That last open thread has been closed. I am deeply offended. People were jibber-jabberin’ about sidekicks and crime-fighting duos and no one mentioned The Avengers. I will not tolerate such slack and neglect.
Let’s begin this one with some appreciation for Diana Rigg as Emma Peel, please.
Patrick McNee as John Steed wasn’t bad, either.
All bow to Diana Rigg, Avenger and host of PBS Mystery for many years…
a_ray_in_dilbert_space mentioned The Avengers here.
Re: Diana Rigg/Emma Peel. Smart and sexy. Fantastic.
Still learning,
Robert
With you on this one PZ. Mrs. Peel and her Lotus were the TV highlight of the 60s.
Only thing that could have improved it would have beeen if she rode a Vincent Black Shadow.
Subsequent “Mrs. Peels” such as Linda Thorson (Canadain, by the way) and Joanna Lumley, while capable, were not Diana Rigg.
Hey, my wife thought of the Avengers, but I nixed it because
EMMA PEEL IS NOT A SIDEKICK.
She’s way too independent and kick-ass to be a mere sidekick.
How dare you say such a thing about Mrs. Peel!
I see your offendedness and raise you a an utterly pissed off.
From the last thread:
a_ray_in_dilbert_space February 13, 2010 1:37 PM #705 [kill][hide comment]
Time to see the opthamologist again to get your spectacles recalibrated.
Mrs Peel? Hard to beat. Takes me back to my youth!
Obviously, Steed was the sidekick. Surely you don’t mean to imply that he should be regarded as the equal of Emma Peel?
I call your utterly pissed off and raise you a snooty look of disdainful hauteur.
*ahegm*
Also: DAMN YOU TO HECK, Antiochus Epiphanes!
Interestingly, after Greg talked about commenteres like me and SC and our ability to silence other voices, Windy said we should be called The Silencers, and compared us to The Avengers.
Since then we’ve been practicing our Ar Gu Fu and fighting over who gets to wear the catsuit.
I never really watched the Avengers. We didn’t have ABC in BC until I after I left for college. Then I was too busy for a while for regular TV.
And damn you, too, fscking <blockqutoe>!
All right, I shall have to vote for a_ray_in_dilbert_space in the latest Molly thread.
*Grabs the popcorn and libation, and keeps thread open.*
I call fowl! That comment is from this month. You can’t use that to vote for him for January!
In one of the previous versions of Teh Thread That Ate Teh SciBorgs, very good restaurants were (briefly) discussed. El Bulli, often rated as the world’s best, is apparently closing.
Clearly a case for Mrs Peel and John Steed.
Smugness poker. Now on ESPN.
Still learning,
Robert
I think Paul W. is going to have to fold his cards and give me the pot.
Telegraph 06 Jul 2008
I must confess to a deep shame. I have this gigantic collection of DVDs at home — much bloated right now because the wicked daughter dumped all of her anime DVDs on us — and I don’t have The Avengers DVD set. Yet.
OK, everyone, click on that link and then buy stuff at Amazon. I’m an affiliate, so I get a cut, and if you buy a few tens of thousands of dollars worth of stuff, I might be able to get it.
PZ,
Ha. I’ve got the catsuit now.
I raise you a knowing, pitying young Diana Riggesque hint of a smile, wearing her catsuit.
Crime and air pollution and a general dislike for big cities in general. I was raised in a small town where people didn’t lock their doors and I now live (way) outside of several small towns. I bought a car a couple of months ago and haven’t removed the keys from the ignition yet. That sort of thing. I probably would badmouth any large US city except MPLS-St Paul and a couple in the Pacific Northwest. I can’t imagine Dave being happy there coming from Europe.
On the other hand I could introduce him to a virtual clone of his self, a department head at the field museum. A dear friend of mine from MPLS. The only person who I could stand to walk through the woods with. We could spend a hour on one rotten stump.
He isn’t getting any either :-)
BS
You might have pulled it off, Paul W., you might have pulled it off…but you went too far. Now I’m picturing you in Emma Peel’s catsuit, and I raise you a facepalm, a pitying look of sad revulsion, and a sneer of disgust.
You are no Diana Rigg, sir.
Neither do I. But I do have The Prisoner set. With French subtitles. Which makes the surreal even more surreal…
yeah, I imagine that would do it :-p
and as far as not liking it… he doesn’t have to live there forever, and Chicago is an awesome cultural experience (Boston or NY would be better, but that wasn’t one of the options)
*throws popcorn in the air, catching it in the mouth.*
If you haven’t seen the entire Avengers series – from all the way to #1 where Steed was actually the “sidekick” then you should. The evolution of the female role is actually quite amusing – and Emma is a follow-on to Kathy (Cathy??), who basically didn’t allow Steed to get away with his antics – and was better than he was anyway.
Besides, some of the errors in shooting are absolutely hilarious.
Most of us on this side of the pond didn’t even know there was anyone before Emma. Before [CK]athy, anyone “associated” with Steed was basically the fall guy, so that Steed wouldn’t get hurt in any physical exchange.
I loved the one where there is some cult-like group following this one guy, which they basically resolve by having his “congregation” all pile up on him – and the camera (this was the 60s – a huge affair on a rather large dolly) pulls back while all the extras file in front – and they basically run over someones foot with the camera dolly in the process.
JC
What a weird place to pop corn…
I feel I must defend the honor of the Midwest. Chicago is a nice city. There are fantastic museums, shopping, wonderful restaurants, and an intriguing political culture that is somewhat confusingly referred to as “criminal” in the news.
Did anyone else see this article over at the onion. It’s a fantastic take-down of Walmart.
Did someone say “anime”?
Anything you like in there, PeeZed?
Male sidekicks: Brosnan’s Bond to Dame Judi’s M.
Back in the ’80s, a group called The Allies had a great song about Emma Peel.
I snicker and remark that you might have mistaken humble hommage for ludicrous pretense… and underestimated The Silencers.
I say amused and amusing things that clearly suggest to the audience that you’ve forgotten that there are two of us, and that perhaps I am the less formidable Silencer; somehow you don’t catch the implication.
Oh – and I forgot. Cathy started the Leather Cat Suit bit. OK – she wasn’t really as hot as Emma, but still – this ain’t all that bad.
Reason for cat suit? She kept ripping out here standard pants!
Meow!
JC
Kramer just set an Olympic record in the 5000m. Shaunie Davis is out of medal contention :(
Indeed. (And it was Cathy, as I recall, played by Honor Blackman.) Steed didn’t even appear in some of the early episodes, albeit I don’t recall which ones now…
Wikipedia backs up my memory, and adds a fact I forget: Steed wasn’t originally an “English gentleman” character.
OK, props to Emma Peel and mention of the Avengers, yada, yada, goddammit.
negentropyeater: Oh, God, you poor thing. LISTEN TO ME GOOD. If you have been in pain for five days, you are likely to have a kidney infection by now and your kidney is sustaining damage. Are you sweating at night? Do you feel basically run over by a truck? I remember it well.
Get to the emergency room if you cannot schedule an appointment with the doctor TODAY. The doctor is likely to give you a strong antibiotic (Cipro is the likeliest. Macrodantin may not be strong enough, at least it never was for me). You should ask for a pain reliever equal to the pain. Since you have been having pain for almost a week, this is not going to be a small stone that passes easily, but you should still keep plenty well hydrated, three quarts of pure water per day. Caffeine will irritate your urinary tract, as will pseudoephedrine decongestants, so don’t use them.
Your doctor should schedule you for an X-ray and then for a lithotripsy. They’ll probably relax you with a little Valium and you’ll sit in a big machine where they’ll bombard the stone with sound waves to break it up. This is all outpatient stuff. Have a friend drive you. If your urinary tract is messed up enough, they might install a stent (a temporary tube) in the passageway between your kidney and bladder (I always get ureter and urethra mixed up) so the pieces can go down without torturing you any further. Your doctor may want you to pee through a fine tea strainer for a while to make sure you are passing the pieces of stone.
If you had a stent installed, get the damn thing taken out. My doctor forgot to tell me to do this, and I was too ignorant to know better, and the damn thing stayed in for fifteen years and got blocked. Do not be me. My right kidney did not survive the experience. My left kidney is a champion, but it shouldn’t have had to be.
Since you’re having trouble concentrating (I don’t blame you):
– Go to the doctor for a urine culture, and possibly antibiotics. Get the pain medication you need too.
– Get your kidneys X-rayed. The stone may not be on the side that hurts (they can be funny that way).
– If necessary, get the stone broken up.
– Drink lots of water to help pass the stone fragments.
Do you live in an area where the water is heavily mineralized? Stop drinking or cooking with that crap and drink distilled water instead. Easy on the salt and mineral supplementation. Go light on caffeine for a while. Monitor yourself closely after treatment for symptoms of urinary tract infections – tests are cheap, surgery is expensive.
Good luck, hon.
Emma Peel is smokin’ hot.
That is all.
Carry on.
I’m picturing Diana Rigg as Emma Peel doing battle with Julia Newmar’s Catwoman.
Excuse me, I’ll be back in 5-7 minutes.
Negentropyeater,that sounds like a misery; I hope you are getting good care and feeling better soon.
blf – precisely. I believe (It has been a few years since I watched – and re-watched – the entire series on Turner Classics I think) Steed was basically kind of a “dirty job” kind of person. The original lead lasted one show with Steed his “Second” and after Ian quit, McNee took over from there. He used women because he basically felt they were “disposable”. Other than Cathy (Honor), most were pretty bad at what they were talked into doing.
And of course, Honor went on to become “Pussy Galore” (!!!) – an event actually referred to in one of the first bits with Emma on The Avengers, when Steed gets a christmas card from “Mrs Gayle”. (“I wonder what she is doing in Fort Knox? …” ;-)
JC
*Considers e-mailing Patricia, to change the destination of the next trebuchet load of Pullet Patrol™ excrement to blf’s site, but decides against it. Too much EPA paperwork…* (+1)
Diana Rigg is stil..Oops there’s the Redhead…
(Emphasis added.) Entire series? My understanding is most(?) of the early episodes are lost/destroyed, or at least no longer exist in their entirety.
Mrs. Peel certainly Rules, as does Dame Diana.
And the theme song was and remains pretty good as well. Finnish surf band “Laika & The Cosmonauts” even did a pretty good cover.
Nope, not at all. Was purely to do with Godel. That to define infinite knowledge is necessarily incomplete because to define it creates further knowledge.
It’s probably a bad argument and a misapplication of what Godel was getting at with his incompleteness theorem, but that’s why I posted it here before embarrassing myself by posting it on my blog.
Not to mention the locals would probably consider it a delicacy, and after some clever cooking, eat it.
And they could possibly be correct. (He says, possibly drunk, after a fine lunch with fine wine, a day of rugby and lots of beer, and another fine dinner and yet another fine wine…)
blf, rugby? A man’s sport. But the drinking…(hic)
And on spinach. Spinach is full of oxalic acid, and kidney stone is calcium oxalate.
Geez, I’m offline about a day and a half and y’all manage to fill up another thread in that time? Bloody hell – I’m sorry I missed it.
However, since I was spending my time on a little exercise – putting on a full-size production of Chicago in 24 hours* for charity – I had a pretty amazing time where I was.
*On Friday at 8pm the show we were going to do was announced. On Saturday at 8pm the show began. In the interim it was auditioned, cast, rehearsed, set and rigged; it had a cast of 53, a 16 piece orchestra and a crapload of sound, lighting and backstage crew.
Extreme theatre!
Women do play rugby, and Generalissimo Google™ has quite a number of hits. However, I’m completely unfamiliar with it—not out of lack of interest, but due to it’s general invisibility…
Drinking’s not sport, albeit it goes well with food, wine, music, women, and most anything except sleep… (and work ;-( )
Like we would be impressed. Yes dear, I said we were impressed. Ouch, my spleeen…
*apologies to Brewster Rocket, Space Guy.*
We are impressed Wowbagger…
Well – to be honest, I can’t really tell for certain, but the series does start with Ian Hendry in only one episode. I understood that to be the only one he was in, but Wikipedia says there were others – something I didn’t know. The series has only the one, with Steed alone in a few following and with a somewhat rotating cast of women “assistants” – culminating in Cathy as a regular, then of course, Emma which was the first set shown in the US.
So I think you may be right – to me, it seemed that Ian was in one, then not in the rest, Steed continues the full run and the women come and go. So to speak. I will submit that I was incorrect technically by saying “the entire series” and that I probably should have said “the entire remaining available series”. Still good, no matter what, even in all its badness.
The video was so horrid in those early originals as to be nearly unwatchable in any case!
JC
Nice footwork. But I can’t help but notice she’sn’t wearing heals.
The Avengers was at the peak of its popularity just as I was passing through puberty, so, if you have a Freudian bent, I suppose she became my idea of the Perfect Woman.
I agree she should have ridden a Vincent, but she did carry that clunky looking .55-calibre Webley breaktop revolver. Not the best firearm, and considered barely more useful than a sharp stick today, but very, very British.
Come to think of it, maybe she should have ridden a Brough Superior, despite Lawrence of Arabia’s bad luck aboard one.
re: Kel, omniscience & Godel’s incompleteness theorems…
I suspect omniscience is an incoherent concept, and probably a lot depends on the assumptions one makes about what it could possibly mean (if anything).
By my definition: if there were an “omniscient” critter, then it knows everything, anywhere/when/how in the universe, everything about itself and whatever supernatural realm it may or may not inhabit — if you like, throw in multiverses, multiple omniscient beings sharing information with each other, etc. If omniscience were the critter’s only supposed attribute, then I don’t see why it couldn’t be internally-consistent.
It seems like poor old YHWH will have to remain a delusion. I’m being too kind. He can go smite his non-existent self for all I care. I just have a few questions which I hope may clear up some things for me.
Does omniscience mean one knows true statements which it cannot prove (a la Godel’s theorem), or does it know how to prove them?
If it’s true that all sufficient formal axiomatic systems are inconsistent or incomplete, then could omniscience be possible if “truth” doesn’t obey the same kinds of rules? … I suppose I don’t know what a physicist’s take on Godel’s theorems would be. Although the world is orderly, does it necessarily work according to formal axioms? Does randomness mean a lack of information and hence there is no “truth” about it, or that the truth cannot be known even by an omniscient being?
And on spinach. Spinach is full of oxalic acid, and kidney stone is calcium oxalate.
Not all of them – there are four kinds: calcium, uric acid, cystine, and struvite. The calcium stones are most prevalent, the cystine the least, as they stem from a genetic condition. People who tend to get uric acid stones are typically treated with the same meds as gout. Struvite stones are caused by a bacterial infection altering the acid balance in the urine. They tend to be large [read “painful”].
I do second “get thee to a doctor”. I ended up spending a week in hospital after what turned out to be a kidney stone attack, then eleven days a month later attached to a Vancomycin IV for a subsequent infection.
There’s a whole list of foods they’ll tell you to avoid. It unfortunately includes chocolate, ice cream and oranges. I’d rather spend time in the ER…
For Emma Peel, it was worth trying again to register!
Brava!
Haven’t seen the last thread, but there were also Melina Mercouri and Whosis in TOPKAPI. (And far the lesser, Laura Holt and Remington Steele.)
Oh, and Miss Marple and Whosis, who really was her sidekick.
Rigg was also an excellent choice for the one and only wife of James Bond in that most underrated of Bond films, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
Nerd wrote:
You damn well should be!
Anyway, I’ve just spent the last hour or so catching up on the comments on Greg Laden’s blog; I have to say that I’m pretty close to stunned by what’s gone on there.
Altering people’s posts because you don’t like what they say? What the fuck?
So, just caught up on the other blog.
Call me cynical, but I reckon GL is gonna say this was all to prove a point, a kind of demonstration.
And I mean it. 40+ years ago I was the voice of Tinkerbell (via piccolo) in Peter Pan the musical. Twenty four hour turn around for a musical is fantastic. There must have been actors already practiced for that to happen. Even then, still MAGNIFICENT! Take a deep breath…Self pats on the back are called for.
In his defense, he has raised the possibility of maybe never doing it again as long as we either thank him for it or shut up and go away, and understand that he isn’t doing it because it is the right thing to do, but because… Well, that part isn’t very clear.
BS
One difference between Joanna Lumley and Diana Riggs, – the former has aged with more grace, into a GILF, and seemingly is not imitating Patsy from AbFab.
Nerd wrote:
Nope. Only the two producers and the head musical director knew in advance what the show was. No preparation by anyone other than them.
But it’s musical theatre – some people had done their roles before (albeit years ago; amateur rights for Chicago aren’t being made available), and others love the show so much they know all the words and music and have sung them for auditions and at karaoke and so forth. Our Velma, however, was only barely familiar with it.
Technology helps – we had a couple of LCD monitors set up facing the stage the lyrics on them – but it’s really just down to rehearsing the crap out of it, all day plus being able to ad-lib. And that just makes it more fun, ’cause those who come to see it expect that – and even look forward to it.
It helped we had some of Adelaide’s best talent out there on stage.
Wowbagger, could you put on a presentation of the Ring Cycle? No hurry on this, you can begin the show any time in the next ten minutes.
Shonny: GILF.
Classy as always.
I kind of want to know what Rabid Chihuahua Girl thinks is so “new and unusual” about me being female, but I’m really done with her this time and won’t ask. Which is a good thing, since there’s epic levels of wrong in her reply to my last attempt.
