I could have continued the last edition of the unstoppable thread with the hot topic of the moment — race — but thought maybe promoting another controversial subject would fill up the thread far too quickly. So the other subject people were talking about is my birthday.
Gee, people, I’m not that old. IT ISN’T MY BIRTHDAY TODAY. Do I look 53 or something?
My birthday is tomorrow. I’m celebrating it by folding myself up into a narrow little airplane seat and sitting there for 19 hours. And then spending a week and a half in Australia with spasms.
This is how we spend all our birthdays after the 50th, in case you young whippersnappers had no idea.
Badgersdaughter, #467:
Much sympathy for your grief.
Much admiration for your ability to channel it in such a pointed, and necessary, manner.
Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 10, 2010 8:35 AM:
I’ve been playing D&D since I was 11, and I didn’t get any of those.
Walton, you say that like it’s a bad thing. ;) Thanks for the link to One Tin Soldier. Man, I haven’t heard that song since the ’70s when I was too young to grasp the meaning or social context of the lyrics. I just remember it being a catchy tune.
I agree with badgersdaughter and Bobber. Alternative medicine is, all too often, dangerous bullshit peddled by con artists; and all too often, people rely on it in lieu of real healthcare, and die needlessly.
I’m deeply unhappy that the NHS in this country funds homeopathy, as though it were a real medical treatment – which it is not.
Have you seen The Big Lebowski?
You’ve never seen The Big Lebowski?
Blasphemy!
What’s so intrinsically funny about French royalists? I don’t know what this particular group stands for (as I understand it, there are a number of different French royalist groups, reflecting the turbulent history of the French monarchy itself), but I firmly believe that a constitutional parliamentary monarchy, such as we have in Britain, would be preferable to the current French system of government.
Constitutional monarchy can genuinely work very well. In Spain, King Juan Carlos I supervised the country’s peaceful transition to democracy after the end of the right-wing Franco regime. In Bhutan, the current King, Jigme Sigye Wangchuk (sp?), has recently introduced a new constitution and is gradually moving Bhutan, previously a very traditional hierarchical society, towards a liberal-democratic political system. And some of the most liberal and stable countries in Europe, such as Sweden, Denmark and Luxembourg, are constitutional monarchies.
Vive le Tréma! Morte au Trait d’union!
oy, way behind. Apologies if this proves redundant, but my pre-coffee dander is raised here by this recurring claim:
I’m not talking about human ‘race’ any more, as resolved, but I am compelled to point out that the claim that [formal designation of geography-based sub-specific taxonomic units is never done in modern biology] is bullshit.
Despite active philosophical arguments that still go on, other areas of biology do, in fact, still use trinomial subspecific epithets all the time. Nobody calls them ‘races’ of course, for reasons that ought to be obvious from the discussion above. (This converges also on the subject of ‘metapopulation’ dynamics, as hot a topic currently as ecology ever gets.) But do not imagine that there is widespread agreement among biologists that subspecies are not useful for concisely referring to obvious geographic variation. Because they are (with suitable caveats: of course they are not treated as real Platonic typological entities, and there are taxonomists that refuse to use them on such grounds (Deep Rifts!); in any case, nobody imagines bright dividing lines, and in fact the phenotypic and genetic correlates of hybrid zones are well studied in many species…surprise, they’re not always ‘clines’). Among other uses, subspecific designation has useful applications in conservation biology (again, together with ‘metapopulations’). Believe it.
This fact does not have any direct bearing, of course, on the empirical questions I tried to raise in the first place about the geographic distribution of human phenotypes and genetic variation.
You are happy with a fuzzy term that can be applied at will to various levels of hierarchical reality? You are happy to be able to refer to a group of populations as a population and then have to explain every time so that people know what you’re talking about? Because that’s sort of the opposite of the point of all the rest of scientific terminology, i.e. precision and unambiguity. Did it ever occur to you that one of the reasons you are using such a useless technical term—useless because by itself it means nothing–might be because your cultural-anthro colleagues across the hall have made it suicide to approach any concept that even seems vaguely like ‘race’? That what makes it a “useful idea” is specifically that it neatly elides ‘race’ and its cognates from the every-day vocabulary?
fuckfuckfuck I’m stepping in it again
going away to catch up more tacitly later
@464
Actually, the Quackmeister did provide references to studies earlier, but those studies were dismissed, in detail. But the Quackmeister did not let the dismissals sink in because that would require, you know, integrity.
Most of the Quackmeisters references to studies appear here:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/03/episode_xxxv_under_the_underpi.php#comment-2326879 That’s in the underwear thread (two chapters ago), comment #588.
‘Tis provided a link to a reply here in comment 592
In the chapter that followed the underwear (The Predictable Descent), Quack complained in comment #70 that his studies had not been refuted. He received answers @81, @86, and @314 from Sastra; and @94 from David M.
Then Quack provided more references to a homeopathy document here, in comment 290. He also blathered on about how he had not casually thrown away the Rosa study on therapeutic touch (he capitalizes “therapeutic touch”, but I can’t bring myself to do likewise). And he defended nurses who continued the practice despite the fact that it had been shown to be a fraud. This is the comment to which Sastra replied @314.
And … there’s more, but I can’t be arsed to ferret them out. Suffice it to say that no matter what refutation you provide, what skeptical sources you refer the Quackmeister to, there will be no dent made in his confidence. And, he will provide references to yet more questionable studies and blatant woo.
And why so ?
And some others aren’t, such as France, Germany, Switzerland and Finland.
What is the benefit of a monarch.
And btw, the french monarchists are a majority of far right conservative racist Christian fundie loons. They don’t even represent a total of 1% of the electorate, so why do you care about them ?
Some of them may well be. But that doesn’t mean that instituting a constitutional monarchy is actually a bad idea in principle, or that only right-wing loons can be monarchists. There is a perfectly sound liberal argument for constitutional monarchy.
Providing a genuinely non-political head of state, who can represent the whole nation rather than a particular political party. I think it’s healthy to have a division between the head of state and the head of government, and for the head of state to be non-partisan and apolitical. A monarchy can also create stability in times of national crisis – as with Juan Carlos I in Spain, and the transition to constitutional governance after the end of the Franco era.
Germany and Finland are not counter-examples, because they both have ceremonial Presidents who perform more-or-less the same functions that the Queen does in Britain, while real power is vested in the Prime Minister (or Chancellor, in the case of Germany) and cabinet.
What’s that got to do with anything I said? I didn’t say I “cared” about them; I asked why some people found the idea of monarchism so funny.
Too bad I know far too few of these characters…
Wikipedia is True Neutral*, even though it shows in ways completely different from those of the Big Lebowski.
* Seems to have been removed from tvtropes.org. :-(
British royalists are merely conservative. Never change a running system, don’t change horses in midstream*, and so on.
French ones want to change a running system.
* Unless the one you’re flogging is dead (source).
Why?
OK, there are… peculiarities to the French intermediate between presidential and parliamentary democracy, but those can’t be what you mean.
Absolutely*, but that’s because of how little power the monarchs have and/or which person happens to be the monarch (and could just as well be an elected politician). Monarchy itself serves as little more than an overexpensive tourist attraction (…oh, yeah, and endless fodder for the yellow press).
Plus, as my dad likes to mention, the British monarchy is a violation of human rights – the Queen doesn’t have the right to vote! :-Þ
* Heh. I overlooked the pun.
Mais non. That might well be true in time of peace and stability, but there are times when a constitutional monarch has actually led his or her country towards greater democracy and liberalism. See some of the examples I quoted earlier: Spain in the post-Franco era, and modern-day Bhutan, being examples of the transition to democracy being led by a monarch.
What never ceases to bother me about it is how easy it would be to demonstrate real effect.
If something like reiki really helped the immune system fight disease then reiki might show a measurable effect on something like herpes.
Valtrex was able to… although not by boosting the immune system whatever that really means anyway. Look I’m not smart enough or educated enough to know how antiviral drugs actually stop replication, but I do know that they actually have to pass trials to show that they reduce symptoms of the disease, and also to ensure they won’t as or more dangerous to health themselves.
(oh and for the record, no I don’t have herpes, I just thought it made a good example. But even if I did, why the fuck are people so up in that shit anyway?)
Alt med doesn’t have to do this, and that’s what scares me. I’m some one who drank colloidal silver when I was young. I didn’t know any better. I just couldn’t afford a doctor that month and I needed to be able to get to work and back. Now I’m just glad that it was probably just water because I’m not freaking gray. We shouldn’t have people out there touting this stuff to the ignorant and desperate.
Hell, when I started taking the silver there was a whole website (no defunct) where the people hawking the stuff were claiming it curing all sorts of ills. They were situated in Mexico (how convenient) and had lots of pictures of the wonderful recoveries, including before shots of giant tumors erupting from the skin. Looking back on it that is very sad. I’m completely certain that almost all of those poor people in the “before” shots are dead, or worse yet that the images were just stolen from some medical database somewhere with no regard to the patients depicted.
I would be irate if I found out that photographs from a surgery or illness had been stolen and used to falsely advertise crap.
If “boosting the immune system” with alt med worked it would be able to do so in a clear measurable way.
but then they’ll cry big pharma.
Now I’ll be the first to argue about the price and availability of effective drugs and “big pharma’s” place in that right along with “big insurance” as well… but no one is keeping the magic of C-Silver or Reiki secret.
“Constitutional monarchy can genuinely work very well. In Spain, King Juan Carlos I supervised the country’s peaceful transition to democracy after the end of the right-wing Franco regime”
Franco named Juan Carlos as his heir. He didn´t supervise the transition he took advantage of the situation, nobody wanted another civil War so the parties made a lot of concesions, and they voted the nonarchy in the Spanish Constitution.
Now they are voting the new abortion law and the catolic churh will excomunicate all the politicians that vote yes to the law, the funny thing is that all the spanish laws have to be signatured by the king, and the Church is not going to excomunicate the King.
<snarl>
Mort et au tréma et au trait d’union !
Homo sapiens sapiens
Homo sapiens neanderthalensis
I don’t think much has become of H. s. idaltu which was named a few years ago. The Crô Magnon man was called H. s. fossilis in the 19th century, but that was just silly.
Who can, however, just as easily side with one party against the others. Turned out well in Spain and Bhutan, turned out bloody in Nepal.
Absolutely. But then, I can’t think of a democracy that unites these functions other than the USA.
As far as possible, yes.
Because he was already in nominal power. Like Italy, Spain had been a monarchy throughout the dictature. The difference is that the last king of Italy supported the dictature and was kicked out for that in 1945 (or -6, I forgot). Had there not been a king, a king couldn’t have provided continuity and could hardly have created stability.
Also, so far there’s no reason to call him the First. Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary was called the First till 1918… then people stopped doing it, and the old monuments look a bit embarrassing now.
He is the First, because he is the First named Juan Carlos, his son will be Felipe the VI, I think.
Among the best typos ever.
Sven,
Holy fucking shit! Really? Yes, Sven, I’m well aware of the use of subspecific designations in taxonomy. Do you think the variation in extant Homo sapiens is enough to warrant multiple subspecies? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not. That’s why race is not a useful concept for human variation. Not because I’m afraid of my cultural anthropology colleagues down the hall.
But you don’t have to explain it every time. Go read some of the fucking literature for biological anthropology. I linked to a whole issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology just for you and you, apparently, cannot be bothered to read it. Check out one of the three books I recommended. Do something besides regurgitating the same, tired “cultural anthropologists are poisoning the discussion of human variation with their un-scientific ideas.” You’ve ceased to make any sense at all because you are so wedded to your own position.
Generalissimo Francisco Franco
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wait for it
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Is still dead!
@David
True Neutral
All I know is my gut says maybe. You can’t trust those neutrals, with their heart full of neutrality.
David,
Yep, but I think most paleoanthropologists have moved to regarding Neandertals as a unique species. There’s always a bunch of posters at the AAPA meetings about it though :)
If by not much you mean “has become widely accepted,” then yes, not much has happened :) The few papers I’ve seen on BOU-VP-16/1 support the original publication. The cranium is just outside the range of variation for anatomically modern Homo sapiens.
Gah, I swear I checked my href. Oh well.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TrueNeutral
Nonarchy = the rule of nine? If so, I suppose the US Supreme Court is a nonarchy.
Paul,
Why would you link to TvTropes? Now I’m gonna lose at least a couple of hours to the internet.
Must resist wiki. Must resist wiki. Must resist wiki.
Ack, I clicked on it! Someone save me! :)
Pre-coffee thoughts: the monarchy is a medieval relic. It goes against the idea of democracy and equality. Even if the head of state and head of government should be separate having a monarch isn’t the only way to go about it, nor do I see why it’s even a good way. To me the argument just seems like a rationalization for a silly tradition.
And after you’ve all read all of the Discworld books, I’d also like to recommend Good Omens, for which Pratchett teamed up with Neil Gaimen.
“Do Notte Buy Betamacks.”
Yes, constitutional monarchy is non-democratic. But democracy isn’t some intrinsic magic good in itself. In evaluating a political system, we should not automatically assume that democratic=good and undemocratic=bad; we should look at the actual outcomes a given system produces.
I don’t deny that democracy tends to be preferable to absolutism – if only because it provides us with a means of overthrowing a tyrant without assassination or violent revolution. But democracy isn’t good in and of itself. Sometimes democracy produces authoritarian and illiberal outcomes, as with Proposition 8 or the Swiss ban on minarets, or the popular election of judges in many US states leading to demagoguery and miscarriages of justice. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t have a democratic political process – we certainly should – but there is a strong argument for incorporating non-democratic elements into a liberal constitutional system.
So in evaluating whether constitutional monarchy is good or bad, it is not sufficient to point out that it is undemocratic; being undemocratic is not intrinsically a bad thing. The fact is that constitutional monarchy, in present-day Britain, works. The Queen is a competent, hardworking, and sincerely non-partisan and independent head of state. I expect and hope that her successors will be similar. And as they say, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” This also answers your point about monarchy being a “medieval relic”. Yes, perhaps it is; but the fact that something is old does not intrinsically make it bad. If constitutional monarchy is working well, why would we need to change it merely because its origins are medieval?
Speaking of national health services offering woo-based treatments, and of religion creeping into health care, here’s a story about a Canadian man seeking treatment for alcoholism. He doesn’t like the references to god and to higher powers in AA.
The Twelve Steps of AA (though I think these are old and have been slightly modified).
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Lynna @530:
Alas, that’s a pretty common theme–there was a case here in Oregon a few months ago about a man who was refusing court ordered AA treatment because of the religious overtones. The Center for Inquiry has raised the profile of several secular substance abuse programs, (one such, SOS, is an international organization. I’ve not had a need for such services myself, but I’m glad they exist for nonbelievers, and I’m infuriated that, thus far, the “persecuted majority” doesn’t see anything wrong with forcing people into a god-soaked rehab program.
It’s hard not to attribute the phenomenon of so many recovered addicts becoming ultra-religious to the tone of these AA/NA meetings.
An ex-mormon sounds off about the funeral for Marie Osmond’s son (typos and spelling errors are in the original):
As far as I know, the talk about Marie Osmond’s son being gay is rumor, not fact. It’s claimed that Monson was/is a long-time family friend, and that’s why he was there. The bit about Prophet Tommy Monson using the event to shine a bit of light on himself looks to be true. The fact that some mormon bishops use funerals as opportunities to recruit new members and/or to chastise inactive members is correct. And yes, celebrities do get away with breaking Boyd Packer’s funeral rules more than do lowly peon members, but I don’t know why that would surprise anyone.
Walton, you skipped relevant parts of Feynmaniac’s post. Most importantly.
Interesting rant from the ex-morm, Lynna (Mistress of Morridor) OM.
The idea of the Church not allowing a greiving family to select a given piece of music to play at a family members funeral is cruel, in my way of thinking.
Using any funeral as an recriutment tool is really—-ick, disgusting!
I find arguing where the alleged soul of a suicide will spend eterenity to be especially foul…and know some families will suffer even more after a family member completes a suicide because of this, its just sick.
Being as I’m an atheist, and person and members of the immediate family of the recent suicide in my family are also non-believers, we aren’t suffering more because of such an archacic belief.
Yes, it is post-hoc rationalisation of a system which developed for long-gone historical reasons. But I just don’t see why this matters. Constitutional monarchy is working fine; why insist on throwing away something which works, for the sake of ideological purity? What is actually wrong with the way the British constitutional monarchy functions in practice?
I will admit that I have an aesthetic appreciation for the rituals, traditions and titles which surround traditional constitutional monarchy. But as far as I’m concerned, this is entirely harmless. No one has yet even attempted to point out any actual deficiency in the functioning of constitutional monarchies in practice.
Walton,
There’s nothing magical about it.
I disagree. In general it’s fair that people have a say in the way their community is governed, especially if it ends up impacting them. It’s by no means always going to be produce the best possible results, but you can give that argument for any system. We should try to maximize democracy while at the same time ensuring personal freedoms, minority protection, etc.
Monarchy directly goes against the idea that people are created equal. In practice there’s much inequality, but we should try to eliminate it in every instance we can.
Competent? I’m sure she waves to the cameras and shakes hands with people very well, but that’s hardly a challenge.
Hardworking? Please.
Even if she was the bestest person my beef really isn’t with her but with the institution.
And this rock keeps away tigers. Do you see any tigers around?
At best you can say the monarch doesn’t do serious harm. What you can have with a monarch you can have with an elected head of state, without all the extra costs that come with it or the approval of an inherited position*.
What I was trying to say is that it’s one of those traditions that only survives because it’s a tradition. Sort of like the church. Here in Canada I’ve heard people try to justify the monarch based on “tradition”. That to me isn’t an argument. Those making other arguments seem to me to also be motivated by a sense of tradition and everything else is just a elaborate rationalization.
___
* Yes, there are already many who benefit tremendously from inheritance in other instances. However, we should to try to minimize this in every case we come across.
Dust,
It’s also pretty normal for many denominations. I’ve been to several funerals where the preacher called for people to convert right then and there. It’s really uncomfortable for me and intrudes on what I see as the purpose of a funeral, remembering the deceased.
I wrote something and then thought better of posting it. But yeah, it felt good to write.
I’ll just put this bit in since it’s relevant to what Rev,BDC posted.
I do have that problem with AA. It’s based on old protestant born again conversion models. It’s been adapted a lot, but I think it goes without saying also that it doesn’t work for some. Rather it only works when it’s working.
The thing is it doesn’t matter anyway, it’s not like there’s a cure for addiction. AFAIK addicts are still addicts. The best ones just get better at living without their addiction destroying their life.
Arghh…..if #537 seems poorly written blame it on my pre-coffee state of mind.
I saw this headline while searching for the Global Atheist Convention in the news:
GAC defeats Blessed Trinity
and thought, “Things must be getting off to a good start down under.”
Splitter!
In Spain the budget of the Royal House is not public. But we know that we pay for the King’s House, the Houses of the infantas (the daughters of the king), the family of the king, the family of the Princess. That’s why I think it will be less expensive to have a democratic Republic.
Juan Carlos is the heir of a dictactor. And the head of a a nonarchy because he represents Spain, he signatures the laws, he is pictured in the stamps and no much more. He spends the rest of the time hunting drunk bears in Russia, sailing in Mallorca, and practising his Christmas speech.
Pygmy Loris:
WOW! I did not know that. Quite disrespectful in my view.
*********************************
I spent several years in GA (Gamblers Anonomyus) which is a 12 step program. The Lord’s Prayer was said after each meeting.
