Comments

  1. Rev. BigDumbChimp says

    I see FTB is still sputtering along even on the new server.

    Time to start adding some crack to the Hamster’s daily intake.

  3. says

    @ chigau, OggVader,Ms. Daisy Cutter (previous TET)

    Thank you.

    I went out to celebrate with teh Spawn and Theaphontes – sitting under the umbrella on the side of the street in the pouring rain and smoking a shisha. Got a phonecall from South Africa to say I am now a Great-Relative to Phoenix Phontes.

    @ pelamun

    [Zwarte Piet] Even though my own regard for Zwarte Piet is very positive, I am more than happy to see him transform into Groene Piet if he in any way offends anyone. I am sure we can keep the tradition going in another way if push comes to shove.

    Fantasy is good, especially for kids (such as I). Also I think it good that such a positive (at least in my experience) role model such as Zwarte Piet should be so welcomed into Dutch society. Piet is in principle both good (bringing presents to good children) and bad (kidnapping the bad children and carrying them of to Spain). The “bad” part lends frisson, but in reality is never carried out – even in jest.

    I don’t know why there are Surinamers complaining about a Berber (Zwarte Piet is North African in the current tale) being depicted here. My support of Zwarte Piet is as a positive black role model. On the other hand, my experience of this is limited. Possibly there have been similar characters that have been less positively depicted. If this is the case then it is certainly time to re-evaluate the whole fairytale.

    @ Caine

    Being insulted by Justic(i)ar is nothing but a backhanded compliment. His comments are a ringing endorsement when one considers it as coming from the other side of the looking glass.

    PS: What has happened to teh rodent updates?

  5. says

    KG (last thread): Yes, I will freely admit that my views two years ago or so were a perfect example of the kind of simplistic “vulgar libertarianism” that Carson was criticizing. That kind of libertarianism (mainstream modern-day American libertarianism) is really just conservatism fluffed up with some extra rhetoric. They refuse to recognize the amount of coercive violence that goes into creating and sustaining the existing economic order, and the degree to which corporations and the rich owe their power and privilege to state coercion; and they pretend that private property rights are “natural rights”, rather than privileges granted by the state and enforced by state violence. This leads them to label any coercive violence used in defence of the existing economic order as “self-defence”, while condemning any that challenges the existing economic order. In effect, that makes them consistent defenders of the privilege of the elite (or, at least, of a particular section of the elite), hence why they fit in so well with conservatives.

    I still have a lot of philosophical sympathy with certain more radical brands of individualist anarchism, though – largely because I don’t believe that the nation-state wields “legitimate authority”, or that there is any fundamental moral difference between state violence and private violence. After all, in their origins, states are just very well-organized protection rackets, built on the use or threat of force against those who refuse to comply. (This isn’t to deny that states can and do do good things, and that some states are less coercive than others; but that doesn’t change their basic nature. In the end, the defining feature of the state is its ability to enforce obedience through violence.) I’m therefore consistently unimpressed with arguments based on “national sovereignty”, “national security”, “patriotism”, “civic duty”, and so on; all of this is just obfuscatory bullshit, designed to dress up the realities of violence in pretty rhetoric. There is no such thing as a “legitimate” state, nor do I owe any moral obligation of obedience or allegiance to a state simply because I happen to have been born on the part of the Earth’s surface over which it claims control. I certainly don’t believe that a state can demand that its subjects sacrifice life or freedom in order to protect the state’s interests; hence why I strongly oppose conscription and any other form of compulsory service. (It also follows that all distinctions based on nationality are essentially arbitrary and unjust. Just as we can look back on the feudal system, in which one’s rights and duties depended on whether one was born in a town or in the countryside and whether one’s father was a serf or a freeman, and view it as ridiculous, arbitrary and oppressive, so too I suspect that future generations will look back on our system of nationality-based border controls as similarly arbitrary and oppressive.)

    (I realize none of this analysis appears to fit very well with my monarchism. But I’m still working that part out.)

    That said, I’m not an individualist anarchist in practical terms, because I don’t think it’s actually possible or desirable to abolish the nation-state, nor do I think a genuinely non-coercive society is an achievable goal. More realistically, if we dismantled the nation-state, the likelihood is that the power-vacuum would just be filled by the local gang of armed thugs, as has happened with al-Shabab in Somalia, for instance. As long as there is a scarcity of resources, people will fight over how to distribute them. (For this reason, Carson’s desired individualist anarchist society might work if the world had seven million inhabitants instead of seven billion, meaning that there would be more than enough land and resources for everyone without any need for competition or coercion. But that isn’t reality, and will never be so, unless we ever figure out how to colonize other planets.) So we have to put up with the nation-state as a fact of life; but I argue that we should try to weaken its security-industrial complex as much as possible.

    (Addendum: After spending some time writing this post, I’ve spent even longer desperately trying to post it. FTB appears to be borked.)

  6. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Is anyone at FtB aware of how bad it is trying to load this thing? It’s been going on for 24 hours at least and no one has even acknowledged they’re aware there’s a problem.

  7. Janine, Clueless And Reactionary As Ever, OM, says

    Josh, I know things are bad but I do not want to clutter up the place with very obvious complaints and no offers of solutions.

  14. Muse (evidently temptress of Pharyngula women) says

    Okay – so as I tried to say before everything broke – Caine, I’m watching Top Chef.

  15. chigau (む) says

    So this is FtB’s fault?
    I thought it was my crappy new netbook with it’s crappy Wndws.

  18. Pteryxx says

    random linkdrops, because ♥ :

    Paramilitary policing of OWS

    Discussion including former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper:

    We were using military tactics. I authorized the use of chemical agents on nonviolent offenders. I thought I had good justification at that time. I did not. The police officer in me was thinking about emergency vehicles, fire trucks, aid cars being able to get through a key intersection. The police chief in me should have said, “This is wrong,” and vetoed that decision. I will regret that decision for the rest of my life. We took a military response to a situation that was fundamentally nonviolent, in which Americans were expressing their views and their values, and used tear gas on them. And that was just plain wrong.

    And, Boingboing interviews the creator of yesterday’s 99% batsignal:

    Link to interview

    But we started thinking about creating a more unifying moment. A celebration of the birthday of Occupy Wall Street. Maybe taking the roadway and having lots of arrests might not be best thing. What if we took the pedestrian walkway, and gave out LED candles? We would give out 10,000 LED tea candles, a river of light streaming over the walkway.

    And a guy named Hero, who has been central to a lot of facets of the occupation since the beginning, turns to me and says, “We need a bat signal. The 99%.”

    hope NateHevens sees this. ~;>

  19. Carlie says

    I’m also watching Top Chef. I worry that Beverly is on track for a Seth-style breakdown.

    Wonderful World was the song I used to sing to my kids at bedtime, so it makes me misty. Interesting that the Muppets secularized the lyrics. Heh.

  20. lipwig says

    @ theophontes # 390 previous thread
    wow… didn’t ever imagine that I would see an arial of my home city linked to on this blog.. what year was that pic taken? Did you ever do the Duzi?

  22. Moggie says

    I think Louis Armstrong performing What a Wonderful World is one of the highpoints of human achievement. Not so sure about Rowlf, though.

  23. Father Ogvorbis, OM: Delightfully Machiavellian says

    While FtB was down (it was down, right? not just my computer?) I made a garlic bloomer. Nice loaf of bread — I actually was patient and let it rise fully.

  24. says

    I too am watching Top Chef.

    I worry that Beverly is on track for a Seth-style breakdown.

    The preview scenes seem to suggest it. I thought her “even though I’m a daughter” comment was terribly sad.

  27. Ms. Daisy Cutter says

    A post by a friend of mine that I think others here might appreciate: A field guide to the Pseudosopher.

    In addition to all that, Pseudosophers tend to pick certain types of online handles:

    • Those containing words like “reason” or “logic” or “objective” or “rational.” (*cough* “Random Reason” *cough”)
    • Phrases in Latin or Greek, to show off how learnèd they are.
    • Names of philosophers, politicians, theologians, fictional characters, or other personages exemplifying what the Pseudosopher admires. For example, “John Galt” is an extremely common one for lolbertarians.

  28. Sili says

    Personally, I think they have a limited point–the tribalism is a little thick around here too imo.

    I guess we could always talk about GMO, veganism and SSRIs for a bit.

  29. mck9 says

    Apropos of Thanksgiving:

    I have long had fantasies of being asked to say grace at a Thankgiving dinner. Solemnly would I intone (with details possibly altered according to place and circumstance):

    For that which we are about to receive, let us be truly grateful to those who have provided it: grateful to the farmers who grew the crops, and to the ranchers who tended the herds; grateful to the livestock who gave their lives that we might live, and to the slaughterhouse workers who dismembered them.

    Let us be grateful to the truckers and railroad workers who ferried our food across the continent, to the stock clerks who shelved it, and to the cashiers who rang it up.

    Let us also be grateful to the kitchen staff who prepared this meal, to the servers who set it before us, and to the underpaid wretches who will clean up the mess we leave behind.

    Let us indeed offer our gratitude to those who have earned it — and not to mythical magical beings who ain’t done squat.

    Alas, I don’t expect my fantasy ever to be realized. Perhaps someone else will get lucky.

  30. says

    Happy birthday, theophontes!

    ***

    I guess we could always talk about GMO, veganism and SSRIs for a bit.

    :D. After that, we could all sit around agreeing about animal rights and intellectual property.

  32. says

    Walton, interesting analysis. I hadn’t thought of the “natural rights” angle.

    **NEWS** I’ll be going to Denver for the long weekend so will be around Friday and Saturday and Sunday a.m. Hoping for a drive in the mountains on Friday. Recommendations for cheap ‘n’ delicious restaurants, anyone?

    If anyone is still worrying about cat-fur… My cat is part Maine Coon with fine, aerostatic hair that floats indefinitely once separated from the cat. If the hair mats, I cut out the mat rather than trying to comb it. She hates regular brushes, combs, and grooming gloves but adores being brushed with a stiff plastic brush with widely spread teeth. For cats jumping on counters & tables; apparently they hate walking on aluminum foil, so that also keeps them off, especially combined with mousetraps for scary snapping sounds. For cat discipline in general, you can use a water pistol as long as you never let them see you using it. You must hit them from behind: once they realize it’s you, they will obey only when you’re around. It must strike them as Divine Justice.

    My guess about hairball food is that it is a little oilier than regular food, to help the hairballs keep moving.

  33. ahs ॐ says

    After all, in their origins, states are just very well-organized protection rackets, built on the use or threat of force against those who refuse to comply.

    And to hear Nietzsche tell it, morality itself is, in its origins, just a method of consolidating power and controlling other people.

    What if he’s right?

    Genetic fallacy is still fallacious.

    +++++
    For those having problems with FtB, anecdata: running NoScript and RequestPolicy with everything blocked, I’ve noticed no problems with FtB; pages load quickly, commenting is easy.

  34. cicely, Inadvertent Phytocidal Maniac says

    At last, the endless nightmare is over. Thread, sweet Thread!
    –

    Me too. The swelling is gone, but I now have a body wide rash and blisters all over.

    :( :( :(
    Very cautious and gentle *hugs*.
    Was this a salon job, or a do-it-yourself? And is there any difference, as far as potential allergic reactions go?
    –
    Merry Sun-circuiting, theophontes! :)
    –

    I’ll have to admit it, I’m looking forward to taking my niece to see the new Muppet Movie next week.

    I’m looking forward to taking me to see the new Muppet Movie. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until it hits the second-run theater.
    –
    –

    :D.After that, we could all sit around agreeing about animal rights and intellectual property.

    And animal property and intellectual rights, intellectual animals and property rights.
    :D :D
    –

  36. Squigit says

    Soooo glad FtB is back up. For a few minutes there, I thought I would have to be productive or something.

    Looks like we share a birthday, theophontes! So, happy birthday. :)

    In debates, he will resort to all sorts of fallacies while maintaining that, because he knows the names of those fallacies, he obviously cannot commit them;

    This drives me insane.

    *continues reading*

  38. says

    ChasIng jobs now. And while I know that being unemployed in the Netherlands is still often better than being employed in other parts of the world, it still sucks.

  42. Esteleth says

    Yay FTB is back up!
    The past two days have been writewritewrite for me.
    But!
    At T-14 days for my thesis defense, my presentation is DONE. My thesis has been okayed by my advisor. I have found someone to take over my lease after I move out.
    Oh, and I have tea. *sips* Ahh.

    I found a song! It’s about a particular variety of godbotherer: the kind who think they’re Jesus and hang out online. It’s called Go Away Godboy and is great.

  43. says

    SC:

    I thought her “even though I’m a daughter” comment was terribly sad.

    Oh gods, me too. It was terrible to hear her sincerely state that along with her hope of proving her worth.

    What did everyone think of the ‘you have to compete to make the final cut’ they did this season?

    Cicely:

    Was this a salon job, or a do-it-yourself? And is there any difference, as far as potential allergic reactions go?

    Did it myself, it wasn’t a permanent dye. One of the Clairol ones, lasts for 28 washes or so. It doesn’t make any difference at all, it’s the PPD (Para-phenylenediamine). Never had a problem with it before, but apparently, you can develop an allergy to it any ol’ time. I’m just hoping once I’m over this, I don’t develop the insane amount of cross-reactions to other stuff this can cause.

    Theophontes:

    What has happened to teh rodent updates?

    Sorry, sorry! A Gytha & Magrat (two more females) are on order, don’t know when we’ll get them. Esme has settled in nicely and has discovered *food!* in a big way. She’s growing. :) Peanut Butter is the most precious food of all, although she’s loving salad, broccoli, cauliflower, peas and corn too. Eggs are okay, but they have nothin’ on baked beans, which are delicious.

    Chas has become very fond of Esme (who knows her name, but quite likes her nickname, Monkey), they sleep together, he teaches her how to get into trouble and they have much fun chasing each other all over the place. Esme continues to work on her thieving skills, which are very good at this point. She’s particularly fond of flatware, spoons in particular.