Miss Emma Peel by Dishwalla
negentropyeater: Didn’t notice your problem when I skimmed through earlier…
I have had trouble with small stones for years due in part to excess uric acid (taking meds for that now). Also, for reasons no one has ever determined have had far too many kidney infections–one doc said, “Hmm, your right kidney looks like a puppy has been chewing it, but it is still functioning”.
Most small stones make you hurt for a couple of hours. But if one gets lodged you go into agony in a matter of minutes. The advice to get to a doc is very good. Kidney infections and stones must be treated because even if mild, they can, over time, do a lot of damage. So drink lots of water and get your ass to the doctor.
Emma Peel my first crush on a 2 dimensional cathode ray tube delivery system, next was Rhonda the Robot, Juli Newmar.
I just wanted to thank you all again (and a special thanks to Josh, OSG, and A. Noyd, and also to proxyhowzes, whoever you are, if you’re reading this).
I also wanted to say that I’m stupefied at what Greg Laden has done in the past several days. I’m unhappy that the other sciencebloggers have been so silent about it publicly. The false accusations are one thing, but I never thought I’d see someone’s comments altered here, or anyone’s email revealed. I used to use an email with my real name, and I always felt comfortable doing so here at Sb and at other blogs in the “family” because I couldn’t imagine – whatever my opinion of them otherwise – that any of these people would reveal it. It will make people less likely to comment, I suspect, and not just at Laden’s blog. It’s a matter of trust.
And, finally, I wanted to say that Stephanie Z is an appallingly dishonest shitflinger who continues to destroy any remaining shred of credibility with her shameless character assassination. Here’s a clue, Stephanie: Not only does no one believe the inconsistent pieces of garbage you’re still spewing, no one believes you believe them, either, you lying toad.
Anyway, I’m going to try to take a break from commenting for a bit, or possibly just stick to my own blog, at least until my health is better (nothing serious). I’m sure I’ll be reading, though. :) Take good care, all.
Wowbagger, that is really impressive, very cool, and totally insane.
Hey, yeah, WTF?
I wasn’t here, but I am also offended to hear of such blatant disregard for Dianna Rigg.
Come on, she even helped Steed climb up that styrofoam nose…
Diana Rigg? Indeed, one of my major adolescent lusts, along with the aforementioned Judy Carne and Julie Felix. Diana and Julie are still working, and still fine-looking women; Judy unfortunately had serious drug and marriage problems and has dropped out of sight. Could this be because her showbiz role was very much simply as eye-candy, while the other two were obviously strong and independent as well as beautiful?
Sili (@30):
I skipped down to comment immediately, so perhaps somebody’s already smacked you around for this, but…
Wait.Just.A.Damn.Minute!! I know M is his boss, but James Frackin’ Bond is nobody’s “sidekick”!
In related news, though, and at the risk of outing myself as some sort of fetishist, Dame Judi is smokin’ hot!
Youngsters, the lot of you!
My crushes: Edie Adams ( the Muriel cigar girl and Penny, Sky King’s sidechick. I don’t know why I never fixated on Elisabeth Taylor in National Velvet.
BS
Xray will only show about 20% of kidney stones, therefore CT is the gold standard.
Trainwreck nicely summed up by Stephen Wells :
Amen.
This video was kind of a tribute to the The Avengers. Though the only 60s era British secret agent show I watched was The Prisoner. But I suppose there was not enough nubile female forms to get hormonal adolescent boys going into lust overdrive.
‘raspberry’
SC, please don’t be long.
Greg sayz: “Do you know that there are people who NEED to be anonymous for very valid and important reasons, and do you realize that Judge, Jury and Executioner Trolls such as yourself give all those people a bad name?”
I so desperately want to ask him that if he knows this, then why did he replace a commenter’s initials with their email address that included their name, but I’m afraid that if I do he’ll go reveal it again just out of spite.
SC, get some rest and whatever recuperation you need. We’ll try to be entertaining for you to read. :)
Wowbagger:
Others have already said so, but I, too, am impressed!
What charity were you supporting? And was somebody shooting documentary footage of your process? I’d happily buy a copy of such a film, to further support your charity and just because I’d love seeing how such a thing could come together.
In his defense, he has raised the possibility of maybe never doing it again as long as we either thank him for it or shut up and go away, and understand that he isn’t doing it because it is the right thing to do, but because… Well, that part isn’t very clear. – Blind Squirrel
He’s also issued the following non-specific threat to me @201 (and possibly to Blind Squirrel as well, this isn’t clear, clarity not being his strong suit):
“Now, stop annoying me or I’ll do something bad to you. Not for revenge or anything. For fun.”
I have a screenshot of this.
In a later comment (#215) he says:
“I’m trying to model some good behavior here.”
I sure wouldn’t like to be around Greg Laden when he’s not on his best behaviour.
Under the blog post “short takes” I posted (doubly so) a question/story/anecdote for the dissemination and (hopefully) response from the Horde.
It asks if anyone can ascribe any validity to a story I heard from an admitedly disturbed person, albeit one with intelligence, that the writer of the book of revelations, John, had written he consumed psilocybin containing mushrooms before having his revelations dream.
My main questions are 1 Does John write anything about eating or tasting a “little scroll” before his apocalyptic vision? 2 Was John at the time in exile or imprisoned on an island? 3 If so, are there any psilocybic mushroms on this island? 4 Do any of them resemble small curled scrolls?
Walton is displaying bravery and sanity (a rare combination) on the UAH thread. Read and enjoy.
Impressive indeed, and imagine high heels getting stuck between two pedals! :-S
Let me put it this way… I hope that when I’ll reach your age I’ll agree…
The Avengers was the first British program I recall watching, and I watched it whenever I could. Diana Rigg’s Emma Peel was oh-so-fine to watch, even for a pre-teen. And Mr. Steed… so calm, cool, collected (but not as cute as Mrs. Peel).
Thanks to The Avengers, I picked up an appreciation for British TV. That led to my addiction to Space 1999, Benny Hill, Monty Python….
I’ve been away from that addiction for a number of years. It may be time to revisit old “bad habits”…
David, would you prefer someone closer to your age?
No matter what her age, she is very attractive.
:-D
I’m not sure if it’s before, but it’s mentioned. Check it out yourself: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com
So the story goes.
No idea.
Well, not that one. Many men seem to like it when women have a huge mouth slapped in the middle of their face, even further exaggerated by lipstick, but I’m not one of those…</TMI>
That’s right. I just called Angelina Misnamed-Jolie ugly. I shall retreat from teh intart00bz almost immediately and go to bed. :-)
Well, maybe if you squint. This is a gilled mushroom, as are Psilocybe.
BS
Must not get into a weird debate about the size of a woman’s mouth. Must not get into a weird debate about the size of a woman’s mouth. Must not get into a weird debate about the size of a woman’s mouth. Must not get into a weird debate about the size of a woman’s mouth.
I know that psilocybin containing mushrooms grow pretty readily in the Med latitudes, but do any of them look like scrolls? Also I read one commentor say this island was called Paloma(sp?)
Also I have read about many cults and religions who partake in so called psychoactive eucharists. Is there any posibility John was trying to tap into pagan ways of god(s) communication and just happened to have one of the most influential trips ever? As well as one of the worst, lol.
On another note I have conversed with many gods on many different “trips” with various synthesized as well as naturally occuring psychoactives. Psilocybin, LSD, Mescaline, 2CB, 2CI, 2CE, MDA, MDMA, LSA, DMT(orange crystal), 5 MEO DMT, 5 MEO DiPT, Peyote Buttons, primitive Ayahuasca, and a Mimosa Hostilis snuff. At no point in time after the “trip” was I convinced of any personal revelations or supernatural happenings, merely awed by my plain old evolved mind, but I can see how the exp John had might confirm his own views
Literally dying laughing.
What anyone finds attractive is subjective, of course, but I too never understood the appeal of (what appear to me to be) outrageous jumbo alien mouths. Like Julia Roberts and Angelina Jolie. I suspect they have little mouths inside their main mouths . Even weirder is the vogue that comes and goes for other women to get their lips artificially plumped to emulate them.
WowbaggerOM
Wow. That’s really working without a net. Sounds like the theatrical equivalent of a flash mob.
Walton:
Thus reinforcing the American view that the British are inherently eccentric.
Walton:
…but ok, I’ll feed your eccentricity.
The ultimate crime fighting duo must have been Lancelot Link Secret Chimp and his associate Mata Hairi.
At least “God Save the Queen” doesn’t change key halfway through the song, unlike a certain other national anthem I might mention.
DM (@84):
Heh. I don’t actually have a comprehensive kink for older women, but there are some…
Mostly it’s just old crushes that I refuse to let time steal from me — Shirley Jones (not to mention her TV daughter, Susan Dey), Dawn Wells, Julie Andrews… — but Dame Judi was already… shall we say, mature… when I first became aware of her, and I’ve always thought she was a babe. Helen Mirren is in that category, too… but to be fair, the first thing I knew about her was the movie Calendar Girls, which was all about the hotness of older women.
BTW Dr.Myers, Mary Ann or Ginger?
How soon everyone forgets the feminine hotness that was Mrs. Lovey Howell.
LOL!
Actually, I always found the Professor kinda nerd hot.
‘Tis – what national anthem has a key change in the middle?
Would you prefer that it wasn’t in the middle?
EastexSteve (@99):
Funny you should ask the Mary Ann/Ginger question just as I mentioned Dawn Wells as being among the older women I still have a crush on! I was always a Mary Ann guy to begin with, and frankly, Tina Louise hasn’t held up nearly as well.
Bill, you’re right, Dawn Wells looks gorgeous.
Alleged highest-IQ-in-the-world-guy* is a fool.
* Kim Ung-yong’s was recorded as a child, and these things change by adulthood.
Why choose just one of the Gilligan’s Island lovelies?
It is time to get medieval on your ass.
“Mrs. Peel, we’re needed!”
I thought the “Star Spangled Banner” changed keys in the middle but upon extensive research¹ I discover it stays in the same key but has a 4½ octave range.
¹I read the wikipedia article.
That was what reminded me. She still is hot, smokin hot, reefer that is. I wonder if she ever got high with Bob Denver.
Update on the google buzz I was complaining about earlier: they’ve given in to all of the complaints and are changing it to be all opt-in for contacts, and also bringing on an option to disable it entirely rather than just hiding it. I guess that’s good. http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/new-buzz-start-up-experience-based-on.html
Janine (@107):
Effin’ hilarious! I couldn’t stop myself from posting that on my Facebook page.
‘Tis, I thought you were wrong, but I had to go over to the piano and pluck it out just to be sure.
I hate egregious, abrupt key changes. If you do too, you might enjoy this web site.
Off to watch the olympics…and remember kids, You don’t have to floss all your teeth, just the one’s you want to keep.
As for my other rant of yesterday, Bob Costas just announced that NBC won’t be showing the video of the luge crash again at all during the Olympic coverage. I guess they got a lot of feedback about it.
The Redhead has Mary Ann’s (Dawn Wells) autograph for a coconut cream pie recipe book. So guess which (yes dear) I prefer.
Actually, I always liked the nerdette best friend of the “star” on TV shows. I always felt if one could get her aside, and show her the proper attention, and get the glasses off, there was something interesting underneath. Yes dear, I mean you, except you were the star (*ouch*)
Re the Trainwreck:
Am I the only person who thinks there’s something just plain wrong about putting what purports to be a private letter to someone (about a painful disagreement no less) up as a public blog post?
Does that strike anyone else as insincere, or am I just not getting the “nuances”?
(asking here because I trust PZ not to alter my comment or give out my e-mail)
I’ll admit I was expecting a link to Louis Armstrong, not ‘Tis Himself…
Windy #118
Me neither.
Tis Himself,
The SSB has a one and a half octave range unless you’re showboating :)
A few years ago, he and his wife were using sockpuppets to edit his Wikipedia article. Now, that’s low.
Errol Morris made a documentary about Chris Langan once. I found it on YouTube; the interviews revealed him as a pompous know-nothing who goes off the rails and becomes an outright eugenicist.
That’s business. But if he were really smart, he wouldn’t have gotten caught.
‘Tis Himself, OM:
I think you meant 1 1/2 octave range; very few pro singers have an honest 4 1/2 octave range. As for key changes, there’s a secondary dominant* in the third and fourth bars that functions as a momentary key change, but it’s done in an instant.
*In the American version, the 11th note is sharped, while in the original British “To Anacreon in Heaven” that we stole, it isn’t.
Epikt, I think I love you. Whisper sweet nothings into my ear about dominants, tonics, and mediants. Maybe someday, we can modulate. Shiver.
They just called 35 year old Michelle Roark a girl on NBC. Wow. That’s the difference between competing as a man or a woman in sports.
Pygmy Loris, I wish I could say that I am surprised or shocked by that. Instead, I will just roll my eyes and sigh. Maybe someone can explain to me why that is not a big deal.
See, Janine, they are just trying to do her a favor. Many people are threatened by successful women, but fewer are threatened by little girls playing in the snow. The newscaster just wants us to clap and cheer for her.
Janine,
It just pissed me off because I cannot imagine the commentators referring to any male competitor as a boy. I hate entrenched sexism so very much. Women are not children and it is always inappropriate to refer to them as such.
I know. That is why I use boy for a pre-teen male and girl for a pre-teen female. Is that so hard to do?
Josh, Official SpokesGay:
Thanks a bunch. I just coughed up a lung laughing.
Sorry Josh, I’m straight. But I do appreciate the sentiment. Though I suppose even at my advanced age I could learn alternative forms of sweaty fun, on the theory that it’s better to modulate than never.
I tend to extend those terms to teens, but usually modified as teenage boy and teenage girl.
Apparently.
In other news the USA just won Gold in Women’s Moguls. Hannah Kearney was amazing!
I usually refer to teens as young woman and young man. Teens are in that liminal stage between childhood and adulthood, so the terms are a little difficult to pin down. However, anyone old enough to die as a soldier gets the unmodified woman or man even when they seem very young to me.
126/6/7/9/31/33
So how come the 40 or 50 somethings have a “girls night out” or a “girls weekend getaway”? Is that only a term to use female to female?
Then I have accomplished my goal!
I’m sorry, too. But you can’t help it.
If ever you want to come over to the dark side, sidle up to me and we’ll chat about the Devil’s Interval .
(srsly, I’m just playin’ around with you)
Pygmy Loris and Janine (@125, et seq.):
I don’t want to defend this too much, but to be fair, it may be more a matter of competing in freestyle skiing — which, along with snowboarding, is a very youth-oriented sports culture with a very youth-y sort of lingo — rather than a more traditional sport with a more formal language. In figure skating, even the 15-year-olds (e.g., Mirai Nagasu) are always women (and the same with the no-really-they’re-older-than-12 Chinese gymnasts in the Summer games). Plus which, the color announcer was Jonny Moseley, who’s very much a gnarly, dude kind of announcer. I actually wouldn’t be surprised to hear him call the male competitors boys (in the way that male dancers often are) or dudes.
I do notice that the color announcers, who are usually ex-athletes and coaches — are far more likely than the professional journalists to refer to athletes as boys and girls.
RMM Barrie,
Interesting question. Might as well ask why it’s okay for African-Americans to refer to each other my certain racially charged terms and their derivatives but it’s not okay for white people to do the same.
The use of terms that denote an immature or sub-adult person in reference to adults is a tool that our culture uses to maintain the attitude that women are not as fully human or as fully adult as men. It’s a tool of oppression. I, personally, have extremely mixed feelings about oppressed groups using the tools of oppression within the group. Whereas one can argue that it removes the power of a word if one can use it in a non-oppressive situation, I think that as long as it’s used as a tool for oppression by the oppressors, taking it back is very difficult.
That being said, women in their 40s and 50s have “girls’ night” may be trying to reclaim or re-experience their youth. Youth, of course, is the only desirable trait a woman can have from the perspective of our culture.
I’m really not sure how clear this is, but I’m trying.
PS to #136
…actually, I think the formal name of the women’s figure skating event is Ladies, but in any case, it’s never girls.
Bill,
Regardless of his motivation, it was egregious to call her a girl. Roark is 35. Definitely not a girl.
Is it surprising that this term would be far more common than “boys’ night out” in a culture that encourages both men and women to think of women as immature?
I remember seeing a television program on human sexuality which mentioned, among other signs of female sexual arousal, a subtle plumping of the lips and that this is ritually exaggerated by the application of lipstick.
The ultimate crime fighting duo must have been Lancelot Link Secret Chimp and his associate Mata Hairi.
Gees, Greg, you better wear a disguise coming in HERE.
I think SC has a silver bullet with your name on it.
…and I don’t blame her.
sgbm #140,
That’s such a great, straightforward explanation.
re 91:
Is Paloma the same island as Patmos, as I’ve always heard John was exiled to Patmos.
As for the “girl/boy” thing; remember that (in the US, anyway) there is a big problem with calling certain adult males “boy”.
I saw Diana Rigg in a play in London’s West End in the mid 70’s. I was in the second row. I don’t remember the name of the play, but …
she did a nude scene.
No catsuit on.
<faints>
Pygmy Loris @137 and strange gods before me, OM @140
Still musing, and being a male, I just never viewed the terms the way you are. Never looked at women as being immature as a group. I am not sure where the true sensitivities lie.
I have no problem using an expression like “She is some kind of woman, that girl” regardless of age. French tends to use the word “fille” to cover it all except the very young, so maybe the origin. Note what SteveM just said about “boy”, so maybe I am just USA culturally insensitive, to which I readily agree.
I can see a sports announcer calling a 35yo problematic, but if the context was joviality, then take it for the light heartiness.
