I just stagger back from yet another long day of travel, and what do I discover? You’ve filled up the las entry in the endless thread again. Does the horde never sleep?
Anyway, we will launch this one with a mystery. Watch this video of an Oregon bigfoot:
Now the mystery. Why is it that all sightings of bigfoot are such obvious scams? They are typically badly done messes like a poor and shaky camera recording, or a pile of rotting meat in a fur suit. This one suffers from overly slick choreography — isn’t it nice how the camera zooms into focus only briefly, just as Bigfoot turns to look at the cameraman? At least this guy invested in a nice hairy man suit and put some effort into the makeup, but it’s still a guy in a costume.
And wait — the creator’s name is “John E. Walker”? Yeah, right.
As if you need anything to talk about, at least you can start by ripping into this video. I have no idea where you’ll end up from there, of course.
As a recent transplant from New England to California (SF Bay area), this amuses me to no end. These people have no idea what bad weather is.
Even tho they missed the reference, Mr T’s response @416, to Owlmirror’s #416 was awesome in it’s own right.
Oh yeah, when I rewrote that comment from scratch (vox.com signed me out), I forgot to add the following to the end again:
Allons, enfants de la pa-triii-i-euh,
le jour de boire est arrivé!
[…]
Aux verres, citoyens,
buvons nos flacons,
buvons, buvons, qu’un vin bien pur
a-breeeeeu-veuh nos poumons !!!
You need some training. Expect to slip. Start to slide deliberately. I never slip when I expect the ground to be unpredictable, and sliding along can be great fun!
Done.
Come to SoCal, live in our heat during the summer. It’s pretty bad, lol. (Not nearly as bad or dry as some places, still I rather that my AC isn’t on.)
… Speak it. We must find this (spits vehemently) accursed pikachu and make them see the error of their ways!!!
(… counts exclamation marks, concludes that, clearly, there just aren’t enough up there yet…)
!!!!!!
(/…in other news, in five days I will be in Whistler. My legs are getting all restless already. If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the basement, standing on my board, with my hands over my tips and my eyes closed.)
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
So your university is in it-never-rains-in-southern-California?
arrivé !
Mère. Deux.
Steve Benson gets in trouble for making fun of Pat Robertson. See cartoon at http://comics.com/steve_benson/2010-01-17/
oh, fun! I’ve been there once, with a friend from Vancouver. Snow and weather were shitty then, but it was still a cool weekend.
Lynna@492,
Amazing! Thanks. Knot theory is one of the most fascinating branches of mathematics for an amateur – and contains many deep, unsolved problems. I have a popular book on the subject on my shelves. However it’s not true, as the linked article says, that until now knot theory has been considered completely abstract. DNA strands can get knotted, and there are special enzymes, called topoisomerases, which knot and unknot it. In chemistry, synthesising knotted molecules is part of the study of isomers – different molecules made of the same combination of atoms. Knot theory also has deep connections with statistical mechanics.
On a lighter note, this reminds me of a British series of children’s books about an eccentric scientist (oh well, at least not a mad or evil one) called Professor Branestawm. The Prof. wrote a letter to the Water Board (in the good old pre-Thatcher days, the UK had a municipally-owned water supply system), complaining that the water was coming out of his taps twisted. The Water Board wrote back saying they didn’t mind that, but if it started coming out in knots, to please let them know!
Blech. You can have the ones here. I’ll never understand the appeal of camping in the mountains. I live in a part of the world that only has three or four snow-free months and the first thing people want to do is go as soon as the weather warms is find the only place in the province that still has snow, like Jasper or Banff, and set up a tent near a glacier?! I’ll take Mai Tais and palm trees any day.
This is exactly the sort of up-to-no-goodery I’m talking about, AJ.
That’s awesome. In the most tangential manner, that reminds me of this delightful puzzle game.
Knockgoats @508:
Ahhh. Excellent addition of info. I didn’t know that. This is what I like about Pharyngula!
:-) :-) :-)
I seriously can’t wait. I’ve been training on my local regular hill almost nightly, and doing cardio stuff and strength stuff at home in faint hopes of being halfway ready for that kind of drop and that much powder, and everyone I mention it to is warning me after this mountain, I will be forever spoiled for the East coast.
Yeah, I realize… But I figure to make me pay now, the sick-of-winter lynch mob is gonna have to come into the mountains to get me. I figure I’m safe for a bit, anyway…
(/Granted, they’ll probably be waiting at the airport when I get back with a noose, too… But by then, fuck, who cares. I’ll die happy.)
Opportunity.
Also, guitar is god and steve eagles is it’s prophet.
Is the LDS Church trying to buy a controlling interest in the Salt Lake Tribune? Jeeezus christ, I hope not. Sometimes the Salt Lake Tribune reporters are the only force keeping the LDS Church honest when it comes to Utah politics.
http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/blog-2955-lds-church-vs-city-weekly.html
Doesn’t sound good though. The Tribune is bleeding money and the church has money. Shades of Rev. Moon buying the Washington Times.
Already got a reply! Information on the digs should start to become available in March.
See, I’m not agin’ that, either, exactly… With enough iced drinks, no particular need to move through the air, and plenty of sufficiently cool water to swim in and/or sail on, even I can stand summer. Briefly, anyway.
But too much of the reality of summer for me is nothing like that. It mostly seems to be about stinking, overheated, humid cities, trying and failing to breathe ground level ozone and worse, and this awful sense of intellectual torpor. Seriously, I feel like I lose 20 points off the top of my IQ in the months around the summer solstice… Sometime ago, I came to the conclusion my body’s cooling systems completely suck, and my CNS starts going on the fritz even when mildly overheated… I’ve always figured it’s probably some nasty side effect of having spent the first three years of my life somewhere around 60 degrees North.
(/So summer’s label sez, for me: Warning, take only with ice-cold beer and/or margaritas.)
Not without snow tires I won’t. You’re safe…for now.
(Okay, so the roads are fine. I’d still rather be rollin’ with my windows down.)
I remember those books! In primary school, I think I even dressed up as Professor Branestawm once (using a shower cap to create a high bald forehead, as I recall) for a “come dressed as your favourite book character” day.
I’m not going to rise to the bait about the Glorious People’s Commissariat of Water Supply, of course…
Of course, now water is privatised, you get to choose whether it twists or not – and if it does, which way – as it comes out of the tap ;-0
Unlike the good old days of socialised water, when government inspectors made sure everyone’s water twisted to the left, like good socialist water. If you were suspected of twisting your water to the right, you’d be up before the Communist Fascist Death Panel before Sarah Palin could say “You betcha!”
(I’m not quite sure whether I’m making fun of socialists or conservatives here, or both. Bah. A plague on both their houses.)
Weather? We are burining valuable Threadwidth talking about weather?
Now, water supply: fascinating history there, of engineering breakthroughs and grand schemes. Cadillac Desert, fossil aquifers, all that shit.