Was a weak non-believer at the time, and the prayer did cause me some uncomfortable feelings. But in the group I orginally started with, the woo and ‘working the steps’ really wasn’t that strong or pushed on the individual. Just having a fellowship of fellow gambling addicts who were serious in trying to change their lives is what made the difference to me.
Haven’t been to a GA meeting in years, so don’t know how strong the religious aspect is currently. Would vary from group to group I imagine.
Wow, do they have no sense of shame?
/rhetorical
This tangent didn’t start with someone proposing ending the English monarchy out of ideological purity, it started with you questioning why people are laughing at French people who want to revert to monarchy. Keep your system, fine. But don’t generalize to There is a perfectly sound liberal argument for constitutional monarchy and not expect people to point out that you’re just defending your current system instead of making said liberal argument honestly. I’d be curious to see the “liberal argument” for implementing a constitutional monarchy, which is much different than England’s situation where the decision would be whether or not to abolish it. How are you going to liberally defend giving one person unquestionable authority as head of state? Pointing out past successful examples of constitutional monarchy working isn’t an argument, any more than pointing to past benevolent dictators is an argument that liberals could support a dictatorship.
Yes, it is technically true that the same constitutional effect, and the separation of head of state from head of government, can be achieved in non-monarchical parliamentary systems like Germany, Ireland or India.
But to illustrate the difference: Imagine you had a venerable old mahogany table in your dining room that you’d inherited from your great-grandparents. Would you throw it out, merely because it was old and unnecessarily ornate, and replace it with a cheap functional pine table? After all, the pine table would perform exactly the same function: you could still eat your dinner off it. But what would be the point in getting rid of a perfectly good, and aesthetically pleasing, piece of furniture simply because it wasn’t strictly necessary?
Walton,
When the vast majority of those who have this crazy idea are loons, then I wouldn’t waste too much time on it.
So you mean a “whole nation” is represented by a useless head of state who only goes to funerals and shit ?
That kind of head of state is only good when chopped off and put on the end of a stick. That’s the kind of “representation” that’s useful.
The person who represents Germany in all the things that matter is the chancellor.
Nonsense, he could have been dead it wouldn’t have changed a thing.
The king today is just another one of those make believe manufacturer of consent who works hand in hand with the Church to put the populace to sleep.
“L’homme ne sera jamais libre tant que le dernier roi ne sera étranglé avec les entrailles du dernier prêtre.” Dennis Diderot
(Man will not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.)
No you didn’t. You asked :
“What’s so intrinsically funny about French royalists?”
French royalists aren’t funny. They’re loons who think there is a benefit in reverting back to a system of “droit divin” when we already cut the head of our king and more than 99% of the French don’t want it back.
Vive la République
Viva la República¡
Hmmm. This is more difficult. I wouldn’t advocate, in general, that current republics introduce (or restore) constitutional monarchy. It’s fundamentally something that can only really be established by history, and in a lot of countries it would be entirely out of tune with national cultural traditions and historical development. But at the same time, I’m a passionate supporter of maintaining constitutional monarchy in those countries in which it has a historical basis. And it’s perfectly possible, given recent political turbulence there, that Fiji (which is part of the Commonwealth, but became nominally a republic a couple of years ago) will soon choose to re-establish Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state, making it the first nation of the 21st century to restore its monarchy.
While I have a decent layman’s knowledge of the history of France, and have visited plenty of times, I’ve never lived in France and don’t have a deep enough grounding in contemporary French political culture to know whether the restoration of the monarchy would ever seriously work. But I don’t think it’s an inherently silly idea.
Walton,
One could make the same exact argument for the RCC.
The whole debate about keeping/reinstating a monarchy is hilarious to me. Some of the brainwashing patriotism of elementary school did manage to wear off on me so I think the idea of inherited titles is absolutely something to fight against. Thinking about why I feel that way led me to oppose inherited wealth in general.
Dust, Ol’Greg, Rev. et al.
For a couple of people I know, finding religion was effective in helping them overcome their addictions. I don’t argue with them about the source of their strength because I worry that it could send them back into the spiral of destructive behavior, but it bugs me that they don’t realize it wasn’t god that cured them, but their own mind.
Yes, but the difference is that the RCC (along with all organised religions) makes a series of pseudo-factual (but non-empirically-backed) claims about the nature of reality, and uses these to found a series of complex and arbitrary prescriptions about how one should live one’s life. Her Majesty the Queen does neither of these things, last time I checked.
And that’s perfectly fine. I know and knew people who struggled with addiction and frankly anything they can do to help themselves I’m in no position to be critical.
HOWEVER, the reason I posted those is because everyone uses AA as a go to alcoholism treatment (being that is it the most famous as far as I know) and is immediately sucked into the “you must use religion to help you past this” when there are other options. Once they become a part of AA (especially if it is court mandated) they have incredible pressure to follow through with AA’s program.
Lets not even talk about Narconon.
Curiously, Walton also said much the same thing about Church (of England?) after coming out as a nontheist here (I don’t mean to sound like a stalker!).
But I don’t think he is using said aesthetic appreciation of pomp/ceremony as a serious argument as to why monarchy should be retained. But then, how would that really be different than wanting to “retain one’s culture”, which most people don’t see as an intrinsically bad thing. The problem with the RCC is that their culture specifically fosters cruelty and maltreatment, not merely that it is trying to retain an old-fashioned culture. To really compare it to the monarchy you’d have to show that the culture created by the monarchy has similar detrimental/criminal effects.
If that’s your argument…what about Prince Charles?
Sorry, couldn’t resist. His alt-med and organic woo is so irritating.
Shorter Comrade Walton: “The problem isn’t the dictatorship of the proletariat. The problem is it’s a dictatorship of the proletariat.“
Pink Elephants-Sun Ra
Yes. Me too. Although I don’t *worry* about them anymore per se. In fact, I really don’t care what happens to any of those people so long as I never have to see or hear from them again.
When addicts are a part of *your* destructive cycle it’s a whole ‘nother game.
A friend I quite like just became Catholic for this reason. Strangest thing. I mean… I like the windows too but damn!
are you an adept of goalpoast moving ?
We don’t have that mahogany table in France anymore. We chopped it into pieces more than 200 years ago.
If in Britain you want to keep that mahogany table because you think it looks good, your choice. I personally think it takes a lot of space and is expensive to maintain, and not that pretty.
But that is not a valid argument to defend the concept of constitutional monarchy.
You wrote :
” I firmly believe that a constitutional parliamentary monarchy, such as we have in Britain, would be preferable to the current French system of government.”
The only reasons you have provided so far to support this “firm belief” are that a monarch provides a benefit in times of war (which is ridiculous, it was the fact that Britain is an Island that was a benefit during the war, not the existence of the king) or stability in transition towards democracy (which is false in the case of Spain the king wasn’t a benefit, he was just clever enough not to be in the way. Moreover, it is a ridiculous argument when a country is anyhow already a democracy).
because it’s taking up half my office, and if I sell it to some collector of antiques I can afford buying a new desk AND pay for my yearly health checkup.
Clearly, I don’t agree with Prince Charles on the issue of non-evidence-based medicine (I refuse to call it “alternative medicine”, since this wrongly implies that it is in some way a valid “alternative” to scientific medicine). But this is a personal opinion of Prince Charles, not an intrinsic part of the institution of the monarchy. Indeed, if and when he becomes King, he will be expected to avoid becoming involved in controversy or forcing his beliefs on others, and will have to be entirely politically neutral when acting in his official capacity. This is completely different from the RCC, which is an organisation whose entire purpose is to promote a particular set of dogmatic beliefs and behavioural prescriptions.
This itself is an AA dogma. Does it also have empirical support, or is it only a secular-sounding translation of “we are all absolutely debased sinners, who will fall again without God”?
Welcome to my hell.
Would you then be in favor of removing from the Queen the title of ‘Supreme Governor of the Church of England’? Or changing the national anthem of the UK, ‘God Save the Queen’*?
__
* Religion AND monarchy! Come on, UK.
OK, negentropyeater, I retract what I said about monarchy in France. I don’t seriously suggest that the French should re-establish their monarchy.
But I don’t think there is any case whatsoever for abolishing the monarchy in Britain or the Commonwealth.
A correction on one thing, incidentally; the British monarchy is not actually “expensive” to maintain. Although the British treasury does fund the Civil List (that is, the money set aside for the maintenance of the Royal Household), and on indirect expenses such as security protection, the cost of this is offset by the fact that the revenues from the Crown Estate (the lands and holdings attached to the Crown) are paid into the public treasury. So the Queen’s net cost to the British taxpayer is near zero – and that isn’t even taking into account the tourism revenue that the monarchy brings to the British economy.
on second reading, it’s not even a mahogany desk, it’s a fucking dinner table.
what the fuck do I need a dinner table for? Especially one I’d have to take care of, cuz every droplet of water would make it lose value? Definitely sell. it’s a fucking waste of space :-p
Good point. Honestly I don’t know. Is there empirical support for methods of curing addiction? Also, what causes addiction? I don’t know that any of these questions are even well understood or have something with good supporting evidence to answer them? Honestly, I could simply be ignorant here.
Another one I think maybe is to question other underlying problems. For instance most of the addicts in my life including those related to me have malevolent narcissists to the point of sociopathy in some. AA can’t do jack shit for that, and quitting drugs or drinking is kind of lipstick on a pig. Ultimately you are still left with a person who will break your face, steal your credit cards, rape your cat, and light the drapes on fire before showing up the next day saying “Sorry for partying can you pay this warrant off for me?”
Yes to the first, no to the second. I think the Church of England (and the Church of Scotland) should be disestablished, and the UK should become a fully secular state. Secularism is not incompatible with monarchy; Sweden disestablished its national church in 2000, and the sixteen “Commonwealth Realms” which share Queen Elizabeth II as head of state (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands, Jamaica and so on) are all secular states without established churches. So we can keep the monarchy but scrap the legal entrenchment of religion. (This would also allow us to abolish the current anachronistic ban on Roman Catholics, and spouses of Roman Catholics, succeeding to the throne.)
As to the national anthem, I don’t have any problem with the fact that it refers to “God”; it’s a very generic reference. I can quite happily sing “God save the Queen” without believing in any sort of literal or personal God. It’s just a tradition; no different from atheists celebrating Christmas or Easter, for instance, despite the religious origins of these festivals. The essential sentiment underlying “God save the Queen” is support for the Queen, not belief in any specific conception of “God”. I really see it as a metaphor.
Jadehawk, I think you’re taking my metaphor a bit too literally. :-)
Speaking as a Canadian I don’t see why my head of state should be some unelected old woman living across the ocean.
The Royal family costs the British taxpayer less than $1.50 per subject. Look at it this way: those sausage-eating Hannoverians are among the cheapest belly laughs on the planet!
Sorry for being stupidly ignorant of French history and current affairs (so much so that I should keep my mouth shut although I’m obviously not going to) but do people even know who would be in line for the crown anymore? Weren’t all the royal heirs killed?
Well, I could talk about how the shared monarchy provides a symbolic unity between Canada, the UK, and a range of other countries around the world, from Tuvalu (the third smallest country on earth) to Jamaica to Papua New Guinea.
But instead, I’ll restrict myself to talking about purely practical considerations. Imagine Canada were to become a republic tomorrow. The actual change to your political life would be minimal; the Governor-General would be replaced with a ceremonial President, who would perform exactly the same functions that the Governor-General currently performs, and would be indistinguishable in all but name. (This is what happened when Ireland, India, Dominica, Mauritius, Malta and other Commonwealth realms severed their links to the monarchy.) The Canadian Parliament, the Cabinet, the courts and your other political institutions would most likely continue in exactly their current form.
But while this change would be completely symbolic and non-substantial, it would also be very expensive in terms of administrative costs. Think of all the rebranding. You have the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, several “Royal” army regiments, the Royal Military College of Canada, and a whole host of other “Royal” organisations that would have to be re-branded nationwide at taxpayer expense. Your national coat of arms and insignia would have to change. And what would you do with the Lieutenant-Governors of the provinces? So I don’t see how you, as a Canadian citizen and taxpayer, would benefit in any way from abolishing the monarchy. You might, of course, feel some bizarre sense of “national pride” in severing your links with Britain, but I would hope you don’t hate us that much. :-)
Prehistoric Vero Beach carving may be Americas’ oldest artwork.
I’ll take anybody’s mahogany furniture that they don’t want – I love antiques, even though they look out of place in my very 70s ranch-style house.
Monarchy, though? not so much. Although sometimes I’ve felt that we *should* separate out the symbolic and governing features of our USian government – let the glory hogs have the lime light and leave the work to the professionals.
This right here is why I toyed with alt religions for so long. I freaking love celebrations and rituals. I love the action of tradition even though, very often with me, the bottom has fallen out.
I still do the little things but they don’t seem as fun unless people really get into it! Heh… but the thing is what people do is all so different anyway.
But I’m not sure if “God save the queen” is so meaningless?
I sure don’t think “One allegiance under God” is.
No. There are several different pretenders to the French throne. Confusingly, both the descendants of the original Bourbon royal family, and the descendants of the Bonaparte Emperors, today claim the vacant throne of France. (Clearly the former have a rather better historical claim.)
Even more amusingly, until the eighteenth century, the Kings of England also claimed the title of King of France (through a rather dubious genealogical claim). This is no longer the case, but Queen Elizabeth II is still the Duke of Normandy (not Duchess, for some reason), hence why she is the sovereign of the only remaining part of the Duchy of Normandy, namely the Channel Islands. :-)
hardly. I feel about monarchies precisely the same way as I feel about useless but ornate possessions: why would I keep them? they only take up space and are a pain to maintain.
pretty much the only good argument for the British monarchy is to keep it as a tourist attraction.
Ol’ Greg,
The French have an embarrassment of riches as far as Royal claimants:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080318000501AA9QvX3
Remember that the D’Orleans branch ruled after Napoleon I during the Restoration.
Janine @#558: Sun Ra?!!
I think you just found an intersection of our musical-taste Venn diagrams.
I met the man (the legend) back in 1981 or so. I asked him how he would prefer to be addressed. His answer, as closely as I can recall: “Some call me Sun Ra, others call me Mr. Ra…you can call me Mr. Ree.” (say it aloud)
Complete blockquote fail… wtf did I do?
#578 was supposed to include this:
Of course it would work.
We’d put the monarch in the chateau de Versailles (which is a bit more grandiose than Buckingham Pallace), transform the chateau de Fontainebleau and its forest into his hunting lodge, and in exchange, he’d do a few weddings and funerals of other royalties and a few trips to the ex colonies, and we’d get a few more tourists (as if Paris, the world’s number one tourist destination, needs more of them).
Oh, and also we’d make sure his family is involved in a few romantic scandals so that the press gets something groovy to write about and the populace focusses on these love affairs so that it avoids complaining too much about the economy and other societal problems.
Best case, he’d have a very pretty daughter-in-law who gets killed in a car accident in a tunnel somewhere in Paris so that we’d have a mega mourning event that keeps people rivetted in front of their TV sets around the world so that we can place lots of advertisements to sell cosmetics, french fashion garments and wine.
The question isn’t whether it would work but why would we want to do such a silly thing ?
Who doesn’t like a party
/runs
Why does the royal family have estates and such? They didn’t do anything to deserve them. Imagine, if you will, that those estates are, quite properly, property of the UK, not the royal family. The monarchy is costing you the revenues of those estates in the form of maintaining the monarchy.
So says the British monarchist :P
Space is the place
Saw him live in the 80’s at this art museum in my hometown.
Coincidentally, this was the same art museum that hosted Serrano’s Piss Christ and was the start of that whole uproar.
OMFG COREY HAIM IS DEAD????
I had such a crush on him when I was a kid.
I need a hug.
Rev.,
I don’t I made myself very clear in my post about addiction. The whole point I thought I was making (but now I don’t think I did) was that it’s annoying that people attribute their recovery to god when they did it themselves. Lots of people use recovery from addiction as a proselytizing tool. God didn’t save them from the bottle because god isn’t real.
L M A O!
You pretty much described perfectly what the British monarchy looks like to many of us in the rest of the world.
This is more complicated than you think. There is a distinction between those estates which are owned by “the Crown”, and those which are owned by the Queen in her personal capacity as an individual.
The lands comprising the Crown Estate, and some of the royal residences such as Buckingham Palace, are property of the Crown. The Crown is a corporation sole (i.e. a corporation consisting of a single person), and therefore has a legal identity separate from the Queen herself. Since “the Crown” is also the legal personification of the British state – hence why prosecutions are brought in the name of the Crown, and the military and civil service are said to be “Crown servants” – this property is, in a sense, owned by the nation. The Queen does not own it personally, and would not keep it if she were to abdicate.
By contrast, there are other royal residences and properties – Balmoral and Sandringham, for instance – which are owned by the Queen in her private capacity. If she were to abdicate, or if the monarchy were to be abolished, she would remain owner of these properties as a private citizen. In fact, this became an issue when Edward VIII abdicated; his successor, George VI, actually had to buy Balmoral from him, as, unlike the Crown properties, Balmoral was the King’s private property and did not pass automatically to his successor when he abdicated.
It doesn’t really rank high on my list of priorities. I do however think it should be put to a vote and have Canadians for themselves decide whether to keep the Queen as head of state or not.
Nah, it’s more like a 35 year old needing to finally move out of their parents’ house. The only time you really see Canadian “national pride” is during beer commercials (I’m half serious).
In any case, at this point we’re more like Americans than we are like you.
Hi Walton. I think this is the first time I’ve engaged you, and regrettably, it is to criticize something you wrote.
I think this begs the question. Isn’t the point of this discussion that the monarchy is not perfectly good?
In my opinion, a more apt metaphor would be that it is a sawdust-and-balsa-wood composition, plated over with an attractive mahogany veneer. Moreover, it has only been kept viable through constant jury-rigging and repairs.
My hypothetical family has been passing down a lemon the entire time!
strange gods, don’t forget that I replied to you above at #175, and that we had a conversation from the previous thread which we never finished.
Not now, Walton, can’t you see I’m in mourning?
Yeah I wasn’t being critical of your points I was, clumsily as is my way, trying to point out that the god stuff is unnecessary and tricks people into believing that is what helped them. Pretty much what I think your point was.
Walton #591,
The legal vagaries of the holdings of the Queen are of no concern to me. The Queen’s private holdings are just as much property of the UK as the Crown holdings. It’s not like George VI went out, got a job, made some dough, and then bought Balmoral. Where did his money come from? Really, these things shouldn’t be the private property of the Queen or any other member of the royal family because the funds to buy them are rooted in the monarchy itself.
Anyway, I’ve got a meeting with my committee chair, so I’ve got to go.
Apologies. I only just spotted your post at #588.
My condolences.
*virtual hug*
Thank you.
A million dead Iraqis, and now Corey Haim? Truly this is the straw that broke the atheist camel’s back.
Oh since Strange Gods brought up Haim’s death if no one else has mentioned it Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse is also dead.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/08/arts/music/08linkous.html?ref=music
I’m really sad about that actually.
Mr Fire,
ROTFL! That’s a fantastic metaphor!
Okay, I have to go.
That’s a shame, Ol’Greg. I think me and you are going to have to get sloppy drunk at the clubs tonight.
As long as you continue to frame humans in those two identities as if they were the only ones that matter, you’re going to continue to be baffled by human behaviour and unable to predict it.
