The thread still goes on? I can’t believe it. But then, I’m a scientist—I don’t believe anything.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
The thread still goes on? I can’t believe it. But then, I’m a scientist—I don’t believe anything.
This cracked me up this morning.
#618 Lynna refers to:
I wish it to be known that I am not a member of the Geo Group.
I would be curious to know:
1) Whether people had previously heard of the Herefordshire lagerstätte or seen any of the pictures from the research group.
2) Without reference to Google, do people know about the Dudley (Silurian) lagerstätte?
Ah. Understood. I guess that makes sense…
Still, I want pictures of powder when you get to it… Pretty please? Me, I’ll see maybe one week of that if I’m lucky this season (at Whistler, yes, which should be pretty cool, but still… so far, this coast kinda sucks more than usual this year, and it looks like I’m not even going to get to Tremblant until after Christmas at the earliest, now…)
(/In other news, congrats to Lynna for the Molly, and any rumours that I might be sneaking out to one of the nearby local hills with its few pathetic runs open at lunch after my one-on-one with my manager are complete calumnies–I would never do that–I’m only wearing these boarding boots already to break ’em in… yeah… that’s the ticket.)
Sphere Coupler, I really mean no offense by this, and I do not in any way want to dampen your enthusiasm for physics and cosmology. BIG HOWEVER, your post represents a wonderful example of why you NEED the math. There would simply be no way to formulate a self-consistent theory based on your view of cosmology–and the math would tell you that.
Science has to be constrained–either by observation or by mathematical consistency, and preferably both–or you are just making shit up that sounds good.
For instance, you assert that gravitons do not exist. What is your basis for this conclusion? There are plenty of good reasons for positing their existence:
1)every other force we know of is mediated by a vector boson (or two or three or 8).
2)a massless vector boson nicely explains why gravitational force follows an inverse square law
3)we know gravitational influences travel at or near the speed of light
4)and so on
Your characterization of our understanding of dark matter is sloppy, and jumping back and forth between Universes is not recommended even on a conceptual level.
Look, I’m not telling you this to dampen your enthusiasm. I think it is admirable. Unfortunately, because you haven’t gotten the math background, you are missing most of the interesting stuff. Yes, the most interesting thing about physics is all the stuff we don’t know, but the way a physicist thinks about this is to say, “OK, it could be this, but how could we test it?” Verification is part of the speculation. That’s where the fun is. Does that make any sense?
#621 SEF
If you will pardon the expression, this was not a black and white case. This is not the deep South and black children not allowed to attend public schools with white children. As Lord Sacks the Chief Rabbi said:
Might I suggest that a more careful reading of the Judge’s comments is required. From the BBC (no friend of anything Judaic, Jewish, Israeli) report:
What has happened here is that a school has asseseed whether a pupil should be accepted on the basis of a religious test – is the mother a member of the Jewish religion? If she is a Jew by descent then she is of the Jewish religion. If the mother claims to be Jewish by conversion then a definition has to be used to decide whether that conversion is acceptable to those who make such religious decisions.
The Jewish religious authorities under the leadership of the Chief Rabbi are Orthodox. The form of conversion she underwent was not in line with that required by the Orthodox religious authorities. (There is much discussion in British Jewry between Orthodox and Liberal parties). The decision, therefore, is a religious decision and is not directly related to race.
The Court (or at least a majority) have taken on themselves to decide that a religion shall not have the right to decide on a religious matter – who is or is not a member of our Faith.
You may or may not like religion in any form, you may or may not like the Jewish religion. But in the US I doubt very much whether the Constitution would allow the Government (who in the UK passed the laws that are being interpreted) to start to tell those of religion, or no religion, what they can and cannot do in religious matters. I thought this is what many on this site have complained bitterly about.
As I said, this is not a simple matter and it has taken several levels of Judgement to reach this verdict which was only a majority verdict.
According to the Supreme Court (UK) President:
“The majority [of members of the Spureme Court]have made it plain in their judgments that the fact that the JFS admission policy has fallen foul of the Race Relations Act certainly does not mean those responsible for the admissions policy have behaved in a way that is racist, as that word as generally understood.”
Note the careful choice of words: the school is judged to have “fallen foul of” not “broken” the Race Relations Act.
… but also neither competent nor honest – so hardly having any authority or opinion worth anything! I don’t regard lawyers and judges as particularly honest or competent either. The UnSAnians should know this from their own collection of nutters.
The version of Jewishness the school bods were trying to get away with is every bit as racist as the BNP. It’s just that religion is used to getting a special-pleading free pass. And you’re willing to give them just that. Any religion which insists on having a tribal family lineage is de facto racist. It doesn’t matter whether they’re as white or as black as the people against whom they’re discriminating.
Incidentally, it should be the child’s Jewishness and not the converted mother’s which is at stake anyway. The mother is not attending the school!
The BBC story about the Jewish school kicking a kid out because his mother was not sufficiently Jewish sounds like tribalism to me. While abhor the entire concept of schools based on religion, I don’t see how you can legally stop them from employing restrictive admission standards (no matter how bonkers) unless you stop religious institutions from offering education.
In Idaho there is a charter school in Nampa that wants to use the bible as an educational textbook. This is a somewhat different case, since the school is not claiming to allow only a certain brand of Christian student, but in effect they are preaching and teaching a specific brand of christianity.
Policing an educational system turns out to be quite difficult.
Here’s the website for the GEO Group to which Alan B does not belong: http://www.thegeogroupinc.com/ Their main emphasis is making money:
Alan B @630
I hereby announce my complete ignorance previous to your enlightening presentation of the Herefordshire lagerstätte. I also maintain that I am profoundly ignorant in reference to the Dudly (Silurian) lagerstätte.
Per Rorschach’s comment about Wackenhut. I don’t know all of the ins and outs of the the GEO/Wackenhut relationship. Wiki says:
I can’t tell if Wackenhut actually sold out to GEO, or if GEO is Wackenhut under a new name, new mask, and less history in the courts. Did present GEO people work for Wackenhut previously? Some did. Should I have said that GEO runs former Wackenhut facillities, but has no connection to Wackenhut? I don’t know.
Wackenhut wacked Karen Silkwood. In the 1998 Atlantic Article “The Prison Industrial Complex” (from which I quoted in comment #618), George C. Zoley is identified as ” the chief executive officer of Wackenhut Corrections” — and now Zoley is CEO of GEO.
:-) :-) :-) ^_^ ^_^ ^_^ (-: (-: (-:
It snowed all morning long! And in the afternoon it snowed again! There are up to three centimeters of snow lying around, covering everything (that hasn’t been salted so far)!
Ah. Never seen that done to bread. :-)
Exactly :-)
Nope and nope, respectively. Well, the name Dudley appears to ring some bell, but I don’t know which one.
Do we, actually? Has that been measured?
David M.: Answers to your black hole questions here, if you’re interested.
But that’s it. The traditional, and Orthodox, definition of “Jew” is “anyone with a Jewish mother”.
In Judaism, the whole concept that there’s a difference between a people and a religious community only dates to Hellenistic times, and almost all scripture is older than that.
Thanks!
Yes, that is it – it’s fundamentally racist!
Not all religions have to be racist of course (just as not all religions have to be anti-evolution). That one has merely chosen to be racist. As such it’s “illegal” in some senses in the UK – but, simply because it’s a religion, it has been continuing to get its traditional free pass. It’s time to put a stop to that – along with the tax breaks and everything else.
#635 Lynna said:
I never join the right groups …
#634 Alan B said:
To which SEF replied:
With all due respect, neither my view of the BBC nor yours is the point here (perhaps I should not have raised it but the BBC seemed to be surprisingly factual and even-handed in their reporting which is unusual because of their usual bias).
The BBC were using direct quotes ” … ” of what the head of the Supreme Court of the UK said. The authority or opinion of the BBC does not change the words in a SC judgment.
An interesting observation but nothing to do with what was said in the UK Supreme Court in its ruling which is what the BBC was reporting.
You are welcome to your opinion but the UK Supreme Court made the opposite point, with an (informed) opinion based on reviewing the evidence and reviewing previous court judgments in the light of English Law.
They quite specifically did not call the actions of this school “… every bit as racist as the BNP.”
You appear to be happy for the Supreme Court (UK) to get directly involved in the religious decisions of Judaism in the UK. How would you feel if the US Supreme Court was taken over by Republicans and Creationists who then started making religious decisions for church, synagogue and mosque (to say nothing about schools)?
(I know the Constitution says something about this but it can be changed (or interpreted or ignored …)
#643
I suppose my main point is that IMO you have chosen to hang your views of Judaism on the wrong hook. The Supreme Court of the UK, interpreting UK Law, is saying the actions of a school are not racist in the normal way that would be understood. They have not “broken the law”, they have merely “fallen foul” of it.
I never said they did. You’re repeatedly missing the point – which is that they should have done! I don’t value their opinions/judgments precisely because they are so frequently faulty – as they are now. It shouldn’t have been anywhere near so hard for them to work out (ie in a majority verdict only) that the school (and that specific flavour of religion) was in the wrong.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1236651/Is-lost-city-Atlantis-Grainy-images-released-showing-city-like-structures-beneath-Caribbean-Sea.html
Why are they always “grainy images”?
#630
Since both David Marjanović and Lynna confess ignorance of the Dudley lagerstätte I will probably look at that shortly. Don’t expect something like the Herefordshire version.
Why do I am always thinking about beer when I type “lagerstätte”? [Ed. And he can’t even work it out – doh!]
YEC Journals etc. on the Internet
Part 1 The Creation Research Society
http://www.creationresearch.org/
The CRS produces a Quarterly “Peer-reviewed Journal” (CRSQ) and a bimonthly “Popular Publication” (Matters)
They are at the url above but ending /crsq.html and /matters.html respectively.
From their site:
While all the CRSQ Abstracts are indeed available, any attempt to keyword search using the search box gives an “internal server error”. Thanks guys! The CRSQ goes back to Volume 3 in 1967 (earlier Volumes were dummies).
The number of articles available (mostly as pdfs) is limited. Also, some of them lack the Figures (text only). You may find something of interest, you may not. If it’s not there, you will have to pay (no thanks).
“Matters” runs from 1996 to date but current year is members only. There is no search facility offered. You select by year and issue and browse page 2 to find the index.
Finally, they have a book to sell called (Josh please note) “The Geologic Column” see:
http://creationresearch.org/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=BK-GEO0&Category_Code=
My Comments
I cannot comment on the book but the main authors are Reed and Oard (with contributions by many others). Presumably this will give an up-to-date (?) overview of the Traditional view of YEC.
CRSQ is good (by YEC standards which makes it bad by everyone else’s). Most of the expected authors seem to turn up. The standard is perhaps higher (i.e. a bit more thoughtful and “meaty” than TJ that I have referred to several times in my “Share and Enjoy” series. Unlike TJ they appear to have no short articles (none are listed in the Abstracts). These are in “Matters”. Matters tends to be more chatty with short pieces, many of them commenting on mainstrean science articles to show how they actually support YEC (really and truly: they really do …). The lack of a search facility is a total pain but the 2 CD set (of Matters to 2007 & CRSQ to 2008) they will sell you (at $125) is searchable by pdf.
Yes! I’ve been eying this book for a while, but I don’t want to give those fuckers any dough.
Livestreaming of what may be an announcement of the discovery of WIMPS/DM!
A classic tale of the late Oral Roberts, from a Tulsa World article linked by Jerry Coyne:
Seems to me that Roberts would have been more face-to-toenail than face-to-face with 900-Foot-Tall-Jesus.
But I think the fact that nobody else seemed to notice the 900-ft.-tall apparition lifting a half-built hoispital at 7 pm says a lot about Tulsa, Oklahoma.
It snowed again :-)
(…After raining. Hmpf.)
Quoth amphiox:
It’s cold here (16°F/-9°C) but clear. It’s supposed to flurry on Saturday and snow on Sunday. We’ll see.
It’s not snowing here – but that’s only because I have a roof over me! :-D
@Josh,
In one of the older incarnation of The Thread, I wondered about the hypothesis(?) that places the iridium layer of the K/Pg boundary 300Ka after the Chicxulub impact. You had already gone off doing whatever it was you were doing by then, so I just wanted to re-ask the question in case you had any thoughts. David Marjanović suggested that Keller’s team overlooked the obvious, but it looks like she’s found supporting evidence in tsunami deposits in Texas and Mexico. So… I dunno?
Oh, and as long as I’m asking, I also wondered if you had any thoughts on “Shiva” — David M. explained that Chatterjee has been claiming that it is a crater but had not convinced anyone for more than a decade. Again, any thoughts?
In #95 I mentioned the indirect evidence of gravitational waves observed in the PSR B1913+16 binary system. If you use the data from the decaying orbit you get that the speed of gravity is within 1% of the speed of light [Source].
A more direct, but less precise, method was done by Kopeikin and Fomalon. They measured the deflection of radio waves caused (a moving) Jupiter’s gravitational field. They put the speed of gravity within 20% of the speed of light.
Here it’s -16°C/3°F. Canadian winters. Thankfully it’s not snowing because I don’t want to be shoveling in this cold.
Or… a convert to Judaism.
Conversion is relatively rare, especially for men (who wants to undergo painful and intimate surgery to join a religion?)(then again, some people voluntarily undergo piercings and even more extreme body modification just for kicks, so what do I know?) — but not impossible, and not restricted by race.
The issue comes down to a conflict between two branches of Judaism: Orthodox Jewish Rabbis want converts to jump through hoops before being considered converted. Circumcision is only one such hoop, of course (and it’s the only one that’s both small and actually on fire, as it were)(and as such, it’s also usually done toward the end of the hoop-jumping), and women, while not having to jump through the small hoop on fire, do still have hoops to jump through. Progressive Jewish Rabbis, on the other hand, have large, roomy hoops that can be walked through rather than jumped through, or are willing to waive some or all of the hoop-jumping schtick as stale and outmoded primitive tradition.
The kvetch made by the Orthodox Jewish Rabbis is that the boy’s mother did not jump through the hoops that Orthodox Jewish Rabbis think that converts ought to jump through. Technically, the boy (and his mother) can jump through the right hoops and be considered proper Orthodox Jews, regardless of race.
Given all of the above, racism is a rather ludicrously extreme interpretation of the issue.
Santa is not having it easy in this thread.
-19°C/-2°F
SEF @626, ah. Good explanation.
If the school takes a single dollar of public funds, then the issue becomes “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” rather than “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
If they accept any tax dollars or any tax deferments, then the public does have the right to dictate how they will practice their religion.
And most religious organizations do accept tax deferments under provision 501(c)(3). With this, they already accept at least one government dictate: they may not endorse political candidates, even if endorsing political candidates is a central tenet of their faith.
If they take no taxes and they pay their own taxes as a profit-motivated business, then they have some more freedom.
Still, there is no absolute right to private ethnic discrimination in the United States. Especially if a practice of association perpetuates the “badges or incidents” of established discrimination against a suspect classification of people, then courts may intervene in private affairs, as they do regarding hiring discrimination under Title VII.
The traditional definition of Jewishness is plausibly considered racist not because of the size of the hoops, or matrilineality per se (note that Karaite Judaism uses patrilineality instead), but because Jewishness extends even to non-believing children.