I have been learning about the old Brooklyn Water Works. Brookyn, in the years before it became a borough of NYC and back when it was the third largest city in North America, used to get its water via an amazing system of reservoirs, giant conduits, and steam-powered pumps from further east on Long Island (including the “lake ” across the street from which i live).
to burin: chatting listlessly and aimlessly about random, trivial subjects.
Wait – I thought Knot theory was a hotly contested subject only amongst knitters.
Here‘s a good read!
:-)
I should be able to hold off on buying the tickets until then. That makes me happier.
Why knit?
.
.
.
.
.
.
Why knot?
Nighty-night!
Gyeong Hwa Pak (#487)
The thunder in Seattle sometimes sounds like buildings exploding and then collapsing. That’s freaked me out a few times before I realized it was only one of our rare storms.
So did David from Canada ever return, or did he end up being eaten as well?
yeah, thunderstorms sound like that over here, too. And they look Epic, as well, because you can have a single lightning-bolt go across the entire sky; which is HUGE here in the prairie.
Day, David fC is one of a few who’ve appeared honestly inquisitive, asked questions, were directed to a wealth of resources, and never returned.
Make of that what you will…
like this, for example.
Waterspout over Tampa Bay.
And…SHHHHHIIIIIIIIT
Coakley concedes the Senate race to Scott Brown.
On that note, I just got a call from the RNC, laying out the case that the Republicans™ are BACK!! and would I please be willing to donate $100.00 in the fight to defeat Obama’s policies??
I let the caller run on and on with his script, thinking the time he wasted with me would be time he wouldn’t have to proselytize to an actual Repubtard. When he had finished his spiel, I calmly informed him “Well, I’m a “big L liberal democrat socialist Muslim fairy, so…….no.”
Then I hung up.
That pic appeared in the RSS feed for HiRISE some time ago. Probably 1 in 5 is comparably weird and beautiful – the rest a pretty too, but only moderately weird. One of the many I like.
Just to join the discussion about lightning: here are a couple of storm and lightning photos my brother Leland took.
http://www.wildernessbooks.com/lee/lee/owhyee_river_lightning.html
http://www.wildernessbooks.com/lee/lee/natures_glory.html
Here’s a nice article on knot theory.
Those are very beautiful pictures Lynna. I like the one with the rainbow over the field. I reminds me of the time I say a tripple rainbow.
Lynna, Leland is an artist with his photographs. Unfortunately, only the Redhead’s work in on our walls.
If you see a triple anything in nature isn’t that supposed to instantly convert you to a brand of christianity that worships the dogma of the Trinity? :-)
Reflector of the Light of God
Dang, those typo cooties. …work i
ns on our walls.Growing up in Alaska, double rainbows, circular rainbows, and rainbows in the middle of the night were not all that uncommon (although still very cool). I don’t think I’ve ever seen a triple, though.
I suppose so. But since they were rainbows I suspect they want me in Valhalla. Or join a gay church. lol.
@Sven and David M.: Thanks for the archosaur metabolism/palaeo xrefs.
Possibly relevant regarding knots:
http://fold.it
I remember seeing lots of “sun dogs” in Alaska. The most spectacular sky display, though, was the northern lights.
Hmmm. As far as joining a gay church, if you see a triple rainbow, don’t you have to join a triple-gay church? I like the idea of a triple-gay church.
Change of subject warning: Here’s a Moment of Mormon Madness. Or rather, years and years of madness. The information is from an anonymous poster on exmormon.org
He was convicted of statutory rape, forcible rape, or being gay and handicapped?
‘Tis Himself, OM | January 19, 2010 9:28 PM:
Your link does not work unless I forge the referer to http://www.caedes.net/
Otherwise it takes me to an image which threatens that chihuahuas are comming to get me for stealing images.
Here’s another waterspout. (From here .)
And another.
Third and forth order rainbow. Very rare.
BS
Miki Z @546: Sorry, I don’t know what the conviction was. I assume statutory rape. I went back to the original post to see if there was more info on the handicapped gay guy, but no.
#282
David (Also Sven, but I’ve lost his comment on the Yowie (I do things like that)),
There are reports of finding sasquatch hair and feces. I haven’t been able to check them out, and while there are reports on DNA testing etc., write ups in the scientific literature aren’t there as far as I can find.
The stories have it that the hair and fecal samples contain genetic material that is not human, not even bear. What it is, according to the tales, is primate, but not any species currently known.
On a related note there was a report our of Calgary, Alberta Canada wherein a pair of young men out in a rural area heard a noise late at night. It being over cast, and them out in the boonies, the night was very dark, and our investigators forgot to take a light. So there they were, flailing about unable to see anything clearly.
They saw something large, got excited, and decided it had to be a sasquatch. But they weren’t able to catch it, though they did manage to get a few, short hairs.
The hairs they managed to get a local professor to test. According to the test our intrepid souls had discovered, the bison. Last I heard they still insist they had seen a sasquatch.
As for the yowie, which Sven asked about, let us start with the Wallace line. A line between two faunas; the South East Asian to the west, and the Australian to the east. In the one you have primates. In the other you have tree kangaroos.
There are a few animals shared between the two faunas. Birds for example, and bats (I think). Also humans, dogs, and some rodents. These last animals that could reach Australia from South-East Asia via boats, or by hitching a ride from those with the tech.
But what about yowies? How did they get to Australia, when they had no boats, and apparently never hitched a ride with the humans. And keep in mind that Australia broke off from Africa a long time before apes evolved.
The yowie, from what I can tell, is that the yowie is an example of Aussie humor, only that.
289,
BDC
Creationists are offering evidence now?
mythicalmage:
Friggin’ blockquote fail!!! ‘Nuff said. Please? is me, obviously. Also, emphasis mine. Duh.
#436
Rohrsharch,
Never ascribe to bi-polar disorder what can adequately be explained by Aspergers.
mm,
Is it that they’re all scams, or because you need them to be scams?
Why the need to deny Yowie? Were you ordered to? Is it because you disagreed with His message of peace and love in favor of violent revolution? Did you deny Him three times before the cock crowed?
—
PS Ctrl-F is your friend, and the post you’ve lost is #445.
PPS Similar alleged creatures outside of North America.
#555
Boygenius,
What strange compulsion forces you to read me?
And since I’m writing…
On David Marjanovic’s Macintosh
Are you barred from upgrading the OS on your Mac? If not then I recommend getting a copy of either Leopard or Snow Leopard.
On the Orang Pendak
The first thing to note here is that the orang pendak is taken more seriously than other cyptid apes. Something to do with the relative lack of fakes and hoaxes where evidence is concerned, and the relative lack of a hostile reaction from scientist (might be because assholes and jerks haven’t produced all that much in the way of fakes related to it).
Then again, the orang utan turns out to be more bipedal than any other great ape with the exception of humans. Forget where, but I think in National Geographic there is an article on the animal that points that out.
So the orang pendak may be a subspecies of orang utan, or even just a population of one of the two established subspecies. Considering how long the species has been around, and the varied territory it lives in, it would seem there’s been some evolving going on.
I love it when drudgereport.com doesn’t try to influence politics. They’re just so fair and balanced over there.
Current headline:
“NOW… WILL HE RUN FOR PRESIDENT?”