  45. KG says

    There is no such thing as a “legitimate” state, nor do I owe any moral obligation of obedience or allegiance to a state simply because I happen to have been born on the part of the Earth’s surface over which it claims control. I certainly don’t believe that a state can demand that its subjects sacrifice life or freedom in order to protect the state’s interests; – Walton

    Well you’re right that there’s no objective sense in which you owe any such obligations; but neither is there any objective sense in which either the state, or other individuals, owes you freedom from coercion and violence.

  48. Sili says

    Also, the Oxford comma.

    Let’s stick to subject where there’s actually something to discuss.

    –o–

    I see neutrinos still appear to be breaking the speed limit.

    The magic word being appears.

    To repeat the lesson to my kids: We’re dealing with a measurement that’s very, very precise. Unfortunately we don’t have any idea how accurate it is.

  49. picool says

    @ the Laughing Coyote (previous thread)
    The forced equality story your referred to is by Kurt Vonnegut and can be found in Welcome to the Monkey House, although I can’t remember the name of the story itself.

    (Yay I helped :3)

  51. says

    Rolling Stone magazine featured a good look at economics, past and present. NPR’s Fresh Air podcast covered the story, and interviewed the author.

    Excerpt:

    Republicans are opposed to raising revenues by raising taxes, even on the wealthiest Americans, who have seen their taxes dramatically cut over the past 14 years.

    “Almost without exception, every proposal put forth by GOP lawmakers and presidential candidates is intended to preserve or expand tax privileges for the wealthiest Americans,” writes Rolling Stone political correspondent Tim Dickinson. “Most of their plans, which are presented as commonsense measures that will aid all Americans, would actually result in higher taxes for middle-class taxpayers and the poor.”

    [Tim Dickinson] explains that the top 400 taxpayers in the United States have seen their incomes increase threefold since 1997. In that same period, their tax rate has fallen by 40 percent.

    “Today, a billionaire in the top 400 pays an effective tax rate of about 17 percent,” he says. “That’s about 5 percentage points less than your average worker.”…
    The income of the wealthiest Americans has also increased. Dickinson writes that “since Republicans began their tax-cut binge in 1997, they have succeeded in making the rich much richer. While the average income for the bottom 90 percent of taxpayers has remained basically flat over the past 15 years, those in the top 0.01 percent have seen their incomes more than double, to $36 million a year.”…“The people at the very top of the income period are taking off like a rocket — $10,000 an hour raise for the people in the top .01 percent.”

    “Traditionally, Republicans cared deeply about fiscal balance,” he says. “So you fought over balance — and taxes were an otherwise uninteresting mechanism to pay the bills. And tax policy wasn’t meant to prod and stimulate the economy because prosperity came from the private sector. So the GOP focus on tax policy was not to give the economy a boost, but to find a nondestructive way to raise the revenue that [the government] decided it needed.”

    The biggest tax cut during that era, says Dickinson, was made by Democratic President John F. Kennedy. Republicans largely opposed it….

    Rolling Stone link.

  52. says

    TLC and others, that story about a society where everybody’s forced into being equal, is Harrison Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Or did somebody already point this out? I’m still catching up.
    ====
    Family member Ogvorbis, if you like the Dropkick Murphys, you’ll probably enjoy Flogging Molly as well. Knowing both bands, I prefer the latter.
    ====
    Sorry for leaving the Zwarte Piet discussion, I hope my comment #38 clarifies why. But to summarize my problem with Zwarte Piet, regardless the origins, it’s a stereotype of a black man, who is acting goofy at best and dumb at worst. I don’t think it’s racist on purpose, which makes it difficult to get the point across — people get really defensive: “I’m not a racist, so anything I do isn’t racist either.” Besides, they always know some black person who enjoys celebrating Sinterklaas, “so it isn’t racist.”
    ====
    Theophontes and Squigit, happy (possibly belated by now) birthday!

  53. says

    Speaking of good journalism in Rolling Stone, here’s a story by Matt Taibbi:

    Rick Perry: The Best Little Whore In Texas
    The Texas governor has one driving passion: selling off government to the highest bidder

    Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/rick-perry-the-best-little-whore-in-texas-20111026

    Excerpt:

    …In an era when there’s exponentially more money in politics than we’ve ever seen before, Perry is the candidate who is exponentially more willing than we’ve ever seen before to whore himself out for that money. On the human level he is a nonpersonality, an almost perfect cipher – a man whose only discernible passion is his extreme willingness to be whatever someone will pay him to be, or vote for him to be. Even scarier, the religious community around which he has chosen to pull his human chameleon act features some of the most extreme end-is-nigh nutcases in America, the last people you want influencing the man with the nuclear football. Perry is a human price tag – Being There meets Left Behind. And sometimes there’s nothing more dangerous than nothing at all….

  54. Dhorvath, OM says

    Strange Gods, err, scratch that, AHS, do you need some loaners? Middle fingers I mean.
    ___

    Trollishness,

    Is this a wanking reference? How heterophallonormative of you to assume that a troll is male.

    Because no one else could have sticky fingers after a wank?
    ___

    Alethea,

    Face it, having a shower is just so much less interesting than mining for flame crystals.

    I wouldn’t even accept that alone, but add partners to the mix, and I am all for the showers.
    ___

    Sally,

    People complimented me on the shape of my head, which was odd. And they wanted to “pet” me–literally, that was the word they used. Which was nice sometimes and annoying others.

    As someone who has frequently had a shaved head, this happens constantly. People seem to drop any sense of personal space once scalp is exposed. I know there are far more intrusive reasons to have unwanted contact, but it does seem pretty annoying.
    ___

    Theophontes and Squigit,
    Happy day. Hope it’s habit forming.
    ___

    Ms. DaisyCutter,
    Hah, very cute. And the article was well written too.

  55. says

    No slash, but IIRC, they both are more or less in the same situation. And I remember a Pharyngula slash thread back at sb.

  56. says

    What did everyone think of the ‘you have to compete to make the final cut’ they did this season?

    I didn’t like it after I got the impression that they had arrived thinking they were already “cheftestants,” and had probably told their family, friends, and coworkers that they had been selected. That seems unkind. It was also two full episodes, which was a bit much even though it was entertaining.

    (I’ve been saying for a long time that I’d love to see a Top Chef: Vegetarian – I really don’t understand why they would have vegetarian or vegan chefs even trying to compete. Even if they can get around their objections and make it through a round or two, there’s no way they’re going to last long. It’s just dumb.)

  57. says

    Happy birthday Squigit!
    ++++++++++++++++
    I use the Oxford comma sometimes and sometimes I don’t. It depends on the flow, purpose, and grouping that suggests to me whether to use it or not.

  58. says

    Well you’re right that there’s no objective sense in which you owe any such obligations; but neither is there any objective sense in which either the state, or other individuals, owes you freedom from coercion and violence.

    True… but since coercive violence, all other things being equal, is detrimental to human wellbeing, it is rational to argue for a moral and social order which minimizes coercive violence as much as possible.

    Obviously, this doesn’t exclude the possibility that coercive violence in the short term can be justified in order to prevent more coercive violence later on. I’m not an out-and-out Tolstoyan pacifist. But it is my contention that the majority of the typical rhetorical excuses on which nation-states rely to justify coercive violence – “national sovereignty”, “border security”, “patriotism”, “civic duty”, and so forth – are either meaningless propaganda, or are founded on incorrect factual claims; and that the majority of the violent coercive endeavours in which nation-states engage under the guise of “keeping us safe” (wars, immigration detention and deportation, mass imprisonment, conscription, and so on) in fact make the poor and powerless less safe, and simply serve the interests of the ruling power-elite.

    The difficult question is how we can achieve a less-coercive society in practice. Of course, on the economic front, every existing socio-economic model, and every form of government, relies somewhere down the line on the use or threat of coercive violence in order to enforce compliance. (For the reasons I gave above, right-wing “libertarians” are absolutely wrong to suggest that real-world capitalist societies are, or have ever been, non-coercive.) But I don’t know whether there is a feasible alternative that would be dramatically less coercive and violent.

    Hence why I’d say I’m philosophically an individualist anarchist in the tradition of Thoreau, but in practice a moderate liberal. I don’t think a liberal state is the ideal (since, like every other form of existing social organization, it still relies on the threat of violence to enforce order), but liberal states have, on balance, a much less violent and brutal track-record than other forms of government that have been tried. So I accept the existence of the nation-state, and of armies and police forces and prisons and the like; but I don’t trust governments or their agents, and I believe in limiting their power over the individual as far as possible.

    (Note that I say “liberal” rather than “democratic”, since I don’t think that majoritarian voting is either necessary or sufficient to make a state liberal. I’m not opposed to majoritarian voting, but it is perfectly possible, and indeed common, for majorities to vote to oppress minorities. Doubly so when the minorities in question are disenfranchised and politically powerless, as with undocumented migrants and guestworkers in Western countries, for instance.)

  59. says

    SC:

    I’ve been saying for a long time that I’d love to see a Top Chef: Vegetarian

    I don’t think they’ll ever do that, but I wouldn’t mind seeing that either. I do like it when they’ve sprung a vegetarian or vegan challenge on them in past seasons, just the looks on their faces is worth it.

  60. says

    Test, this is only a test. Had this been an actual comment you would now be reading something longer and actually pertinent to one of many subjects.

  61. says

    (Trying this again)

    Re: Trans-C Neutrinos

    If some neutrinos can go Trans-C it means Einstein’s work needs to be re-addressed and re-assessed. In short, it’s going to need correction. But first let us confirm that our observations are correct, and not due do error.

    Query: What if photons do have mass. Just enough mass to be able to go the speed of light, indeed, enough mass that they have to go 1C. Anything with more mass can not go 1C, while anything with less mass has to go faster.

    (Yes, I have an idea, but I don’t have the math necessary to support it, and even with the math it would take up too much space.)

  62. says

    PZ, the Endless Thread link on the home page still leads to the previous chapter.

    In news about mormon news, the New York Times takes a look at mormon propaganda. The comments below the article are mixed, with good-to-great references to reality, and with mormons posting pie-in-the-sky stuff and boilerplate apologetics they’ve been taught to swallow whole.

    Mormon Ad Campaign May Play Out on the ’12 Campaign Trail

    Excerpts:

    After Sunday worship in recent months, Mormon bishops around the country gathered their congregations for an unusual PowerPoint presentation to unveil the church’s latest strategy for overcoming what it calls its “perception problem.”
    Multimedia.

    Top Mormon leaders had hired two big-name advertising agencies in 2009, Ogilvy & Mather and Hall & Partners, to find out what Americans think of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Using focus groups and surveys, they found that Americans who had any opinion at all used adjectives that were downright negative: “secretive,” “cultish,” “sexist,” “controlling,” “pushy,” “anti-gay.”

    On seeing these results, some of those watching the presentation booed while others laughed, according to people at the meetings. But then they were told that the church was ready with a response: a multimillion-dollar television, billboard and Internet advertising campaign that uses the tagline, “I’m a Mormon.” ….
    The Mormon image problem is a problem not only for the church, but also for Mr. Romney. …
    The highly negative poll numbers that surfaced in the first Romney campaign were deeply disturbing to the church’s top leadership, according to people involved with the church’s advertising campaign who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize their jobs. Church leaders were also taken aback by the vitriol directed at Mormons after the church contributed money and volunteers to pass Proposition 8, the California measure in 2008 that banned same-sex marriage.

    “You would think,” said one person involved with the advertising campaign, “that the higher Romney’s profile, the better it is for the church. It’s actually the opposite….

    In many ways, Mr. Romney and Mr. Huntsman embody the Mormon archetype: clean-cut, Republican American family men. The church’s campaign is designed to introduce a rainbow of Mormon faces who counter the stereotype. These Mormons are not only white, but also Asian, black and Hispanic, and from countries other than the United States. There are plenty of traditional two-parent families, but there are also single parents, working women and stay-at-home fathers, and even an interracial couple — all family arrangements rare among Mormons until recently….

    Sample comment from a reader:

    I resent the implication that the reason I disapprove of the politics of the Mormon church is because I am “misinformed”. Instead, I would like to see some honesty on the side of the Mormon church. Rather than rebranding themselves as shiny happy people who are just like you & I, perhaps they should admit they are a socially right-wing minority religion with an orthodoxy with views that reside outside those of the majority of people in this country. This rebranding smacks of EXACTLY the sort of obfuscation and semantic cloaking that makes non-Mormons eminently suspicious that the church is trying to assimilate the majority to its minority views, rather than the Mormon church trying to reconcile its recidivistic and liminal orthodoxy with the progressiveness of mainstream American society.

    Sample comment from a mormon reader:

    If you don’t like Mormons and if you don’t like religion, I don’t understand why you waste time reading articles about us. For the life of me, I can’t understand why my exercise of my freedom to worship in the way that brings me happiness and helps me live a more meaningful life causes offense to any other person. The reason why the church felt it necessary to spend money on this campaign is because most information out there about Mormons is incorrect. …

  63. The Laughing Coyote (Papio Cynocephalus) says

    SQB: THAT’S the one! Thanks. Every time it slips my mind and then someone jogs my memory, I’m always like “OF COURSE, how could I forget that?”

  64. ringtailedlemurian says

    This is also a test – I’ve can’t seem to post anything with a link. The whole post just disappears, although it looks fine in Preview.

    One-Two Punch Caused KT Mass Extinction

    A cosmic one-two punch of colossal volcanic eruptions and meteorite strikes likely caused the mass-extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period that is famous for killing the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, according to two Princeton Univ. reports that reject the prevailing theory that the extinction was caused by a single large meteorite.

    Gerta Keller’s been banging on about this for years :)

  66. Dhorvath, OM says

    But the Deccan flats don’t have the same catchy dino death logo design. I mean look at any dinosaur stuff, they always have volcanoes around, but how often do you see meteors? Right, only at the end, only at the end.

  67. Muse says

    @Caine I have no real opinion on the 29 to 16 thing expect that it seems cruel to me to let them think that they made it in to the top 16 then spring that on them.

  68. says

    Muse, yeah, I thought it was cruel too. At first, when I saw them all, I thought “wow, an extended season!”, but no. Oh, I got your package by the way, thank you, thank you! I’ve been having problems with gmail lately.

  69. Sili says

    Query: What if photons do have mass.

    Yeah, no.

    (Photons do have mass, just no rest-mass. If your proposal was right is should be possible to stop a photon in the same way as an electron.)

