s not a great step to think that those who’d make that choice are under some sort of mental illness or injury.
But I also said that it’s not a useful label.
Crissa:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:05 pm
The argument that one did terrible things and yet was not in any way mentally injured is also a stigmatization of mental illness – that accepting that the decision tree and actions were not sane is more scary than accepting that you’ve done them!
Ugh.
But anyhow, as far as I can tell, Kate is saying I said most people suffering from mental illness have the symptom of violence. Which, as far as I can tell, I never did say. I do not have the position, and I can not find where I might have accidentally said it.
joed:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:12 pm
Psychologically speaking, why do these shooters go after the most defenseless of people.
Hopefully this is the right thread to bring this up.
What really gets me to thinking is the question as to why these sort of tragedies are directed at the most defenseless of people?!
Why don’t these shooters attack a police station or military base? Seems they don’t have an escape plan or end up killing self as planned any way?
Is there some psychological advantage(whatever that is) to going after children?
Anyone have any ideas they care to share?
Owlmirror:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:23 pm
Am I being paranoid?
Is there a term for pasting in footage that subtly undermines the current voiceover in a video?
Context: 60 minutes did a segment on the Newtown massacre. One of the points that came up was that Lanza was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. Note that this was hearsay, from neighbors reporting what Lanza’s mother claimed. 60 minutes read from a statement from an Asperger’s support group.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2102-18560_162-57559459.html
And while the voiceover said:
the footage that they chose to show was of police and emergency workers walking through the streets outside the school.
Was it just an editing decision that was made in haste and whose impact was not well thought out? Or was it maybe something less pleasant?
vaiyt:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:26 pm
Typical sheltered affluent first-world view. Do you think your neck of the woods is special? That you see less violence because your people are more mentally healthy? Are all those people dying in third-world countries just sick in the head, the poor retards? Think again, if you can use your brain at all. Fucking idiot.
If that were true, we would see patterns of violence that correlate to mental disease rather than societal aspects. Do you have any evidence that indicates so?
consciousness razor:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:27 pm
Not this shit again. You’re making a very giant leap.
There doesn’t need to be any functional problem or abnormality with a person’s brain when they do something unethical. You’re just plain confused if you think you can turn every ethical or epistemological problem into a purely psychological one. Simply making irrational or unethical decisions does not imply you have some kind of fucking health problem, for fuck’s sake. And you’re doing no one any favors by pretending to know what you’re talking about with this handwaving nonsense. So shut up.
cm's changeable moniker:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:30 pm
Shorter joed:
Um, no. Please fuck off.
joed:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:35 pm
The military kills women and children and all sorts of defenseless folks often. The shooters get rewards for the killing. These soldiers are at the peak of physical health.
These killings are ordinary and usual and happen daily. Healthy humans are capable of the most heartbreaking, immoral acts.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:41 pm
Crissa:
Do you have any evidence for your claim that violence is atypical? Or are you just better enlightened than the rest of humanity? From what I’ve seen, humans have exercised violent tendencies since forever, and continue to do so every hour of every day across the planet. Violrnce among human beings is *extremely* typical. Do you live on Paradise Island or something?
joed:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:42 pm
@297
Gosh CM wouldn’t you like to have some ideas about why these shooters go after defenseless folks rather than attack military or police. I sure am interested in the why of this. Certainly skepticism is real important and actual knowledge is necessary. I have the skepticism but not the knowledge therefore I asked.
Sounds like you have a problem with that?! Or are you venomous just for fun?
cm's changeable moniker:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:48 pm
I’m not venomous. I have lots of answers to your questions. I’m just not interested in feeding your narcissistic need to use every fucking tragedy in the world to make every internet discussion thread about your feelings about the US military.
As I said.
Please fuck off.
I’m asking nicely.
Ichthyic:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:56 pm
gotta go with CM here. Joed’s obsession with warfare would be poignant, if it wasn’t so tiresome and artificial.
consciousness razor:
December 17th, 2012 at 4:56 pm
It’s easier to attack defenseless people, compared to the military or police, partly because they are defenseless are partly because there are more defenseless “targets” than there are well-defended ones, and partly because they’re likely to interact with defenseless people more often giving more chances for a violent response to occur. It may also be some who commit violence are in some way sympathetic to such authority figures, perhaps thinking they are allied together in violently defending the prevailing social structure as they see it. (You get this sort of mindset in the US with gun-toting “patriots” in “militias.”)
Lots of possibilities, but some of the answers are pretty fucking obvious. It’s easier.
consciousness razor:
December 17th, 2012 at 5:00 pm
I probably shouldn’t have responded to joed. I don’t really want to encourage him to ask even more stupid questions.
Owlmirror:
December 17th, 2012 at 5:18 pm
Hm.
Is Facebook a Factor in Psychotic Symptoms?
?!?!?!?!??!!!?!???
opposablethumbs:
December 17th, 2012 at 5:19 pm
My monkey is indeed turned on now and everything is as it should be again. (it didn’t occur to me to check, as I certainly didn’t consciously turn it off – but also because I really am just that much of a technosaur). Thank you very much, strange gods before me ॐ . I really appreciate the fact that even technosaurs can get help with (embarrassingly) simple questions (without adding to the embarrassment :-D) (I have Firefox. I like Firefox, it doesn’t seem to present me with awkward surprise faits accomplis too often :-) )
cm's changeable moniker:
December 17th, 2012 at 5:29 pm
John Rentoul wants that question!
Probably, that one, too.
—
@Ichthyic, I didn’t grok your #147. But, for what it’s worth, my #146 wasn’t a poke at you, it was just (Saturday was a really ranty day for various reasons) a ranty snark at the fact that no matter what shit you try and stamp out, there’ll always be some good old boys (and they seem to always be boys) who want things back the way they were at some historically-privileged time they imagine they could have lived in.
Nick Gotts (formerly KG):
December 17th, 2012 at 5:53 pm
A typically stupid generalization.
joed:
December 17th, 2012 at 6:15 pm
@303 consciousness razor
Thanks for the ideas about the “why” defenseless people.
I have talked with gun-toting “patriots” and seems the ones I have talked with have problems with just about everybody.
What is “stupid” about wanting to get some reasonable/educated ideas about why people do this?
Thanks for the response you did come up with.
cm's changeable moniker:
December 17th, 2012 at 6:17 pm
You know, I used to live in Belfast. Care to try that one over again? (Remember, I’m being nice.)
SC (Salty Current), OM:
December 17th, 2012 at 6:57 pm
I check in after a long absence, clicking on a comment by Owlmirror, and the first thing that catches my eye is
Actual recent conversation with my mother (who for some reason believes I can help her with computer issues):
My Mother: I keep getting a thing that says “Adobe Flashdancer has…”
Me: laughter
My Mother: That’s what it’s called….
consciousness razor:
December 17th, 2012 at 7:04 pm
You easily could’ve anticipated some of the reasons. There’s no one answer to the question you posed, because it isn’t clear what the question really is. It’s not clear whether we need to explain basic concepts to you, or if you realize some of that and are trying to ask something more specific about specific kinds of incidents or specific people. If you did some of that work yourself while setting up the question, there wouldn’t be as much reason to dumb down the answers. But when we’re dumbing everything down, I call that “stupid” and “unreasonable.”
And in this case, you’re apparently asking the question in such an asinine way, because you have an axe to grind with the military (and the police?), perhaps just the US military in particular. I’m a pacifist, so what I find repugnant about this line of thought is that you seem to think it would be good if people in the police/military were murdered, and I don’t think anyone should be murdered. So that pisses me off too.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls:
December 17th, 2012 at 7:16 pm
What is stupid is that you expect people other than yourself to do your research. What part of that do you need explained to you in words of one syllable or less??? DO IT YOURSELF, AND LEAVE US OUT OF YOUR PARANOIA.
Pteryxx:
December 17th, 2012 at 7:29 pm
seems like as good a place as any to leave this. It’s already been noted that the gun lobby’s basically prevented research that might lead to suggesting gun control, which is part of why the field’s befogged. Just saw a Salon article pointing out that the “more guns less crime” theory is based on flawed research:
http://www.salon.com/2012/12/18/the_answer_is_not_more_guns/
joed:
December 17th, 2012 at 7:58 pm
@313
Nerd, these questions are part of my research.
Why are you so full of hate today. Not necessary you know.
joed:
December 17th, 2012 at 8:06 pm
@312
You are way off, I don’t want anyone to be victim of violence.
My question is straightforward. Why do these shooters attack defenseless people rather than people that can defend self? There are perhaps many answers to this and skepticism is important when looking at this question.
If I haven’t finetuned the question it is probably because I am not sure how to, but I wont let that stop me from asking. If you don’t want to attempt an answer then fine–don’t, but venom and malediction is not warranted.
Thank you
Sophia, Michelin-starred General of the First Mediterranean Iron Chef Batallion:
December 17th, 2012 at 8:11 pm
Really?
Why?
What’s easier? When you have a gun, facing someone else who has the ability to kill you, or someone who is unarmed, or armed with a vastly less lethal weapon?
People are cowards. RWA wingnuts even more so. When’s the last time an armed shootout broke out in a gun club or at a firing range? When people shoot at other people with guns, we call it war and name the survivors heroes.
joed:
December 17th, 2012 at 8:13 pm
OK, I forgot this is the Thunderdome. venom, malediction are almost necessary.
Sorry.
Sophia, Michelin-starred General of the First Mediterranean Iron Chef Batallion:
December 17th, 2012 at 8:16 pm
Venom? Where?
I thought it was simply a statement of the blindingly obvious.
Crissa:
December 17th, 2012 at 9:13 pm
I’m sorry, all evidence seems to point out that with less stress, mental injury, and less dire need, there’s less violence. There’s also less mental illness – at least in illnesses impacted heavily from outside factors, like depression.
So I’ll continue; violence is atypical. The vast majority of humans never commit a violent crime. A goodly number are never pressed into a violent defense, either.
A few per 100,000 is atypical, not typical.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 17th, 2012 at 9:28 pm
Again: where is your evidence?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls:
December 17th, 2012 at 9:31 pm
Hence your paranoia about drone operations. Do you have anything to feel guilty about? Or are you just a quivering mass of jello?
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 9:31 pm
Typo in that Salon article. Ms. Rosh’s first name was Mary.
+++++
opposablethumbs, it’s a very common question. You can reduce the chance of accidentally toggling it by removing the monkey’s face from your toolbars (you’ll probably want to use the method of ‘Context-click (right-click) on a blank spot in the toolbar and select “Customize”‘).
+++++
Any port in a storm. :)
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 17th, 2012 at 9:34 pm
You know what, I find it galling that you-crissa-whined about Kate not linking to your lies, yet here you are making an extraordinarily stupid, unevidenced claim. So put up or shut up. At this point, I think I’d rather you-and Joed-shut up.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 9:35 pm
Rectal revelation.
Note the evasion of this point (not for the first time).
consciousness razor:
December 17th, 2012 at 9:39 pm
Could you do any more handwaving? If you had all the evidence, maybe you would share just one piece of it with us.
People are violent every fucking day, all over the fucking planet. So in what sense is that “atypical”?
The vast majority of people with mental illness never commit a violent crime. What are we supposed to conclude from that?
What do you think your fucking point is? A few what per 100,000 what?
Whatever it is, how the fuck it supposed to get you from violence to “mental illness”? Show your work.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 17th, 2012 at 9:45 pm
http://pediatrics.about.com/od/childabuse/a/05_abuse_stats.htm
ChasCPeterson:
December 17th, 2012 at 9:53 pm
jesus. I find myself trying to imagine SC’s mother.
[exercise for the reader: try to imagine my mom.
\
bwaha.]
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 17th, 2012 at 9:58 pm
I’m loving ‘rectal revelation’!
****
Why do I get the feeling crissa is only focusing on _some_ types of violence? I think of all domestic violence and sexual abuse cases. I look at sports (football, boxing, Ultimate Fighter, etc). I think of homicide, mass murder and war. I think of drug deals gone wrong and turf war fights. Hell even drunken bar fights. Crissa must live in a bubble to think violence is atypical. What’s next: sex happens occasionally?
SC (Salty Current), OM:
December 17th, 2012 at 10:04 pm
Mother of SC
Has MST written all over it.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 17th, 2012 at 10:10 pm
crissa:
From SGBM’s link above–
For the year 2006, 325K children were physicaly abused. Thats violence. That number exceeds your deeply stupid figure of 100K. And that is only one type of violence and only in the US at that.
Have you done _any_ research beyond anal gazing?
wytchy:
December 17th, 2012 at 10:20 pm
You have to admit, that blinking brown eye can be mesmerizing.
vaiyt:
December 17th, 2012 at 10:21 pm
Key words being outside factors. Have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe, that’s the common point that makes violence more common in some places than in others?
Wow, you just did an acrobatic fucking pirouette of logic there.
Plenty of behaviors are atypical without being associated with mental illness. You’re pulling up a correlation out of your ass.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 17th, 2012 at 10:35 pm
You know I’m sensing a trend here. Mesmerizing brown eyes. Rectal revelations. Anal gazing. Jinkies. I think these are clues. To the Mystery Machine!
Amphiox:
December 17th, 2012 at 10:38 pm
The vast majority of humans never walk on the moon.
So, Neil Armstrong is mentally ill?
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 17th, 2012 at 11:51 pm
@ SGBM
The martini has landed.
SC (Salty Current), OM:
December 17th, 2012 at 11:52 pm
Define “violent crime.”
kate_waters:
December 18th, 2012 at 5:57 am
Oh, dear-me-oh-my, Crissa (That poor little speshul snowfwake) is upset that I didn’t link to her lies immediately? Oh, my, I am SOOOOO sorry that my off-net life intruded on your pathetic whining, Crissa. Poor little idiot. Give me 10 minutes and I’ll go back into the almost 1000 comment thread and pull them out for you, since you’re too much of a fucking asshole to just cop to your bullshit and stop with the fucking stupidity.
…and while I’m on the subject of you being a fucking useless twit I’d like to ask you this:
If people were supposed to know you were trans, how the fuck could you be “outed”? You can’t have it both fucking ways, sunshine.
Fuck, but you’re a fucking stupid asshole. You want everyone to hold your hand and feel sorry for you and get yourself all in a tizzy when you’re not treated like some special person we should all respect, when you’ve shown no respect for anyone else.
You give what you get, you shit-for-brains.
kate_waters:
December 18th, 2012 at 6:06 am
Here, at comment #260, one example is pointed out by Chigau:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/14/before-you-reach-for-the-its-not-guns-its-the-cray-cray-argument/comment-page-1/#comment-514198
…and you need to apologize for your ableist crap, right fucking now. If you want apologies for being offended you had better fucking start apologizing for your offensive crap.
You were told to stop being ableist, and you keep doing it … over and over and over.
STOP IT. STOP IT AND APOLOGIZE FOR YOUR OFFENSIVE BEHAVIOUR.
kate_waters:
December 18th, 2012 at 6:22 am
I would like to ask everyone in this thread who is engaging Crissa to please go back to her cpomments and replace “mental illness” or “mentally ill” in her comments with the words:
“Being a POC” and “POC”
– or –
“Homosexuality” and “Homosexual”.
Do that, and you’ll see why asking for “evidence” on the matter, or treating Crissa as if they are trying to engage in a “conversation” is not only ludicrous, but deeply, terribly offensive.
kate_waters:
December 18th, 2012 at 7:11 am
…and this is the last thing I’m going to say in regards to the Crissa idiocy:
If she didn’t want to be fucking “outed” all she had to say was “I am a woman, please refer to me as ‘her’ and ‘she’”
Instead, Crissa chose to be, yet again, a complete fucking asshole and have a pity party for herself, the same way she accused mods of “abusing their position” for “comic sans-ing” her over her bullshit. (Although she seemed to be too stupid to realize it was the author of the tread who is the only one who can make that happen.)
Crissa seems to think she’s got some “right” to continue to act in a manner which is offensive and that her “speech” ought to be without consequences, while fully expecting others to face consequences for their speech.
With that said, I’m killfiling her ass. I can’t take anymore of her shit, and she can join Morales and a few select others who, over the years I’ve been reading Pharyngula, have proved themselves to be the lowest of the low. If she continues to whine about a lack of “evidence” for her lying bullshittery please go read the threads on the Newtown shootings and do a quick search for her username. You’ll find all the proof you need.
rorschach:
December 18th, 2012 at 8:00 am
@ 341,
Who the fuck are you that you would dare to pontificate like this here, call people “the lowest of the low”, as someone who as far as I can see has never participated in any comment threads until maybe very recently? If you killfiled John Morales, please do make sure you killfile me as well if you haven’t done so yet, because I don’t want to be read by you.
rorschach:
December 18th, 2012 at 8:14 am
Owlmirror @305,
This sounds very plausible. Ironically, Facebook is also a great screening tool and early-warning system for suicidality, I see on average one or two patients every week brought to the Emergency Department by police for urgent Psych evaluation based on suicide notes or thoughts posted on their Facebooks.
kate_waters:
December 18th, 2012 at 8:53 am
@rorschach
Well, then, I guess it’s completely impossible for people to lurk and not participate, isn’t it? …and no, I don’t think you get to ask me not to read you, if you’re going to post here publicly. My killfile is mine, and mine alone, to fill or empty at my pleasure. Don’t like it? Ask to have me banned or stop posting.
I killfiled Morales because I have no patience for his pedantic BS wherein he treats real, suffering humans as little more than facets of an intellectual exercise, and when asked to cease this silliness he not only refuses, but seems to think that living, breathing, suffering people don’t really have the right to ruin his “fun”.