They report, you decide!
#555
John Morales,
Where’s the evidence? Did they take the ferry from Jakarta?
And why are you blathering on about this when people have asked you to stop? I swear, you show all the signs of being bi-circular. I mean, when are you going to provide proof that Vishnu sleeps at the very center of reality, and all of reality is but the product of his dreaming? That is, after all, really what you’re talking about, isn’t it?
I mean, why should we take seriously anybody who believes in some cosmic vatch with an esoteric taste in halleucinogenics?
(Yowies = Vishnu, a simple equation!)
(Vatch: cf The Witches of Karres)
mythicalmagic:
Have you ever witnessed a train wreck? Were you able to look away?
That said, can anyone tutor me on how to create a killfile. Can I do it through Movable Type? I’m admittedly clueless on this subject.
@ mythusmage
Sooooo, have you found me a quote or two of people saying anything like “the lack of evidence means we can’t go looking” or are you ready to admit you’ve imagined this anti-sasquatch prejudice we’re supposed to be feeling? This should be so easy; you don’t have to step outside the blog. How do you hope to change our minds on the beastie itself if you can’t even produce a single quote to show us we’re being tripped up by our “inner creationist”?
On the other hand, here are your own words: “[T]oo many people have an emotional investment in sasquatch being a lie. … You have become afraid to admit to error, you and many more besides.”
Which I originally compared to those of an actual creationist and can now compare to the words of a paranoid lunatic confused about science over on Respectful Insolence: “It boils down to this – if you entertain the thought that vaccines are bad and I’ve been grossly lied to about the benefits and risks then it EXPLODES the world you believe in. And most people don’t want to go there.”
See the theme here? Doesn’t it worry you?
Now get to work. Show us what we’ve said that makes you think we’re sasquatch deniers too invested in our sasquatch-free worldview to confront the “evidence” with the proper level of reverence. Slaughter us with our own words. If you can’t, then admit you made a mistake, shut the fuck up, and try to learn enough about science and skepticism that you stop sounding like a creationist or a vaccine denying conspiracy theorist.
Peer-reviewed Research Shows Richard Dawkins Can Change Minds.
Azim F. Shariff, Adam B. Cohen, and Ara Norenzayan have recently published a paper, The Devil’s Advocate: Secular Arguments Diminish both Implicit and Explicit Religious Belief . ( Journal of Cognition and Culture 8 (2008) 417–423 )
I found it by way of the most recent Reasonable Doubts podcast. (Starting at about 16:20 .)
Anyone who reads pharyngula long enough will encounter a story from regular commenter about how their mind was changed by a “strident” atheist, such as Bertrand Russell, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, or PZ Myers. A few of the atheists interviewed in D.J. Grothe’s long running Point Of Inquiry podcast have told similar stories.
Yet many opponents of so-called “New Atheism”, or “Militant Atheism” claim the arguments of Richard Dawkins will not change minds. And from there, the argument seems to devolve into a war of anecdotes.
But now there has been a scientific test – a limited, small-scale test, but a test nonetheless.
Abstract:
Discussion:
The Dawkins passage used appears to be The “know-nothings”, the “know-alls”, and the “no-contests”, which appeared in The Nullifidian, December 1994 .
The authors do note some limitations, particularly:
It can often seem futile to argue with believers. But there is evidence minds can be changed by atheist arguments. Next time you find yourself wondering if anyone’s mind will be changed by your arguing with a theist, come back, and read the paper I have written about. Do not give up hope. Minds can be changed.
Did you need a paper to tell you that? I’m the living proof; my de-conversion occurred while I’ve been commenting here, and I haven’t been quiet about it.
Admittedly, it’s not as simple as “Pharyngula changed my mind”. I already had considerable doubts before I ever started commenting here, and was on a gradual road towards non-belief. But it certainly accelerated the process.
I would also add that I don’t think it’s particularly worthwhile, in and of itself, to “evangelise” for atheism. It is worthwhile to try and convert people to a pro-science worldview, and to campaign on important issues like gay rights, proper science teaching in schools, and secularism. But it isn’t necessary for everyone to be an atheist in order to support these things. It’s IMO far more worthwhile to try and persuade conservative/fundamentalist believers to convert to a more liberal and flexible form of religion, than to try and convert relatively moderate believers (as I used to be) to atheism. In the end, atheism isn’t a religion; it’s a simple state of not believing in any gods. And, self-evidently, the non-existent gods don’t care whether people believe in them or not. What I care about is the actual effect of people’s beliefs; and conservative/fundamentalist religion is a million times more harmful to the world than moderate religion.
Walton,
I think you’re equivocating between someone’s beliefs and their religion.
For me, the difference between what you refer to as “conservative/fundamentalist religion” and what you refer to as “moderate religion” is the degree of zealousness of an adherent, at least in regards to the Abrahamic religions.
“Study” had 106 participants, who were Uni students, so had some intelligence presumably, hardly representative of the general population.
Interesting, in a way, but not more then that.
Walton, stay away from the rwandan coffee, I don’t think it agrees with you !
Who evangelises for atheism ? All people point out, here, or in the public sphere, is the shortcomings of religion, noone is running around yelling “join the non-stamp-collecting society” !
Walton | January 20, 2010 5:19 AM:
I was thinking of stories like yours when I decided to post this. I certainly appreciate conversion stories, and I think there are plenty to be found on pharyngula and similar places. However, from a scientific standpoint, it is important to see the ideas implied by these stories tested under controlled conditions.
Additionally – comments claiming the minds of believers cannot be changed are sometimes made here, and I thought the paper in question provided a new way to argue against those claims. Narratives like yours probably appeal to more people, but research changes minds too, and I think it’s important to apply multiple strategies.
Off-topic (!):
Why men use prostitutes. US readers need to bear in mind that political definitions differ in the UK and that far fewer UK people attend religious services overall (so you can’t directly compare those sorts of things with your own experience but would instead need to see how they relate to the actual local population norms).
From the PDF, an interesting parallel:
It’s a shame they don’t have figures for the same ages of each. It looks as though youth is a big factor on both sides. It’s far easier to trap females into prostitution when young (no options, poor self-image) and also somewhat easier to convince males it’s an OK thing if they get inducted into that culture when young. But the males reported also easily adopting the habits of other males and other places where it’s regarded as OK (and tended to down-play the significance of the fact that the women were coerced – and from how young an age that had been for most).
“Rorschach” | January 20, 2010 5:52 AM:
That’s why I referred to it as “a limited, small-scale test”.
But your decision to put quotes around the word ‘study’ is irresponsible; it is real research, and the researchers are entirely honest about its limitations. You, on the other hand, try to imply it has no importance. That is a mistake on your part.
Seems to me the claim that is more often made here is that the minds of a certain type of believers cannot be changed. Those whose delusions completely incapacitate them of the simplest form of critical reasoning and evidence based thought. That paper doesn’t provide a way to argue against this claim.
llewelly,
What I am implying is that it has no statistical significance.