Every religion is insular and discriminatory toward non-members, but membership is opt-in. With traditional Judaism, the benefits of community membership — few though they be — are extended upon ethnic lines. This is changing in the most progressive synagogues, and in time mainstream Judaism will adapt, as it has before. Too bad for the Orthodox.
seconded!
now there’s fluffy, white snow AND non-fluffy, non-white bread! Best Squidmas vacation EVAR
@ Owlmirror #659:
But those hoops are themselves a later addition to their original racist doctrine – showing that they could become even less racist if they tried (like some other flavours of jews have), eg by only caring about the boy’s “hoops”. It’s all too revealing that they whinged about his mother.
Whereas other religions are much more evangelical, convert-grabbing entities, Judaism was solidly based in racism from the get-go. Everything else is just them being forced (by the outside world) to introduce fudges to get around that, like all the ridiculousness over what constitutes work and fire on the Sabbath.
These people (ie in their religion!) are fundamentally racist and are merely trying, extremely reluctantly, to dig themselves out of that pit, one tiny speck of dirt at a time (with much retrograde motion whenever they can get away with it), assiduously ignoring the rescue ladder etc.
A Black man imprisoned in the USA (Florida) for 35 years was exonerated yesterday (the longest ever for a wrongly convicted person in the USA, link). Sadly, James Bain did not make it out of the celestial dictatorship:
Leaving a devoted worshiper locked up for 35 years?—Another example of how evil God would be if it were real.
It’s that tough love schtick.
I dont know about that.
Just imagine being locked up and effectively have your life taken from you, for 35 fucking years ! Would make lesser characters convert to belief in some deity and promise of a better life in the afterlife i guess…
There is no god, so the blame is on the US judicial system.
I have watched Law& Order for 15 years now, and also watched “12 angry men”, a movie made 50 years ago, enough to realise that the US judicial system with its juries of citizens that have no clue, are prejudiced and no idea about what they’re doing, is a bad joke at best, and screws up people’s lifes at worst.
On the contrary, James Oliver Bain has suffered gloriously as a warning to the rest of us. His reward will be in Heaven.
It would be “treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen”; except that it’s actually a case of (non-existent) “ignore them utterly so they know you love them” (as per that sparkly vampire book/film stuff people have been mentioning on the interwebz).
I’ll admit something here, I can give a pass to a man who was wrongly convicted and imprisoned for 35 years turning to religion as a way to cope. There’s not much in prison for people to grab a hold of and if it helped him do his time, then I’ve got no problem with that. People do irrational things under duress.
Re the Jewish school controversy: For me, it should depend on whether or not the school receives public funds. If the school is publicly-funded (as many faith schools in the UK are, since we don’t have a direct equivalent to the First Amendment), it is right for the law to require that it adopt a non-discriminatory policy, IMO. Taxpayer funds should not be used to support institutions which exclusively benefit members of a single ethno-religious community. (Indeed, I’m not keen on public funding of state schools in general.)
At the same time, if the school were an entirely private/voluntary body which received no public funds, it ought, IMO, to be free to set whatever admission criteria it wishes. Under the principle of freedom of association, I would argue that private religious schools, like churches, synagogues and other voluntary bodies, should be able to adopt whatever policies they choose for their own members.
Because poor kids don’t need an education. I wonder if your affliction is getting worse instead of better.
This isn’t a question that principles will answer. We generally don’t allow discrimination in private employment because employment is effectively mandatory. Likewise schooling is mandatory.
We must look at the consequences. What is the impact of allowing Orthodox Jews the benefit of ethnic discrimination in private schooling? Probably not very great, considering their small numbers. Were they 80% of the population, though, it would be more necessary to intervene.
Sorry, this was a typing error. I meant public funding of faith schools.
*pops in to The Thread*
Well, that had to be the coldest f-ing ruck I’ve done since last February.
That sucked.
*pops out*
#659 Owlmirror said:
Which was also the position of the head of the UK Supreme Court and the point I was making.
Many here (and I concur) are upset by the high pressure conversion tactics used by some churches. By contrast, here is a religion that, far from putting emotional and psychological pressures on people, puts lots of obstacles in the way of people converting and some still don’t like it!
Agreed (although personally, I would leave out “Technically”). Thus, race is not the issue (unlike segregation in the US). The key point is whether the State should be able to take away the right of UK Judaism to decide who is and who is not a member of their religion. The State should only impose its will when a breach of the Criminal law has taken place. And in this case, the Head of the Supreme Court of the UK has been careful NOT to say that.
Technically, they aren’t. This doesn’t change how synagogues can define Jewishness. It does mean that if they are going to define Jewishness by ethnicity, then they can not use Jewishness so defined as a requirement for school admission.
Yes, definitely. I would be pissed at the judicial system. I don’t understand how Bain can be peaceful over this or how he can attribute the release to God but not the imprisonment. Despite that, I’m very happy for Bain, whatever his beliefs, and horrified that the judicial system here is so sloppy as to convict on eyewitness testimony alone.
Me too. I imagine the pressure to identify as a believer is very strong in prisons, sort of as a way to make the statement that you’ve changed and become a better person. Or I could be reading it all wrong and Bain could just really like his religion and see it as a hobby he wants to devote his time to now that he is free.
That possibility—that state of mind—is really what scares me about faith.
It is like that, isn’t it? I also saw the sparkly vampire love as like training a wild animal because you never know when they are going to rip your head off.
One guy who is guilty is being locked up. A polygamist from the Yearning for Zion ranch in Texas was given a 33-year jail sentence. He had a “spiritual marriage” to a 15-year-old girl, but she gave birth when she was 16. I guess that’s how the spirit works.
Allan Keate is 57 years old, and had six wives. I really don’t care if people over the age of 21 want to set themselves up in marriages of multiple persons, but this business of pressuring young girls into marriage, of ending their education early, of carting their young boyfriends off to Salt Lake City or Vegas and dumping into the Lost Boy pool, them etc. is really nothing but abuse.
Feel free not to read this post if you are not interested in the Jewish school issue but if you want to comment further, I suggest it might help you to understand the issues as seen from the UK. I am not a lawyer, or a teacher or a School Governor but this is my understanding of the legal and educational issues.
You in the US might not like our legal and education system. You might think your system is better or even that any other system is better. You might well find support for those views over here. To aid discussion I have numbered the paragraphs:
1) Most schools are owned and managed by the Local Education Authority (i.e. ultimately the Government – the State). They employ the staff, set the curriculum, are responsible for capital expenditure, health and safety of staff and pupils along with all others aspects of running the schools. The individual schools have a Board of Governors who include LEA appointees, interested parents and teachers and other local worthies (in the past this would often be a doctor or a solicitor or other professionally qualified people). Overall, the LEA maintains total control of the school in line with State and local government policies (whether the parents like it or not).
2) There are a number of other types of schools. Notable for our discussion is faith schools. These are schools that are recognised by the State to have a particular religious basis. Often these are schools which were founded specifically for a religious purpose and were subsequently taken over by the State.
3) To formalise the arrangements, 2 types of school were set up: Voluntary Contribution (VC) and Voluntary Aided (VA). Most Church of England schools became VC while most RC and Jewish schools chose VA status. Tuition costs were still met by the State, indeed, the arrangements for VC schools are little different from run-of-the-mill State schools. For VA schools, a larger share of running the school meant a smaller amount of money from the State and a significant contribution towards capital costs from the Governers.
Two important features: No school (even VC or VA) can choose pupils on the basis of ability unless they are totally self-funding. Nor can they charge parents for the education of their children. There are a very few VA boarding schools. They are allowed to charge boarding costs but nothing more. They select purely on the suitability of the pupil to board.
4) While it is not invariably true, faith schools (at lower cost to the State) have a higher reputation and provide a demonstrably better education than State-run schools. This is confirmed by mandatory Government inspections and resulting league tables. The JFS school was last inspected in May this year and was said to be “Outstanding” in each of the 38 categories used in the inspection. (I am open to correction but I think “Outstanding” is the highest grading.)
5) Because of the higher standards (achieved, they would claim in part because of the religious basis of the schools) VC and particularly VA schools are very sort after. Parents will move house and employment to live close to one for the sake of their (often unborn!) children. Non-religious families will often discover religion or claim religious affiliation to get a child into the school.
6) Popular schools will have far too many applications for the existing size of the school. Hence, some form of selection has to take place. To select only from the local area will often mean that rich families will move in and bias the intake to the disadvantage of those who do not have the flexibility and money. Also, these parents will often have given their children special help with tutors or fee-paying private schools. Since these schools are forbidden by law from discriminating on the basis of ability a different method of selection is needed.
7) You might ask, if these schools are so good, why doesn’t the State encourage them to grow and take more children. To answer that you need to ask the Socialist Government who seem more keen on levelling the playing field to a mediocre standard than encouraging those schools that produce the best results and drawing up the standard in that way. Incidentally, virtually all the Labour government ministers have their children at the best schools – either fee paying or faith schools. For example ex-PM Tony Blair sent his children to a VA RC school some miles away from his home rather than the decidedly poor local state school. DAISNAID.
8) One form of selection that is allowed to faith schools is to choose those who have demonstrated a serious commitment to the religious basis of the school. This makes some sense because there is little evidence that this distorts the ability mix. Also it encourages parental and family support from those who are already committed and supporting their local church/synagogue. (In the UK, active proselytising would be strongly jumped on. At the RC school my grandson attends there are only a handful of confirmations each year – a tiny proportion of the total pupils.)
9) Thus, in the UK system (which I am not claiming to be better than any other) the JFS Jewish school is totally legal, is highly successful based on independent assessment and highly sort after. It is allowed to choose its pupils on a religious basis and costs the State less to run than a similar sized State school. It is simply “Outstanding”.
10) In this JFS case, the mother has strong connections with the school (I understand she is/was a teacher there). Her son (aged 12) has professed no interest in the Jewish religion. The mother, knowing the school religious selection requirements, has still chose to go through a process not acceptable to the Orthodox Jewish religion and hence has chosen to make her son unlikely to be accepted compared with others (mothers and sons / daughters) who take their religion more seriously.
11) This case is far more nuanced than many here believe. Before the case came to the final court of appeal, other courts had ruled, first against the mother but finally for her. The UK Supreme Court has 9 members. The decision was 5:4 i.e. the smallest majority with several of their Lordships strongly opposed to the decision. The effect has been that the school has changed its admission procedures and now requires a careful assessment of the religious performance of the family but in such a way that race and ethnicity is clearly separated from religion. This, of course, will reduce the flexibility of the school to choose non-Jews who they can see will benefit highly from the style of education offered.
12) For those who think that the school should just go private and cut the State’s apron strings it is the opinion of many that the same ruling will apply to Private religious fee-paying schools. The faintist hint of choice based on ethnicity as distinct from religious faith would attract the weight of the Law based on this 5:4 majority decision. If the school had decided it did not like the ruling the only option would have been to close down to the serious disadvantage of the children there. The State has decided that the Jewish religion shall not have the right to decide who is a member of that religion. And it has used the Race Relations Act to do it, even though many do not believe that this has anything to do with race.
Tap water that’s legal, but unhealthy: NPR has a Fresh Air podcast out on toxic drinking water.
And there’s also a New York Times article.
#674 Hi Josh
Take the weight off your feet and pull up a warm English beer!
I have a glass of dry Herefordshire cider in my hand and I salute you.
(Still got a few more Geologic Column™ articles – there is one in particular that I can’t put my hands on at the moment.)
Alan B (#680), Your points are extremely naive in their basis! And that’s the generous interpretation of your world-view.
The school grading system has often been shown to be very flawed – partly because of incompetent and corrupt inspectors. Good schools get labelled as failing in order to allow them to be taken over by purchasers and certain bad schools (ie those already under evil control) are helped to flout the law and get falsely labelled as good. NB Some of the links to the evidence (especially Ofsted’s own ones) have been deleted.
On objective measures such as exam grades (though there’s unfortunately a lot of dishonesty there too, from help with course-work to selecting fake/easy subjects to take), religious schools only do better in so far as they carefully choose parents (and hence children) on the basis of already not being scum, eg being literate, pushy and likely to succeed. The “religious” test is merely a cover to let them legally avoid those who are poor – in cash, in ability, in morals and in expectations. NB consider the ones who wouldn’t even think of trying to get their kids into a “good” school. It’s self-perpetuating and dishonestly founded.
Remember the correlation between religiosity and all the ills of society and then wonder how the religious schools somehow miraculously manage to avoid having more of those sorts of religious people go to them. If they genuinely believed they were capable of providing the best morals etc, they would take the worst pupils and fix them up. They don’t do this. They carefully rig the “religion” test to take the affluent, aspirational ones.
At least in the UK, the religious brain-washing doesn’t work as well as in seriously woo-steeped cultures. Religious schools here (of the older Christian type anyway) often turn out atheists, because there’s too much opportunity to work out that the religion is bogus. On the other hand, despite pre-selection and their much vaunted religious morals, some religious schools have still somehow managed to have a worse drug and sex problem than rival non-religious schools.
It snowed again all morning long. No significant amounts, however.
I remember that vaguely, but… probably the deposits are difficult to date or something. I’m not as familiar with this literature as I should be if we kindly ignore the fact that my thesis is mostly about the time between the Devonian-Carboniferous boundary mass extinction and the Permian-Triassic boundary mass extinction. It’s not exactly textbook wisdom in any case.
Ah, thanks.
#674 Hi again
While you are relaxing, Josh, enjoy a few English granites
http://www.turnstone.ca/shap.htm
http://www.turnstone.ca/rom101wr.htm
http://www.turnstone.ca/rom100sw.htm
The first comes from a commercial quarry at Shap in NW England. The owners have been kind enough to dump some massive (several tonnes each) boulders where the quarry access road meets the main road. However, one of the easiest places to find Shap granite is on the East coast at Robin Hood’s Bay. This is a classic location for the Jurassic lower lias.
http://www.robinhoodsbay.org/geo/mil2stu/millbeck.htm
Scan down and you’ll find a large boulder transported by glaciers and left on the beach while erosion has worn away the boulder clay and the lias shales. I’ve got a cobble from the beach. (Couldn’t get the crane and dumper truck down the steep access road to collect the boulders.)
Incidentally, at Staithes, a bit further N but still on the Yorkshire coast they have a serious problem of erosion (again in Jurassic lias). The road down to the small harbour is about 1 in 3½ and narrow. The most economic and practical way to get rock slabs in is to transport them across from Norway. I only found some gneiss but there is larvikite as well (if I’d found it I would have been cut off by the tide!) I have some hand specimens from further down the coast (Robin Hood’s Bay again). It seems almost everything of interest “outcrops” amongst the pebbles of Robin Hood’s Bay.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Larvikite.jpg
From the inexhaustible Prof West: PermoTriassic red beds:
http://www.soton.ac.uk/~imw/Dawlish-Warren.htm
(The only excuse being they also use larvikite for their coastal defences.)
‘Tis Himself and Mr. Fire, very belated thanks for visiting my blog and leaving comments. That was lovely to find you’d been there. I finally replied to your comments. I am nowhere near as good at blogging as PZ, nor do I respond to my fans in a timely fashion.