If you like, I can go back to the post where that shit caught my attention, but it may take a bit because it was almost a year ago.
Oh, wait… that’s right… it’s **TOTALLY COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE** that I’ve been lurking for several years, isn’t it? Or that I could have formed an opinion about people based on thousands of comments made by them over that time? Yes. Impossible. Totally impossible. I must have dreamed it all, right?
Sheesh.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 18th, 2012 at 9:58 am
Rorschach:
An excellent commenter and someone who wrote an article which featured in one of Chris’s recent posts.
kate_waters:
December 18th, 2012 at 10:03 am
No, Caine. I am not Kate Donovan! That’s not me! Don’t confuse me with her, please, you’re doing Ms. Donovan a GREAT disservice! She’s an excellent writer, and I’d venture to say a lovely person. I don’t really think I’m either of those things.
keresthanatos:
December 18th, 2012 at 10:06 am
“and she can join Morales and a few select others who, over the years I’ve been reading Pharyngula, have proved themselves to be the lowest of the low.”
Wow, how do I gain entry into this hallowed group (the lowest of the low), short of being a polymath, with impeccable reasoning skills, published and cited many times, …… Inquiring minds want to know?????
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 18th, 2012 at 10:08 am
Kate:
Yikes, not enough tea! My apologies. Okay, I’ll just go with “you’re an excellent commenter”. That okay?
I think you write just fine, btw.
kate_waters:
December 18th, 2012 at 10:10 am
Keresthanatos:
Stop. Just stop. Seriously. He’s there because he’s acted like a pompous ass, because he’s treated rape victims as if they were mere statistics even when said victims have asked him to stop doing so, and because he can be an insufferable jerk.
If you want to do that kind of thing then, yeah, I’d killfile you. I really don’t think being smart or published is an excuse for acting like an asshat.
kate_waters:
December 18th, 2012 at 10:11 am
Caine:
Awww, thanks! Yep, I’ll take that. :)
Enjoy your tea. Myself I’m having a nice cup of “FireHaus” coffee brewed in my bodum. I’d share, but I have a feeling that it might be cold by the time it got to you.
rorschach:
December 18th, 2012 at 10:21 am
That is your view and your right, but I dont have to like or respect it. Cheers.
emburii:
December 18th, 2012 at 10:23 am
I can see how John Morales could end up in someone’s killfile from, say, comment #167 on this thread. Insinuating intellectual laziness or insecurity on the part of others because they don’t have the same number of spoons to voluntarily put up with upsetting things, for instance, is a little off-putting. And his self-laudatory tone provides an extra-specially vile and ableist aperitif to that nastiness.
kate_waters:
December 18th, 2012 at 10:32 am
@Rorscharch:
I’m not asking you to like it. You don’t have to like it. I don’t expect anyone to “like” or approve of what I do. I’ve never asked, even in real life, for anyone to blindly agree with my opinions. (Facts are a different matter, but that’s not what we’re discussing.)
…but asking me to killfile you so I don’t read what you say? WTF? You’re more or less telling me you don’t think I’m worthy or fit to read your words, as if you have some sort of monopoly on your speech in public spaces. That’s just weird. Also, it’s not really how that kind of thing works.
kate_waters:
December 18th, 2012 at 10:33 am
Shoot, I misspelled your name, Rorschach. I’m sorry I did that!
rorschach:
December 18th, 2012 at 11:10 am
No, it’s just that from your short track record here I deduce that you are an angry moron. So just killfile me already. And those hard nuanced balanced thoughty considered informed openminded posts people here tend to post every now and then are clearly not for you.
ChasCPeterson:
December 18th, 2012 at 11:18 am
example of what?
most X is due to Y.
≠ most Y causes X.
3rd-Grade logic.
oo! oo! choose me!!!
lol
kate_waters:
December 18th, 2012 at 11:56 am
@Rorschach
Nice. Real nice. You might want to use smaller words, though, so a moron such as myself can grasp the deep significance of such lofty thoughts. After all, if you think that kind of thing is beyond me, you might want to dumb it down enough for me to feel the full sting of your obviously weighty and superior intellect.
It would be a crying shame if I missed even one barb from your sharp tongue, wouldn’t it?
The tone policing, though, has got to go. Being angry about someone being an ableist asshole is perfectly justified. If you can’t understand why this might be so, then you have some self-examination to do. People get heated here all the time over others acting like privileged twits and I am not the only one to have ever thought John Morales was acting like a complete jerk, nor have I been the only one to call Crissa out for her shit.
If you’d care to make an argument as to why I ought to respect or listen to John Morales’ opinion which does not involve some shitty argument from authority or popularity, I am more than willing to listen and discuss it with you. I won’t even use off-colour words, if that is your preference. However, if all you have is “He knows lots of stuff and has been published” then you’re making a very, very weak argument. There are many people who can make the claim that they have multiple fields of expertise and have also been published in journals multiple times. It doesn’t make them immune to being jerkwads, or insensitive assholes, or automatically make anyone who dislikes them or disagrees with them “morons”.
rorschach:
December 18th, 2012 at 12:38 pm
???
I LOL’d though, when you suggested John was making arguments from authority or popularity. That’s at least one new irony meter right there. It’s 530 am here, so I will go to bed now and get back to this joke fest tomorrow…
kate_waters:
December 18th, 2012 at 12:53 pm
No, I’m suggesting that in this very thread arguments were being made from authority or popularity for why John Morales was somehow worthy of listening to.
Yes, you’re obviously tired. I get it. After all, if someone so brilliant can’t make sense of what an idiot such as myself is saying it indicates you’re not at your best. Hopefully after you’ve had some sleep you can parse my moronic ramblings well enough to be able to make sense of what I’ve very clearly said.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 18th, 2012 at 1:37 pm
rorschach is big on everyone knowing “their place” — though, to be sure, he’s not the only one here like that. If you want to have a bit of fun with him, call Hitchens a fuckbrained warmongering misogynist.
To be sure, the argument Crissa did make, that most violence is mental illness, is blatant bullshit. (Asked about war, she tried to characterize the willingness to fight as delusion.)
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 18th, 2012 at 1:38 pm
To be sure, my writing suffers from the midday slump. Coffee time!
chigau (違う):
December 18th, 2012 at 1:44 pm
ॐ
I not so sure…
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 18th, 2012 at 1:51 pm
If you lack certitude, try an ethanol solution.
carlie:
December 18th, 2012 at 2:22 pm
I am very happy for the existence of killfile for those who need it. I am grateful to those (sg) who have tweaked it to be usable for this site for people who need it.
But isn’t the point of having it so you can completely ignore people? If you talk about who you have in your killfile and who you don’t, that defeats the purpose of ignoring the existence of said people.
Ichthyic:
December 18th, 2012 at 2:34 pm
best killfile him then, right?
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 18th, 2012 at 2:37 pm
Nah, in my opinion it’s best to gently tease him. :)
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 18th, 2012 at 3:26 pm
I dislike the idea of making people ‘know their place’. One of my first posts in TET back when got a ‘…and who are you?’ type response. It reeked of elitism as if I weren’t worthy of posting there.
consciousness razor:
December 18th, 2012 at 3:44 pm
For some people, I use it to remind myself that I probably don’t want to waste my time with them, but that can change. If they say something useful or interesting, or if on the other hand they’re dominating the conversation with everyone else and need a good troll-smashing, then I don’t really care whether my handy little webgadget tells me I probably shouldn’t bother.
Of course, that’s not a reason I’d tell someone they’re in my killfile. The reason I’d tell someone they’re in my killfile is basically just to piss them off a little before I stop responding.
John Morales:
December 18th, 2012 at 4:06 pm
Tony,
Nothing to do with what you wrote, except it reminded me of a rather funny post from days of yore: ‘Life Reeked with Joy’, which I here share for any who might not have seen it before.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 18th, 2012 at 4:11 pm
rorschach,
You lol’d because you’re excessively sleepy so you parsed wrong.
Read: “If you’d care to make an argument (as to why I ought to respect or listen to John Morales’ opinion) which does not involve some shitty argument from authority or popularity”
Not: “If you’d care to make an argument as to why I ought to respect or listen to (John Morales’ opinion which does not involve some shitty argument from authority or popularity)”
The argument from popularity was made by you, and an argument from authority was implied by keresthanatos.
+++++
Is John “published and cited many times”? This is not implausible, but I am interested as it is news to me.
+++++
Anyway, I object to any out of the blue invocation of Morales-as-bad-example, by kate_waters or anyone else, when he is not currently being a shithead. It is gratuitous.
Besides being gratuitous, it is incomplete and inaccurate. John is also thoughtful and kind, and he makes an effort to understand others, sometimes more carefully and charitably than is standard around here.
cm's changeable moniker:
December 18th, 2012 at 6:32 pm
I don’t understand how JM’s “I’m willing to see criticism despite my insecurities” counts as ableism. Suggestions welcome.
===
I also don’t understand how to understand this:
===
I will admit; I used to (with guilty pleasure) read the conspiracist rantings at various veterans’ websites.
Now, I’m a bit more worried.
Ichthyic:
December 18th, 2012 at 6:44 pm
I read it, and the links.
it’s a very tenuous connection, with no consistent underlying motive.
what in the fuck would the purpose be, for an underling in an organization at best minimally related to the “libor” scandal, to have connected themselves to a mass killing?
it makes no fucking sense.
sorry, but this is exactly WHY conspiracy theories become popular… at some level, the “kevin bacon” effect kicks in, and everything “seems” connected.
Ichthyic:
December 18th, 2012 at 6:45 pm
…of course, I could have gotten paid 6 figures by the “LIBOR CONSPIRACY” to say that.
cm's changeable moniker:
December 18th, 2012 at 7:07 pm
At the risk of compromising my SciBlogs identity, I’d like to point out that a commenter who totally isn’t me despite having a very similar ‘nym commented on Stoat’s blog here. “Stoat” may not be his real name, either.
ChasCPeterson:
December 18th, 2012 at 7:17 pm
agreed
StevoR, fallible human being:
December 18th, 2012 at 9:35 pm
I realise I have really offended and upset some people here and I apologise for that.
Of course, many of the people here have said some hurtful and offensive things that have made me pretty upset too. I feel far from “coddled” and more piled up and generally misjudged by those here.
However, if Ing returns or if someone wants to gets in touch you can tell hir that I do apologise for calling hir friends “Jihadists” and that if xe returns I’ll say nothing further to her unless xe addresses me directly.
I’ve taken a few days offline and may take a few more. I’m rethinking some things especially my conduct here as I always do whether some folks believe that or not. I’ve also emailed of PZ Myers and Chris Clarke and requested to be put on automoderation “probation” for awhile in the interests of blog harmony but have had no response from them on this.
vaiyt:
December 18th, 2012 at 11:38 pm
@StevoR:
We don’t give a fuck about harmony, in case you haven’t noticed. No amount of niceness will make you not a racist asshole, so you won’t be any more well liked here.
I don’t believe your apologies, because I’ve seen you lie through your teeth way too many times.
You’re offended? Good. Racist assholes like you should be offended. Maybe you could feel some shame for your stupid, dehumanizing opinions, but that might be asking too much.
Just go away.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 19th, 2012 at 12:18 am
1a) that’s not all you said about them which you should apologize for. For one, you also claimed — knowing nothing else about them except that they’re Muslim — that they “want to committ genocide against Israel!”
1b) and that’s not even the entirety of it. IIRC, you also — knowing nothing else about them except that they’re Muslim — accused them of being homophobes. This was the beginning of your attacks on Ing’s friends, again IIRC. You should apologize for this too.
2) what, no explanation of how you understand that you were wrong? It is hard to believe that you are serious and honest about any apology, without an accounting of how you got to here from there.
rorschach:
December 19th, 2012 at 3:27 am
I’ll play because I’m bored (so who is having fun with who now?).
Fuckbrained I would object to as a pretty obvious insult that is not saying anything other than you didnt like the guy. The other 2, meh, inflammatory and unkind, but that’s what Shermer complained about too the other day. So yeah, I give you those…
;)
keresthanatos:
December 19th, 2012 at 6:58 am
just trollin’ on the published and cited, though I would not be suprised if he was.
puppygod:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:16 am
@293 joed
I wonder whether these assumptions are even true. It might be a side-effect of media bias in reporting. I can recall of the top of my head at least five attacks on police stations in the mainland US. It seems that those would-be mass-murderers who chosen targats that can defend themselves, well, end up defeated. They go to the police station, shoot an officer or two and go down when officers return fire. So they don’t rack up enough victims to get more than only a brief mention on a global-wide news networks.
StevoR, fallible human being:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:25 am
@ strange gods before me ॐ – 15th of December 2012 at 2:23 am
From here :
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/05/thunderdome-11/comment-page-2/#comment-513906
No I really wouldn’t say that quote now however drunk or sober I am.
What’s wrong with the quote and what I’d say now to someone who said it?
Well, the quote’s wrong because it suggests that African-Americans are somehow less loyal and less American than, say, Irish Americans or Native-Americans and there’s no evidence for that. It also implies that African Americans and other “hyphenated” Americans can’t or don’t fully support American values and that their own values aren’t also American and haven’t also contributed to forming US culture as we know it which again there’s no good evidence of or reason to believe. It also is an over-generalisation implying that all African-Americans are the same and have only the one collective opinion rather than being individuals with a diverse range of views and that holds true for all the other groups as well. Am I right?
As for how my views have changed and evolved over time, well, it’s a long and personal story. For a while I was too left wing and eventually I woke up to that and for a while I reacted and overcompensated by becoming too rightwing before realising I’d gone too far the other political direction. For a long time I’ve thought about the dreadful and biased things I once said as an extreme leftwinger against Israel and the Jewish people more broadly and felt I had to make up for that in part by offering a good argumentative defense in their favour. There’s more to it than just that, natch, stuff I don’t even fully understand myself as well as stuff I do but that’s certainly part of it.
Also for a time I felt utterly betrayed by and was furious at Obama for some of the policies he did and failed to do such as his cancellation of the Constellation human lunar return plan.
Anyhow, I’m not the same person I was when I wrote that quote – or the older one too. When evidence and situations change and new insights occur I change my mind in response, what do you do?
Do I perhaps have my biases that should be examined? Sure. Doubt I’m alone in this and suspect its part of the human condition generally. Have you (& everyone else here) stopped to rethink your own biases and prejudices in some of these issues too?
Ogvorbis: useless:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:28 am
Will the leopard actually change his shorts?
StevoR, fallible human being:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:31 am
@15. Amphiox :
Hey Amphiox, are *you* really are telling *me* what my personal preferences are even when I’ve repeatedly told you what they >actually are? I meant what I said when I told everyone that my first preference is for a peaceful non-violent resolution here.
Sheesh, what next? Are *you* going to tell *me* that *my* favourite colour is really blue after I’ve told everyone its actually red as well or something?
Why do I get the feeling that if I said the Moon was made of mainly basalt-like igneous rock some people here would still claim I’m really arguing that its made of green cheese based on one silly long forgotten joke I made five years ago or something even tho’ I’ve since repeatedly made my actual serious view perfectly clear?
Maybe that I do know the history and what’s been tried and failed before here? Because, y’know, that would actually be the case. That ever occur to you?
StevoR, fallible human being:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:35 am
@.383 Ogvorbis:
Maybe. Maybe it was always a pantomine leopard and the crowd never did properly see or judge what was inside seeing instead only the spots before their own eyes painted on by others hands?
Ogvorbis: useless:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:14 am
StevoR:
Re; #383 and #382:
Are you actually claiming that you did not make racist, bigoted, and warmongering statements over the last year or more? Or are you claiming that these repeated statements were one-off jokes and that we have all managed to not see all the places where you stated otherwise?
You claim that your views have changed. As I stated, I’ll have to wait and see.
Claiming joke-that-everyone-failed-to-grok or claiming others-put-words-on-my-screen-that-I-never-used is not blowing warm air up my shorts. If you (as I have done, here and in meatspace) have made statements with which you no longer agree, own up to them, apologize, and don’t get snitty when others, such as me, fail to instantly see that you are now a completely different person who no longer sees all Muslims as supporters of terrorism, no longer sees Islam as an existential threat to the west and thus a valid target for nuclear weapons, or advocates immediate and unrestricted preventive war with Iran. So excuse the fuck out of me that I see two weeks of ‘I didn’t mean it’ or ‘I have changed’ and compare it with a year or more of ‘bomb ‘em all’ and am not impressed. You may have changed. Don’t expect me, or anyone else, to accept it without further evidence. And that evidence will be in your comments to come.
vaiyt:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:28 am
You can “tell” us what we’re supposed to think about your opinions all you want, StevoR. What we actually got in your actual opinions about the actual subject is another matter entirely.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:37 am
Someone wake me when our resident xenophobic racist leaves the place he really doesn’t like posting, but does so anyway, again.
The desperate pleading is getting pathetic. As is requesting to be put in moderation. One would think an adult who is trying to change would police their own fucking posts.
(Yes, I am being passive aggressive here)
md:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:41 am
Anyone have any opinions on the Hagel nomination, or the Washington Post/establishment GOP’s reaction to it? I couldn’t be more pleased with Obama over it (well, Ron Paul as Sec. of Treasury perhaps) and was wondering if there was any common cause to be found. You guys taking the WaPost’s line or supporting the Eisenhower Republican?