Indeed, there’s more an expectation of a huge pool of mediocrity, of moderate religionists, of cowardly potential atheists and other assorted fence-sitters who could conceivably be reached with sufficient remedial education and unremitting application of reason.
The problem being that, even though this mediocrity can individually be pinned down into acknowledging that they don’t really believe much of their religion (and don’t really know much about reality nor even about what they pretend to know about religion!), it’s debatable whether they’re worth having on side. They’re liable to want to maintain their comfortable cover within society and to revert to their normal non-thinking habits – or even to be convinced of the reverse point of view the next moment they encounter another charismatic religiot.
It’s hard to civilise their minds in the first place but also hard to get them to retain and maintain that level of civilisation (ie as active mental processes). The ones who were capable of it (ie sufficiently intellectually honest and brave) would already have obtained it for themselves.
Obviously it’s important to try and stop the fundies claiming the mediocrity as their own; but the average dishonest, lazy, cowardly, unthinking human is not a great asset in its own right for the truth-seeking (ie atheism and science) side.
Think of them as pawns in a reverse Overton Window game:
If the large mass of mediocrity are generally held away from flocking with the religious nutters (both the dangerously insane and the criminally manipulative) and giving them protective cover, then those religious nutters can more properly be seen for the extremists and conmen that they are. So the big flock of sheeple will then be even more discouraged from hanging out with the rabid dogs and voracious wolves – despite the unlikelihood of the sheeple suddenly becoming sensible in their own right.
llewelly,
Thanks for that reference – interesting. However, I’d strongly criticise a couple of aspects:
1) The first four of the six questions of the self-report questionnaire assume that the subject is religious:
“My personal religious beliefs are very important
to me”,
“My religion or faith is an important part of my identity”,
“If someone
wanted to understand who I am as a person, my religion or faith would be
very important in that”,
“I believe strongly in the teachings of my religion or faith”
2) The r-values for correlation between self-report and implicit measures are quite low, and many statisticians would say r is not a robust measure anyway.
I would worry about the Hawthorne effect with the study as well. It’s not unreasonable to suppose that if you have someone reading a passage which hints that they’re a moron for being religious and then ask if they’re religious, you may affect the answer more than the thinking. It’s an interesting study, and I don’t have any suggestions on how to improve it, but what it says is pretty narrow.
Pretty geology – but only allowed to remain that way because of its lack of mineral value!
Cool, but not rare at all. Problem is that to see them, you have to be looking right at the sun.
It’s good to see another Pharynguloid from the Last Frontier! :)
Imagine (if necessary) yourself a molecular biologist. You’ve got all the tools needed to isolate, amplify, and sequence DNA (these don’t come cheap even today btw; nobody, not even molecular biologists, has the apparatus set up in the kitchen). You are brought a hair or shit sample from North America.
Now you have to primer out a gene of interest, PCR-amplify it, and run it through the auto-sequencer. BLAST the resulting sequence.
WTF? Seems to cluster with primates? Try another gene or two. Maybe a mitochondrial.
Still a primate, but not any known species?
Yes, now is the time to shut up about your incredible discovery and maybe leak out a surreptitious “tale” or anonymous internet “report.”
This shit is just so fucking stupid it makes my eyeballs hurt.
This happens more than you would believe, Sven. I’ve got proofs of P vs. NP and the Hodge Conjecture. I just keep them secret to keep people guessing. I’ll release them when it stops being funny.
Coincidentally, my wife is watching “Bones” right now, with this great quote by a UFO-nut:
Springs to mind for some reason.
I know there’s a larger context to this statement, and you do later go to saying that, regardless, you do want to keep these people away from religion anyway. And this I’d agree with, regardless.
I’d also add, however, that assuming (if anyone is) even said segment of the population is unchangeable would be unreasonably pessimistic.
My view is: people are naturally curious, at the very least. There’s an awful lot of ways of subverting that curiosity, an awful lot of ways of distracting yourself with minutiae and trivia–burning off brain cycles on rote learning, computer solitaire and baseball scores–and apathy of various kinds adding up to undue tolerance of incredible batshit unreason can often seem just as frustrating as that unreason…
But people, in my experience, are also easily fascinated with reality, in all its complexity and beauty, too. Religion, in my mind, must actively work to suppress and subvert that to survive.
I’ve often suspected this is part of why religious services are held weekly–or even more frequently–to steer the mind actively in the directions wanted, away from those not wanted, to keep that creed echoing through the neurons so they don’t get busy with something that might undermine it.
As to why, I dunno. I wouldn’t call myself so much an optimist at all, but I’ve talked with a lot of segments of society, for various reasons, over the years–partly from some years as a reporter, partly from having been through a few career changes, partly from a few hobbies that seem to attract quite a cross-section, and I’m the garrulous type, in person–give me five minutes in an environment I’m not shouting to talk in, and I’ll talk. And in my admittedly limited experience, there’s an awful lot of people who seem to know squat about anything who want to know more about everything. I’ve talked to people about stellar evolution on chairlifts, and had them keep asking for more, not nodding off.
In my less charitable moments, I sometimes think society actually does it, in a sense, deliberately: tries to keep some people dumb, for various reasons. They want to know, they want to learn, they like to flex those (relatively) big, H. sapiens brains, given half a chance… But there’s so much telling them: don’t. Get lazy. Knowing, understanding, thinking too deeply, too rigourously, this isn’t done… Advertising campaigns that lean on emotive, empty appeals and deliberately irrational associations between sex and whatever telling them that whatever you want to associate, for whichever reason, that’s all good…
So, more briefly, I’d say: just because someone looks a little lazy, a little apathetic, don’t count them out yet. People like to think. Sometimes, tho’, they really only feel comfortable discovering how much they like doing so when they think certain influences–peers, priests, and family–aren’t looking.
Then, of course, you have to get to the next phases: past curious through straightened out enough by where that curiosity leads to use their brain with some effectiveness, through to brave enough to express that aspect of themselves more publicly… But even getting to that second stage, I’d say it’s a good thing, in the long run… And they don’t even have to be brave enough to shout anything from the rooftops, either… So long as they’re not also actively teaching their children the bullshit they themselves used to believe, that, too, is one hell of a victory.
I’m one of those who believes there will probably always be some degree of religiosity around much as a gardener expects there will always be weeds–and even if we were somehow to stamp out every old superstition tomorrow, there’d still be some annoying new ones next week–but I also do not hold to the notion there’s really anyone who absolutely cannot shake off the older dogmas, and start really thinking for themselves, if they are given a good enough reason to do so, and the space to do so. It is no contradiction–thinking in terms of, say, epidemiology.
So, more to the point: there is so much that is possible just through speaking up, just through educating, just through getting that spark of curiosity started, however you do so.
aratina cage,
I grew up in Fairbanks, went to junior high and high school there, and moved away shortly after I graduated from high school. I don’t drive, so I’d never move back there, but I have some good memories of it.
Awesome!!!
If that thing comes too close… :-S
Almost three-dimensional.
Worthy of Terry Pratchett!
I saw a triple rainbow once and double ones occasionally.