Well, okay, “fan” not “fans.” I have one official fan. ~:-)
Alan B @687: Those were some great pics of granite! Thanks.
Josh is not gneiss man, you know.
I like narrow roads. Too bad we don’t have my brother’s truck, The Predator, to make our way down to the harbor north of Staithes.
Hi, Alan.
When I get home this afternoon, I think a pint of warm brew will be just the ticket. And thanks for those links. I’ll browse them this evening or tomorrow AM. Indeed, it looks as though there is going to be some browsing time available; they’re currently predicting 10-20 inches getting dumped on us before tomorrow night. Maybe I’ll finally get through those two or whatever threads that I missed/Owl’s question, etc.
I definitely think stocking up on some good snacks on my way home is in order (presuming everything hasn’t already flown off the shelves–DC gets absolutely frozen by weather).
#683 SEF
I see no point in continuing from my end. I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.
Heh…that’s a true statement on several levels. At the base of it, though, all rocks are good rocks. Even those once perfectly good sediments* that nature has seen fit to fuck all up.
*Of course, I always prefer to believe that any gneiss that I’m looking at had an igneous or metamorphic (from igneous) protolith…and that no sediment was harmed during the making of this outcrop.
#690 Josh
My grandson and I have regularly been out for walks since he was very young. He went through a stage when everything was either “GOOD™” or “BAD™”.
While we were looking in a quarry (as you do) he asked me whether one particular sample was “GOOD” or “BAD” and I told him there is no such thing as a “BAD” rock!
At times he thinks I’m mad – I tell him I am just enthusiastic. [Ed. – he could be right, of course]
What you have to remember, Ed, is that the line between enthusiastic and mad is perhaps not always that clearly delineated.
I have a very clear picture of how that conversation must have gone, Alan. I can imagine myself in your grandson’s role (I was pretty black and white when I was a kid).
Alan B @691, out of the mouths of babes, and all that … perhaps you are only a bit mad?
Josh @690:
LOL. A pollyanna-ish viewpoint, but I totally understand. Don’t go putting undue pressure on my sedimentary rocks, the poor dears! Besides, the “book” of geology would be a lot easier to “read” if certain “pages” had not been shredded or pulped or cooked or cooked-then-pressed.
What I find particularly annoying is when a fuck-up of sedimentary rock was begun, but then not completed. I shake my fist and say, “Who did this?! This does not match my expectations!” Rock formations are out to confuse me … and they know I don’t have my brother Steve’s patience.
When I first started following my brother Steve around on geological explorations, I would bring something to him that I thought was interesting and ask him to identify it. “That’s leaverite,” he’d often say. It took me awhile to figure out that I was supposed to leave ‘er right there because the rock wasn’t worth picking up. Not a “bad” rock exactly, but not worth packing up or down a mountain.
“leaverite” is funny
“Leaverite” is even funnier when you realize that it illustrates my gullibility, which is legendary according to my brothers.
Apropos of nothing, I only just now discovered that Avatar has absolutely nothing to do with Avatar.
Seriously, Hollywood. This is worse than that Antz/A Bug’s Life thing.
And less obvious than Wegwerfit* and Stein an sich**…
* Throw-away-ite.
** Not any particular kind of rock, but just rock. Just stone. Like how plain text does not have a font size, font face, font color… Also, a parody of Hegel’s idealist philosophy. Hegel asked for it.
Das Ding an sich, the thing in itself, as opposed to our perception of it. Actually, I have no idea if that’s Hegel. I don’t even care.
How Kant you care?
It Marx you a poor philosopher.
Yes, I have to Bentham my mind to pun.
Lynna and others
Are you aware of the Dry Dredgers site?
http://drydredgers.org/
Well worth exploring if you are interested in Ordovician fossils in particular but there’s lots of other fossil-type things. They come from the Cincinnatian and locally the fossils just lie on the surface and can be collected in bucket-fulls.
Try also Youtube for a load of videos about the fossils in their area. Well worth a browse around.(e.g. search YOUtube for Cininnatian brachiopods, dry dredgers – I’m sure you’ll find plenty.)
Play some of the videos with your brachiopods watching – they’ll enjoy them!
This has been a public service announcement on behalf of the brachiopod appreciation society.
Okay, everyone, all together now, what US city is the type section of the Cincinnatian near?
Sorry. Josh + friends + dinner + gin + vermouth = silly comments.
Gosh, Josh, I wonder if the type section of the Cincinnatian is anywhere near Cinncinnati, Ohio?
You should drink gin and vermouth more often, it makes you more gneiss.
On the Dry Dredgers website there were some nice photos of fossils found on each of their expeditions. I liked the Silurian coral reef at the Oakley Quarry site — and for the brachiopod appreciation society, there were even a few pics of brachiopod fossils near the bottom of the page for an October field trip.
David, thanks for the new terms. Since my brother doesn’t speak German, I wonder if I can get away with Wegwerfit? Even a moment of doubt in Steve’s eyes would be good payback.
Hi Josh
Some more papers that might be helpful. After the first 3 I have omitted the first 7 characters of the urls to allow me to keep on going. I have starred * those papers that FROM MEMORY might be of particular interest. You may or may not find this helps! If not, ignore it. I’ve included a couple of other papers of general interest. I started too late to put one line comments in brackets – some have, some not.
*Studies in Flood Geology:
Clarifications Related to the ‘Reality’ of the Geologic Column
JOHN WOODMORAPPE
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j10_2/j10_2_279-290.pdf
*The Geological Record
Statement from a meeting at Bolney
House, Sussex, in August 1996 to discuss various issues
of Flood geology.
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j10_3/j10_3_333-334.pdf
*The Global Stratigraphic Record (Letter)
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j11_1/j11_1_40-45.pdf
Old Rocks Where They Shouldn’t be
A. A. Snelling
creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j11_3/j11_3_257-258.pdf
*Letter Geologic Column Letter & Reply by Woodmorappe
creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j14_1/j14_1_45.pdf
Genesis and catastrophe:
the Flood as the major biblical cataclysm
Andy C. McIntosh, Tom Edmondson and Steve Taylor
creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j14_1/j14_1_101-109.pdf
(Theology does away with the British Model)
Conflicting ‘ages’ of Tertiary basalt and contained fossilised wood,
Crinum, Central Queensland, Australia
Andrew A. Snelling
creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j14_2/j14_2_99-122.pdf
(Thought it might be of interest)
*Flood Models
Paul Garner, Michael Garton, Steven Robinson & David Tyler
UK
creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j14_3/j14_3_79-80.pdf
(Arguments about McIntosh et al paper)
Reply by McIntosh
creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j14_3/j14_3_80-82.pdf
*Toppling the Timescales
Part III Madness in the Method http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/45/45_1/CRSQ%20Summer%2008%20Reed.pdf
(The other parts are behind the CRSQ paywall
*The Uniformitarian Stratigraphic Column—
Shortcut or Pitfall for Creation Geology?
John K. Reed and Carl R. Froede Jr.
http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/40/40_2/2003v40n2p090.pdf
(I seem to remember this was interesting)
The Current Status of Baraminology
Todd Charles Wood
http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/43/43_3/2006v43n3p149.pdf
(Just so people can stay up to date with the science of Baraminology – you know you want to …)
#703 Lynna
I seem to remember that one of their best collecting sites was right next door to a creation museum! (Indeed, the museum was built on the same formation – they probably unearthed thousands). There is a video on Youtube that mentions it and shows how close it is.
And so to bed.
Thanks, Alan. You…rock.
Nope. Brunswick, New Jersey.
*ducks*
Heh…not likely.
Damn! And I’ll bet you’re still pretty fast even when you’re drunk, so I might as well not waste any effort throwing rocks at you. I have some Teton jade (not real jade, but jadeite, I think) that’s really dense, nice weight in the hand …
Here’s a nice ballad by Heather Dale:
I collected an amazingly cute rolled-up trilobite from the Cincinnatian of Indiana. We were on a class field trip, and it was about 35 degrees and raining, and several people honked and stopped to yell at us for collecting in a protected area. Like the facts that it was a bunch of 20somethings with one older professorial-looking gentlemen climbing around on an outcrop next to the highway in weather not fit for a dog didn’t provide enough clues that it was an approved class trip. I did like that they were protective of their fossil grounds, but did wish they had thought a little bit about it before being rude.
How about instead of it? ;-)
“Tis Himself, OM – Thanks for the link to Heather Dale. I’m a fan of hers too. I like the lyrics of this one in particular.
*^%*%ing Vista.
That is all. Carry on.
(No, Rorschach, I don’t want to hear about how you built your own OS out of dental floss and a matchtip. :) I just want my laptop and internet connection to continue to fucking work. That really shouldn’t be too much to ask.)
Are we doing cocktails?
“Pajala Sunrise”
An off-topic thing for the off-topic thread:
Terry Pratchett answers a question about whether he belives in god(s).
It’s beginning to look as though the sign-in process is working a lot better. I’ve had several successes in a row now.
I think I’ve kept forgetting to post this (for about a week now!): seasonal penguin exploitation (NB the wretched BBC have set the video on autoplay again).
That first image was particularly interesting. I’m no igneous petrologist, but I can definitely appreciate a ridiculously porphyritic granitoid such as that one.
That was a nice little pic of cone-in-cone structures about half-way down. Love to see the delugionists explain those away.
What’s particularly interesting to me on that page is that they map the linear feature in that first outcrop photo as a fault, and yet their geological map shows absolutely no displacement along that line. None. WTF? When I looked at the photo, before I saw the map, I was questioning where the displacement was…then I convinced myself I could see some (but I can also convince myself that it’s erosional). But that map, although it has no scale*, appears to be at a similar general scale to that photograph. If they can observe displacement in the field, then they should have been able to map it. Otherwise why are they calling that linear feature a fault?
I love the glacial erratic. I’ve always been geeked-out by those things.
*And no north arrow! WTF?
If I saw people fossil hunting in a protected area I’d yell at them too. It’s your job to show that you’re approved fossil hunters, not mine to think, “oh well, they’re probably a paleontology class on an approved outing, I’ll ignore the fact that people aren’t supposed to be gathering fossils here and just assume, with little or no evidence, that what they’re doing has been authorized by the powers that be.”
Ignescent,
While I like Heather Dale’s singing and songs, my favorite Canadian folk singer will always be Stan Rogers.
Terry Pratchett has a new Discworld book out – Unseen Academicals. W00T!!
From The Guardian:
Terry Pratchett on religion: ‘I’d rather be a rising ape than a fallen angel’
What a fantastic quote!
Video
Full Video
Guardian Reader’s Responses
I see Ragutis beat me to it at #716 but posting again with extra detail.
But ‘Tis, would you have then thought “I’d better yell obscenities at them, then” or “Perhaps I should inquire as to their intentions and knowledge of the state regulations regarding fossil collecting”?
No, Carlie, I don’t yell obscenities at strangers. But I do ask people why they’re doing things that I know are illegal.
My internal punctuation nazi just cracked me over the knuckles with a ruler for the misplaced apostrophe above.*
Catholic school flashbacks can be surprisingly vivid. I’m going to go do something sacrilegious to get over it. I thought I saw some AIDS activists (I’m in Cape Town) handing out condoms in the area earlier; I think I’ll give them a hand or a donation.
* I wonder what mistake(s) I’ll notice in this post as I press Submit.
Don’t tell my daughter but I’ve bought her the book for Christmas.
Oh, I’m being mentioned !!
@ 714,
It’s like global warming ya know. The solution is going to hurt, but it has to be done !
Updating to W7 from Vista is like agreeing to keep warming under 2 degrees, it’s going to relieve the pain a bit but won’t make a big difference.
Switching to Linux would obviously be like 80% reduction until 2050…:-)
Hope you can get the lappy fixed soon !
‘Tis, Fossilguard on Duty.
This is silly. First, these say different things. First you say that you would yell at people, then that you would ask them questions (which is what Carlie was suggesting people should have done in her first post). Second, you wouldn’t know in this situation that they were doing anything illegal, and in fact in this case they weren’t. Third, no, it isn’t their “job” to do that at all.
I went to lunch with some friends in Cambridge, MA, a few years ago. We were parking in Harvard Square in a handicapped spot, and despite our having both a sticker in the front window and a prominently-displayed card hanging from the rearview mirror, as well as a person slowly being helped from the back seat, like three people stopped to tell us we shouldn’t park there and that we were going to get a ticket. Seriously, if you’re going to play vigilante at least make some effort to ascertain the facts.
That’s too much geek for this early in the morning.
:)
Talk about weather caprioles :
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/19/four-eurostar-trains-break-down
And loading this thread now makes my Firefox have a little tremble, is it getting too big ?
Help I’m A Rock
Well, memory available also makes a difference, along with any addons that examine the whole load like killfile. At work, I would begin to see a delay (old machine, low memory XP/IE6). At home (OSX 10.6.2, Firefox, 4 GB RAM), no.
Dude, mine is bigger than yours, and I tell you I have tremble ! killfile’s a possibility…
;)
‘Tis – if you were to nicely ask, then you’re not who I was complaining about. I was upset at the people who yelled things like “HEY get off there you can’t be there! HEY you assholes I’m calling the cops!” and the like.
SC – the parking space thing has really gotten my goat (on fire!) since I started having closer knowledge of what it’s like to have to use one. Someone close to me has needed the special spots on and off, although you wouldn’t necessarily be able to tell from the way they walk. Haven’t gotten much in the way of comments (maybe the hang tag in the car is obvious enough), but I’ve definitely become much more aware of conditions that cause one to need as little distance to walk as possible, regardless of what it looks like. Sometimes it’s not even a matter of “it hurts too much to walk” right then, but conserving enough energy to make it through all the subsequent walking that has to take place before returning to the car. And getting the close spot is not really a great compensation for that kind of health hassle. No, person griping that we got the front spot, it really isn’t awesome enough to be worth the trade you have to make for it.
Huh – I’ve noticed a tremble the last couple of weeks when I load Facebook, but not on any other pages. I thought that was really weird. I guess maybe it’s a Firefox glitch of some kind?
That might be true if it were actually early. It’s 09:06!
*ducks*
Yes, but you left that comment at 6:16 and I read it around 7. You’ll note that I was posting at 2:29.
Blizzard there yet?
Sunny day, but nonetheless still freezing. Found a nice ice plate made from trampled snow to slide on. Wheeee!
Cool. I’ll use that as a random insult from now on. I’m going to read Climategategate threads now… the next AGW denialist I lose patience over is a ridiculously porphyritic granitoid! :-þ
I did indeed notice that. What you’re doing up is beyond me…
Well, DC is calling it a blizzard. There’s about 4″ in the street outside my window (they haven’t plowed). Snow is still falling, but the news and the actual radar echos are not in agreement with each other*. The wind and cold definitely suck, however…
You guys got anything at all up there yet?
*News: worse DC storm evah!!!1! Another foot on the way by sundown!!!1!!! Echos: Richmond and Charlottesville seem to be almost out of it now. *shrug*
Wow. Granitoid does sound like an insult, doesn’t it? Awesome.