Hell, I’d gladly pay to rid ourselves of the monarchy if it meant those fucking inbred leeches had to get real jobs, but as that’s not likely to happen soon (too many fox-hunting aristocracy brown-nosers in the UK, apparently), I’m with Feynmaniac that it’s not all that big a deal.
And Olympic gold-medal hockey games. We don’t even go to the bathroom unless it’s between periods.
I’ve thought about the ‘I’m a recovering addict’ meme alot, as I’ve quit not just complusive gambling but drinking as well. To me, there is something very negative about being in a never ending recovery state. I’ve recovered already! I don’t drink or gamble any more-just like I avoid doing things that would break my bones-something I have also recovered from.
The always recovering but never getting there meme serves a diservice to those who can, actually, recover and move on. It slows down the process in my view.
I don’t know enough about the people who have’nt been able quit their addictions, but I do wonder if the ‘never able to recover’ idea does not serve then well either.
Just my thoughts.
This referendum would involve a very large expenditure of taxpayers’ money, for something which you admit to be an unimportant issue.
You know nothing of Canadians and our love for referenda.
But on the same view, no one who has inherited land or wealth from his or her family really “deserves” it; all inheritance of property is, by definition, a consequence of the accident of birth. The logical conclusion of your argument would be that we should have a 100% inheritance tax, or that inheritance itself should be abolished and all property should revert to the state on someone’s death. I presume you wouldn’t actually advocate that, as it would be a very extreme position.
@ strange gods before me
I never met Corey Haim personally, but I was an extra on “The Lost Boys.” Those were good times.
I’ll join y’all in a drink tonight in memory.
That’s quite sad. Deep down, I still think of Canada as the Dominion of British North America. :-)
(Yes, I’m kidding… *runs away from rampaging mob of Canadians*…)
.
Why not? No playing field could be said to be level as long as inheritance of property exists.
I tend to agree. Another thing is it sets up a dynamic where the addiction still controls the life. For instance for a time our whole life revolved around some one not drinking just like it revolved around their states while drinking. Nothing changed, life was still a complete obsession with that person’s needs in which nothing else mattered much. Except we were supposed to be happier about it…
Joys.
When I think on it though the addiction itself seems like the small thing. It’s all the crap surrounding it, the culture, the mental problems, the societal shame, misplaced senses of duty, manipulative use of love, uncertainty, the skewed priorities that matter. The addiction, well it was a suppurating ulcer, but the real problem was more like a large invasive tumor that went right through to the bone.
That’s awesome!
Of course he was not exactly a great actor. But I was too young to appreciate that. What mattered was that he was cute, and he battled vampires.
Walton,
I find it weird that you don’t seem to take seriously the idea that many people are pretty disgusted by ceremonial classism and an actually hereditary ceremonial monarchy.
What would you think of outright ceremonial racism and/or sexism? E.g., a law that just says the ceremonial French monarch must be as genetically pure a white male as science can define. (Which is clearly not very, but why not?) Or maybe chosen at random from a pool of such people?
Or how about a little reverse discrimination, with a law saying that the ceremonial monarch must not be male, and must be human but as distantly related to past monarchs as possible?
I, for one, would like that better.
I know some British people who think that aristocrats are in fact genetically superior, on average, to typical commoners, because of centuries of selective breeding that is in fact correlated with something or other they think is of value.
Given the heir apparent’s “good breeding,” excellent educational opportunities, and penchant for promoting alt med, I gotta say yikes. Given the tories’ largely aristocratic top leadership, I gotta say double yikes.
You shouldn’t be able to have ceremonial classism on top of actual classism. The latter is disgusting. The former is adding insult to injury, IMHO.
If you’re going to send a signal about the value of such traditions, I facetiously suggest that you do with Charles what has traditionally been done with powerless monarchs who prove their unfitness to lead—put the guy’s head on a pike in some very public place, and destroy the evidently fucked-up hereditary royalty system.
But that’s just me. I’m not British. I don’t get it.
But if the French have an admirable tradition about monarchy, I think that has to be the tradition of destroying it. Restoring the monarchy, even symbolically, would send exactly the wrong signal, going against their best and most hallowed tradition.
I’m all for the traditional French treatment of monarchs and aristocrats—KILL THEM AND TAKE THEIR STUFF! (Merely ceremonially, of course, in the case of killing them. Not actually killing people over not-very-consequential politics is an important tradition, too. But as for taking their stuff… well, yeah, to the extent that there are aristocrats still benefiting from the hereditary system, and still richer than average because their ancestors exploited people under an unjust system, or just because they benefit from social perks of being “aristocrats,” then actually take their stuff.
I think the French non-aristocrats might want to offer their aristocrats a compromise. They might reinstate the monarchy as a purely ceremonial position, in return for nationalizing all the inherited wealth of all hereditary aristocrats. (And not just as a one-shot deal.)
For ceremonial purposes, the King gets to show up to funerals and cut ribbons and such, and when the TV cameras are off, he gets to live in a modal French house on a modal French income, and hang out with modal French people—no particularly rich or powerful people, and absolutely no aristocrats.
Oh yeah, and once a year, on the anniversary of his ascension to the thrown, he’s brought in shackles to the ceremonial guillotine, and the blade drops to the point where the edge touches his neck, and actually nicks it so that it bleeds.
Then that blood is used to write I SUCK DONKEY DICKS across his bare chest, and he’s led in a procession through Paris, in which he’s pelted with rotten tomatoes—real ones—and made to wear the smelly mess for the rest of the day, to underscore the point that hereditary aristocacy stinks.
I think that might send a more appropriate message about French traditions, like fraternite and egalite, and a violent opposition to the horrendous institution of monarchy.
I’d pay to see that kind of sideshow, which could be a great fundraiser for the needy.
*puffs up proud*
Thanks Pygmy Loris – good luck with your committee chair meeting!
To be fair, I should correct part of my comment @593:
Don’t want to give the impression that it was somehow a foregone conclusion.
Rome school criticised for installing condom machine for pupils:
Ol’ Greg @ 569:
As far as the effectiveness of AA methods…not so much, it would seem. Here are a couple of sources on that score:
http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-effectiveness.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2746426/
As to the causes of addiction, it’s one of those snakepits of complex environmental, psychological and genetic factors (inasmuch as the latter two categories can be separated from one another). Several genes have been implicated in influencing one being more–or less–prone to addiction, but it’s a question rife with complexity.
I was a fan of the vampires.
I believe that movie had a short clip of Bauhaus in it. I was a very small child. I freaking loved Bauhaus.
It’s like legend. When I grew up I wanted to marry Tim Curry and eat all that black fruit and have that awesome dress. Actually…
Walton, about twelve hours ago, that loud moron in the current Palin thread did respond to one of your points. I was hoping that you would take to time to show him how mistaken he is in his assumption about you.
Seriously? Really?
I’m British, have lived all my life in southern England, have been active in the Conservative Party for some years, and know a significant number of real aristocrats. I’ve never heard a single person say a word about “selective breeding”, nor have I ever known anyone at all who harboured the attitudes you describe. That kind of absurd elitism is long since dead.
In my experience, the only people who actually give a damn about “class” and aristocracy tend to be the social climbers, who want to pretend their background is more aristocratic than it is. Those people who are real scions of the aristocracy usually downplay the fact as much as possible.
I dunno but I think if we started a ceremonial monarchy in the US it would be done as a reality TV show.
Paul W.,
You said it better than I could.
Well I’m off. Can’t wait for the next subthread and the YouTube regarding monarchy it will probably contain.
Really? I’ll drink one in your honour too then, Physicalist. Er, for those of us who never miss a showing of TLB, even when it’s on Peachtree (“Holy spit! My own brother, a goldurn shirt-tucking vampire!”), could you point out who you were and in what scene? Please tell me you got to rock out to Tim Cappello on the beach.
Mmmmm. Jason Patric and Kiefer Sutherland were dead sexy.
Are you sure? Because here in the US that kind of thinking is alive and well.
In fact, years ago in a history class we had to do some genealogical research and report on it (this was a college class so it was supposed to be significant research). It was pretty easy for me. One side of my family is well documented and goes back a very good while. When I reported I was criticized (by peers not the prof) for including too much information about the “unimportant” (read low born or immigrant) members and also had a couple people *compliment* me. Not on my writing, but on my genetic material I guess. As if being connected to those old names meant I was a better sort than the average American.
And werewolves.
The British monarchy as furniture…
Walton’s “venerable mahogany table” metaphor is very apt: typically these are huge and hideous pieces of 19th century vintage, entirely unsuited to modern life and forever getting in the way – and it is of course in the 19th century that most of the “immemorial” traditions of the British monarchy originated (on this, see “The context, performance and meaning of ritual: the British Monarchy and the Invention of Tradition, c. 1820–1977” by David Cannadine, Ch. 4 in Hobsbawm and Roper The Invention of Tradition). I’d certainly get rid of such a table if I had one to get rid of!
I’m British, have lived all my life in southern England, have been active in the Conservative Party for some years, and know a significant number of real aristocrats. I’ve never heard a single person say a word about “selective breeding”, nor have I ever known anyone at all who harboured the attitudes you describe. That kind of absurd elitism is long since dead.
Come off it, Walton. You (among others) were absurdly impressed by that lunatic “Viscount” Monckton; if he’d been Mr. Monckton, no-one would ever have listened to his ravings. Anyway, if “that kind of absurd elitism” is dead, why haven’t all the “real aristocrats” given up their titles? Some among them still own vast tracts of land, let alone other forms of wealth.
The British monarchy is the apex of the British class structure – which is why Walton wants to keep it. It is also (as “The Crown”) the excuse for the unaccountability of the British state – the reason we are subjects and not citizens. Off with their heads!*
* I mean, of course, off the stamps, coins, banknotes etc :-p
Like the non-aristocrats who defend aristocratic institutions like the monarchy and fox-hunting?
But did he make witty remarks and pop culture references while battling vampires?
On addiction and AA, there was an article in today’s Grauniad about a secular and science based alternative to the “12-step” bullshit, which substitutes one addiction for another (admittedly, the substitute may be less damaging). You can read about this here: Smart Recovery.
I’ve recommended before the book Love and Addiction by Stanton Peele and Archie Brodsky.
Hey hey hey! Now bash the monarchy all you want but do you have to be so mean about the furniture?
:P
Or rather, if anyone wishes to dispose of such a table, please drop me a line.
Walton:
Seriously, really. It may be a weird statistical fluke, but I’ve met a very few English academics who said they thought the upper classes are genetically superior to the lower classes, on average, if only marginally.
They also professed valuing upward mobility and intermarriage, acknowledging that the upper and lower classes overlap a lot in any interesting characteristics, and that many of the best and brightest are in fact of common stock, and that it would be stupid to simply perpetuate the aristocracy as such. (And one talked about the positive value of interbreeding, because of dangerous inbreeding among the aristocrats.)
But still, yes, there really are some Britons who think that there’s something slightly genetically special about aristocrats, on average. Perhaps not coincidentally, the people who said that to me had substantial aristocratic blood. (And Oxbridge educations.) But I would be surprised if there weren’t a few commoners who believed it, too, just as there are a few blacks in the U.S. who do believe that blacks are inferior to whites, on average.
I’ve also heard similar things about Jews from a very few Jews, who attribute the peculiar successes of Jewish people in academia, etc., partly to a higher incidence of good genes for being smart and hardworking or something that promotes high achievement somehow.
Given that there are a lot of people in the U.S. who believe the “Bell Curve” stuff about superiority of whites to blacks—though of course it’s just a minor difference in means, and the distributions mostly overlap—I don’t really find either very surprising. It’s the same basic thing.
I would guess there are survey studies about such attitudes in Britain, but haven’t looked into it. I would be delighted to find out that such attitudes were extremely rare.
If they’re not, that seems like a good reason to abolish the Monarchy and stop pandering to the fetishization of hereditary “traditions.”
This itself is aristocratic fashion, and has been long enough to be noted in The Great Gatsby.
Actually, that is false on both counts. Firstly, since the British Nationality Act 1981, we are, legally, British citizens. “British citizen” is not strictly synonymous with “British national”, since citizens of British dependent territories (such as Bermuda or Gibraltar), as well as certain people born in former colonies before they achieved independence, are considered to be “British nationals” but not “British citizens”.
As to the Crown being “unaccountable”, it is strictly speaking true that the Crown is immune from certain forms of civil process (though less so now than historically, since the Crown Proceedings Act 1947). But modern English law has developed to deal with this. If your rights are violated by a government agency, you can either (depending on the circumstances and the type of right violated) seek judicial review of the decision in the High Court (under section 31 of the Supreme Court Act 1981), or bring a private civil action against the minister, department or public body responsible.
There are also certain “royal prerogatives”, such as the right to declare war or conclude treaties, which can be exercised by government on behalf of the Crown without parliamentary oversight. But these are nothing to do with the Queen personally; and it is, ironically, the Conservatives who are proposing to abolish some of the prerogative powers (since the prerogative was abused, inter alia, by the current government to ratify the Treaty of Lisbon).
Why? If nobody actually cares about the aristocracy, why hide it?
No, the reality is that they want to be treated just like everyday ordinary people, without the attendant lack of wealth and power that characterises real commoners.
jenb, thanks for the links. Yeah, most people I know follow a path where they get waaaaay into AA, then fall off the wagon, then get waaaay into AA, then… etc.
Some of them eventually do stop using though. I’m really not sure it has anything to do with AA.
And some people really do just seem less prone to addiction. Crack, for instance, is something most people get addicted to if they use it for a little while. But some people seem to be able to stop using it, and others seem completely lost to it.
And Brownian wins Episode XX[X]VII of The Thread.
Brownian:
Yes, I was indeed part of the crowd on the beach of “Santa Carla” (as they labeled my hometown, IIRC), during the concert scene (with Tina Turner’s sax player, as we thought of him). I could point out my silhouette at the back of the crowd for a fraction of a second (I’m tall, and I had a tall girl on my shoulders), but you can’t really see me.
Those were great nights though. Huge bonfires burning on the beach for hours. Everyone partying down. Movie stars and cameras. (And, of course, vampires . . . )
I’ve been in training all day learning to teach people to breath into dummies. And they say government workers are, well, um, something.
Back to flaming cars up at the top.
I’ve been in two cars which caught fire. One was a 1978 Ford Fairmont station wagon with a 3-speed manual transmission. We had a lead in the head gasket and oil was blowing back onto the tranny. I was driving to work (whitewater raft guide) and, suddenly and without warning, the engine died. I drifted for quite a ways down the country road (no idea how fast I was going as the speedometer, though it went up to 120, stopped the needle at 70mph) and pulled off onto the shoulder. I tried to restart the car. Nothing. A guy in a Jeep stopped behind me, got out, walked up, and told me there were flames coming from under the center of the car. Luckily, he had a fire extinguisher and we extinguished the fire. The only real damage was that the rubber boot around the gearshift melted, so for the next four years, we could watch the road through the hole.
The second time, I was not driving. My pal and I rebuilt many VW beetles and microbuses (we always ended up with extra parts (we figured if we rebuilt enough, we’d have a whole extra engine) left over from the engine). One day, we were driving in Northern Virginia (heading to do some hay bailing at a farm) and Darrell looked behind us and wondered (aloud) what all the smoke was. I saw none in front of us and plenty behind us so I suggested it was the beetle. We stopped (no way to pull off) and, sure ’nuff, there was smoke enveloping the back end. He tried to pop the engine cover and came away with the most amazing blister. We stepped back and watched the fire consume the engine compartment, the magnesium wheels on the rear, then the back of the car, then the cabin (including the $800 stereo (keep in mind, this was 1984 so that was a lot of money)) and finally the front end and the front wheels. By the time the fire company arrived, there was nothing left.
Other car fires I have seen (but was not involved in) include a Porsche 928S (“All right, who’s the U-Boat commander?”), two Subarus up in New Hampshire, an MGA (also in New Hampshire), and a school bus (used as crew transport at a wildland fire). So, yes, they do burn. All of them.
And vampires? They suck. Now Vampires are cool!
That’s a leak in the head gasket, not a lead. Sorry.
Walton, thank you for that. But I think it is obvious that cable is having an argument with figments in his mind, not with the people on the thread.
1- Corey Haim was 38? Crap, I’m getting old.
I loved him in The Lost Boys, and in general back then, too.
2- The Monarchy- I’ve always found it bizarre that a supposedly modern country could have a hereditary head of state. Well, and that a constitutional monarchy should lack a written constitution.
Brownian @#627: My own background is entirely non-aristocratic, and I don’t pretend to be anything I’m not. So I’m not sure what you might be alleging.
I support the monarchy for the reasons I have outlined on this thread. Yes, there is a certain amount of non-rational aesthetic preference involved on my part. But when the monarchy isn’t doing any harm, and has several advantages which I have outlined, I don’t see why it would be justified to get rid of it.
Most people’s arguments on this thread have been purely ideological. If you dislike the symbolic significance of the monarchy, or believe that inheritance of wealth or status is intrinsically wrong, then that’s fine – but that’s a very ideological, doctrinaire view. I take a more pragmatic approach; if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And no one has yet offered a really substantial pragmatic reason for abolishing the monarchy. The Queen does a sterling job as head of state, and any sort of change in this regard is, IMO, simply a solution looking for a problem.
A movie for the times:
Born Rich, by Jamie Johnson, heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune.
I’ve changed my moniker back. I decided the whole “Extra Special Dumpling of Awesome” thing, as cute as it was, may have been a little lacking in gravitas. :-)
As I understand it—mostly from picking things up from novels, so I could be totally wrong—there are several factors at work.
My impression is that some of this goes back to the Industrial Revolution, at least, and the rise of the middle class with trading and The Empire.
One reason is that you don’t want the commoners to resent you for putting on airs, even if you think the airs are actually justified. (Some aristocrats do, or did, and some don’t.) A bit of noblesse oblige, a little bit of not wanting to get whacked on the head by some pissed-off uppity lower-class commoner, or seriously screwed with by a powerful “middle class” (non-aristo) commoner.
(Come to think of it, a fair fraction of the understated wealth, don’t-flaunt-it breeding thing among the British upper class probably dates back to the French Revolution—there’s a striking example to learn from, if ever there was one. Time for a low profile and a secret handshake.)
Another reason is that you don’t want to be confused with the (comparatively) nouveau riche middle class—i.e., commoners with money.
(For Americans who aren’t savvy to the traditional British sense of “middle class,” it’s not at all what we would call middle class. It’s mostly what we would call upper-class in American terms—a minority of people who are comparatively wealthy, and often from families that have been wealthy for generations—but not aristocrats, with aristocratic pedigrees going back many hundreds of years. Most of what counts in America as upper-class “Old Money” “society” is middle-class nouveaux riches in traditional British aristocratic terms—AFAIUI, not being British or an expert by any means, and not even having put any actual study into it.)
It would be very surprising to me if there wasn’t a significant if small percentage of upper-class British people who felt at least a little bit that way, to this day, given rich “society” people I’ve known in the U.S., some of whom just feel lucky to have been born rich and connected, and some of whom feel a bit superior and entitled to it.
Hey Walton, do you think this opinion would change if her successor did a terrible job as a head of state?
The current monarch does a good job, therefore a hereditary monarchy is good? What happens when the next in line is a bumbling idiot, but becomes Queen/King due to legacy?
Heredity is a rather medieval way of handling any position of significance, and it seems odd to defend its legitimacy, even if it’s something that works with the current placeholder.
Ol’ Greg:
OK, I’ll let you know where the page is for bidding on it on eBay, like the rest of the suckers for ugly, awkward, traditional old junk.