Wallace actually worked on birds when he discovered the Wallace Line between Bali and Lombok. Of course, some bird species don’t care – there are even globally distributed ones –, but most do.
I’d have to buy it myself, which is ridiculous and way too expensive.
He can’t run Snow Leopard. That is for MacTels only.
Reminds me of when cold fusion was first announced. As a scientist and skeptic, I was willing to tentatively, but skeptically, accept the announcement at face value. But it set my BS meter off big time, so I thought about it, and decided that I would not fully accept it until the “smoking gun” experimental results were there. Namely, both excess heat and neutrons, with the neutron output being expected for the extra heat seen. The results were never there, confirming I was right to be skeptical.
While catching up on my reading, Skeptical Inquirer Vol. 32, No. 6, had an article by Michael Dennett (pages 47-51), looking at the Patterson BF video, and the alleged footprint evidence from that scene. The timeline for the taking, printing, and first showing of the film is dubious, being almost physically impossible in that time. The footprint data was interesting, in that the alleged BF print was deeper than a hoofprint of a 1,200-1300 pound horse. Given the difference in foot area, this require poor BF to be horribly overweight at about 2,200 lbs. Hoax.
Like with cold fusion, I require the “smoking gun” evidence for BF. For me, a body, or even a reasonably complete skeleton is required. Scat or hair with good DNA analysis, which Sven #577 pointed out is both expensive and time consuming, would bring the concept that BF probably exists back into play. The body would be easier and cheaper. So, the burden of proof is upon those making claims to sasquatch existing to provide the necessary level of evidence. MM, do you have the body? If not, until you do, shut the fuck up on BF.
As an aside, the same issue of Skeptical Inquirer had a picture of our bearded overlord (page 9). Some asteroids were named, and PZ, Philip Plait, Michael Stackpole, and Rebecca Watson were honored.
Miki Z #581, I think growing up there qualifies you as an Alaskan. :) I never really got to stay long in Fairbanks over the summer and so I feel I have missed out on much of the grandeur of that city (like the midnight rainbows), but it is a hard place to go to and not take away some special memories. I was able to see the Northern Lights there several times in the dead of winter and one of those times I was mesmerized by what looked like a giant hand playing Liszt on the piano.
And in #579 you mentioned a quote from a Ufologist:
Coincidentally, the National Geographic special on Bigfoot that mythusmage linked to in #424 (I swear it looks like a parody from the preview) also had Jeffrey Meldrum (the Sasquatch specialist) saying nearly the same thing. It shows Meldrum holding up casts of “big feet” and stomping ludicrously fake footprints in freshly laid soil to “prove” that the hundreds of mismatched Squatch footprints he has documented and collected could not have been faked. It even shows a map of the USA with lighted dots representing all reported Bigfoot sightings and wouldn’t you know that the sightings correlate with bear populations. Unfortunately, National Geographic props up Meldrum vs. the rest of the scientific faculty at Idaho State as a continuing “debate” despite the fact that Meldrum is treated like a crackpot.
*headdesk*
Incomplete citation in #583. That was the Nov/Dec 2008 issue. Left out the year.
I want to bite on something. Hard (so, not Jadehawk’s neck). First I hit the keyboard somehow, so a cascade of random acts were triggered, which included submitting the comment. Naturally, I tried to interrupt that, but, as always, it didn’t work.
Then, while trying to see the page with the Hodge Conjecture, I pressed an extra key and made the bookmarks bar show up. I tried to get rid of it by… showing all bookmarks (under the silly assumption that this was turned on and had to be turned off). Did Safari show me all bookmarks (whatever that actually means)? No. It crashed. Now I have to write the entire rest of my comment from scratch. I’m supposed to work here!!!
Fortunately it isn’t much anymore.
Unfortunately, at the link you give, it’s very sloppily retyped.
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
…where BLAST means this.
“The Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST) finds regions of local similarity between sequences. The program compares nucleotide or protein sequences to sequence databases [ = GenBank] and calculates the statistical significance of matches. BLAST can be used to infer functional and evolutionary relationships between sequences as well as help identify members of gene families.”
…Ouch.
~:-| How do you tell it was Liszt?
Also, BLAST most assuredly is a blast. :-)
The best way to view the northern lights is to lie outdoors in the snow. The lights may last for a few hours, and if you lie there until they’re over, you’ll probably realize you’re suddenly feeling Liszt-less.
The lights are amazing, sometimes more than others. I remember in particular a night when they were a ribbon of purple and white light snapping audibly back and forth across the sky, bright enough to tint the snow purple.
arpeggio.
Here’s Rubinstein, but you can’t see his hands much (@2:20):
SEF @571
This is an excellent point. You clarified some of my own thinking about people from whom one cannot expect reasonableness when it comes to religion. They’re likable perhaps, in other areas, intelligent in their chosen career, etc., but they also have very little perspective when it comes to the negative effects of religious nutters because they have a knee-jerk reaction to any discourse that puts religion in a negative light. Making it okay for the masses to look down on the nutters is one step in the right direction.
The “finger” movement was crazy fast, all over the place, yet graceful with intense emotion, like so: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmq5JBpFf9w
Yes, I think I may have on Ester Dome for that show.
This is cool: experimental evidence for the evolution of “3-bears” DNA polymerase: both too much and too little error (mutation) is disadvantageous.
Are you saying I was staring at the sun?
It wouldn’t be the first time. . .
Prop. 8 puts Paramount board member on hold is the title of an article in the San Francisco Chronicle. Oh, look, mormons are being
persecuted forcalled to account for their support of Prop 8 … again.Mendelssohn’s 4th Symphony (The Italian), 1st Movement:
Correct. I should have been more precise with my wording. Speaking of looking at the sun, I have on 2 separate occasions, seen naked eye sunspots.
BS
On page 1003 of Stephen King’s new novel “Under the Dome” the adjective “mormonesque” is used: “Another family!” Charlie Gibson said in a voice of approval that was almost Mormonesque.”
The strange droning, restricted sing-song of mormon worthies during General Conference speeches has been remarked upon before. I don’t know why the regular members don’t notice. They do seem to soak it up though, because some them adopt the style unconsciously and they slip right into it when discussing religious matters.
One oddity that shows up more in past speeches than in present ones is the tendency of mormon worthies to smack their lips into the microphone. Don’t know what that’s all about, but it’s irritating, mormonesque even.
And now you go by the soubriquet “Blind Squirrel”.
@584
Meldrum graduated from BYU, of course, where he learned enough to do some good work on bipedal locomotion, and also how to veer wildly from the facts.
From wiki: Meldrum received his B.S. in zoology specializing in vertebrate locomotion at Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1982, his M.S. at BYU in 1984 and a Ph.D. in anatomical sciences, with an emphasis in biological anthropology, from State University of New York at Stony Brook…
From ex-mormon, Bob McCue:
SEF: I didn’t even make the connection when I posted! Actually,the reason naked eye sunspots are rarely observed is because a cirrostratus haze of the correct density must be present to make it safe.
The first time I noticed the phenomena was in high school. I went down the street pulling people out of cafes and making them look. “Do you realize what this would have meant to the trial of Galileo if this had occurred previous to his trial?”