Ogvorbis: useless:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:43 am
md:
We have to wait for PZed to give us the party line. The we can tell you what ‘us guys’ think. /snark
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:53 am
Ogvorbis:
Too true. We love our groupthink here. Thinking for ourselves and coming to the same conclusion as PZ is out of the question.
md:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:59 am
Ogvorbis,
nice dodge/snark
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 19th, 2012 at 12:44 pm
StevoR:
The bit I have emphasized is why I am no longer willing to give you a chance. You took the opportunity to reflect and truly apologize for how deeply you have offended and hurt people and turned it straight into a notpology with your “hey, people have said nasty things to me!!1!”
The loss of Ing is a very serious one to our community, StevoR. They were a long time, welcome part of our community, unlike yourself. Look at everything you wrote in this thread – you start off with “sorry”, rapidly run into notpology and from there, launch right into your usual “you fuckheads are all wrong” and sing your idiotic “I’m soooooo misunderstood” song.
You have not thought one bit nor have you changed at all. Not one iota. As I said several threads ago, your willingness to stay off certain topics doesn’t mean jack shit. You’re still a poisonous bigot under the silence, one whose toxicity will continue to poison this community.
Others might be willing to give you a chance, I am not. It would be stunningly nice and good form if you simply left of your own accord. Hint: do the right thing.
Amphiox:
December 19th, 2012 at 12:52 pm
If StevoR wants to rehabilitate his reputation here, this is not a good first step.
The above statement, regardless of its truth, is irrelevant. Here is why:
The discussion was about drone strikes, double tapping, targeting assassinations, pre-emptive invasion and the like, used against Arab and Muslim civilians.
StevoR says that is JUSTIFIED self-defence. That’s his argument.
What is “justified” self-defence? What does it mean to say or imply that something is “justified”?
Something is only justified if it is a better option than available less harmful alternatives. If its superior effectiveness outweighs its greater cost. It DOES NOT MATTER if you say that you “prefer” alternative Y. If you say that alternative X is JUSTIFIED you are AUTOMATICALLY saying that in that given situation X is BETTER than Y. You are ASSUMING that Y does not work or will not work. If you do not make the assumption, you CANNOT say that X is “justified”.
If StevoR was really telling the truth about not making that assumption, he WOULD NOT HAVE EVER EVEN ATTEMPTED to make the “justifiable self defence” argument at all. The very fact that he made that argument is proof that he DID in fact make that assumption, and is now lying about not making that assumption when he made that argument.
If I say or imply “I was JUSTIFIED in killing him, but yeah, I preferred to resolve things peacefully” that second statement means JACK SQUAT SHIT. By saying the first statement, I turn the second into a irrelevant hypothetical. I am saying that circumstances made it so that my preference in the second part became unavailable and thus I was justified in acting as I did in the first part, even if it was against my preference (boo hoo, poor me, forced to do what I really didn’t want to do).
All that StevoR has ultimately said with all this is that those dirty brown jihadist terrorist muslims FORCED him to support drone strikes, targeted assassinations, collateral damage on civilian children, and pre-emptive first-strike wars, because THEY made it so that peaceful resolution was not possible, even though he, StevoR, pure and noble as always, would have “preferred” it that way. Thus shirking all personal responsibility for his original views and arguments, and giving ZERO evidence that they have in fact change in any way at all.
It’s pathetic.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar:
December 19th, 2012 at 1:02 pm
If I do not get involved in the latest round of StevoR donning the hairshirt, it is because I do not give a fuck what he has to say.
Nick Gotts (formerly KG):
December 19th, 2012 at 3:48 pm
StevoR, dishonest little shit,
No, it wouldn’t.
These are not the words of someone who has had a genuine change of heart about all the bigoted and even genocidal remarks they have made over a long period here. Even if one adopts your view, that people here have been terribly mean and unfair to you, it’s incomprehensible why you want to continue posting here. Just fuck off.
Amphiox:
December 19th, 2012 at 4:29 pm
Pretty much a straight out flat admission from StevoR that he WAS in fact lying about not just assuming that more benign methods of self-defence had already been tried and failed.
ONE DOES NOT AND CAN NOT MAKE THE ARGUMENT OF “JUSTIFIED” SELF DEFENCE UNLESS ONE ALREADY KNOWS THAT MORE BENIGN ALTERNATIVES HAVE ALREADY FAILED, OR ONE ASSUMES THAT THEY HAVE FAILED.
Since StevoR has just admitted that he did NOT know, that means that he DID assume it.
Pitiful liar.
Nepenthe:
December 19th, 2012 at 4:45 pm
Caine is right. Go away Stevo. You are boring and annoying. Ing is awesome. This was a shitty trade.
[Semi-OT]
I’ve never seen a leopard wearing shorts. Thus, I think it’s highly unlikely that it will change its shorts.
John Morales:
December 19th, 2012 at 5:12 pm
Amphiox, there are many kinds of justification, and you only speak of one kind.
(‘It pleases me’ is another)
consciousness razor:
December 19th, 2012 at 5:33 pm
That’s irrelevant. When you’re talking about defending yourself by harming others, rather than not harming them, “it pleases me” isn’t justifying a damn thing. It doesn’t refer to anything about the actions or situations it’s supposed to justify, except that something causes “pleasure” to “me.” Even a totally naive straw-hedonist who was only concerned with his or her own “pleasure” would have to take into account what all the other options would be like and compare them to one another.
mountainbob:
December 19th, 2012 at 6:21 pm
Can You (any ‘you’) help me? I d/c’d my subscription to FTB when I changed my E-dress (due to Micro Soft discontinuing ‘hotmail’. Now, though I am registered, I cannot figure out how to re-subscribe. PLEASE! With maple syrup and chocolate on it! A figurative hug will go to the person who provides the solution! Bob
John Morales:
December 19th, 2012 at 6:24 pm
CR: The common sense of a ‘justification is ‘the stating of one’s basis for some action or belief’ — claiming something is the minimally-sufficient action to achieve one’s goal is but one type.
Maybe your straw-hedonist has to, mine certainly does not. :)
(And she certainly doesn’t need to justify her pleasure-seeking by claiming it’s minimally-sufficient; for her, more is better)
consciousness razor:
December 19th, 2012 at 6:46 pm
We’re not talking about “the common sense” of the word.
It’s a specific concept in ethics, and while there are a lot of different flavors, the sorts of things which factor into a justification (e.g., “pleasure”) are distinct from what’s necessary for something constitute any kind of justification at all (e.g., “this is why we should X rather than Y,” when that is the form the reasoning is supposed to take for a particular claim). Amphiox didn’t offer any alternative factors to “pleasure” (just anything “benign,” which is uninformative), so any differences in that regard would not themselves make it a justification rather than a non-justification.
John Morales:
December 19th, 2012 at 7:01 pm
CR:
It’s the very same concept in ethics, and what is justifiable in one particular ethical framework may not be in another.
consciousness razor:
December 19th, 2012 at 7:12 pm
Something you call an “ethical framework” may not be one at all. I’m sure you could continue down this rabbit hole for a long time, but the ability to play with words isn’t having a point.
Rodney Nelson:
December 19th, 2012 at 7:20 pm
strange gods before me (silly squiggle) #264
I apologize for not responding sooner. Meatspace intervened for the past couple of days.
SGBM, you do fucking play thread cop. Just because you’re too convinced of your own rectitude to admit it isn’t my fault. If I was an asshole like you I’d tell you to fuck off and die but I’m not quite as much a shithead as you are, so you can fuck off and stay alive. If you really want an apology then I guess you’ve got a long wait. I haven’t done anything I feel needs apology. So suck it, shithead.
John Morales:
December 19th, 2012 at 7:22 pm
CR:
Exactly! ;)
John Morales:
December 19th, 2012 at 7:29 pm
[[silly squiggle][silly squiggle][silly squiggle][silly squiggle][silly squiggle]] [[silly squiggle][silly squiggle][silly squiggle][silly squiggle][silly squiggle][silly squiggle]]: ?
Heh.
(As if ideograms are but silly squiggles, unlike alphabetic graphemes)
John Morales:
December 19th, 2012 at 7:32 pm
Rodney:
<burp>
Ah, nothing like a surfeit of irony.
John Morales:
December 19th, 2012 at 8:21 pm
SteveoR, any comment on this story?
Israel under fire over settlements decision
chigau (違う):
December 19th, 2012 at 8:42 pm
Rodney Nelson #406
Since you appear to be capable of copy-pasting, try copy-pasting the silly squiggle into a translator.
Also try to understand that not all written languages use The Alphabet™.
Rev. BigDumbChimp:
December 19th, 2012 at 8:45 pm
md I think it’s fine. I need to read up more on it the details. But if Kristol hates it, it can’t be all bad
Rev. BigDumbChimp:
December 19th, 2012 at 8:46 pm
iPad posting flail, ignore a few extra words there. Editing failure.
SC (Salty Current), OM:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:20 pm
This is interesting and maybe promising. I think it signifies a recognition* that you sometimes say things you shouldn’t. That’s not rare. But it’s the wrong path to distance yourself from responsibility for it and leave it to others to control which of your statements become public (even if they have the time, which I doubt PZ and CC do). A better plan would be to try to critically edit your own posts, especially to scan them for rightwing talking points and strings of assertions that don’t respond to what people have said and don’t rest on evidence you’ve seen yourself. You could also check your writing for a lack of humility. If you find these problems, either don’t post or rewrite.
I think you’re trying to make too clean a break between conduct and content. People are reading, rightly, much of your content as the product of disrespectful conduct. Intellectual conduct. Epistemic conduct.
*partial
ChasCPeterson:
December 19th, 2012 at 9:48 pm
Blaming anybody but Ing for Ing’s putative departure is ridiculous.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 19th, 2012 at 9:59 pm
Blaming Ing for Ing’s reaction to StevoR’s nastyness?
John Morales:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:13 pm
theophontes, not blaming, but assigning responsibility for action taken.
(What, would you have it that Ing was at the mercy of StevoR)
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:17 pm
Rattiness: Ratmas Prep, O.M.G. Ratmas Is Awesome!, O.M.G. Ratmas is Awesome! Part II, and Fishing in Style.
consciousness razor:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:21 pm
Responsibility (as JM would have it) can be shared.
SC (Salty Current), OM:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:23 pm
I replied to the rat pictures on the other thread but then noticed (wasn’t shocked) that there was an ongoing discussion about cooking and eating animals, so I left again.
The pictures are adorable.
John Morales:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:29 pm
CR, would you say that StevoR is not responsible for his remaining here, despite the ongoing animosity and outright repudiation he has (and) is facing from many?
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:35 pm
Chas:
Clearly not everyone agrees with you. Yes, it was Ing’s decision, but SteveoR is an important component in that decision.
I’m still wondering why that racist shithead is still allowed to post here.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:38 pm
SC, thank you! More and more of them are exploring the tree. Much excitement over Ratmas. :D
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 19th, 2012 at 10:40 pm
@ StevoR #382
Do you see yourself as some kind of “white knight” for the West? (Be this under the banner of left (anti-semitic StevoR) or the right (anti-islamic StevoR). You hero you!
And here you, poor misunderstood StevoR, are being judged not by those lights, but rather by how much humanity you display in your writings. No wonder you are so at odds with the ethos of Pharyngula.
With regard to your pro-west|anti-islamic diatribes, might I suggest that you do a little homework and see how the forms of “radical Islam” that you are so quick to fob off on all of the Muslim world actually came about.
Learn your (western) history. Observe that in Iran, the democratically elected prime minister Mossaddegh was deposed by the ‘Merkins (in cahoots with the British) for placing his own people’s interests above the interests of BP (yup, the dirty oil company – originally Anglo-Iranian Oil). Your precious “West” behaved like a bunch of thugs.
Observe in Afghanistan how the CIA worked flat out to promote and radicalise the cause of Islamic fundamentalism. The Afghanis now suffer for ‘Merkin shortsightedness and meddling.
Observe how ‘Merkins built up the Wahhabists in Saudi Arabia by placing their (and the House of Saud’s) interests above the interests of the people of that country. What was then convenient (and driven by greed) has now come back to bite them.
The so called “Islamic extremist/Jihadist” is very much a product of the West that you hold so dear. The main losers in this devil’s pact have been the peoples of the Middle East, those very people you have sought to demonise.
consciousness razor:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:49 pm
No. Why would I say he’s not?
Ichthyic:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:51 pm
well, no better time than the present!
I’m interested in StevoR’s take on what is going on with the Polio vaccination volunteers being killed in Pakistan.
questions:
-is this an inevitable result of the Islamic religion, that these aid workers should be murdered?
-is it a political statement?
-is it just terrorism?
-is there any reason why militant factions might be claiming that vaccination programs are a cover for something else?
-is there any reason for any pakistani to believe what these militant factions are saying?
-is the pakistani government in collusion with the people who killed these vaccination workers?
-are most pakistanis in collusion with the people who killed these workers?
-what do you think the best approach should be to resolving the situation?
use your best abilities and knowledge to tell me what you think is going on over there, and answer the questions as best you can, and honestly.
John Morales:
December 19th, 2012 at 10:57 pm
CR,
Well then, would you say Ing is not responsible for xir choosing to depart this place?
Amphiox:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:01 pm
The kind I speak of is the kind that is relevant to the context in which I use it.
Substitute this definition of “justification” and StevoR hardly comes off any better. Indeed I had hardly think of any alternative definition by which StevoR does not come of WORSE than he does with the one I used.
John Morales:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:03 pm
Amphiox @428, I can’t dispute anything you’ve written there.
consciousness razor:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:07 pm
No, and I already implied that when I said it can be shared. To put it another way, it isn’t bijective.
John Morales:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:12 pm
CR, but leaving and not leaving are the complements of the same choice, which entails that if one is not responsible for the one, one cannot be responsible for the other.
(Whence your purported asymmetry where responsibility for leaving can be shared, but responsibility for not leaving cannot?)
consciousness razor:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:31 pm
There isn’t one. I disagreed that “StevoR is not responsible,” meaning that I think he is responsible, which doesn’t imply there are no others who are also responsible. It could be that there’s only one responsible party for something in one kind of situation, while at the same time multiple people are responsible for other things in different kinds of situations; but it’s certainly not ridiculous in general to hold more than one person responsible for something.
John Morales:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:35 pm
Fair enough, CR.
(And thanks for playing along with the Socratic technique; you are a rare specimen)
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 19th, 2012 at 11:39 pm
@ John Morales
Are you not treating such circumstances too cut and dried?
If I set fire to my house and the fire brigade choose to arrive and put it out, can I say that they undertook such action purely off their own bat?
Surely I bear some responsibility for the whole sequence of events. Further, the fire brigades’ reaction was perfectly rational and justified, given my prior actions.
John Morales:
December 19th, 2012 at 11:51 pm
theophontes, <blink>
Can you map Ing and StevoR to this example of you and the fire brigade, so as to alleviate my bemusement?
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 20th, 2012 at 12:07 am
@ John Morales
{theophontes smirks gently and waits before answering …. in order to fill John with ……………………ANTICI……………………..}
I ——> StevoR
fire —–> inflammatory remarks wrt Muslims
house ——-> Pharyngula
fire brigade ——–> Ing
action ——–>Ing’s response to the inflammatory remarks
own bat ——–> independent of others actions/comments
.
.
.
{……………………………PATION!}
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 20th, 2012 at 12:19 am
PS: Is that injective or surjective?
John Morales:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:25 am
theophontes, neither; it is merely absurd.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 20th, 2012 at 12:40 am
@ John Morales
I take it this response on your part was predicated by my comments?
John Morales:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:45 am
theophontes, no; it was occasioned by your comments.
(Predication means something different)
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 20th, 2012 at 1:06 am
@ John Morales
Does predicated not also mean “based upon”? I am happy to substitute “occasioned“.
Then: Can we not say that Ing’s reaction was occasioned by StevoR’s comments?
@ (my) # 424
Anglo-Iranian Oil… Anglo-Persian Oil Co.(Commenting from the hip is not standing me in good stead.)
John Morales:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:30 am
theophontes:
I suppose so, but it generally a specific type of a type of subsequence: it typically refers to a necessary antecedent.
Yes, we can. So what?
(My retort was occasioned by your comment, but you are not responsible for my choosing to reply)
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 20th, 2012 at 2:05 am
@ John Morales
Aah, this is the sense of Chas’s comment I suppose.
My concern is that this can be construed as indicating that the upset that StevoR occasioned can somehow be ignored. That he is somehow innocent of the turn of events.
The fire-brigade could ignore the fire, Ing could ignore the insults. We could say that there is no real compulsion to react in a particular manner. But in both cases the instigators have done something to the other party that was not of their choosing. We cannot then proscribe a right¹ to reaction by making it all about the victim. That can amount to saying “Suck it up ’cause no one compelled you to react in such a manner”.
…
¹ Is this too moralistic a term? In a strictly logical sense I could be accused of being naughty.
Useless:
December 20th, 2012 at 2:27 am
Hello? Anybody in there?
John Morales:
December 20th, 2012 at 2:52 am
theophontes,
If you want to imagine Ing was somehow forced off this site because StevoR made obnoxious comments about Muslims, that’s your prerogative.
If you want to make that case, I don’t see how you can avoid characterising Ing as a helpless and manipulable victim who just can’t cope with PZ not banning a commenter who trash-talks about a group of people among whom some are xir friends, rather than as someone who is just disgusted with that and therefore chose not to participate in the site in protest.
(Me, I think Ing left as a protest to PZ’s tolerance, not because xe was victimised)
Yes. Yes, indeed.
(Isn’t that the whole point of killfile, to ignore commenters that annoy you?)
Plenty of commenters annoy other commenters; hell, I’m pretty sure plenty of commenters annoy StevoR — and they’re targeting him specifically, not just a group of people among whom he has friends.