Just sayin
You don’t need to take note of the fact that one gender is marked with the term of the juvenile more often than the other, and you don’t need to wonder why, because the practice is so common as to seem second nature, and you aren’t directly disadvantaged by it.
I refer to fifth grade kids as varmints. You can get away with that if you’re dressed in animal skins at the time.
BS
RMM Barrie,
What sgbm said. You’re not alone. Many people fail to realize their privilege. Calling an adult female a girl infantalizes her. It’s a way of maintaining male privilege. Women aren’t adults in the same way that men are. The use of “boy” to refer to African American men is an example of the same behavior. Both serve to reinforce privilege.
John & Revelation: And there’s always ergot fungus, rye being a food crop in Turkey at the time.
Girls’ Night Out/Boys’ Night Out: I hear both pretty equally. It has nothing to do with “…women in their 40s and 50s …trying to reclaim or re-experience their youth”. The women I’ve heard it from more often are in their 20s and 30s. We old broads just announce we’re going out to drink ourselves into oblivion.
Speaking of women and the Olympics: The IOC still isn’t allowing female ski jumping. Their reasons are idiotic. One official was quoted as saying that the longer women protest this exclusion, the longer it will take for it to be reconsidered. I suggest that the “girls” take up a collection for a hitwoman.
They are!
Are you an acquaintance of the Naked Bunny?
BS,
Do you often dress in animal skins? By animal skins do you mean the skins of fifth grade kids? ;)
Ha! I suppose if you can get away with that, you can get away with anything.
Oh, I hope so. I do so hate children. I would eat them, but they taste nasty, and they leave gristle in your teeth.
WTF? The IOC is composed of power-mad jerks.
strange gods before me, OM @148 Pygmy Loris 150
Maybe where you live or the world you live in, but is not true in mine. Just cannot work up any hostility, nor do I know many women that get worked up about it. Equality within the limits of biology, and that is where I have to look up to most women.
Have to retire, before I get a bigger shovel out, so will pick up in the morning if need be.
The beauty of the endless thread.
Well, the cave man costume ties in with the atlatal chucking activity. On the circuit this is considered normal. Sometimes I forget that I don’t have the same sort of job as other people do. I spend about a month out of the year in costume. But I’m not a furry. Pretty sure.
BS
PL (@139):
Well, as I said, I don’t want to go too far in defending it. I don’t own any stock in girl! I just thought in this very narrow case it might be more a we see ourselves as rebellious kids, no matter what our age thing than a keeping the women in their place thing.
I actually think there’s an argument to be made that both girl and boy have common usages that really don’t reference age or maturity… but I’m not the boy¹ to make that argument! I look a bit too much like a whale, and y’all have really sharp flensing knives (or so I’ve heard).
OTOH, maybe DominEditrix (@151) can get away with noting that…
The best argument for why gay people should not be allowed to adopt children:
You would have to be severely detached from reality to want children. Desire to raise children then is prima facie evidence of being unfit to raise children.
This applies just as well to gay marriage and gay people serving in the military.*
The best argument for why gay people should be allowed to adopt children:
Raising children will eventually make you severely detached from reality. By utilizing those who are already so detached as parents, the rest of society can contain the gibbering horror.
* Straight people too, but we’re not talking about them.
Truth is, I don’t mind kids too much. For trivial amounts of time. If school summer vacation was canceled just for parents’ sake, it would be reason enough.
I’m not sure you understand that I’m not accusing you of anything.
Not sure what this has to do with anything I said.
my last comment on the GL mental breakdown/trainwreck:
THIS:
Is why i call Greg disingenuous.
Logically, when you suggest someone’s commentary might look like it is antisemitic to an outsider, without saying that an outsider really did, you are defacto saying that YOU are the one who thinks they look antisemitic. Greg can rant all he wants, but he can’t change this simple fact, that on the face of it, he did in fact say that SC’s posts look antisemitic to him.
and THIS:
is why i say he’s drama queen.
seriously? GREG is the victim here???
so, yes, Greg Laden, you are proving over and over that my label of you is both accurate and fair.
You ARE a disingenuous drama queen.
Urk! Blockquote FAIL on Aisle 159!
It’s comprehensible, though, so I won’t waste electrons on a repost.
RMM Barrie, I can believe that you and your coworkers have an excellent subculture, but if you say that you do not notice it in the rest of the world then I doubt your powers of observation.
Wow, Ken Ham actually mentioned PZ by name!
And he’s still angry about the dinosaur riding:
Just one more reason for PZ to use this picture flap of his next book. Or maybe the cover?
@146, I’ve caused PZ to faint. Another checkmark for the Bucket List.
I also saw her as Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion at the Albery. No nudity, but she was very good. Amazing vocal range and command of the accents needed for the role.
Again, no nudity, but the Playbill had a nude woman on the cover. Wasn’t her.
There’s another lady from the era in the UK whose voice alone inspired my young teenage – er – interests, and that is Fenella Fielding (who I just discovered I share a birthday with). Check out her cameos on the Morecambe and Wise shows on You Tube. Elvira has nothing on Fenella. Actually, nor does Diana.
Steed and Peel whizzed around my grammar school grounds several times – the school was near the studios and they sometimes used us for sets since we had no traffic.
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/against_valentines_day/
Y’all may refer to me as boy if you wish.
Ichthyic (#162)
Oh, he and Stephanie are taking turns playing the victim. Stephanie thinks SC was trying to “impugn” her: “And in which you, once again, ignore the fact that person to whom you’re attributing benign and friendly motives is engaged in an attempt to impugn me.” (A reply to Paul in the letter thread.)
And if you ever need to stress test an irony meter, there’s comment 209 by her in the same thread. My favorite line was this glorious bit of un-self-awareness: “Being an enforcer in one cordoned-off area of the internet is a lousy way to learn how to interact with people in areas you (the generic ‘you’) have no control over. Your habits will work in some places but get you in up to your eyeballs in others. Hollering about sin will mark you as provincial.” Gee, what a great way to sum up this whole debacle. Too bad she doesn’t realize how aptly it describes both Greg and herself.
More ketchup. Longer, slower roasting.
David Marjanović [#69 on the previous thread], the Beast joke is based on street addresses, even on one side and odd on the other:
If 666 is the Number of the Beast,
then 668 is the Neighbour of the Beast,
666A is the Tenant of the Beast, and
667 is the Guy Across the Street from the Beast.
*clenched tentacle salute*
Staying with Mrs. Emma Peel (oh, how I’d love to)…
You can still catch full episodes of “The Avengers” free here…
I agree with the general sentiment of the article.
But then, I’m a born-again cynic….
And single.
Has no-one noticed that Afghanistan are through to the finals of the 20/20 cricket?
Ehm, no.
But good on them.I note Ireland who lost the final will also go on, and have in fact the easier group.
I also note the USA lost to Afghanistan by 29 runs.
Sport is the big equalizer, isnt it.
Dumbest.Teacher.Ever.
Infuriating, yet funny. Honestly, when I see that childlike* ignorance I can’t help but think of Hyperon.
*Apologies to children.
In some ways. Countries that can’t be competitive across the board tend to focus on a handful of sports.
The big Olympic medal totals* though are all developed countries with the cash to invest in athletes for many sports. For example, the USA and China were the only two countries to amass 100 or more medals at the 2008 games. The Winter Games are dominated by Germany, the USA, Austria, Russia and Canada (based on 2006 medal counts).
To take an example of a developing country that routinely wins Olympic medals, Kenya focuses almost exclusively on track and field. Track and field offers lots of opportunities for medals, and isn’t as expensive as say, gymnastics or equestrian events.
*I know you guys aren’t talking about an Olympic event, but the Games are on my mind and they cover a huge range of sports.
Of course if I wanted to be snarky I’d just say we only play real sports in the USA, so it comes as no surprise that we’re not that good at something like cricket. ;)
Cricket does have one advantage over most other sports. There are official “tea intervals” when the game stops so the players, officials and spectators may drink copious amounts of beer.
Bill Dauphin wrote:
It was for a local (South Australian) charity called the CanDo Group, which raises money for blind or vision-impaired and deaf or hearing impaired South Australians.
I’ve no idea about documenting it – I think everyone was too crazy-busy putting the show on! Which is a pity, because I think that it would make an interesting (and educational) documentary.
As for how it worked; it really was about having a lot of people – two directors, half a dozen musical directors and the same number of choreographers and a couple of dozen other sundry people (I did set design and construction as well as backstage crew) – working their asses off.
But a lot of the work was done by the two producers and the co-ordinating musical director, who were the only ones who knew the show in advance; they worked for months to put stuff together to make it as easy as possible for us – lots of scheduling breakdowns and other useful information.
They way we designed it meant that there wasn’t that much set to build or move around so we had it relatively easy. It’s scary how well the sound and lighting people and the cast did in that little time.
This was mentioned in the last thread, so here’s for everyone who missed it :
KD Lang–Hallelujah at the Olympics opening ceremony
Lovely KD, but an odd song to sing for the Olympics.
Ganja Theif at 91
yup, I have a very similar history with psychedelics, and at no time did I ever experience anything remotely religious, except for thinking that Jerry Garcia might be God.
A friend of mine cooked up some 2CB many years ago, and I dropped some with my daughters mom and when we came down we were married in Las Vegas, where there is definitely no God.
The same day my friend who cooked the 2CB blew his brains out because he was an insane meth head, proof positive of no God, IMHO.
I can’t believe my friend killed himself over a girlfriend who jilted him, and she was just a teenager. She must have been smokin hot like Diana Rigg or maybe it was the meth.
If somebody talks to PZ today, tell him to call Roy Zimmerman. I sent him Roy’s phone number in emale, and here is my ‘PZ, call Roy Zimmerman’ You Tube video:
monado@172,
In the UK, the phone number for the emergency services is 999 – but if you’re so panicked you’re holding your mobile upside down, it’s rumoured that your call will be answered by the Great Beast of the Apocalypse.
Jim Al-Khalili on Desert Island Discs – just finished but will be on IPlayer soon.
I saw Diana Rigg in a play in London’s West End in the mid 70’s. I was in the second row. I don’t remember the name of the play, but …
she did a nude scene. – Bob Munck
Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers. She was playing the neurotic wife of a philosopher (George Moore, but not the George Moore). There was a corpse in the same scene, and the philosopher thought she was playing charades, and guessed “The Naked and the Dead”. Like all the Stoppard I’ve seen, it was funny, but there was maybe less to it than met the eye. The best bit apart from Diana Rigg’s nude scene was a TV report from the British lunar expedition (shown on a big screen). There were two astronauts, named Scott and Oates, on the lunar surface, but the lander was damaged and could only take one back up. Scott and Oates fought for it, and the winner (can’t remember which), said as he took off: “I am now going up, and I may be gone some time”.
On the subject of GILFs: Dame Maggie Smith, Katherine Hepburn, Bodil Kjer.
To return to the theme, if obliquly
Thanks to Paul Merton on the radio just now
Emma Peel and Laura Petrie were both somewhat scandalous in their day (1961), for the outrage of being female and wearing pants on American TV.
Prior to that, if you were trying to get into somebody’s pants on American TV, you were probably gay, and there was definitely something wrong with that until Seinfeld.
Miss M and I going for a walk now
here
Sili:
GILFs? I never heard GILF except in regard to Sarah Palin, but she quit, so I guess she’s just back to being a RILF.
OOOPs, I forgot it’s not cool to say ‘retard’ anymore, hey maybe she’s Emmanuel’s secret FRILF girlfriend.
Mary Travers tribute, because I can :
*sob*
Professional sportsmen seem to go in for a lot of self-infantilising. For example, they often have nicknames derived from their surnames, or some physical characteristic, generally ending in “-y” – which is very common among boys, but most of us grow out of it (Internet handles are of course a different matter altogether :-p); and play “practical jokes” on each other. Then of course (but this applies to both sexes) there’s the fact that they take sport seriously, and spend as much of their lives as possible seeing who can run fastest, or throw furthest, or kick a ball most accurately. So childish!
Professional sportsmen seem to go in for a lot off self-infantilising. They often have nicknames derived from their surnames, or some physical characteristic, and usually ending in “-y” – very common among boys, but most of us grow out of it (internet handles are of course completely different :-p). They like to play “practical jokes” on each other. Then of course (but this applies to both sexes), there’s the matter of taking sport seriously. So childish!
“Some people think that football(soccer)is a matter of Life and Death.
They’re wrong.
It’s much more important than that”
Shanks
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! SMOOOOOOOGGY! COME BACK!
(Yes, I’m late.)
Pygmy Loris
If I wanted to watch people doing circus tricks I’d watch a circus. Why is sport increasingly turning into the Eurovision Song Contest?
I don’t think any “sport” that requires style judges should be in either Olympics. Timers and measuring tapes only, no subjective judgements. No bloody dancing (on or off the ice), no gymnastics, no synchronised swimming, no moguls et-bloody-cetera. Let them have their own Style Games if they want, just stay out of the Olympics and stop piggybacking on real sports. They are fun Recreational Activities (or Theatre), not Sports.
I only want to watch people attempting to go “faster, higher, or further”, not doing summersaults as they go down a hill looking like a clown in a square-wheeled go-cart, or grinning away in spangled miniskirts while dancing.
What next – an undulating 100m track with a few springboards along the way and Usain Bolt doing triple sumersaults with half twists, and taking 20 seconds to do it? (And then coming 3rd because some judge wants his/her fellow countryman/woman to win).
Forget the showboating and just get down the bloody hill as fast as you can, please.
I will never understand why people get so excited about sports. The whole endeavour has always seemed pointless and dull to me. It’s just one of the many facets of human psychology I simply can’t understand.
Ugh, sorry, still having trouble with my broadband.
See, Walton, if we adopted my idea of direct election of the BBC board of Governors, you and I could both vote for the anti-sport candidates, and…
Oh. We’d lose! :-(
Sports fans have crafted an elaborate mythology to make sport seem more interesting than it actually is. Fluke reigns in most sports, especially at the highest level when there is so little separating opposing sides. I used to follow football (soccer) on occasions, but it got to a point where, to me, it felt like casting dice.
WHOA, check THIS
out for a Diana Rigg fix…..
Feynmaniac,
I never did call anyone a “nigga”. What I did was question the sagaciousness of affirmative action, and assert that culture in African-American ghettos tends to be of the primitive, violent nature. (How else would you care to explain the high crime rates, if not culture? Genes?) These were not ignorant comments, nor were they racist. If you think what I said is “offensive”, then that is a comment on your limitations as a human being — not mine.
Oohh, this place needs some airing from the foul odors emanated by a bigoted insipid stoopid troll. Still dumb as a doorknob, as is confirmed with every post.
Oh look, the racist bigot has come to grace our humble thread. Welcome, Hating Hyperon. What news of the untermensch have you come barf today?
I doubt you did. You’ve discovered that if you make your unthinking bigotry too obvious then people tune you out right away.
How about grinding poverty? The same violent culture is seen in equally poor white neighborhoods.
They are both. But then ignorance and racism are your too most favorite pastimes.
If not being a racist, intolerant, small-minded bigot is a limitation then I’m glad I’m limited.
No it isn’t. For instance, Poland has less crime than the US, and yet the average income of African-Americans is more than the average income of Poles. Poverty alone just doesn’t seem to be a good explanation.
Hyperon@208,
Economic inequality is the key variable – you know, the thing right-wing shits like you are all in favour of. Being at the bottom of the social scale damages people, and the steeper that scale is, the worse the damage – and the higher up the scale it reaches, even if actual income levels are the same.
Secondly, international comparisons of average income are very difficult to make, as I’m sure ‘Tis could tell you in much more detail.
Bloody heel, it gets so fucking tedious correcting your stupidities. I know it will never make any impression on you, but in a public space like this, they can’t be left unanswered. Couldn’t you just do us all a favour and fuck off?
Feynmaniac,
Regarding this story: hilarious! On a more serious note we’d like to see more resistance to racial invective within the respective racial/ethnic groups, as the double standard that exists now makes for a weak argument when someone outside the group employs the same language.
Hyperon:
First, if you’re going to question the sagaciousness of affirmative action, question all affirmative action, including the affirmative action of “white privilege” which is embedded in both the public and private sectors. It has been around a lot longer, and is far more effective in doling out the goodies.
As for the “primitive” and “violent nature” of African-American ghettos and “high crime rates” we’ve always been amused at how some people define words like “primitive” and “crime.”
If an African-American robs a convenience store at gunpoint, that’s a violent crime. Whereas, if a European-American supported by mostly other European-Americas invades a foreign country and formulates governmental policies that result in the deaths of thousands and ruined lives in the millions, some people don’t see that behavior as primitive or as a crime.
Not surprisingly, now that there is an African-American in the white house, many of those same people have mysteriously begun to broaden their definition of criminal behavior.
Interesting.
tries to smile but can’t. That’s a very common condition. Same for Dawn Wells, who also (but that may just be the low-resolution photo) looks like she’s wearing half a centimeter of makeup.
Or maybe he believes, as I think is common in the patriarchy, that women can only be spoken to and about in terms of compliments, and tried to compliment her on her youthful looks (disclaimer: I have no idea what she looks like, and trying to find out would probably be to miss the point).
Sometimes it even works as intended. I know a scientist who’s close to 40 who once mentioned wistfully how a waiter somewhere in France had recently addressed her as Mademoiselle.
Smash peer pressure!
*clenched-tentacle salute*
I don’t dare watch.
Heh. That matches my experience!
“We must win, everything else is primary.”
– Hans Krankl, Austria’s most famous footballer
Simply give up and slap a label on yourself: asportual male. Oh, and, welcome to the club. :-)
For some sports I understand the appeal of participating. But just watching?