    –o–

    The Sailor,

    I see what you did there.

  70. says

    More sampling of comments on the New York Times article about mormon ad campaigns:

    Regardless of how they choose to present themselves in public, they are a racist, homophobic, male-dominated, polygamist group. My wife, who was often shunned by them for her out-spokenness and habits (smoking, coffee and wine drinking, speaking like an adult), while a student at the university there, likened them to the “Stepford Morms”. We socialized with non-Mormons, because we were not welcome in the “inner circle”.

    As regards religion in general, I agree with those who point out that ALL religions are based in myth and fairy tale. I find it self-righteous of other religious groups to single out the Mormons as basing their beliefs on fantasy.

  73. changeable moniker says

    Yes, I have an idea, but I don’t have the math necessary to support it, and even with the math it would take up too much space

    Fermat said that.

  74. says

    Sili, #69

    From our point of view photons have no rest mass, but then again, it may be that nothing is ever at rest, not where the internal structure is concerned. That rest mass applies to the object as a whole, with what makes up the object itself in motion and thus producing mass.

    If you’re really interested I could give a short precis of my idea.

  76. Amphiox says

    Sheese, meltdown central in the merch thread

    I understand PZ doesn’t usually like it when people throw around the b-word, but seriously, when a troll devolves into a proliferating tandem repeat that, at my last estimate, is now taking up over 50% of the per-character volume of the thread, it really ought to be banhammer time….

  77. ahs ॐ says

    Dhorvath

    do you need some loaners? Middle fingers I mean.

    That’s very kind of you. I’ve been scraping along by photocopying others’ fingers and presenting them as my own.

  80. says

    Here’s a second article in the New York Times, and this one is full of mormon propaganda and errors of fact.

    http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/lincoln-and-the-mormons/?hp

    Practically since the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded in 1830, its disciples had been on the lam, and for good reason, as they encountered brutality in one place after another.

    Umm. Yeah, but what about the brutality and unethical behavior of the mormons themselves? Why not mention that?

    Tearing up printing presses before they can out Joe Smith for polygamy, gaming the political system by forming mormon voting blocks, abusing women, questionable financial transactions that were either outright scams, or rip offs to varying degrees…. Mormons were not innocent. There was violence and bad behavior on both mormon and non-mormon sides.

    “They had no great love for slavery…” Really? Brigham Young even had black women “sealed” to white men so they could serve as slaves in the Celestial Kingdom after death.

    The NYT published mormon propaganda.

    From the readers comments section:

    Lest it be assumed that the Mormons were always on the receiving end of mob violence, we should recall the 1857 Mountain Meadows massacre. You can, as they say, look it up.

    The Mormons might have had some problems with the African-American slave trade, but they were actively involved in the Native-American slave trade. They, like the all of the other “Christian” denominations, called their slave business “conversion”. A converted Ute or Navajo was a ‘servant’ for life. whether they wanted it or not. They almost always certainly did not want, or even acknowledge ‘conversion’.

    The old “don’t make fun of my underwear” defense.

    -Magic underpants? That’s simply offensive. A tired poke at something you think is funny and I value as sacred. The temple garment I wear symbolizes promises I have made to values and people that I hold dear. Not unlike the promises you make to the people you hold dear.

    For Black people, simply read 2nd Nephi 5th chapter of Book of Mormons. Force Mitt Romney and the other Mormon running for president to denounce this part of the scripture.

    Once you are a Mormon, the church basically takes over your life. It becomes the conscious focus of your daily life. As has been often noted, it’s much harder to leave the Mormon church than join it. The church does not encourage, in fact actively suppress, intellectual discussion and debate over its doctrines but brooks no dissenters. And the Mormons regard themselves as a God-chosen elite, the only ones that will be saved. If these aren’t the indicators of a cult, I wouldn’t know what a cult is.

    I am in no way condoning violence of any sort. However, painting a picture of innocent people who were preyed upon by evil bigots is simplistic and historically incorrect.

  81. Muse (evidently temptress of Pharyngula women) says

    Nigel – he’s c and Ped the same thing over and over in teh thread. i think he’s lost it a bit.

    @Caine – Oh, I’m glad you got it. I hope you like it – it struck me that the style might not suit you, but it seemed to fit.

  82. Muse (evidently temptress of Pharyngula women) says

    Well that was an offering to Tpyos. See what happens when you click the wrong button?

    Caine, I meant to say, I was worried that it might not be your style, but I hoped it would fit your taste.

  83. says

    For those having problems with FtB, anecdata: running NoScript and RequestPolicy with everything blocked, I’ve noticed no problems with FtB; pages load quickly, commenting is easy.

    Adding to ahs’ anecdata: me too. No problem at all. I run AdBlock also, but RequestPolicy kills most of that now anyway.

    Prettige verjaardag, theophontes! Happy Birthday, Squigit!

    Zwarte Piet is a mixed character, though – yes, he may have been a good guy, but he was also a slave. Slavery is hardly something to celebrate. And with increasing globalisation, you now can’t avoid the US blackface associations. I like the idea of Groene Piet or Regenboog Piet.

    It’s hard to change traditions. There have been attempts in Australia to do something much less contentious, and swap the Easter Bunny for the Easter Bilby. It’s taken off only in a small way, as a niche market.

    @Dhorvath: simulated. Sims character: humans eat microwaved food, shower (alone, no nudity), play computer games. Silly fantasy construction game: anthropomorphic cartoon cat builds fairground attractions staffed by giant ladybugs, whacks comical monsters with spade. Fantasy RPG game: whack non-comical monsters with swords or magic, learn spells, collect magic weapons and armour. One of these is not very escapist.

  84. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Oh, thank Tpyos it’s back! I just can’t stand it when all my daily-read blogs go down at once.

    Caine – Yikes about the allergic reaction and the hair! Although I’ve never met you in person, I just can’t picture you with anything but long, straight hair. Is the rash getting any better?

  85. Dhorvath, OM says

    Alethea,
    Oh, well, the sim has it all wrong then. Get some partner action in the slippery room and that game would be more fun.
    _

    (I kill the monster, I get the loot.)

  87. says

    Muse, I love it and it suits fine. I has many moods. :D

    Josh, generally speaking, long straight hair is what I’ve had all my life. I have cut it short a few times, but it grows so damn fast, it will be long again in no time.

    The rash is the same, it will be a while before it all calms down, I think. Geez, I finally get itchy palms and for all the wrong reasons. I’m not a werewolf, either.

  88. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Caine, do you have any idea what ingredient in the Feminist Hair (TM) dye did this? Have you had such a reaction before?

  89. Dhorvath, OM says

    Caine,
    If you were a werewolf would it make for more visits to the hairdresser for emergency hair removal?
    Sorry to hear about your reaction, sensitive skin is seldom a treat, but that sounds doubly unpleasant.

  90. First Approximation says

    Query: What if photons do have mass.

    Massless spin-1 particles have two polarization state and massive spin-1 have two polarization states. The photon, a spin-1 particle, is observed to have two polarizations.

    The magic word being appears.

    Indeed. All this experiment did was rule out some systematic errors as being responsible for the anomaly.

  91. Carlie says

    Well, Chris is apparently in the middle of manic phase, at least according to him. :( I do feel for him, but man he’s an asshole.

    Can I ask a knitting question before I get myself into trouble? If I have a pattern that is just a set of k/p different stitches to make a raised design, can I double all of the stitches to make the whole thing larger? (for example, instead of k5, p2, k3 I do k10, p4, k6)? It seems this ought to work, but there might be a flaw I’m not aware.. oh, I just thought of one. I’d have to double the rows too, right? Otherwise it would be all smeared out lengthwise. (I’m trying to make a pattern for a small hand-sized round thing into large enough to be a small throw pillow)

  92. says

    Josh:

    Caine, do you have any idea what ingredient in the Feminist Hair (TM) dye did this? Have you had such a reaction before?

    Yep, it’s PPD (Para-phenylenediamine). Never had a problem before. It seems you can develop an allergy to the stuff at any time in your life, whether you’ve dyed your hair before or not. From what I read, reactions to it are ubiquitous and almost always on the severe side. I didn’t go to the hospital for it, as I’ve had contact dermatitis before and knew what I needed to do, but it’s damn freaky to see your forehead swell up. Last time I had contact dermatitis, I had spontaneous blistering take place, so it will probably be a couple more weeks until this is completely gone.

    Dhorvath:

    If you were a werewolf would it make for more visits to the hairdresser for emergency hair removal?

    I don’t think so. Both Mister and I can cut hair, so we don’t visit salons. Besides, Mister is like me and just lets it grow. :)

  93. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Carlie, it seems to me doubling the stitch pattern and row count ought to work just fine, but I’m wary of my ability to detect hidden flaws too.

  94. Carlie says

    Caine – ouch! I’ve never had a reaction that severe, but I’ve had contact dermatitis a lot (and used to react badly to perm solutions), so I have a smidgen of a feel for what you must be going through. Hope it clears up soon.

  95. First Approximation says

    From our point of view photons have no rest mass

    The rest mass of a particle is the same for all reference frames (via E^2 – (pc)^2 = (mc^2)^2).

    it may be that nothing is ever at rest

    “At rest” according to who? Something in uniform motion in one reference frame can be at rest in a different reference frame.

  96. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Yikes Caine! I hope it goes away soon, poor thing.

    Apparently there are worse reactions than the scalp blistering I used to get when I bleached my hair silver blond in my younger days (my natural hair is about the darkest brown you can get before it looks East Asian black). Took two bleachings with 40-volume peroxide then a toner. Also three days so as not to aggravate the blisters any worse.

    Yeah, it was worth it.

  97. Esteleth says

    Carlie, that would work. It would not necessarily be smeared out – that depends on the pattern. The one thing to check is if the overarching pattern (like, how row #5 fits with rows # 4 and 6) might shift. You can test this by scribbling on graph paper – use an x for one kind of stitch, a star for another, etc.

  101. says

    I do like it when they’ve sprung a vegetarian or vegan challenge on them in past seasons, just the looks on their faces is worth it.

    It’s bizarre. They’ve worked in all sorts of restaurants, and some of the other food they make is vegetarian, but when it’s the official challenge they act like it’s totally unfamiliar ground and frequently insult vegetarians. I couldn’t get over the episode when they went to a steakhouse (I think it was Craft Steak) and then found out they were cooking a vegetarian meal for [was it Natalie Portman?] and friends. They all made these wierd plates of vegetables. Not a pasta, a dumpling, an enchilada, a puff pastry,…in sight. And the judges didn’t say anything about it. I went to the TC blogs to express my befuddlement shortly after the show and found around 300 comments already saying the same thing. And they never seem to have any vegetarian chefs guest-judging those episodes, even though one of the contestants on TC: Masters was a vegetarian IIRC. It’s really irritating.

  102. says

    I think the craziest thing I’ve ever done with my hair is to boil it, while it was actually attached to my head.

    No, seriously, I did. Back in the early 90s, some friends discovered that fabric dye worked brilliantly on hair. No, I don’t know how they found this out. We made streaks – bleach some locks with standard commercial ultra-blonde hair dye, then dangle them in a simmering pot of purple or red or blue dylon fabric dye for 30 minutes. Surprisingly, this seemed to be actually pretty good for the hair – it felt very soft and healthy. Only for people with long hair, obvs.

  103. Esteleth says

    I agree, Salty. I’m not vegetarian, but I know several (and am related to several more) and that it never ceases to amaze me the BS about how vegetarian (and especially vegan) food isn’t “real” or something.
    ‘Course, I get crap about having food allergies and thus being unable to eat certain things. And there not even that extreme! But the way some people carry on, the fact that I can’t eat lobster is the end of the world and I’m being rude for refusing to try the paella.

  104. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    SC – See, a vegetarian/vegan cooking challenge would actually be a challenge worth watching. I don’t have TV, so I only catch these shows infrequently when I’m at friends’ houses, but it strikes me as bizarre that they haven’t tried this as a legitimate gimmick and that they mock vegetarians. WTF? One of the actually enjoyable parts of having to adapt my diet over the past year for cardiac reasons is exploring entirely new ingredients and cooking techniques, the bulk of which are vegetarian. It’s a hell of a lot more fun (and very tasty) than trying to find one more dish to force a chicken breast into.

  107. Rev. BigDumbChimp says

    Ahhh yes, the fun of being the only IT employee in a company.

    At the office running full system backups before migrating all of our main production servers to a hosted location across town.

    Then i get to physically move the big honking power 720 and get it in the rack over there.

    Luckily we got some help from a couple of consultants we use otehr wise it would really suck.

    Probably will get home around midnight tonight.

    Tomorrow more of the same.

  108. says

    Dhorvath, #75

    You asked:)

    Leptons and hadrons are made up of quarks. Quarks are made up of strings, strings of twine, twine of fibers, and fibers are made up of folds.

    A fold is a volume of compressed space-time. A fold in motion is a line of space-time where space-time becomes compressed then uncompressed, with an adjacent volume become compressed in turn.

    Space-time resists being compressed and uncompressed, Space-time tends to remain compressed or uncompressed unless switched from one state to another by an outside force. In short, it takes work. The quicker the change occurs the greater the effort required. This has the result of bending space-time, the greater the bending the more effort needed and thus the more energy expended.

    Two or more folds orbiting a common center of mass form patterns known as fibers. Fibers form patterns orbiting a common center of mass known as twine, and so on with twine and strings which end with the patterns we call quarks. So long as two folds are part of a fiber they are in motion, and being in motion they produce mass, which is expressed in space-time as gravity. Forces such as weak nuclear, strong nuclear, and electromagnetism arise from the bending of space-time caused by the motion of higher order patterns.

    (Yes, the above is a reiteration of an earlier comment. No, I have no proof of my thinking, because I don’t have the math for it. It’s just an idea some physicist in the future may find profitable to take up and either prove or disprove. It depends on the existence of super-strings, and should those prove wrong then my idea either needs re-working or is wrong itself.)

  109. ahs ॐ says

    Walton

    Hence why I’d say I’m philosophically an individualist anarchist in the tradition of Thoreau, but in practice a moderate liberal.