(Yet he hasn’t left — not yet, anyway. I can see people are working on it, so perhaps it will get to him in due course)
To what proscription do you refer?
(As far as Ing being a victim, I addressed that above)
The non-compelling part is the truth, but I don’t see where any exhortation to “Suck it up” comes into it.
(Accepting reality is not sucking it up)
Dhorvath, OM:
December 20th, 2012 at 3:26 am
Rats came to my house. Does that make it ratmas or are there other rituals to observe?
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 20th, 2012 at 3:37 am
@ John Morales
We could note that pretty much everyone is offended by the idea of giving someone a platform to spew bile. That much is not unique to Ing (hell, there have been dozens of different reactions, not just leaving.) Are we going to omit the one common denominator in all of this?
“Blaming anybody but Ing for Ing’s putative departure is ridiculous.”
(Proscribe²: Denounce or condemn. Saying an action “is ridiculous” sounds, IMHO, like a denunciation. The upshot is we must not look at the broader context. Would Ing have left if StevoR had been banned long before spouting the remarks that occasioned the reaction in question? (I cannot know for certain, but I certainly doubt it.)
This much I understand. We should, however, cast our net more widely to determine what all the real causes and circumstances are behind the final reaction. Ignoring these does not give us a full understanding of the issue in question. Now that would be ignoring reality.
consciousness razor:
December 20th, 2012 at 3:38 am
Advocating for genocide shouldn’t be construed as merely “annoying,” and it isn’t something that should be ignored. So while someone may not be compelled to act on that in a particular way, they certainly are obligated to do something about it.
It’s this confused idea that StevoR isn’t morally responsible for Ing leaving (because Ing wasn’t “compelled” to make that choice) is where I’m getting the implication that Ing is the one who has to “suck it up.” It’s apparently fair game for StevoR to be as bigoted and genocidey as he wants without being held responsible for what happens to the environment here as a result, because the rest of us are expected to be unethical (simply ignoring how “annoying” he is) or else whatever happens is our fault.
consciousness razor:
December 20th, 2012 at 3:43 am
I shouldn’t have even tried that phrasing. It’s too convoluted.
John Morales:
December 20th, 2012 at 4:11 am
<sigh>
I do like to argue, but not about such subjective opinions.
I leave it at this: I think it’s giving StevoR too much credit to claim he’s responsible for Ing’s departure, and that to do so is an insult to Ing’s autonomy.
Nepenthe:
December 20th, 2012 at 6:31 am
Rat. Mas. *squeee*
StevoR, fallible human being:
December 20th, 2012 at 6:42 am
@422.Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞ :
Maybe its because I’m not actually that?
Ing~wise :
Any individual can only ever control one person (if that sometimes!) – themselves.
I am responsible for what I personally choose to do or say.
Ing is responsible for what xe does or says. If Ing wanted to be here hirself xe would still be unless PZ banned hir. I cannot ban her nor would I even demand or request that Ing be banned.
Ultimately its PZ Myers and Chris Clarke’s blog and Ing’s own decision as to whether xe returns and participates or not.
StevoR, fallible human being:
December 20th, 2012 at 7:18 am
@397. Amphiox
Not at all. Its a statement that I’ve actually studied the issue and judged that these methods have in fact been tried and failed.
Huh? No. I didn’t.
What I am claiming is that in my view and my understanding, based on knowing something of the actual history here, the alternatives have been tried and failed.
Two words for you Amphiox : Oslo accords.
Alright another three words : Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.
Israel *has* tried to make peace, multiple times in many ways. People are *still* trying for peace between Israel and the Palestinians incl. Israelis and I hope they eventually succeed but reality is that these attempts have so far been failures.
Now I know the history here is considered contentious by some people and we’re clearly not going to agree on this issue. We’re coming at this from very different perspectives and see things here totally differently but you are completely wrong to call me a liar because of that fundamental disagreement.
Nick Gotts (formerly KG):
December 20th, 2012 at 7:29 am
Yes – by illegally annexing occupied land, building illegal settlements on occupied land, ethnic cleansing, illegal destruction of property on occupied land, illegal collective punishments, campaigns of state terrorism, bombing campaigns against civilians including undefended cities, electing terrorists and racists to high office…
StevoR, fallible human being:
December 20th, 2012 at 8:15 am
@426. Ichthyic
19 December 2012 at 10:51 pm (UTC -6) Link to this comment
Do I perhaps have my biases that should be examined? Sure.
My answers :
1. No, not necessarily inevitable. The culture and the political situation in Pakistan as well has a lot to do with why the aid workers were murdered although the religion has shaped and influenced that culture and the political situation as the religion. The Islamic religion certainly hasn’t helped the situation because of religious leaders making frequent extremist anti-Western and I think also anti-vaccination statements.
2. Yes. I think so.
3. Terrorism is also usually political and this is also true here.
4. Yes because of the precedent of the use of a vaccination survey in tracking down Osama bin Laden although this particular vaccination to the best of my knowledge had no such background or use and was purely what it claimed to be –an attempt to eradicate polio from Pakistan and thereby benefit the local population.
5. See above.
6. I don’t know. The Pakistani secret service is notorious for having links with the Taliban and other terrorist groups that are extremely murky and so it is plausible but uncertain.
7. I don’t know. Most Pakistanis is vague term. The numbers that could or would have colluded are probably very small, maybe a hundred or so in the loosest sense of colluding in terms of working with the Jihadists who killed the aid workers, sheltering and cooperating with them. Whether more Pakistanis approve of these killings or not I’m just not sure.
8. I’m not sure of that either. Capturing or taking out the actual specific Jihadists who committed the murders because murderers should always be brought to justice combined with an education campaign in the region and working closely with the various locals to reassure and convince them seems the best combination to me.
StevoR, fallible human being:
December 20th, 2012 at 8:35 am
@ 424. theophontes (坏蛋) 19 December 2012 at 10:40 pm (UTC -6)
Um, thankyou.
Not quite. I see myself as a Westerner supporting Western values – including feminism, human rights, gay rights, environmentalism, secularism, democracy and a whole lot of other ideals. Do you see yourself and your values that differently?
I’ve already done plenty of homework when it comes to reading about the history of the region. Also, if I may say so, whilst understanding the origins of Islamic extremism may be interesting, (& hopefully we can learn lessons on what not to do from it) I think the more relevant question is how do we deal with the current problem posed by the Jihadists today?
Some Westerners did, sometimes , yes, and that was wrong. The West doesn’t always live up to its own ideals and isn’t always perfect I’ll grant you. I did read & enjoy that ’Empire of the Mind ‘ book after all which I think you recommended.
As well as from Soviet meddling and the USSR’s invasion during the 1980’s which teh US helped lfree teh Afghanistanis from and the Talibans brutality and the Talibans stupid decision to shelter Osama bin Laden and a whole lot more factors besides too. Yes, the USA made some in retrospect pretty bad decisions Afghanistan~wise. Hindsight’s great ain’t it? If they’d know then what the mujahideen at the time would evolve into I’m sure they’d have decided differently. The USA and CIA isn’t however the only factor responsible for making Afghanistan the hell it is today or solely to blame either.
I don’t seek to demonise the people’s of the Middle East. Nor once again, btw, do I wish to see a genocide against them.
The Jihadist movement and Islamic radicalising may have been partly influenced by and a reaction against the West but it is essentially derived from Islamic culture and Islamic beliefs. To scapegoat the United States plus the wider Western world and claim its all their fault is, in my view, incredibly simplistic and one-sided and wrong and ignores other more relevant factors.
StevoR, fallible human being:
December 20th, 2012 at 8:45 am
@453. Nick Gotts (formerly KG)
No, by political negotiations, by attempting to swap land for peace, by unilaterally withdrawing and handing over land to the Palestinians for self-government, by many international talks and endless diplomacy incl. offering the Palestinians about 90% of what they’d demanded only to have the Palestinians turn that down.
Yes, some Israelis have done some terrible things some times. No nation, no person is perfect. You can come up with a long list of nasty things the Israelis have done, if I want I can come up with an equally long list of horrendous things the Palestinians have done starting with homicide-suicide terrorist attacks, hijacking international aircraft, bringing up a generation of brain-washed children raised to glorify such terrorist acts, firing rockets at innocent civilians, calling for another nation to be totally exterminated, etc .. ad nauseam.
Have you ever tried seriously thinking about the other side of this issue, looking at how it must be tobe in the Israeli sides shoes KG?
md:
December 20th, 2012 at 9:25 am
SteveO,
Good luck getting any traction on this issue. You’d think leftists would defend a country created out of a multilateral U.N. resolution, who for a long time was the only place in the world an Arab citizen had any democratic representation. Wasn’t it just a year or so ago when an elected Arab-Israeli member of the Knesset was calling for Iran to hurry up and get the bomb and restrain her country she was elected to represent. Find me the Jewish analog in the Islamic world. I suppose we can say nice things about Iran for not persecuting every last one of its Jews out of the country in ’47 like most of the Islamic world.
There is a lot of high falutin talk around here about morality and human rights, but the abandonment of Israel by the international left is I suspect more a result of Israelis no longer accepting their meek role as victim, the buisness and technological (capitalism!) success of Israel, and the diminution of the collectivist kibbutz in Israeli life.
Further its kind of odd, dont’ you think SteveO, that so many here take the side of the blatanly anti-immigrant Palestinians in this debate, particularly when they criticize them so in the U.S. Why is it that a milllion plus Arabs can live in Israel but if and when Palestine gets a state it must be ethnically cleansed of Jews trying to build a better life for themselves, and why would universalist human rights activists support a people with such a policy, while criticizing others with far milder anti-immigrant positions?
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls:
December 20th, 2012 at 9:57 am
I see the bigots haven’t left yet. Leave. You have nothing cogent to say, just your paranoia, which is illogical ravings. Because you aren’t listening, there is no reason to try to teach you to think rationally.
Beatrice:
December 20th, 2012 at 11:02 am
Interesting.
I’m sure a different kind of a dishonest shit would say that settlers and Native Americans also “swapped land for peace”.
Nick Gotts (formerly KG):
December 20th, 2012 at 11:05 am
Well well, two barefaced lies in a single sentence!
1) I, along with most leftists, “defend Israel” in the sense of defending its right to exist within fairly negotiated borders – I don’t even insist that it be confined to the borders defined by the U.N. resolution to which you refer – which is quite different from defending its right to illegally annex occupied land, build settlements on occupied land, undertake state terrorism, bomb undefended cities, etc.
2) There have been Arab citizens of the USA, UK, Australia, Canada, most if not all west European countries… with democratic representation, for many years.
Nick Gotts (formerly KG):
December 20th, 2012 at 11:08 am
As for the garbage about immigration, immigrants in most countries are not insisting that people who were there before the immigrants arrived have no right to return to the homes from which they fled during a war.
md:
December 20th, 2012 at 11:20 am
—in the world
Major mistake. Meant the Middle east.
vaiyt:
December 20th, 2012 at 11:34 am
What part of “trying to build a better life for themselves” includes the Israeli state building settlements in Palestinian land, then walling the Palestinians out of their own fucking territory?
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:01 pm
Rodney Nelson, you demonstrate your malice, and probable hypocrisy, as well as your evident stupidity and/or dishonesty.
For the sake of gratuitously attacking me, you change the subject while ignoring the substantive challenges to your narrative. Let’s recall what you asserted about me in your initial attack.
There are multiple claims here:
1) that I brought up some whole thing (whatever this thing is, is as yet unidentified);
1.1) implicitly, whatever this supposed thing is, it is objectionable to bring up (else you would not be objecting);
2) I like to play thread cop;
3) depending upon 1 and 2 being true: as indicated by the definite article, there is no less and no more than exactly one real reason why I allegedly brought up the aforementioned, unidentified, some whole thing, and that is because 2;
4) depending upon 1 and 2 being true: in allegedly bringing up the aforementioned, unidentified, some whole thing, I was targeting Caine.
Clearly you cannot sufficiently argue your case on the truth of 2 alone. This was already pointed out to you by John Morales.
And if by target you mean something else, you cannot argue your case without showing that I performed some action which had a target; i.e. you will have to identify the as-yet-unidentified some whole thing, and demonstrate 1, in order to have any chance of arguing 4.
The fact that I did not bring up shit was carefully explained to you already, and identified as that which you should apologize for.
Now you selectively quote only “Read for comprehension and then either have the decency to apologize to me or go fuck yourself, Rodney”, and you pretend that I was telling you to apologize for saying that I like to play thread cop.
You suggest my issue with you is that I won’t admit something which no one here has disputed.
At the same time you still fail to back up the claims of yours which people have disputed.
By the way, I said go fuck yourself. I didn’t say fuck off and die, and I think you’ll have a hard time finding me saying that regarding an offense of this degree. In being the kind of asshole who says it sometimes, I am in fine company (cf. the first result when googling "fuck+off+and+die"+site:freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula of someone here issuing the command).
Back to the subject at hand. I will attempt to understand you charitably. The only hint you give regarding the as-yet-unidentified some whole thing you mention in #260 is that you quote me there saying “Caine wouldn’t have apologized if Crissa didn’t have a grievance.” If this is the some whole thing I am alleged to have brought up and targeted Caine with, there are two obvious problems with your claim. First, I didn’t bring it up. As John noted, I was responding directly to your own dissection of whether either of them had grievances.
Second, you selectively quoted me, overlooking my attempt to defuse tensions — to reduce the likelihood of a spiraling rehash of recriminations — by my noting that Caine had satisfactorily addressed Crissa’s grievance: ‘Caine apologized, Crissa accepted this. If Caine wants to talk about Crissa calling her “he”, Caine will.’
It would be ridiculous for you to claim that I was “targeting” Caine by pointing out that Caine had already satisfactorily addressed the matter. And if discussing who has a grievance qualifies as “playing thread cop”, then you are a hypocrite when attacking me for joining you in the discussion. So, was that quote from your #260 the as-yet-unidentified some whole thing I am alleged to have brought up? Or can you identify something else?
The reason I responded to your own dissection of whether either of them had grievances was that I don’t want to see unanswered the implication that someone who’s trans cannot have a legitimate grievance about language which, intentionally or not, does not acknowledge someone’s identified gender. Again, I considered Caine’s apology satisfactory and a sincere expression of regret at the realization that she may have unintentionally hurt someone.
Because I am justified in seeking fairness, I object to these vague and unsubstantiated claims about my intentions. I’ll open up the opportunity for criticism more broadly to you and everyone else: if you can quote me here doing something wrong to or about Caine, please do so. Please note my #280; if I have otherwise wronged her here then I shall not want to let it pass without acknowledging and probably apologizing for it.
Rodney, so you won’t again imagine you can get away with cherry picking, I will reiterate what I already pointed out to you: what you should apologize to me for is your claim that I brought up something which I in fact did not bring up, and your claim that I targeted Caine. In addition you should apologize to me for claiming that I was playing thread cop and for your using that claim as an occasion to attack me. I like playing Tetris, but you are not justified in claiming that I’m playing Tetris whenever I’m using a keyboard. This is not a moral outrage like advocating genocide, which arguably must not be allowed to rest — attacking me out of the blue, for an annoyance that I’m not doing at the time, is simply gratuitous and demonstrates your malice.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:46 pm
SG:
You have not and we’re good.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 20th, 2012 at 12:47 pm
Dhorvath:
I’d say that’s up to you. :D
Nepenthe:
It’s proving to be a most popular holiday here. :D
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:02 pm
Caine, I am relieved to hear it.
Nick Gotts (formerly KG):
December 20th, 2012 at 1:24 pm
A very telling one. Those Arabs – they belong in the Middle East and nowhere else, eh? Besides which, Lebanon, despite the years of civil war and foreign intervention. is a clear counterexample to your claim.
Beatrice:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:26 pm
Rodney, stop playing a thread cop!
Amphiox:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:39 pm
Israel has actually not ever negotiated peace in good faith with the Palestinians. Negotiating in good faith means halting the creation of new settlements on Palestinian land without Palestinian permission. They have never done that.
To this day the PLO, under Abbas, has been pursuing a policy of attempting to negotiate peace with Israel. The current Israeli administration’s response has been to ignore and marginalize them, while simultaneously pursuing policies that legitimize the PLOs main rival for power, Hamas.
It’s almost as if the current Israeli administration WANTS the primary power among the Palestinians to be a terrorist organization hostile to them, so that they will have an excuse to continue being belligerent.
cm's changeable moniker:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:44 pm
md:
(She’s not an ambassador, she was elected to represent the people who voted for her.)
And she might well have a point: The Upside of a Nuclear-Armed Iran
Ichthyic:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:45 pm
I’m gonna have fun with this later, but right now have to go and have my teeth ground with a dentist drill…
Steve’s responses, starting in the very first sentence:
bias fail, big time.
oops.
Ichthyic:
December 20th, 2012 at 1:47 pm
for correction to bias on first point, see:
Pashtun
that’s as good a place to start as any (note that this has fuckall to do with Islam).
I’ll hold off the rest until later.
vaiyt:
December 20th, 2012 at 2:02 pm
You’d think?
Hint: “defend” isn’t the same as “support its political decisions unconditionally”.
Another hint: one can support Israel’s continued existence AND be against the murderous, dishonest policies of the Israeli state.
Yet another hint: Being a democracy for your own doesn’t excuse being belligerent and oppressive outside your borders. That lame excuse doesn’t work with the US and doesn’t work with Israel either.
Amphiox:
December 20th, 2012 at 2:16 pm
Nor did it work for Classical Athens, or Republican Rome.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 20th, 2012 at 9:55 pm
@ John Morales
What is especially interesting about this is that it is a social question with, as you have well remarked, a logical dimension to it too. A quintessentially appropriate question for here, that spans the divide between objective|subjective. But fair enough, we can leave it there.