After taxes.
Those taxes finance good primary and secondary public schools, healthcare for everyone… all things that poor people don’t get in the USA.
Know what this thread does not need? Effing giant crabs, that’s what.
Hyperon
Knockgoats
I think that(only in relation to these quotes) that Hyperon is correct and Knockgoats is wrong.
There are many places (eg Mumbai) where the actual poverty is worse than in the USA and where economic inequality is greater (and the extremes live in much closer proximity), but crime rates are lower.
Hyperon is wrong, of course, in attributing the Afro-American crime rate to “ghetto culture”. The USA has a ridiculously high crime rate, and I attribute that to USAnian “culture” as a whole, not just that of one section of USAnians.
Knockgoats,
You might be right that inequality is the important causal agent here (although I don’t think the case is as clear-cut as you portray). Inequality, however, is not the same as “grinding poverty”. If what you say is true, then we would expect the poisoning influence of inequality to be manifested and propagated throughout the culture (e.g. perhaps a growing sense of resentment).
To clarify, I was never “blaming” minorities for the culture they live in. Often it is more imposed upon them than generated by them.
Legion,
I do, but I think the type of affirmative action you refer to is less tangible in the 21st century.
I shouldn’t have used the word “primitive”, which has unfortunate connotations.
Just as you mysteriously pull us down to foundational principles as soon as the discussion turns to criminals with brown skin. If we were talking about criminals with white skin, I doubt you would invoke US foreign policy, even though it would be exactly as applicable.
Hyperon, I thought you said you were leaving.
Boy / Girl
@161
Rest assured, I did not perceive any accusation.
@164
From what is before you, fair conclusion, but in the absence of sufficient information, I humbly disagree.
Yeah, good point there. I agree. Even so, I don’t think poverty is, by itself, sufficient to account for the high crime rates seen in various ghettos. If Poland isn’t a convincing example, take China, where poverty is certainly deeper and more widespread than any African-American ghettos.
Very cryptic, Barrie.
I said that months ago, and I did leave, didn’t I?
I said that months ago, and I did leave, didn’t I?
Ring Tailed Lemurian,
The data I’m relying on comes from comparisons within the USA, and between rich countries, which seem most relevant here, but I didn’t make that clear and broader comparisons would of course be interesting. Do you have a reference for your claim about Mumbai’s crime rate? – it may well be that most crimes where the poor are victims just never get recorded. In any case, I would guess that there, the vast majority are poor, and the small wealthy minority, while physically close, are socially very distant – most of the poor are comparing their status with that of their social rather than just their physical neighbours. Incidentally, have you read Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra, an excellent novel set in Mumbai, with a gang boss and a policeman as the central characters?
Walton @ 200
Fixed that for you, as there have been other changes in you over time.
No, you are still posting. Leave means bye-bye forever, like a good little bigoted insipid inane troll. Now leave…
That’s because the Avengers suck compared to the Justice League.
Avengers:
A bunch of guys I don’t care about and Spider-man
No Plastic Man
No satellite of death in asynchronous orbit
Won’t let Deadpool in.
Nick Fury is a putz.
Justice League
Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Hawkgirl, Flash III, Red Tornado
Oh, and Plastic Man, yeah
Have Watchtower
Still won’t let Deadpool in, not their fault.
Not letting Lobo in is, however.
Oh, I found it.
You didn’t simply say you were leaving. You said you wouldn’t post again.
This is privately ironic to me, because less than a week ago I was thinking of you. I remembered how you said you were going to leave, and then within a day or so you finally did leave; it seemed like you had kept to your word and I thought, well, that’s one positive thing I could say about him.
But here you are again today, proving yourself a liar.
Hyperon:
You’re both right and wrong. You’re right about US foreign policy being applicable if we were talking about criminal’s with white skin, but you’re wrong in your assertion that we wouldn’t have brought up US foreign policy.
It has always seemed strange to us that there exists in the US, a double standard for the definition of crime.
This dualism is most evident today in the tea
baggerparty movement. Here you have a party composed almost exclusively of white people, presumably working class, who feel as if they are being victimized… and you know what, we believe they are.What’s telling is that they’ve been victimized for some time now, most recently between the years of 2000 – 2008. And yet, they were largely quiet for that time. In fact, many of them probably voted for the Victimizer in Chief — twice.
Now that there’s a black man in the oval office, these people suddenly decide to go marching in the streets. We could argue, by this example, that George Bush benefited from European-American Affirmative Action, due to the fact that his supporters, mostly white, gave him a free pass — sort of like a food stamp — while he was busy fucking up the country.
If you send me money, I’ll post the pictures of me having non-consensual buttseks with Hyperon bent over the rail after he got pulled over for drunk driving in Vidor Texas with a Hooker who was not white
RTL,
As an example of likely under-reporting of crime in Mumbai, the are believed to be about 1.2 million child prostitutes in India, according to an official report. Mumbai is a major centre for human trafficking. This must involve millions of crimes per year (even apart from the coercion and violence involved, which affects adult prostitutes too, the age of consent in India is 16), but I doubt they appear on official statistics.
Excellent. Because it points the way to one of the basic truisms of American society since… well, since there’s been an American society: in order to stave off the war of the powerless majority against the powerful minority, the powerful minority continues to use American selfishness, racism, and irrational prejudice to divide the Common Masses and distract them from the actual crimes being committed at the top, which are far worse than anything being done in any “primitive ghetto”. The Teabaggers aren’t revolutionaries; they’re unwitting pawns.
My latest at Greg’s, for people who are interested but don’t want to jack up his blog hits:
—
Stephanie:
IMHO, what I did wasn’t mansplainin’. What Greg did was, when he mansplained away the issue of using the gendered term “bitch” in a supposedly nonsexist way.
Why am I not even a little bit surprised that you didn’t call him out over that? In comment 185, he agreed with me on the post you called complete and utter mansplainin’, and he compounded it with a bit of shallow mansplainin’ that completely sidesteps a very common feminist critique of his sexist language. I may be a mansplainin’ asshat—though I’m still trying to understand how—but he’s a bigger mansplainin’ asshat than I am.
(Hint: even if the person you call a bitch doesn’t mind being called a bitch, and even if you “don’t mean it that way,” other people may misunderstand and/or rightly object to your reinforcing patriarchal crap by casually using a sexist word. BTW, I’m very seriously not calling Greg a sexist; I’m sure he’s not, and I am quite sure most of his readers do understand that. But imagine if I carelessly called Henry Gee “a dumb Jew” and defended it by saying “well, is a dumb Jew, and my readers know I don’t mean it in an antisemitic way.” I would rightly be completely eviscerated for my lack of sensivity to an oppressed class’s sensibilities, even if Henry himself said he didn’t mind, except of course that he’s not dumb. BTW, I realize that’s an imperfect and very loaded analogy, but I expect you to be able to see past that to the real and valid point, just as you expect us not to mind being compared to a genocidal firing squad.)
Bunk. You’ve done little else in these three trainwreck threads. It’s what they’re mainly about, whether you realize it or not. That and your double standards.
You may disagree with Greg sometimes—I’m sure you have many arguments of varying degrees of pleasantness—but with respect to us, in these three threads, you certainly do seem to err on the side of presenting a united front. You hold us to standards that you do not hold yourself or Greg to.
A. Noyd already quoted this from you (emphasis added by me):
Surely you didn’t mean to make such a simple and obvious sexist distinction there—that A. Noyd would not get the benefit of the doubt unless he/she turned out to be female? (As she did, and while that’s funny, it’s irrelevant to my point.)
Surely you meant to say Unless you’re female or Greg Laden.
If you wonder why you’re derisively called a sidekick, that’s why. And yes, this is just one anecdote, which is not conclusive, but it does seem to us to be part of a larger and fairly consistent pattern. You treat us as an enemy who deserves no quarter. Good luck with that; it seems to be working really well for you so far.
—
I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
Strange Gods,
Couldn’t even remember I wrote the sentence you quote. I’m not lying, just wrong. It turns out there aren’t that many other interesting blogs or forums. Anyway, no need to get your underpants in a twist, as I have no intention of posting regularly.
Legion,
Fair enough.
True, and I suspect that is likely. There’s no way Obama would get away with anything approaching such gross incompetence. However, unlike diversity quotas, this kind of affirmative action is not open and explicit.
RMM Barrie@222,
No, the other changes have clearly been the results of Walton maturing. Spending lot of time and emotional energy on watching pointless contests would be the exact opposite.
#230
It’s just gasoline, you stupid bitch.
(Back to Emma Peel) PZ, I now have to thank you. Forevermore when I play my Avengers vids my mind will be filled with images of Kidney Stones and shoehorning fat Americans into black leather catsuits. I hope the zips hurt.
Let me help you understand something.
As I thought “Hyperon has shown a flicker of human decency by voluntarily leaving,” I was just wrong.
As you said “I won’t post again,” and then you came back to post again today, you are a liar.
The difference is that I can not control your actions to decide whether they will be congruent with your statements; I can only guess and be right or wrong in my guess.
But you can decide whether to make your actions congruent with your statements. So when you do otherwise, you are not just wrong, you are choosing to be a liar.
Even your very temporary presence makes this an unpleasant day. I’ll find something else to do today. Please fuck off by this evening.
RTL,
Also, in Sacred Games (admittedly fiction), the policeman, Sartaj Singh, is a sympathetic and even noble character, but sometimes assaults suspects and takes bribes – this is portrayed as an inevitable part of the job. If that’s right, you have many more thousands of crimes per year, which certainly don’t get into the statistics!
If Demessieux could do it …
Hyperon @231:
True, but you’ll have to admit that diversity quotas, whatever you may think of them, are far more honest because of their openness.
Scooter, you ignorant slut, you’re obviously just expressing your blind, provincial, phallocentric anti-asian Pharyngulism.
There’s polystyrene in napalm.
If you want to know what you’re talking about, ask any Vietnamese woman. They can smell burning polystyrene miles away.
BTW, sincere apologies to anybody for whom napalm has very bad associations.
Rereading what I just posted, it creeped me out. Napalm is very seriously not funny in the particular context of being Vietnamese. Sorry for being quite so callous to make a dumb joke.
I have no positive thoughts about Hyperon at all, but I wouldn’t wish rape on anybody – that’s bad form.
I would normally agree with Walton on the sports thing, but last night Hell froze over, I found myself in a pub down the way, cheering with them at the Vancouver Olympics. I don’t usually go to bars, watch sports, drink, or make friends. But I had fun.
Walton, I’ve enjoyed sports on occasion when watching them with someone who knew something about them. Golf with narration by a golf pro, high school basketball with the mom of one of the players (she could have qualified as a referee), racquetball with my brother, who was a neighborhood champion before rheumatoid arthritis set in. I “borrow” my interest in sports; it’s not really interest in the sport but interest in the person who’s interested.
By the way, I like national anthems too. I think I’m actually getting an idea of your taste in music from things you’ve said. Try to get your hands on a copy of Rachmaninoff’s First Symphony, preferably the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s performance with Ashkenazy conducting. Don’t skimp with the volume knob, and listen with full attention.
What kinds of crime rates does China have, and – as for India – how reliable are the available figures?
@183
Thanks, Rorschach. It was still good the second time around. KD Lang is Canadian, and Leonard Cohen is Canadian, and the song celebrates the female form — that’s enough to qualify it, as far as I’m concerned, for inclusion in the Opening Ceremonies. A little odd, yes, but then Canadians are a little odd. They had Donald Sutherland in the mix too. Donald in a winter white suit, which made me smile. Rock your eccentricities, Oh, Canada.
Knockgoats @232
Agreed on maturing, and pointless contests. The point, I was trying to bring out, was the understanding, there are people who derive enjoyment from sports, or using the expression of Walton “..why people get so excited about sports.”.
The way Stephanie has been tacitly agreeing with Greg’s use of language, and screaming about the use of sidekick, the only reasonable conclusion is that although she thinks being called Greg’s sidekick is irredeemably sexist, she would have been quite happy being called Greg’s bitch. Or maybe she has double standards when it comes to Greg. Or maybe she has no idea what she thinks.
I’m not immersed in sports, nor do I really play any, nor do I quite understand the radical fan support. However, I can watch a professional do them and appreciate the years of dedication and skill that went into honing their skills. I think hurtling down a track at 90 mph 6 inches away from the ice is borderline insanity, but I can watch it once every 4 years and admire that some people can do it so well.
Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers.
I idolize Tom Stoppard, especially the film, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. It contains the best physical comedy jokes about the laws of gravity, measuring volume by displacement of water, and more … Not a lot of nudity though, but we do see a man aroused by the prow of a ship.
Violence and Poverty: Images and realities of the “underclass”
By Herbert J. Gans
When people in mainstream America think of violence, they also think of poverty: the deviant, defiant, dangerous “underclass” or “undeserving poor.” Such stereotypes contain a grain of truth amid their untruths. Bad apples exist in all classes, from muggers among the poor to manufacturers of defective products among the wealthy. I don’t deny the existence of undeserving people, although no one ever complains about an undeserving middle class. But notions like undeservingness take on an existence independent of the specific behaviors they describe, often broadening into labels and stereotypes that gloss over useful distinctions. The attitudes that such labels reflect and reinforce have political ramifications, some of which exacerbate poverty in their own right.
Social labeling–the resort to imagined knowledge to make moral judgments, differentiating some people pejoratively–has a long historical context. The US inherited much of its labeling tradition from England. From the 14th century, when the centralized church conferred responsibility for the English poor on local parishes and a new category of “unworthy poor” was recognized, to the 19th, when the terms “deserving” and “undeserving” entered the language in connection with the 1834 Poor Law, to today, when Gunnar Myrdal’s non-pejorative economic term “underclass” has been transformed into behavioral and hereditary categories that Myrdal would scarcely recognize, Anglo-American social beliefs have continually dichotomized the poor. Along with their supposed laziness, feeblemindedness, and debauchery, the undeserving poor are considered prone to violence. Whether this is based on beliefs in inherited deviance or in a “culture of poverty”, this perception provides a rationale for scapegoating. It is remarkably consistent over time: The characterization of the undeserving poor (the one thing all other strata of society agree on) has changed remarkably little over at least 500 years. Undeservingness is not simply a problem of modernity or postmodernity, capitalism or socialism.
In this mixture of fear, anger and disapproval, fear is perhaps the most important element. The threat to safety blends into other threats to cultural standards, economic positions and moral values, justifying blanket measures (e.g. increasing imprisonment) that do little to diminish violence but increase the distance between the so-called underclass and the remainder of society. The poor are the major victims of street crime, but mugging, robbery, and pickpocketing are particularly threatening to everyone because they involve invasions of intimate personal space. (Auto theft, probably the most pervasive of urban and suburban crimes, is treated as less threatening.)
Fear makes people less willing to distinguish between actual and imagined threats and more willing to listen to politicians who promise harsh reprisals. Local news media rarely miss the most dramatic incidents, especially in white neighborhoods. (Researchers have long argued that the emphasis on crime news is connected to the publicity needs of police departments, especially at budget times, but news organizations also respond to perceived audience interest.) The media rarely explain why crimes have taken place, adding to the sense of randomness and senselessness.
Some findings suggest that the fear of crime is partly imagined. Polls report that the percentage of people feeling safe in their own neighborhoods has not changed since the mid-1970s, even though the same people believe that crime has increased significantly both in the country and in their own community “over the past year.” Clearly, people fear something; they express this as fear of crime, but it may be in part displaced fear of socioeconomic uncertainty, political inefficacy, and cultural conflict.
The real fears that safety threats evoke easily spread to the non-criminal poor. Where homeless people and panhandlers proliferate, the better-off perceive begging and acting-out (misuses of their public space) as threats–even if the danger is often imagined, since the homeless are largely passive and beggars rarely attack their benefactors. Since beggars generally outnumber criminals, a possible threat from the latter thus turns into a more visible imagined threat from the former. Vagabonds and tramps evoked similar responses in the rural communities of past centuries.
Moreover, apprehensiveness spreads to innocent people who look like street criminals to the better-off, especially poor black young males–probably the major targets of imagined threats in America today–especially when they resort to “oppositional” lifestyle signifiers: gangsta rap, distinctive dress codes, and general adolescent swagger. These are essentially cultural threats, not so much an attack on adults as youth’s rather conventional attempt to keep adults at a distance. Again, there are historical parallels: At the turn of the 20th century, innocent immigrants from groups with high arrest rates for the street crimes of the day–the ancestors, incidentally, of today’s “white ethnics” were also viewed as cultural safety threats.
Fears of street crime must be understood as particular cases of more general class and race fears, which go far beyond issues of safety. Yet since the perception of undeservingness depends in part on violence, effective crime reduction would undoubtedly help to reduce the political scapegoating of the poor, improving their lives both directly and indirectly. If the nation is ever to take effective action against poverty–neither the 1960s’ federal “Skirmish on Poverty,” as some called it, nor today’s counterproductive punitive approaches–non-poor citizens must consider the poor sufficiently deserving to merit job-centered policies. But first, America must end the terrible scarcity of jobs open to low-income people.
To break the dubious dichotomy in which the Right blames the poor and the Left blames society, we need less blaming (justified or otherwise) and more policy-focused research into the empirical causes of crime and the (self-) selection of some poor people to turn to violence. More attention should be paid to the relation between ideology and fact, and researchers can insist on empirical study for questions that can be answered empirically. Either street crime is primarily caused by poverty and unemployment, or it is not; this need not be a matter of permanent debate. After all, the middle and upper classes do not mug.