    If you’re going to be philosophically inclined toward a conceit of anarchism you believe is impractical, why not at least be philosophically inclined toward a conceit of anarchism which is historically literate?

    Thoreau’s self-reliance is Thatcheresque in its antiscientific denial of human social interdependence.

    and I believe in limiting their power over the individual as far as possible.

    No, you don’t. You’re speaking in slogans again.

    It’s possible to absolutely eliminate a government’s ability to prevent individuals from polluting streams, for instance, but you do not believe in limiting such a power as far as possible.

  112. First Approximation says

    Leptons and hadrons are made up of quarks

    Wrong. Leptons are not made up of quarks.

    Quarks are made up of strings

    This may be right. The rest is just crackpottery.

  115. Rev. BigDumbChimp says

    mythusmage

    Do you have a conspiracy theory to explain how Congress is out to get Herman Cain by declaring pizza a vegetable just mere days after him making comments about sissy men eating Vegetarian pizza?

  117. Crudely Wrott says

    From Lynna’s (thanks again for your seemingly tireless efforts to shine a light into the Mormon shadow lands.) link at #62:

    “We’re not secretive,” Stephen B. Allen, managing director of the church’s missionary department, who is in charge of the campaign, said in an interview. “And we’re not scared of what people think of us. If you don’t recognize the problem, you can’t solve the problem. If nobody tells you you have spinach in your teeth, how would you know?”

    Use a mirror.

    (This has been another short answer to a dumb question.)

    .

    Further, they are secretive; their reluctance to allow outsiders not only into their temples but also into their confidence is sufficient evidence.

    I would also say that while they may not be fearful, they are certainly concerned about the opinions of non members. Else why spend so much time, effort and money to present themselves as just like everybody else?
    One could even say that they have looked into the mirror of wider public opinion and were deeply disturbed by what they saw there.

  120. says

    Thoreau’s self-reliance is Thatcheresque in its antiscientific denial of human social interdependence.

    Oh, of course Thoreau didn’t have a realistic plan for how to restructure human societies in practice. He was a poet, a philosopher and a dreamer, not a social scientist or a policy wonk. As I said, I’m not a Thoreauvian in practical terms; but I find his moral ideals, particularly those expressed in Resistance to Civil Government, to be very powerful and compelling. (Indeed, it’s worth remembering that he was a huge influence on both Gandhi and Martin Luther King.) His refusal to acquiesce in the great social ills of his day, slavery and imperialist warfare, and his refusal to subordinate his individual conscience to the orders of the state or the opinions of the majority, make him a personal hero of mine.

    And I can very much appreciate the intellectual merit of the left-anarchist and anarcho-socialist tradition (Kropotkin, Chomsky, and so on) too, though, again, I wouldn’t identify in practice as an anarcho-socialist. (I won’t go into any more detail because I’m not hugely well-read in that area, and don’t want to speak in generalities or misrepresent the views of any specific thinkers.)

    It’s possible to absolutely eliminate a government’s ability to prevent individuals from polluting streams, for instance, but you do not believe in limiting such a power as far as possible.

    True. That was a badly-written sentence. I should have specified “as far as reasonably possible within the constraints of practical necessity”. Of course that’s a (deliberately) vague formulation, and I’m only outlining a general philosophical aspiration in very broad terms, not trying to lay down some sort of rigid deontological rule for the making of every policy-decision. (As you yourself have long argued, it’s generally a serious mistake to make decisions on the basis of rigid deontological principles without regard to context and practical effects.)

  121. says

    Mythusmage, if you can’t do the math, you don’t understand what’s going on.

    p.s. I can’t do the math either.
    p.p.s. Photons DO have mass.
    +++++++++++++++++++
    I haz a sad. It’s a very minor sad, as these things go, but here it is:
    I’ve been a co-blogger for two sites since 2006. On the site I don’t link to in my ‘nym (http://vidiotspeak.blogspot.com/) we are back channeling (i.e. email) discussing our swan song message.

    None of us have posted since August, it is time to pull the plug, but damn. I wish I knew how to archive all the great writing and Photoshopping we’ve done. (We did a lot of mediocre writing, but some things were outstanding.)

    It’s like a break-up when everyone knows it’s over but no one wants to be the first to say so.

    I haz a sad.
    ++++++++++++++++++

  122. Dhorvath, OM says

    Mythusmage,
    I am sure it was fun to put together, but you are correct, you would need a whole lot of math to justify that construct. For this lay person, I should say some other concepts as well: what keeps folds from collapsing if spacetime resists their motion? What keeps them orbiting one another to form fibres instead of collapsing together? What value is there in the intermediate twine? How does charge, spin, and colour grow out of these orbits? Can the waves have differing size? etc. And I still don’t follow how momentum and photons are accounted for, they don’t have a resting mass component in their momentum, regardless of frame of reference. It’s fun to play games, but my final question is perhaps most pertinent: what does this idea predict?

  123. Esteleth says

    After surveying the wreckage of my kitchen (that is, after not having gone grocery shopping in too long), I am now sitting down to a lovely dinner: bacon, eggs, latkes, and beer.

    Sounds like friday night for a grad student.

    The cooler over there is full of beer. Help yourselves!

  124. First Approximation says

    What are leptons made of anyway?

    Leptons, as far as we can tell, are elementary particles. Quarks are subject to strong interaction. Leptons, such as the electron, aren’t so they can’t be made up from them.

    For that matter, what are strings made of?

    Dunno. We don’t even know if string theory is correct. It’s currently impossible to test directly. So asking what’s below strings eems like pure speculation at this point and not particularly useful or interesting speculation.

    Sailor,

    p.p.s. Photons DO have mass.

    What?

  125. Rev. BigDumbChimp says

    Rev. BigDumbChimp, #115

    I’m supposed to?

    Sure, it would go along nicely with your other “hypothesis”.

  126. First Approximation says

    Crackpot index:

    10 points for each statement along the lines of “I’m not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it in terms of equations”.

  127. says

    Sounds like friday night for a grad student.

    Being a grad student, and the law school cafeteria being closed on Friday evenings, I had two slices of tomato-and-basil pizza* from the little café down the road, and a Twix bar.**

    (*Take that, Herman Cain.)

    (**The rest of the week I eat more healthily than this. For lunch, for instance, I ate at the cafeteria, and had a Puerto Rican-style*** bean sofrito with rice and pigeon peas.**** And a Diet Mountain Dew.)

    (***At least, it was described as Puerto-Rican-style. Never having been to Puerto Rico, I’m going to trust them on this.)

    (****Lest I infringe the First Rule of the Thread, I should mention that pigeon peas are nothing like actual peas, and taste much better.)

  128. Dhorvath, OM says

    The Sailor,
    That is sad, can you at least pull your archives off the server? Have a drink on my account, the bar keeps know I am good for it.

  130. says

    Chopin’s “Polonaise in A Flat”

    :)

    Chopin and television: I was watching a biography show about Chopin recently, and in describing his budding relationship with George Sand the narrator said he found her a charming conversationalist and an “admiring lover.” Admiring?

    Physics and television: I saw the episode of The Fabric of the Cosmos with Brian Greene about “The Illusion of Time.” They had to pull out the big-gun analogies and visual aids, but I got it found it amazing. Can anyone who knows the subject comment on the quality/accuracy of the presentation?

    ***

    Tomorrow more of the same.

    But are you in the cloud yet?

  131. says

    10 points for each statement along the lines of “I’m not good at math, but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it in terms of equations”.

    Oh, I see…

    The Magna Carta – was it a document signed at Runnymede in 1215 by King John pledging independence to the English barons, or was it a piece of chewing gum on a bedspread in Dorset? The latter idea is the brainchild of a man new to the field of historical research. Mr Badger, why are you on this programme?

  132. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Cheers Esteleth! Have a vodka on me if you like.

    Tonight’s menu chez Spokesgay will be moo shu vegetables and tofu with scallion pancakes done with toasted sesame oil. All from scratch, naturally.

    Oh, and lots of booze.

  133. ahs ॐ says

    True. That was a badly-written sentence. I should have specified “as far as reasonably possible within the constraints of practical necessity”.

    I was waiting to respond with this:

    A social democrat would give the same answer. What, then, makes you identify as a liberal in practice, rather than a social democrat in practice? Only some historical peculiarities of the nation: your background is Anglo rather than Continental.

    On the soil where you now stand, I expect you would agree with many of the progressive critiques of liberalism.

    (My reason for encouraging this particular line of introspection is that our and their liberalism has historically stood in defense of capitalism; while our progressivism and New Leftism, and their social democracy, have historically stood in critique of capitalism; even while all have agreed on personal liberties as any modern cosmopolitan does.)

  134. Dhorvath, OM says

    Esteleth,
    thanks, I dropped some in there too, gotta help the next crop of smart people along. You are going to dig me out of this mess, yes?

  135. Crudely Wrott says

    I haz a sad.

    ‘At’s OK, Sailor. We all get ’em.

    But, cheer up! There’s a great day a comin’. OK, maybe a great hour or at least a passing moment, but it’ll be great! Or so I’ve been told.

    Crap. Be sad for as long as it takes to just fade away on its own and things will probably look better later. I like Douglas Adams’ approach to learning how to fly; you just need to be totally distracted at just the right moment.

    In the mean time, try a little Harry Nilsson. So soothing . . .

  136. Esteleth says

    Walton,
    That sounds lovely. However, I will point out two things: (1) you (AFAIK) are in Cambridge, where you’re likely to get pizza other than McPizza and (2) you apparently have cash to drop on said pizza.
    Me, I’m in upstate NY, where the pizza is either shitty or McPizza. And I’m broke.

    In other news, latkes cooked in bacon grease are AMAZING.

  138. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    In other news, latkes cooked in bacon grease are AMAZING.

    Yes, yes, they are. Latkes are always amazing. Bacon grease makes them Amazing Cubed.

  139. ahs ॐ says

    Sailor

    I wish I knew how to archive all the great writing and Photoshopping we’ve done.

    Is there some problem that prevents you from archiving it as you usually would? Or is this a way of saying you don’t know where to begin?

  140. Esteleth says

    Latkes are always amazing. Bacon grease makes them Amazing Cubed.

    Trufax. Make said bacon applewood smoked, and you have a tesseract of amazing.

  142. John Morales says

    First Approximation, I suspect The Sailor is not referring to photons’ rest mass but to their energy, such that by mass–energy equivalence they have effective mass.

  143. Carlie says

    Esteleth – thanks for the graph paper idea – I love doing things on graph paper!

    I couldn’t get over the episode when they went to a steakhouse (I think it was Craft Steak) and then found out they were cooking a vegetarian meal for [was it Natalie Portman?] and friends.

    Oh man. “Here’s a boiled bok choy on a plate”. That was terrible.

    Janine – awesome! I saw that they were auctioning his outfit, but I didn’t know he had acted it out.
    I guess that answers my question on whether they have another set for the rest of the series.

    But good grief, can they please get away from WWII and Victorian England?

  146. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Trufax. Make said bacon applewood smoked, and you have a tesseract of amazing.

    Shoooooooot, girl. I know that’s right. It’s a hypercube of savory lusciousness.

  147. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    I am contemplating egg foo yung from the greasy wok across the street. Help!

    Do it. Eat it. Do it.

  152. says

    First Approximation, it’s currently under discussion whether photons have mass or not. IME photons can damage/kill.

    I get so excited, I just can’t help it.
    ++++++++
    Dhorvath, yeah, I can pull them off of Blogger one by one, but I have a day job.

    When my co-bloggers agree and post our swan song I’ll echo it here.

    We really did some good writing. The best is yet to come, and won’t that be fine … final.
    +++++++

  153. Esteleth says

    Carlie, one thing to be careful of with graph paper is that most graph paper is symmetrical – the boxes are square rather than rectangular. Many knitting patterns are not. It’s very rare for the gauge to be symmetrical.
    here is a website where you can enter your gauge and get a sheet of graph paper (as a .png) to print out that fits your gauge.
    Useful. Free.

    (Ignore the ads, they’re silly)

  155. Esteleth says

    Dhorvath,
    It is a well known fact that us gays are hotter.

    Plus, if you’re an atheist AND gay, you’ve got a twofer in pissing off the godbotherers!

  158. says

    A social democrat would give the same answer. What, then, makes you identify as a liberal in practice, rather than a social democrat in practice? Only some historical peculiarities of the nation: your background is Anglo rather than Continental.

    On the soil where you now stand, I expect you would agree with many of the progressive critiques of liberalism.

    Well, that’s largely a terminological issue; it depends which of the many and varied definitions of “liberal” one is working from. But I’m too tired for a sophisticated analysis of that subject right now.

  159. chigau (む) says

    I am an omnivore with a decided leaning to carnivory but I can do occasional vegetarian dishes with ease.
    Rule of thumb: don’t put meat in it.
    (I know real, fulltime, vegetarian eating is waaay more complex.
    But cooking one meatless meal??? Not that difficult.)
    —–
    If I had a greasy wok across the street, I’d never cook again.

  160. First Approximation says

    First Approximation, I suspect The Sailor is not referring to photons’ rest mass but to their energy, such that by mass–energy equivalence they have effective mass.

    That’s still problematic. E = mc² is only a special case of E² = (mc²)²+ (pc)², when taken to the rest frame of the particle (i.e, p=0). However, since a photon can never be at rest it’s not really valid.

    First Approximation, it’s currently under discussion whether photons have mass or not

    Under discussion where? See #90 for why they don’t.

  163. ahs ॐ says

    Sailor, this will get the text (maybe not the pictures, depending on which server they’re on). Others may argue against the “wait” and “convert-links” options. It will take a while; be prepared to let it run overnight.

    wget --recursive --level=inf --convert-links --wait=5 --random-wait --output-file=wget20111118.log http://vidiotspeak.blogspot.com/

  164. John Morales says

    ahs @157, no need to read the article — just looking at his picture tells me that was one strong, grim, scary dude!

  165. changeable moniker says

    Walton:

    “as far as reasonably possible within the constraints of practical necessity”.

    I refer you to my previous post about “the logical necessity of proof” for what a headfuck this is.

    —

    In related news, photons don’t have rest mass, because resting photons aren’t photons. Sorry about that.