“Whatever. Fucking dumbass granitoid.”
“Oh look–someone let a fucking granitoid into the thread. Great.”
“Perhaps if you weren’t such a granitoid, minor elements of proper discourse wouldn’t be quite so difficult. As it is, you appear to have an IQ just south of room temperature.*”
*Yes, I did envision that one coming from TM.
#707
Coming from you, Josh, the ultimate complement!
The London Oratory. My alma mater, and a very strange place indeed. Plenty of child rape and general bigotry there.
The headmaster, John McIntosh, was an unmarried bachelor who wasn’t a repressed gay man struggling with his uber-Catholicity in the least. Not at all. Rumor was he still retained the right to use the cane, but this was in the ’90s, so I can’t see how that was at all legal.
We had excellent science teachers, though. Mostly of the Ken Miller variety, I suppose.
Perhaps I’ll share more later when I don’t have meatspace obligations, and if anyone is interested. Like the time I nearly got expelled for smiling in the school chapel…
#718 Josh
You might be interested in a better description of Robin Hood’s Bay:
http://www.jncc.gov.uk/pdf/gcrdb/GCRsiteaccount1943.pdf
They do not show any faults in the Stoupe Beck area (about halfway down the bay). Nor does the Geologists’ Association Guide No. 34, “The Yorkshire Coast”. Figure 4.7 is a picture taken at an ultra low spring tide. The area shown is further N than the feature in the link I sent you but it shows the same kind of linear features. I can’t see any mention of the cause which, to me, suggests that it is not as simple as a fault. The whole structure is as a result of doming from a centre off-shore. I just wonder if the lines are radial and are a result of stretching making the rocks more vulnerable to erosion/weathering. I’ll see if I can find out anything more.
I would not rule out the possibility of ignorance.
A “beck”, of course, is a stream so maybe the presence of a series of streams could explain the linear features. As well as the 2 significant streams in the pdf at Mill Beck and Stoupe Beck there are others where there are waterfalls landing on the beach (beautiful when the sun is shining and a rainbow is formed.
The map in the link is conventionally oriented with N at the top (yes, I agree it would have been better to show it). Scale? Well, I reckon the distance between Stoupe Beck and Mill Beck (barely readable) is around 650 m (based on a scale map in the GA Guide).
I liked the cone-in-cone structure. I’ve seen better examples near Dudley in the W Midlands in the Upper Carboniferous (Coal Meaures) but I have no examples in my collection.
And aren’t granites lightweights compared to most other rocks (excepting some volcanics, of course)? Hence the granitic plutons, like the Idaho Batholith, rising like dumplings in the crustal stew.
“You fucking granitoid” is like saying “you common, fucking intellectual lightweight” — not so sure if “ridiculously porphyritic” is required, though it is fun to say — rolls around in the mouth nicely and is bound to confound the object of the insult.
I guess “ridiculously porphyritic” could refer to the scattered nature of the thought process of some lightweights.
SC, it’s never too early for rocks.
I truly enjoyed the photo of the boulder left behind by a retreating glacier — that one is in a particularly nice setting. And, of course, adorable ammonites, cute crinoids and other goodies located near the usual green slime.
Head hurts. I’ve spent my morning alternating between online X-mas shopping* and wading through delugionist literature.
Ugh.
*I’ve really come to hate this holiday.
From the Robin Hood Bay link (@#718 for one):
Gah!! The singularization-of-Latin-plurals juggernaut continues! First they came for “agenda” and then “media”…the battle for “data” is all but lost…and noe strata “is”?????
I suppose all you descriptivists are just fine with this?
Me, I weep for the language.
Not really, but it bugs me.
No, no. You might recall that I’m about as happy with the word strata as I am with the word layer
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/science_of_watchmen.php#comment-1491754
but if used, I think it should be plural.
And for the record, I’m totally on your side with respect to data.
A boulder, weathered into a convenient shelter, (the one I took photos of on Thanksgiving Day — some of you have already seen it), is a porphyritic rhyolite.
Thanks for additional info, Alan B. Josh, I thought the same thing about the supposed “fault” in the photo. It looked more like a “beck”, or at least a drainage course that might even move a bit, depending on conditions.
*sputters and laughs*—heavy LOLz at that, Lynna!
#723 ‘Tis Himself, OM said:
Nor would I not knowing whether they might be carrying or not.
A colleague in the US (same business, same name – by coincidence) lives just outside Atlanta Ga. He showed me his collection at home. I counted 17. 3 or 4 were antiques and unable (currently) to be fired. What concerned me were at least another 3 which quite clearly were in fine working order and fully loaded. He practised regularly in the woods close by. In addition, his wife carried a fully loaded hand gun in her handbag (purse in American) at all times and had produced it when things looked like getting nasty in a parking dispute in downtown Atlanta – her handgun trumped his car jack handle. There were a further 2 in the pickup he drove (may have been more – he told me it was on loan from his son and he wasn’t sure how many more he had in the vehicle). In a country town where he used to live they had a town ordinance that every home had to have a loaded handgun. (Not much crime in the area, apparently!).
No. I definitely would not be yelling obscenities at strangers. Anyway, I am an English gentleman.
Oh that’s terrific. I’m stealing this. I might say mantle stew instead of crustal stew, but otherwise…
“And so it was that a new rhetorical weapon was added to the Pharyngula arsenal against willful ignorance.
I have some terrific photos of erratics, mostly from New England. They’re all in PowerPoints though (or are analog photographs from back in the day that haven’t been scanned).
*shrug* all of Long Island is glacial erratics. And till.
Yeah, that’s quite possibly the case. They could well be joints (fractures/breaks in bedrock along which there is no displacement) that of course are preferentially weathered, resulting in distinct linear features. Jointing is a possible result of localized crustal stretching.
Incidentally, 14933
15K coming up quick!
Yep. And Block Island. And the Cape. Linear piles of till, stratified drift, and outwash, sprinkled with erratics and iced with eskers here and there.
Beautiful.
And.Not.Long.For.This.World.
#743 Josh said:
and it’s all my fault. Exits stage L with cackling laughter, turning to hysteria.
[Ed. He’s forgotten his tablets again]
Smack him, would you, Ed?
To call these “papers” dreadful is to be remarkably charitable.
Fucking abominations is perhaps more appropriate.
Thanks, Josh, that is an improvement. I’m using that description for a photo caption — just haven’t decided yet if I want to apply it to a huge bubble of granite that is exposed in the Trinity Mountain area of the Boise National Forest, or if it would be a better description for the Big Horn Crags area of the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness (specifically, some enormous, rounded humps of granite near Ship Island Lake).
So, it should read “granitic plutons, like the Idaho Batholith, rising like dumplings in the mantle stew” — now if I can just get the right photo(s) from Leland.
yeah. I live on the outwash plain at, like 30 or 40 feet above current sea level.
#755 Josh
my comment (#538) was:
Seems like we are in approximate agreement.
Not too surprising, that.
Goodbye Long Island party at Sven’s! Okay, perhaps it’s a little premature, but still, the amount of material Long Island loses into the sound every year isn’t trivial.
I’m more worried about a hurricane from the SOuth than erosion to the North. I think I’m above any possible storm surge, but my favorite bar would be history.
So for those of you who are goal-oriented, comment #818 on this subThread will be Thread comment # 15000.
I would yell “What are you guys doing? Don’t you know you’re not supposed to take fossils from here?” or words to at effect.
If I know that collecting fossils is illegal in an area and I see people apparently doing so, then it’s my duty to the fossils (that’s not a non sequitur) to either make sure what’s being done is legal or is stopped.
Yes, I’m the sort of asshole that actually cares about this sort of thing and will stop people from doing things they shouldn’t.
It’s a very valid concern. If the storm were bad enough, I don’t think there are all that many places on Long Island that would be immune to the surge.
And the loss of a favorite bar, well that’s just unacceptable.
Alan B,
Guns are part of the American mystique. When I was growing up in Wisconsin the majority of people had at least a shotgun and usually a rifle or two for hunting. As a teenager I had a 12 guage (bore) shotgun for bird hunting and a .22 cal. rifle for squirrel and rabbit hunting.
My father had two pistols, a .22 for target shooting and a .38 for “home protection.” My mother argued with him for years about the .38. She felt a shotgun was much more intimidating and lethal. Plus she wasn’t a very good pistol shot but was a good shotgun shot.
This is typical in rural and semi-rural parts of the US.
Well, “up” somewhat overstated my condition at the time, but I agreed. Went back to sleep for a bit. Now I’m up. Geek out.
No, I don’t think till late tonight or tomorrow morning, but I have to check the latest.
But this would be silly, as evidently some groups (like Carlie’s) receive approval, so they’re not doing anything illegal. If you stopped and calmly asked them those questions, that would be doing what Carlie suggested, and they could show you that they’ve been given permission. But driving by and shouting at them serves no purpose. And if you aren’t convinced that they’re legitimate, confronting them yourself is – as Alan suggests – quite reckless.
Oh, I completely forgot – did anyone see Jon Stewart this week showing a clip of the last tea party in which Laura Ingraham was giving a speech and used “First they came for the rich…Then they came for the property owners…” She really did. Truly sickening.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/hurricane38/maps/index.html
Fine, instead of yelling I’ll ask them IN A LOUD VOICE. Does that suit your sensibilities better?
Honestly, I don’t see what your problem is. I’m driving down the road. I see people doing something I believe is illegal. I roll down the window and, unless one of them is within a couple of feet, I have to yell to get their attention. If I’m told they’re a paleontology class then I’ll probably be satisfied. If I don’t feel satisfied then the cops are only a phone call away. Would you prefer I call the cops first without asking?
And if someone shoots me for asking about fossil gathering then that person is wacko with a capital wack.
hmmmm.
Well, it’s not quite that bad, according to this map. Unfortunately, a close look at that map also indicates that my house is fucked in a Category 4 situation, and touch-&-go in a Cat 3. And then elsewhere on that site it sez:
fuck.
There may be a communication error – when I say “yelling at”, I mean not just a loud voice, but with a mean and accusing tone and intent. In the uses I’m familiar with, being yelled at is usually being chastised by someone who is assuming an air of authority, (often incorrectly). It’s not just a descriptor of the volume of conveyance.
Why would you even have to do this? Why not just ask them? We’re talking about a group of college-age people with a professorial-looking dude.
Honestly, I’m rather surprised by that.
You don’t have reason to believe that. Some groups are approved to do it, and Carlie said her group had the appearance of a paleontology class, so it would be rash to assume they were doing something illegal without checking first.
Oh, come on. Carlie described people shouting things at them as they drove by, not asking them questions calmly at an appropriate volume. She said, “several people honked and stopped to yell at us for collecting in a protected area….I did like that they were protective of their fossil grounds, but did wish they had thought a little bit about it before being rude.”
No, I believe this is what Carlie was suggesting would be appropriate. She said if you were talking about asking calmly you weren’t describing the behavior she was complaining about.
We weren’t talking about asking. We were talking about aggressively confronting people. And there are a number of people who are wacko with a capital wack, and will not take well to being confronted like that, especially if they are doing something illegal.
Sheesh, already.
#764 ‘Tis Himself, OM
I am well aware that guns are part of the American mystique. It still comes as a bit of a shock when you come face to face with it – and from a christian (or at least a Southern Baptist). And apparently with considerable glee.
I am comfortable with firearms suitable for hunting or target shooting. Or as part of a properly trained armed force. It’s the snub-nosed, push-it-into-the-belly-and-fire type of handgun I dislike.
Huh…I guess my “pulling it out of my ass” somewhat educated speculation wasn’t all that close to reality. Huh…funny that. Guess I should have probably looked that up.
Good times.
Re Robin Hood’s Bay and possible faulting.
I said I will try and look a bit further. You might like to look at:
http://www.geologyrocks.co.uk/articles/field_guide_to_robin_hood_039_s_bay
These are notes for a quasi filed trip by someone with some position at the University of Edinburgh. Seems to be a lecturer but I haven’t checked that.
“Boggle Hole” is at the mouth of Mill Beck (I have stayed at the Youth Hostel there).
Figure 10 is the money picture. Slightly more information is given elsewhere on the same site (where the same photo is used):
A superficial viewing would suggest a horizontal tear fault but we have no idea of the 3D orientation. We are being asked to accept that the seaweed grows on one type of rock but not the other. Since the rocks are likely to contain different levels of lime, I can understand how that might happen.
Ahhh…my crime was that my memory of Long Island’s topography was a little off (and I over estimated the storm surge intensities).
http://www.eastendrealtor.com/pics_logos/topographic_longisland.jpg
Never trust your memory; always double check.
How exactly do I know that what they’re doing is legal? My crystal ball is at the shop. It would be rash to assume this group doing something I know to be illegal for the general public has been blessed to gather fossils. And what does a paleontology class look like? Do they wear trilobite hats? Do they hum the theme song from Jurassic Park?
As I said before, I honestly do not understand what your objection is to me asking a group if they know what they’re doing is illegal.
Don’t know if this was posted, but I thought it might amuse Pharyngulites :
Chuck ‘future president of Texas” Norris has asked a few silly questions :
What if Mother Mary Had Obamacare?
“Will Obamacare morph into Herodcare for the unborn?”
Those wingnuts in America will never stop to surprise me… now they’re comparing healthcare reform to Herode killing all less than 2yold babies in Bethleem !
#772
For “filed trip” read “field trip”
I’ve seen one grad student do this on a field trip. True story.
*shiver*
Extrapolating from the storm surge map, if there’s a Category 3 or 4 storm then I’m likely fucked as well.
Re Alan @ #772
From your link:
Oh that’s just fucking cool. I absolutely love it when stuff preferentially grows/adheres to one kind of lithology in an area.
In one of the structure classes that I took, we did this mapping project in the beginning of the spring term (so, January). The geology was a sequence of sandstones and conglomerates with intercalated basalt flows. The conglomerates and the basalts exhibited a very similar resistance to weathering and formed topographic highs. The sandstones were much less resistant. The mapping area was forested and rugged and there was about two feet of snow on the ground. So we really couldn’t see shit in terms of outcrops (only just a very few of the largest ones). However, we could easily map the sandstone outcrop pattern because those rocks were associated with topographic lows. The conglomerates and the basalts, however, were of basically equal weathering resistance, so they looked identical in the snow. But, the fucking mountain laurel, which was all over that area, didn’t like the basalt. For the most part, it only grew on the sandstones and the conglomerates. Once we figured that out, we could actually distinguish the basalt from the conglomerate based on where the damn laurel was growing. They always did that project in the winter (and hoped for deep snow) for exactly that reason (and they didn’t give us a head’s up about it, so only about 1/3rd of the class figured it out). It was one of the coolest* mapping projects ever.
*Oh shut up.
What if??????
What if Jesus had been aborted as a fetus?
And then (of course, being the
fetusUnborn Son o’God) rose from the dead three days later?Think about what a weird religion that would be!
wait
David M.
Glad you like the white stuff lying all around but after 7 years in Barcelona I am not prepared! The wind chill factor in La Défense (work location) the last week has been enough to make me reconsider my decision to relocate. Walking on unsalted and uncleared paths can literally be a real pain in the ass.