Not at all, Ing’s response may equally be construed as autonomous, rational and consequent. The “drol in die drinkwater” was not of Ing’s doing.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 20th, 2012 at 10:12 pm
@ vaiyt and Amphiox
Thucydides has Pericles say:
Oh for such honesty in these times.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 20th, 2012 at 10:17 pm
I had to get out of the house so I ventured to Books A Million. I picked up the DVD Into the Universe, by Stephen Hawking. So far, it is quite interesting. I just learned about panspermia for the first time. Totes cool!
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 20th, 2012 at 10:24 pm
Sheesh. Wrong thread.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 20th, 2012 at 10:57 pm
@ StevoR #455
Am I (African living in China) chopped liver?
Yes. As opposed to your beloved America, my country expresses itself through its African Humanist values as inscribed in our constitution. All these human rights are enshrined and further, importantly, enforced by law. Contrast this with ‘Merkin oppression of basic human rights within her own borders.
I think where you are going wrong is conflating your idealised version of humanism with western values. You’re pinning that tail on the wrong donkey, damnit!
Or gun deaths? Or why one is 8 times (in USA at least) more likely to get killed by a cop than by terrorist action (Jihaddist or not)? Why are we not getting through to you?
That is putting it mildly. Why blame a tiny minority amongst the victims of ‘Merkin meddling for all the worlds problems? Surely you see how grotesquely unfair and disproportionate your views are?
And they continue with their reactionary bullshit to this day! Don’t get me started on the sordid details of broken thinking, of exceptionalism and the othering of half the planet.
The US is guilty of all these things. That is not scapegoating for Jeeebus sake. Perhaps a little contrition and basic humanity will go a long way to ameliorating past fuck ups.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 20th, 2012 at 11:08 pm
@ Tony
This is the Thread of Threads. It is always The Right Thread® .
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 20th, 2012 at 11:20 pm
Theophontes:
StevoR is highly invested in The No True Human fallacy.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 21st, 2012 at 12:39 am
@ Caine
Why am I still arguing with that person?
/ rhetorical
…
OK, now I really have seen everything: Uganda’s own Ray “Way of The Master” Comfort: Banana therefore
GAWDTeh Ghey!!!1!Link to animated GIF.
.
The Raw Story.
MissEla:
December 21st, 2012 at 12:51 am
OK, trying to post one last time before bed. Did the new theme switch turn on auto-mod or something? Or did I turn something off by accident? Aaaaarrrrgggghhhh!!!!!
StevoR, fallible human being:
December 21st, 2012 at 2:29 am
@472. Ichthyic : How? Really how? Where exactly in the supposed bias in what I said then?
@458. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls :
Seems you need to check your vision because I for one am no bigot and I’m certainly reading – my computer doesn’t speak you see!
@482. Caine, Fleur du mal :
Eh? No, I’m not. I freely recognise that all humans are well human and messed up to varying degrees, me included. Not sure what you’re referring to there at all.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 21st, 2012 at 2:57 am
@ 484
472
458
chopped liver
482
John Morales:
December 21st, 2012 at 3:10 am
Oh hey, StevoR. Care to respond to my #410?
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 21st, 2012 at 3:18 am
@ John Morales
Heh, John, you are also chopped liver! (At least I feel less alone :)
…
Mayan prophecies: Life after the (non) end of the world
Link:BBC
John Morales:
December 21st, 2012 at 3:28 am
Rebutted.
John Morales:
December 21st, 2012 at 4:30 am
I see StevoR is quiet.
Hey, StevoR, what do you say about Operation Cyclone?
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 21st, 2012 at 7:33 am
South African version of chopped liver:
Skilpadjies
Is there such a dish in Australia? There was a similar dish in Roman times. Also YHWH used to have a foodgasm for the stuff.
Exodus 29:13
It is to die for!
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 21st, 2012 at 7:41 am
Oh wait, stop cooking, that is the Devil’s food! It is the opposite of YHWH’s favourite.
Romans/Zef (hecatomb/braai chefs): Caul fat from around the kidneys wrapped around liver.
YHWH (Supreme sky-daddy of the uniBerse!): Caul fat from liver and kidneys.
OMFG! I am going to hell for muddling my menu…
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls:
December 21st, 2012 at 7:45 am
Still lying to yourself. Then lying to us bigot.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls:
December 21st, 2012 at 7:46 am
Prove to us you aren’t a bigot by going away for a year. No posts here whatsoever. Then I will stop calling the obvious bigot a bigot.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 21st, 2012 at 8:03 am
@ StevoR
Reading Pfffffft to much work? Here is a video instead:
CIA and ISI nurtured Mujahideen and Taliban
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 21st, 2012 at 8:28 am
Thunderdome Quizz in form of monkey-puzzle. (1st Prize: Banana):
.
.
.
1. Select the correct term from the list to finish the following sentence:
A. Jihadists
B. Mujahideen
C. Palestinians
D. Jews
E. Catholics
2. Who does the above quote belong to?
A. George W. Bush
B. Barack Obama
C. Abraham Lincoln
D. Rachel Maddow
E. Rebbeca Watson
F. Rodger Rabbit
dianne:
December 21st, 2012 at 10:25 am
Re all the “arm the teachers” laws being proposed here and there throughout the US: I have an idea for a response that should sink them all without a trace:
1. Add the following amendment: If teachers must be armed then teaching should be considered a hazardous position and $50K added to their current salary to compensate for the danger.
2. In order to avoid incurring debt due to the increase in teachers’ salaries, taxes on people making $250K+ will be increased as much as needed to meet the increased need.
3. Additional funds will be needed for training teachers in marksmanship and professional development. These funds will be added to the tax bills of those making $250K+.
4. If there are no people making $250K+ in a given district the federal government will supplement their income as needed, with the funds again coming from those making $250K+ nationally.
5. Profit!
Watch the bills disappear like magic.
SC (Salty Current), OM:
December 21st, 2012 at 10:27 am
OK, can the NRA be laughed out of politics now?
dianne:
December 21st, 2012 at 10:31 am
OK, can the NRA be laughed out of politics now?
Not yet. Give it another 5 or 6 massacres of children. (The Onion article was optimistic.)
SC (Salty Current), OM:
December 21st, 2012 at 10:40 am
Thousands of armed adults volunteering on school playgrounds.
What could go wrong?
dianne:
December 21st, 2012 at 10:45 am
@499: Especially since we know that having armed civilians around has always been so successful in stopping massacres. Why they’ve stopped…zero.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 21st, 2012 at 10:50 am
John @489:
Until such time as he can consistently demonstrate that he is no longer a hateful xenophobic bigot, I am happy if he stays quiet. He still doesn’t understand why people call him a bigot, and that is a barrier to any true change. His whiny denials are quite tiresome. If I could killfile him, I would.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 21st, 2012 at 10:56 am
I didn’t realize the West had a set of values that were so super fantastic AND were specific to them. Is the rest of the world a bunch of decadent, immoral heathens?
md:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:05 am
Dianne,
http://www.news9.com/Global/story.asp?S=11696830&Call=Email&Format=Text
“As the man was firing shots, another citizen armed with a gun came around the corner and ordered the gunman to put his weapon down. The gunman dropped his weapon and ran into his father’s apartment and barricaded himself inside.”
Janine: Hallucinating Liar:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:06 am
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 21st, 2012 at 11:07 am
@ Tony
Hehe. I, for one, am!
…
NRA have really shot their wad.
…
I have found the religious institutions’ response to the recent school shootings profoundly offensive. They are going flat out to hijack people’s misery for their own ends.
*spits*
Janine: Hallucinating Liar:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:07 am
Retry that.
Why do you think that Europe spent centuries colonizing the rest of the world and sent missionaries to convert the heathens. The rest of the world spent thousands of years dying out without “Western” help.
md:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:08 am
lots of stats on major gun control law in varous places around the world, and its effect on crime here:
http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2012/12/so-did-piers-morgan-and-christiane.html
Janine: Hallucinating Liar:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:12 am
Your sure are funny md.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 21st, 2012 at 11:16 am
@ md
Why do you link to the liar John Lott?
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:19 am
theophontes:
Heh heh. As if you don’t already know the answer to that.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:23 am
Janine: funny in a “dishonest, incapable of vetting information” kind of way? John Lott is a dishonest fuck. Quote him as a source and you have no credibility.
md:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:27 am
Do you have evidence he’s lying? Do you have a superior, more comprehensive analysis you could link to that I should read? Im serious, this isn’t a topic Ive read about extensively.
So far you have name calling. Im not interested in your emotions on the topic. More facts are another matter.
Nick Gotts (formerly KG):
December 21st, 2012 at 11:27 am
md,
John Lott is a proven and admitted liar:
Nick Gotts (formerly KG):
December 21st, 2012 at 11:33 am
md,
Since Lott is a proven and admitted liar, in connection with this very issue, his article is worthless, since we have no reason whatever to trust that it is an honest analysis.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:36 am
md:
So instead of verifying the truth of what Lott said, you swallowed it whole without question? Why? Did it confirm your beliefs?
Nick Gotts (formerly KG):
December 21st, 2012 at 11:37 am
I see that my prediction that the NRA’s solution would be MOAR GUNZ NAOW has been vindicated. Not a difficult one, I admit.
md:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:38 am
Sockpuppeting. A definite no-no. Bad for the reputation and if you’ve got the facts marshaled for your argument, why bother?
So lets cut Lott out of the discussion and focus on those charts he links to, and their sources. All lies also?
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:38 am
And while we are at it, what is so wrong with ‘name calling’? That is said as if it is a bad thing. Lott is a liar.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:40 am
*giggles*
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:40 am
Why don’t you learn to cross reference? Do the work on your own. It’s clear you know how to search with google. Now refine your search.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:46 am
Sorry, md, but it is really fucking hard to take him seriously when his discredited book is the fucking header of his blog.
And his talking about gun control laws for cities in the US is meaningless because one does not have to go far to get a hold of guns out side of city limits.
Municipal laws are not the same as federal laws.
md:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:49 am
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ahNNKo_dO7E/UNOaVpGJG-I/AAAAAAAAFDw/KCHechftMQY/s1600/Screen+Shot+2012-12-20+at++Thursday,+December+20,+6.07+PM.png
Is it a lie? Sourced to crime statistics of the U.K. Homeoffice.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 21st, 2012 at 11:50 am
@ Tony
He could just go to the comments section on Lott’s website for graphs refuting his. Or even check out Lott’s own sources …. more Lott!
(Check out KJQ13 for teh LOL.)
md:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:54 am
Janine,
Is it your proposal that we disarm every American of every gun? I think that would reduce gun violence.
The state of Connecticut had in place an Assault Weapons ban identical to the Federal law that expired. Lanza’s guns were all purchased legally.
Nancy Lanza, however, made some extremely poor choices. Seems she thought he was dangerous, yet left her guns in the house anyway.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar:
December 21st, 2012 at 11:57 am
And this is an argument for assault rifles for the public?
md:
December 21st, 2012 at 12:01 pm
theophontes,
Are you referring to this?
http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/192/rate_of_gun_homicide
Yes, it contradicts the U.K. home office. Who is correct?
md:
December 21st, 2012 at 12:02 pm
Janine,
I havent argued either way. Merely observing that the Federal laws many are called for being renewed were in effect at the state level in CT, and did not stop this crime.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar:
December 21st, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Yet you site John R Lott and have tried to hand wave his dishonesty.
You have a funny way of stating you have not argued either way.
Plus, you have a record here.
md:
December 21st, 2012 at 12:20 pm
I cited the U.K. home office, which I got from the Lott blog. Does reprinting U.K. home office statistics on his blog render them false?
Yes, im extremely skeptical the gun control policies proposed will do much of anything, and posing my questions and reservations.
According to the FBI, Rifles, not just ‘assault’ rifles, are used in 3% of murders in the U.S.
So when Assault Rifles are banned, and gun crime drops a blip, or doesn’t, will you rest, or try and shift the Overton window to shotguns and handguns?
Janine: Hallucinating Liar:
December 21st, 2012 at 12:26 pm
Hey, it happens so rarely, what is the point of stopping it.
Nick Gotts (formerly KG):
December 21st, 2012 at 12:38 pm
md@521,
Just try thinking for a minute.
1) The 1997 law was aimed primarily at preventing repetitions of the Dunblane massacre, where a legally held handgun was used in a mass-murder. Such mass-murders have never made up more than a small part of the overall homicide rate in the UK.
2) For that matter, most homicides in the UK have never been carried out with guns, so the overall homicide rate is a very poor measure of whether the gun control law has had an effect.
3) Why would you expect a gun control law to have an immediate effect? Most gun crime in the UK is carried out with illegally obtained weapons, either stolen, or illegally imported. The 1997 Act could be expected to make it harder to obtain stolen guns over a period of months to years, but would not have an effect on illegally imported guns. (I’m not going to claim that the fall a few years after the 1997 Act is a consequence of it, but that would be as valid as claiming that the rise in its immediate aftermath was such a consequence.)
You see, Lott’s dishonesty need not consist of simple lies. Much more likely is the cherry-picking of evidence and the ignoring of context. we know he’s a liar, so merely looking at the charts he uses is not going to tell you anything.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 21st, 2012 at 1:19 pm
md:
Any reduction in firearm related injuries and homicides is a good thing. Given that it is unrealistic to expect a ban on civilian firearm ownership in this country (a measure I support), any laws that reduce the prevalence of military grade weapons, or increases the safety regulations is beneficial. Owning a gun-despite any interpretation of the 2nd Amendment-is a luxury, IMHO. It is not a right in the sense of human rights. It is not ‘life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, oh and moar GUNZZZ’.
md:
December 21st, 2012 at 1:46 pm
—Any reduction in firearm related injuries and homicides is a good thing. Given that it is unrealistic to expect a ban on civilian firearm ownership in this country (a measure I support), any laws that reduce the prevalence of military grade weapons, or increases the safety regulations is beneficial.
Though you shift from reducing injuries and homicides as your bar to reducing the prevalence of military grade weapons, (is a law that reduces military grade weapons but does not reduce firearm related injury or homicide beneficial? How?) I appreciate the honesty regarding really wanting to disarm the civilian populace. I expect most supporters of the assault rifle ban really feel the same way. Nice to see it in writing.
Why do you say its unrealistic, though? Old amendments can be trumped by the new, or failing that, ignored. Your side has a good crisis to parlay. Dare to dream.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 21st, 2012 at 1:59 pm
md:
I can see where my lack of clarity is confusing. Given the money the NRA has, it will take time to convince the general populace that guns are not a necessity. As well, informing the populace has been made difficult because of the NRAs actions to prevent in depth published research on gun violence. I think a series of gradual steps will be necessary to effect change. Given the type of automatic weaponry Lanza had, banning their sale to civilians is a step in the right direction, but not the only or last step. At this point in time, I believe there is enough support to ban the sales of these type of weapons, but not enough to go further. Baby steps.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 21st, 2012 at 2:03 pm
md:
Also, we live in a society that glamorizes guns. It is unrealistic for anyone to expect the majority of Americans to back any measure to ban firearms at this point in time. Let’s start with the worst of these killing machines and work from there. Dreaming is great, but at some point one has to wake up.
md:
December 21st, 2012 at 2:05 pm
–Given the type of automatic weaponry Lanza had
He had no types of automatic weaponry.
—banning their sale to civilians is a step in the right direction
Already done, since 1934.
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcfullau.html
Janine: Hallucinating Liar:
December 21st, 2012 at 2:27 pm
And yet the arms one can get now are more powerful and can fire more rounds then what was available in 1934.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 21st, 2012 at 2:35 pm
Let me make some corrections then. I was clearly mistaken. The Bushmaster SEMI-automatic assault rifle (that I wrongly conflated with an automatic weapon) that Lanza used (Police said Lanza used the Bushmaster rifle against most of the victims*) which was purchased legally by his mother is a weapon that no one in the civilian population needs to possess (setting aside the idea that *anyone* needs to possess any sort of firearm).
Given that we aren’t at a point in our culture where the American population will back a comprehensive ban on all firearms, a good place to start is with semi-automatic weapons and military grade ones. Then we can work our way down to shotguns and handguns (eventually? hopefully?).
ChasCPeterson:
December 21st, 2012 at 2:51 pm
You want to criminalize shotguns?
cm's changeable moniker:
December 21st, 2012 at 3:00 pm
md:
You didn’t cite UKHO, you cited Lott misrepresenting UKHO data. He talks about the 1997 “handgun ban”, but it didn’t “ban” handguns in any meaningful sense. As of the 1968 Act, handguns required a firearms certificate (FAC) from the police which the police were extremely unlikely to give out. They were effectively banned by police policy. The 1997 Act just enshrined this in law. (Semi-automatics had been banned outright in 1988.)
Comprehension fail. Lott’s graph is “Homicide rate per …”. The second one is “Rate of Gun Homicide …”. They’re both accurate, but Lott is misrepresenting the stats: gun homicides (which stayed roughly flat) are a tiny fraction of the total (which went up, mostly due to gangs and drug turf wars). And given handgun ownership was 0.1% of the population pre-1997, you can’t even claim a realistic deterrent effect.
Lott’s bullshitting and you’re defending it. If you value intellectual integrity, you might not want to do that.
Nick Gotts (formerly KG):
December 21st, 2012 at 3:06 pm
Speaking for myself, no, just private possession* of shotguns! Unless you can show a real need to possess one for your livelihood – and I’m not convinced anyone can. Farmers are usually named as needing them to kill “vermin”, but I doubt they are actually an effective means of protecting crops. As far as I can see, every gun is at best an accident waiting to happen.