No they didn’t and they returned, unimpressed, to their coffee. This was the first time I realized that I was “not like the others.”
Sven: as long as we are pulling techs on one another the third and forth order rainbows occur at 45.5 degrees from the sun and do not require looking directly at it. It helps to mask the sun with a building, watertower etc.
BS
The LDS Crutch just bought a few more acres of downtown Salt Lake City.
There are also plans for a new “North Temple viaduct” which the city has planned, but not yet constructed. The viaduct is part of an engineering project that would culminate in a TRAX train from Salt Lake City to the International airport. That might help revitalize the downtown, but I think it’s also a plan to make it easier for mormons to fly into the airport and then take a train to Temple Square, the Conference Center etc. If the LDS Crutch would stop buying up the downtown, I would be all for better public transport for visitors, for transport to downtown hotels, fewer cars, etc. (Salt Lake City already has one of the worst smog problems in the USA, and that problem is getting worse every year.) Source is at http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_14224477
:-D :-D :-D
I’ll watch the videos later.
Jadehawk, in my rabid and frantic concern over consuming oranges, I forgot to tell you that I liked your wordle. (See Jadehawks comment and link at
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/pharynguloids_from_the_deep_en.php#comment-2209618
#574 SEF
I can see your point but according to Prof. Ian Stewart who did a film there for the BBC:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/01/geologists-explore-giant-crystals-in-fated-cave.php
Part 1 of a 5 part series on the crystal caves (others accessible from youtube):
Given how many times you’ve mentioned that Safari crashes– have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling it?
Have you tried installing Firefox and/or Opera and seeing if it’s more stable?
Have you fscked your filesystems? (Note for dirty-minded non-geeks: This does not mean something dirty.)
Do other applications crash on this machine?
tease
:-)
and since this thread is slowly nearing its end as well (though who knows if PZ will have time to restart it anytime soon), I made another one, and I think this one is truly worthy of Pharyngula :-)
and in other news, it’s supposed to snow on Friday. Yay!
Right you are (about the 3rd order ‘bow). Of course I was not recommending looking directly at the sun; that’s counterindicated for anybody who enjoys vision. In any case, what you meant in the first place was “rarely seen,” which is certainly true, and that’s why.
too…much…adorableness…
Indeed! (And “hard Squirrel Now“? Beauty.)
Yeah, that’s what you geeks want us to believe.
Hitler Finds Out Scott Brown Won Massachusetts Senate Seat (since we’re abusing that meme anyway)
This is still my favorite by a mile:
In BBC2 now;
Horizon: Pill Poppers.
Brilliant coverage of both the benefits of science based medicine and the evils of big pharma.
Check it on the iPlayer.
As a f’rinstance: Why do you get combinations of paracetamol and codeine? Sure paracetamol is a useful drug that is effective as a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory pain releiver. The amount of codeine in them is not enough to help pain relief, but enough to make you addicted to codeine.
Note, in particular, the proximity of “Jadehawk” to “Marjanović” in the wordle.
Further deponent sayeth not.
The other side was made for you and me.
@ eddie #615:
Ah but the real trick there is that they put in more of the drug which genuinely does have a worthwhile effect – eg aspirin. So, whereas a standard aspirin would be 300mg, the aspirin in a standard aspirin-codeine mixed pill is 400mg. For average people taking 2 pills that’s 600mg straight aspirin vs 800mg contaminated aspirin. So it’s no wonder the victim/patient notices some genuine improvement – which they can be misled into attributing to the codeine rather than the aspirin.
However, very few people are smart enough to read the label (despite the fact that regulations do now at least force manufacturers to own up more and more to what they’ve actually put into stuff) and work out the trick that’s being played on them. Otherwise more of them would figure out that the correct thing to do instead is to take the maximum safe dose of straight aspirin, viz 3 x 300mg, and have a slightly higher dose again (900mg) while avoiding the codeine trap altogether.
You’re also allowed more aspirin overall in a day too. 4g aspirin is greater than the total from 4 doses of 3 aspirin (3.6g) which in turn is greater than 4 lots of 2 codeine-contaminated pills (3.2g).
Very Spanish
I was looking by the version of Spanish Fly by Avant Jazz guys Cavemen but can’t find a no-pay version :-(
Reinstalling from where? Only version 4 can be downloaded.
I tried Firefox. Then I tried to upgrade it to 3.5. It doesn’t open anymore.
…Then… what does it mean?
(See also comment 611.)
Rarely. And Safari crashes on those websites where it’s plausible that 2005 technology can’t deal with them, those with extra bells & whistles.
Usually, when I need to open something and can’t get it to work in Safari, I now use Netscape 7.2, but that, too, can’t deal with some things. Netscape has apparently been succeded by Flock, which presumably requires an Intel processor.
HA! Smack dab in the middle, in the biggest font, front & center, “evidence”. It is a science blog after all. =8-)
One detail isn’t adorable, though – look how far the Redhead is separated from her nerd! :-(
…”David” to “Bigfoot”. Hm.
On the other hand, I’m next to “take time”. That fits.
And while we’re at words, here’s something interesting from the ResearchBlogging widget:
“I got the word daft published in the British Medical Journal”
Congratulations.
SEF: You never specifically stated otherwise, but the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory pain reliever discussed in #615 is know as acetaminophen in the USA. The nasty stuff that takes out your liver when one tries to get high on codeine containing pills. This happens a lot.
BTW,In the USA, 100mg ibuprofen is available over the counter. 800mg tablets are prescription only, and a person is liable to be arested and charged for the poession thereof.
BS
Walking Spanish Down The Tall
Sing Me Spanish Techno
In the UK, the common paracetamol codeine combination would be “co-codamol”.
That would be the paracetamol. Nasty and almost useless stuff compared with aspirin. Yet, for the past couple(?) of decades they’ve been trying to push it as the safer option when in fact, not only does it barely have any worthwhile effect at all (compared to aspirin’s 3 pronged efficacy) but it’s actually more dangerous in overdose than aspirin is! It only functions as fractionally better than a complete placebo for people who can’t tolerate aspirin. It’s a stupid “choice” for anyone who can tolerate aspirin.
Heh! LOL! It stopped playing at 2:25 because it can’t keep up loading, and the fingers of the left hand are in several places at once in that single frame! :-D
…
Speechless.
It’s like working on Supersaurus and Sauroposeidon and suddenly seeing Amphicoelias fragillimus walk by.
See… I was assuming this was some sort of cracked cover version… Possibly ‘Walking Spanish’ as performed by some guy on stilts… But noooooo….
Not that having the master hisself do the thing is in any way unsatisfactory, natch… The problem here is typos, an overactive imagination, and the general observation that Waits has to be one of the most covered artists anywhere on the planet.
(/And if there isn’t actually a ‘Walking Spanish Down the Tall’ version out there somewhere, well, there should be.)
A quick one, gtgt work.
I don’t know about that.At least Paracetamol O/D I can fix with an antidote, Aspirine not so much.
And btw, Paracetamol has no anti-inflammatory effects whatsoever.