:-P
It wouldn’t be unprecedented for a monarchy to crumble when a successor to a competent monarch proves to be, well, not so competent.
Walton@633,
You are being absurdly legalistic, failing to take any account of historical context and current realities. I know the Crown prerogative is not personally exercised by Liz Windsor, but the Government has inherited and uses those powers. We are subjects and not citizens in fact, because we do not have constitutionally protected rights – something you’re always prattling on about, IIRC. You really can’t be a consistent civil libertarian and a supporter of the British monarchy. The British constitution needs revamping, and getting rid of the monarchy is a key part of that: there should be no hereditary privileges. BTW, I would support 100% death duties on anything over some reasonable sum, which certainly shouldn’t be above £1m.
Maybe. But the Queen is still in good health, and if she lives as long as her late mother did, Charles is unlikely to succeed for a long time, if at all. He will in turn be succeeded by William, who should be a good king, on balance.
But in principle, yes. Most British people support the monarchy at present, as the Queen is very widely respected on a personal level; but if any future monarch were ever to, for example, abuse the position for partisan political purposes, it is highly likely that support for republicanism would become more widespread.
Cable has a mind? Where’s your empirical evidence for that?
Party like it’s Episode XXXVIII, people.
True. But that’s nothing to do with the monarchy. There are many constitutional monarchies which have written constitutions, and constitutionally-protected rights and liberties enforceable by the courts, but still have a monarchy. This is the case in Sweden, for example, and Denmark, and the Netherlands, and Belgium, and Spain, and to some extent in Canada (though the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has some limitations). So it is a fact that there is no practical reason why we cannot introduce a written constitution and bill of rights, yet keep the monarchy. Likewise, we can easily get rid of the prerogative powers and yet keep the monarchy.
Your opposition seems to be purely ideological; you dislike the principle that someone can be head of state by virtue of inheritance. That’s fine; you’re perfectly entitled to be an ideologue. But, along with most of the British people, I prefer to take a more pragmatic and evidence-based approach.
Minbari Grey Council!
“Look, strange women lying on their backs in ponds handing out swords … that’s no basis for a system of government.”
And some people really do just seem less prone to addiction. Crack, for instance, is something most people get addicted to if they use it for a little while. Ol’Greg
Peele and Brodsky, who I referenced, argue that addiction has very little to do with the specific properties of chemical substances and everything to do with insecurity, anxiety, and lack of personal autonomy and purpose. They note that the “symptoms” of many people who have just been rejected by a partner often resemble those of “cold turkey” from opiate addiction; and conversely, many US troops in Vietnam habitually used heroin, but most gave it up without difficulty when removed from that terrible situation.
A small correction to my post at #654: In fact, the courts in the Netherlands do not have power to review primary legislation for compliance with the constitution. But all my other examples were accurate, and my point stands.
Walton:
That might be a reason that aristocrats might not let you know if they did think aristocrats were a bit genetically special, on average.
(Why they’d tell me, who’s poor Southern white trash and/or poor Irish Catholic from way back on all sides, I have no idea… except maybe I’m very far away most of the time, or perhaps that I’m “a credit to my race.” :-) … :-/ )
It might also be partly that you’re a generation younger, and your age cohort is substantially less classist than mine. That would be cool.
I have to share this with everyone. Walton is my hero.
Walton, please do not take this as me making fun of you. But, dammit, I have to laugh!
I have no said a word about royalty. That is because it is rather blunt and without nuance. The English got one thing right in 1649.
I’m really going to have to read that Knockgoats.
If that proves to be true, then it confirms my view that drugs should be legalised. Rather than trying to stamp out substance abuse via the criminal law, which is an expensive, authoritarian and pointless endeavour, I would argue that the most rational approach to reducing drug addiction is to pay much more attention, as a society, to mental and emotional health. If everyone who had a substance abuse problem was able to access comprehensive treatment, not just to deal with the addiction but also to cope with the underlying mental and emotional issues that led to the addiction in the first place, it seems to me that this would be far more effective in reducing drug addiction than the current discredited “War on Drugs” approach.
:-D :-D :-D
Maybe I should change my moniker to “Walton, Janine’s Hero.”
Maybe it’s a North American thing, but defending the institutions of the elite when one isn’t a member of that elite can be seen as trying to curry favour with the elite while distancing oneself from one’s true class (See Uncle Tom). However, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t engage in that under certain situations, so I’m not really impugning your motives as much as doing a little piss-taking, Walton. ;)
I liked it. If anything it demonstrated your playfulness and made you seem a little more well-rounded, complementing the often more serious tone of your comments. Do you need more gravitas?
True. But that’s nothing to do with the monarchy. There are many constitutional monarchies which have written constitutions, and constitutionally-protected rights and liberties enforceable by the courts, but still have a monarchy. This is the case in Sweden, for example – Walton
You miss the point. Such things are compatible with monarchy in general (although a really egalitarian society is not): they are not compatible with the British monarchy, which is not a constitutional monarchy. You cannot divorce an institution from its historical, legal and political context. The British monarchy is the epitome – the crown, indeed – of a system of hereditary, religiously-justified privilege and unaccountable state power. You can prate about “ideologues” all you like, Walton, I don’t think you’re even convincing yourself, let alone anyone else. In practical terms, I most certainly would not trust the monarch to be politically neutral in a crisis – I would be astonished if they did not side unequivocally with the rich and powerful. They would, if necessary, give legitimacy to a military coup against an elected government that seriously threatened elite interests. Which is, of course, the real reason you want to retain the monarchy – you know they would as well as I do. (Incidentally, if you think that Prince Tampon is going to stop shooting his mouth off if he ever becomes King, you’re crazy.)
Noooo no no no no. Oliver Cromwell was a Puritan fundamentalist authoritarian bigoted joyless wingnut. The Commonwealth was, in many respects, one of the worst and most illiberal periods of British history. From the perspective of individual freedom, things got a lot better after the restoration of Charles II.
Yeah, but his band is pretty rockin’.
Don’t be ridiculous.
It’s true Cromwell was highly authoritarian, but the Commonwealth was the first time democratic ideas got any sort of hearing in Britain: the Levellers, Diggers and Ranters were the political ancestors of 18th and 19th century radicals in both Britain and America. Walton, I’m afraid you still have a schoolboy view of history.
YEEESSSS YES YES YES YES.
You’re not refuting the proposition that they got one thing right in 1649.
Which I’d agree they did, even if they fumbled the implementation rather dramatically.
Walton,
I can only imagine what the Kings of old would’ve thought of this notion.
Don’t be ridiculous. That could never happen.
Walton, why do you think I said one thing? I know some people still have a justified hatred for Cromwell.
And, please, change your moniker to Janine’s Hero. I am sure that will knock some people for a loop.
Of course not. Monarchs and their non-elected representatives clearly know their place.
Honestly I think that drugs should be legal even if it were false. Simply because I think criminalizing addiction only serves to worsen the problem for addicts, but also for whole community of people surrounding addicts. Not to mention it gives rise to a massive criminal industry and helps fund terrorism.
I guess a nicer and more honest way to say what I sort of was trying to say is, yes, intuitively I think addiction really is just another manifestation of various mental issues. Those issues may take a variety of forms. People who’s general emotional and mental state is healthier really do seem to be able to recover better if nothing else.
What I said earlier was unfair, because I do many people actually (myself included) that have regularly used substances which people can become addicted to without losing focus on life, and also have quit using them with ease.
In fact, until I got ill I was drinking quite a bit because I was going out with friends almost every night. But feeling ill kills the enjoyment of that, and away went the drunken fun.
But then again there is physical addiction too.
People who have injuries have to break the addiction some times to the drugs.
Also smoking, which as far as I have seen is a pain in the ass to kick that most people fall back from a couple times. Luckily I never picked it up, although I will admit to having a fondness for the occasional use of the hookah (hipster scum!)
Not in the slightest ridiculous Walton. Anyone who supports the Tories supports elite privilege; and the elite will never give up their power if they think there is any way of hanging onto it.
Brief topic detour – PZ gets a veiled(unless you’re a Pharynguloid!) reference in the latest Mr. Deity…it comes at about 2:50.
check it out ;)
For Americans who aren’t savvy to the traditional British sense of “middle class,” it’s not at all what we would call middle class. It’s mostly what we would call upper-class in American terms – Paul W.
I’d say you’re talking about the upper-middle class. “Middle class” is now much broader – basically, if you own your own home, you’re middle-class by at least one criterion. However, we do still recognise that there’s a working class, whereas, as I’ve come across it (though i think someone corrected me), in the US you’re middle class if you’re not destitute or on welfare.
No harm? Do you think it’s fair to have one person groomed to that position from birth like a trained monkey, and loaded with all sorts of responsibilities he/she didn’t choose?
—
Or of the idea that they are like old pieces of furniture…
Yes, I agree entirely. The current “War on Drugs” is doing no one any good (except maybe the private correctional industry), is massively expensive, highly authoritarian, ruins lives and is nevertheless almost completely ineffective.
Pope’s on fire! The Pope’s brother admits to repeatedly slapping choir boys in the face as punishment as well as doing nothing to investigate abuse allegations brought to his attention by the children.
Isn’t it time to dissolve the child-abuse operation that is the Roman Catholic Church once and for all? There seems to be no end to its depravity.
However, we do still recognise that there’s a working class, whereas, as I’ve come across it (though i think someone corrected me), in the US you’re middle class if you’re not destitute or on welfare.
In the US, you will occasionally hear reference to “the working middle class,” but it’s become a relic mostly, with the decline in organized labor and the manufacturing sector. I always took it as an essentially classist distinction, though. Like “real” middle (read: professional) class people in Michigan and Ohio had to admit that their factory worker neighbors had just as much money as they did, but they couldn’t admit them to their class without a qualifier.
Hahaha… I was raised working class in the US. The class exists, it’s just pretended away or romanticized as the “Joe Six-Pack” trope. The idea is you brought it on yourself and if you just worked a little harder you’d be middle class. Otherwise get a credit card and pretend to be middle class anyway.
Urban underclasses and the like are very visible, and the working classes from my experience to everything possible to try and distinguish themselves from them. Which includes pretending to be middle class even though it works against their interests to do so.
Buying a house on a 30k household salary in a job that requires physical health and with kids is gambling with your life. My family made it. But there are plenty of working class people who end up right in that nasty underclass because of it.
And now, so long as I don’t get fired, I am proudly lower middle class! Wheeeeee :D
Well, in a sense, almost everyone is willing to tolerate “elite privilege” in some form. In virtually any kind of society, some people will garner certain advantages for themselves and their families; and their children will, in turn, grow up in conditions of greater unearned privilege than their peers. This is true whether a society is capitalist or not; do you think that the children of party officials in Cuba, say, grow up in the same conditions as the children of ordinary workers? Even if you eliminate the inheritance of actual wealth or property, there are still a number of intangible privileges – power, elite social connections, better education – which the elite in any society will pass on to their children.
The only way to eliminate the perpetuation of privilege across generations would be to eliminate the family entirely, and raise all children in communal creches rather than in the home, therefore completely destroying heredity as a social institution. IIRC, Alexandra Kollontai advocated something like this in the early years of the Russian Bolshevik regime, but it was too radical even for Lenin, and the idea was very quickly dropped.
So when you say that “anyone who supports the Tories supports elite privilege”, you are, in a sense, correct – but so too anyone who supports Labour, or the Liberal Democrats, or the Greens, or the Scottish National Party, “supports elite privilege” in this sense. If your statement is construed that broadly, it becomes more-or-less meaningless.
FWIW, I do believe that inheritance tax, on estates of more than a certain value, is perfectly justified. Indeed, I’d support a rise in inheritance tax and a corresponding cut in income tax. While “unearned wealth” versus “earned wealth” is perhaps an overly simplistic dichotomy, it’s still true, by most measures, that earned income is more “deserved” than inherited wealth, and therefore it’s justifiable to take a higher proportion of the latter than the former.
I vote for buying all the opium that Afghanistan can produce and using it for medical opiates; including putting all heroin addicts on a medically-supervised, pharmaceutical-grade maintenance dosage.
Afghanistan gets an economy, drug traffickers lose their product and their market simultaneously, crime rates drop.
Now that’s a war on drugs that Sun Tzu could support.
aratina cage @ 681:
FFS. So, he felt bad about slapping the shit out of kids, but couldn’t stop until it was illegalized? Riiight. There’s not even a pretense to morality, ethics or compassion in that. Moral monsters specializing in making people’s lives hell.
H All
Just leaving for the airport for my flight to Melbourne for the GAC. It’s looking like a great programme and I’m sure there will be a more than a few of us reporting back on Monday.
PZ should have arrived in Melbourne already so it would seem the Gathering has begun….There can be only one!
See you Monday people, have fun!
Caine, Flowers of Evil, I know! It’s insane how they think they are above the law and that a simple “sorry” and a brisk flight across the border to some other unsuspecting community is all that any of them ever needed to do to make up for their crimes against children.
Bye, (No Longer A)Bride! Have fun storming the castle!
Just how much of our Oz brigade are going to be MIA? Will there be incriminating photos and videos?
Walton, it is official. You are a smartass. Good on ya!
aratina cage, I was reading a story yesterday about yet another child molesting priest and how he escaped justice. Not a surprise in the least. What bothers me most is that they don’t even play lip service to the notion of morality. The church has long been a shelter to some of the worst corruption ever seen, and it’s hard to understand why they are still allowed to get away with the evils they perpetrate.
They’ve certainly had their fangs blunted, but if any organization ever needed to be destroyed, it’s the catholic church. It just organized crime with colourful costumes.
I am in Melbourne! And I don’t have time to start a fresh thread!
Walton,
I most certainly would. Inherited wealth is one of the greatest inequities of our society. It is completely inconsistent with any idea of equality of opportunity, meritocracy, or democracy. Also, I don’t feel this is rather extreme. Before the advent of agriculture, it was the norm.
68 Pharyngulites at the dinner on Saturday night and an estimated 100 or so to turn up to Friday arvo drinks. Monumental effort to get it all organised but it’s all done now and nothign left for me to do but drink copious amounts of alcohol.
..must rnu for airport, poor form to miss the flight I think!
Bye
Caine, agreed! (And I see that should be “Flower of Evil” not “Flowers…”.)
To all Pharyngulites who get to be in Melbourne: Have a great time! I’ll be up here in the States being jealous.
Well, the British Empire took a very illiberal approach other people’s (aka, 1/4 of the globe) rights.
Hatred, yes, justified, not so much. However there are few people so devoted to hating as the Irish* and using long past events as justification for their hatred.
As Michael Flanders explained in a bit of doggerel about the Irish:
*The various folks in the Balkans do a pretty good job of hating each other.
PZ:
Yay! I hope your back is feeling okay.
Bride of Shrek, OM:
Wow, it’s a horde! :D Sounds like great fun.
You being an anthropologist and all, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you would take a very long-term view. :-)
But I’m intrigued. What are the specifics of what you propose? Would you abolish the whole legal concept of inheritance (thus getting rid of wills and probate completely) and have all a person’s property vest in the state, as bona vacantia,* on his or her death? Or alternatively, would you simply have a 100% inheritance tax on all estates over a given value?
I can understand your point, but I don’t think you’ll ever find much political support for this proposal. Like it or not, the idea that a person ought to be able to pass on wealth and property to his or her children is very firmly entrenched in Anglo-American society; I doubt that’s going to change in our lifetimes. But you’re the anthropologist, not me, so I don’t know how quickly such culturally-entrenched notions of familial economic relations can change.
*(Bona vacantia is the legal term for property which has no owner. In England, such property goes by default to the Crown – i.e. to the state.)
That’s what you want us to believe.
There are degrees to which someone can support the elite. In the US both the Republicans and Democrats support elites. However, the poor and middle class end up doing marginally better under the Democrats. Yeah, as long as there are humans there’s gonna be inequality, but we should at least make the effort to minimize it.
So it’s possible in this system, where one inherits the title of head of state, someone totally fucked up (which frequently happens when you inbreed) can take the position, abuse their power and you hold that “it ain’t broke”?
I guess the question now is how many posts before my computer at work decides to hack up a hairball with this thread. 1000 posts ought to do it.
You might, of course, feel some bizarre sense of “national pride” in severing your links with Britain, but I would hope you don’t hate us that much. :-)
the people who should hate being a part of the UK are the ones the UK completely sold out when they joined the EU…
New Zealand.
New trade deals the UK made with europe after union completely bypassed all the deals they had had with New Zealand goods for decades and decades.
threw the NZ economy into the shitter single-handed, and it has never, and likely never will, recover to its former state.
and STILL, there are plenty of British Loyalists here enough to interfere with NZ breaking away and making its own constitution.
bloody irrational.
@677: Great Mr. Deity episode! Thanks for the link. Not only did Lucy refer to biologists that desecrate the host, but she also mentioned that mormons are universally homophobic. Mr. Deity replied that he could see them being homophobic and that it used to be cute, but not any more.
Regarding transubstantiation: “You mean they’re literally eating his flesh and drinking his blood? It’s not symbolic? I thought it was symbolic. Boy! We’re going to need a lot more Jesus!”
Walton,
I would probably simply propose a 100% tax on large estates, or perhaps on large inheritances. If you want to divide your $10 million between a whole bunch of inheritors, or give it to charity that should be allowed because it’s not contribuiting to the entrenchment of economic privilege. Inheritance of sentimental family heirlooms and such poses little problem to me, but I really feel it’s immoral to have inheritances large enough to support descendants indefinitely. This leads to established, hereditary aristocracies.
That’s what makes it an ideal. The Grand Duchy of the Loris will be run in such a manner.:)
That’s a good question. Intense social upheaval can change cultures relatively quickly. The Industrial Revolution had a dramatic effect on the role of families in society, gender roles, geographical organization of society, etc. Sometimes, though, cultures just don’t change even when they’re clearly maladaptive. The Vikings in Iceland found this out the hard way.
I do tend to take a long view of human history. For example, the (American) middle class is largely a product of changes in income structure during the last 150 years. Our current subsistence systems haven’t been around that long either. Agriculture only accounts for 5-10% of the 100,000 year history of Homo sapien sapiens. Prior to the development of agriculture, there simply wasn’t enough excess to have large inheritances, nor was there a way for our nomadic ancestors to transport such things. Inherited status and inherited wealth go hand in hand. I don’t think either of these things was a particularly good development.
Agriculture that is intense enough to support large urban populations while not requiring huge rural populations to produce food stuffs is also a very, very recent development. Most of the things we take for granted on a day to day basis are a product of the reduction in the need for agricultural labor. Some of that reduction is only 40-50 years old. The mechanical cotton picker only came into heavy use in the 1960s. It did radically change the geographic structure of human communities in the American South. That’s really recent.
In addition to attending a talk on paleogeography called “Dessine-moi les visages de la Terre” (Draw me the faces of the Earth), I finished an entire figure for a manuscript today :-) …so that the Thread grew by over 130 comments since I checked last time :-)
(And it still hasn’t been closed, upon refreshing and over 40 more comments!)
That outstretched arm with fist reminds me of communism. Young Pioneers and stuff. <slightly open, smug grin>
The article is still there (I fixed the link), but it doesn’t mention Wikipedia anymore. :-(
As usual it depends on the species concept. There are 147 out there (as of February 2009), pick yours…
Ah, good to know, thanks. :-)
Walton… you just took a (lame) joke and improved on it.