* I mean, in the home or whatever – if you really want to own one that’s kept in a secure location at a shooting club, OK.
md:
December 21st, 2012 at 3:12 pm
—Farmers are usually named as needing them to kill “vermin”, but I doubt they are actually an effective means of protecting crops.
Try Cows, or specifically cows legs. Think Groundhogs and the holes they dig.
From very minor experience, a 30-06 with a scope is much better. Have to get too close with a shotgun and they see you coming and duck into their underground lair, which also doubles as a cow leg-breaker.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 21st, 2012 at 3:15 pm
Chas:
Other than owning and keeping firearms at a shooting range, I am for banning civilians owning guns. Perhaps I would feel different if gun violence weren’t so prevalent, but that is not the case. Why? Do you think anyone neefs to own a shotgun?
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 21st, 2012 at 3:25 pm
We have two rifles in the house, for hunting purposes. They’re both unloaded, in hard shell cases and stored in the root cellar. Neither one of us would have a problem storing them at a secure location. Not a big deal, really.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar:
December 21st, 2012 at 3:30 pm
But, but, but…Caine! You could be one of the good guys with guns and stop those bad guys.
ChasCPeterson:
December 21st, 2012 at 4:01 pm
Duck, goose, pheasant, grouse, quail, turkey, rabbit, and squirrel hunters use shotguns. (They’re also generally speaking much better choices for home protection than handguns.)
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 21st, 2012 at 4:04 pm
Janine:
Uh huh. I’m pretty sure my ability to take out a quail isn’t much qualification to be a hero.
;D
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 21st, 2012 at 4:09 pm
Chas:
Yeah, so what? You can’t just go hunting whenever you want. There’s a season for each quarry, licenses need to be acquired, regulations met, all that. Picking up your guns at a secure location would hardly be a big fucking deal.
The fuck they are. If they are stored properly, it would take to long to get to them, get to the ammo and load them. They’re also just as likely to be used against the owner and they are a prime target for thievery, which is hardly a good thing.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 21st, 2012 at 6:14 pm
For those who remember the last time, philisyssis has reappeared.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 21st, 2012 at 6:46 pm
Never mind, PZ hath hollered.
Ichthyic:
December 21st, 2012 at 8:21 pm
just getting back to this now; got delayed due to much dental work yesterday.
I think rather than wading through details, I will just throw this at StevoR, and say:
“take the answers you gave me, and measure them against what this article has to say about what is going on over there”
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/12/20/kara-d20.html
and also recall(?) that the CIA did in fact sponsor a fake vaccination program back when they were trying to finalize plans to kill Bin Laden in Pakistan, and the Pakistani government was NOT notified. they were rightly quite pissed, and the current pashtun/taliban groups are using that as a basis for their current attacks on the UN vaccination program.
again, nothing to do with Islam.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 22nd, 2012 at 12:23 am
@ cm’s
Thanks.
@ Ichthyic
We can also add to the argument that Bin Laden et al are (‘were’ in his case) operating outside of the bounds of Islam with their vigilante actions:
The above by Tim Winter:
Link to above article.
keresthanatos:
December 22nd, 2012 at 2:34 am
Folks, most gun control arguments are moot. Google “printed guns”.
If that is not enouge for nightmares, try searching for home made armed drones.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 22nd, 2012 at 2:56 am
@552:
Neither 3D guns, nor home made drones are a nationwide epidemic. Gun violence is. Please do not minimize the extent to which gun violence negatively impacts people in the USA by making unequal comparisons (if/when 3D guns and home made drones become problems of the same caliber as gun violence, then the comparison is valid).
Amphiox:
December 22nd, 2012 at 3:12 am
And those printed guns don’t work. Using readily available commercial 3D printers, the “gun” that results shatters from the recoil force of repeated use after only a few discharges. Furthermore, the “printed” gun is not the whole gun, but just several (in most case just one) part. The other parts you still have to buy and assemble yourself.
Amphiox:
December 22nd, 2012 at 3:20 am
Here’s something interesting:
http://www.ehow.com/about_5478768_law-samurai-swords.html
The salient tidbit:
In other words, knives (covered under the Second Amendment just as guns) are more tightly controlled and regulated in the US than guns are.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 22nd, 2012 at 3:21 am
More to the point, even if printed guns were a significant problem, they would just be a subset of the larger culture of gun violence.
keresthanatos:
December 22nd, 2012 at 3:28 am
Tony, exactly, make all the laws you want, in the US i see almost all of them gamed, just how much can you get away with before you get caught. P.S. loved the pun in 533.
keresthanatos:
December 22nd, 2012 at 3:42 am
So, in all honesty what do you prepose? How do we fix this broken house?
John Morales:
December 22nd, 2012 at 3:54 am
Hey Tony, you’ve been on fire on the Shermer feminism thread. Sort of stuff that should have people putting you down for a Molly.
Also, your correction of me there was correct.
(I’d have noted that there, but I figure you have no need for public acknowledgement so I’ve done it here)
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 22nd, 2012 at 4:13 am
Even when I argued for gun possession, I had the good sense not to cite John Lott.
+++++
That is probably not true.
+++++
Tony,
Picture a handgun. Get as clear an image as possible in your mind. Then mouseover this text.
keresthanatos:
December 22nd, 2012 at 4:15 am
I am not trolling, I am seriously disturbed by what is happening here. I have the flu and I have been up for two days now, sitting in my little chair rocking back and fourth.
I have watched pundit after pundit, political leaders, religious leaders, all the usual suspects, trotting out their old tired horses, with a tear in their eye, and a tremor in their voices saying think of the children. Mass hysteria on all sides being played by the players. All for power, all for show. The idiot president of the NRA did not have the sense, or decency to keep his mouth shut, even out of respect. I have serious issues that do not respond well to traditional meds. This is pushing me really close. John, I am glad you showed up here, as I really value your options. How do we change this stupid hyper competitive dysfunctional society before it becomes the death of us all?
John Morales:
December 22nd, 2012 at 4:19 am
keresthanatos,
Is it me to whom you refer?
keresthanatos:
December 22nd, 2012 at 4:21 am
yes
keresthanatos:
December 22nd, 2012 at 4:22 am
opions… sorry
John Morales:
December 22nd, 2012 at 4:45 am
keresthanatos,
I don’t know.
Sorry. :(
–
If venting about it helps you any, please do, but please hang in there and keep having your say whenever the issue comes up — be another voice for reason.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 22nd, 2012 at 4:48 am
keresthanatos,
While it is impossible to eliminate guns, reductions in firearms deaths are still possible to achieve. Let’s see what Biden comes up with.
keresthanatos:
December 22nd, 2012 at 5:14 am
reason is leaving me at the moment. The mark of a man is …the mark of a human is forethought and controll, The mark of an animal is reflex and instinct. The problem is not the tool, the problem is the weilder. If it would save one life, if it would spare the world pain, I would proudly put my name on the list of crazies, ( I can use that fucking word because I am! sub clinical god i still hope psychotic), I would ware an arm band, a flashing light, what ever it took…..and those who wouldn’t , well… I would be happy to hunt them down and kill them!!!!! After all you have to minimize harm. Even from my prespective I see this.
keresthanatos:
December 22nd, 2012 at 5:39 am
You ask me to wait to see what the current adminastration proposes. The action can not come from above. The preposals and solutions by politicians will be a meaningless comprimize to preserve the status quo. If they really cared, they would have already done something about it. As in years ago. The change has to start with us.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 22nd, 2012 at 5:42 am
Nope. Bad logic. You can’t call someone else “a crazy” without engaging in ableism. Your error is the same as that of a gay man using homophobic slurs to hurt other gay men. That’s still a homophobic action, and what you are doing here is similarly morally wrong.
Macho bullshit is not okay here. Quit it.
keresthanatos:
December 22nd, 2012 at 5:53 am
I must think carefully about the next subject I am going to broach. It is uncomfortable, unpleasant, unethical and down right dangerous. It will require the best minds to implement, the most fair to safeguard, and the very lives of myself and many others like me so that the rest of you can live in peace and prosperity. I really need to think long and hard on how to say this so I don’t endanger others needlessly.
Thank you for taking time to listen to me.
Howard M. Gray
John Morales:
December 22nd, 2012 at 6:03 am
keresthanatos, whilst epiphanies can happen at any time, ideas that come to one while exhausted from sickness and lack of sleep and when one is down in the dumps perhaps should be reconsidered at a more propitious time.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 22nd, 2012 at 6:04 am
Howard,
You are incorrect. Taking your and others’ lives would not constitute peace and prosperity as far as we are concerned. Many of us have loved ones who experience psychotic symptoms. Some of us personally have experienced such symptoms. No one here sees the elimination of people as part of a desireable goal.
Please speak to a therapist soon. You are talking yourself into illogical and inaccurate conclusions.
strange gods before me ॐ:
December 22nd, 2012 at 6:37 am
I forgot that Howard is a confessed troll.
Regardless, Howard, if you are serious then I advise you to talk with a therapist.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 22nd, 2012 at 11:42 am
John:
Thank you good sir.
****
SGBM:
Will try that later on my laptop. Cell phone won’t cut it.
XA-26483:
December 22nd, 2012 at 5:15 pm
*Moved from http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/21/an-experiment-why-do-you-despise-feminism/comment-page-2/#comment-519054
I can’t offer any arguments against feminism (probably because I self-identify as one), but I’ll try my best to illustrate my concerns with the approach many here seem to be taking to it. I can’t imagine I’m the only one who feels this way.
Before I start, I have to ask anyone reading this to please try and give me the benefit of the doubt. This is going to be a somewhat long post, and I (being human) am almost certain to get at least one thing wrong. That doesn’t mean I’m an idiot and should be dismissed. Even in the extremely unlikely case that I’m somehow right about everything I say here, you’re almost inevitably going to disagree with me on a least one point; that doesn’t mean we have to hate each other’s guts. I may even say something that looks disingenuous to you. That doesn’t mean I’m a liar or a troll; going to all this trouble just to piss people off when I could just copy-paste some MRA asshattery would be ridiculous.
The fact that I felt the need to include that last paragraph should give some insight into what I’m taking issue with. I’ll use the first post I ever made here to illustrate:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/12/06/a-metaobservation-on-misogyny/comment-page-1/#comment-506821
This was the first post I ever made on this blog; I had been reading Pharyngula for…. forever on my phone’s RSS feed and thus hadn’t bothered with the comments for quite some time. I took issue with a single aspect of Chris’s argument, seeing it as somewhat hypocritical, and thought that some constructive criticism might be appreciated.
Needless to say, I was wrong. Right out the gate I was accused of being a misogynist troll, and my post (whose most offensive word was “ridiculous”) was given a warning while replies calling me an idiot, liar, or “fuckwit” went unmoderated. Once that label had been applied, it seemed that no amount of politeness, candor or levity could remove it. All this was in spite of the “three comments” rule, which basically asks that new commenters be treated in the exact opposite manner that I was. After a few rounds, Chris stepped in and said “your attempts to make this thread all about you end now. Final warning.”
Seeing as making the thread all about me had never even crossed my mind, I wasn’t sure how to take that. The most obvious interpretation was that Chris thought that I was referencing myself too much in my comments, but I honestly didn’t think he would be thoughtless enough to threaten someone for using the words “I” and “me” too much in responses to what were almost entirely attacks on his character, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and asked him to clarify. He didn’t, he instead ignored me, and then later referenced my question as “a marvel of clueless trolldom”. Chris, if you’re reading this, I hope that wasn’t representative of your behavior.
There is no justification for the kind of absolute contempt I was treated with. I wouldn’t be surprised if others resorted to trolling as retribution for being handled in such a cynical and flagrantly unfair manner. Instead, I just withdrew myself from the situation, and this is my first post since.
This “with us or against us” attitude is stifling growth and productivity, and is almost certainly responsible for a good chunk of the ire FtB draws. There seems to be a common view here that any argument advanced in favor of feminism is automatically above criticism, reason be damned. The merits of an idea have no bearing on the merits of an argument for that idea. If you drive away everyone who’s willing to think critically about your cause, you’ll be left with nothing but sycophants and the intellectual integrity of your movement will crumble.
There needs to be two major changes in the thinking here. First, you need to keep in mind that sexism, like religion, is endemic to our society, and grilled into us from birth from almost every possible angle. Most people are going to be anti-feminist simply because of the environment they live in; they are misguided, not “cockroaches”. Most of us would never have been able to escape the shackles of faith without some outside help, and the same goes for sexism. Imagine if you were a religious person, and every atheist you talked to simply dismissed you as asinine or morally repugnant, without ever explaining to you why you were wrong; you would probably just decide that atheists were assholes and double down on your beliefs. I know many here are quick to dismiss the importance of tone, but this is about more than that; it’s about substance and fairness. There is nothing more infuriating to a well-meaning person than to be disregarded as unworthy, especially when they are implied to be dishonest. People are complex and capable of change; determining their worth by holding them all to a litmus test which they are culturally inclined to fail is just as exclusionary as the bigotries we combat every day.
Second, the taboo on criticizing any aspect of feminism has to go. We are all human, we all make mistakes and feminism is a human endeavor, subject to all the fallacies and biases of any other worthy cause. As skeptics, we have to remember to hold nothing sacred, to strive against the very idea of the sacred. If you’re having a gut reaction against this suggestion, you may want to reexamine your dedication to critical thought. That same kind of unquestioning faith and self-righteous furor is what causes christianity to continuously fragment into ever smaller sects. If we are unwilling to find the flaws in our own thinking, you can bet our ideological opponents will.
Like I said at the beginning, I’m only human, and don’t purport to have a monopoly on the truth, so any substantive criticisms of my post are welcome. In fact, if anyone has any advice on improving my ability to communicate here, I’ll be happy to hear them. Also, if you happen to agree with anything I’ve said, please let me know; only receiving negative feedback is really depressing.
On the other hand, I’ll be ignoring the (seemingly inevitable) cheeky quips and base insults; make them if it makes you feel better, I really don’t care. I’m sure some will just see this as a long whine about how I was mistreated, and in part it is, but that doesn’t preclude it from making valid points. I’m also going to disregard responses which contain attacks on my character; trying to defend my motivations to someone who’s already made up their mind about me is a transparent waste of time, especially on the internet. Who someone is behind the keyboard is ultimately unknowable, give me the benefit of the doubt, let the arguments stand on their own merits, and I will do the same. If you scan someone’s comments looking for reasons to be distrustful, you’ll be sure to find them.
Ogvorbis: useless:
December 22nd, 2012 at 5:20 pm
XA-26483 wrote this over on the Experiment thread.
No, the fact that you have, repeatedly, claimed to have been reading ‘forever’ and yet have never heard of Thunderdome, despite some major angst among the Pharyngula regulars provides evidence that you are lying.
Ogvorbis: useless:
December 22nd, 2012 at 5:26 pm
And I see that I should have refreshed. Sorry, XA. I now know that in my first comment to you I broke the rules as to how I should respond to you.
chigau (違う):
December 22nd, 2012 at 5:26 pm
XA-26483
Which part of this
link
was “constructive criticism”?
cm's changeable moniker:
December 22nd, 2012 at 5:29 pm
The showjumping bunnies video was awesome, though, wasn’t it?
Look, you got stomped for being–by your own admission–wrong. You seem to be upset that the people who insulted you for being wrong didn’t get stomped for rudeness.
It’s simple: if you’re wrong, people will be rude to you. This is not a “nice” blog. This is a rude blog that aims for rightness, not niceness.
Try to understand that, re-read the thread in question, and if you still feel upset, feel free to ask more questions here.
[Please note, in passing, that at no point in this comment have I been rude to or about you.]
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 22nd, 2012 at 5:32 pm
cm:
:coughs: I don’t think XA was admitting to being wrong, they were attempting to say we are all wrong.
David Marjanović:
December 22nd, 2012 at 5:51 pm
Crossposted from the feminism thread:
People, XA-26483 has explicitly said that they used to not read the comments, because they were reading only the RSS feed of Pharyngula on a phone. It’s not hypocritical of them to behave like an obvious n00b.
XA-26483, here’s an example of you needing to learn, young padawan:
1) Insults aren’t comparable to violence.
2) There’s a strong tradition here of distinguishing what people say from how they say it, and to ignore the latter. Complaints of “you’ve insulted me” are highly likely to be met with “duh, you deserved it, what’s your point?”.
Addendum: as has been pointed out, civility is not considered a value here. People will be as rude to you as they feel like at the moment. Some never feel like it, and always express themselves in carefully crafted diplomatic phrases; some always feel like it, and always express themselves in carefully crafted snarky insults; some change their expressions with their moods, influenced – or not – by how fuckwitted you appear to them at the moment. :-) Live with it.
cm's changeable moniker:
December 22nd, 2012 at 6:08 pm
*oooooohhhhhh* Thanks, Caine. Apparently I read too literally to interpret!
That’s my career interpreting Chaucer buggered, then …
John Morales:
December 22nd, 2012 at 6:30 pm
XA-26483:
But it’s not just feminism; the approach taken here applies to all topics, including (but not limited to) creationism, atheism, social justice, environmentalism and science.
See, here’s the thing. You had already started; this locution only makes sense if you use it at the very beginning of your comment. This is an indication of sloppy thinking or carelessness, and so you have already begun to erode any “benefit of the doubt” that accrues as an unknown.
See, when you go out of your way to remind people you are human, you are already employing condescension and setting up a rhetorical frame. Then you follow it with a trite truism, as if it were worth noting.