Ultimately, violent crime will not decline until enough Americans realize that punitive measures have not worked. But until the actual threats decline significantly, imagined and displaced threats are not likely to be reduced either. The political, and tragic, reality is that mainstream America appears to be unwilling to give the poor a chance at decent full-time jobs until safety threats decline. The poor, however, need the jobs first. Otherwise, the lure of the streets will be too strong, and the incentive to move into seemingly secure and well-paying criminal occupations too great.
We lost interest in sports shortly after high school and never could understand how people get so worked up. Our interest in the Olympics have likewise declined over the years and performance enhancing drugs in sports have pretty much killed the thrill for us.
We were in our 40s the first time we attended a major league baseball game. We wound up going to a couple more games over the course of the season. At no point did we have the slightest interest in the game, but sitting outside on a warm summer evening, with the smell of popcorn, good conversation, and a jubilant crowd made for a spectacular diversion.
What we do like… love actually, is sports radio. We’re not sure why, since we have no interest in the teams or the outcomes of the games, but there’s something about the way others get so wrapped up in the games that we find endlessly fascinating.
As a maelstrom of demons inhabiting the animated carcass of a male human, we’re often expected to provide random commentary to random strangers on sports related topics on a fairly regular basis.
Question: Does this happen to other male asportualists males on Pharyngula? Do you plead ignorance in these situations or do you fake it so as to preserve assumed man-cred?
Carlie,
Oh snap, girlfriend!
Mind if I steal that?
To paraphrase Bob Hope, Stephanie wouldn’t fuck with me if I had my writers with me.
Lynna, OM @244
Have to take your word for it on the billing, as do not watch TV, ignore the Olympics and sports in general. But:
How so EH?
Paul W @230
Thanks, Paul. I appreciate your reposting here.
David Marjanović #211
As some of you may know, I enjoy sailing. I’ve been racing sailboats since I was even younger than Walton. But watching a sailboat race? That’s akin to watching grass grow. I know the sport well enough to recognize and appreciate the nuances that non-racing sailors would miss, but I still don’t care to watch a race.
RMM Barrier@245
Touché!
Tis Himself. Thanks for posting this essay.
This is why there was so much support for the Iraq invasion and why there are now calls for an Iran invasion.
It’s also why we put up with airport security.
Hi – just an aside, but I bet some of your are Kurt Vonnegut fans.
If so you will enjoy the BBC’s recent radio adaptation of “Slaughterhouse 5”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qny57/Saturday_Play_Slaughterhouse_5/
Quite fabulous. Of course, you may find it difficult to get the iplayer (if you live in a foreign country and have not paid your licence fee, you naughty things), but it’s currently available on “Listen again”.
Brilliant.
Sorry, carry on.
Paul W – please feel free; I’d post it there myself but I’m honestly not willing to wade in, even with a totally fake spam email account.
Our interest in the Olympics have likewise declined over the years and performance enhancing drugs in sports have pretty much killed the thrill for us. – Legion
Yes, it would surely make more sense for the teams to represent major pharmaceutical companies and prosthetics designers, rather than states. You could have different categories, depending on what performance-enhancing interventions were allowed – from “anything goes” downwards – in the less permissive conditions, of course, the competition would focus on evading detection.
The dangers of just skimming the thread! I read this, “No, the other changes have clearly been the results of Walton maturing”, as this “No, the other changes have clearly been the results of Walton masturbating.” I have self-corrected, but am still trying to figure out if this is just because masturbation is such a frequent topic on the endless thread, or if Walton… no, no, no, mustn’t go down that road. Shake it off, Lynna.
Knockgoats #221
I’m afraid I must have the same Broadband supplier as you (BT?) because it seems to be running slower than dialup, and I just can’t go searching for up to date national crime statistics atm (and I’m busy watching the FA cup games :) ), but I found this, and this
(quote from the first link)
Of course, as you say, many crimes are not reported or recorded, but I think poor people in the USA, are also reluctant to report crime and thus become involved with the police.
There are however, more than “just a few” rich people in Mumbai (the few searches my broadband have allowed me, give reports that there are more (dollar) millionaires in Mumbai than New York), and I’d say that the extremes interact more often, and more deeply, than in the USA or the UK.
Re Sacred Games – no, I haven’t read it (I hardly ever read fiction nowadays) but I’ll keep an eye open for it. Have you read “Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found” by Suketu Mehta? If not, try and do so. I can’t recommend it too highly.
Amother very good book on India is “City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi” by William Dalrymple.
After reading those two, and of the horrific, traumatic, histories of many Indians, I was amazed that the Indian crime rate isn’t way higher.
PS I have no illusions about India being a peaceful, socially coherent society, been there too often for that. Last time I was in Mumbai I watched a family (in rags) going through a stinking, fetid, sewer picking out individual grains of rice and eating them. If I was ever in that situation and needed to feed my children, I think I’d commit any crime, except murder, to do so.
Five minutes later at the Central Station taxi rank I found a naked man lying unconcious with a hole bigger than my fist in his back, diahorrea leaking from his arse, and a dog eating it as it emerged. While I stood there, wondering how much more of my limited money I could give away, the Railway Police came and threw a bucket of water over him and dragged him away. (My) problem solved.
‘Tis Himself, OM #253
In related news, BMW Oracle, the American boat in the America’s Cup series, won the first race on Friday and is leading in the second race today in the best of three series.
Here’s a picture from an earlier America’s Cup race. In 1934 Rainbow beat Endeavour 4-1 in a best of seven series.
‘Tis @248: Thanks for that link. This struck a chord with me:
Hey, I graduated with Diana Rigg. And the room was glowing with awesomeness due to her presence.
I saw < ahref="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/opinion/13bissinger.html">this op-ed about the Olympics today (it’s a reprint from 2 years ago). Very intriguing – I never thought about exactly how much personal sacrifice has surrounded so many of the Olympic events. The basic premise is that the Olympics is simply a commercialized political fight that quite often gets real people killed, and is therefore not worth doing at all.
Carlie @241
I side with Carlie on this. Very bad form, and not acceptable even on Pharyngula, where, surprise, surprise, you cannot wish rape on those who annoy you. Now, if you accept one of Smoggy’s humorous invitations to send Floyd Rubber over to relieve your tension, that’s different. Ethics are in the details.
Knockgoats:
We read a story in Omni Magazine, decades ago, called The Mickey Mouse Olympics, by Tom Sullivan. The story is set in a future where Olympic athletes have been so freakishly genetically modified that they’re hardly recognizable as humans anymore.
There are protests and counter-protests by the US and Soviet teams. The protests are upheld by the Olympic committee resulting in the Dominican Republic winning because, due to their relative poverty, they didn’t have the money to create franken-athletes and were forced to send normal humans instead.
Great story.
And of course the link didn’t work. op-ed in NYTimes
Lynna (#259):
Given the image you’ve just inflicted on all of us
really isn’t helping.
I think poor people in the USA, are also reluctant to report crime and thus become involved with the police. – Ring Tailed Lemurian
True, I’m sure, but the vast numbers of the poor in India would make a big difference; and while the police in the US may put less effort into solving a crime in the ghetto, I’m inclined to think the Mumbai police would be unlikely to bother with crime with poor victims at all, as in the example of mass-scale child prostitution. Homicide rates might give a better comparison. I don’t have time to research this properly, so I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I’m not convinced you’re right.
Oh no. If this devolves into a bunch of masturbation puns, I’m going to have to pull out of the thread, because I don’t want to be jerked around that way.
I don’t know quite what to say in response to this comment…
Knockgoats – Homicide rates. Wikipedia gives 5.4 for the US and 2.82 for India.
Of course, there are many murders of unwanted spouses in India that are passed off as “domestic accidents”.
Legion and Lynna,
You’re welcome. I came across Gans’s essay a month or so ago and, as Lynna said, it struck a chord. It seemed appropriate to post it.
In other news BMW Oracle has a 2 minute 44 second/2000 metre lead over Alinghi after both boats rounded the second mark. The Swiss are flying a protest flag. I have no idea what they’re going to protest. Both boats are now reaching to the gybe mark. It’ll be interesting to see how the wing-sail does on a broad reach.
BTW, Ring Tailed Lemurian, thanks for the references. I won’t promise to read them, knowing from my past performance that this is unwise, but the socio-economic and cultural dynamics of megacities in poor countries are a truly important topic.
RMM Barrie asks how Canadians are odd, EH? I should know by now not to make blanket statements. Some Canadians are odd. [I was joking in the first comment about Canadians being odd, because I loved the oddness of KD Lang looking like Johnny Cash and singing Cohen’s best song… all to the befuddlement of many. I’m still joking.]
Sara Green: Seal Hunt Supporter
Love of bad weather, masochistic joy when visitors are subjected to bad weather. Let ’em ski in the rain, we do.
Curling, and this category includes Cheryl Bernard’s makeup and big hair.
Now running to the finish line. BMW Oracle has a 2200 metre lead.
Lynna, OM @275
And if you cannot ski it, then hike it, we always say.
Curling is great, because like Cricket, lots of beer time.
Like most everywhere, there are tremendous regional differences, in addition to the two solitudes of English and French Canada.
And thanks to the diagram you helpfully drew for those of us totally ignorant of sailing terms, I half-assed know what you’re talking about this time! :-) Joy in new knowledge. Would you link to that GIF again for those that missed it?
Yeah, I’m following the America’s Cup on their website. They’re posting their Twitter feed there.
BMW Oracle will have to gybe to get to the finish line. The lead is now about 2100 metres.
re 183:
It was a great performance, but it is such a sad song, didn’t really seem like the right venue.
@ Paul W. (#230)
Awesomeness. She really doesn’t get that she’s setting up SC, you, me, etc. as villains by her constant shift to another accusation towards us after she’s failed to support her previous ones. If there really was a problem, you’d think she’d be able to better explain exactly what it is.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Carlie (#246)
Oooh, it’s so true. Well, I’m sure she’d come up with some completely ineffective excuse as to why no, she’d find that sexist based on X imaginary loophole and Y conveniently double-standardish reinterpretation of what Greg means when he calls someone a bitch. And why isn’t anyone calling you out for calling her a bitch. Blah blah blah.
Ready about!
Gybe OH!
BMW Oracle did the gybe beautifully and are set up on the port tack for the finish line. Alinghi is taking a better line than BMW Oracle and doesn’t have to gybe.
Re the sports thing – the idea is that you watch sports with other people who are on your ‘side’. It really doesn’t matter in the end whether your team win or lose. Unless it’s the final, or course.
The most fervent fans are the ones of the bottom teams – they get to moan about the team, the referee’s sight problems, the cheating of the winners, how ‘we wuzz robbed’. It’s all about having a good time with your mates, and bonding with them.
Walton, you just need to go to a football match, and join the banter. Everyone wearing the same team colours is your friend, the other team is the enemy, as is the referee. But when the opposition score, you clap their skill appreciatively. It’s rather like a mixture of a pantomime and this thread on pharyngula.
BMW Oracle have finished with a lead of 2 minutes 31 seconds over Alinghi. However we still don’t know what the penalty is. If the penalty is disallowed, then the America’s Cup goes back to America.
‘Tis Himself
I was, a very, very long time ago, an international swimmer (well, ok, an unused reserve) but you couldn’t pay me to watch swimming.
@ all those who can’t understand anyone watching sport. It depends what sport it is. When I go and support my football (“soccer”) team I’m not “watching”, as in watching a film, I’m part of the action. It’s partcipatory. The crowd affects the game. The more we sing, and outsing the opposition, the better our team plays. If we are quiet, or get outsung, then they play badly. We definitely affect the result. It’s as if we are actually playing (and at a higher standard than we actually could play). I’ve experienced emotions while “watching” that are far, far stronger than any I ever felt while playing any sport.
Oh, I didn’t realize that Alinghi had to make a penalty turn. BMW Oracle’s lead is 5 minutes 26 seconds at the finish.
The LDS Church pays a PR firm in NY to keep them in the news in a positive way. Lately, the New York Times has been sucked in to this scam all too often for my tastes.
The NY Times should hire ex-mormon SL Cabbie as a fact-checker. Here’s his take on the latest mormons-are-lovely-people story:
Those in the know think the PR blitz may be related to upgrading the mormon public profile before they run Mitt Romney again in the Presidential campaign. And the PR may also be meant to counter all the negative press the church received for backing Prop 8 and other anti-gay campaigns.
A.Noyd and readers
It turns out my favourite War of 1812 whitewash story is hogwash. I have been the purveyor of fine bull excrement, albeit in good faith. As most here know, faith is not the path to glory in the present or future.
With research, I found many assertions, all Canadian, to the mini burning of the President’s house, and many assertive denials, mostly American.
Therefore, I read material in what was deemed to be scholarly books for the time immediately around the story period, finding nothing. Looking at original material, or quotes, in Canadian libraries, I found no mention, but did find a fair amount of gloating for lesser conquests. Reading the Madison papers, Dolley Madison writes a letter from the house, to her sister, 3 days after the incident would have occurred, but just before the actual burning, where she was in residence full time. In that letter, she writes at length about the events of the days, but does not mention anyone trying to burn her house down. President Madison also writes a note from the front, in the same time frame, re-assuring Dolley that she is safe, with no mention of any untoward events at the house in previous days.
I realize this does not constitute a mathematical proof, nor pays respect to the scientific method, as absence is not proof. However, in the world of the social science-y, is all we have to fairly conclude it is a “cute story”.
RMM
PS: For those on the northern side of the border, “we” still won the War of 1812! That is as blunt as I can be, so as not to be accused of being “Laden” down with imprecision.
Is that pronounced with a hard or a soft “g”? (just kidding) I’ve always seen it spelled “jibe”.
@188 Knockgoats
Wait, you’re claiming there was dialogue in this scene? And other actors on stage?
Stoppard and Jumpers sounds right, though. Thanks. Also thanks to Lynna.
That’s not sadness, or rather not just the sadness of the broken Hallelujah. It’s the mix of great moments and difficult moments that make up a fully-lived life. Cut the damned “sadness” out and it’s no longer reality, but just a white-wash, just spongey wonder bread with no nutritional appeal.
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah…
There’s a blaze of light in every word
It doesn’t matter which are heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah
Walton, you just need to go to a football match, and join the banter. Everyone wearing the same team colours is your friend, the other team is the enemy, as is the referee. – davem
I guess I get my fix of that particular high at political demonstrations.
all those who can’t understand anyone watching sport. It depends what sport it is. When I go and support my football (“soccer”) team I’m not “watching”, as in watching a film, I’m part of the action. It’s partcipatory. The crowd affects the game. – Ring Tailed Lemurian
Has anyone actually done a study of how crowd participation affects team performance, that you know of? I don’t think we can accept the impressions of crowd members as definitive!
Bob Munck@290,
Our memories obviously interact with our libidos differently! Mine produced a “penumbra” effect, transferring far more of the scene, and the play into LTM than would usually have been the case; whereas yours focused in on the really important point to the exclusion of all else!
Paul W,
The SidekickTM is really rather strange. We noticed her most recent threat:
GL has made similar assertions. It all sounds so sophomoric as in, “I’m a bad-ass, so don’t fuck with me.”
What’s strange is that the original GL post was about civility and how being on the “firing squad” can turn some people bad, but the boasting, posturing, and threats that they’ve engaged in seem to exhibit the very behavior they were supposedly railing against.
What’s worse, they seem to revel in their piss-stained testosterone-laced invective. It’s almost as if they were completely self-unaware.
I don’t mind piss-stained, testosterone-laced invective as long as it is well-aimed. I do mind when the aim is off. Just a bunch of piss to clean up when the aim is off.
‘Tis, the photo gallery is monumental — http://www.americascup.com/en/multimedia/gallery/index.php
RMM Barrie #288
By 1814, both sides, weary of a costly war, were ready for a settlement. It’s difficult to measure the costs of the American war to Britain, because they’re bound up in general expenditure on the Napoleonic War in Europe. But an estimate may be made based on the increased borrowing undertaken during the period, an additional £25 million was added to the national debt. In the US, the cost was $105 million. Considering the worth of the pound vs the dollar the costs of the war to both sides were roughly equal. The US national debt rose from $45 million in 1812 to $127 million by the end of 1815, although by selling bonds and treasury notes at deep discounts—and often for irredeemable paper money due to the suspension of specie payment in 1814—the government received only $34 million worth of specie.¹
The war was ended by the Treaty of Ghent, signed on December 24, 1814 and taking effect February 18, 1815.² The terms stated that fighting between the United States and Britain would cease, all conquered territory was to be returned to the prewar claimant, the Americans were to gain fishing rights in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and that both the US and Britain agreed to recognise the prewar boundary between Canada and the US.
The War of 1812 was basically a stalemate.
¹All data are from Donald R. Hickey’s The War of 1812
²The Battle of New Orleans was fought on January 8, 1815, after the treaty was signed but before word had crossed the Atlantic.
Interesting seeing a catamaran in the race. I recall the brouhaha from the first use of a winged keel.
The War of 1812 was basically a stalemate. – ‘Tis Himself
Unless you were a native American – the allies of the British, the Shawnee chief Tecumseh, and the Creeks, lost out in a big way – naturally being abandoned by the British when that became convenient.
the Americans were to gain fishing rights in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence
Or a fish in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
I take that back about the America’s Cup gallery — only a few of the photos are monumental. The rest, bleh.
Loss of Faith — video:
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/02/the-loss-of-faith.html
Makes the most sense to me…
Me? Man-cred?
Remember how I made Jadehawk homesick last time? We know where the referee’s car is parked, and we’re going to light it up, so he better take the train, the song goes.