Thanks for the tip on a good multigrain bread. Have seen the brand in the local market and will definitely try it.
Did I get the Nelson?
Ahhhhhh. Got in a brisk walk just before dark. On my way back I was alone on the beach.* Very cool.
No one is saying you have to. But in a situation in which some people are authorized to do something you can’t know that they haven’t been.
Generally, like Carlie described.
What the bloody hell, ‘Tis? There’s no objection to your asking them a question. That was not what Carlie had described, as both of us have pointed out to you repeatedly. And again, you don’t know that what they’re doing is fucking illegal, and in that case it was not.
*Well, with the birds. And I did come across some people but it looked like they might be illegally shellfishing, so I took ’em out. Punks.
Nah! I got carried away with the final of Strictly Come Dancing. Chris and Ola won. Rickie and Natalie were the better dancers but for sheer entertainment, Chris and Ola were brilliant.
You were watching your six, right?
Always. Of course, even I‘m not as hyperaware as some people…
;P
The only way I can find out if what they’re doing is illegal or not is to ask a question. That’s all I said I’d do.
I give up, SC. You win. I’m a stupid idiot who doesn’t understand why you’re fucking objecting to me asking a fucking question. But somehow me asking a hypothetical group a hypothetical question is invading their hypothetical privacy or something, so I’m obviously in the wrong in this hypothetical situation.
You may have the last word on this. I won’t respond.
Okay, good.
*folds arms and looks smug*
Out of interest, I looked a bit further on the same site as #772.
Just a few miles away on the same coast:
http://www.geologyrocks.co.uk/articles/on_the_hunt_for_dinosaur_footprints
Also, amongst the images I found this:
http://www.geologyrocks.co.uk/images/preambrian_cambrian_unconformity
For “preambrian” – (the mis-spelling is in the url)read precambrian.
This is from a brilliant site (fairly) near me called the Ercall (it is next door to the Wrekin). The quarry complex was last used to win (for Lynna) Cambrian Wrekin (ortho-) quartzite aggregate used in a local stretch of motorway (?interstate?). After the work was finished, the quarry was closed down. Before it was, the owners asked if anyone were interested in it for its geology? It had been used as a teaching area for decades.
To cut a long story short, they owners agreed not only to tidy-up the quarry to make it safe but they also removed more rock to produce better exposures of key areas of geology. Not many companies did that at the time but it has become more common with an increased interest in geoconservation. The quarry has now been used for teaching for well over half a century and is still being used by groups from Key Stage 2 primary school up to University undergraduates.
The image is just one of the features.
For more info. have a browse at:
http://www.ukrigs.org.uk/html/esos.php?page=ERC1index&menu=ercks2
(The large .exe file does not work for me: Vista, IE8. Does it work for others?)
Great, because you really do seem lost. Carlie explicitly said to you, “‘Tis – if you were to nicely ask, then you’re not who I was complaining about. I was upset at the people who yelled things like “HEY get off there you can’t be there! HEY you assholes I’m calling the cops!” and the like.” That was what she was decribing. Reasonable behavior in this situation would not be to yell at people but to ask, calmly, “Hey, are you guys authorized to do that? You know this is a protected area, right?” If you really suspect foul play, then yes I think it would be rational to contact the authorities rather than confronting people. The behavior Carlie (and to some extent you) described in that particular situation is rude, clueless given the appearance of the group, unproductive, and potentially dangerous.
Sorry, negentropyeater, but I like to think that Chucky Baby’s career came to an end when he was the recipiant of Brucecare. I know that is ignoring over thirty five years of Chucky Baby’s career but isn’t it better that way?
The cross-beds with roots in them (Figure 5) are awesome. Those are really rare.
Oh, and did you check out Figure 4? The bottom the channel scour is very coarse (maybe pebbly) sand, but it looks like the lower portion is overlain (higher in the channel fill) with mud laminae which are soft-sediment deformed. That is absolutely bad ass. If I’m reading that outcrop correctly, what happened is that the main flow portion of the channel migrated for a bit, allowing slower or still water to deposit mud laminae for a while. After a bit, that portion of the channel started receiving sand again. The sand provided a load that the mud couldn’t accommodate and it deformed. It’s a really nice shaped channel and it’s large; it goes out of the frame. Very cool.
Fetusism ? Not sure it would be much wierder than the current ones… not wierder than cracker-is-god.
Holy shit. There’s a show on THC right now about Black Sunday. The pictures. Wow.
[I’ve never been particularly afraid of drowning (though being caught in currents/the undertow is scary and humbling). There was something about The Perfect Storm that I related to at a basic level. The idea of getting caught in a sandstorm in the desert, however, horrifies me. Odd.]
I would never EVER try to run an .exe file off the Web. It could do anything!
I like to hum it quietly. It’s a beautiful tune.
I know a guy who likes to sing it in the field (“nuh nuh nuuuuuh, nuh nuh nuuuuuh…”). Makes me giggle in disbelief.
The same guy has the entire thing on his laptop and sometimes takes that laptop into the field and turns up the volume so we don’t need to listen to Rihanna’s “I kissed a girl” for the twentieth time (Polish early-morning radio is a bit repetitive, methinks).
.exe is short for executable. It’s a program. You’re supposed to download it and then execute it from your harddisk.
All Windows programs are files whose names end in .exe.
I had a lab mate in grad school who used to play it in her office. I swear I don’t think I ever went in to her office when that damn soundtrack wasn’t on.
Sandstorms aren’t a lot of fun, to be sure, especially if you have something that needs to get done during the event.
Um, not Rihanna.
#797 David Marjanović said
I am well aware of what .exe means. I have been trying to run the thing and ended up with error meesages each time I try.
I would love to see SC, The Pop Culture Queen, get into an epic debate with these two. I kissed a girl, in deed.
Yes, I am ignoring the current song.
This may or may not be urban legend, but my father told this odd tale some years ago about some Baptist convention type thing in a border town (Detroit-Windsor seems to ring a bell)…
Story goes: the Baptists were shuttling back and forth across the border a bit for various reasons. Canadian border guards happened to ask a few questions, soon realized a rather substantial quantity of armaments were traveling in the cars involved. Eventually, they started searching vehicles, and intercepted a completely insane haul of guns.
(/I’m reminded of a Steve Wright line: So the guard asked me: ‘Mr. Wright, do you have any firearms in your vehicle?’ And I said ‘Whaddya need?’)
Alan B @789, that Cambrian Wrekin quartzite aggregate looks like good paving stone, worth winning from a quarry. :-) I liked the photo of the unconformity.
Dino footprint links and photos were fun, but I’m spoiled now by the old pic to which Josh once provided a link. It showed a small child playing in the bathtub-like puddle formed by rainwater captured in a dino print.
#792 Josh
I knew it was interesting (and not just the footprints which are “scrappy” by US standards) but I didn’t realise it would get such a rave reception. Glad I put it up.
When I saw it my reaction was a bit ho-hum, “Looks like a braided river channel that has changed its main flow path one way then back again”. Hence the high flow that was able to move the larger clasts was now so reduced that even mud could settle. It is in the nature of a braided river that the stream could again carry larger clasts which would settle out.
Am I wrong: have I missed something or is it that you are surprised that there was a record of it happening?
Since Douglas Adams had the puddle marvelling at how well it fitted the hole it was in and the creationists claim humans co-existed with dinosaurs, perhaps Ray Comfort’s next epic should be about how well children fit into puddles formed in dinosaur footprints.
Either that photograph or a clone of it is one of the ones that pushed me in the direction that I ultimately went.
Janine #791,
hmmm, Chucky Baby was quite cute then… I kinda like the read hair.
<scratching head>
But my fully pop-culture-immersed little sister told me it was Rihanna. Who then? Britney Spears?
(…Do I actually want to know that?)
Sorry. It looked like you weren’t because you mentioned IE8 – the browser you used to download a program isn’t relevant to what your operating system can run.
No, I want to see Ray explain how a pineapple is designed to fit up Kirk Cameron’s rectum.
Rectum? Almost killed him.
I’ll get my coat.
[Apologies to MAJeff is this was the link he posted earlier – can’t recall. I don’t see how it would be possible not to like this song.]
Moi? :)
Heh. Heh heh.
***
Speaking of urban legends – saw recently and though was funny:
http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/020925.html
I was surprised that there was such a clear sand-to-mud-to-sand transition preserved within the channel fill. That combined with the deformation of the mud laminae makes is a somewhat rare and beautiful suite of sedimentary structures.
You got the major theme of the channel correct, but I don’t think this is a braided channel. I think the sequence preserves evidence of meandering. Whereas most braided rivers are moving coarser material than was in that channel, such as:
http://cgiss.boisestate.edu/~billc/BHRS/Photos/quarry.gif
…I have seen modern braided channels in Africa and elsewhere that are completely sand dominated with few pebbles.
It’s the singular lenticular-shaped sandy channel within a mud-based overbank/levee sequence* that makes me think meandering (and the dramatic difference in grain-size between the channel and the “extra-channel” facies). Even sand-dominated braided systems tend to be just that-sand dominated. There’s too much mud in this system. There should more stacked bar sequences and channels all amalgamated into each other.
http://www.geo.sunysb.edu/lig/Field_Trips/hartford-basin/images/outcrop-stop-1.jpg
*presumably–there isn’t much direct evidence of these deposits in the photograph itself.
David:
Try to keep up, dude.
I can smell 15K from here!
It smells like…an arbitrarily large number of sequential comments.
thought was funny
Katy Perry. And no. :)
IIRC, Katy Perry is one of J*hn Kw*k’s obsessions.
Could you post the link again?
Incidentally, I’m regarding the whole solstice season as cephalopodmas but are there specific days for squidmas, octomas, cuttlemas etc?
… ‘kay… this is amusing:
I got to thinking: that wasn’t my father’s story. Pretty sure I heard it on the radio…
And yep: I found the newspaper coverage. It wasn’t an urban legend.
And they were Baptist ministers at a conference, and 14 of them were arrested:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19810912&id=p_INAAAAIBAJ&sjid=FnsDAAAAIBAJ&pg=7036,2683742
15,001
!
http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/dinosaurs/images/exhibit/gallery/md/4-5_319835s.jpg
For Octonukkah you light a goat on fire every night for 8 nights, one for each arm.
Thanks!
The power of photography…
What could people possibly get up to on nautilus/las night …
Meanwhile:
The cuttle and the octopus
When they are both full grown
Of all the molluscs in the sea
The cuttle bears the bone.
Remember Terminator 2? The part where the T-1000 wades through the liquid nitrogen, slows down, gets stuck, and eventually ends up freezing solid?
That was me on my way to the grocery store today.
———————-
Lynna way back @686:
Thank you. I don’t know if you had at all intended it this way, and it’s meant to be a compliment, but when I read ‘Bee Dance’, I instantly thought of Seamus Heaney.
It’s on Squidmas Eve, at midnight, that St. Nautilaus comes to put plush cephalopods in the stockings of all the good little boys and girls (and intersexes of all descriptions), and leaves turnips in the stockings of all the bad ones.
cicely, you irresistibly remind me of Baldrick’s thingy.
Oogity boogity!! Wa waw wa woooooo…
This? It’s OK, I guess but not very… dinosaury, somehow? Speed it up a little and it could almost as well be the theme for a ’80s TV show about a family of oil magnates. (on second thought, maybe it does fit dinosaurs.)
Anyway, John Williams has done much better, IMO. (Here’s something for the archaeologists to hum in the field, or maybe whistle)
Now wait a minute… Didn’t Jesus give out free health care? Answer: Yes, when he wasn’t flying around like a tweety birdie. Tweeet tweeet!!
Boo – this morning the sign-in procedure was back to repeatedly giving me the page-of-errors error.
@ cicely #825:
Strangely enough, it was the nautilus of which I was thinking last night in this one (so it’s your own fault I’m inflicting it upon you after all):
Good thing nautilus peeked out,
On the feast of Squidmas,
Where the sand lay round about
Crumbling off the isthmus:
Brightly shone the moon that night
On the tidal delta
When an octopus did sight
Coconuts for shelter.
In the unlikely event that anyone cared about the case of the gynaecologist, it turned out that the important issue was indeed “form” and it was the woman who had it.
Evidently, Chuck Norris thinks that all pregnant teenage girls in modern America, especially those living in poverty, should get the benefit of the full “Mary experience” – being forced to give birth, denied access to medical attention, socially ostracised, and thrown out of their homes to sleep in a cold dirty stable. It’s what Republican Jesus would want, after all.
Of course, “Chuck Norris doesn’t read books (or legislative proposals). He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.” Whether or not that information is actually true is irrelevant, unless you’re a sissy liberal elitist intellectual trying to confuse matters with all that “facts” and “evidence” malarkey.
That must mean the pillowcase I hung on the mantlepiece should be full of turnips. I shouldn’t have to buy any turnips for weeks.
Walton #832
Who are you and what have you done with the real Walton?
I thought the same thing !
This,
was very nicely put !
Oh, so that’s why the name rings any bells at all! :-)
Yes, this, absolutely. To fully appreciate it, you need to remember the most impressive scene in all of cinema ever, the one where you (and the main characters) get to see the Brachiosaurus for the first time. Don’t speed anything up.
I don’t know any TV shows about families of oil magnates, and may not know any ’80s TV shows, having been born in ’82. However, that John Hammond guy is supposed to be some kind of old businessman who’s so rich it started getting to his head…
BTW, I stay quiet in the field. Would be too distracting otherwise. :-)
That’s supposed to be scary. I want something that’s supposed to be… elated. Not necessarily triumphal, but… happy. The JP theme fulfills that criterion.
So does the Imperial March, incidentally. The other Star Wars theme song isn’t bad, but it sounds a bit naive… appropriate for the fairytale that Star Wars is…
Now, the despise for restrictions on freedom is nothing new… but the delicious snark is! What happened to your issues, Walton? Did you accidentally eat a box of self-esteem recently? :-)
It’s really great that you managed to take a Chuck Norris fact and turn it into a joke. That is really hard to do.
<currently performing JP theme by just banging teeth together. With the mouth open, and in a small room that has enough echo, that works.>
Me three
Walton, nicely put. Have a happy holiday season.
AND Happy Holidays to the gang at P Zed’s Playhouse – go here to read my favourite version of Nite Before xmas – http://www.creativeyouthideas.com/blog/humor/cajun_night_before_christmas_1.html
but ignore the rest of the site if you are wise.
Ciao, y’all
Happy Monkey, JeffreyD, goats on fire and all…:-)
We know that Rudolph has a red nose (probably from massive amounts of alcohol consumption) but the other reindeer have brown noses. They’re all down on Rudolph until the Boss says “Rudolph, you’re my boy.”
“Then all the reindeer loved him.”
I’ve got to help my daughter shovel her car out.* Back later.
*This is one of the few times I wish I were in Australia. They’re almost in summer now.
I did come across some people but it looked like they might be illegally shellfishing, so I took ’em out. Punks. – SC, OM
You’re a dangerous woman, SC! Irony that pointed could take someone’s eye out ;-)
Re: #832
They say that Walton’s small snark grew three sizes that day.