Good-bye
Ta-ta.
What?! No! Argue! Now!
Look, don’t joke. You’re a fixture here. Come on. Don’t be silly.
mythusmage, you there? Please answer.
Spanish music? Concierto de Aranjuez
Loved it since I was a kid.
Not if it’s too late and the liver damage effect has already been set in motion.
Alan,
Post anything. Please.
It would seem MythusMage has transitioned from the manic to the depressive phase.
Damn! I’ve been confusing the terms anti-inflammatory and Antipyretic. Thanks Rorschach.
BS
Are you trying to sell the thread, all fixtures and fittings included, before we move on to a new home?
Apple doesn’t provide reinstallation media with their machines?
Srsly?
Sigh.
OK, can you uninstall and reinstall that?
FileSystem ChecK. Corrupt filesystem => programs failing.
Hm. Does the machine need to have MacOS on it? I suppose you wouldn’t be comfortable installing a Linux distro on it….
Hur, hur, hur.
SC, that you seem genuinely concerned makes me concerned too. :|
Hey, mythusmage, defend Bigfoot. I dare you.
Look, you’re a part of this blog. Don’t go anywhere.
I like how Jadehawk’s first Wordle had “Oh done old” in the middle of the O of OM.
AJ Milne, as always, we have the scapechimp. Why does he insist on passing on his typo cooties? And you are right, the new title is quite evocative.
Alan, what’s going on?
What do you want to talk about?
Post something.
SC, you know there is always new people to tangle with.
usually I agree, but in hte case of people with known mental problems, such sudden, visible yet not explained departures are usually not a good sign :-/
Come on! Hello? Is it me you’re looking for? :P
mythusmage,
What’s going on?
Just post anything, amd I’ll be the happiest girl in the world. Please, please, please.
I agree with SC and Jadehawk. Alan, please come back, and don’t do anything foolish.
mythusmage,
I completely understand if you just want to go to another site. Please just let us know that that’s what you mean by Good-bye.
You should know by now this is what I would do.
Alan, everyone here understands. Let’s talk and argue. Even if you’re not up to that, just a letter, or a symbol, or anythig to let me know you’re still there.
Alan?
Don’t be a tease. :)
What’s going on?
Just post anything, amd I’ll be the happiest girl in the world. Please, please, please.
It is like she is setting this up for me.
Janine,
Are you fucking crazy? This isn’t a joke.
SC – you’re fine.
I am sorry. I have been ignoring Mythusmage.
And mythusmage?
I see SC is worried Alan K (MM) might do something drastic to himself. I simply thought he was being melodramatic, irritated because we weren’t agreeing with him about sasquatch, and not letting him dictate the topics.
I would hope Alan is AFK, rather than just being cruel to SC (who very clearly is exceedingly concerned) or something worse.
Alan, please, just let us know you’re OK. I know I’m melodramatic, so feel free to make fun of me.
Alan, come out come out wherever you are.
I don’t know how he is.
But you are fine, that’s my way of giving you a cyber hug, and support.
In the mean time I’m gonna go share a Walnetto with Janine.
SC: oh, I enjoyed that one. Woody Guthrie ala soul!
I have no idea why it reminded me of this one, but whatever; I’ve loved it for years:
Right, so, incidentally, 18700
But you’ve, generaly, been welcomed here
Hugs. :)
Hugs. :)
I lost my lab manual in the rain today. I blame Jadehawk and AJ Milne. *Pokes
Fuck. After a quick google search, I’m really worried about mythusmage now too. Is someone in San Diego who can check on him?
mythusmage, I know nothing about Aspergers, and online I just usually don’t deal because I don’t how to deal. This might have come off as ignoring you, but that’s not the case. I read your posts.
If you’d like to educate me about Aspergers syndrome (sp?), please feel free.
This has been described as “an explosive day” in the Prop. 8 trial in California. Here’s an excerpt from some of the coverage:
Alan, as you can see, (at least some) regulars care and are worried about you.
Please post anything so as to reassure us, and be assured that I (and others) will come down like a ton of bricks on anyone who disses you for it. Seriously.
For those who may want to follow the Prop 8 trial going on now in California, here are some links:
The Courage Campaign provides transcript-like coverage interspersed with commentary since Day 1 (with 2-3 liveblogging entries per day) of the trial here: http://prop8trialtracker.com/ Note the logo which is a parody of the Yes on 8 campaign and which sparked its own kerfuffle last week.
For details of the logo fight, see -http://prop8trialtracker.com/2010/01/15/irony-defined/ This blog also includes quite a few commentary/discussion posts in addition to the liveblogging posts.
Firedoglake is covering the trial live: http://firedoglake.com/prop8trial/
The San Jose Mercury News has a reporter providing live coverage http://www.mercurynews.com/samesexmarriage
The Los Angeles Times has daily reports here: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/prop_8/
Lynna,
This type of thing is not so surprising anymore, but it is highly hypocritical. Given that the LDS church doesn’t regard non-temple marriages as being anything other than a temporal partnership, what is their investment in traditional marriage? I remember being taught as a very young child that polygamy was God’s style of marriage, and that when we were ‘spiritually ready’, God would make it legal again. This was in the “mainstream” LDS, not FLDS, RLDS, or any other *LDS sect. If marriage equality will lead to polygamy, aren’t they fighting God’s will?
Alan – The offers of support here are serious. They have been helping me through the death of my husband, and they will help you too.
Sorry, gawd won’t, but we will.
@ mythusmage
I know I’ve been riding you for being irrational, but only because I sincerely want you to be more rational. (I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t think you were up to it.) But before that, I want you to be alive and well. Can you let people know you’re at least alive?
Lynna (#666)
Can’t you just imagine the judge fantasizing about taking his gavel to someone’s head?
~*~*~*~*~*~
MikiZ (#668)
Marketing. It’s easier to sell people outside the church on “protecting traditions” rather than “using religion as an excuse to deprive fellow human beings of their equal rights.”
I fsck my filesystems all the time; but, of course, with filesystems the size of mine, it takes a while. Thankfully, I can fsck a couple of them at the same time. The only thing I find annoying is them demanding to be fscked when I want to do something else.
My favourite Bigfoot hoax was of the hairy figure trotting away, followed by “experts” wisely opining that this couldn’t be a human because it didn’t have the proportions of a man. Some years later, the fellow with the convenient film camera revealed that the person in the ape suit was his wife. Sexist assumptions will bite you on the ass when you least expect it.
I’m not entirely clued in to the discussion about/with AK/MM but for the concerned, a more recent sighting here.
thanks windy; i guess that indicates that he’s just sick of us, but otherwise fine. I can live with that :-)
Good pickup, Windy. It assuages my guilt-free worry. :)
—
On another note, Leigh still has not responded to me regarding whether she’s honest on the occasions when she asserts her belief by reciting the Apostles’ Creed.
windy – Thank You!
Alan Kellogg now owes me one good night’s sleep and the enjoyment of one set of trig puns.
And apologies to Janine and Patricia. I can get worked up into a frenzy of worry. It may be genetic.