That’s a rare skill.
Lumper!
:-D
Not only is it inherently silly, it’s utterly laughable.
But to what extent will that actually happen?
(And what’s that about all those rumors that his son William might be crowned right away instead of him?)
She’s spot-on and could succeed John Stewart.
If it’s genuine, and if that’s really a mastodon on it, that is fucking fascinating.
Too bad the finder has to auction it because of his… wait for it… wait for it… waaaaaaaiiiit for it… medical expenses. He’s disabled and can’t work much.
I conclude that “schools in the US” are not “secondary educational institutions” :-D
That seems to differ a lot between the chemical substances in question – alcohol being one that creates a lot of physical addiction very easily, more so than many “hard drugs”, some of which don’t seem to do that at all (I forgot which ones).
But I haven’t read your reference.
I’m seriously disappointed that Janine hasn’t changed hers to “unfair maiden” yet!!!
Cromwell did say one good thing, though: “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken!”
Incidentally, The Natural History Museum (formerly the British Museum (Natural History)) is still on Cromwell Road. That sort of history-is-good-in-general approach to street names is otherwise limited to Paris, I think.
Indeed! As he wrote: “First win, then go to battle.”
:-)
(Or rather ” :-( ” because I’m not there.)
David,
Thus you have articulated one of the many reasons I don’t like dealing with paleoanthropology. There are enough problems with species concepts among living organisms adding fossil species into the mix is just a pain :)
Seriously, though, most of the texts I’ve read recently that give a specific name use Homo neandertalensis. A lot of us get around the species question by talking about anatomically modern Homo sapiens and Neandertals.
Paul W wrote:
Extra! Extra! PZ and the Pharyngulistas are threatening people with execution by guillotine and forcing them to commit acts of bestiality – is this science? Read about it now in the special new ‘Our Loyal Pissants Take Things Completely Out Of Context’ page of The Intersection!
strange gods before me – I just found out about Corey a couple of hours ago, and also had a huge crush on him (he’s right at my age). I’ll give you that hug if I can get one too.
(He was the cute Corey; the other one was just too scruffy. And I loooooooved Lucas.)
Writer (author) living below the poverty line — that’s me. I’d be doing better if I had health care. I don’t mind just getting by. Roof over my head, running water, enough food — all luxuries depending on your point of view. I wouldn’t be able to travel to the San Rafael Swell to do the research for a story without my brother’s help. He’s taking his truck, paying for all the gas, etc. Of course, we camp out on the types of public land where no fees have to paid, we cook our own food, never stay in hotels or motels no matter how bad the weather — very cheap way to travel. Relative poverty can be a good thing when it forces you to experience the weather and the scenery with no filters, with no temporary escape to civilization.
Of course, Carlie! *hugs* I knew you had good taste. :)
That’s probably a large part of the reason why people avoid referring any new species to a genus of Mesozoic dinosaur (specifically including the Mesozoic birds) and name new genera instead. Indeed, sometimes they don’t even actually name genera, but just make up names that look like binominals and call them “new taxon” instead of “new genus & species”… completely worthless under the Code, but nobody ever talks about this. Maybe there’s omertà about it. :-)
Yes, that seems to be a sort of general convention these days. :-)
What is this “too scruffy” Carlie speaks of? I don’t understand.
As long as we’re on the subject of death, Lolly Vegas died last week.
Janine @ 689,
We’ll try our best…:-)
But I guess during the convention we will have to be at our best behaviour, because I expect a flotilla of tone concerned media folks and xtians to be around and watch the evil atheists’ every step !
In reference to the prior discussion on human variation, I found a photo of fetal rickets (Vitamin D deficiency).
Here it is.
We should put together some kind of betting pool to see how many – and how much- things said by those interviewed are taken out of context to ‘show’ how rude and disrespectul atheists are towards believers – when of course any honest person would report that it’s the beliefs being criticised, not necessarily those who hold them.
The concept of class never seemed to come up in my home as I grew up, and I’m not sure if that was intentional on the part of my parents, or if they, too, bought into the “we’re all middle class” mythology. It was only many years later that I was able to look back and realize that I was a product of a working class home – dad was a barber, mom (who was an Italian immigrant with very little English language skills and no formal education past the 5th grade) worked in factories. We never had much extra – I mean, I thought everyone wore hand-me-downs, that spam was on everyone’s table, that everyone had to go to work at 15 in order to start saving money for college. I suppose that I never really took notice of my situation in relation to others because even though I wasn’t showered with luxuries, I certainly never wanted for the basics – a home (cramped as it was), heat in winter (though we did suffer with coal and kerosene during the worst of the fuel crisis of the 70s), and food (being the child of an Italian mother has its culinary advantages) – but I am now keenly aware, when I look back, as to how much I had to work, even as a teenager, in order to have a little extra for the arcade and the ninety-nine cent theater on the weekend.
I sometimes wonder what “privilege” (in this context) might have felt like.
Oh, and so it gets another mention, Strange Gods linked to Born Rich – which is an excellent film, and answered a few of my questions about that privileged life.
Hmmm. Maybe I’d better take a closer look at my rock collection, which pretty much surrounds my house.
pfft, like the only thing that’s going to hold us back from the raping and plundering (we’re vikings right?) is that the media could take such things out of context? Get out of here.
*points to self*
I have already had to repeatedly pinch myself this morning when I was standing on my balcony overlooking the 8-lane Westgate Freeway, if I look to the right there is the Hilton Hotel, and I was like, PZ friggin Myers is over there…:-)
Next thing you tell me there is a hot redhead on a plane on her way to meet me this arvo.Get out of here.
I really wish I was that excited. At the moment I’m more concerned with what I’m going to do on Saturday night than I am that I’m going to hear a whole bunch of intellectual heroes of mine talk.
I guess the biggest question is this: where are those of us at the dinner going to go when the drinks stop (10.30 IIRC)?
The endless thread is growing too quickly. Four of the monster’s subthreads now fill the “Top Posts” box. I’m afraid PZ is going to have to drag the brute out back and take an axe to it to stop it from taking over the blog.
About 20 pubs and clubs that even I can spontaneously think of in a 200m radius from the CC, that’s not even counting the ones in the City proper…:-)
I hadn’t remembered this until I started watching it again, but near the beginning there are two interviews which mention that they make a point of not talking about their wealth, because it makes people uncomfortable, and it’s “tacky.”
Like I said, not talking about wealth is a matter of fashion, and Walton is a tremendous sucker if he thinks it’s an indicator that they don’t really think they’re better than us. Indeed, not talking about money is one of the ways they indicate that they’re better than us; it’s a shibboleth because only people who need more money need to talk about money.
I guess we just let those not going to the dinner find a place and we can show up there once we’re done. Would warning them that a drunken, enthusiastic swarm of godless-types are going to descend upon them like a school of hungry piraña be a good idea?
Indeed, certainly within my family and circle of friends, money eventually would come into the conversation – when you count pennies and need to decide whether to fill up your gas tank today, or just leave it half-full so that you can buy a few extra loaves of bread from the Wonder Bread discount outlet… well, yeah, money comes up all the time. It still does. Of course, I’m still counting pennies, and so are my parents, and so is my sister… oh, if I had only started working at 13 instead of 15, I might be rolling in dough now! [/snark]
Sounds like a plan.
I talk about money a fair bit of the time and I’m reasonably comfortable.
..only people who need more money need to talk about money.
then that’s ALL i should be talking about, I guess.
shall we discuss current usd->nzd currency exchange rates?
PZ friggin Myers is over there…
he’s much smaller in person.
really.
quite an unassuming guy, never leads the conversation, etc.
be gentle with him!
Coming from (but no longer residing in)the UK, I don’t really agree with any of Walton’s more sophisticated arguments for the Monarchy. I find the perpetuation of privilege they represent frankly unpalatable, and excepting dear old Liz herself (the epitome of genteel blandness, at least in public)they seem a pretty unattractive bunch.
The thing is, short of having no Head of State, I don’t see the alternatives as being very attractive either – Some of the criticism of the monarchy has been regarding expense – I wonder how much it costs to maintain a non-royal Head of State, let alone run the pre-requisite elections?
From a purely practical perspective, I don’t see the executive power wielded by the elected Prime Minister in the UK as noticeably different from any of the various elected Heads of State globally.
On the whole I am slightly puzzled as to why Countries that currently have the Queen as nominal Head of State would want to either add a political replacement that could lead to the unbalancing of established political institutions (unless said institutions needed unbalancing, in which case definitely dump the Windsors) or a Ceremonial replacement that would cost so much more. Maybe its something to do with ‘Patriotism’ (a concept I find hard to relate to – I dislike at least as much of the UK as I like, a proportion that seems to be applicable to most places and experiences – the accident of my birthplace seems somehow irrelevant).
Or is having no Head of State a viable alternative? Could we do without a figurehead representing us? I wouldn’t get rid of the Royals to replace them with a President, but get rid of them and not replace them? Perhaps that’s the way to go.
Speaking of monarchy…
?[Once I was the] King of Spain?
I think he gets it from his father (and if anything, Charles is actually more discreet).
I saw the film “The Queen”, and liked it, but noted that Prince Philip was rather rude. When I checked Wikipedia on him that night, I found that his character in the film was actually toned down — he’s infamous for racist and sexist (and a few other “-ists”) mouthing off at anyone and everyone, and a list of remarks was included.
Wikipedia has gone through many edits since then, but still links to this and similar pages.
An obvious comeback to his question “Aren’t most of you descended from pirates?” is “The same question could be asked of the royalty of any nation…. Your Grace”
But really now.
Charles is actually more discreet
maybe too much so?
I hear tell when he visited NZ, NOBODY came to meet him.
the expected crowds, were… absent.
I think there was a group of protesters shouting about having a mobile breast exam vehicle moved, but that was about it.
Anyone who thinks that “aristocrats are in fact genetically superior” needs to read up on Charles II of Spain.
I’m just saying.
I like this song. I had never heard it before.
Sorry, random I know.
Why would anyone want to go to see Charles? Heck, I find the idea of going to airports to see famous people to be completely stupid – there’s no point; they’re not doing whatever it is they’re famous for, such as acting or playing sport or music or whatever – but Charles is a guy who does nothing and is nothing worth paying any attention beyond being the first child of a parent who happened to be a monarch.
I don’t object to the redundant monarchy in principle; I just find having any interest in them (as people) to be one of the more ridiculous habits of terribly inane people.
ha, delayed portcullis
here we go
Heck, I find the idea of going to airports to see famous people to be completely stupid
Myself as well, yet I think I might have hesitated saying that to a Di fan, once upon a time…
I rather like not having crowds stomp me into pavement.
Oh that is just a sad sad story. Although it is nice to see some one correcting the story about his lisp affecting language.
Long ago I wanted to become a linguist.
Oh and then I noticed the person explaining the shift was the ever-popular David Marjanović.
*sigh*
Chet Baker
But you don’t need to, you’re just gauche.
Jewelry and rock buyers are subjected to various claims about the beneficial effects of stones. Here’s one example:
And here’s another example:
Well! Imagine that! My brother, Steve, and I thought we’d better test our plume agate and inform the buyers:
Warning:
Prudent Man and PrueHeart Plume Agate fine tunes one’s bullshit detector. It may drastically, and mystically, reduce your tolerance for bullshit.
Now we wait to see if our bullshit about bullshit increases sales.
Will have to ask my brother Steve, but I think calcite is even more common than agate. I have a piece of perfectly clear calcite in my rock garden. This is why I’m so spontaneous, childlike, and stupid. I haven’t noticed any amplified energy, but no doubt I’m doin’ it wrong. I have not directed energy directly at my chunk of calcite. If I did, I’d receive back double the energy. So, if you see me sitting, mesmerized, in my rock garden, staring at a piece of calcite, rescue me, because I might be about to explode with energy. Either that, or my mind is so open that my brains have fallen out.
I wonder if even this is bullshit. Results for piezoelectric calcite on google are all woo sites.
it’s a muthafucka
What’s up with all this Sun Ra!?
I think I love you people.
But Lynna, you must have noticed they keep away tigers… very useful for keeping away the tigers, yer clear calcite. And attracting invisible intangible unicorns – your rock garden’s probably thick with invisible intangible unicorns…
@750: Surprisingly, there are no tigers in my rock garden! So, you’re right, the calcite must work to keep them away. As for the intangible unicorns, I am skeptical, but I could be convinced. Do they leave tangible droppings? ‘Cause the place does sometimes smell like horse manure — though that might be the neighbor’s horses who are pastured just on the other side of the fence.
My rock garden is thick with some kinda shit.
Lynna,
When you can smell shit, but no one will admit it was them, it’s usually the fault of invisible, intangible unicorns. Weird, I know. :P
Pygmy Loris, I though that unicorns shit sunshine and rainbow!
(Runs to check her Unicorn Bible.)
Lynna @754
I find the aroma of ‘left behind’ by yer average invisible intangible unicorn is more reminiscent of Bullshit (it explains the redolent scent of most Mystical Crystal Healing Emporiums – they are full of said unicorns), but Horse manure might be close enough.
If your rock garden is thick with it, perhaps you could try growing different rocks?
Janine,
Yeah, but no one knows that rainbows smell like shit!
Yay, a recent Owlmirror translation! How I miss them.
It would be funny if “RogerS” is just Alan Clarke sockpuppeting, especially since he manages to misspell ‘Alan’ (twice).
Would you believe I missed this yesterday !
Richard Dawkins on The Conversation Hour with Jon Faine on ABC Melbourne
Feynmaniac @ 759:
Just read that, a thing of beauty. I doubt it will dent “RogerS” though.
Caine, not even an Acme safe dropped on his head will dent his skull.
(And yet an other threat of violence that will make the tender souls of the Intersection weep in sorrow.)
I think all assets beyond a certain maximum amount should be taxed at 100%. In the US, I would tie this maximum to a multiple of the poverty rate rather than a fixed amount that has to be adjusted individually.
If you want a charity to have your money, why wait until you’re dead? If you’re worried they won’t spend/invest it as well as you could, you should probably choose another.
Janine, I believe that, which makes Owlmirror’s effort all the more grand. As for the tender souls, let ’em weep, wail, gnash the teeth. It keeps them somewhat amusing.
Ok folks I’m off, got a date with a hot unbeliever…:-)
And so it begins…
Stick a candle in a reflector and place it in front of calcite, and heat your home!
Place calcite in the path of an electron gun, and use it to power a city!
Awesome!
Holy crap, RogerS is back! O_o
I think it’s unlikely. The two were kind of tag teaming for a while, and though there comment style is very similar, Alan was by far the more obnoxious (and creepy) of the two.
I think the similarity of style just comes from both being from the same school of young-Earth creationism.
Of course, it’s possible that Alan Clarke is now sock-puppeting under RogerS’s name… but I suspect he’s far to narcissistic to do so.
Do you think BoS will get jealous if you keep talking like that about PZ? ;)
John,
I support a wealth tax, too, but I had never considered tying it to the poverty line. That sounds like a good idea.
I was going to write a few more remarks on the race discussion, but I hope this doesn’t trigger any more flouncing in and out of the thread, or other unpleasantness…
David:
And I didn’t claim it was. I was talking about what Cavalli-Sforza et al did with their data.
Sven:
But this is exactly what is done in those population genetic studies you were so excited about earlier, like the one showing differentiation between European countries. The researchers pick their ‘populations’ depending on what scale they are looking at. There is no single unambiguous way of delimiting populations, either. So isn’t it a bit inconsistent to condemn cultural anthropologists for using ‘population’ on multiple levels and then cite results of population geneticists doing the same?
(On the other hand, I think it’s also inconsistent to say that race is a bad term because there’s no single unambiguous way to delimit races, if you accept the use of terms like ‘population’ and ‘species’.)
SC:
There’s a lot of good information there but also some bits there I found somewhat misleading and annoying.
“[Wright] arbitrarily suggested that the minimal threshold for the existence of great variation was Fst = 0.250”
I’m sorry but it makes fuck all difference if humans meet some arbitrary(!) threshold that Wright proposed in anno dazumal. The observed value depends on the marker used and various other things. No studies I’ve read of other species in recent literature say that you have to meet this ‘threshold’ to have meaningful differentiation.
He also writes that “one can argue that a wide range of genetic differentiation is consistent with identifying biological races, depending upon the action of the specific loci involved, in the context of a given species biology” but two paragraphs later he directly compares Fst values across species!
Is he saying that subspecific differences in other large mammals only evolved as a result of human activity? Er… confusing.
Interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and special on atheism and feminism.
Ron, a login with your name, yay!
AFAIK, doing again what I’d done before had a different result. Isn’t that someone’s definition of insanity?
Walton, I think what you’re looking for is the Society for Creative Anachronism. Privately funded, too.
I heard today that the publication where I got my start, Terrain, just got the axe from its organization. All gone, everyone laid off. My feelings about that are um complex. Chris Clarke, are you reading this?
Icthyic, I’m glad to see someone’s willing to do brick duty. Entirely in the spirit of Krazy Kat of course.
Too many interviews today, too much red wine and rum tonight. And the mulberries are already starting to flower. I am exhausted and in abject terror.
OTOH the ribes and ceanothus are blooming too. Life is worth living.
Posted this at the InterDungeon. It’s waiting in moderation.
Let’s see who can distort a quote on that thread best!
_______
What a fun game you discovered John!
Bilbo,
<giggle>
Man, look how twisted the people at The Intersection are:
bilbo,
Janine, Mistress Of Foul Mouth Abuse, OM | March 11, 2010 12:59 AM:
Well, that’s what unicorns think too … and that’s why you never see them slumming with your crowd.
Pygmy Loris,
As a law student, I can tell you that this would be quite easy to circumvent in practice.
Let’s say I have $10 million, and I want to leave it all to my son Bob. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that under your system all individual inheritances over $250,000 are taxed at a marginal rate of 100%. So if I leave my $10 million to Bob in my will, he will get only $250,000, and the remaining 9.75 million will go to the state in taxes.
So I wouldn’t do this. What I would instead do, during my lifetime, is settle my $10 million on trust, reserving a life interest for myself and assigning the remainder to Bob. So the legal ownership of my $10 million would be transferred to trustees. I would have a lifetime beneficial interest, so would continue to enjoy the benefit of the $10 million during my life. After my death, my life interest would expire and Bob would become the beneficiary of the trust. Hence there would be no will, no inheritance, and no inheritance tax. :-) For bonus points, I might create the trust in an offshore jurisdiction, such as Jersey or Bermuda, so as to avoid other taxes.
In general, those people who have $10 million sitting around are capable of employing a lawyer to figure out how to avoid paying lots of tax. So your proposed inheritance tax system would make very little difference to the very wealthy. It would probably only serve to stop the moderately wealthy passing on their largesse.
Walton, reveived gifts over $10000 are taxable income; wouldn’t setting up a fund in someone else’s name count as gifting money? and if it doesn’t, wouldn’t it be possible to make it so?
I’m not sure – it depends on the jurisdiction, and I haven’t studied tax law, as it was an optional subject which I didn’t choose (though I have studied equity/trusts, hence why I know how trusts can be used to avoid taxation). But I was simply highlighting how PL’s proposed inheritance tax could easily be avoided.
Hmm, it seems like the Loyal Intersection Morality Police are, in their unceasing intellectual dishonesty, trolling (not, not that kind of trolling) this thread for new quotes to take out of context and tattle, perhaps in the hope that Nannies Sheril and Chris will say even more horrible things about PZ and us nasty Pharyngulistas.