According to the Free Online Dictionary either spelling is acceptable. Many sailors spell it “gybe” because “jibe” can be confused with “jib.” The two spellings are pronounced the same, with a soft g in “gybe.”
If anyone’s wondering, a gybe is shifting a fore-and-aft sail from one side of a vessel to the other while running (sailing before the wind) so as to sail on the opposite tack. If anyone wants a further explanation just ask.
Both boats are multihulls. A multihull is faster than a monohull but a monohull can sail much closer to the wind (i.e., can sail closer to the direction the wind is coming from).
BMW Oracle
Alinghi
Alinghi having an oops.
Speaking of Jadehawk… that Muppets video about cheesecake… is it normal that that muppet says “cheesegake” all the time? Or have I misundreshtmated something about the English language?
In the words of the Beachboys:
” … everybody’s surfing now …”
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/5/20100214/tod-huge-waves-wipe-out-crowd-at-surf-co-870a197.html
It’s not the opening ceremony of the Olympics, but here’s another version of KD Lang singing Hallelujah.
Somehow, the rougher version she sang at the opening ceremony is more moving than this cleaned up version. But both are good. The sound is better in the clean version.
I just realized that earlier in this very thread I said something to the effect: “Me watch sailing? I’d rather have Mormon missionaries preaching at me than watch a sailing race.” So what did I do? I watched the last two legs of the America’s Cup race on feed.
But at least I watched a very pretty gybe by BMW Oracle and saw how Alinghi took a better line to the finish line than BMW-0 did.
Tis Himself, OM @296
That is true. The important thing to remember, is the first two years of the war was on Canadian soil, defensively, as the objective of the Americans was to annex Upper and Lower Canada. Canada had the most to lose, while the American objective was not met.
The PS was tongue in cheek, from some previous postings, in the previous thread, where I quoted a newspaper intro, Feb 13 @ 646
National Post September 28, 2007
There was a fair amount of back and forth in the previous thread which I am sure you did not have the opportunity to read.
As I happen to live, or did live close to many of the battle sites, or happened to be in the area of other sites, I have taken the opportunity to visit.
Watching the America’s Cup beats mormon missionaries any day of the week. If fact, if any mormon missionaries show up, force them watch the America’s Cup while you browbeat them with as much sailing lingo as possible. I think they need to see the shape of the wind.
I don’t know of any true studies, but in the U.S., the common wisdom is that the common wisdom about home crowds helping their teams is probably overstated, if not completely wrong. But again, that’s just the common wisdom.
IIRC, people who’ve done cursory statistical analyses have generally concluded that home field/court advantage has little effect on wins and losses, except where there’s an objective physical factor involve (e.g., teams whose home [outdoor] stadium is in a warm climate often struggle when playing on the road in cold weather). And, of course, home/away win-loss records don’t really take into account the actual level of engagement of the crowd.
That said, there are places (esp. in college basketball) where it’s famously difficult for visiting teams to win (e.g., Cameron Indoor Stadium on the Duke University campus)… but it’s hard to know how much of that to attribute to the rabid fans and how much to the general excellence of the home team.
But if fans feel as if they’re affecting the game, and that enhancing their enjoyment, why screw with the mood?
I guess I’ll be the contrarian here, and say I really like sports. I’m not a rabid fan of any particular sport or team (I like football and baseball, and follow the Patriots and Red Sox, but I’m nothing compared to their real fans); I’m just generally interested in sports. I’ll watch a sport I wouldn’t normally follow if something really compelling is happening or if someone historically great is playing (e.g., I became a golf fan when Tiger Woods appeared on the scene).
And while I know there are plenty of good reasons to be cynical about the Olympics, I always find the actual events riveting. Last night I was sitting on the sofa watching Apolo Ohno and his teammates in short-track speedskating, a sport I’ve never watched at all except during Olympics, and I found myself swaying my body back and forth in time with the skaters. In the same way that I can lose myself in a movie, I can do the same with an athletic event.
In fact, I’m going to go lose myself in the Olympics right after I hit Submit.
It’s the time of year for fluffy dragons to appear all over southern California.
I spent yesterday watching the ski jumping final. It just appealed to me for some reason.
Just saw this:
http://www.freep.com/article/20100214/COL26/2140335/1026/Features01/Some-good-from-vaccine-controversy
How is it possible for someone who writes:
“When I learned the study had been discredited, I was outraged. I had agonized about whether to vaccinate my children and spent many sleepless nights watching my babies for any sign of a reaction to a vaccine.”
to have completely missed all the other reports trashing Wakefield’s tainted garbage (can garbage be tainted?) See her earlier paragraph:
“Earlier this month, the Lancet’s editors retracted the study, acknowledging what some doctors already knew anecdotally: There’s no solid evidence the MMR vaccine causes autism. The study was flawed.”
If she was so concerned for her children, why didn’t she keep up?
“Anecdotally” for FSM’s sake! Where has she been these last 10 years?
Knockgoats @ 298
They lost out in far greater proportion than has ever been generally acknowledged.
About the only thing Tecumseh got out of it, was a town named after him in SW Ontario, after he was killed in Oct., 1813.
Happy new year, Gyeong Hwa Pak.
I’m not a huge sports fan (watch some baseball and football*), and could never get into any of those snow sports. Yet, I never get tired of watching Sumo wrestling…an irregular late night event, that I enjoy agape in my entirety. There is nothing in the world like seeing a 500lb man fall from a raised platform.
*American football. The *other* football is fun to play but horrific to watch. The better the teams are, the more tedious it is. I have gotten the whole “It is like watching an exquisite chess match” explanation before. I don’t like to watch chess matches either. Unless we are talking about Chess Boxing
eh? he pronounces it normally, where do you hear a “g” in there? *confused*
He also got a submarine named after him.
and on the sports thing: I enjoy watching soccer, but generally only with other like-minded people. it’s one of the rare forms of meatspace socializing I actually enjoy.
The boyfriend on the other hand likes American football. But since he’s a Lions fan, I wouldn’t precisely say he enjoys it much :-p
though, he did make me watch some Barry Sanders clips, and those were fun. dude runs like a rabbit :-p
Peace and Prosperity to you too.
Now that’s two New Years down. Just one more.
Jadehawk, OM #317
Any American football fan can tell you the Lions do not play football.
Tell him someone who grew up less than 50 miles from Green Bay said so.
RMM Barrie: “About the only thing Tecumseh got out of it, was a town named after him in SW Ontario, after he was killed in Oct., 1813.”
‘Tis Himself: “He also got a submarine named after him.”
And the middle name of a certain civil war general, who, given certain voting patterns, arguably, had the right idea.
‘Tis Himself, OM @ 316
Had no idea, and then when I look some more, there has been 4 ships named after him in the US Navy.
There are some parks, monuments, streets named after Tecumseh in Ontario, which I should have mentioned before pushing the magic submit button.
There are Tecumseh cities in Oklahoma, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas.
Having just returned from a day centred on watching the Six Nations rugby, during/after which I met a new(-to-me) gentlemen who lives within a few minutes of me who is ex-FFL (French Foreign Legion) with the stories to tell, and another who used to go to the same club I went to, and we’re from three different countries, all now live in France, and thought the English were shite today and the Italians could have done better (and that the Irish should have done better yesterday), and bought each other beers, and exchanged name and ‘phone numbers, I obviously don’t quite agree with the sentiment that sports is dull
Unless, of course, it’s soccer.
Or gridiron.
Or whatever the feck is currently being done in Vancouver…
Good point.
Well, not what would count as a “g” in northern German, or Polish, or French, or Spanish, or sung English – it’s voiceless. (The one in gobble is voiced in the song.) But it would still count as “g” in southern German, or Chinese (Pīnyīn transcription), or most spoken Englishes. I know that aspiration in English is the weaker the less stressed a syllable is, but that’s not merely a completely unaspirated [k] in that song, it consistently takes the next step and lands in the “g” range.*
This is normal, at least for Americans, for /p t k/ following s; words like “skills” or “school” usually come out with voiceless [g], as part of the rule that takes aspiration away (completely) behind [s]. There’s a famous song where you have to read the lyrics to find out whether the guy sings “while I kiss the sky” or “while I kiss this guy”. But I really didn’t expect it in …
Oh, wait. There’s a [z] right in front of the first /k/ in cheesecake. <lightbulb above head> That probably explains it all! Looks like it works even across the parts of compound words.
It’s fascinating to no end how counterintuitive this rule is for me, simply because southern German doesn’t aspirate (northern does, and, or so I’ve read, has the same rule). It makes plenty of physical sense – the air pressure needed for aspiration has already escaped during the [s] or [z] –, so one might imagine it ought to come intuitively to me, but it just doesn’t. And while I was taught to aspirate in one of my first English lessons, I was never taught this exception. I had to read up on it a few years ago in places like Wikipedia.
Well, an interesting description of the whole Greg Laden v. Pharyngulistas fiasco:
Henry Gee = Voldemort/Sauron
SC = Princess Leia
StephanieZ = Wormtongue and Michael Myers from Halloween
Paul = Aragorn + Terminator
(Maybe he’s a typing energizer bunny?)
Greg Laden = Q from Star Trek
It’s the Olympic Games for a reason. Sports that require judging have been at every Olympic competition. Deal with it.
Is this a Webley?
I first saw Diana Rigg as Mrs. Peel. Later I saw her in about 1970 in a televised production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream — she played Helena. Anyone else remember that? She looked so dishy in that classical Athenian costume…wish I had that on DVD.
Speaking of the infantilisation of “girls” vs. “girls’-night-out” and ” boys’-night-out”. In those latter cases I suspect it has something to do with a desire to relive a lost youth.
Of course, I’m thirty-mumble and I still find it hard to refer to myself as a “man”.
That’s what she said.
You just need to verb the noun, young padawan.
Ignore the asterisk. I was enlightened while I was writing the comment, more precisely while I was starting to add a footnote that turned out to be unnecessary.
The singer is Jimi Hendrix.
LOL!
The Socialist Kingdom of Spain.
And never explaining what he wants with a starship.
(…Is that Q or some other fake deity? All I’ve watched is the YouTube clip.)
Hyperon,
While commenting would be superfluous….
I think your problem isn’t so much hatred as jaw-dropping ignorance, like that of the teacher. However, the fact that you spend much of your efforts here focusing on criticizing minorities or women makes me wonder.
To your credit though, on a previous thread you acknowledged (after much effort) that institutional racism existed. While this is by no means the only factor (poverty and inequality have also been mentioned), it is a significant one.
No, all Canadians are at least a little odd. Thing is, so is everyone else. Think of the people you know well; is there anyone you would describe as truly, totally normal?
Not that this is a bad thing, of course. Little quirks and oddities are part of what makes us interesting.
It depends on the strengths of the opposing sides. Did you by any chance see the Brazil-USA final last summer in (I think) the Confederations Cup? A horribly disappointing result for me, but it was impressive to see the Brazilians do what they had to do even though they were denied a palpable goal.
Apart from technical aspects, televised soccer has this advantage over American football: I hate commercials. In a soccer match I get to see 45-minute halves with no commercial interruption. Unfortunately I have to watch most of my soccer in places where I can’t be supping a pint.
If that’s true, then even official U.S. government pages are carrying incorrect information.
I found this document that has a lot of references to documents from the early 1800s, although it doesn’t look like any of the references are specifically for this event.
I just don’t know. It’s certainly plausible. Washington at that time was very small and poorly defended, and the US forces had managed to push all the way into the city of York and burned both major public and private buildings during the war.
Tedious clarification: instead of “the strengths of the opposing sides,” I should have said something like “the styles of play favored by the opposing sides.” Long-ball, “Route One” soccer is boring as hell. But the sides that play that style mostly seem to do so because they don’t have the skills to play any other way.
It just so happens that in the episode of Mental I was watching last night, a guy referred to another grown man as “our boy.” (Speaker was white and the guy being referred to was black, but it didn’t seem like the line was meant to make him sound racist, either.) I might not have even noticed that before yesterday. Slightly easier to notice was their shameless repetition of the autism epidemic myth in a different episode. Grrr!
~*~*~*~*~*~
RMM Barrie (#288)
Well, as far as history’s concerned, original sources carry a significant deal of weight, right? Thanks for sharing what you found out.
~*~*~*~*~*~
SteveM (#289)
I used to play an MMO where one of the skills for a particular class was called “gibe” and everyone I ever heard say it out loud would use the hard “g.” Drove me up the wall.
~*~*~*~*~*~
David Marjanović (#324)
Hmm, any examples of a “t” becoming a “g” like this? In the examples I can think of, they’re more “d”-like. For instance, “last onion” comes out “lass dunion.” (Yes, the “d” jumps to the second word like that.)
~*~*~*~*~*~
Feynmaniac (#325)
I nearly peed myself laughing at that.
I’ve tried watching american football, nothing happens in it! And somehow it’s dragged out for 3 to 4 hours?
I really wished more countries played Aussie rules football. There’s always something happening, because as soon as its held up the umpires step in to restart play.
I’ve got to say I love football (soccer), when it’s played well – damn it is good to watch. Put two teams hoping for a draw however…
Please tell me Sister Mary FP is a relative of Smoggy. Please? Because it would be awesome to know he has someone doing his good work while he rests up.
Feynmaniac (and David M.),
Your sketchy presentation underestimates the seriousness of my multiple personality disorder. Heck, I might even be multiple physical people, too.
The full description was
Somebody else recently described me as “a marriage of TruthMachine, without the personality disorder, and David Marjanović.”
I’d never been described as a same-sex marriage before; now, apparently they have a rather butch all-male coterie.
ckitching @334
August 24, 1814 all government buildings and the local paper were all destroyed by fire by British and Canadian troops in retaliation for the burning of York, now Toronto.
There is an urban legend about a raiding party, partially setting fire to the President’s House (now White House since 1901) August 19, 1814, and then the Americans whitewashing the building to cover over the damage. This is my reference to “mini burning”.
Eternal truths:
Der Ball ist rund, ein Spiel hat 90 Minuten.
“The ball is round, a game has 90 minutes.”
– Author forgotten, but should be easy to look up.
Sorry, of course not: /p t k/ become /b d g/, respectively.
The pronunciation question was a lame reference to the recent discussion about how to pronounce “gyre” (and gimbal) since the spelling is so similar.
Oh my, Stephanie’s got her victim hat on again. Now she’s bringing up the sockpuppet accusation and the “Sauroman” analogy. I think she’s trying to preemptively excuse Saadia from having to make a case for why her (Saadia’s) emotional reaction should be grounds for SC editing herself.
Great. Now I’m wondering who carried you to term.
:-D
I wonder if it’s good that I am Legend or whether it’s a rather bad omen. ;-)
RMM Barrie @340
Hmm.. I’ve never heard of the presidential residence being burned before the Burning of Washington on August 24, 1814. In fact, it wouldn’t make any sense because that would’ve been advance notice of an attack on the city, whereas the reports of the occupation of the city seem to say that it was almost completely undefended so there were nearly no casualties when taking the city. The few casualties that did occur were due to the tornado that swept through the area shortly after.
I know that as a child I was taught the whitewashing of the presidential building was to hide the smoke and scorch marks from the fire (although I don’t believe it was actually in the textbook). I would agree with you that this seems to be a complete fabrication. However, this is the first I’ve heard of an earlier attack. I guess my area only received part of this particular urban legend.
Lynna @ 244: Where do you get “celebrates the female form”? Cohen himself has said:
Hallelujah is a Hebrew word which means “Glory to the Lord.” The song explains that many kinds of Hallelujahs do exist. I say: All the perfect and broken Hallelujahs have an equal value. It’s, as I say, a desire to affirm my faith in life, not in some formal religious way but with enthusiasm, with emotion….
It’s got variable lyrics; what Cohen sings live and what he records in studio are different. I’ve heard it both upbeat and down; I think it depends on how he’s feeling at the time.
That said, it’s a favourite song; I just found it a bit odd for the Olympics, with its rather dark imagery. TBH, I like KD’s rendition of it better than anyone else’s – her voice incredible.
Think of the people you know well; is there anyone you would describe as truly, totally normal? jefrir
Well the person I know best is me, and I’m completely normal. It’s just the rest of you who are so odd!
(The old Yorkshire way of saying this – my mother was born in Yorkshire – was:
“All’t’ world’s queer save me an’ thee – an’ even thee’s a bit queer.”)
Pygmy Loris
I fail to understand what that has to do with Style Judging. The ancient Greeks didn’t have Style Events. They didn’t even have judges for the boxing. Is the Olympic motto now “faster, higher, further, except when it’s not as aesthetically appealing”? Why the hell does ski jumping require style judges? Jump furthest and you should win. Also, especially in women’s events, they get points merely for being “pretty”. An ugly female ice dancer with “British teeth” is never going to get the same marks as a plastic, over-madeup, grinning ninny, no matter how good they are.
I know that, but the style sports have become a greater proportion of the Games than they ever used to be. The Olympics have become bloated and need trimming, not expanding. It’s almost a curse to be awarded the Olympics now, virtually bankrupting the host cities.
Aw, come on. Let this grumpy old man grump away about how the world is going to hell in a handbasket if he wants. Deal with my grumpiness.
One of my children works for the London 2010 Olympic Delivery Authority and tells me that many of the (what I’d call real) athletes think that the Style Events belong elsewhere. Personally, I’d also get rid of the events which require very expensive equipment, such as the equestrian events. Keep It Simple.
“even if it means trolling his own blog.”