  166. Dhorvath, OM says

    Esteleth,
    How intriguing. Perhaps it helps explain this: crossing the street not once, but twice to get some fried egg, onion, and mushroom.

  167. Esteleth says

    Well, obviously, you’d forgotten one of those things. Probably the egg. Fried egg is awesome.

    Probably because it’s fried chicken menses. :D

  169. Dhorvath, OM says

    I am telephobic (?) so one run to order, another to pick up. And yes, fried egg does awesome very well.

  171. Esteleth says

    Dammit, the neighbor has decided to practice his dj skills.
    He sucks.
    The fact that (1) he uses shitty equipment he probably got at Wal-Mart, (2) he’s a pothead who only “spins” when conked out of his gourd and (3) he think that its wrong to have the volume set below like 15 is the reason I’m pissed.

    Especially (3).

    But if I go complain? Oh, I’m a bitch.

  172. says

    You can export an entire blogspot blog in XML format, from a command somewhere in your admin area that I forget now. Links will be to the original so if you uploaded media you’ll need to move it (or just save the picasa album if it’s pics), and then do a global search & replace. There must be some good parsing tools to do that, though I haven’t looked.

  173. First Approximation says

    Sailor,

    google it

    Well, it wouldn’t surprise me if someone somewhere on the entire internet was discussing it. After all, we just saw some crackpottery about it here.

    And pretty much every item in that search is saying that photons don’t have mass.

  175. Esteleth says

    I have headphones on. But I shouldn’t have to wear headphones to listen to music piped over the speakers that shipped with my computer.

  176. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Dhorvath:

    I am telephobic (?)

    Seriously? You’re afraid of the phone? I’m asking because I need to know if that’s a joke or something I shouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole.

  180. Esteleth says

    Sorry, Dhorvath, the noise (now he’s added dubstep!) is making me snippy.

    I wish he WOULD wear headphones so I wouldn’t have to.

  182. Dhorvath, OM says

    Josh,
    No need to worry about avoiding it, you could scarce mock me more than my wife about it. Yes, I will do just about anything to get out of using the telephone. I don’t have a cell and doubt I ever will and whenever possible I use email or, preferably, in person communication.

  183. Dhorvath, OM says

    Janine,
    I love Brian Greene, one of my favourite science writers, but this is the first I have seen of him in a narrative role. What I have seen so far (just up to the space-time loaf) is very consistent with explanations I have encountered in a variety of contexts regarding how we understand time. I don’t think I will finish tonight, but I am comfortable that you are not being misled. If the show interests, the book is more in depth and features some other excellent analogies, Greene’s strength in my opinion.

  184. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Yes, I will do just about anything to get out of using the telephone. I don’t have a cell and doubt I ever will and whenever possible I use email or, preferably, in person communication.

    I’ll only mock if it’s not a genuine sore spot or OCD hang-up. If it is, I never mock (well, maybe a little, since mocking my own helps). Lord knows I understand the latter, and rationality has nothing to do with it.

    Walton

    I love Pete Seeger.

    Well, if you get yourself up here to Burlington in a timely way you may just get the chance to see him carting his self around as he’s here not infrequently. Hurry though; he’s ancient. His brother (? perhaps cousin?) runs a music shop downtown with the coolest custom-made stringed instruments ever.

  185. Esteleth says

    My favorite SF author remains James Tiptree, just because (1) awesome and (2) intelligent, well-written stories.

    A woman writing SF back in the bad old days just adds to the win. <3

  186. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I love Brian Greene, one of my favourite science writers, but this is the first I have seen of him in a narrative role.

    Brian Greene did a previous book of his for PBS, The Elegant Universe. If it isn’t still available through official channels, it can still be obtained.

  187. Esteleth says

    Bah. My addled brain stuck the word “fiction” between “science” and “writers” and thus decided to start babbling about SF.

    Whups.

  188. SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu says

    Well, if you get yourself up here to Burlington in a timely way you may just get the chance to see him carting his self around as he’s here not infrequently. Hurry though; he’s ancient. His brother (? perhaps cousin?) runs a music shop downtown with the coolest custom-made stringed instruments ever.

    Wow! News to me. I mean, I knew there’s a music store there but I didn’t realize the connection with Pete Seeger.

    On the other hand, that sort of helps explain how the Marshfield Public Library got the Mammals, the band Pete’s grandson, Tao, started along with Ruth Ungar, the daughter of folk heavyweight Jay Ungar, to come play a benefit gig for them. Marshfield is teeny-tiny. After the show, I showed the band the local swimming hole and we went skinny-dipping. I flirted hard with Tao but he was dating somebody.

  189. Dhorvath, OM says

    Josh,
    I have some sore spots in my chest, they aren’t really provoked by mockery. I don’t know if I have a thick skin or a dense mind, but you won’t offend me should it slip into a conversation: there are some advantages to being me.

  190. Janine, Clueless And Reactionary As Ever, OM, says

    Janine,
    I love Brian Greene, one of my favourite science writers…

    It ain’t me, babe.

  191. Dhorvath, OM says

    And that doesn’t get the tone down. Damn. I am trying to mock me, but it appears I am pulling punchlines.

  192. says

    Speaking of sci-fi, I just gotta type this, because…well, because I want to:

    [Voice of Doctor Moreau, Doctor Spock, Doctor J., Doctor Seuss, Doctor Who, Doctor Iguana, Doctor Jet Engine, Doctor Alarm Clock, Doctor Demento, Doctor Boiling-Screaming-Dying Lobster wanted in New Jersey for petty Larceny.]

    -Doctor, Ian told me that the digitalia was harmless. He said it was nothing more than a tattoo, a tattoo in his cerebellum. Jesus. God. All his friends were getting it done. Why shouldn’t he?

    Dragonhead, Nick DiChario

  193. Dhorvath, OM says

    Janine,
    So red right now, I even went back to check and still read that as one comment. My apologies.

  195. SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu says

    I recently finished my first Octavia Butler book, Xenogenesis. It was fascinating, well-written, and thought-provoking. It was surprising to reach the end of the novel and find myself rooting for the main characters to essentially find sexual partners to carry off against their will so they could chemically entrance them and have offspring. I did find that her conceptions of male and female behavior were very gender essentialist, and her vision of humanity’s destruction by nuclear war extremely dated. But still, amazing characters and interesting ideas. Which is really all I’m looking for in an SF novel.

  197. Esteleth says

    Xenogenesis is very good, Sally. I read it as an undergrad.
    Much of Butler’s work is well-written and very thought-provoking. Kindred is very good (it includes, among other things, a discussion of just what life for a slave in the antebellum South was like).
    She does play with gender a bit in some of her works. My favorite of these, actually, is her short story “Blood Child,” which also is very high on the creepifying scale.

  199. SallyStrange, Spawn of Cthulhu says

    I’ll be going to the library tomorrow to check out more Butler books and whatever else looks interesting. :)

    Sunday I’ll be going to the vigil for Transgender Day of Remembrance.

  200. Esteleth says

    International Transgender Day of Remembrance

    Awhile back, I was reflecting on just how horribly fucked up it is that a day dedicated to trans people is the Day of Remembrance. ‘Cause the average trans person doesn’t even make it to 25.

    Sometimes, I hate the world.

    The fact that trans people get significant crap from LGB people and from some strains of feminism just adds to my rage. SRSLY. Not cool.

    *lights candle for the lost*

  203. Janine, Clueless And Reactionary As Ever, OM, says

    SallyStrange, Xenogenesis is the name of the trilogy. They are Dawn, Adulthood Rites and Imago. (I have all three singed by her.)

    If you like her, I highly recommend Parable Of The Sower, Parable Of Talent, Wild Seed and Kindred.
    The first parable novel is about a utopian movement in a post apocalyptic US founded around a rather atheistic religion. The second parable novel centers around the daughter of the founder of Earthseed in the first novel. Wild Seed is about the centuries long conflict between two immortals, a male who survives by taking over other people’s bodies and a shape shifting female. Kindred is about a college educated black woman who slips back into the past to a plantation in the southern US. She interacts with the son of the plantation owner over the years as he increasingly accepts his role as a slave owner and how this chamges how he treats the hero of the novel.

    Octavia Butler is one of my favorite authors. I am still upset the she died at such a relatively young age.

  204. Janine, Clueless And Reactionary As Ever, OM, says

    The fact that trans people get significant crap from LGB people and from some strains of feminism just adds to my rage. SRSLY. Not cool.

    I guess I will not bring up The Transsexual Empire by Janice Raymond nor the policy of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.

  205. Esteleth says

    The Transsexual Empire by Janice Raymond nor the policy of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.

    *seethes*

    Transphobic asshats.

  206. Janine, Clueless And Reactionary As Ever, OM, says

    I do not want to paint all of the women at MWMF as transphobic, save that for the likes of Lisa Vogel.

    Some of the stories that I have heard about the Twilight Zone…

  207. Esteleth says

    Not all women who go to MWMF are transphobes, true. The leadership (especially Vogel) is. The policy definitely is.

  208. says

    Janine:

    The Transsexual Empire by Janice Raymond

    Oh gods, I read that piece of utter crap back in 1980. She wrote some of the most loathsome shit I have ever read. Transphobic doesn’t even begin to describe her.

  209. Janine, Clueless And Reactionary As Ever, OM, says

    Ya gotta love the idea that the patriarchy created “she-males” in order to infiltrate women only spaces. It seems to be self contradictory because of this; if the phallus is the most important thing, why would a male bodied person give it up just to destroy these space?

    (Please forgive me for using that term.)

  210. sandiseattle says

    Fried egg is awesome.

    I have had such terrible luck with frying eggs lately. I think I’ve messed up at least a dozen in the last week.

  211. ChasCPeterson says

    Alan (Allen? sorry) Kellogg, aka mythusnmage, is a crackpot polymath.
    Or a polymathic crackpot; one.
    He’s keen on the idea of slime molds as animal ancestors, for example, despite the abundant molecular-sequence evidence to the contrary.
    An idea man. Not so much with the knowledge or respect for evidence.
    He will defend his ideas tenaciously, nevertheless.

  212. Esteleth says

    Right! And transwomen still have their male privilege from before they transitioned and are oppressing the poor “real women!”

    Yes, I’ve actually heard that. So, so sorry for repeating it. :(

  214. chigau (む) says

    Josh Josh Josh
    You live where Pete Seeger lives????
    OMG.
    I mean, you‘re Special but PETE SEEGER!!!11!!
    Sorry, I’m an old, unionist, commie.
    ,,,

  215. says

    Janine:

    if the phallus is the most important thing, why would a male bodied person give it up just to destroy these space?

    Didn’t she argue that they were simply cutting off the most obvious penetrative bit in order to effectively rape “real” women? Or something like that. She’s seriously unfuckinghinged when it comes to transpeople.

    I wasn’t all that long out of Catholic school when I read that book and it seemed to me that she remained mostly nun, regardless of leaving the order.

  217. says

    Regarding the Transgender Day of Remembrance, I suppose it’s an appropriate time to share the extraordinary and tragic story of Sonia (born David) Burgess, who was killed last year. I think I posted this earlier in the year when I first read the article, but it’s appropriate now.

    On an autumn evening last October, a slight, pretty woman with a mass of curly hair fell underneath a tube train during rush hour at King’s Cross underground station. The driver of the eastbound Piccadilly Line train applied the brakes as soon as he saw the woman lose her balance, but a whole carriage passed along the platform before the vehicle shuddered to a halt. It was shortly after 6.30pm on 25 October when the British Transport Police started trying to recover the body, a gruesome task that lasted late into the night.

    The line was closed, the platform cleared. London’s Underground network was severely disrupted as commuters struggled to make their way home. And yet, in the sprawling urban mass of the capital, many of those passengers – crushed against each other in scarves and coats, clutching their copies of the Evening Standard and adjusting their iPods – probably reflected that, depressing though it might be, a person throwing themselves in front of a tube train was not particularly out of the ordinary.

    But all was not as it seemed. The ensuing media coverage revealed that the police suspected that the woman had not fallen but had been pushed by her 34-year-old female companion, who was later charged with murder. It then turned out that the woman who died, 63-year-old Sonia Burgess, was living a double life. Once the police had established her identity (from her railcard), it was discovered that Sonia was biologically a man – a man named David Burgess, one of the finest immigration lawyers of his generation, a man responsible for a succession of trailblazing judgments in the House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights.

    The confusion over the dead person’s identity meant that it took longer than usual for the dreadful news to trickle through to friends and family. Christina Beardsley, who was friends with Sonia through a Christian transgender support and discussion group, read the evening newspaper’s report of the death, but initially she did not think the victim was anyone she knew…

    In 1987, Burgess acted on behalf of a group of 52 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers who were refused entry at the UK border and threatened with deportation. In an article written after his death, Frances Webber, then a junior barrister, remembers being asked by Burgess “to run across to the High Court to get an injunction to prevent [their] removal… When I say ‘run’, I mean it literally – immigration officials were escorting the Tamils to the plane, and they, hearing of David’s efforts, decided to help by stripping off on the tarmac. We got our injunction – but eventually the men’s judicial review claims were rejected and they were sent back to Sri Lanka. David didn’t give up.”

    At the time, refugees had no right to appeal against deportation before being sent back to their native country, but Burgess refused to take no for an answer. He travelled to Sri Lanka at the firm’s expense to gather evidence of the men’s maltreatment, eventually winning them the right to return to the UK. The law was changed as a result of the case, to ensure asylum seekers could appeal against refusal of asylum before being sent home.

    The same dogged determination was in evidence when Burgess took up the cause of “M”, a Zairean asylum seeker, in 1991. He eventually brought contempt proceedings against Kenneth Baker, then the Conservative home secretary, for failing to stop M’s deportation. The House of Lords upheld Burgess’s complaint, in a decision which reversed centuries of deference to Crown ministers. The victory was described by Professor Sir William Wade, one of the giants of academic law, as the most significant constitutional case for more than 200 years.

  219. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Chigau – I don’t think Pete Seeger lives here in VT, but it’s not uncommon for him to visit here. So far as I remember, one of his relatives (a brother or a cousin. . I can’t quite remember) runs a small instrument store in downtown.

  220. Janine, Clueless And Reactionary As Ever, OM, says

    Ing, that comic still cannot out crazy the currant Republican crop.