Yeah, because that’s going to have some effect.
So, time to get creative. Okay, the following is 100% hyperbole and in no way meant to be taken literally by the intended recipient – or anyone else for that matter:
Bilbo, I hope you are sexually assaulted by an overly well-endowed (and enthusiastic) water buffalo while being fellated by an especially sharp-toothed weasel with dubious oral hygiene standards.
Now, let’s see whether or not that ends up there…
Rorschach just messaged me a pic of what I assume is him, Bride of Shrek, and PZ at dinner in Melbourne.
I hope the atheist convention goes well. I wish I could be there, but Australia is a bit too long a trip for me, I’m afraid (being a student with no money, and having exams in a couple of months).
Wowbagger @#779:
*cringe* That was not an image I wanted in my head.
In my ideal world, there would be an extremely limited number of cases where it would be legal to create “artificial persons”. Trusts could only be created for non-profit charities, or minors and people with disablities that are unable to manage their own finances. In these non-charitable cases, there would again be strict limits on the amount of money able to be placed in trust.
Gifts would be limited the same exclusions they are now in US tax law, however that would be the maximum amount able to be gifted. Much of the current estate/trust law would be reduced and made much simpler. Income tax could use a lot of simplification as well.
Good morning, fellow meta-abusive atheists
I hope you all find yourselves violated with shards of a smashed vinyl copy of Roger Miller – King of Road.
As an upstanding member of PETA I am horribly offended by your words suggesting animal abuse.
I think even Peta would find Bilbo to be too dumb to be worth defending.
I wasn’t defending Bilbo
I know.
Hello, is this thing on?
/tap tap tap
Heck, I find the idea of going to airports to see famous people to be completely stupid
I have never done that. And I agree that it is a rather strange/stupid thing to do.
My (((Wife))), however, once gave Dick Cheney’s motorcade the finger, holding her arm out of the driver’s side window of her minivan, as they passed in opposite directions on the interstate. Not that she actually met him at the airport, but. . . .
I would, however, consider meeting Mr. Myers at the airport (if he ever flies into AVP). And I would offer him a homecooked meal. And his choice of which cat he wants to take home with him. Does he qualify as famous?
I tend to avoid airports unless I have to use them as a leaving point. The only things Airports are really good for is leaving them.
That and the occasional airport bar.
That and the occasional airport bar.
Well, if you want to but cheap (plastic bottle) scotch priced as if ‘twer 30 year old Pinch or a gourmet single malt, then yeah, airport bars are okay. Me? I take a couple of empty water bottles through security and fill them at a water fountain to consume on the plane. Then again, I’m cheap, so . . . .
Well if you’ve ever been stuck in a place like Newark for 8 or 10 stormy hours after an 8 or more hour flight and you don’t really know what time it is anymore anyway but damn those bags get heavy… then that bar ends up looking pretty good and a 12 dollar Makers seems like a greeeeaaat idea.
I said occasional.
Yes. Yes it does.
I got caught in (I think) Detroit for seven hours coming back from working a wildland fire. I found the smoking room and holed up with my last cigars (four Macanudo Maduros), the really excellent book which does an overview of Triassic life (don’t remember the name, but WOW!!1!!!) and my mp3 player (I have three: one for folk and showtunes, one for rock and roll, and one for classical (I listened to the classical one)) and had a wonderfully bearable long-term delay. Didn’t hit the bar, though. I travel in uniform, and sitting in my NPS uniform at a bar is, well, frowned upon (plus, I was in pay status the whole time (took 16 hours total to get from Warm Springs, OR, to Wilkes-Barre, PA. All of it paid.
I like forest fires.
Dawn of the Dinosaurs: Life in the Traissic. Google does wonders for mediocre memory. It’s an excellent book which I, as an historian, was able to enjoy and grok with fulness. I read it twice while working security at that fire (15 hour shifts at checkpoints in the middle of nowhere).
Parenthetical fail: Should read: “I travel in uniform, and sitting in my NPS uniform at a bar is, well, frowned upon (plus, I was in pay status the whole time (took 16 hours total to get from Warm Springs, OR, to Wilkes-Barre, PA. All of it paid.)).”
Quick question for English majors out there (or those who write enough to remember the rules): if I use a complete sentence within a set of parentheses, and the parenthetical is at the end of the sentence, do I double period as I did above? It looks awkward, but I’ve never found myself doing that in formal writing, so never looked it up. And, in English, if it looks or sounds awkward, that does not mean it is incorrect.
Disclaimer 1: I am not a population geneticist*.
Disclaimer 2: I need to re-read not only some of the human pop-gen papers that we have been discussing, but some of the papers that support the analysis performed in these papers.
Although I am not a population geneticist, I have occasionally used pop-gen tools in my own research. One of the tools that I have used most often is a really simple frequentist analysis called AMOVA (Analysis of Molecular Variance) which is essentially the same as an ANOVA, but uses a non-parametrically generated null. Which is to say, you choose to assign haplotypes/genotypes to populations a priori. Then you generate a null distribution by randomly assigning genotypes to populations and generating a test statistic (phi-ST, an Fst analog)…you do this several thousand times and see if the population differentiation that you observed is higher than 95% of the permutations. So, if your choice of genotype-to-population assignment was in fact arbitrary compared to the random distribution of variation among genotypes, you would find that out. Bayesian analyses like STRUCTURE implicitly do not use a null. Windy…if you could provide a brief explanation about how STRUCTURE mitigates/fails to mitigate arbitrary assignments to population size, I would appreciate it. I need to re-read all of the Pritchard et al. stuff again…admittedly in my initial readings I ignored most of this, being more interested in the implementation of the MCMC. But if you already have an idea, I would like to know what it is.
*a) As if that weren’t obvious, b) but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express.
I can see how that would be awkward!
They still have smoking rooms in airports?
I don’t smoke, but I figured they probably did away with those. Poor smokers. It seems like hailstorms and 10 degree weather would make a person say “Meh… I don’t need a cig anyway” but it does not manifest as such in reality.
Dang, took over 90 seconds to load this thread on my work computer (XP service pack 2, IE 6, 1.4 GHz singe processor, 100 MHz bus). Looks like I won’t be constantly watching this thread today.
–I should rephrase the question in #799 a little…I know that STRUCTURE gives you genotype-population assignments that maximize fit (like, marginalized over parameter space) given some number of populations…How is the “fit” compared among population number selections? If K were parameterized (assigned a prior and a posterior distribution were estimated), this wouldn’t be much of a problem, but from my reading, K isn’t treated as a parameter of the model. Confusing myself now.
Ol’Greg: A few do. They are glassed in enclosures. Makes me feel like a monkey in the zoo. Needs a sign that reads: “Smokers: this subset of homo sapiens willingly engages in a non-scientific study of the effects of smoke on the human lung. Materials used for the experiment include tobacco wrapped in paper, tobacco wrapped in tobacco, and tobacco enclosed in a wood, clay, or aluminum silicate apparatus. Many are past breeding age; those still attempting to breed tend to attract fellow experimenters. They are not, however, as silly as those who assume that members of royal or noble houses (which, when one considers the spermal profligacy of the male aristocrat, is all of us) are genetically, rather than environmentally (education, diet and medical care), superior to the proles.”
I really only smoke while at forest fires (and going to and from) or when playing a hobo as part of a living history program.
And in uniform, alcohol is allowed if I am, say, eating dinner or lunch (not sure about breakfast). Not at a bar.
The pic was taken by an obese stranger in a ridiculous T-shirt who wanted a pic of himself with PZ taken for some reason, might just have been PZ’s american accent, I dont think he was a Pharyngula reader lol….
And yes, we had a nice dinner, although the poor man was semi-conscious after those students dragged him out to the Zoo when he came off the plane…:-)
He be fine for the Pharyngufest tomorrow tho I’m sure !!
misrepresentation—I have never been “excited about” any of this. I was just pleasantly surprised to find somebody discussing data rather than dogma.
Was wondering who would point that out; it’s true, of course (see my tangential reference to the vexatious metapopulation concept). And, as you point out, the same is true of ‘species’ and ‘subspecies’ and ‘deme’. What you don’t see is use of the word ‘subspecies’ when the writer means ‘deme’ or ‘family’ of ‘guild’ or ‘community’.
I was citing the data, not giving a blanket approval of their usage of terminology.
have fun, windy
Trains are back in the thread again. Here is a story about a train, about rotary plows for train tracks, and an horrendous series of avalanches.
[I’m not flouncing. I’m just not in the mood for the (not-)race discussion today.]
Years ago, I was going to Florida with my boyfriend at the time. We were snowed in at our dinky local airport, and so sitting in the bar playing TV trivia, when in walked the Black Crowes. After a little while, a girl sitting near them asked them for an autograph, and they said no and appeared to be pretty rude about it.
I generally like airport bars (and airports), but I think that’s because I only travel for fun and infrequently, so I associate them with vacations and chatting with people I wouldn’t otherwise meet.
If you’re ever in the Atlanta Airport and have time to kill, go to the Sweetwater Brewery bar in Concourse B.
Great beer.
The owner of the brewery is a friend of mine.
/Kw*k
You can tell they’re assholes from their music.
At least, I think I can.
I’m pretty sure they are. The two brothers were / are always bitching with each other. I get a sense of real “we’re fucking rockstars, worship us” attitude.
But I kind of like some of their stuff. They put on decent live show too.
Did they do that Mr Jones song? I hate that song.
Wait… no… that’s counting crows.
Crows.
*shakes head*
I think we need more bands with crows in the name.
Mooney picked up on the rape with a rusty knife comment and is publicly coming out against rape. As if we don’t. His posturing is pathetic, and it’s also pathetic that the completely ignored the context on his own fucking blog. I’m not touching this one, I’m tired of dealing with their crap. I did get quoted this time, though.
[envious]I hope we get to see some pictures of the Melbourne Pharyngufest tomorrow.[/envious]
—
I remember a nice bar in the Atlanta airport, don’t know if it was the Rev’s friend’s.
My two favourite airports for wasting time are Singapore and Amsterdam Schiphol.
—
Celebrity spotting in Airports ? Never done that. But years ago, I was visiting a friend in St Tropez during the off season and I was joking with him on the way: “I hope we get to see Brigitte Bardot”.
The next day, we go to a small supermarket where I’m getting some dog food. I hear a voice behind my back:
“pardon monsieur…”
I turn and standing there was Brigitte Bardot.
“pourriez vous me passer deux boites de PAL s’il vous plait” (can you help me with two cans of PAL dog food please)
“avec plaisir Madame”
“merci Monsieur”
“je peux vous demander un autographe ?”
Not a very exciting conversation but I still have this can of dog food with her autograph on it.
I live in a small village on the Côte d’azur where we get many celebrities who come to do their shopping in the numerous art galleries.
Last month my dog and I spotted Berlusconi while he was buying a big pop art portrait of Obama…
Actually, I have heard that Adam Duritz from the Black Crowes can also be a crabby dickwad…treating fans poorly, etc.*…although so can I**, so I’m not sure I care to be all that judgemental.
I kind of like to listen to August and Everything After when I am feeling maudlin. These are rare occasions, however.
Unrelated, but so what: I am reading a book right now that I don’t really want to read, but I feel obligated to because I am in a book club. The author has been hailed by many as a genius, the critics praised the book wildly, and I hate, hate, hate it. It is a quart of lukewarm puke in a 2 oz. glass. I have never found a novel to be this boring. To continue to read it is killing my spirit. The fact that I hate it so much given its apparently universal appeal makes me wonder what is wrong with me.
*sigh*…The book is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. If you love this book, and I am clearly missing something, tell me what it is…I need to have something to appreciate about the fucker so I can finish it.
*from a friend who met him at a bar, not as a fan but just as someone who knew someone who knew Duritz.
**my imaginary fans. It’s a love/hate relationship.
Oh, my word, are they witless wonders.
I’m tempted to tell them what I find offensive, upsetting, and dangerous about their comparison but I know it will be worthless and leave me frustrated and feeling vulnerable. So I won’t.
HEY MOONEY, if you read this here… I’m a rape victim.
YOUR BLOG MAKES ME TOO UNCOMFORTABLE TO POST THERE.
I’ll stay here, it’s not stokholm syndrome. It’s that the sort of conflation and dishonesty you exhibit while using rape as a pious platform, not to mention the fact that your commenters really seem to think those words have anything to do with the real misogynistic speech that people like me lash out at damn near every day online because really online is the only place where you can. IRL I have to suck it up and accept a certain level of abuse because my eye is on the ball and not the arena. In other words you guys don’t get it.
You really don’t.
So, uh, fuck off and die and all that shit yo’
Oh, a thought. The “Lens of your Preconceptions” thread is under 300 comments so far, and has been tangential for some number of posts. The Endless Thread behavior could migrate there until Myers has the time to create a new one. Of course, I imagine this would create hell re: Sven’s Endless Thread tracking.
Ugh… just linking that statement to my real name left me a little… exposed feeling.
Oh well fuck it. Might as well.
@Paul.
I can’t believe they are still hand-wringing over such nonsense.
I posted this at the end of the newest thread:
sigh
why did I bother to go back there and comment.
WHY
WHY
/kickself
Walton,
I thought we were talking about a different system all together. You think I’d let these silly trusts and other methods of circumventing the estate tax continue to exist? They’d be done away with. Much of the tax law in the USA has huge loopholes for the rich to drive their money through. Those loopholes need to be closed now. Same for the loopholes in corporate tax law. It’s ridiculous that the only people who are really forced to pay their fair share are the people who work for a living (I’m including everyone who has to have a job, here.)
You need to learn to think in a grander manner, Walton. Get away from your acceptance that the way things are is necessarily the way they’ll continue to be. Shit needs to change!
Another triumph of worrying about appearance, and not context. Framing over substance – see how the mentality works?
They’re still going at it over there? Oh. Em. Gee.
Ol’Greg – good on you. Probably doesn’t help much for me to say it, but it’s not you who should feel exposed, it’s the piece of shit perp who should.
Well, Mooney’s in on the act too. And he’s engaging even less with the actual comments at hand than his commenters did. I suppose that’s because he was bright enough to realize the vast majority of the quotes they altered don’t stand up to scrutiny, so he should stick to the one that does in fact have a straightforward reading of directly advocating violence, even though in context it was troll bait (which has now been taken).
I went their to post as well, although the comment I made it currently held in moderation.
I asked Kirshenmbaum if the fact that she allows, and even encourages, people to be willfully dishonest on her blog should be taken to reflect badly on her, Mooney, Discover and science blogging in general. I reminded her I once emailed her about their policy on dishonest comments, and that she could not be bothered to reply.
Holy shit, Mooney has driven an other train into the fucking train wreck. Does anyone want to make yet an other link to the statement that seems to be the “cause” of commotion? It was done a couple of times before but no one seems to have picked up it was said in frustration over the Catholic Church protecting their priests who rape the children in their congregation. It was not even a bloody call for violence against women!
Last night, in an other thread, I tried to spin this into something humorous for Cath, though I feel I have failed in that. Damn but I feel bad for her. As it stands, those dishonest gits would have latched onto an other quote. A couple of those quotes in that big, bad list are mine. (And what is really sickening for me is this, not once did I say a person should get raped, just engage in violent masturbation.)
I wish that somehow, one of those braying jokers would stop long enough to actually read what Cath wrote. As it stands, I swing back and forth between laughing at the stupidity and feeling bad about the situation and my part in how it plays out.
Janine, they’re actually pointing to the “Stop using the lens of your Preconceptions” thread, where a person actually said :
Guess which paragraph Mooney quoted. He also omitted the context where in a previous Intersection thread they misused and abused Cath’s quote to the point where it was impossible to take them seriously.
Paul, never mind that much of that thread has become a place where heterosexual men express their lust for John Barrowman.
That is why I have been expressing my concern when I make use of violent imagery. Not that I expect anyone to acknowledge my sarcasm.
Do they have a limitless supply of locomotives ?
Oh, damnit, it’s Kirshenbaum with the most recent post, not Mooney. Mea culpa. I skimmed the first paragraph and thought it said something like “I ignore attacks against me, but ….” and my brain filled in “attacks against my co-blogger”. I’ve fallen into the normal trap of assuming anything not a kissing image is Mooney posting. Sorry.
Ooooh, my heterosexual identity just got slapped.
Do you reckon suggesting Kirhenbaum has earned a slap round the face with a dead halibut is likely to be taken at The Intersection as a suggesting real violence be done to her ?
Only I reckon she does deserve a slap round the face with a dead halibut for her concern trolling. And for all those bloody posts on kissing.
I have put up a post on the Ken Ham thread for RogerS.
I would hate to think that he has switched over here and would miss it.
Ref back to #280 on the Ken Ham thread
Hi RogerS
Are you aware of the amount of scientific work that has been done on C-14 dating? The paper you chose to quote was from 1981. Considering that papers take a finite time to produce from scratch to being published, that’s 30 years ago!!
Even if it were valid (and I don’t intend to chase that up) it is so far out of date as to be pre-history!
Just another thought …
You quoted a source in #280. Going to it and nosing around a little it appears to have been written by David Pratt. Looking at his website shows that he is a student of Theosophy and relies on a date of the Earth of around 2 billion years old, based on Hindu or Budhist writings.
So. You who believe that the Earth (indeed, the Creation) is around 6000 years old are relying, not on science, but the studies of heathen religions. These are only out by a factor of around 2 compared with science whereas you are out by a factor of around 500,000 (taking 4.5 Gy & 9000 y).
Odd N’est pas?
(Apologies to David M if my 50+ year old French is incorrect)
Antiochus Epiphanes | March 11, 2010 11:13 AM:
Do not let yourself be clubbed into suffering through a book you think is truly awful. Write up a review of the portion you have read, which adequately expresses your disgust, and distribute it to the other members. And don’t read any further. There are better books to read.
Sheril sez:
No kidding, Captain Obvious.
As someone who has been raped, I’d like to point out that remarks, especially ones which contain “go fuck yourself” not only aren’t rape; they are so fucking far removed from the experience of an actual rape it defies expression.
Lady Pucker has her pearls jammed so far up her ass, she can’t distinguish between reality and enhanced vocabulary expressions of contempt a/o disgust.
#745 Lynna
Hi Lynna. I wonder if your quote on the wonders of clear calcite have a vague, multi-diluted and many times percussed, memory of the real optical properties of calcite. Clear calcite or Iceland Spar demonstrates double refraction:
A little more info.:
More complex still:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/scenario/labman3/polarize.htm
Thus, the energy being doubled meme could be a memory of light being split into 2 beams.
Just a thought …
Got to see casts of Triadobatrachus*, Karaurus**, and Sauravus*** today, under a binocular microscope, and I even managed to reach and keep 3D vision in spite of my nose :-) :-) :-)
And now it’s getting dark, so soon I’ll look at them again, under horizontal light :-) :-) :-)
Unfortunately the cast still isn’t good enough to tell whether Sauravus had 4 or 5 fingers per hand. I fear I’ll need the original, which must not leave the building.
* One of the 2 oldest known frogs, and way more complete than the other one. Early Triassic – older than the dinosaurs.
** Oldest complete salamander. Late Jurassic, like Archaeopteryx.
*** Underresearched little coal-swamp beastie that could be pretty closely related to the frogs, salamanders, and caecilians. If you don’t know what a caecilian is, go to Tet Zoo and use the search engine. And remember: never go against a caecilian when death is on the line.
Ubi bene, ibi patria – where good, there fatherland!