:)
SC, it may be genetic, but it’s also contagious!
it snowed! only a wee tiny bit, and by tomorrow morning stoopid people will ruin it by driving cars over it, but it looks soooooooooooooo pretty right now!
hopefully Friday will bring enough snow that people doing people stuff won’t be able to ruin it.
Bit of paranoia going on here, I see….
Unfounded, methinks.
SEF @ 632,
No that’s not correct, even then it is still protective of hepatocytes.It is not like some unstoppable avalanche of damage once a tipping point is reached.
Unless it asks you too, a unix-based system shouldnt have to be fscked, this stuff runs in the background without you ever noticing.
Only ever happens to me on Unix I run on USB sticks, somehow after a while the inodes break, and all fscking in the world won’t fix it anymore.
Get a room already, you too !!
:-)
Aww, won’t you think of the voyeurs? ;)
—
No harm done, though.
/note to self
too and two mean different things
/end note to self
It is when the tipping point includes the amount of alcohol (or other susceptibility factor) and passage of time before anyone even considers doing anything! In the UK, what had tended to happen (it may perhaps not be so true any more) is that people overdosed, didn’t die immediately, were thought to be OK (being largely asymptomatic initially) and then died of the liver failure just a little later.
I have been treating those overdoses for more then 10 years and in all this time had to send 3 or 4 patients to the transplant unit.Once you come to Hospital, and especially within 12 hours, you are probably going to be ok.
The issue here is that a potentially fatal drug is consumed by the general population like lollies, and anyone can acquire large amounts of the stuff in their local supermarket.
It is not a nice way to die, by the way, not at all.
Here, have some culture folks….:-)
Stan Live
Mockingbird
There’s a dearth of nice deaths.
Totally unrelated to anything anyone is saying:
Robin Williams on Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Yeah, y’know… And I’ll tell you, honestly, reading this thread is making me mildly nervous.
I mean, I use a fair bit of paracetamol/acetaminophen, myself, on and off. Headaches (weird schedule, lot of time in front of screens, so do I get a fair number of these), muscle pulls, colds, flus, yadda yadda… Thinking I’d rarely exceed 2000 mg per day–might get to 3000 if I’ve really banged something up bad, or at the peak of a bad cold… And I do have a beer or two frequently enough that now and again my liver probably does take a pretty heavy load–between that and the analgesic…
I get that ASA also does the anti-inflammatory thing all by itself, but I do have occasional stomach issues (I have a prescribed proton pump inhibitor in the medicine cabinet, for when a too-spicy relleno starts getting revenge and irritating the bottom end of my esophagus), too… And odds are, if I’ve torn something up bad enough to need anti-inflammatories, the docs will put me on a dedicated one in a second anyway (on one now, actually, for a bruised rib)…
So now y’all are making me wonder about the acetaminophen by default thing again… Dunno… Thinking mebbe it should be ASA, anyway, after all, if I find it’s not causing me to digest myself.
(/Heads off to read dosage recommendations/toxicity stuff more closely, again…)
Part of the problem with paracetamol is all the stealth paracetamol included with other products (along with stealth alcohol!). People can easily take some paracetamol alongside what they think is some magical cold remedy, without noticing that the cold remedy is itself laced with paracetamol. It’s rather similar to the problem of all the stealth salt in processed foods.
Yeah, I’ve noticed the cold remedy thing. Also muscle relaxants for back pain–tho’ there, at least, the common product here (Canada) tends to be available in a mix either with the paracetamol or ASA, take your pick… I guess given the use, people would be looking more for the ASA anti-inflammatory thing…
Also, in both cases, typically ‘extra strength’ for over the counter stuff generally seems to mean 500 mg vs. 325 of the paracetamol, not the decongestant/antihistamine/muscle relaxant/what-have-you.
Clarifying, re ‘not the decongestant/antihistamine/muscle relaxant/what-have-you’… The point being: the dose per unit will be the same for these, between extra and regular strength–it’s just the analgesic (usually paracetamol) dose that’s different.
(/And in many cases, of course, consume either 325 or 500 mg of the other ingredient would be rather unwise.)
Finding a photo of me just got a whole lot easier. (But don’t immediately start scrolling. Read the whole thing, comments included. It’s also fine to get lost in the links for a while. :-) )
Also, I talked about the air in sauropod vertebrae. There are currently several posts about this on the front page of this blog.
I think it does. I’ll have to ask where the CD might be.
It’s actually worse: it’s 3.0, not 3.5, that I tried to upgrade to.
I just deleted it (no uninstalling procedure seems to exist). But the only Firefox version I can find on mozilla.org is 3.5, which requires OS 10.4 or higher.
That isn’t the case. Only Safari fails, and that only when I try to access too advanced websites.
I wouldn’t, because there are programs here that wouldn’t run on anything but MacOS. And is it even possible to run Linux on a G5?
I noticed it myself and wanted to write something adorable about it before I saw you had covered it already. (Probably better that way. :-) ) So, all I got to do was making a lame joke. :-)
I don’t think leaving in disgust is connected to Asperger’s. Asperger’s is more like SIWOTI syndrome.
However, where do we take our impression that disgust is involved from? Maybe no emotion whatsoever was intended. That’s something Asperger’s makes one capable of.
As I told you, people: she’s not merely taking words out of my mouth, she’s pirating entire thought processes right out of my brain and then setting them into words (which I probably wouldn’t even have done in the first place). Now let’s just hope she doesn’t start mass-producing them in Shenzhen.
Autumn, uh, fall weather here, with a thick cloud cover, except that the sun comes through and briefly interrupts the darkness every afternoon.
Looking fine in that photo, David M.! BTW, I always pictured you in my mind as having fiery eyes. Nice to see I was right, though the red is slighting less saturated than I imagined. This makes you look like a thoughtful devil, a satan with a polite listening stance. :-)
Thanks for giving up on your whole hermit thing.
Another plea for someone in Europe (or anywhere, Europe is easier for shipping), who has a copy of the Leopard install disk that they are no longer using, to send it to David Marjanović.
David, if there is no response, I will see about backing up my firewire boot recovery volume, which is still Leopard (always one version behind the internal boot volume), and sending you my copy. IIRC, Safari 1 was so bad, I used Netscape or IE instead. Safari has gotten better.
SC, just heard about this book, Mythmakers and Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers on Fiction. Guess I will have to hunt for a copy.
Funny, it was couple of decades ago while reading a lot of Ursula LeGuin and Edward Abbey (Could two authors be more different?) that my political thought was more anarchistic in nature then anything else. I guess it is time to dig up my old copy of Always Coming Home.
I knew you were evil. Just look at those devil eyes.
“slighting” should be “slightly” in my post @694 — this mistake was made in a post intentionally slighting David M’s devilish eyes.
Back to enjoying morning coffee, and researching the costs of CT scans at local sources of medical imaging –I’m still in fuck’em mode most of the time, but trying to resist sounding like that on the phone. I may need some of these people to cut me a break.
Again? Jeez, you guys, it’s like you can’t shut up.
More space for conversation here.