“Trolling his own blog” definitely sounds like a snatch of Polari. Probably the equivalent of “blowing his own trumpet” in standard English, and with the same hint of double entendre.
I use probably what is a bad analogy, but I consider normal like climate, what you expect. One expects a family of mom, pop, 2.3 or so kids, plus a certain number of
petsanimal companions. People are the like the weather. They show some signs of being normal, but rarely totally are. And there are a few of them off the charts one way or another.@346
You’re right to point that out as a questionable statement (good quote from Cohen BTW). I wrote that while misremembering the lyrics. In my mind, I had made the lyrics “ You saw her bathing on the roof [line break] Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you” as being more specific than they are.
er… London 2012 ODA
Is that like Two and a Half Men?
Happy new year, Gyeong Hwa Pak.
Do you have to collect a certain number of “Happy New Year” greetings in order to keep the earth in its orbit?
Ring Tailed Lemurian,
You are more than welcome to be a grumpy old man if you want.
OTOH, like I said, there have been events that are judged since the inception of the modern Olympics, so your aversion to them being in the Games isn’t a product of age unless you’re a couple of millenia older than I think.
Sepp Herberger.
I don’t mind watching events that include style points, but as I was watching the women’s downhill moguls yesterday I remarked that I couldn’t understand why anyone would devote their life to competing in an event that included style points. “Yes, you were the fastest, and had the most technically difficult moves, but we just didn’t care for the way you looked while you were doing it.” Fuck that noise.
:-)
From GLB. Stephanie Z. is an unappreciated comedy genius!
“A. Noyd, have you looked up dog whistles? Do you understand that they are things that are deliberately vague, deliberately elusive, designed to sound just like the things people say every day without any ill intent or possibly even ill effect (i.e., like the things SC said), designed to be impossible to object to without the objection looking paranoid?”
I’ve responded as follows, but it’s held in moderation:
“So the objection to the things SC said is that, to someone who just happened to read them without knowing SC, they might have sounded like things that sound just like the things people say every day without any ill intent. Now I’ve got it!”
I’m not ignorant, I’m simply intolerant of paralyzing political correctness. I should not have to dress every substantive point I make in connection with race in layers upon layers of touchy-feely bullshit. I don’t think racism in the West is an especially interesting problem, globally speaking. (For instance, 100,000 people die of malnourishment every day.) To my mind, this obsession with race is just a waste of time and a big distraction from more important concerns.
ckitching @346
The British actually landed about 75 miles away on August 19, and this was well known to the American forces. There was no element of surprise, plus the British only stayed for the day, and moved on toward Baltimore.
The origin of the legend, is Canada.The texts in Canada suggest the reason there were few casualties, is because the American militia ran away. American texts say lightly defended which is hard to believe also. Truth is somewhere between the extremes.
Depending on which side of the border one resides, determines who won in the eyes of many, even to this very day.
Although the ancient Olympics didn’t include style events, other ancient games did, e.g. the Isthmian Games included poetry and music contests, in which women may have competed. (In the Ancient Olympics, they could do so only as owners of horses and chariots in the equestrian events. Would you advocate returning to this rule, Ring Tailed Lemurian? How about the requirement that the athletes compete naked? Boxing contests that continue until one man submits or dies – but in the latter case, is judged to have won?)
The Texas State Board of Education just can’t stay out of the news. And Don McLeroy, dentist and liar for jesus, is in the thick of it. How Christian Were the Founders?
That would be every event. Even ones like running in the summer olympics – those ain’t $10 shoes they’re wearing, and if you include the amount of money it takes to train to the point of making the cut, there really aren’t many bargains out there.
That would make the Olympics too appealing to watch. Especially in such events as greco-roman wrestling.
Exactly, every greeting maintain our elliptical orbit in check. Because we can’t rely on gravitational pull.
:-)
I’m not ignorant, I’m simply intolerant of paralyzing political correctness. I should not have to dress every substantive point I make in connection with race in layers upon layers of touchy-feely bullshit. I don’t think racism in the West is an especially interesting problem, globally speaking. (For instance, 100,000 people die of malnourishment every day.) To my mind, this obsession with race is just a waste of time and a big distraction from more important concerns. – Hyperon
Just keep confirming your ignorance, Hyperon. But please stop pretending you’re concerned about the people who die of malnourishment – they’re just pawns in your self-appointed role in battling against “paralyzing political correctness”.
Hyperon,
Interesting considering I’ve seen many posts from you dealing with minority issues and none dealing with global malnourishment. Even if you have posted on malnourishment I doubt you’ve spent anywhere near as many words on the topic than on racial issues. I have however read you lament on the (male) victims of violence caused by a “macho” culture. So, you seem to perfectly willing to discuss less important topics.
In any case, it’s not an either/or. Both are problems that need to be discussed.
Yawn, idjit inane bigoted troll is incapable of seeing beyond his own selfish interests. Film at don’t care. And he wonders why we consider him a total and utter fool. The first mark of being is a civilized person is compassion for others, who are different from you, and in need. The bigoted fool just doesn’t get that. Maybe in twenty or thirty years when he has been shat on enough, will he gain the wisdom of the regulars here. Until then, begone idjit troll, begone…
A bit more from the NY Times article on the Texas State School Board — this is from page 4:
This is fun, in a horror-movie way. Here’s a description that includes the fundamentalist christian members of the Texas State School Board being “dumbstruck” by the facts, but then gathering their strength and voting not to be deterred by those same facts.
I watch some sport – cricket and tennis – but the rest I can live without. I’ll occasionally watch Australian football, though.
An Australian comedy duo named Roy & HG did a radio show called This Sporting Life on Sunday afternoons for over twenty years (on and off) – it was a complete piss-take on serious sporting analysis; when they were at their best it was some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever heard – even though I had no interest at all in the sport they were discussing.
They had a television version for one of the Winter Olympics and I nearly died laughing when they were discussing the significance of ‘dude placement’ on the aerodynamics for male contestants in the luge events…
[Luke 11:53-54]
King James Version:
And as he said these things unto them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to urge him vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many things:
Laying wait for him, and seeking to catch something out of his mouth, that they might accuse him.
Andy Schlafly’s Conservative Bible:
As Jesus told them off, the scribes and Pharisees furiously interrogated Him about everything,
plotting and seeking to quote Him for a politically incorrect remark to use against Him.
Cynthia Dunbar, professor at Liberty University School of Law in Virginia, and a member of the Texas State Board of Education, is teaching wannabe lawyers how to argue cases:
Ring Tailed Lemurian #349
Sailing is an Olympic sport. There are ten classes:
* Mens’ single dinghy – Laser
* Mens’ single heavy dinghy – Finns
* Mens’ double dinghy – 470
* Mens’ double high performance (trapeze) dingy – 49er
* Mens’ Windsurfer – RS:X
* Men’s Keelboat – Star1
* Womens’ single dinghy – Laser Radial
* Womens’ double dinghy – 470
* Women’s keelboat (Match Racing2) – Elliott 6m
* Womens’ Windsurfer – RS:X
Some of these boats can be very expensive. A 470 set for world-class racing can easily run US$20,000.
1The Star design is 100 years old. Some things have changed since the first Stars were built in 1910. The first boats had mahogany hulls, now they’re fiberglass. The rig has changed from gaff rig to short marconi to a high aspect ratio rig. The spars are no longer wood but aluminininium. Sails are now made of dacron rather than cotton. But the hull and rudder design haven’t changed in a hundred years.
2Match races are two boats going head to head, like the America’s Cup. All other Olympic races are regatta races, where a fleet of boats race together.
But how are you going to have the pentathlon without equestrian?
You’re also a racist, bigoted, ignorant asshole. One of the things you’re ignorant about is how much of a racist, bigoted asshole you are.
so where does the Treaty of Tripoli figure into her rambling about interlinking documents and Christianity?
Crib Notes on Canada, From a Canadian
http://tinyurl.com/yccplux
“We think you’ll discover that Canada is not only a lot bigger than Minnesota, it’s just as interesting.”
What we see of the process in Texas is not the whole story. Part of the process is open to public scrutiny, but …
In March, the Texas State School Board with start inserting bullshit into the subject of “American Government”, and as they take the subjects on, one by one, the teachers who are the curriculum writers will see their hard work reduced to a tattered semblance of education. Most of the board members are not trained in the fields they are reviewing, and that’s another fly in the soup.
Considering simply looking at the ripples on a bucket of water makes me feel queasy it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’ve got very little interest in sailing, either as a sport or a recreation.
sure. just like creationists aren’t ignorant. They’re simply intolerant of paralyzing commitment to the scientific method.
Happy New Year, Gyeong Hwa Pak, Pikachu para lang sa iyo!
Good night all.
I need to amend my post #375:
Some of these boats can be very expensive. A 470 set for world-class racing can easily run US$20,000 just for the hull, spars and fittings. The sails can be an additional $15,000.
470 going up wind.
Good point, Jadehawk. Ms. Dunbar would probably point to the treaty as a special case, one not meant to apply to the United States as a whole. Just trying to think like a christian here … it hurts.
Anybody else giggle when they read “Men’s single heavy dinghy” or am I the only 15 year old in the room?
Yet another lawyer for the LDS Church speaks out (how many lawyers does that church employ, fer chrissakes?):
I think the Mormon Times is inadvertently spreading good news.
Well, for some people it apparently doesn’t even work across syllable boundaries, so that some of them hear Wisconsinites as saying “Wisgonsin”.
Win.
WowbaggerOM #381
That’s okay. We can’t all be perfect.
Hyperon, here is a simple test to see if you are an idjit troll, or someone whose opinions we care about.
1. Is anybody, especially the regulars, agreeing with you?
2. Is everybody calling your stupid, bigoted, irrational, and inane?
If question 1 is true, the regulars agree with you, and you may, with evidence, have a point.
If question 2 is true, you are a idjit troll who should cease posting. Your opinions on anything are meaningless to us.
There is no doubt, that question two is the true one. Why are you still here? We don’t give a shit about your inane, insipid and bigoted opinions.
PZ is mentioned in the wiki entry for Mel and Norma Gabler:
The Gablers were influential in the Texas State School Board, and they were hyper-sensitive to anti-christian sentiments popping up in textbooks — the “insubordination” of Robin Hood, for example, and the definition of marriage for another. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_and_Norma_Gabler
So, I forgot to add, is that muppet from ND? :o)
Someone needs to explain the concept of deism to Ms Dunbar – obviously she has never encountered it.
Win.
And that’s a good place to go to bed.
I think he’s actually learning, though slowly. More slowly than Walton for instance.
If it weren’t for all the typical malevolent slander, I probably would have posted about race in only one thread. Now every time I post I have to contend with “Shut the fuck up, you racist scumbag”.
I admit I tend to post a lot about political correctness. That’s because I feel it is (like religion) an impediment that must be removed before we can sit down and have a serious discussion about what policies are right for our species.
You probably are.
Finns at the 2008 Olympics
Finn in heavy weather
You can buy this Finn for £1200. Shipping from England is extra.
Hyperon,
The people who complain about “political correctness” are racists who don’t like their racism being challenged. That’s why people keep calling you a racist.
Yes, I’m entirely happy to discuss problems that receive almost no attention. “Diversity”, in contrast, utterly saturates our culture, so I don’t feel the need to go out of my way to promote it.
Shipping? Literally? :-)
If you don’t like hearing the truth about you, you can always cease posting here.
As far as politically correct goes, you hold your ideas up like they are new and edgy. Guess what bigot, we have heard the same inane arguments for the last 40 years. You are just the latest bigot to spout them. You need to address institutional racism/sexism on your own, and have a plan in place that will do away with institutional bigotry prior to initiating any discussion. So far, all you offer is the same thing the bigots of the seventies offered. Which is shit that covers over the problem, but doesn’t address it. Take your attitude elsewhere. You bore us to tears.
‘Tis @396, the photo of Finn in heavy weather was great — love that. Fuckin’ Aye.
The way I see it, you have two choices. You can either shut the fuck up or you can stop being a racist scumbag. Do either of these and you’ll stop getting abuse.
You also post a lot that shows your racist bigotry.
It’s funny that the people who whine the most about “political correctness” are the ones who push racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry. Often when their bigotry is decried, they whine “you’re just being politically correct.” Now I’m not saying Hyperon does this, but he’s a racist scumbag who talks a lot about political correctness.
Who the fuck cares whether you think it’s “interesting”? I know I don’t.
It’s a fucking huge problem out here in the real world, dumbass.
Do you have anything other than more bullshit to explain why you think “political correctness” is such a big impediment (and let’s not forget supremely interesting) to serious discussions about political policies?
I seriously doubt it.
Tis Himself, those aren’t Finns. This is a Finn.
Lynna #401
I love heavy weather sailing. It’s so exhilarating.
And wet.
Sometimes very wet.
‘Tis Himself, Nerd of Redhead, etc.
Seems obvious to me, no matter how objective I try to be, and for all my shortcomings, that I am a much better person than you. You repeatedly describe me with hateful insults such as “scumbag”. I might use such words on the spur of the moment to refer to cold-blooded killers such as Amy Bishop — and, afterwards, I feel guilty about resorting to such dehumanizing language. But for you, this level of vitriol is common currency.
I would not be in the least surprised to find you advocating killings and torture if only you somehow became convinced that it is the “fashionable” course of action. Your psychology — one of divisive rhetoric, of dehumanizing the opposition, and of deeply-ingrained herd-mindedness — is no conceptually different from the psychology that has been propelling the self-destructive tendencies of our species for tens of thousands of years.
Disclaimer: I’ve had rather too much port this evening. And just “came out” as a liberal in front of a bunch of equally drunk conservatives.
With this in mind:
(For those who don’t know – as I honestly didn’t before listening to this song – “victuals” is pronounced “vittles”.)
Walton, that is from ancient TV. That show starred Clint Eastwood before his Spaghetti movie and later Dirty Harry fame. And it is vittles…
awww, the poor little racist is insulted by our tone…
interesting bit of projection there.
seriously, hyperon, stop with the pathetic persecution complex. you are being called on your callous ignorance and desire to see everything in very simple, easy terms, and to see yourself as the victim rather than part of a privileged class. it’s fucking boring, shallow, simpleminded, and in effect racist, sexist, and altogether hateful. your whining doesn’t change that. your accusations of “fashionableness” are absofuckinglutely ridiculous, considering you’re on an American atheist leftist blog (hint: being a leftis atheist in America is the opposite of doing the “fashionable” thing). OTOH, being a defender of white male privilege will get you very far in mainstream society, since mainstream society IS white-male-focused and backlash at liberal ideas is one of the most mainstream, wonderbread positions one can take.
Gyeong Hwa Pak #404
An interview with the most famous ski-jumper in the US:
Nerd: Yes, but it’s the best song ever. I’ve listened to it hundreds of times over the last few days, and now know the lyrics by heart,.
I tried watching an episode of the original Rawhide series on YouTube. Unfortunately, since I’m not used to watching black-and-white TV, and everyone was dressed the same and wearing a Stetson hat, I couldn’t tell any of the characters apart from one another, which rather adversely affected my ability to figure out what was going on. I am an idiot. :-)
Hyperon
Political correctness serves a purpose. It changes what is regarded as acceptable behaviour and speech so that better treatment of those who are different from you becomes normal in society. Most people then conform to that expectation.
Without such changes, equality would just never happen.
Great, I had no idea it was snowing today, and now I’m trapped at home without any cigarettes. If I become incoherent, y’all will know what happened.
That being said,
YAY! Did it feel good? dirty?
Lynna, thanks for the links to the TSBE proceedings, it amazes me how natural it seems for these people to lie about facts of their own history, wrt the “founded as a christian nation” business.
Just when I thought I had seen it all a Croatian from France, on the blog of an american professor, cites Sepp Herberger !!
I’m not sure that I would have envisioned SC as a white-robed laser-pistol shooting aristocrate from space who likes Harrison Ford…:-)
And just a minor quibble, but I really think the only person here to tell people to go away or stop posting should be PZ.
Jessie, Hyperon isn’t particularly interested in really achieving equality. Keep in mind, he thinks that being raped is not as bad as being beaten up, and minorities are being treated more favorably in society than whites are. he’s a fucking idiot desperately defending a privilege he believes is his right.
Well, I only “came out” as a Cameronite – that is, a moderate member of the Conservative Party (as opposed to a “Thatcherite” who is on the right wing of the party). But I talked about the problems of social exclusion and marginalisation of deprived communities, inequality and the decline of social mobility, the need to deal with AGW and depletion of environmental resources, and why “small government” isn’t always the solution today. Britain in 2010 isn’t the same as Britain in 1979, and we can’t offer the same solutions as though they were magic answers to everything.
‘Tis @405: Great pics. The “sometimes very wet” photo looks painful. Doh!
Being a racist bigot makes you better than Nerd and me? I doubt you’ll find too many people who’ll agree with that.
If it makes you feel better I’ll call you a shitstain instead. Happy now, shitstain?
Poor fluffy. Does your asshole hurt too? Or only when you get sand and broken glass in it?
Insulting you equates to being a killer and torturer. That really makes sense, if you’re stupid or projecting.
Pointing out your racism and bigotry is not dehumanizing. It’s showing you a fucking moral failing on your part. Now I realize that you consider your racism to be pure and good and noble. But normal people, i.e., everyone who isn’t a racist shitstain, would disagree.
Hyperon, #406:
How fucking ironic. You think being insulted for saying bigoted shit is dehumanizing. Try being dehumanized by a bigot some time. It will change your mind. How dehumanizing is it to say this?
There only seem to be two options: are you a racist or totally fucking oblivious?