…You mean like in the USA…? :-/
LOL!
Interestingly, this somewhat “related video” is funny, too.
DIY on the Internet! That’s almost all of what I did. :-)
<sigh> Misunderstanding of double diffraction.
Double diffraction doesn’t “even” violate the 1st law of thermodynamics. One photon is absorbed, two are emitted, and each of the two has half of the energy of the first one.
I… doubt it’s really that simple.
Lie.
Plain lie.
LOL!!!
It does sort of look like it.
Being banned will do things to some people.
Yes, I’m unhappy with what they did with their data. :-)
Yes, and I bet he’s mostly wrong.
Fool! The cat chooses.
Who doesn’t.
Looks like a good idea, except I completely avoid putting half a sentence and the entire next sentence into a parenthesis.
I’m more surprised IE6 loads it at all. IE7 started taking forever to load ScienceBlogs threads just before IE8 came out.
This is the time to translate the demonstration song Jadehawk posted a few subthreads ago:
* Bad translation.
** That’s a bit too strong. The original is a bit of a filler, though it does imply you have participated in demonstrations before.
*** Same word.
Duritz is in Counting Crows; he appears to be quite an amazing narcissist, but I do like a lot of his songs. The rest of the band is excellent too.
temporary…migration…
of teh Thread??
nope. Does not compute.
An argument from consequences, but yes, things would get…complicazted.
Oh, I think you’re right, Alan B.
Which of course means the energy is being halved*! Idiots.
*assuming equal distribution between the ordinary and extraordinary rays – it’s been too long since I failed microscopy.
Well, if you don’t like the argument from consequences, we could just invoke Manifest Destiny and spread to every existing thread to assure that the Endless Thread chatter doesn’t make any one given thread too long to load. But I think that would be even harder to track :-).
Besides, what’s wrong with argument from consequences when you’re arguing a purely pragmatic approach to a problem? Obviously the consequences are the only thing relevant to the decision.
I think that Sheril and Chris both deserve the most terrible, awful, horrific thing that can be done to a blogger, something that would demoralize them, discredit them, and make them re-think their purpose in life as bloggers:
They should be ignored.
Hmmm. Reforms to trust law would have a far more far-reaching and disruptive effect than mere changes in the tax code. In countries which use the English common law system (including the United States), trusts are a far more common form of property-holding than most people realise. The law of trusts is very complicated (as I know to my cost, since I have to take an exam in it next term), and you underestimate the importance of certainty whe it comes to property rights. A complex commercial economy can only function properly if proprietary rights are well-defined and do not suffer constant legislative interference.
(Also, bear in mind that from your perspective as an American, you wouldn’t necessarily be able to make the reforms you suggest at the federal level at all. Equity, trusts and property law are primarily an area governed by state, not federal, law.)
And whatever you were to enact in your own country, you can’t control the law of foreign jurisdictions. Like I said, I’d just set up a trust in Jersey or Bermuda or the Caymans, taking advantage of their lower tax regimes and friendlier legal systems. There are entire multi-national law firms and financial consultancies which are dedicated to doing this kind of thing.
So unless we’re talking about a scenario in which you were dictator (dictatrix?) of the entire world, I don’t see how your plan would be feasible. Bear in mind that I’m only a third-year law student with no interest in working in tax law; the very wealthy can afford to employ tax-specialist lawyers who know a hell of a lot more about this than I do. (I don’t know if there are any tax lawyers on Pharyngula who can add further detail to this – Bride of Shrek is a criminal barrister, IIRC, not a tax specialist, and I don’t know if any other lawyers post here regularly.)
ROTFL!
In hindsight, the possibility should have been fairly obvious, but it wasn’t. That’s how reality keeps being stranger than fiction.
Off-topic, but important: Dobson’s apparently been booted from Fuck-us on the Family.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/dobson_and_focus_on_the_family_less_than_amicable.php?ref=fpblg
No real hope that this will actually improve these crazys, but a man can dream.
David M.:
Especially while involved in a land war in Asia.
I’m listening to it now. Even though I don’t generally enjoy rock, or political songs, it’s actually… *looks over his shoulder nervously* not bad. :-)
That’s the second hippie peacenik song I’ve actually admitted to liking this week, along with this one, which I already posted further up the thread. I seem to be subconsciously lurching further and further left by the day. At this rate, I’ll have turned into a Trotskyist by the time I turn 21. :-)
(Meh. Maybe I should go and read a Tom Clancy novel to balance it out.)
I just noticed this (okay, I’m a little slow): we have retrograded IX on this itteration of the time-consumption machine. The last thread was XXXVI. This thread is XXVII. No more triple-X.
So tell me again why Arabic numerals are more useful for most applications than Roman numerals? I think I slept though that part of third grade.
David M: I shall endeavor (where possible) to avoid mixing sentence fragments (such as this one) with full sentences (This is a full sentence.) within one set of parentheticals. This is something that never comes up when I’m writing for the government.
#707 David Marjanović
Apropo of nothing, the NHM is next door to (and now linked with) the Science and the Geological Museums. Next door (if it weren’t for a road junction) is the V&A (Victoria and Albert Museum): “the world’s greatest museum of art and design” – according to the V & A.
When I was a mere slip of a lad there used to be a Commonwealth Institute Museum (if I’ve got the name correct) and the Aeronautical Museum. Imperial College with another museum area (IIRC) open to the public was a little further down the road.
Finally, there is The British Museum a short bus-ride away with its mummies, the Elgin Marbles, Assyrian monuments and the detritus of an Empire. In addition, there is the Rosetta Stone, key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphic writing and the Cyrus Cylinder; regarded by many as the world’s first documented charter of human rights. There is even a room (Room 26) devoted to North America.
I am aware of the concentration of the various Smithsonian* Museums in Washington and have visited (briefly) several of them. London and Washinton, arguably, have the 2 finest, concentrations of museums in the world.
* James Smithson being an English (by naturalisation) chemist and mineralogist who never visited the USA. When he died he left his estate, valued at more than $500,000, to the United States “to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.” Interesting English connection between the two concentrations.
Carlie,
You may be right, but that latest thread of theirs is making me ANGRY : to be told that I’m part of a community that somehow perpetuates the notion that rape is a joke or a game is profoundly insulting.
And when that happens, I find it difficult to ignore it.
Fuck Mississippi.
No thanks. It’s large, smelly, and full of alligators.
With consent, of course. Wouldn’t want the Colgate twins to think I’m advocating the sexual assault of a landmass.
Oh yeah. Counting Crows. Black Crowes are like a southern rock band, right?
All these corvidologically oriented band names. Can’t keep up.
Gads, take a day off to fight the hordes of cold germs and have 600 comments to read. Well, in no particular order:
“Pygmy Loris, I though that unicorns shit sunshine and rainbow!” Not sure of that, but I have reliable information that they fart glitter.
Walton, your new moniker is nice, and well earned, but the Dumpling one is also fine. I do not think you really need to enhance your gravitas.
Whoever mentioned it – not sure – but I used heroin in Vietnam and was able to stop with no effort. Never tried it since. Now, if I could only stop smoking tobacco.
Bilbo and others at the Intersuction – Please do go online and order a clue – Amazon has them cheap. Conflating words with physical harm is a perverse and slimy bit of mendacity. I would not piss on you and your ilk if you were on fire.
Terry Pratchett. Rereading my way through his books again, starting with Feet of Clay, my favorite. I prefer all the ones with Vimes and company. Fifth Elephant is not well known, but I think it is pure fun and Sybil comes off well in it. Thud is excellent, Guards! Guards! always makes me laugh. Nightwatch is just too sad in some ways. Love many others as well, Carpe Jugelem is fun. Pratchett character I most resemble? Foul ‘Ole Ron – not in hygiene but in mental acuity.
Royalty? Kings? Bring out the guillotine and have at them. Interesting that I am reading Feet of Clay at this time. Old Stoneface was right, but I extend it to all kings. Kneel neither to gods nor men, but only to speak to a child.
The race discussion gave me many things to read, but otherwise provided more heat than light. That said, thanks for things to read. Never have understood the race thing, at least since I grew up. There are lots of populations, one race – human. Of course, I am often accused of being too simple.
For the hell of it:
(Yes nurse – I’ll take my meds now)
I know, me too – I’m even commenting over there (ewwwww). I have half a mind to think that the only reason Sheril posted it at all was that the page hits from the other post had died down and they wanted another jolt. I guess I meant ignored in anything of actual “substance” they want to try and engage people with. Kind of like how I think people ought to treat Palin, and Donoghue, and etc. One of the biggest problems we have in society at large is that we’re just not willing enough to shun people who are willfully ignorant. “Oh, you said that? Then obviously you have nothing of substance to contribute, and your 15 minutes of fame are now OVER.” If I only had a stack of magic cards with that written on it I could hand out and have it stick…
More hell
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/11/vatican_exorcist/
#scio10 aftermath: Continuing thoughts on what civil engagement could mean, online or offline.
One of the greatest songs ever written, in not one but two awesome versions:
Judy Garland
Eva Cassidy
Ok, I just have to repost this comment by Kwok at Int for hilarity’s sake. In response to Brownian, who joked about Kwok having to pull out his autographed McCourt texts to comment:
“I’ve actually pulled out my autographed books by Carl Zimmer, E. O. Wilson, and especially, Stephen Jay Gould (No need to pull out those signed by Frank, though I will say that I once played a practical joke on Gould which benefitted Frank and his third wife, a publicist, who once appeared on a panel with Gould.).”
I am snort-laughing here. Kwok almost managed to make a good self-deprecating joke, only to pull out a fail at the last minute by adding the parenthetical phrase. He just can’t help it.
here’s a third version:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3wner_israel-kamakawiwo-ole-somewhere-ove_music
Update on the homophobes in Mississippi. This could get interesting.
:-)
Oh, I don’t like it as music. But, first, it’s not meant to be beautiful, and here it’s really the lyrics that count.
This isn’t to say, though, that it’s impossible to combine a beautiful tune with this kind of lyrics. The effect can be rather snarky. I offer the good old French Ah, ça ira, ça ira, ça ira ! as a prime example.
Yeah, by those who read the blatantly fake translation, as explained in Wikipedia and elsewhere, with transcription and translation of the full text. Thanks for making me aware of the cylinder, I had no idea about it…
Carlie: Hey! Don’t knock parentheticals (you can knock (to your hearts content) what is inside them, but I (personally) love (though not as much as I love (((Wife)))) the things).
Don’t worry, imabilly, I love parentheticals with a secret unspoken passion that cannot be denied. It was the substance within that doomed Kwok.
iambilly (865), it’s not the existence of the parenthetical, it’s the CONTENT. Were you here for that whole debacle? Kwok’s a compulsive name-dropper. At first it sounded like he was making fun of himself, but then he dove right back in.
Yes – that one is my fave.
iambilly, your parenthetical remarks don’t invariably contain some kind of special note about your eternally amazing social contacts (and that reminds me of how I was vacationing with the Dawkins last month after I visited the reunion of my high school class which was, of course, from the very prestigious…. etc.)
Walton,
You still aren’t getting me. I’m talking about a massive overhaul of the tax system. Elimination of off-shore tax shelters is one of the top items on the agenda. That’s why I said we need to close loopholes in the system. Again, you’re not thinking grand enough. We need to eliminate inherited wealth. I’m not a policy wonk or a politician, but these are the kinds of things I would support doing.
Indeed, Walton, you’re decidedly not thinking grand enough here. these ideas we’re batting around? they’re basically “how to rebuild the world from scratch, after The Revolution” (imagine post-war Germany, if you must have real-world examples). or at least, they’re “this is where we want to end up. now, how do we get there?” sort of ideas. just getting stuck with the thought that it would be difficult is annoying and counterproductive. All significant changes to society seemed impossible before they were actually achieved.
I’m probably going to regret this but…
What exactly do you mean here?
We do?
How? By invading them? :-)
Or is having no Head of State a viable alternative? Could we do without a figurehead representing us? I wouldn’t get rid of the Royals to replace them with a President, but get rid of them and not replace them? Perhaps that’s the way to go. – Usagichan
Yes, I’ve long advocated that. In the UK, the Speaker of the House of Commons could take over duties like inviting X to form a government, and we could have an official host(ess) to welcome visiting dignitaries.
As for inheritance/wealth taxes – the first step would be an international agreement to abolish all tax havens. In the case of the UK, we could start this all by ourselves: the Channel Islands and Isle of Man have battened on us long enough – invasion now! There’s a war we could actually win!
They are sovereign dependencies of the Crown. The Queen can’t declare war on herself. :-)
Admittedly, it would be a very short war, owing to the fact that the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man have no militaries of their own and are entirely reliant on the UK for defence.
Not possible, unless the “tax havens” themselves agreed. Some of the “tax havens” are sovereign countries – Liechtenstein and Monaco, for instance. (Switzerland is sometimes considered a tax haven, too, though less so than in the past.) In international law, and accepted norms of civilised international conduct, we have no right to interfere in the internal financial policies of an independent foreign state.
There are other “tax havens” which are British overseas territories (Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Gibraltar, and so on). These territories have their own legislatures and governments, but the Queen, with the advice of the Privy Council, does technically retain the right to legislate for them and to override local legislation. So the UK government could abolish several tax havens if it really wanted to. However, to impose a new tax policy on a self-governing territory by fiat (and destroy its economy in the process) would be incredibly illiberal, and I hope you wouldn’t advocate this.
What you could do as a national government, if you wanted to, would be to place restrictions on the ability of companies incorporated overseas to trade in your country, unless they pay corporation taxes in your country. (In the UK this would be illegal as regards other EU Member States, but legal as regards any other country.) I’m not at all advocating this, but it’s the easiest means I can think of to achieve your desired goal.
It would be extremely difficult to eliminate off-shore tax shelters. Among other things, how do you differentiate between investing in a foreign corporation and depositing in a foreign bank? I own stock in a Nigerian company.* My dividends are sent to me via electronic transfer from a bank in Lagos. My investment is not a tax shelter but how does a cursory glance by a tax auditor determine it’s not?
*It’s a legitimate company, not an internet scam.
HAHAHAHA! That is beyond awesome. It almost feels like the entire internet has been waiting for some one to say that and not be talking about a scam.
Rev,
In our current culture, inherited wealth amounts to inherited status. Eliminating the ability of individuals to leave vast amounts of wealth to their heirs would leave a fundamentally more just society. No one should be able to inherit enough wealth that they can simply live off of investments the previous generation made.
#858
Someome disagrees, although he doesn’t want to do anything about it.
SC, if you’re around:
Are you planning on going to the following Roy/Chomsky talk at MIT, on April 2?
My wife and I are thinking of checking it out: I figured you’d be interested too. Apologies if you already knew about this months ago, or something.
David sez I’m supposed to blogwhore, so he doesn’t feel too lonely over there :-p
P.S. I suck at blogwhoring
I know somebody linked this already, or else how did I find it? But still, this can’t be repeated often enough. Or maybe it can:
Bacon-grease Jesus!!!
Hey, guys, Jadehawk is
BLOGWHORING!
So go check out her blog.
Ol’Greg and Sgt. Obvious: I know. I looked at the namedrop. I was just objecting to the association of parentheticals with the dropping of such dreck (which reminds me, I was just talking with Gregory Peck and he agreed).
oh yeah, and on a different note, Scarleteen is doing a survey on attitudes about casual sex. go forth and contribute to the sex-ed of American teenagers here (sorry for the indirect link, but direct ones for some reason aren’t working too well)
Jadehawk is back. I must therefore mention that the curator I borrowed the casts from has most exquisite canines.
Sounds like a good idea.
(And a lot more feasible than the Tobin tax, which would put a heavy lid on bubbles and crashes alike, but would probably need to be introduced by the entire world on the same weekend.)
Have you stopped dealing with Prof. Charles Soludo yet???
That’s not quite the right term. Meatspace is where I feel lonely. :-)
Falling asleep while cooking something? That’s the miracle.
And why does the poor guy still not use a teflon pan? Was this a sign that he should buy one?
The image is very impressive, but this one is better still. (Except that I wonder if it actually shows Edward Drinker Cope, my academic great4-grandfather if I’m counting correctly.)
I’m still waiting for that paper (and photographic evidence, and a live specimen or two… but casts might do in a pinch) analyzing the prevalence of prominent canines among paleontologists…
:-D :-D :-D
I’ll attend this meeting before the dig. I might not manage to take casts, but gathering data should at least be feasible.
I don’t really have anything to say about the preceding comments. I just wanted to feel like I’m part of something … big.
So I thought I should comment here before the post is closed and the numbers set back to 1.
Oh no, blogwhoring…*clutches pearls*
(home computer, < 5 second load)
‘TIS CALLED JADEHAWK A WHORE I’M TELLING SEED.
We need to eliminate inherited wealth.
Pygmy Loris, of even a greater concern for me is the elimination of inherited poverty.
#837
No not like the USA (unless the USA abolishes the office of President). I mean leaving the political system in the UK (or any other Country where Good Queen Bess is currently Head of State) as it is (note functioning perfectly well without a president), and just getting rid of the position of Head of State. If the UK doesn’t need a King/Queen, why should it need some politicised substitute?
But the numbers only seem to get reset. In reality, the Count goes on and on and on
32978
(33333 coming up, maybe tomorrow!)
Janine,
Oh my, yes! I should have said so. Eliminating poverty, in general and the inherited form, is an immediately pressing need. Eliminating inherited wealth is a more long term goal/ideal.
speaking of the dig… any news as to when we can sign up for it? I really need to book my flight soon…
And the count goes on
All together now: Well, shit.
Court upholds ‘under God’ in Pledge of Allegiance.
So you say. All I know is the numbers I see on the page.
and with such idiotic reasoning, no less. this is right up there with “a cross is not a symbol of christianity”
*facepalm*
All together now: Well, shit.
In the immortal words of Michael Newdow:
“Oh man, what a bummer.”
the reasoning behind the court’s decisions were specious at best.
and more to facepalm about: Oklahoma opts out of Federal anti hate crime laws
Not yet. I’ll ask tomorrow. However, given the fact that nobody else can have signed up yet either, I’m sure you can book whichever flights you like and just tell me about it later. You prefer the slot with the last two weeks of July, right?
‘TIS CALLED JADEHAWK A WHORE I’M TELLING SEED.
You do and I’ll give you a splintered broomstick or a rusty knife, umm, somewhere.
Was there ever a more dynamic performer than Sonny Bono?
Ever?
yes. but I don’t want to book flights before I know for sure when and if this will happen, because this requires serious re-arranging of my original travel plans. I want to have the option of reverting back to the original plan if this doesn’t work out for some reason.
Just caught up on Knockgoats @ 875
That’s exactly what I meant – do away with the whole institution of Head of State.
Also, I would love to do away with the concept of inheritance, but as Walton has been pointing out the rich have a knack of getting around anything that limits them from passing on their wealth. Short of eliminating the concept of personal wealth altogether its hard to see a structure that couldn’t be circumvented. Replace cash with a personal credit system where value can be earned and spent but not transferred? Hm, seems a little too SciFi for me.
Scientology!!!
(Which reminds me… I haven’t headdesked enough yet today.)
New ways in which stupidity can burn. Hooraaaaaay.
It’s really hard to imagine that it won’t. People who weren’t even students have got in simply because they knew someone who was one (or perhaps that wasn’t even the reason); and while I’ve previously had occasional trouble finding a place, that was because I only found out about the dig in May or even June.
Again, I’ll ask tomorrow, but I really think you don’t need to worry at all.