  221. Rev. BigDumbChimp says

    Hey what’s our old friend Scott Adams up to-Oh sweet fucking Jesus REALLY!?

    Oh, this should be good.

    Or horrible.

    most likely both.

  222. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    I fucking hate Scott Adams. Hate him. How can anyone be so actively, maliciously stupid.

  224. Janine, Clueless And Reactionary As Ever, OM, says

    Dearest Fake Hubby, you know that there is a large minority of people who embrace that active and malicious stupidity. Some people make a very comfortable living pandering to it.

  228. Janine, Clueless And Reactionary As Ever, OM, says

    Let’s see if we can convince the creators of Mallard Fillmore and Prickly City to join the presidential race. And if we are feelingly really perverse, the creators of Faith Mouse and The Leftersons.

  229. sandiseattle says

    Beacon NY? I know that place. We installed a satellite office there once. Didn’t get to see much tho :-(

  230. ahs ॐ says

    Ing, do you have any idea how hard it is to search for your nym in a TET?

    Try searching with a space at the front: ” ing”

  233. John Morales says

    madarab:

    Ing, do you have any idea how hard it is to search for your nym in a TET?

    You can’t do case-sensitive searching?

  235. First Approximation says

    Alan (Allen? sorry) Kellogg, aka mythusnmage, is a crackpot polymath.
    Or a polymathic crackpot; one.
    He’s keen on the idea of slime molds as animal ancestors, for example, despite the abundant molecular-sequence evidence to the contrary.

    And then there’s him and Big Foot….

  236. John Morales says

    Ing, ah. Fair enough; then it becomes more laborious: Copy all, paste into a text editor that can, search that.

    (Why, it would take me several seconds!)

  237. says

    At the Holy Land Experience, where employees dress to match the park’s ancient Jerusalem setting, Cain spoke at length of his battle with colon cancer in 2006, crediting his Christian faith with helping him beat steep odds for survival, which his doctor had put at 30 percent. Cain said that having a “doctor named Lord, a nurse named Grace and a J-shaped cut” (an incision shaped like a “J,” for Jesus, he said) gave him the strength to recover.

    Cain said he was initially uncertain when he learned that his surgeon was from Lebanon but was relieved to be told that the doctor was Christian. “Hallelujah,” Cain recalled saying. “Thank the Lord.”

    Oy.

  240. says

    Dhorvath, #122

    I am sure it was fun to put together, but you are correct, you would need a whole lot of math to justify that construct. For this lay person, I should say some other concepts as well: what keeps folds from collapsing if spacetime resists their motion? What keeps them orbiting one another to form fibres instead of collapsing together? What value is there in the intermediate twine? How does charge, spin, and colour grow out of these orbits? Can the waves have differing size? etc. And I still don’t follow how momentum and photons are accounted for, they don’t have a resting mass component in their momentum, regardless of frame of reference. It’s fun to play games, but my final question is perhaps most pertinent: what does this idea predict?

    To address your comment as much as I can…

    Folds are not things so much as they are states. A fold is a highly compressed volume of space time, a fold being a high energy state. The rest state of space-time is unfolded. This means the universe is expanding because it is uncompressing, which means that the universe is unfolding as it should. :)

    Now twine I came up with because it seemed the logical thing to do. In short, the pattern called “twine” is included to account for the space-time bending we call the higher forces (higher forces such as the weak nuclear)

    As for photons, it is what photons are made of that moves. From our POV photons as photons don’t move, but that is an illusion created by our view point. To clarify, photons do move, as a whole, but they don’t spin or other movement of that sort.

    What keeps folds from occupying the same volume? First the degree to which the universe is compressed. At our degree of compression two folds cannot occupy the same volume. It doesn’t help that folds in motion have mass, mass in this case being space-time’s resistance to change from folded to unfolded and vice-versa.

    What does it predict?

    That the universe is weirder than we imagine.

  241. Janine, Clueless And Reactionary As Ever, OM, says

    Caine, did Cain make sure his doctor did not eat sissy pizzas?

    Rachel Maddow insists that Herman Cain is an art project. For the sake of my sanity, I am inclined to argue with her.

  246. chigau (む) says

    cicely, Inadvertent Phytocidal Maniac

    ‘Night, y’all. Tomorrow…Skepticon!

    muttermutter jealous mutter muttre pthlbbttt
    Have a great time!!

  248. says

    Janine:

    Caine, did Cain make sure his doctor did not eat sissy pizzas?

    I saw no mention of sissy pizzas, however, as stated in the article, Cain now has secret service on tap, to the tune of much money, because a dozen to 50 media people show up any time he stops now! *gasp*

    This idiot is causing many near fatal eyerolls.

  249. says

    Let’s see if we can convince the creators of Mallard Fillmore and Prickly City to join the presidential race. And if we are feelingly really perverse, the creators of Faith Mouse and The Leftersons.

    Naaaaaah… Garfield for President!

    (The first president who’s plumper than William Howard Taft, sleeps more than Ronald Reagan, and eats lasagna for breakfast every day. Of course, he’d be the second President Garfield, which could get almost as confusing as the two Presidents Roosevelt.)

  250. First Approximation says

    Are you by some chance referring to my post regarding the timing of the accusations against Herman Cain.

    He’s referring to this post of yours entitled ‘Hypothesis’:

    Here’s my proposition.

    Liberals have woken up to the harm Barack Obama has done, and continues to do, to the country. He has disappointed the Left and they are seeking a replacement for him. The Left is convinced that a black man would be best in the office of President of the United States, but Obama is not that black man.

    So along comes Herman Cain, who has the draw back of being conservative, but the bonus of being black. He also makes sense, and promises to correct the errors of the Obama administration. But how to support a Cain candidacy without seeming to support a conservative?

    Make wild and unconvincing accusations against him. Cain gets to shine compared to the bloviation now swirling around, the Left gets to deny their covert support for the man. By making the accusations so early in the pre-nomination race, and making them so wild and unconfirmable, the Left makes it just about impossible for any substantial charges to make any headway later in 2012. They get .plausible deniability, Herman gets further support for the right and the center and his candidacy is bolstered.

    Yep, that’s a much better explanation than Cain just being a asshole/harasser of women.

  252. says

    ChasCPeterson, #211

    To correct one mistake, I am not convinced all slime molds are descended from a common ancestor of animals.

    Especially not when one type of slime mold is made up of bacteria. :)

  253. ahs ॐ says

    Liberals have woken up to the harm Barack Obama has done, and continues to do, to the country. He has disappointed the Left

    This is word salad.

    God made liberals for the purpose of disappointing the left.

  254. says

    Herman Cain doesn’t “make sense” on any planet of which I’m aware. (This is a guy who “joked” about building a fence to electrocute undocumented immigrants. And whose tax plan appears to have been drawn up on the back of a napkin. Not to mention lovely sentiments like “I don’t have facts to back this up, but I happen to believe that these protests are planned and orchestrated to distract from the failed policies of the Obama administration… If you don’t have a job, and you’re not rich, blame yourself!”)

  256. says

    @Walton

    I am damn curious how people like Cain and McCain (heh) think people who know folks south of the border or in Iran respectivly feel about their ‘jokes’.

    For some reason with McCain I felt like someone had just joked about setting my neighbors house on fire to kill them horribly (which was funny because they are brown) and I was the only one around who didn’t find this funny for some reason.

  258. Ing says

    @Madarab

    Yeah. I’m having to build the system from bits and pieces, so it may be rough and the party I play with is heavy Role Playing (like…oh we have character sheets? heavy), but we are gonna be trying to play stricter to the die this time but the focus will still be the RPing. And I still have to type up the necessary background fluff people will need to know, so send me an-email and I’ll keep you posted if you’re interested.

  259. says

    Confession Time

    I’m aspers and I tend to see things differently. I realize a lot of my ideas are strange, but I am willing to admit to being wrong when shown I am wrong. (Note; assertions won’t cut it.)

  260. Ing says

    I’m aspers and I tend to see things differently. I realize a lot of my ideas are strange, but I am willing to admit to being wrong when shown I am wrong.

    Your aspers is not the problem. The problem is that you are additionally, a douchebag and a bigot.

  261. chigau (む) says

    just how HARD does Internet Explorer SUCK????
    I’m giving it another 10 or 15 minutes, then I’m for bed.

  263. Ing says

    oh and the being shown where you’re wrong when the offensive statement in question is you telling people what THEY believe and being absurdly ignorant or malicious about it?

    Yeah, an assertion should be more than enough.

  264. Ing says

    Mythumage “The problem is that you’re gay”

    Person ‘I’m not gay I’m-”

    Mythumage “I’m will to admit when I’m wrong but I will accept only evidence and not assertion”

    Person ‘But I’m-”

    Mythumage “NO ASSERTIONS! SEE HOW RATIONAL I AM!”

    Yeah just wanted to cut off this tactic at the knees cause I’ve seen it before.

  265. Ing says

    Additionally (forgive me, sick and have cold medicine head) I’m gonna be immature and play your game. I don’t believe your aspers at all. I’m willing to admit when I’m wrong but you’ll have to show me evidence beyond just your assertion.

  266. Janine, Clueless And Reactionary As Ever, OM, says

    Garfield for President!

    Only if it is President Garfield without Garfield.

  267. says

    Ing, 263

    Where did you get that idea, and when? For that matter, who told you I was a bigot, or are you imputing bigotry based on something of mine you think I said?

  268. says

    @Walton

    I am damn curious how people like Cain and McCain (heh) think people who know folks south of the border or in Iran respectivly feel about their ‘jokes’.

    Indeed. It was an incredibly shitty thing to say. It really depresses me, the way that it seems to be socially-acceptable in political discourse to dehumanize immigrants, to talk about them as “problems” rather than as human beings, and to cheerfully advocate violence towards them. It’s nothing other than a form of thinly-veiled racism (Cain being African-American does not mean that he cannot also harbour racial prejudice). On no possible planet is it “funny”.

    Broadly apropos of this, I posted upThread a news story about the British government’s latest idiocy:

    The communities secretary, Eric Pickles, is to make a UK curry college that would teach British workers the secret of perfect pakoras a showpiece of the government’s integration strategy to be published shortly.

    Pickles’s “curry college”, as it is being called, would see the government backing a school to train British people from all backgrounds to become chefs specialising in Indian food as an answer to the crisis in the £3.2bn curry industry triggered by the Home Office’s ban on bringing in chefs from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

    The scheme is in line with Conservative policy to make deep cuts in immigration numbers on the basis “that we do not need to attract people to do jobs that could be carried out by British citizens, given the right training and support”…

    Conservative ministers see the integration as an essential element alongside a much tougher drive to reduce immigration, including requirements for new family and labour migrants to be able to speak English…

    Paul Goodman, a former Tory shadow communities minister, and executive editor of Conservativehome website, said the curry college plan was “very Eric Pickles”. Goodman said: “He [Pickles] has a dream: namely to set up a curry college. It combines border control with foreign cooking. It would both help satisfy the apparently inexhaustible appetite for onion bhajis and prawn birianis while also providing justification for the squeeze on visas.”

    What a steaming pile of patronizing, racist, cluelessly-privileged idiocy. Seriously, Pickles: you’re a rich privileged white guy, who was born in Yorkshire, has lived his entire life in an affluent developed country, makes £140k a year and has a taxpayer-funded second home. Until you’ve walked a mile in the shoes of a migrant worker trying to feed her family and getting arrested and deported for her pains, or spent some time locked in a detention cell at Yarl’s Wood, you do not get to talk so blithely about “border control” and a “squeeze on visas”, or appropriate others’ cultural imagery in the service of your anti-immigration agenda, as though you had some clue about the human consequences of the things you’re talking about.

    (Sorry for ranting. It just frustrates me so much.)

  269. First Approximation says

    This is a guy who “joked” about building a fence to electrocute undocumented immigrants

    Yeah, he said it was just a joke, but then said he wasn’t “walking away from that” either and he might actually do it. :S

  270. says

    Mythumage “The problem is that you’re gay”

    Person ‘I’m not gay I’m-”

    Mythumage “I’m will to admit when I’m wrong but I will accept only evidence and not assertion”

    Person ‘But I’m-”

    Mythumage “NO ASSERTIONS! SEE HOW RATIONAL I AM!”

    Yeah just wanted to cut off this tactic at the knees cause I’ve seen it before.

    Argument by soundbite I see. Could we get some links to the originals?

  271. Ing says

    Why don’t you take a guess at where I think you’re hilariously bigoted and insane?

    Hint, it’s quoted on this thread and it’s where you start projecting negative traits onto a demographic you clearly don’t know shit about.

  272. The Laughing Coyote (Papio Cynocephalus) says

    I’m aspers, and I say aspers is no excuse.

    Going off on a bit of a tangent here, is anyone else sick of the whole ‘Aspies are actually all secret geniuses’ stereotype?

    I’ve seen so many ignorant shitheads who also happen to be aspies comfort themselves with that crap. It’s not that they’re being blockheaded, it’s that the world can’t recognize their true genius!

    After all, didn’t you know Einstein (or whoever your favorite historical smart person happens to be) had aspergers too?

    That’s a big part of the reason I can’t stand most of the online ‘aspie’ communities I’ve come across.

  273. chigau (む) says

    I’m very tired.
    and my teeth hurt.
    could some of you just learn to copy-paste ‘nyms?
    and
    not equals … & ne ; (lose the spaces)
    ≠

  274. Ing says

    Argument by soundbite I see. Could we get some links to the originals?

    It’s explaining the strategy of what you JUST SAID, you thick twit.

    And you’re actively doing it here! You’re using my comment explaining what you’re going to do to actually do it. oh bravo, bravo! And I almost wasted time actually responding

  276. ahs ॐ says

    but I am willing to admit to being wrong when shown I am wrong. (Note; assertions won’t cut it.)

    Really. I don’t notice that you admitted being wrong about leptons.

  277. Ing says

    I’ll have a talk with my counselor next time I see her and see if I can get a copy of the report from CARES. I could mail that to you if you like.

    Like that can’t be faked.

  281. The Laughing Coyote (Papio Cynocephalus) says

    In other news, I’m worried about the Ex. She has some abdominal pains originally diagnosed as a bladder infection, and it doesn’t appear to have responded to medication.