Well, who isn’t in love with Harrison Ford?! And who doesn’t secretly want to be a character in Star Wars, the single most classic and amazing and awesome series of films in all of history. (Including Episodes I, II and II. I don’t care what all you film snobs say.) :-)
(As I said, I’m pretty drunk and am going to regret this level of candour in the morning…)
I keep forgetting to ask this,
Jadehawk, kamt du auf Deutschland? Ich hatte gedacht, dass du nur deutsche Abstammung hat.
Walton # 417
‘Well, I only “came out” as a Cameronite – that is, a moderate member of the Conservative Party (as opposed to a “Thatcherite” who is on the right wing of the party). ‘
Is there a battle for the soul of the Tories at the moment? Are there tensions pulling the party to the left and right. Or is the bulk of the party behind Cameron’s endeavours to make the Tories more centrist?
I ask this because here in ‘Stralia, the Liberal party seems to be lurching to the right, and it is causing divisions in the party.
Walton
Did you read this from Friday?
Christian Tories rewrite party doctrine
I’m done with Hyperon. He’s a bigot convinced of his own rectitude. I’ve got nothing more to say to him.
Comment by Hyperon blocked. [unkill][show comment]
Jessie: That’s a bit scary. Admittedly, I know a lot of devout Christian Tories, but they tend to be of the Catholic or Anglo-Catholic variety, rather than evangelical. (Evangelicals here at Oxford have their own organisation – the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, or OICCU – which mostly seems to bribe students with free food in order to get them to attend various talks about Christianity. But they’re rather looked down on by Christians of a more traditionalist bent, and I’ve never met any of them in the Tory Party.)
I’m an out-and-proud outspoken atheist, have been a vocal critic of religion for the last year or so, and am very much on the secular liberal wing of the party. If the party ever lurches towards religious stupidity in the way that the Republican Party in the US has, I will leave and join a different party. “Social conservatism” and “traditional values” are complete bullshit, and those who want to impose reactionary religious nonsense on all of us can, frankly, fuck off.
They are now led by a right-wing religious nutcase who advocates “preserving your virginity until marriage” and is a climate change “skeptic”.
The public outcry is much less then what I would have expected, however.
Keep them doggies rollin’
I thought it was ‘dogies’. But they seem to pronounce it more like ‘doggies’ in the theme song on Youtube.
obligatory Blues Brothers:
While you are talking about those issues people in the world are dying of malnutrition….
It’s about time somebody stood up for the white man!
Just tell them you were drunk, it’s college and you were just experimenting.
Feynmanica @ way up thread, about stupid teacher:
Bizarrely, an almost identical thing happened on an episode of The Boondocks.
On the subject of race and poverty, this song is relevant.
Hyperon,
Then allow me to proffer commentary from the other end of the tonal spectrum, without the severity of language you decry, albeit with no more sympathy.
Your posts have consistently exhibited poor character, not in their tone – a facet few at this forum find a compelling reason to confront – but in their content, as time and again you present your disregard for plights outside the narrow frame of reference by which you fancy the socio-political aspects of the world sufficiently measured.
The objectivity you trumpet repeatedly fails to surface; that alone is not so bad a thing. As humans we all have subjective perspectives in a variety of circumstances. The failing in your case lies not in the existence of your subjectivity, but in the blind insistence with which you wield it, like a horned ungulate in a purveyor of earthenware (with apologies everywhere to horned ungulates at market and elsewhere). Yours is not the approach of someone seeking to learn more, to synthesize and incorporate and unfold and explore and investigate and report and refine and immerse and emerge. Rather, yours is an approach content to insist, and insist again despite counterargument and efforts to engage. Yours is the emotional vector of the spoiled child: emitting only, disdaining introspection, yet coveting attention.
Simply because you imagine complex social conditions not to be evident, or at least not worthy of significant attention, does not make you correct in your assessment; moreover, it reflects the extent of your own insulation. May I suggest gainful employment as a device for keeping cold beverages cold, or hot beverages hot? It does not in the least flatter your position to parade your insularity as either heroic martyrdom or particularly gifted insight. Fish in aquariums, too, perhaps imagine that from tiny plastic castle to bubbling surface, from glass wall to fluorescent lamp, therein lies the world entire. We are rarely so boorish as when we imagine our particular perspective more significant than it is, and simultaneously more informed than it is. I myself have crossed the boorish demarcation in this very post, in what I hope will shine as point of illumination. I recall hopefully a past post of yours in which you demonstrated a gently burgeoning recognition, like a tiny bud striving for light from under the soil, of the myth of systems purporting to meritocracy but merely as imagined and fantastic as any cockatrice. I hope you may continue to so grow.
In closing, I bid you good works, good reading, good journey, good seeing. Terrifying simultaneously in its largeness and its smallness, the world nevertheless remains for you to venture into it, and return a wiser person.
Still learning,
Robert
I think I really like drunk Walton.
I can’t see that here in Canada. From this YouTube clip I’d say the episode was based on the incident. The infallible word of Wikipedia confirms this.
When I first saw the news piece I seriously thought it might be a joke.
It’s catchy, but as Western themes go, it’s no Ennio Morricone.
Walton,
Young man, with regard to the above and indeed the past year’s worth of dialog, and following in the footsteps of the artifact you yourself invoked in your happy inebriation, I quote a fictional mystic of some repute: “You’ve taken your first steps in a larger world.”
Cheers, sir.
Still learning,
Robert
Ahh, that explains it. Here I was figuring that no person could be as dumb as the character in that episode.
The losen-up-Walton project does seem to be making progress…:-)
Next thing you know he’ll be talking to real wimmenz !
comment # 25000
Way way way OT
I’ve been trying to find the title of a movie for several years with no luck; maybe someone here remembers this one.
It’s from the mid to late 50s. The plot is teens-defeat-alien-invasion-after-adults-don’t-listen (not so unusual, so far).
The thing(s) that stood out are some of the details: the aliens want to avoid detection, so they land in a rural area; they assume that the largest beings wearing manufactured items are members of the dominant species (mistake #1); and to keep these beings from alerting others they (the aliens) inject them with the deadliest poison they have (which turns out to be ethyl alcohol) (mistake #2). As a result, herds of drunken cows repeatedly wander through the streets of the local small town.
Does anyone else remember this one?
windy,
Indeed! My own nominations in that respect go to this one and this one.
Still learning,
Robert
Just when you think nobody could be as stupid as the last stupid person you had to deal with, then someone else more stupid will come along. This is a fact of nature, like natural selection or eliminating bodily wastes.
Any Friday evening in rural Texas or the Midwest?
(I’ll get my coat.)
Still learning,
Robert
Greg just closed the letter thread saying there’s been a death in the family and is now demanding a public apology to Stephanie from Paul for the “Greg’s bitch” thing.
Invasion of the Saucer Men.
Our little boy is growing up. [dab eyes with handkerchief]
kamt du auf Deutschland? Ich hatte gedacht, dass du nur deutsche Abstammung hat.
ooh, can i practice my German reading comprehension here?
lesee…
Do you come from Germany? I had thought that you only had relatives there?
Is that about right?
Fixed.
(Don’t mind me, just SIWOTI syndrome)
Trainwreck commenter :
I actually somewhat agree with the first half sentence, I also think PZ should post on this, just because quite a few people like this particular reader are getting a wrong impression of Pharyngula’s debating culture and the people who have tried to make some sense out of the whole mess.
.
It was unneccessary.
Well, I guess that was my fault. Sorry, Paul W! Amazing how he’s just made both the same category errors he himself is guilty of in the first place: mentioning something as a possibility is not the same as saying it, and absolutely not getting the connection between what he or Stephanie say and then how people take it.
‘Gybe’. *carefully tucks word into the “Scrabble Vocabulary Words” file
Walton, what are these “Episodes I, II and III” of which you speak? Something from the Realm of Imaginary Sequels, perhaps, keeping company with Matrix 2 & 3?
I agree that there are two different senses of “bitch,” and I apologize for conflating them.
Seriously.
It was basically a joke, but I apologize to the extent that it wasn’t, or anybody thought it wasn’t.
However, there was a very serious point that I will not apologize for.
The term “bitch” is irretrievably gendered, in either sense.
I find it ludicrous that Stephanie would maintain that the term “sidekick” is clearly gendered, and therefore sexist when applied to her, but ignore the fact that bitch (in either sense) is quite clearly gendered.
Sure, you can use “bitch”—in either sense—in a “non-gendered way,” e.g., I can say, if some guy is under my thumb in a game we’re playing, that he’s “my bitch,” and it’s just a kind of joke, maybe.
But it’s a gendered joke, or at best a metaphorical usage of a gendered term.
So is calling a guy a bitch in the other sense. The genderedness of the term “bitch” is inescapable.
For example, I just looked up “bitch” on dictionary.com, and the two senses only I got that were about people were these:
3a. a malicious, unpleasant, selfish person, esp. a woman.
3b. a lewd woman.
Note that it says either especially a woman or flatly a woman.
But when I look up “sidekick,” I get only two senses:
1. a close friend.
2. a confederate or assistant.
Note that neither says anything about sex.
It doesn’t take any deep feminist analysis to notice that bitch is a gendered term. You can just look it up in the dictionary, and it says so. Sure, you can apply it to a man and ignore the “esp. a woman,” but the prototypical bitch is a woman. You don’t have to look very hard to find sexism, if you’re looking for it.
“sidekick,” by comparison, is something you have to work at to see as a gendered insult. (As opposed to, say, just an insult.)
Does anybody here seriously believe that “sidekick” is a gendered term, but “bitch,” of all words, is not?
And we’re talking about dog whistles?
Seriously?
Irene,
Wow….I don’t think I’ve ever seen such blatant hypocrisy.
Sorry, but no, I have zero influence on people posting outside this particular site, so I disagree with the first half of the sentence. And the fact that this obnoxious person can then declare the people whose behavior he deplores “floating turds” kind of flushes his status as an arbiter of commenting etiquette away, anyway.
I found the whole mess utterly incomprehensible, and resolved not to get involved at all. I don’t know what the hell Greg was talking about.
Posting here drunk is really entertaining, keep it up Walton!
More or less, I had meant to say “I thought dass you only had ancestry there.”
Und ich kann deutsch so gut nicht sprechen.
That Irene certainly has a way with quote-mining, doesn’t she? She could have a lucrative career ahead of her as a Creationist.
Paul W, I’d be happy to have you point to my comment here as the origin of the bitch comment, if you think it would do any good. I think you made the connection between Stephanie’s attitude towards both words and that subsequent conclusion more clearly than I did, though, so I don’t know if it would help them understand it any better. Given my reputation here as a PC feminist word fetishist, it would seem to make perverse sense that through the looking glass of Ladenworld I would get the label of calling women bitches. It fits right in with SC being antisemitic and you being aggressive and mean.
I also am truly sorry that Greg’s had a family loss, and hope that he takes some time off and has the ability to slow his life down for awhile.
Hm.
frozen_midwest asks a question at February 14, 2010 9:57 PM about a cheesy SF-horror flick.
Ten minutes later, at February 14, 2010 10:07 PM, PZ Myers answers correctly.
Clearly, this must mean something — possibly that PZ is a swollen-headed green-skinned monster with long-laid plans for world-domination, perhaps involving alcohol.
Clearly, this may be why PZ has been strongly promoting skepticism !! When the invasion comes, all of the clever people will laugh it off — “It’s too fantastic to believe!” — and all of the credulous people will think it’s something supernatural !!
Is there nothing that can be done against this insidious plot ?!
Spread the word before it’s TOO LATE !!
Cicely,
I seem to recall something about a crystal skull in that same Realm :)
Or it could just be that I’m a nerd who is into 1950s sci-fi B movies.
PZ wrote:
No they don’t, you have been trolled by people who are so convinced of their own righteousness that any attempt to smear the opposition goes. I think it’s best just to leave them alone.
Just for the record, this is what Greg said earlier:
—
Yeah, I used to think that Paul W. was patient to a fault, but now he has been exposed as a spittle-flecked raving maniac like the rest of us! Muahaha!
More or less, I had meant to say “I thought dass you only had ancestry there.”
no, you’re right, Abstammung fits “ancestry” better, Verwandten fits “relatives” better.
@ Rorschach (#449)
No offense, but you seem kind of… concerned, the last few days. Is there some larger point you want to make about how people are behaving? Just curious.
Desert Son, OM @ 432
Very nicely done. A fine example of how polite discourse can be scathing in its intent. Your line “Fish in aquariums, too, perhaps imagine that from tiny plastic castle to bubbling surface, from glass wall to fluorescent lamp, therein lies the world entire.” reminded me of this Ani DiFranco song.
How about giving some hits and/or link love to Tetrapod Zoology instead?
http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2010/02/death_of_tetrapod_zoology.php
I don’t really blame you, PZ, but it’s important to remember that in the course of this imcomprehensible mess, your friend Laden a) insinuated in the sleaziest Glenn Beck plausible-deniability manner, over days, that SC had “anti-semitic issues”, b) added words to comments without annotation, and c) published the e-mail address I had typed into the “E-mail required for authentication purposes only” comment-box as a means to blackmail me to shut up about (b).
He sucks. Please do not forget that all this happened.
@paulW
If you send Laden his “requested” apology for
Stephaniehis attack terrier, I will lose all respect for you.that is all.
:)
That’s exactly what a secret swollen-headed green-skinned monster with long-laid plans for world-domination would say.
Gyeong Hwa Pak:
1) Happy New Year!!
2) One more? Are you going to celebrate Rosh Hashanah with me this year?
I just posted this:
http://saltycurrent.blogspot.com/2010/02/huh.html
(There’s other stuff, too!)
What he said.
Depends on how you celebrate it. Will there be food? If so then is the food good? If so then yes.
The next new years is Songkran.
Re Sven @ 468–One can only imagine the gleefulness with which PZ would have made mincemeat of anyone not a friend who’d committed just one of those offenses…
Trying not to allude to “all animals are equal, but…”
I guess we all make allowances for friends & family; not to mention having to consider workplace politics, strange bedfellows, etc. Not that there’s never any Scibling rivalry…
Common ground!
(As in, neither did he…)
I expected that someone here would know, but never expected it would be the Tentacled Overlord himself. Not sure whether I should feel flattered or alarmed. Now if I could only remember if I saw it on Creature Features or Chiller Theatre (with Elvira Mistress of the Dark) …
GHP:
Oh, hell yes. Excellent food (my mother-in-law’s brisket is to die for) and way way waaaaaay too much booze. And drunken grandmamas. Really, it’s good times all around.
“Floating turds” — an artless insult, flung from the canker-blossom that has lately marred the face of Laden’s blog. I doubt the Order of the Molly will suffer for it.
Everyone should have just gone drinking with Walton instead. That seems to have turned out well.
I hope Greg has lots of caring family members around to share the difficulty of dealing with a death in his family.
Excellent. Food Good. And at least I won’t have throw water and baby powder at people.
Remember Chris Buttars, the über mormon state Senator from Utah who has earned infamy for his involvement with the mormon gulag (Utah Boys Ranch), and for his anti-gay statements preserved for posterity in the film “8: The Mormon Proposition”? Well, that very Mr. Buttars has had another good idea. He proposes that Utah cut the 12th grade of high school. Just get rid of 12th grade.
right. because American High School students aren’t already falling behind the rest of the world. let’s make them even more undereducated!
fucking
stupidevil.and Gyeong Hwa Pak, I’m actually really German; and Polish. Definitely not American. :-)
More cheap labor for the first world, way to go USA !
Not really, no.
But there are a lot Americans with German ancestry.
I know. I’m just not one of them.
Ah interesting. As you can see, I can I know enough German to pass off as an elementary student
Alle ihre Basis sind gehört zu uns
Windy,
I have no idea what you’re saying. Whose bases? What bases? and shouldn’t that be:
Alle ihre Basis sind zu uns gehört.
Isn’t hören conjugated with haben?
I’m so confused.
Ich habe Basis?
Hehehehe.
BS
*cringes*
No you don’t…:-)
I’m not too bad at translating German into English, but speaking or writing in German is an exercise in frustration. It takes so long to remember which adjective endings go with which genders and cases. In a conversation by the time I’ve formulated an entire sentence, no one’s talking about that anymore. :(
Safari doesn’t correct grammatical errors.
*headdesk
I guess some humor doesn’t translate well…
Windy,
Thanks. I’m not up on my gamer/internet memes I guess.
yeah yeah ok, total NERD fail, I admit it…:-)
To my excuse, I got my first computer in 1998 at the age of 31…
Completely off topic, but can I just say that it really sucks to be told you’re overqualified for a job when you’re unemployed?
I need a job, but I’m over qualified for anything in my geographic area. This sucks. I’ve got my substitute teacher credentials, but I need something a little more reliable to pay off my bills :(
Funniest thing ever :
Daily Show–John Oliver at the RNC meeting in Hawaii
Right on. I’m tempted to dumb down my resume.
I got my first computer in 1995 at age 6 and I still don’t understand things about it.
Pygmy Loris,
I feel your pain. I really need a job and the only ones currently available in my field are $10-12/hr positions. I’m not too proud to accept that wage at this point, but everywhere I apply they tell me that I’m “overqualified”. WTF? They would rather hire people with 2-3 years experience? that don’t own any of their own tools? rather than someone who owns everything and then some? and has been self-employed in the industry for 12 years?
I used to bill out my time at $45-50/hr. I’m willing to do the same work for $10-12/hr but nobody will hire me because I’m “overqualified”.
*facepalm*
*headdesk*
*teardrop*