The Competition (The “That’s Just Fucking Awesome” category):
Opening scene/Take-off scene in Blade Runner.
The spaceships emerging from the clouds in Independence Day.
Ripley fighting the Alien Queen in Aliens.
Sarah Connor’s nuclear holocaust dream, or anything the T-1000 does, in Terminator 2.
Sen a.k.a. Chihiro treating the ‘Stink God’ in Spirited Away.
Neo when he ‘wakes up’/Neo when he is ‘resurrected’ in The Matrix.
The opening credits to Se7en.
(Well, they called it Brachiosaurus, but it was most likely a Giraffatitan… here’s why.)
If that had been awesome, I’d remember it.
Weaksauce. (Well, except for the scene with the liquid nitrogen. I love boiling stuff in nitrogen. Can you tell I studied molecular biology???)
I haven’t watched any of the other movies you mention. :-]
I suspect the scene where Godzilla finishes off the GINO in Final Wars must be awesome, but I haven’t watched it either.
However, I like the “always bring a gun to a swordfight” scene in whichever Indiana Jones it is. That shows us how to do it. :-) Am I glad Harrison Ford had diarrhea that day :-)
“That’s Just Fucking Awesome” category:
Firefly: ‘Darn’
Buffy: Rocket launcher
Contact: Intro
15K update
ABC news, Nightline, covered the Mormon Muffins calendar. The piece includes an interview with Chad Hardy, who was excommunicated for his earlier calendar featuring mormon missionaries (men) with their shirts off. The Mormon Muffin calendar’s biggest sales were racked up in Utah.
*shrugs, points mano cornuta at the screen*
Dude, near as I can tell, you’ve studied a lot.
That is a good one. Raiders of the Lost Ark, I believe. Which reminds me: Face-melting Nazis are just fucking awesome.
Feynmaniac #847
That was one of my favorite scenes from Firefly. Another is in the episode “Our Mrs. Reynolds” when Mal walks into Saffron’s house and yells “Honey, I’m home.”
It really must be Cephalopodmas – they’re turning up all over the place. There’s just been one on an advert on TV. I don’t know the product it was trying to sell (a drink?) but the cephalopod “monster” turned out to be a person in a suit in the water, pretending to attack someone else so that a third person could pretend to come to the rescue.
#845 David Marjanović
Giraffatitan?
Giraff[e] – a – titan??
What have they done to my favourite dinosaur?
Aha – you can find all sorts of things on the interwebz these days. All I needed in a google search was “advert” and “octopus” and it suggested the drink which might complete the set. Warning: they’re not nice to the octopus.
Giraffa, which is “giraffe” in Scientific, + “titan”.
Gregory S. Paul (who has also published on the evils of religion) pointed out numerous differences between the type species, Brachiosaurus altithorax from the USA, and the later-named B. brancai from Tanzania. In order to get that across into nomenclature, he created the subgenera Brachiosaurus (Brachiosaurus) for the type species and Brachiosaurus (Giraffatitan) for the referred one. (…Yes, in zoology the genus name and the parentheses are parts of the subgenus name.)
This should have sounded a couple of alarms, because Paul is (or at least was at that time) a rather radical lumper. In the same 1988 book, he sunk Deinonychus into Velociraptor, which has been speculated to be among the reasons why the Jurassic Park “Velociraptor” isn’t the size of a turkey with a meter-long tail.
However, nobody else had used subgenera in Mesozoic dinosaur nomenclature for 100 years, so this move was pretty much ignored.
Later, Paul thought that he hadn’t been radical enough and raised Brachiosaurus (Giraffatitan) to genus status, automatically changing its name to Giraffatitan.
This, too, was mostly ignored, probably because Paul had acquired the reputation of being a bit idiosyncratic nomenclature-wise, and because he hadn’t shown that the two species weren’t each other’s closest relatives. (Mind you, the latter is not required by the Code at all, it’s just a commonly used criterion nowadays.)
Now Michael P. Taylor* has had another look at the material, found a long list of differences, found that the evidence for the two species being each other’s closest relatives is weak at best, and concluded that it’s less misleading to separate them at the genus level. Because the name Giraffatitan exists for the African species, it must be used if this is accepted. In the acknowledgements Mike actually apologizes for having to resurrect this name about which he feels just like you do. :-) Read that, it’s awesome.
* Not to be confused with Michael A. Taylor, who works on plesiosaurs.
Well, but everything around them is just kitsch.
Except the scene at the very end, when the box with the Arc of the Covenant is filed away in the British Museum, never to be found again. :-D :-D :-D How true, how true…
Entire dinosaur skeletons have been found in museum basements. And in Berlin they still have unopened crates from the expeditions to what is now Tanzania, from before 1914… I’ve seen some in person.
Money isn’t everything! But without money everything is nothing!
– On the wall in Scrooge McDuck’s office.
More info on the number of women in the UK who have been subjected to FGM (Female Genital Mutilation):
That last bit, “It has no religious signifcance,” gives me pause. The practice may not be written down in the Koran, but it is tied to muslim and to tribal ritual practices that seem to have been integrated into the religious belief systems of those that practice FGM. They think it’s necessary for purity, for chastity and for the woman to be pleasing to god (and acceptable a wife for a god-fearing man). Sounds like religion to me.
What’s this?! Two chances to pedant David Marjanović?
Christmas has come early!
Ark. An ark is either a boat or a box; an arc is a curve or electricity jumping around.
Ha!
No, no! The Brits did not get the ark, it was the Americans !! The Warehouse is a US Government secret !!
Whoops. Profuse apologies for my messed up comment @855. Can’t believe I left all that crap in there. It didn’t show in the comment box. I should have previewed the comment. I think I need to borrow Ed. from Alan B, “Lynna, always preview!” Thank you, Ed. I will.
I thought it was an American war warehouse.
I also recall there initially being a bit at the very end where the crate was humming away to itself and charring off its markings – but that wasn’t then in subsequent showings. :-/
<headdesk>
And it’s only half past one at night! I shall go to bed without further delay !!
WHAT YOU SAY !! Isn’t there a subtitle that explicitly says it’s the British Museum? Do I suffer from false memory?
David M., I found this comment of yours interesting:
I’ve seen the same stored-but-not-sorted-nor-examined travesty in connection with Native American artifacts. Boxes and boxes of stuff no one will ever see. It’s discouraging.
On another topic, who is this guy?!
He’s Robert P. George, a Princeton University professor of jurisprudence and a Roman Catholic.
George shows up in the company of C-Streeters (“The Family”) like Chuck Colson. He sounds dangerous, and looks benign.
Source
UNPOSSIBLE !!
That, or a malevolent or incompetent subtitler.
l wish we could send Robert P. George to an island where he could converse with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and PZ for a few days.
George has degrees in law and theology from Harvard; a doctorate in philosophy of law from Oxford; a Supreme Court fellowship; and the endowed chair at Princeton that Woodrow Wilson once held… and he still thinks (or fails to think) along some pretty odd lines:
Robert P. George teaching — an example from a Civil Liberties class at Princeton:
I find this guy popping up all over, including on the Catholic Education website, in references on the mormon Sutherland Institute site, and in political “think tanks” like the Family Research Council, where the war against gays, and the anti-abortion forces are being given an intellectual spin.
Here is Robert P. George talking about whipping Utah into line in a video posted by Chino Blanco
#859 Lynna OM
Hands off. Ed.’s with me! Find an inner Edwina of your own!!
[Ed. Don’t I get a choice? I thing I’d prefer Lynna!]
So far I’ve been celebrating Cephalopodmas (it’s already the 21st here) by re-watching Disney’s The Little Mermaid – lots of cephalopods in that (in various roles)! I always rather liked the frog chorus on the oar though.
Robert P. George in an interview at the Witherspoon Institute:
Sounds to me like Ed. and Edwina might just get together and go off their own, leaving us both bereft.
Lynna,
Just to let you know: I left you a new note at your blog about buying a book.
Thanks,
Official Fan
Ha! Pretty funny that you have to contact me here to get me to check my own blog.
Yes, send me email with your contact info. I’ve autographed a book for you!
Definitely go through me for the book. Price is the same as it is if you go through the publisher, but I make more money if you buy it directly from me. I need my two bucks. :-)
I can’t find either a clip online or our own DVD of it, but this is from Wikipedia:
Back in Washington, D.C., the Army intelligence agents tell a suspicious Indiana that the Ark “is someplace safe” to be studied by “top men”. In reality, the Ark is sealed in a wooden crate labeled “top secret” and stored in a giant government warehouse (later revealed in Crystal Skull to be located at Area 51) filled with countless similar crates.
Look also at the TvTropes article on Secret Government Warehouse.
or a reflex
Speaking of timesinks [like TVTropes] and warehouses, there’s the Secure-Contain-Protect Foundation.
To mark the winter solstice (or just because), here is more music for the undead thread, this time in various flavors of depression. Enjoy, despair, or do whatever it is you do.
Cannonball Adderley – Dancing in the Dark
Jaco Pastorius – Portrait of Tracy
Robert Schumann – Dichterliebe, no. 12: Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen
Hugo Wolf – Sonne der Schlummerlosen
Lynna:
Thanks, Captain Obvious!
Of course, as we all know, REAL freedom is having every aspect of one’s life dictated by the state and the proverbial elderly male virgin in a dress.
IDK, the arguments quoted don’t strike me as particularly intellectual, just the same dogma dressed up in more words.
His suggestion to rename “The Center for Chastity and Abstinence” as “The Center for Love and Fidelity” isn’t so bad, PR-wise, but I think people in USA already have an ear for these things, and the new title will still set of a red flag in minds that don’t care for chastity and abstinence.
Owlmirror @876, you’re not kidding. There’re mindworms there.
It’s not supposed to be scary, at least not in the map room scene, just exciting and mysterious. The more ominous bits are for the Nazis patrolling outside, I think.
The Imperial March sounds happy??
…In Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Dennett suggest that this would make a great ceremonial march, if not for the unfortunate memetic association.
SEF:
That’s earlier, when the Ark is in the hold of the ship and it’s the Nazi markings that char off. If the US Army stamp had been shown getting the same treatment in the end, it might not have been received well.
More great scenes
Here’s a nice jaunty tune from Star Wars:
;)
Which might, if I’m right, also account for why it was removed from the end of the end-titles of the original release (it was one of those special bits where you had to stay to the very end of the credits to see it).
Here’s a story that cristalizes all that’s pathetic with religious nuts trying to use their bible as a guide on how to deal with environemental issues…
Religion shaping mountain-top removal debate in Appalachia coal country
Why can’t they just dump the old book and use critical reasoning instead ?
Did they have a lot of those in the ’80s? Apparently you’re not the only one who’s wondered about this. But some, at least, seem to be misremembering the scene from the ship hold.
That’s what they want you to think!
Re marches: I never watched all of V (it was on too late at night), but I recall being annoyed that the aliens were greeted at the oil refinery/chemical plants by a marching band playing the Star Wars theme (the boring one). For fuck’s sake! The US fostered the greatest march composer of ever, and that’s what they dish out instead?
:.-(
(Also, I have foiled your evil plan. I shall not click on the link in comment 876. I have a flight to catch today.)
(Finally, the less said about Crystal Skull, the better.)
Sort of. It sounds triumphal. Higher Badass. B-)
Mediocre.
(Also, most of it is a song.)
Yeah. That was just childish. Like the one where all the ashes disappear into a hole in the clouds. Are we back to the age of the flat-earthers!?!
I’ve seen much better parodies of that song…
Hey Josh,*
Someone** did it:
http://glendonmellow.blogspot.com/2009/12/geology-in-art-by-andrea-baucon.html
*Everyone else, too! I just remember discussing the idea of such a work with Josh specifically on a thread several months ago.
**He also puts the u in bacon. ;)
The idea that is antithetical to those who are seeking to redefine marriage is that there is something uniquely good and morally upright about the chaste sexual union of husband and wife—something that is absent in sodomitical acts and in other forms sexual behavior that have been traditionally—and in my view correctly—regarded as intrinsically non-marital and, as such, immoral.
I’m not married and really don’t like marriage as an institution in general-too much creepy history and creepy current laws in many places. However. I’d always understood that one of the points of marriage was to get societal permission to have sex, sex, sex with one other person. This is the first time I’ve heard of a restriction on how you have sex with your partner. And wouldn’t missionary position sex with one person for the rest of your life eventually get, well, boring? Or am I just an immoral person to even be asking?
Shit. There are no original ideas.
Grumpily stomps off to the Post Office.
Shouldn’t one put the bacon in u, or have I been doing it wrong all this time?
Huh. Expected you’d just think it was cool. I know I’ll only be able to complete a small fraction of the projects I dream up, so it’s good when someone else does. (Probably will avoid mentioning them online, though. :))
Wow. It is still not warm out there…
I do and it is.
The grumpy stomping was 100% for effect…
Hi Josh
How’s your reading going?
Hey thanks for the linkage SC.
I’ve been backtracking, and I’m still confused. What were you and Josh discussing? Making a book about art and geology? There’s always room for more of those.
Just remember, art is 1% inspiration, 89% perspiration and 10% stomping in grumpy frustration.
(Hmm. I haven’t logged into here lately with the login problems. I’m the Glendon Mellow artist-guy you linked to about Andrea Baucon’s book.)
Yule-Mate Takes the Pain Out of Christmas Gift Giving
Hey, greetings to theflyingtrilobite, and to Josh and SC: I enjoyed and laughed over the flying trilobite (well done!), and over the hand of [god?] sowing seeds and fossils. Especially appropriate for the season is the Tra-la-la-lobe-ite. Now if I had a tree to decorate this year, I’d love to hang a few hundred Tra-la-la-lobe-ites on it.
My pleasure.
If I recall correctly. It was back in April or May.
The great thing is that once others have done some work in an area, you can be inspired to shoot off in new directions from there. Like now I’m thinking about ways to
…Uh, never mind. :)
OK, but “sodomitical” is an excellent word.
Dianne @888: restrictions on the kinds of sex allowable for even married couples is more common than you really want to know. I’ve posted this on Pharyngula before, but this list of mormon proscriptions is mind-boggling enough to bear reposting:
And then there’s this:
For all the news on the crazed sexuality of mormonism see Mormon Sexuality
Of course, we’ve all heard too much about the estimated 70,000 women in the UK who have had their genitals mutilated (anywhere from removal of the clitoris to removal of all of the labia, the clitoris, and narrowing of the vagina) — all for the supposed virtue of controlling female sexuality, and encouraging chastity. Ayaan Hirsi Ali has written a lot about the introduction of insane worship of virginity into muslim cultures. As far as I know, Hasidic Jews also discourage “unnatural” sex practices.
You will not be surprised to learn that Robert P. George has given talks at BYU in Salt Lake City, and that he has participated in mormon forums on culture and civil liberties.
just watched the news, lot’s of flights out of Paris canceled until the 24th. Hope David got out ok…
Dianne, I think Janine posted a link to this horrifying tape of Oral Roberts talking about sex, but here is a slightly longer version. Oral was also against oral sex. Tip top irony.
Here’s a muslim cleric fulminating against females who masturbate. One of his recommendations is that she work for a charity and do other useful things if she feels tempted. Also, you don’t need to kill women for masturbating, just flog them.