    Using sophisticated diagnostic techniques (we googled pictures of internal anatomy and she tried to show me on my body where the pain was on hers) has gotten me worried that it might be an ovary or something. We did just have that pregnancy scare, after all. Or possibly something to do with the gallbladder?

    Either way, her aunt has taken her to the clinic and I’m waiting for her to call me back. I hope she’s OK.

  282. Ing says

    Here’s my proposition.

    Liberals have woken up to the harm Barack Obama has done, and continues to do, to the country. He has disappointed the Left and they are seeking a replacement for him. The Left is convinced that a black man would be best in the office of President of the United States, but Obama is not that black man.

    So along comes Herman Cain, who has the draw back of being conservative, but the bonus of being black. He also makes sense, and promises to correct the errors of the Obama administration. But how to support a Cain candidacy without seeming to support a conservative?

    Make wild and unconvincing accusations against him. Cain gets to shine compared to the bloviation now swirling around, the Left gets to deny their covert support for the man. By making the accusations so early in the pre-nomination race, and making them so wild and unconfirmable, the Left makes it just about impossible for any substantial charges to make any headway later in 2012. They get .plausible deniability, Herman gets further support for the right and the center and his candidacy is bolstered.

  283. Ing says

    Tell me, are your goalposts motorized, or do you have to move them by hand?

    Yeah it sucks when people do that doesn’t it?

    Idiot.

  284. The Laughing Coyote (Papio Cynocephalus) says

    It’s called “context”, bub,

    LOL. ‘Bub’.

    What are you, fucking Wolverine now?

  286. Ing says

    In other news, I’m worried about the Ex. She has some abdominal pains originally diagnosed as a bladder infection, and it doesn’t appear to have responded to medication.

    Using sophisticated diagnostic techniques (we googled pictures of internal anatomy and she tried to show me on my body where the pain was on hers) has gotten me worried that it might be an ovary or something. We did just have that pregnancy scare, after all. Or possibly something to do with the gallbladder?

    Either way, her aunt has taken her to the clinic and I’m waiting for her to call me back. I hope she’s OK.

    Kidney Stone ruled out?

  288. The Laughing Coyote (Papio Cynocephalus) says

    No, Ing, it hasn’t. In fact we hadn’t even thought about that possibility.

  292. says

    Ing, #282 and 283

    And this proves bigotry how? Fine, I have a sense of humor. So it aint your sense of humor, suffer.

    As for the goal posts, unless I’m utterly wrong moving them is supposed to be a bad thing. I offered you evidence, you rejected it without so much as a cursory peek at it. My offer still stands, you can have a look at the report once I have a copy.

  293. Friendly says

    Atheist students protest the refusal by Duquesne University to recognize a secularist student group.

    “Duquesne, a Catholic school, already has Jewish and Muslim student groups, [the petitioning Duquesne senior] Mr. [Nick] Shadowen said, adding, ‘I don’t see why they should draw the line at non-theistic students.’

    “But Duquesne’s student government did draw the line, rejecting his petition last month.

    “An oversight committee reviewed Mr. Shadowen’s application, looked into the work of similar groups on other campuses and voted unanimously not to approve it, said Zachary Ziegler, president of Duquesne’s Student Government Association, which is in charge of recognition for student groups.

    “‘The main difference with the Jewish and Muslim organizations is that those groups don’t contradict the mission statement, which says that Duquesne serves God by serving students,’ Mr. Ziegler said. “Both of those student organizations recognize that there is a God. Our committee discussed the fact that this organization does not believe in God, and its positions are against the belief in God.’

    “There was no discussion with university administrators until after the decision was made. After the fact, he said, administrators asked how they had made the decision, and then confirmed it.

    “A spokeswoman for Duquesne said Thursday the administration supports the decision.”

    A poll on the subject is up at the Post-Gazette site for possible Pharyngulization, but (as usual) the poll question is badly worded: “Should Duquesne University (a Catholic college) be forced to allow an atheist student group on campus?”

    Should they be *forced* to allow it? I don’t know about that. Should they allow it without compulsion because allowing even free speech and association that they disagree with will make them a better institution? Yes. But of course, this is a RC school we’re talking about, so the chance that they would even parse that line of argument are probably nil.

  294. Ing says

    @Starstuff

    It’s my example of how insane Mythy is and how his ignorance of what a demographic is like apparently doesn’t stop him from just projecting insanity upon them which I consider bigoted.

  295. Ing says

    Oh of course, you were just kidding. How-oh wait…that context thing you mentioned.

    Seriously, just GTFO you’re a waste of thought.

  296. The Laughing Coyote (Papio Cynocephalus) says

    Update: The ex just called. It’s a cyst on her ovary the size of a friggin golf ball.

  298. says

    Let me put it this way, my shrink had a gander at the report in question, and now I’m on a waiting list for therapy.

    I could be wrong, but those that know me and know of my aspers say it explains a lot.

  299. ahs ॐ says

    Then let me, at long last, admit I got leptons wrong.

    Thank fuck. At least that’s something.

    +++++

    On no possible planet is it “funny”.

    Walton, you probably don’t want to go there. Really, anything can be funny, although some things rarely are.

  303. says

    I see no reason to doubt mythusmage’s claim that he has Asperger’s Syndrome. Generally, I think people should, by default, be trusted in such matters, unless there is some serious reason to suppose that they’re not being honest. In my view, it’s not helpful to go around demanding that people prove statements about their own psychological condition. (I don’t have Asperger’s, but if someone were to demand that I “prove” that I “really” have depression and anxiety disorder on the occasions when I’ve talked about those conditions here, I’d find it stressful and hurtful.)

    Of course, having Asperger’s Syndrome has nothing to do either way with the ridiculousness of his theories, which should be criticized on their own merits.

  304. says

    Coyote, #296

    Ouch!

    Hope it’s something that responds to antibiotics. If not, that it can be safely removed.

    (Anticipating a safe outcome for all parties.)

  305. Ing says

    I see no reason to doubt mythusmage’s claim that he has Asperger’s Syndrome. Generally, I think people should, by default, be trusted in such matters, unless there is some serious reason to suppose that they’re not being honest.

    Missed the point. He posted absurd shit about people’s motivations etc etc and then gives the line about how he’ll admit when he’s wrong but only with evidence and not assertion. I was pointing out that that is stupid and a clear bullshit rhetorical trick. It has nothing to do with his condition if any.

  306. ahs ॐ says

    Anyway, I wish we could stop saying “insane” when our meaning can be summarized as “stupid and irrational”.

    If you think I’m talking about you, dear reader, yes, I’m talking about you.

  307. Ing says

    @Walton

    For example if I said that you hated black people or something and then follow up with that I’ll accept evidence and not assertion what could you possibly say to convince me? Anything you’ve written about your feelings are just assertions of your proclaimed state of mind and can easily be dismissed.

  308. says

    Coyote, proffer my sympathies. I had one of those once, about the size of a peach. The pain was insane, beyond description. Then the damn thing broke and I had all kinds of fun with a period that lasted over 3 months.

  309. Ing says

    @ahs

    Odd I thought a better idea would be using mentally ill instead of insane for definitions other than stupid and irrational.

  310. says

    Missed the point. He posted absurd shit about people’s motivations etc etc and then gives the line about how he’ll admit when he’s wrong but only with evidence and not assertion. I was pointing out that that is stupid and a clear bullshit rhetorical trick. It has nothing to do with his condition if any.

    Oh, sorry – I just read your post at 265 again and realized you were parodying his style of argument, rather than actually denying that he has Asperger’s. Apologies. I misunderstood you.

    (In my defence, it’s late here, I can’t think straight, and I should not still be on the internet. I wish I could get into sensible sleep patterns.)

  311. says

    Walton, #304

    For what it’s worth, thank you.

    In addition, I also have depression and general anxiety, which probably have some connection to the aspers, so I know something of what you go through.

    Yes, I get these bonkers ideas. I’m willing to admit I may be getting things wrong, but one thing I shall not tolerate is being treated like utter scum just because I have strange ideas. I may be wrong and I may be right, but no one shall convince me either way by accusing me of things that are utterly irrelevant.

  312. Ing says

    @Walton

    Sorry if it’s unclear. In my defense it’s both late and I’m woozy from meds. I’m in that annoying phase where it’s keeping me from sleeping like I want but leaving me too weak to actually DO anything.

  313. ahs ॐ says

    Odd I thought a better idea would be using mentally ill instead of insane for definitions other than stupid and irrational.

    That’s a start; better still would be to just say “stupid and irrational” when that’s what you mean, instead of trying to squeeze in an implicit claim about psychiatry which you can deny by equivocation when confronted about it.

  314. TLC says

    Coyote here, posting without logging in from ex’s place (can’t remember password for now).

    Caine: Yeah, it’s definitely unbelievably painful. She’s usually very tough about physical pain, but this had her couchridden and asking for my help to get up.

    Janine: We don’t know yet. I think she’s scheduled for an ultrasound soon.

  315. says

    Missed the point. He posted absurd shit about people’s motivations etc etc and then gives the line about how he’ll admit when he’s wrong but only with evidence and not assertion. I was pointing out that that is stupid and a clear bullshit rhetorical trick. It has nothing to do with his condition if any.

    I realize that Ing is not going to read this, so could somebody ask him what, exactly, I said that made him think I engage in bigotry?

  318. says

    Coyote:

    Caine: Yeah, it’s definitely unbelievably painful. She’s usually very tough about physical pain, but this had her couchridden and asking for my help to get up.

    Yeah, I was on the floor with mine, called Mister for help. I actually screamed when I tried to sit. That is some unreal fucking pain. I hope they are taking good care of her, make sure she has good painkillers.

  319. ahs ॐ says

    so could somebody ask him what, exactly, I said that made him think I engage in bigotry?

    If I understand correctly, Ing means you are engaging in bigotry against liberals when you suggest their motivation is just to have “a black man”—and any ol’ black man will do—in the oval office.

    Your suggestion is of course stupid, and does indicate a gross lack of understanding of liberal thought. This is not a typical use of the word “bigotry” but it does fit the dictionary definition. I am inclined to agree with Ing’s wording.

  321. says

    ahs, #319

    You mean to tell me that poor Ing was concern trolling? Oh the poor man, and on top of a bad cold at that.

    And I fell for it (fool me). Should I award Ing 25 Loki Points, or would 50 be more appropriate?

  322. chigau (む) says

    I’m coming to think that my major problem with calling someone a “cunt” is not about the genderness of the insult.
    It’s more about not knowing what precisely is the objection:
    “That was a racist statement.”
    “That was a sexist statement.”
    “That was a political statement with which I do not agree.”
    “You are a nasty person.”
    etc
    If you™ do not specify, all I can understand is disapproval / disagreement.
    Give me more to go on.
    If you™ just say “cunt”, I cannot address your™ real issue.
    —
    Just speaking for me and I.

  323. TLC says

    Yeah Caine she’s on some strong ones, which is why I’m spending the night here, in case the kid wakes up in the night.

    This keyboard sucks.

  324. ahs ॐ says

    You mean to tell me that poor Ing was concern trolling?

    Uh, no? That’s not what I understand concern trolling to mean.

    If Ing was actually a conservative, accusing you of bigotry against liberals, then that would be concern trolling.

  326. says

    Coyote:

    Yeah Caine she’s on some strong ones, which is why I’m spending the night here, in case the kid wakes up in the night.

    Good idea. She’ll need to be on strong ones until it resolves, too. Sorry the keyboard sucks.

  327. Pteryxx says

    frick. seeing mm insist on a right to Ing’s attention is triggering. of all the crawling pathetic vermin…

  328. Pteryxx says

    what I came for: sympathies, TLC, but I’m glad your ex has you there. (and painkillers. sweeet painkillers…)

  330. chigau (む) says

    While I was out shovelling snow, I scraped my hand on something.
    I did not notice until I came inside and thawed and started dripping blood.
    Getting old fucking well sucks.

  331. madarab says

    Ing, I’d love to email you, but I haven’t been able to find your email address in the last TET. Searching for “ing” gives me every gerund used in the thread. Can you resend it?

  332. ahs ॐ says

    If Ing was actually a conservative, accusing you of bigotry against liberals, then that would be concern trolling.

    Or would it? I’ve confused myself now.

    But I’m sure enough that a sincere claim (which Ing’s was) from a person who accurately indicates their own alignment (which Ing does) is not concern trolling.

  333. chigau (む) says

    I did find my missing thumb-drive.
    It was tucked inside one of those stupid little, nylon, reusable, grocery, bags, that I seem to have a thousand of.
    (fuck grammar)

  337. says

    ahs, #332

    Or it could be somebody having a tizzy over a posting he could’ve damn well addressed over at my place.

    Yes, you can comment at Mythusmage Opines, you don’t need to drag it off to some ‘safe place’ for gnawing and worrying.

  339. chigau (む) says

    mythusmage
    The cat is purring.
    The cat always purrs when she wants something.
    The cat always purrs.
    /end logic problem

  341. John Morales says

    chigau,

    The cat is purring.
    The cat always purrs when she wants something.
    The cat always purrs.

    The first statement is redundant, since it’s entailed by the third.

    The second and third statements do not entail that, because the cat purrs, she wants something.

    The third statement implies the second.

  342. ahs ॐ says

    Or it could be somebody having a tizzy over a posting he could’ve damn well addressed over at my place.

    Some or all of the post was already copied into this thread, so it also makes sense to comment on it here.

    See, this is the thread where we’re already making fun of you, after your Greater Crankery at #108 and Lesser Crankery at #61. Mocking you is on-topic, and there are a lot more readers here than at your place. Your place sounds boring.

  343. chigau (む) says

    John Morales
    I missed one:
    The cat always wants something.
    —
    And don’t try your tricksey logicalityness on me.
    I won’t bite.

  346. says

    ahs, #342

    That’s entirely my point, you can comment on my posts at my blog. That way those people not interested in reading what I post can come here and discuss PZ’s postings and stray items of interest in threads like this.

  352. ahs ॐ says

    mm,

    and discuss PZ’s postings and stray items of interest in threads like this.

    Your crankery has become a stray item of interest.