Oh, hey you, we won’t be able to watch any football together then !!
(I’m flying back on the 11th of July)
Off to lunch, then Pharyngufest, I’m already tired, not much sleep, and stomach seems to have turned into some sort of chemistry lab, with waves of toxic things welling up my gullet every now and then, I think I need a doctor.
The current Intersucktion
train wreckthread (which now, for my sins, bears several of my comments under my nom de blog of Pope Maledict 666) is beginning to resemble the case of the Danish cartoons.The rusty knife comment in question probably wouldn’t have been noticed by SK unless she voraciously reads Pharyngula (which I doubt she has time to!), so the fact that it was drawn to her attention is rather like the mischievous imams who not only circulated the cartoons months after their initial publication, but also “sexed them up” by adding several more offensive pictures that were not part of the original dozen images.
(The comments that are being reproduced over at Intersucktion may be being taken totally out of context, rather than manipulated to make them appear worse than they actually are, but they are still a misrepresentation of the general tenor of Pharyngula).
(More *headdesking*. And 33,000 comments ahoy!)
The original batch from bilbo actually was manipulated to make them appear worse than they were, even on top of contextual issues. The changes were subtle, but they were there (and also made it nigh impossible to be absolutely sure which comments he was referring to, in some cases). Without exception, the changes served to make the comments seem more personal or directed, instead of mere rhetorical flourishes.
I’m beginning to wonder if that thread SK put up at the in-tard-sector is really designed to start garnering sufficient whiny complaint status to actually give a slap to PZ from seed.
It would be entirely petty revenge for PZ’s correct demolishment of not only their latest book, but their entire stance. So, IOW, to be expected.
any takers on that idea?
MrFire, if you can bring in an mp3 recorder or something like that, I would be incredibly grateful.
Ichthyic, it wouldn’t surprise me at all, so no bet.
I think I need a doctor.
get in line, bub.
;)
Was there ever a more dynamic performer than Sonny Bono?
Ever?
Yes, best takedown of a snow-covered pine tree by a skier, EVER!
as an aside, his wife, Mary, took his congressional seat on his death, and still holds it to this day.
she just so happened to be my local congressperson when I lived back in the world.
Strangely, she is actually a BETTER legislator that Sonny ever dreamed of being. Then again, that still might not be saying much.
Actually, I have heard that Adam Duritz from the Black [Counting] Crow[e]s can also be a crabby dickwad…
I used to know his daddy and he sure could be. Maybe it’s inherited, like wealth.
[/kwokonnwitchabadself]
I must therefore mention that the curator I borrowed the casts from has most exquisite canines.
I’ve never heard even my dentist say anything quite that particularly kinky.
I’m trying to imagine whether a smear of Vegemite would make the old Host-sticking-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth thing better or worse.
I think the most parsimonious explanation for pretty much anything Sheril Kirshenbaum says, does, or posts is naivete.
I suspect she received some e-mails from the denizens and was quite sincerely shocked–shocked!–at the rough language misleadingly quotemined within.
That she herself just doesn’t get it (where ‘it’ could be any number of things) never even occurs to her as a possibility. People aren’t being nice! Her sorority sisters were always so nice!
Eliminating the ability of individuals to leave vast amounts of wealth to their heirs would leave a fundamentally more just society.
probably true, and yet it still grates on the idea of personal choice and all.
I know! How about we have a special Jeopardy show where the contestants would be primarily anyone directly related to the deceased, and the rest chosen by random. Then they could all compete for the money left by the deceased!
answers would be along the lines of important things to have knowledge of in order to be considered a truly worthy citizen, like knowledge of economics, science, politics, history, etc.
Who wouldn’t watch that?
Ha! Perfect. Uh, I mean….suck frosty balls, you fucking misogynist! You are dead to me!
I’ve noticed a disturbing lack of ability for readers here to be coherent and to follow a line of reasoning. For those who simply spew obscenities, please understand that does not mean you are right. For those who, like badger’s daughter, continue to accuse me of “blood on my hands” I reply simply. No one has died in my care this year. Last year I did see an end stage metastatic patient after her oncologist had told her to go home and die, but we (the oncologist and I) were able to maintain her for six months with aggressive supportive therapy. I don’t treat alone, people, I treat in conjunction with the local M.D.s
It is bizarre to me that your world is so black and white that you can’t understand that it is possible to treat alternatively using available evidence. Kel, OM, pretends to give me a chance and then decides that it is impossible for me to have any supportive studies of merit. Caine can’t even follow the thread, where I did look at Andreas’ site and gave my response.
Lynn, OM, in comment #510, does actually do basic research and find my replies (Thank you, Lynn!) But my previous doggerel was aimed at finding a person on this blog who is qualified to make a determination about the relative quality of a Cochrane Database meta-analysis. I completely understand disregarding alt. med. journal articles, but I didn’t supply that. What I supplied was Cochrane, the last word in evidence. If you all are going to disregard Cochrane, fine, what is the standard of evidence-based medicine? And don’t tell me to read that National Enquirer rag of the skeptics, or I’ll tell you to go read any of the dozens of pro-alt.med. mags on the marketplace.
Finally, I am on this blog because A) some of you might actually be human beings and B) many of you are guilty of a mob mentality in falsely accusing me of censorship and have spread that lie all over the internet. I need to understand what causes that kind of thoughtless hatred.
Well, the other thing is, who decides what’s “vast”? Do you wish to confiscate the piddling amount I will be able to leave to my daughter? Assuming you don’t, who draws the line, and where?
Ah, the Quackster is back with more nonsense. If the Quacker finally understand he has nothing cogent to offer to this blog of skeptics, he would achieve the necessary STFU. What a lose, and I pity his
clientsvictims. I hope they sue his ass for everything he has when his malpractice is sued in court.I think the most parsimonious explanation for pretty much anything Sheril Kirshenbaum says, does, or posts is naivete.
yeah, you’re probably right.
Bah, that should be what a loser. Becoming an honest pickpocket or house burglar would be step up in morality for that idjit.
Sure – I don’t own an mp3 recorder as far as I know, but plenty of people I know should, and I’ll see what I can get my hands on. Also, just so you know, we’re still waiting for confirmation that we have actually seats for it :-
I’ve noticed a disturbing lack of ability for readers here to be coherent and to follow a line of reasoning
translation:
“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”
Um, sorry Quackalicious, but I am not interested in anything you have to say. So I will continue to disregard your posts. You are but a nonentity who passes through. I will trust Rorschach and other trained medical professionals before I trust you.
And, yes, I know enough to get multiple opinions on these matters.
Paul @ 914, you are probably right – I might have been bending slightly backwards to make my point.
Anyway, I’m just about to head off to Chloé’s join the Pharyngulate horde – I’ll be wearing a mathematical T-shirt as an appeal for rationality, and “keeping it real”. See some of you soon ;-)
Assquack:
Translation: Waaaaaaaaah, you don’t believe my line of bullshit!
Quackfraud, you are not a good person. You are not a doctor. You are not a healer. You are a lying con man with intentions to defraud and do harm. Fuck off into a vat of blood.
oh, my.
I’m not quite certain whether that might,um, violate (horrid word) teh Borg’s Terms of Service.
I’d have to know what kind of vat.
Mmmmmm, how about a wine vat?
I find all of your potty mouths offensive and disturbing.
I’m calling all of your mothers.
the last two weeks of July are after the 11th, in case you haven’t noticed :-p
I won’t be visiting just for the dig. I’ll be there for at least half the worldcup, too, so there will be enough chances to watch a game together, assuming your busy schedule allows for it :-)
To the corner with you too, Snitchy.
Oh? I have a whole lot of bacon…
You say this and yet we’re the disgusting ones?
You don’t even see people who disagree with you as human? I’ve been quite nice to you but your nasty nature is showing. You do nothing but take credit you don’t deserve and lie. Sadly that is all too human a frailty. The less I am like you the better I feel about myself as a human.
Really? And what are you? Jesus fucking Christ of False Medical Prophets?
Get a therapist then to talk with you about your issues of projection and entitlement. It’s not thoughtless hatred, sir, it is very thoughtful.
ooooh, want….
But to be honest quack, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it hatred. I really don’t hate you at all. Rather I simply find you unpleasant and dishonest.
Ol’Greg:
It’s not hatred, either. At least not on my part. Contempt, yes. Disgust, yes. The drive-by theists use the same tactic “oh, you’re so full of hate!” in an attempt to use the persecution card. Assquack is the same.
see, this is why I got myself parents who don’t speak English :-p
OK so I have a question for youse that knows how the tubes works n shit:
I just happened to glance at the recent comments list when a chunk o spam got posted to a four-year-old dead thread.* How? It’s a software bot with a yahoo login that finds random comment threads? Or it’s a person at an old Gateway someplace placing the shit by hand? Or what?
*check out the OP, btw; it’s the original PYGMIES + DWARFS cartoon, a piece of deep Pharyngula history.
Janine (#894)
It would help if we all (as a culture) stopped pretending that people are poor because they’re failures and people are rich because they’re virtuous. Just because life isn’t fair doesn’t mean people deserve what they get and vice versa.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Rev. BigDumbChimp (#936)
That reminds me of the time my dad threatened to wash out my mouth with soap. Rather than being intimidated, I was intrigued, and went into the bathroom to sample all the varieties. The oatmeal almond soap was the best.
Quackalicious (#924)
That’s because you’ve got your brain set to Dumber-than-a-dog-turd-ese, and we’re speaking Way-smarter-than-you-ese. I suggest downloading the current service pack at fuckoffalready.net so you can keep up.
The Quack is kinda right on this. While he crowed that the guy’s blog was temporarily shut down as it happens another quack was the one responsible.
This isn’t the first time the Quack has played the martyr card. He accused PZ and the rest of us of threatening violence against his putrid body. This accusation was laughed at then and the Quack dropped it.
Quack, let me put this to you quite simply. We don’t hate you. You’re too insignificant to rate hatred. You get scorn, derision, even contempt, but hatred? Don’t give yourself airs. Sneering and mockery are not hatred.
Sven,
That’s a good question. I would say the legislature, but we all know how good the rich are at getting bills passed that protect them. OTOH, too many people think that they will eventually have tons of money to be able to trust the public.
If you’re really leaving a “piddling” amount, then no, I don’t have a problem with that. It’s leaving millions that bothers me.
I can’t remember if you’re USAian or live in one of the wonderful places that doesn’t bankrupt the old for medical care. I don’t expect to inherit much from my parents because I assume medical bills will eat up most of what my brother and I would inherit before they die. A friend of mine recently lost her mother (father died a few years ago). The bills for the nursing home, surgery, etc. ate up nearly all of the estate. She and her two sisters inherited a few sentimental things and they kept the house since their parents “sold” it to them about 10 years ago. Every last dime went to medical and nursing home bills.
Right. Hate requires effort. You are too much of a woo soaked loser for hate. We also sincerely think you are harming people with your woo. So you should retire from victimizing them and find more honest employment. I have been giving you suggestions in that area for a while now…
Problem is, you and all other woomeisters fail to produce that evidence.
Another interesting topic detour…
I’d never heard of half-male/half-female birds, but apparently it’s not uncommon, and scientists at University of Edinburgh Roslin Institute have “solved the puzzle” of how this can happen.
BBC article with photos of male/female chicken (I would have thought it was a photoshop job if not on BBC):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/8561814.stm
Original media release from Roslin – the study will be in Nature:
http://www.roslin.ac.uk/news/2010/03/10/scientists-solve-puzzle-of-chickens-that-are-half-male-and-half-female/
I love science! And I love this blog. I have a huge list of things I should be doing. Instead, here I am on a daily basis, spending hours reading Pharyngula as my heroes defend against woo, religiousity, small-minded bigots, et al. I post very rarely, because there is almost always someone who says exactly what I think, says it more clearly than I could, and with references!
(Thanks, Janine, for re-posting guidance.)
Quite.
But then, I figure if someone’s spent a whole lotta time lying to the gullible and to himself to keep his rent paid, he’ll do what he’s always done to avoid facing that ugly little fact…
Which is, like all men of no spine and even fewer scruples, he’ll take the path of least resistance. Anything to evade anything so potentially painful as genuine reflection on the distinctly scummy way he makes a living. So… all these people on the web find ‘im generally disgusting, wrinkle their noses when he insists on hangin’ round trying to justify the unjustifiable as he’s pretty much always done?
Well, they’re just ‘thoughtless’, that’s all. Hateful. As to why, let us now make a great show of injured bewilderment on that, and one of trying to work out why–perhaps, later, we can embroider this masterpiece with a nice little story about how all these poor souls were beaten as children by homeopaths… Or perhaps, Big Pharma™ is putting an eeevil tincture in the water that so leads them into this regrettable error of hating little ole well-meaning him… Yeah, that’s the ticket…
… See also every religious asswipe who’s ever, likewise, been called on his bullshit, and responded, ‘Why are you people so full of hate?’… I mean, wow… I’m filin’ that one under ‘original’, I am…
(/… In unrelated news, there’s rock warnings all over the fucking mogul runs at Tremblant. And that could easily earn my hatred… Soooo… dear AGW denialists: eat shit and die. Thankew kindly.)
iambilly: And in uniform, alcohol is allowed if I am, say, eating dinner or lunch (not sure about breakfast). Not at a bar.
Couldn’t you turn your shirt inside-out?
OK, OK, yeah: simplistic. Maybe one ’em Tyvek suits folded up in your carry-on.
thanks suzie, I didn’t know about this either. sounds interesting! (and the pox on the lozerz who say there’s no science in the comments)
“All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” – Samuel Beckett
Um.
Uh
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20000176-504083.html
I think the venue choice was poor but A+ for the effort.
AJ Milne:
One of those types just did that very thing.
Searching through the Archives of The Thread, I see that I first started “translating” in late May 2009, and RogerS only stuck around until about the end of June, really (with one later appearance to apologize for implicitly accusing Rev BDC of coprophagia). In that time, he showed no sign of being moved from his typically smug, snide, contemptuous, fanatical presuppositions.
I am not sure that all of the comments by RogerS on the “Ken Ham, baffled” thread are by AlanC. I can see them trading off, or AlanC composing parts of some comments to be posted by RogerS.
But the point is not to make a dent. The point is to amuse myself, and hopefully others. Making a dent would be a totally unexpected bonus.
==============
I don’t typically reference acts of violence, but in solidarity with the Pharynguloid horde, I include the following in this comment:
A rusty halberd. A bumpy shillelagh. A running chainsaw. A dead moose. A kilogram of nails. Spiked barbed nunchucks. A clown shoe. A liquefaction plume. A depleted-uranium shell. And a gynandromorph chicken in a pine tree.
What they are for is left as an exercise for any disingenuous lying arsehole quote-mining false-witness-bearing Googling or lurking trolls.
Owlmirror:
I’m afraid you’re getting too intellectual for the disingenuous lying arsehole quote-mining false-witness-bearing Googling or lurking trolls.
that sentence brought to you by the tune of “the twelve days of christmas”
Ron Sullivan, thanks for the comments on my photos. I replied. :) I haven’t updated for ages, it’s such a pain in the ass on dial-up. I’ve been procrastinating on the updating until I can get a satellite connection as soon as snow is off the roof this year.
Fiiiiive Rusteeeee Kniiiiiiivvves….
Four dead moose
Three clown shoes
Two bags of rottweilers
And a gynadndropmorph chicken in a Piiiine Treeeeeeeeeeeee
Ah, I love the classics.
Excellent.
Confusion on our enemies!
*glug*
Way too obscure to be quotemined by our trollish friends from the Dungeon, not enough expletives…
Sven, how long since one of these endless thread installments topped a thousand posts? I thought it was some time ago that PZ had dialled back these snippets to about 666 posts. (And 33333 isn’t far off…)
I attribute this lull in posting frequency more to the GAC than to the creeping weight of this thread.
Of more weight, in local news:
Australian of the Year supports Senate Scientology probe
(audio link)
The Scientologists’ defense (00.26 from the end): “I’d say it’s the wrong way for them to go; they’re getting into the field of religion, and they’re in the field of mental health.”
(my transcription)
AAAAaaaaAAAAAaaa!
I just mindlessly updated firefox, and now my Text Formatting Toolbar doesn’t work anymore! *grumble*
wow, slow night.
What, are the Aussies busy or something?
Doggone, I hate “scientific” press releases.
Take the BBC piece on the half-cock linked @#552 (thanks, Suzi!).
*eyeroll*
Sven, I see you hypothesis is not inconsistent with mine @966.
This needs analysis from an expert; there’s only *one* expert in the world regarding Endless Thread Studies.
Ahem.
Knockgoats: The closest thing to the constitutional system you describe is found in Botswana and South Africa. Those countries essentially have a Westminster-style parliamentary system, like the UK, in which the government is drawn from the legislature. In those countries, the President is elected by the legislature and is normally head of the largest party in the legislature, and functions in essentially the same way as the Prime Minister in the UK, Canada and other Commonwealth realms, but also performs the duties of a head of state.
But in South Africa, there have recently been calls to separate the functions of head of state and head of government, and introduce a ceremonial President like those of other Commonwealth republics. Make of this what you will.
I personally think you’re being bizarrely hyperbolic in your criticisms of the British monarchy. The major characteristic of the British monarchy, like most British political institutions, is that it adapts to serve the country’s changing needs. And it will continue to adapt. After all, the Queen is already head of state of 16 very different, diverse countries around the world, each with different political needs and socio-cultural values. If the British constitutional order changes – which I think it should, in some respects – then the monarchy will adapt and continue. It will certainly survive the disestablishment of the Church of England, the introduction of a constitutional bill of rights, and the abolition of the prerogative powers, should these changes be undertaken in the future.
The only thing that could destroy the monarchy is if a future monarch disregards convention and abuses the position as a political soapbox. I don’t think that’s likely to happen.
Walton (my emphasis),
Your apparent certitude is disturbing.
I would’ve written “almost certain to survive a disestablishment”.
The major characteristic of the British monarchy, like most British political institutions, is that it adapts to serve the country’s changing needs. -Walton
Tosh, Walton, absolute tripe. It adapts to serve the elite’s needs. It casts a quasi-religious glow over their greed and power-hunger. Did you notice, by the way, that after Liz Windsor, the richest person in the UK is the Duke of Westminster? There will be plenty of other aristocrats among the top 100, too.
I’d say you & I just analyzed it. Consensus!
cue the deniers…
I have a better idea. We forget about the Queen for a minute and abolish the aristocracy.
They are the ones who freeload on a whole set of outdated ideas and when, from time to time, we have had to take action to keep the monarch in order they are the ones most likely to get in the way and/or slow the process unbearably. Think 1649, 1688, 1936 – 1215 if you want – but there are other examples.
Even better, we could get rid of all styles and titles. You would only get to use a designation – Doctor, Professor, Prime Minister – which you had actually earned.
We might then be on the way to an egalitarian society.
As I’ve said, that kind of head of state is only interesting when it’s put at the end of a stick. Same is valid for those of the viceroys.
As Diderot said, the country’s needs will best be served when the queen is strangled with the entrails of the last priest…
OK, I’ll be the denier: last night’s posting rate is right in line with the previous two nights’ on this subThread. Respectively:
7pm to 1am (blogtime): 38, 53, 69 comments
1am to 7am: 20, 27, 19 (so far, with 45 min left).
I stand self-corrected.
Walton seems to be channelling Lord Creep On All Foursies.
Must belatedly close thread. Go here now.