SC, way to tease.
Thanks Lynna! I should try to find a way to make the Tra-la-la-la-lobite in 3D I guess.
In my patriarchical religion, women will be required to masturbate.
Shaving, however, will be prohibited.
TMI?
In my patriarchical religion, women will be required to masturbate.
I think you may have finally found the way to make people stop mastubating.
Do not, as the scriptures warn, ‘change the natural use into that which is against nature’ (Romans 1:26).
That’s IT! I’m repenting my unnatural use of silicon and electrons and swearing off the use of the computer forever. I think I’ll repent my unnatural exploitation of cotton and stop wearing clothing as well. Why stop short of true grace? Creative sex, on the other hand, is practiced by any number of animals so I don’t think that it could possibly be called unnatural.
What a husband and wife do or wish to do or don’t do in the privacy of their own bedroom (or any other room in the house) is ABSOLUTELY NOBODY ELSE’S BUSINESS!
Anyone else can just get out and keep out of their lives and their relationship together.
The only thing that matters is that one is not forcing or imposing something on the other. It’s called love. And affection. And giving of yourself one to another.
Why are these self-proclaimed ministers of religion taking on themselves the CONTROL of the most intimate parts of people’s lives? /retorical qestion. (I can make a mighty good guess at the answer.)
[Ed. At last I agree with him!]
Why are these self-proclaimed ministers of religion taking on themselves the CONTROL of the most intimate parts of people’s lives? /retorical qestion. (I can make a mighty good guess at the answer
Another relevant question might be why people let the ministers in question take control of their lives? And can anything be done to help them free themselves from these controls and live happier, more fulfilled, more erotically (and otherwise) exciting lives?
@904
Oh, yes! Please do. That would be lovely, and too good to pass up.
Hey, is anyone out there a lawyer? Specifically, a lawyer that I could ask advice of? If it takes more than 5 minutes, we can start talking formal relationships and billing…
It does make one wonder about the sex life of Robert P. George, and why he thinks he’s one of the elect who gets to prescribe correct sex for other humans. George is Catholic and his wife is Jewish. Maybe his wife will have to join Sven’s religion so she can make up for a couple of decades of lost masturbation before she leaves this mortal coil.
I like the mormon version of control best. Catholics ignore their priests, as is confirmed by birth rates similar to non-Catholics in developed countries, but mormons do not ignore their bishops. Somehow, mormons have convinced husbands and wives to spill the beans about their sex life in temple-worthiness interviews. Furthermore, spouses will rat on each other to the bishop. Bishops also meet with 12-year old kids, without supervision, and question them about masturbation, warn them against sex acts they’ve probably never heard of, etc. Robert P. George loves mormons, mormons love Robert P. George. These people need help. Bring on the Mormon Muffins.
‘Tis Himself, I received a digital Christmas card today. It featured an angel that removed herself/himself from the top of the tree and flew around inspecting ornaments (each played a snippet of carol), and the angel also lit lights on the tree. The ending was the best. The angel flew back up to the top and re-impaled itself, which made me think of your joke — and so a dumb-ass digital card was saved by laughter.
#909 Sili That’s what I said (para 3)
#910 Dianne asked:
Tell both the congregation and the minister to read what Paul wrote to the church in Corinth in 2 Corinthians 1 verse 24:
New Living Translation (©2007)
Then tell them to ” … go and do thou likewise”!!
A pastor is a shepherd. A shepherd has a crook to help to rescue sheep that need help. He has a club to drive off those wolves that would harm his “flock”. A minister ministers to people. He serves them. He helps them. He encourages them. He frees them from misunderstandings. He helps them to walk in the joy and the freedom of the new covenant. Free from guilt. Free to help and support one another and anyone else they come into contact with. To “convert them”? No. So that their lives demonstrate the love and compassion of the real Jesus. And the minister sets that example.
This is all ministerial training 101. If a pastor is not doing this, there is something deeply, deeply wrong.
IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE, GUYS!
Sheesh
Funny thing, Lynna, I dated a Mormon Muffin before. The things we did…well I hope it made her Bishop blush :)
Ah, that’s excellent. More people should consider the Bishops while engaged in sexual activity, and remember to add some spice or at least something a little unusual. Nobody wants the bishops to be bored. A campaign to enhance worthiness interviews with more creative sex confessions would be great. I suggest some enterprising mormons get that campaign started right away.
That’s another funny thing about the LDSrons, is the pathetically pompous use of the term “Bishop” for basically just some guy. I used to live across the street from the local Bishop and other than being a tightass Republican with 7 blond kids (all very poilte), he didn;t strike me as especailly holy.
I know there is a very complicated system of priets and high priests of various sorts too, right?
even an apology for typos* (*shakes fist angrily in the general direction of South Cackalacky*) sets a new record on The Thread
*of which this is an example
*waves
The trains are pretty fecked as well. Earlier today, what should have been a c.20min stopover in Marseilles turned into a 3½hour semi-drought (the bar lost power for the last two hours, so no more beers…). At one point, every train on the departures board was either delayed or cancelled.
And this is in southern France. Excepting obvious places like The Alps, I’ve no idea where the nearest snowfall is. (It has been raining heavily most of today, and it’s been about freezing for the last week or so.)
At the Chunnel (Channel Tunnel) between N France and SE England under the English Channel they have run into serious problems because the tunnel is too warm / France is too cold!
The electric trains get thoroughly chilled (poor things!) in N France. When they go into the Chunnel they meet warm air which could potentially have a higher water content because of the higher saturation vapour pressure. With the temperature of the electrics well below the actual dewpoint of Chunnel air, condensation forms and the trains fail.
And nobody thought of this …?
Perhaps it was the wrong kind of cold …
Sven, you are right that the “Bishops” are just some guys. Usually, they have no training for that “calling”, other than the usual morgbot stuff of racking up numbers to show to their superiors.
Here’s how the mormons explain priesthood to themselves:
Mormon doctrine specifies that the ordinary guys called to be bishops receive the power of discernment as a gift from the holy ghost.
This belief is why members obey LDS Church leaders, even when the leaders tell parents that their gay children need to be corrected, and that Satan is working through the internet.
However, the power of discernment claims get them into trouble often. For example, in May of 1980, church news outlets released a photo of church leaders, including Prophet Spencer W. Kimball, examining documents from forger Mark Hofmann. The church paid out thousands of dollars to Hofmann, and no prophets or apostles caught the fraud.
Leaders also made optimistic predictions of converts in Japan when they expanded missionary activities there. Nope. Dead wrong.
They also have a problem with pedophile Boy Scout Troop Leaders selected by the discerning bishops. These are just a few examples — any ex-mormon who is also a returned missionary will tell you more. What continues to amaze me is that mormons are amazed when they find out their leaders do not have the power of discernment.
As a personal anecdote, I can add the story of a “priesthood blessing” given to a woman who now blames herself for not fulfilling the prediction. The “blessing” included a happy marriage and children. Nope. Now in her mid-forties, the woman has been divorced twice, and has problems with her reproductive organs that prevent childbearing. She’s completely wracked with guilt over this and feels she is somehow responsible for letting god down, for not following god’s plan for her. She’s borderline insane, and frequently depressed. The way church members treat single women doesn’t help.
Boys are initiated into the first level of priesthood at age 12, which makes them, technically, priesthood holders over their mothers.
The lack of training for Bishops compounds the psychological problems of church members who seek their guidance. There’s a preponderance of successful lawyers and businessmen in the mormon bishopric.
@Lynna #923
And THAT is why I laughed at Mitt Romney when he evaded the question about his religion by reporters during the run up to the 2008 campaign. He referred them to the LDS website, hiding of what he apparently should have been proud of. I mean, he has a priesthood, that alone should make him an expert in the field! Imagine a Catholic priest referring people to the Vatican website if they had specific questions regarding Catholicism. That Romney, what a slimy idjit.
Yeah, I noticed Mitt Romney tap dancing around the questions. Wise move on his part. Did you see the USA article (written by mormons who did not identify themselves as mormons) that purported to present “research” (done by mormons, also not identified as such, and also not real research) revealing that if people knew more about mormonism they would like mormons better?
We should oblige them and inform everyone of the details of mormonism.
The only details the USA article referred to were things like “do mormons drink alcohol,” and “do mormons believe in Jesus Christ” — Some guy named Monson was one of the authors. The article was one of many steps the church is taking in their Romney for President campaign (all undercover and supposedly subtle, of course).
A pastor is a shepherd.
A predator who enslaves his flock, forces them to breed whether they are willing or not, takes their offspring away at will and only “protects” them in order to be have all of them available to slaughter for his pleasure or profit? Sounds about right.
Mitt will have to ignore questions about his underware for his entire career.
wear. underwear.
I dunno, Sven. “Underware” v. “Underwear” …. hmmmm. The “ware” garments sound more like the protective devices they are purported to be.
I think this belongs over here instead of in the thread where it started.
OK. Here we go, the discussion up to now edited for space and priority:
Top Ten Pharyngula in-jokes/catch-phrases
10. ooooh, sniny!
9. How is it there are PYGMIES + DWARFS?!
8. Happy Monkey!
7. Goats On Fire!
6. Your concern is noted.
5. bacon
4. uh…
How could you forget lebians masturbating with bibles!
You also failed to include references to Cthulhu
2. Get in the sack
Right, “get in the fookin sack!” is good.
Any Irishman could tell you that Dara said Get in the feckin’ sack.
1. When will Cuttlefish get here?
I actually considered something like “Cuttlefish, you’re a genius!” but that goes without saying.
I think “raisin date” has to make that list somewhere
Also I just remembered “buy me a camera!”
“Pharyngulate” has to be in there somewhere.
I say we have a vote for the top ten Pharyngula in-jokes/catch-phrases.
Some other entries:
-R**ke: ‘I would never inflict oral sex on a women.’
– Josh and his Weebles.
– Kw*k’s Facebook threat
– “Deep rifts”
– cephalopod porn
– crockoduck
– The Dungeon = The Intersection
you are also forgetting his noodly goodness
Pearl clutching and the fainting couch should be in there somewhere.
And “It’s a fracking cracker!”
And we mustn’t forget Patricia’s spanking couch!
I see no “trophy wife”
thoughts?
also:
Also, the bitching about the comment reg system.
And how did alcohol get left off? Bacon, lesbians, bibles, and booze, surely.
In any list of Pharyngula trends for the year we’ve got to include ‘Josh puts super-smackdown on delugionists for ignorance of geology’.
We should only commemorate Kw*k with one phrase. While the demand for the camera was pure arrogance, the matchless threat to defriend PZ on Facebook shows the utter inanity of the famous alumnus of the famous high school that few people have ever heard of.
The whole “cyberpistol” thing from crackergate. Wasn’t that Angry Bill himself?
“Brenda, you ignorant slut!”
Smoggy’s friend Floyd Rubber needs an honorable mention …
Sven DiMilo | December 21, 2009 5:40 PM:
#6 is not by any means a Pharyngula in-joke or catch-phrase. It was used on usenet at least as far back as the late 1980s.
You fuck one Weeble…
@Alan–yeah the reading didn’t go as well (over the snowy snowy weekend) as I had hoped (although I did get some writing done, including a tiny bit on a manuscript that I want to submit in January*). Today, I took the day off and finished up the fucking Christmas shopping** (the balance of which occupied most of the rest of the snowy snowy weekend), and tomorrow I have to head off to visit the ‘rents et al. They live in the great white north and haven’t got the intertubes, so it’s all going to have to wait until next week now.
Thank you, however, very much, for your quick reply to my query and for the posting of links.
*woo!
**I did poorly this year. Just really out of ideas. Although I did decide to enroll a scientifically-minded relative in AAAS (which, of course, comes with a subscription to Science). He will be delighted and will never see it coming, so that’s at least one good gift.
Many of the other suggestions also have origins external to Pharungula. Are you suggesting that as a criterion for exclusion?
To me, references to Lovecraft or teh FSM or Monty Python or Pratchett novels or whatever are too general to count (under the rubric offered, at least).
#930
Can I very tentatively put forward (for this thread at least) “Share and Enjoy”
But of course you can! In fact, I think you just did!
Your objection is noted.
#926 Dianne
Unlike a real flock of sheep, human beings are capable of ditching the bad shepherds.
Good night, good people (and any cephalopods lurking in coconut shells on this thread).
At this rate it looks like I’ll see you all on the next thread.
Proposed death sentence for “sorcery” in Saudi Arabia:
See you later, Alan B. Have a good rest.
Gay story line on Big Love:
For consideration as a Pharyngula in-joke, there’s the very recently developed insult: “you ridiculously porphyritic granitoid” or the derivative “you fucking granitoid”
“Nothing worse than a foul-mouthed woman.”
There’s the Endless Thread itself — is that a proprietary Pharyngula characteristic?
PZ is a Poopyhead.
Rev BDC’s cooties should make the list.
Dear Atheists,
The year is drawing to a close and I am about to go and celebrate the Antipodean Christmas, which means beaches, barbecues, and twilight till 11pm.
I hope you will forgive me if I become a little sentimental and tell you what a nice bunch of evil atheists I think you all are. As it seems pretty likely I will be going to hell, I’m comforted by the fact that I will have good company. And while I remember, belated congratulations to luscious Lynna for her well deserved Mollification, I hope you all noticed how her posts improved once she started wearing my patent vibrating lingerie.
I’d like to have written you some Christmas smoggerel but I ran out of time (Floyd Rubber had also intended to write, but he’s landed a short-term job as a Santa in a Catholic Seminary) so here’s an oldie, slightly revised but already dated, from my days as the scourge of stuffgodhates.com:
————-
SMOGGY’S CHRISTMAS PRAYER
DEAR GOD, from Whom all blessings flow,
The Baddest Bastard above, below
And through the omniverse.
I hereby tend my Christmas prayer—
The same one I pray every year—
That You will damn and curse:
The religious fucks who cannot laugh
(Their lack of humour makes me barf);
The schills who’ve milked the public purse;
The bankers who make sub-prime money;
The warmongers who find death funny;
The talking heads who nurse
Our hatreds and our shallow fears
(As Fox and friends have done for years).
I pray that You’ll say something terse
To Bush and Cheney, Blair and Rice,
And those who gave them the advice,
That war is good (“don’t fear the hearse
Cos it won’t be your son or daughter
Who’s fodder in the senseless slaughter”).
But let me finish this line of verse
(For Smoggy can be quite perverse)
Instead, in this season of goodwill,
I’ll cease my list of whom to kill,
And extend to all of you out there,
An olive branch of Christmas cheer:
To all of the lurkers and all of my friends,
And all I’ve offended (let’s not make amends),
The best of the season, to one and to all,
May the New Year bring peace and let happiness fall.
And finally to God, who’s a lonely Old Bloke,
Doomed to live on while the rest of us croak,
With nothing to do but obsess about sex,
I wish there was some way to get you out of the fix
Of having to hear our self-interested prayers
As you’ve had to do now for ten thousand years
Take Smoggy’s advice God, although it’s no hit,
And tell them that Darwin’s the genuine shit,
Then slip quietly off to a tropical island
And leave your creation to languish behind.