(A little more erosion of “benefit of the doubt” has just occurred)
<sigh>
Wow, glad you told me that when I disagree with someone on at least one point I don’t have to hate their guts, and they don’t have to hate mine!
(A little more erosion of “benefit of the doubt” has just occurred)
(Such pre-emptive defensiveness!)
It may not necessarily mean it, but it sure points in that direction, and many liars and trolls are indeed ridiculous.
It also gives insight into your attitude and approach.
<takes a look>
That’s what you call “constructive criticism”? Hm.
Guess you didn’t appreciate the return “constructive criticism”.
Perhaps instead of politeness, candor or levity, you should have tried acknowledgement, retraction and apology instead of defensiveness. :)
Ask yourself this: was the topic at hand your comment and your justification for it, or something else? Were any of your subsequent comments about the topic at hand, or about you and your comments and their reception?
It got the thread back on topic; you think that was a bad thing?
Leaving aside that the justification was presented at the time (so it certainly exists), you think you deserve credit for not resorting to to trolling as retribution for what you perceive as being handled cynically and in a flagrantly unfair manner?
This is your mistake: there was no such attitude exhibited in your example post other than in the case of your derailing the thread; what there was consisted of criticism of you and the post owner stepping in to ensure comments remained somewhat on-topic.
(It follows that what was not there cannot be responsible for anything)
It may seem so to you, but I assure you there’s plenty of argumentation between proponents of feminism; since you have claimed you hadn’t read comments here for a long time until your first post, it follows your sample base can hardly be sufficient to make such a determination.
1. ‘Need not have’, not ‘don’t have’.
(When trying to pontificate pedantically, it’s best to get it right)
2. So, you claim that if Pharyngula (one blog in the FTB network) drove away everyone who’s willing to think critically about its cause, the intellectual integrity of its movement will crumble?
(What happened to “The merits of an idea have no bearing on the merits of an argument for that idea.”? ;) )
–
Ack! I’ve gotten roughly half-way through your comment, and already I am bored with responding to it — not to mention in danger of getting RSI.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 22nd, 2012 at 8:24 pm
John:
That surprises me. I figured you would love ripping that entire whiny rant apart.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 22nd, 2012 at 8:27 pm
Tony:
Those whiny rants get mighty boring after you’ve seen a countless number of them, all saying the same thing.
John Morales:
December 22nd, 2012 at 8:41 pm
Tony, I’m not ॐ. ;)
(enough is enough)
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 22nd, 2012 at 8:41 pm
XA:
Is this:
your idea of constructive criticism?
PZ said this:
in closing.
There is nothing inflammatory about it. Marc Lepine hated women. There are-unfortunately-many men out there who feel the same way he does. They help contribute to a culture of toxicity where women are treated horribly. Some of them may not go out killing women like Lepine did, but they have helped build and develop Lepine’s horrible views. He may have acted alone, but he was influenced by anti women opinions. He didn’t form his views in a vacuum. The MRAs of the world are complicit in the deaths of those women; every bit as much as he was.
That you disagree with PZ’s conclusion shows you don’t know much about the so-called Men’s Rights Movement. Nor how to give constructive criticism.
John Morales:
December 22nd, 2012 at 8:47 pm
BTW, here is XA-26483′s opportunity to make the thread all about them, yet what I see is conspicuously absence.
<pout>
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 22nd, 2012 at 8:50 pm
John:
It’s no fun in an open thread. XA’s particular talent is derailing to make a thread about about XA-26483.
vaiyt:
December 22nd, 2012 at 9:51 pm
For people who wondered where I came from.
I found Pharyngula back in the Scienceblogs Era, following a chain of links about skepticism. I started posting back then (after a good deal of lurking), but it wasn’t long before my login stopped working and I was reduced to a lurker again. Guess I made too little of an impression back then.
I came for the fun posts about pseudoscience and skepticism, and stayed for the comments. As I stated in the other thread, I’m tired of etiquette being valued over ethics. The experience of finally finding a place where I don’t need to put on a straw vulcan mask while talking to the hateful, the bigoted, the dishonest and the ignorant is fucking liberating.
Never change <3
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 22nd, 2012 at 9:54 pm
Vaiyt:
Not so. Well, not to me. I remembered you and was happy to see you here at ftb.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 22nd, 2012 at 10:32 pm
Caine:
You amaze me.
You have the memory of…ummmm…someone with a good memory. :)
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 22nd, 2012 at 10:34 pm
Tony:
Well, most of the time. It’s most certainly not perfect. I remember people I find interesting, so I remember lots and lots of people here. :D
XA-26483:
December 23rd, 2012 at 12:35 am
Thank you, and I apologize if I’ve been rude or combative toward you in any way.
While I don’t think it justified the backlash I received, I’ll admit that I worded it more harshly than I should have. I do still stand by my original point; that’s not to say that I couldn’t be swayed, the discussion just never really seemed to address it.
….. yes, I can’t deny it.
The emotions roused by such hateful language seem to get in the way of rational discussion. I think I could have tolerated it if my point were actually being addressed, but it seemed like the goal of most of the comments was not to respond to what I said, but to attack me as a person, often by misinterpreting my statements in a rather obvious manner.
Correct you are, and I am very grateful for your consideration.
A comment n00b I certainly am, and I thank you for your patience with me.
I’m a guy, by the way (English really needs some gender-neutral singular pronouns…. then again, “you” was once strictly plural….. ah, the absurdities of language).
True, that was a bit of hyperbolic metaphor to represent how I felt my mistakes were not comparable to the response I received. That, of course, is the primary weakness of analogy; they convey “feeling” rather well, but almost inevitably break down under scrutiny. Perhaps it’s best not to use them with a critical audience.
I see. That’s one of the main reasons I wanted to stay out of the Thunderdome; I pictured it as a kind of maelstrom of hatefulness and brutality, though the responses so far have been…. really encouraging.
I try to avoid insults and personal attacks because I think they’re almost always off-topic, but “turn the other cheek” isn’t exactly my motto. Do you think ignoring uncivil comments will suffice, or should I just take my discussions elsewhere?
If that’s true then the issue is more serious than I thought.
I wasn’t cut any slack last time, my rhetoric was more desperation than anything.
My comment addressed a point that was actually in the post, the responses to it (for the most part) did not.
If someone had at least attempted to demonstrate that I was wrong, I might have done so. What I saw amounted to “you suck, therefore you’re wrong”. Telling me that I’m a bad person because of imagined slights isn’t going to coax a withdrawal from me. If my point actually was wrong, I’d very much like to know why, and I’ll be happy to apologize.
The personal attacks were what pushed the thread off-topic, I can’t respond to non-existent critiques.
The ends don’t always justify the means; the thread direction could have been corrected by rebuking the people who were actually derailing it, instead of chasing off the target of their ire.
No, but it seems likely that said handling is responsible, at least in part, for some of the trolling that does occur here.
That’s a fair point. I’m basing my hypothesis on the hysterical response to what I thought of as a relatively innocuous comment. I know the burden of proof isn’t on you, but if you could link me a good example of someone disagreeing with part of a feminism-related post and not being flamed, it would ease my concerns greatly.
?
I was referring to Pharyngula’s part in the feminist movement, though my wording could have been clearer.
They still don’t, but the merits of your argument certainly impact the appeal of your idea. Simply being right isn’t enough.
They are complicit, but not to the extent Lepine was. PZ seemed to be implying that were it not for the consequences, they would all kill just as Marc Lepine did. Talking crap and pulling a trigger are two different things. Hell, I hate juggalos, but I would never consider murdering one, even if there would be no repercussions for me.
Friend’s birthday party, sorry.
Nepenthe:
December 23rd, 2012 at 1:28 am
Wrong thread, dipshit.
Nepenthe:
December 23rd, 2012 at 1:29 am
Clearly that was addressed to myself. Because I am in the wrong thread.
Sleeping now.
A. R:
December 23rd, 2012 at 1:30 am
theophontes: We haz snow.
John Morales:
December 23rd, 2012 at 1:39 am
XA-26483:
Do you hold that it is not possible for the merits of an idea to have bearing on the merits of an argument for that idea?
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 23rd, 2012 at 1:41 am
Nepenthe:
It happens. Usually when it happens to me, it’s because of having so many tabs open. Have a sweet sleep.
Beatrice:
December 23rd, 2012 at 2:30 am
Overly long comments made by people admitting they have read only a handful of comments here, full of preemptive justifications and finger wagging are so much fun.
John, I’m not surprised you couldn’t be bothered to tear apart the whole monster comment, but I would have enjoyed reading that.
John Morales:
December 23rd, 2012 at 5:23 am
Gnumann elsewhere:
The UK is a constitutional monarchy, O ignoramus.
(Vatican State is an example of a theocracy)
Gnumann+, nothing gnu under the sun (but the name sticks):
December 23rd, 2012 at 5:39 am
So, by the same reasoning the DDR was a democracy?
If you analyse a governance system solely by the emic view, you’re only reinforcing existing power-structures, not doing a honest analysis.
The Church of England is a real religious institution you know. And it happen to be tied to the governance of the UK. The power of the Winsors is largely passive, but there is both power and political agency. If not by anything else, so by displacement. The only reason we don’t describe the UK (and the other similar European monarchies) as a theocracy is tradition. And I happen not to subscribe to traditions that reinforce religious influence for some strange reason.
Matt Penfold:
December 23rd, 2012 at 5:48 am
England is not the same as the UK. And neither Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland have established churches. The latter two never have, and in the case of Wales the church was disestablished in the 1920s, so hardly a new development.
John Morales:
December 23rd, 2012 at 5:50 am
Gnumann:
No; by the same reasoning it was a Marxist–Leninist socialist state.
If you dispute the plain and obvious truth, you’re in denial.
Government of the United Kingdom
The Church of England does not pass law, Parliament does.
Bullshit. The real reason we don’t describe the UK (and the other similar European monarchies) as a theocracy is because they aren’t.
(Don’t trust Wikipedia? Try any other source :) )
Gnumann+, nothing gnu under the sun (but the name sticks):
December 23rd, 2012 at 5:54 am
The head of state function is still tied to the Church of England though, even in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. I’m not sure this is enough to sway my view of UK as a theocracy, but it’s certainly more relevant than John Morales’ objection.
John Morales:
December 23rd, 2012 at 5:58 am
The head of state in Australia is also the Queen of England, so by your quaint notion Australia is also a theocracy.
(Heh — she’s also the sovereign of Canada — yet another theocracy!)
John Morales:
December 23rd, 2012 at 6:01 am
I note Denmark, Iceland and Norway all have established Churches (state religions).
(Theocracies, all!)
Gnumann+, nothing gnu under the sun (but the name sticks):
December 23rd, 2012 at 7:43 am
John Morales
I’ve yet to hear and substantive arguments why some states with a church head of state are theocracies, while others are not. Except of course the fact that the persons defining “theocracy” belongs to one group, not the other.
Actually, all laws require the assent of the monarch, which also is the head of CoE. In principle the same system as in Iran (except the Iranian system is by committee). In practice it’s not the same of course, but that’s more a matter of political practicalities than the principle of the system.
Yes, at least up unto recently. I’m not up to date on the process in Sweden, but I think at least they’ve managed a more successful separation of church and state than Norway and Denmark. Some also claim this has been the result of the process undergoing in Norway, personally I disagree (but there’s certainly a case for a discussion whether there has been a separation or not).
Rodney Nelson:
December 23rd, 2012 at 7:44 am
Since XA-26483 complained that nobody was addressing his main whine about PZ, I’ll try to explain why his whine is baseless. He says in #558:
Most MRAs don’t kill women. A smaller number don’t abuse women. An even small number don’t rape women. What MRAs have in common is their support and attempted perpetuation of a social climate which tells people like Lepine that killing, abuse and rape are acceptable behavior. Lepine had convinced himself that killing women was justified. He didn’t come to that attitude in a vacuum. If someone is continuously told, implicitly and explicitly, by society that bitches ain’t shit then he’s going to believe that bitches ain’t shit.
PZ did not say that MRAs would kill women if they could get away with it (after all, if women are dead who is going to give them sex and make sammiches?). He did say that they contribute to a culture which designates women as “other,” “lesser,” and “subhuman.” MRAs tell us all that women are things rather than people. Murder is killing people. Slaughterhouses are legitimate, legal businesses specializing in killing “things.” If women are things then killing them can be legitimate and legal, not murder.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 23rd, 2012 at 7:59 am
XA:
The current feminism thread, where you initially posted has many examples of people criticising feminism-not very well mind you-without being flamed.
More to the point, for me, seeing women mistreated…hearing rape stories…seeing the sexual harassment…being aware of the gender inequalities pisses the off to no end. I feel no need to play nice with people who are treating women as less than human.
That is how I, a male feels.
Try to imagine how much more enraged women feel. They have so much shit to deal with day in, day out.
So maybe instead of complaining about being flamed, you should take a hard look at WHY you’re being flamed.
Rev. BigDumbChimp:
December 23rd, 2012 at 8:07 am
It’s Festivus all year round on the Thunderdome Thread.
theophontes (坏蛋):
December 23rd, 2012 at 8:26 am
@ A.R
Freezing cold in Hong Kong (10°C).
Rodney Nelson:
December 23rd, 2012 at 9:51 am
Freezing cold would be 0°C or colder.
</pedant>
chigau (違う):
December 23rd, 2012 at 10:33 am
We had 5cm of snow overnight.
blar:
December 23rd, 2012 at 10:48 am
John Morales:
It seems that you ran out of enthusiasm just as you got to the meat. You did a good job of highlighting why we can disregard the actual point that XA was making while studiously avoiding the point itself. The points that you hit were the dross where XA was prepping himself for failure and when I read his post I skipped past all that to get to the meat. When he was diverted to the Thunderdome I was looking forward to seeing an actual reply from the sharpest and meanest of the horde.
Ive seen your work before, and I was disappointed that you only challenged his approach and not the point itself. How would you have finished it up? Was it boredom that stopped you from proceeding, or did he have a point that you could not assail?
chigau (違う):
December 23rd, 2012 at 10:59 am
blar
Did you find any?
XA-26483:
December 23rd, 2012 at 11:25 am
You can’t have a good argument for a bad idea, but can certainly have a bad argument for a good idea. What I should have said is that the merits of an argument cannot determined based on the merits of the idea it advances. Each argument needs to be examined critically no matter how valid its conclusions are.
PZ said ” to me, every one of them has the name Marc Lépine, and is just hiding it in shame and fear and hatred and cowardice.”
That certainly seems to imply that they would like to do what he did, they’re just hiding it. Whether that was his intent or not, don’t you think it would be easy to read it that way? I never said he was strictly wrong (due in part to the openness of the statement to interpretation), I just said it was inflammatory and not in line with the “remembrance” tone Chris alluded to.
If I said something along the lines of “Islam is full of shit” at a memorial for victims of a Muslim extremist, I would fully expect the topic to drift away from honoring the victims. That’s not to say Islam isn’t full of shit, it is.
PZ specifically asked for that, possibly in response to the same issue I’m raising.
That’s my point, criticizing an argument for feminism is not the equivalent of advocating misogyny, but it often gets treated as such. The fact that you would seek to justify the response to my original comment by saying you “feel no need to play nice with people who are treating women as less than human” illustrates precisely the “with us or against us” attitude I speak of. When you lump together someone like me with loathsome misogynists you’re making a serious error.
blar:
December 23rd, 2012 at 11:43 am
chigau,
I should clarify that this isn’t particularly meaty, just that its more meaty than his preamble which had zero nutritional value.
This point right here, is one I have seen made time and again with different words. I have yet to see a response that satisfies me (!), and it seems that that overall consensus here is: “in order to protect those who suffer at the hands of JAQers, we have no problem with assuming you are a dick as standard.” Is this the optimal approach? Perhaps I have misrepresented the true consensus…
In fact, the idea that someone can waltz on in and criticise something that they only have a passing understanding of is laughable. Unfortunately, this often cannot be summed up in one line, so the JAQer and Honest Enquirer will both cause time consuming frustration with their misunderstanding of words and semantic quibbles. There isn’t actually a taboo in place, but it seems like there is because no-one has the energy to talk about the same goddamn thing that has been spoken about a million times before. Maybe thats why John didn’t bother?
Its easy to show that his approach was verbose and flawed, but his approach doesn’t invalidate his point.
Gnumann+, nothing gnu under the sun (but the name sticks):
December 23rd, 2012 at 12:00 pm
XA-numbers:
Wow – you’re really good at false equvalence, aren’t you?
Islam isn’t comparable with MRAs. Islam/Muslim is a broad label, often not acquired by choice of the labeled (my English vocabulary in this area is limited, but I hope my point comes across). A lot of Muslims has no more in common with a Muslim extremist than I have in common with Timothy McWeight.
If you want to compare, MRAs are more like the NRA and their behaviour in the recent school shooting(not quite, the groups that deserve the label MRA fully are worse than the NRA). And if somebody said “the NRA are full of shit” at a memorial, some might disagree, a lot more would agree (and the statement has a certain degree of factuality). MRA are actively antifeminist by definition (at least in the strict sense). Which brings us to:
I’m not sure what you mean here. Given a reasonably stringet definition of “feminism” “criticising and argument for feminism” might entail misogyny. This of course depends on whether the critique is “that argument isn’t valid (which is fine, provided you are correct) or the critique is “feminism is wrong”. The latter is misogyny under all circumstances (except a deviant definition of feminism of course, but you should avoid those(and they are most often based in misogyny, so what difference does it make).
Jumping into these discussions places a certain onus on you to actually understand the discussion and the language which is employed. If you haven’t done your homework you will get yelled at. This is an unfortunate effect from too many dishonest participants, feigning ignorance to further their despicable agendas.
Gnumann+, nothing gnu under the sun (but the name sticks):
December 23rd, 2012 at 12:05 pm
Blar:
Given the prevalence of dishonest interlocutors of various stripes, and given people are people with limited time, patience and temper – have you got a realistic alternative approach?
And please don’t use words for sexual organs as an insult.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls:
December 23rd, 2012 at 12:28 pm
Gee, project much? The problem is with concern trolls, who are all over the place, and by far outnumber honest questioners. They ask seemingly innocent questions instead of saying what they think with evidence. They are tiresome JAQers, and our patience for that odious technique is small. Some honest folk may get caught in the crossfire, but the presumption of guilt saves time, as it is usually true.
Again, if you have a better method of sifting the honest from the dishonest is a rapid time frame, show us how to do it. Don’t just complain, which does nothing to solve the problem.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls:
December 23rd, 2012 at 12:41 pm
There are two things you are missing. First, OPINION is not an evidenced argument, which is what PZ asked for. He doesn’t give a shit about your OPINION per se (which is what you seem to imply), but the factual evidence used to make up your OPINION. So, where are your links to the factual evidence, say from the academic literature, to support your OPINION. I see lots of opinion and attitude, and a non-surprising shortness of evidence.
The second is that your OPINION has to be taken seriously. Nobody has to do that. Until you supply evidence to back it up, *POOF* it can be dismissed as fuckwittery.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls:
December 23rd, 2012 at 12:43 pm
Dang, forgot the answer the quote. When you essentially dismiss half the population by saying they can be treated unequally in an inferior manner, how is that not misogyny? Think about that.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 23rd, 2012 at 12:57 pm
XA-:
Before we go any further, are you clear on the definition of feminism and misogyny?
Btw, your original comment was not a complaint about feminism. It was a complaint about PZ lumping all anti feminists together. Given that you have put more thought into his comment here, do you see how flawed your initial knee jerk reaction was (which, incidentally, I SHARED. Scroll through that thread to somewhere in the first 10 comments. I made the same mistake you are still committing. Thing is, when it was pointed out and I engaged my brain, I quickly corrected myself and apologized)
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 23rd, 2012 at 1:01 pm
blar:
I think one of the reasons for the Feminist Link Roundup in the sidebar is to provide a handy resource for n00bs. That way discussions do not get bogged down in repetitive 101 level explanations.
Beatrice:
December 23rd, 2012 at 1:05 pm
Tony,
But I want my questions answered right now and I want someone to take time and care to explain everything to me because I say so! *stomps foot*
blar:
December 23rd, 2012 at 1:09 pm
Gnumann+
I do not. This is one of the reasons why I am interested in reading opinions on the topic. Perhaps the problem has already been resolved and has a common name which I am unaware of, but it seems unsatisfactory to knowingly settle for an approach which yields false positives and alienates honest query (which is not presented in a suitable deferent way).
Thanks for asking nicely. I am careful about the contextual use of sex organ insults and tend to only use them when thats what fits. I didn’t feel like “ass” really covered it given that in this case the third person that I am paraphrasing is tired, dismissing a male condesplainer, and aiming to return the offense with offense. Also, I figured that this being an unmoderated thread, there would be less likelihood of anyone taking umbrage.
Thats it for tonight.
blar:
December 23rd, 2012 at 1:17 pm
Tony,
Maybe just one quick one. FAQs are great, and its important that they are there for people who do have the dignity to go there, but in my experience in various jobs Joe Public likes to think that his unique query cannot possibly have been thought of by anyone else, and so they phone up and waste my time anyway. “Oh yeah, I saw that there was an FAQ, but I didn’t read it. I prefer to speak to a person”
This is discourteous, yet predictable. FAQs work, but only for the courteous. When you have an FAQ regarding courteous behaviour it is to be expected that the discourteous will not read it.
Really going now.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 23rd, 2012 at 1:20 pm
blar:
Although the Dome isn’t heavily moderated, the community still frowns upon any gendered slurs. ‘Asshole’ or ‘douchebag’ would both have been good substitutions.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 23rd, 2012 at 1:27 pm
blar:
The use of gendered insults is not acceptable in this community. Your intent is not magic. Not everyone has a penis, so it does not get used as an insult. Not everyone has a vagina, so it does not get used as an insult. On the other hand, everyone has an ass…get the picture?
Beatrice:
December 23rd, 2012 at 1:30 pm
Well, your job, blar, is to answer Joe Public’s stupid questions. If Joe Public goes on a private blog, gets in the middle of a discussion about feminism and expects everyone to halt and answer whatever stupid questions he has- it’s not our job to answer and we don’t owe him the courtesy of being polite to him.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 23rd, 2012 at 1:32 pm
Gnumann, I remember reading some time ago about a country’s move to secularism and it seems that the move into secularism is much faster and much easier when a country has an official church/religion. It’s one of the reasons things are so fucked up in the U.S. – we’re supposed to be secular, with no official church/religion and what happened is we have pockets of religious fanaticism all over the place with waaaay too much religion in our government.
When it comes to a casual use of theocracy, it’s more applicable to ‘merica than the UK by far.
jackiepaper:
December 23rd, 2012 at 1:41 pm
Seriously, WTF is this? http://freethoughtblogs.com/rockbeyondbelief/2012/12/23/greg-laden-posts-a-home-address-and-employer-contacts-for-online-rival/ Justin really can’t get much lower.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 23rd, 2012 at 1:49 pm
Jackiepaper, I don’t have the slightest idea of what’s going on now, but Laden doesn’t have a good history when it comes to Justin. That said, I don’t follow Laden or Justin, so I don’t know who has done what in this current situation.
I also don’t
twittweet, facebook or any of that other stuff. I’m terminally clueless in that regard.Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 23rd, 2012 at 1:55 pm
jackiepaper:
I haven’t kept up with anything at Rock Beyond Belief. I just read that post and saw your comment, but I don’t have the context to understand your criticism of him. Now you mention he can’t get lower. Do you have a link or something so that I can understand where you’re coming from?
(I hope you do not take this as me defending him. I do not know enough to defend or condemn him.)
Beatrice:
December 23rd, 2012 at 2:04 pm
What Caine and Tony said.
Gnumann+, nothing gnu under the sun (but the name sticks):
December 23rd, 2012 at 2:27 pm
Can we agree that the US is closer to a functional theocracy (in political practice) while parts of Europe is a theocracy in principle (though not currently in political practice)?
The reason I get off on this is that (in my view) the current status of the religion-mingled European monarchies is a state of consensus rather than hard constitutional rules. And consensus is more volatile than constitution. Given the current climate of islamophobia and (otherwise) a lot of political apathy there could easily be a restitution of power to the heads of state. Some persons (Prince Haakon of Norway to name one) are actively working towards a greater political role of the royal families. When you add the link to religion which is very real (for instance, his father recently intervened in constitutional reform to ensure the link between the royal family and the church was preserved).
The religious right (and the political oppression of non-believers) is far more strong in the US. In Europe it’s more a hindrance for further advancement (so far, but it might become more scary).
Gnumann+, nothing gnu under the sun (but the name sticks):
December 23rd, 2012 at 2:37 pm
Blair:
If the infection is severe enough, and there is no good alternative, it might be necessary to accept false positives. Especially if the cure is not too severe.
In the future, you might want to hold off asking these question if you’re unable to formulate an alternative. At least if you don’t want to come off as JAQ’ING.
Imagine you are lifting something you barely can hold up. What would you rather have somebody do?
1: Come up to you, ask “are you really lifting that right? Should you even be lifting that?
2: Come up to and ask – can I help you with that?
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 23rd, 2012 at 2:43 pm
Gnumann:
This is territory of which I don’t know enough to even begin sounding intelligent. I’ll try to get some reading in today.
Gnumann+, nothing gnu under the sun (but the name sticks):
December 23rd, 2012 at 3:03 pm
Caine:
About those processes? Sources, especially in English are few and far between. I would need some substantial time just to find the relevant Norwegian ones. And even with the Norwegian ones, the implications are rarely openly discussed (due to the combination of a royalistic public and a populistic press). Haakons wife’s recent foray into a political hell-hole is readily available, though that one I for one think is more about idiocy than a political agenda (I might be wrong though):
clicky
The islamophobia and current economic-crisis-climate are not so hard to find. Unfortunately.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 23rd, 2012 at 3:08 pm
Gnumann:
To be fair, I think regressive tribalism is happening all over the damn place. Islam is a convenient excuse for all manner of people.
Gnumann+, nothing gnu under the sun (but the name sticks):
December 23rd, 2012 at 3:13 pm
Aye, I prefer “racism” or “xenophobia” instead of “islamophobia” tbh, but it leads to long-winded semantic discussions that’s a bore. Though I long for a new(non-emic, the emic terms are totally out of the equation) term since the phone omen has only the vaguest connection to Islam, and “phobia” does cover it (phobics are afraid, not nessecarly rabid haters).
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 23rd, 2012 at 3:28 pm
I so very much want to post that I’m stringing nuts in the feminism thread.
Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞:
December 23rd, 2012 at 3:30 pm
So I am sure everyone remembers JOACHIM the troll. Over at Dispatches, Ed Brayton has mentioned he is having open heart surgery on xmas day. While he said donations are unnecessary, he has given options to assist him if people desire. What does the troll say?-
Pissed me the fuck off he did.
Nick Gotts (formerly KG):
December 23rd, 2012 at 3:33 pm
Gnumann, I remember reading some time ago about a country’s move to secularism and it seems that the move into secularism is much faster and much easier when a country has an official church/religion. – Caine
I haven’t seen any evidence that this is so. I’ve come across the claim in the writings of Rodney Stark, an evangelical Christian sociologist of religion, who refers to it as the “supply side” theory of why the USA is more religious than western Europe, and I find it odd that so many American atheists seem to buy into it. Stark claims that because the USA has no state religion, religious denominations compete more, and so produce a superior product – so it’s a special case of “free market” ideology. But France, which has not had a state religion, and indeed has had state-supported secularism at least since 1871 (start of the 3rd Republic), with a brief interlude during the Vichy regime, is one of the least religious countries in Europe. Australia and New Zealand also lack official religion, and are pretty unreligious.
This is the etymological fallacy: that you can tell what a word means now, or ought to mean, from its original derivation.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 23rd, 2012 at 3:37 pm
Nick, thanks for that correction.
Gnumann+, nothing gnu under the sun (but the name sticks):
December 23rd, 2012 at 3:49 pm
Nick Gotts:
Nevertheless, I would prefer if words that are currently in use to describe mental illness (and common mental quirks that’s not crossed the threshold for illness) wasn’t used for rabid haters. I don’t mean that in a normative sense. I don’t think ill of people who use the term “islamophobia” – as I said I use it myself. I just long for a commonly understood term that doesn’t demonise real phobics and doesn’t whitewash the haters.
Gnumann+, nothing gnu under the sun (but the name sticks):
December 23rd, 2012 at 3:55 pm
Tony:
Me too, but I didn’t feel the thread was an appropriate place for troll-roast, so I didn’t respond directly. It took several ounces of self-control though (and I usually measure that in grammes). My comments about social security might be a wee bit passive-aggressive though.
Nick Gotts (formerly KG):
December 23rd, 2012 at 4:15 pm
Gnumann,
I see your point. I rather lazily responded without checking back for the context.
Gnumann+, nothing gnu under the sun (but the name sticks):
December 23rd, 2012 at 4:21 pm
Nick:
No worries. I’m commenting while semi-high on pork belly and ginger homebrew, so I’m probably not too lucid.
cm's changeable moniker:
December 23rd, 2012 at 5:00 pm
Do they really ferment that well? Enquiring minds want to know.
Gnumann+, nothing gnu under the sun (but the name sticks):
December 23rd, 2012 at 5:07 pm
The pork belly is not fermented. That’s more of a happy-high than a high-high. (There’s some family recipes for fermented sausage though, but you don’t want to cook that indoors in the wintertime, so that’s for summer).
The home brew is a family recipe. Basically the traditional moonshine mash with added lemon and ginger. Actually far better than it sounds (but the after-fermenting in you stomach is slightly annoying).
Gnumann+, nothing gnu under the sun (but the name sticks):
December 23rd, 2012 at 5:08 pm
Something tells me I ought to practice Oxford commas a bit more…
cm's changeable moniker:
December 23rd, 2012 at 5:33 pm
Teehee. I’m an Oxford comma person, myself. But I know there are those here who disagree.
*looks shiftiliy around; suspects Silinopolotsiswhatisface*
Rodney Nelson:
December 23rd, 2012 at 6:05 pm
XA-bunch of numbers #621
Thinking about it, you’re right. There are MRAs who would imitate Lepine if they thought they could get away with it and PZ was correctly pointing these people out. However, how is that inflammatory? There are men who think women should die “just because” and we have to do something about these people. Changing the sexist culture would go a long way to doing so and would be a fitting legacy to Lepine’s victims.
So your minor point about PZ calling MRAs wanna-be Lepines is correct. Your major point, that PZ making that statement is intemperate, is wrong. It’s not inflammatory, it’s a call to stop toxic and potentially murderous behavior, quite in line with Chris’s remembrance tone.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar:
December 23rd, 2012 at 6:38 pm
Look up “International Marc Lépine Day” if you have any questions about the fact that some MRAs would love to follow his example.
carlie:
December 23rd, 2012 at 6:53 pm
Those people are what we call “wrong”.
vaiyt:
December 23rd, 2012 at 7:02 pm
I believe PZ’s statement was rightfully inflammatory. It was meant to shock the rank-and-file of MRAdom into realising that their cavalier attitude about toxic misogyny gives tacit approval to the Marc Lépines among them.
carlie:
December 23rd, 2012 at 7:05 pm
The sad thing is that those same people often completely agree that moderate Christians give cover to the extremist fundamentalists. They just can’t transfer that understanding to anything they’re a part of.
ChasCPeterson:
December 23rd, 2012 at 10:07 pm
Has everyone seen Al Stefanelli’s new video?
Classic.
Also, Phil Giordana is a scary pirate!!!
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 23rd, 2012 at 10:11 pm
Chas:
It’s hard for me to imagine something I could care less about.
cm's changeable moniker:
December 23rd, 2012 at 10:11 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W2_vb-tDUk
It’s Christmas Eve again!
xxx cm
Rev. BigDumbChimp:
December 23rd, 2012 at 10:14 pm
Cm 666
Eeeeeeeeeevil
cm's changeable moniker:
December 23rd, 2012 at 10:30 pm
Six, six, seven, the neighbour of the beast.
ChasCPeterson:
December 23rd, 2012 at 10:38 pm
Well, thanks for sharing, Caine. In the future I’ll be more careful to only post shit you care about in the open threads.
Janine: Hallucinating Liar:
December 23rd, 2012 at 10:56 pm
I did not see where Caine said that you should only post shit she cares about.
Oh, wait, you are just being passive-aggressive about Caine saying what she thought about that.
Caine, Fleur du mal:
December 23rd, 2012 at 10:59 pm
Chas:
Jesus Christ, would you get down off that grudge you’re hanging on? My remark was about Giordana, not you.
John Morales:
December 24th, 2012 at 12:32 am
Gnumann:
If this is what you meant: , then yes.
–
Can we agree that the UK is not a theocracy, under any normal use of that term?
Janine: Hallucinating Liar:
December 24th, 2012 at 12:38 am
God save the queen! We mean it, man!
Gnumann+, something borrowed, something gnu...:
December 24th, 2012 at 5:16 am
It depends. We can agree that the UK is not commonly referred to as a theocracy.
John Morales:
December 24th, 2012 at 5:28 am
Gnumann, not even uncommonly.
You are the first to make that bizarre claim.
ChasCPeterson:
December 24th, 2012 at 5:34 am
No grudge, just straight-up reaction.
I post X*.
Caine’s entire comment: I am not interested in X.
What’s the point of a comment like that?
I’m certain that nobody would like it if I started identifying all the shit that you-all talk about that I don’t find interesting.
*(in this case, merely a funny picture of Giordana pulling a rockstar face)
Gnumann+, something borrowed, something gnu...:
December 24th, 2012 at 5:38 am
John:
Google says no
John Morales:
December 24th, 2012 at 5:40 am
Chas:
About as much as the point to a comment like “I find X interesting.”
John Morales:
December 24th, 2012 at 5:45 am
Gnumann, Google says ‘no’ to you in the first two hits. :)
First hit: “Why is the claim “Britain remains a theocracy” false?”.
Second hit: Wikipedia (to which I have twice linked):
Third hit supports you, though: “In UK, theocracy on the march | The American Conservative”.
(Congratulations!)
http://www.theamericanconservative.com
Gnumann+, something borrowed, something gnu...:
December 24th, 2012 at 5:52 am
Read further on.
As we can agree on it’s not common usage, you can hardly rely on the first hits, can you?
John Morales:
December 24th, 2012 at 5:58 am
Gnumann, try putting “Bigfoot is real” into the search engine, and see the first hits. :)
(It’s easier to ‘prove’ that Bigfoot is real than it is to provethe UK is a theocracy, by your method. What does that tell you?)
–
Care to define what you think is the meaning of the term ‘theocracy’?
Gnumann+, something borrowed, something gnu...:
December 24th, 2012 at 6:08 am
John: Perhaps I was a bit too brief, my 679 was a comment towards your claim that I was the first to call the UK a theocracy. Nothing else.
PZ Myers:
December 24th, 2012 at 7:29 am
NEW THREAD.