Have a break, take a rest, nod off in the sun,
You really don’t need us, we’re not that much fun.
As for me, Smoggy B., I’m off to steal sheep,
If I never come back, don’t wail or weep,
I’ll have died in the Alps, with my flock in a blizzard,
And so if my banter has stuck in your gizzard,
I’d like to say sorry to one and to all,
And point out that we were all destined to fall.
And it’s not my fault if you’re a humourless turd,
Who takes yourself seriously, preaches God’s word!
Just laugh with your family, love all your friends,
This is your ride, and it too quickly ends.
I don’t want a heaven, I don’t need a hell,
The best that will happen, as far as I can tell,
Is that one day a few of my myriad atoms,
Will be out in space forming marvelous patterns,
And so too will yours, and maybe they’ll meet,
And that’s better than a heaven with God and Saint Pete.
———————–
Happy Monkey to all!
Smoggy Batzrubble
Happy Monkey, to you too, Smoggy!
Specifically Pharyngulish phrases/in jokes
10. Oh, sniny!
9. How is it there are PYGMIES + DWARFS?
8. Happy Monkey!
7. Goats On Fire!
6. I demand a camera.
5. I would never inflict oral sex on a woman.
4. Cyberpistol
3. Trophy wife
2. Bacon, lesbians and beer
1. Pharyngulate this poll.
Thank you, Smoggles, for the conga rats.
To you other readers, I assure you that Smoggy is not exaggerating the effects of the vibrating lingerie. The frequency and quality of my revelations per day have increased markedly. Thus, I have more juicy good news to share. In the spirit of Alan B’s “Share and Enjoy” series, I will continue to share with you the side effects of the specially-equipped lingerie (but I will not share the lingerie itself). [narrows eyes, checks her six]
You’re just saying that to make us feel good, especially the evil part.
‘Tis @ 948,
and of course the legendary ” I even let them use my bathroom” !!
*folds arms and nods approvingly*
Ah, politics in Idaho! Gubernatorial candidate, Rex Rammell, has invited “Elders only” (mormon priesthood holders) to a meeting at the Hampton Inn in Idaho Falls on January 19th. He says he’s going to discuss the Constitution, which means that he is going to discuss how mormons can take over in order to save the world. Mr. Rammell’s printed invitation reads:
Comments below the news article include:
No, you’ll sell it on ebay.
I’d always felt I should be promoting “[Miscellaneous demand] or the cracker gets it!” as a catchprase (Example: “Hand over the calamari or the cracker gets it!”), but I dunno… the opportunities just didn’t seem to be there.
(/In unrelated news, I worked on boarding switchfooted today. I’ve heard this is a lot like learning all over again. I can confirm this is essentially true. Hand over the ice pack or the cracker gets it.)
Deepest Undersea Erupting Volcano:
Yeah, that volcano is badass. Of course the journalist who covered the story had to write something to piss me off.
He wrote molten lava…
*headdesk*
TisHimself #948: Needs more tentacles.
Josh, how would you have worded the phrase “observed molten lava flowing” … looks to me like the journalist is quoting the expedition’s chief scientist.
Josh is one of those geopedants who insist that lava is molten by definition.
Also, shouldn’t it be “lava are“?
My vote for the name of the next segment of the Everlasting Thread (even now breaking over the horizon)—Bring Me the Head of the Endless Thread.
I think it sings.
Also, bacon. With mushrooms. And fresh-baked bread.
(Maybe I should have said, “even now breaking wind over the horizon”?)
@Lynna:
Robert P. George reminds me of Piltdown Man, only ever much more so in every direction; an Über-Palæo-Catholic Megatroll with real influence who sets political GOATS ON FIRE.
And his “chaste sexual union” is a self-foot-shooting oxymoron of epically Piltdownian proportions.
???
Let me Google that for me:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dara_%C3%93_Briain
Heheh. You kill me. Get in the fookin’ sack!
[…]
Strike the first “k” — crocoduck.
[…]
You’re missing the most important one of all:
→ SIWOTI !! ←
And/or: SIWOTI syndrome.
Also: Typo cooties! That darn Rev. BDC !!
Perhaps: Blockquote failure.
Perhaps: “We appreciate your concern. It is noted – and stupid.”
Still not exclusive to Pharyngula, but much less general than “Your concern is noted.” Of course, there’s the downside that it’s used with much less frequency…
That’s not me being pedantic. Wouldn’t you raise an eyebrow if I wrote something like liquid soup? Hmmmm…but wait. What if the soup has sat around for a bit and all of the water has evaporated? Is it still soup? Or is it something else? Is it simply dried soup? Fuck–probably a bad analogy. Maybe it was me being pedantic.
But yes, I think there’s pretty much a consensus that lava is molten. Frozen lava is a rock. And yes, I know people tend to walk around on Hawaiian volcanoes calling that stuff “hard lava” and “cooled lava.” That’s probably okay, but I still don’t like “molten lava.”
*folds arms stubbornly*
And this concludes your morning edition of Pedanticgeodork. Be sure to tune in next time when we discuss such fascinating topics as “can we still call it a mudcrack if the bed is made of salt?”
That one is going on the quote list.
It’s happening all over the world! Or about to happen, in this case:
Yay!
And the timing is perfect:
If there is no presidential veto, the first gay marriage ceremonies could take place in April – a month before Pope Benedict XVI is due on a four-day official visit.
Perfect. The Pope can get married to his secret love (whoever he may be) and issue a papal bull that gay and straight marriage are wonderful things, including for priests.
What? It’s far more likely than the rapture that people keep predicting for next month.
And may I have a (Brief translation: idiot general in Iraq orders soliders to not become pregnant, on threat of court martial. No exception, as far as I can tell, for rape, no option to get an abortion to correct their “dereliction of duty.”)
I did not know Winston Rowntree did comics for Cracked (well, I don’t read Cracker, so no surprise really).
My loss:
http://www.cracked.com/article_17009_how-win-at-panhandling.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_17187_mineral-states-man.html
Dang! Messed up the HTML above. Original line was supposed to be “May I have a WTF?
I do have to add that at least the order isn’t sexist: male soliders who get another soldier pregnant also get into trouble.
@ Dianne # 971, 973
According to the article, there is an exception for rape (“Schwangerschaften nach einem sexuellen Missbrauch würden von der Regel ausgenommen.”)
Ah, so there is. Teach me to not read an article thoroughly before commenting on it. Nice to know that the military is being reasonable even while it’s being completely unreasonable.
Actually, my sister probably told me it was Katy Perry, and then explained who that was by mentioning her quarrels with Rihanna, and I only remembered Rihanna… I don’t dare ask, though. :^)
Thanks, I did, with a delay of half an hour that was mostly caught up with before arrival. Getting to the airport took a long time due to a couple of accidents, but fortunately I had scheduled to arrive 2 h 10 min before liftoff, and terminal 3 happens to be very close to the light-rail station (CDG is unbelievably gigantic!), so I arrived at the gate just when the boarding was scheduled to start (though didn’t for another half hour).
Snow and sunshine here in Vienna. :-) Only slightly more snow than in Paris, though.
Also, as I mentioned on that thread, I prefer the version by DickDocPhD: “We appreciate your concern, it is noted – and stupid.”
:-D
<quiet headdesking in the background>
“Molten lava” is like “monophyletic clade”.
What? Seriously???
Haaaah, hahaah! It could have been so easy to avoid this pseudoproblem. The German word, for instance, is just Trockenriss, “dry-rip”, which mentions that the cracking comes from drying, and doesn’t mention mud. =8-)
Georg Gänswein, his private secretary. Or so all of Rome seems to believe.
I’m pretty much sure not, actually…
And as to ‘molten lava’, however, that really annoys me too. I am no geologist, and couldn’t even convincingly play one on TV, but I do have a great, abiding, occasionally borderline unseemly love of adjectives. A well-placed adjective (or even a cluster of thirty) is a beautiful thing, absolutely…
… superfluous ones, on the other hand, have this fingernails-on-the-blackboard quality about them. Molten lava = blech.
(/And don’t get me started on those philistines I’ve caught qualifying superlatives and absolutes. ‘Highly unique’? What the hell is wrong with you? Get in the fucking sack!)
I would love a tra-la-la-la-lobite ornament!
Actually, I don’t think that works against you. “Hard lava” and “cooled lava” denote lava in an unusual state.
Heeheehee. You’re bad.
(Re the sack, I thought the Irish consensus here was “fecking,” but I don’t have time to look up the thread.)
I am no fan of extra superfluous redundant adjectives. They are obviously and clearly unnecessary and excessive. Take the blue pencil to them! They are unneeded and just say the same thing twice, thrice, or even more times than two or three.
That said, when one finds oneself in, say, Hawaii or Isabela, or for that matter parts of Idaho or California, there is a strong tendency to refer to the igneous a’a or pahoehoe rock of magmal origin on which one is always walking as “lava.” One may quite probably find oneself referring to “lava tubes” and “lava flows” when referencing features of the local geology. In such circumstances one might perhaps be forgiven for clarifying one’s referents, in casual speech, when wishing to mention lava sensu
pedantostricto, viz. the thick, viscous (not to say ‘viscious’) liquid, molten form of the melted lithic material, as “molten lava,” for clarity. Mightn’t one?One might. But if one were, say, hypothetically, to write ‘molten lava flowing across the deep-ocean seafloor’, in the context of a description of an active eruption, they still have to get in the sack.
(/Rules, dammit. This is just how it works. Next, you’ll be asking that people who fart in crowded elevators should just be let off with a warning. The country’s just gonna go ta hell with that mollycoddling attitude, I tells ya…)
Sorry, but ‘extraneous’ adjectives are good. We’re not all experts. A reminder of what we’re talking about helps.
I’m sad to see the Pharynguloids devolving into Pilotless Drone Men. Saaaaad.
Sounds like we need a poll to decide that top 10. It would only be right and proper.
#968 Josh
I think you may have lost this one.
In the Oxford English Dictionary (I know, most of you speak American**) lava has 2 meanings:
A geology dictionary I have follows the same 2 meanings. Its origin implies something to do with washing which may suggest liquid or it may link to pumice which is a harden frothy lava used in washing oneself.
** Specially for American speakers:
(Merriam-Webster – but they have a different
EntomologyEtymology)You know what the problem is? The word ‘lava’ is too simple. Non-scientists like 4 letter words and use them for whatever they want, thereby changing the meaning for scientists as well.
What we need are BIG words, preferably words that cannot be pronounced by the hoi polloi. This is where biology and cladistics comes in. Nobody else is going to use or misuse:
Synapomorphy
Monophyletic
Taxonomic Nomenclature
Synomymous substitution
Processed pseudogenes
Paraphyletic taxon
Parapatric speciation
Heteropy
Heterochrony
Phytogeography
Paedomorphosis
On second thoughts, YEC people use all these words (but without having any idea whatsoever what they mean). At least we won’t get simple slap downs “Ah, but the Oxford Dictionary says something different.”
Closer, closer, closer we crawl toward the next version of the thread…
out of synch, Miles didn’t show up, but (heh) so what
#983 Sorry, Dianne, I ought to have split the last popst. Ah well. This makes up for it.
Add 1
#983 / 985
Always preview! “popst” = post (I blame Ed.)
Add 1
Unlike a real flock of sheep, human beings are capable of ditching the bad shepherds.
(Almost lost this one.) True, but why should religious leaders describe themselves and their diety as “shepherds”? Shepherds are, by their nature, predators. Their motive for protecting their flocks is not for the good of the flocks but for their own benefit: they want the meat, milk, and wool the sheep provide. I find the analogy disturbing at best.
It wouldn’t be much of a slap down. When it comes to scientific terms, what the Oxford Dictionary says or does not say is irrelevant, and sometimes wrong.
Temperature of where I was yesterday: -10°C/ 14°F
Temperature of where I am today: 23°C/ 74 °F
I’m visiting family (rats, I always forget to bring a helpful copy of the DSM-IV)* and probably won’t be commenting much in the next few days. Just wanna wish everyone a Merry Squidmas and a Happy Monkey!
_____
* Looking back this is probably where my fascination with kooks began.
Just rediscovered this strip in my favourites (yay! randomiser!), and I think it’s too cute not to share.
I wonder if posts saying “last” are forbidden like posts saying “first.” Best not risk it. Happy monkey all!
Apropos of Indiana Jones, I note that the original gun-vs-sword scene planned for an epic fist/bullwhip-versus-sword fight.
Well, there’s a certain “First!!!” post that was never deleted. ;)
(+1)
Hi Dianne
I can only assume that you did not want a reasoned answer to your question. Which is fine. My bad for not recognising it.
Do I have to do this myself?
Because I will, you know.
In fact, I (probably) have done so befo
oops!
I accidentally clicked ‘submit” before I was finished composing my comm
darn it! It just happened again!
I am such a clumsy fumblefingers this afternoon!
I just wanted to say this, and only this:
+
1
Oops. What will be the last post?
we can has new subThread?
…please?
#994: ? WRT what?
Hm.
Titanoboa!
Testing how many internal URLs I can load up using MT:
Science of Watchmen,
I have no idea what this thread is about anymore,
I have no idea what this thread is about anymore, reloaded,
The thread that will not die,
Bride of the Thread That Will Not Die,
Son of the Bride of the Thread That Will Not Die,
Revenge of the Son of the Bride of the Thread That Will Not Die,
Curse of the Revenge of the Son of the Bride of the Thread That Will Not Die!,
Thread 9 From Outer Space!,
The Horror Express,
The cursed undead heart of the vengeful bride of the son of the thread that will not die!,
Escape from the planet of the cursed undead heart of the vengeful bride of the son of the thread that will not die!,
The pie made from the cursed undead heart of the vengeful bride of the son of the thread that will not die!,
The lost skeleton of the mad bride of the son of the thread from Mars that will not die!
…
What next ?!!!!?
I can’t say I’m familiar with Marina Warner, but this interview on Radio3 was a quite interesting look into how atheism is handled in the civilised world.
No, mr Thread, I expect you to die.
Wait… 15 links? Fifteen?
WTF?
nice wall o’ linx!
Huh.
Looks like if your URL does not use an http:// before it, comments can contain an unlimited (?) number of links.
Granted, that will only work for stuff internal to Sb, but still. There’s a lot of stuff internal to Sb.
Apropos of:
Top Ten Pharyngula in-jokes/catch-phrases
There’s another one not on the list:
*clenched-tentacle salute*
Blasphemous lesbian bacon porn.
Uf da. You’re in trouble now.
Lesbians are inherently blasphemous, and the regulars here really don’t like pleonasms.
Owlmirror, that was a great list of internal links!
I think there is a mormon over on the Mormon Prophecy thread who has no ass left.
Yay! My brother finally posted on Pharyngula. He’s somewhere around the 340s on the Mormon Prophecy thread, look for “Lee”. Writing is not his thing (luckily for me, otherwise he’d be able to create our book projects all by himself). But recognizing bullshit when he hears it is his thing, and he got some good licks in on the mormons, especially their penchant for ultra-loony patriotism.
The lost skeleton is no more. Now you must tend to The huge evergrowing pulsating brain that rules at the center of the Pharyngula ultraworld.