  354. ahs ॐ says

    For some reason my (long) post is not appearing here. Is there still a problem with the server or must I post in bits?

    I think I had a problem with the length of a comment a few weeks ago. If I were you I would try bits.

  355. John Morales says

    mythusmage, you know that I kind of like you, but really, that’s a pretty poor basis upon which to infer that Ing is male, all jocularity aside — and not only does it bely your claim that you will admit it when you are wrong, but it puts you at the level of those who imagine Jadehawk, Caine, SC et aliae are male based purely on their perceived “testosterone intoxication” which is itself based on their unconscious adoption of gender stereotypes.

    —

    That said, I now go to read your post.

  356. chigau (む) says

    theophontes
    Given what has happened on the merch thread, I don’t think length is the issue.
    Do you have more than the acceptable number of links?

  358. says

    Thanks ahs, I’ll try again:

    @ The Sailor, Crudely Wrott, Salty Current,Squigit, Monado, SQB, Dhorvath, Alethea

    Thank you all for the revolutionary well wishes.

    @ Squigit

    Conga Rats (For yesterday, I have been sleeping off a hangover.)

    @ Lipwig

    wow… didn’t ever imagine that I would see an arial of my home city linked to on this blog.. what year was that pic taken? Did you ever do the Duzi?

    Howzit mah china, kunjani wena? Didn’t realise you where from Durbs. I studied and worked there in the 80’s. IIRC, the flood in the photo was from 1987. There was a lot of flooding that year.

    I went to visit some friends in Richmond (KwaZulu-Natal, at that time there was a virtual civil war in the town) and we got hold of a whole lot of inner tubes to go down the river. At the last minute one of us said we’d better tie some rope onto the tube in case we needed to hold on tightly. We thought this unnecessary as we started in a very broad reach of the river and it was not flowing too fast. We did do it though. And just as well, because the river accelerated around a bend and then we got sucked through some enormous stoppers (hydraulic jumps) many meters high that seemed to hold us underwater forever.

    I never did the Duzi, as I was very poor at canoeing. Nor the Comrades, even though I was quite a good long distance runner. I did do the Midmar Mile and the Midmar triathlon though. Also the Durban Super Triathlon twice.

  360. says

    John, #355

    You’re right, I assumed where I shouldn’t’ve.

    I know this one lady who is convinced, simply because I am male, that I can never be right. She doesn’t know me, but she’s willing to assume. I don’t like it, and I shouldn’t do what I don’t like seeing done to me.

  361. says

    @ SQB ( & Alethea)

    [Zwarte Piet discussion]:

    Jagmohansingh argues that the problem with Zwarte Piet is not the intention to discriminate against or insult but the ‘unintentional message’ which the character sends out.

    In my book, human concerns (such as this example) easily trump tradition. There is a link here: Anti-Zwarte Piet activists arrest prompts new debate

    I consider a way out for the traditionalist, is to stop portraying Piet as black and thereby losing his racist undertones. This has been tried before though – with multicoloured Pieten – but Zwarte Piet staged a comeback. I do not think Piet needs to be killed off, but it does look to be high time to transform him into someone who is acceptable to everyone in Dutch society. Such changes to folk traditions are not uncommon. Even fairy-tales should keep up with the times.

  362. chigau (む) says

    It has just gone -21°C.
    I’m putting on another layer, stuffing a cat in my shirt,,and going to bed.

  363. says

    Theo, #359

    Male+Male rodents,

    Not the experience of some people I once knew. She thought she’d breed hamsters for fun and profit. So she set up some terr… (I know what the word is, I just can’t spell it right now, dang it) and placed one hamster in each one. For the next few days hamsters would escape from their enclosures and kill their neighbors.

    My friend, Robert (who had a politically incorrect sense of humor) would refer to the experiment as the “Bergen-Belsen” for hamsters.

  364. says

    @ chigau

    The above 358, 359, 361 form the original post. The only thing I can think of is that I now removed a space in the link I made. ie [a href=” link”] became [a href=”link”]. I am not sufficiently au fait with html to know if this could cause problems. I have not been experiencing any of the problems that others have recently (Hong Kong server?) experienced otherwise.

  365. John Morales says

    mythusmage, no worries; I hope Ing catches your admission.

    I know this one lady who is convinced, simply because I am male, that I can never be right.

    Just tell her you think you’re wrong about something, thus posing her a conundrum. ;)

  367. says

    Theophontes:

    More pix! I am interested as to wether so many female rats will get on with each other. I understood that with rodents, male+male is OK, male+female is OK but female+female will lead to fighting. We where told this when we acquired “Furball” the Russian Dwarf hamster.

    There will be pics as soon as we get the girls (this may take a while) and I’ll try for more Esme pics in the next few days. She’s still a skitterbiscuit.

    Actually, with rats, it’s not so bad introducing new ones, especially if the new ones are young. Both males and females will fight*, but it’s not the norm unless there’s a serious personality conflict, then you get the social stomp going on. Having a large space is helpful in that regard, as there’s plenty of room and less reason to squabble over territory. My studio is *huge* and they have free run, so I’m not too worried.

    Right now, I’d be thrilled to have the other girls in the house as Esme gets bored very easily and seriously needs someone else to chase and wrestle with besides Chas, who is kind of over all that.

    *Our previous two, Arlo & Nash were fighters. They were sibs, from the same litter, but they loved getting into a good fight on a regular basis. As long as no blood is being drawn, it’s usually best to just let them get it out of their system.

    (And get well soon.)

    Thank you. :)

  369. says

    #367

    *Our previous two, Arlo & Nash were fighters. They were sibs, from the same litter, but they loved getting into a good fight on a regular basis. As long as no blood is being drawn, it’s usually best to just let them get it out of their system.

    Ah, roughhousing!

  370. says

    #368

    I might see her this evening when I go to the monthly concert (Alison Lonsdale and Eben Brooks if you’re up for a search), I’ll have to try that on her there.

  371. ahs ॐ says

    I’ll have to try that on her there.

    It appears from your description that she does not look forward to your company. Why don’t you just leave her alone?

  372. TLC says

    there’s a bit of an outcry over this at scientific american blogs, it appears.

    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7366/full/477626a.html

    I mostly want to take this opportunity to say that this “men from mars women from venus” crap has always pissed me off, even before I started educating myself. Just another bullshit way to try to drive a big ol wedge between the sexes while selling shitty books.

    This ‘man the hunter, woman the gatherer’ shit is in the exact same shitty spirit, of course.

    I’m curious as to what others here think of “Womanspace”.

  373. TLC says

    and thanks to all who expressed their sympathy and concern for my ex. Her painkillers were strong enough to give her a decent buzz. Unfortunately, this led to her getting a bit silly and playful, which in turn led to her constantly forgetting the cyst and moving the wrong way…

  374. says

    Coyote @ 372, you must have missed SC’s post @ #47. Follow her links and you’ll find some happier reading. Henry Gee has quite the reputation and has been the subject of a lot of discussion here, which, if you feel like more reading, can browse through this list.

  375. says

    Coyote:

    I’m curious as to what others here think of “Womanspace”.

    It’s a steaming heap of bullshit, reinforcing stupid stereotypes a la “It’s tongue in cheek! My wife laughed, so it’s not sexist!”

    It’s all an old, worn trope, just the sort of shit Gee would find worthy of publication.

  376. says

    TLC, #372

    I read an interesting story about how two hapless men came to some understanding of a talent most women have. Namely, the ability to seek out all sorts of things, and to remember where they got them.

    I recall a pair of MRI brain scans taken of a man and a woman. Turns out that women use more of their brains, making them, pound for neurological pound, smarter than guys.

    Our old hunter/gatherer days at that long past. Geologically speaking 10,000 years is but a moment. Differences that arose over hundreds of thousands of years haven’t had all that much time to even out.

    It’s a shame that some people insist that those differences mean we need to discriminate against others, but it remains a fact that men and women tend to see and interact with the world differently. I say this is a good thing, because having another viewpoint can help clarify mine.

  377. says

    Caine, #375

    You mean to tell me women don’t have a talent men don’t? That women don’t have something unique that appeared during the long Dream Time before we started practicing agriculture, when the ability to find things useful (or just interesting) and to remember where they got them was advantageous?

    Or are you so eager to be insulted and belittled you’ll see it even when it’s not proffered?

    Yes, I’m male. No, I saw no insult. I saw the observations of a pair of men; which may be right, could be wrong (though I doubt it), but in no wise an insult.

  378. madarab says

    Ing, I found your post the old-fashioned way. I figure that if I’m interested in your game, I’m motivated enough to sort through all of the posts in the previous TET. I just sent you an email.

  379. John Morales says

    mythusmage:

    I read an interesting story about how two hapless men came to some understanding of a talent most women have.

    (Sigh)

    Your implicit “but men don’t” is glaring.

    Turns out that women use more of their brains, making them, pound for neurological pound, smarter than guys.

    (Sigh again)

    But men tend to have greater brain mass, and (even granting that intelligence is proportional to brain mass (not established!)), you haven’t compared the ratios of product of brain mass to brain efficiency, so your claim is vacuous.

    but it remains a fact that men and women tend to see and interact with the world differently.

    (Sigh again)

    About as established a fact as that tall people and short people (or rich people and poor people, or beautiful people and ugly people etc) do so, I suspect.

    Differences that arose over hundreds of thousands of years haven’t had all that much time to even out.

    Concomitantly, similarities that arose over hundreds of thousands of years haven’t had all that much time to diverge.

    (Or, IOW: You need to make some sort of argument that the change of divergence is less than the change of convergence for this consideration to be significant)

    I say this is a good thing, because having another viewpoint can help clarify mine.

    You think any given two people out of the teeming billions on this planet have the very same viewpoint? If not, then anyone else will provide the different viewpoint you seek.

  380. TLC says

    could be wrong (though I doubt it),

    Of course, it all makes sense! Women can enter alternate universes, and, being women, only use this talent for SHOPPING!

  382. ahs ॐ says

    Or are you so eager to be insulted and belittled you’ll see it even when it’s not proffered?

    That must be it.

    It’s not possible that a woman could legitimately take issue with depictions of gender in the media.

    +++++
    I’m inclined to say Ing was being generous to you. Evidently, you’re not just one kind of bigot.

  383. says

    John and TLC,

    We obviously read different stories.

    I’m still all for equality of opportunity and against overt and covert acts of suppression.

  385. says

    mythusmage:

    Yes, I’m male. No, I saw no insult. I saw the observations of a pair of men; which may be right, could be wrong (though I doubt it), but in no wise an insult.

    You are an idiot.

    Or are you so eager to be insulted and belittled you’ll see it even when it’s not proffered?

    You’re not just an idiot, you’re an asshole.

    Your whole idiotic argument is “gee, I buy into this shit, seems right to me, therefor it’s right!” along with “gosh, can’t you take a compliment? Goodness, you’re a stupid bitch.”

    I don’t care enough about you to bother attempting to educate you.

  386. says

    ahs:

    It’s not possible that a woman could legitimately take issue with depictions of gender in the media.

    No, of course not. Everyone knows there’s no bias or stupid stereotyping in the media! :eyeroll:

  389. says

    It appears I got a certain story wrong, and came to an erroneous conclusion. Still, I must ask if maybe certain parties are so sensitized to incidents of repression and bigotry they will see it even when such has not been offered.

    My point about the MRI scans I mentioned seeing once was to elucidate the fact men and women do have some differences whereto brains and brain functioning. Women, as a group, tend to have talents men, as a group, do not have. Obviously there are exceptions.

    No, ladies, I was not out to degrade you, debase you, or force you into slave labor; I was only making an observation upon an article I evidently misunderstood. I am all for anybody doing what they most wish to do, so long as it does not cause harm to anybody else.3

  390. First Approximation says

    Henry Gee has quite the reputation and has been the subject of a lot of discussion here

    Oh, yeah. Gee wrote this three years ago on Pharyngula:

    I predict that in five or ten years time, thanks to Dawkins and others, then scientists who profess any kind of religious belief will find it hard to get tenure, and then jobs, and then papers published, and finally their employers, responding to pressure, will be forced to fire them or retire them early. It will start with the Jews, of course, because these things usually do, as they have done many times in the past.

    Three years later and it’s still not even close to be being true.

    Some time later there was a thread about a story published in Futures, the science fiction section of Nature for which Gee is the editor. The story was about a future society where satellites monitor thoughts and anyone who prays gets taken away by the police. I reproduced that quote, since it seemed relevant and Gee accused me of quote mining him. I didn’t. Anyone can follow the link and see for themselves.

    Is it it just me or is it becoming more and more common for people to use “quote mining” or quoting-out-of-context to mean ‘quoting something embarrassing I said/wrote’?

  391. TLC says

    I think the ending line about women shopping for ‘better looking versions of us’ removes any doubt about the misogyny.

    Also, in videos I’ve seen about primitive and/or indigenous cultures, the ‘gathering’ part of the equation seems pretty equal between the men and women.

  392. First Approximation says

    Oh, I forgot, that quote wasn’t even the worst part of that comment.

    Gee:

    But of course, some of you probably think I am an untermensch, as did the people who killed my grandparents and my two aunts — one a toddler, I have recently discovered, the other a babe in arms, and then recycled them as soap and lampshades, and presumably deserving of no better fate.

    Utterly disgusting.

  393. says

    Caine, #385

    …Goodness, you’re a stupid bitch.”

    Don’t put words in my mouth. Damn me for what I do say, but never put words in my mouth.

  394. ahs ॐ says

    No, of course not. Everyone knows there’s no bias or stupid stereotyping in the media! :eyeroll:

    And mythusmage will surely protest that of course there’s bias against women in the media, of course he knows that; it’s just not present here.

    That much would have been arguable. People can disagree about specific instances.

    What I find amusing is that he’s closed off any opportunity for you to disagree. If you disagree, it’s because you’re trying to be offended. But men? Men are free to come to whatever conclusion.

    It’s almost as if:

    Rule #1: A man is never wrong.

    Rule #2: When a man might be wrong, it’s because reasonable people can disagree.

  395. says

    FA:

    Is it it just me or is it becoming more and more common for people to use “quote mining” or quoting-out-of-context to mean ‘quoting something embarrassing I said/wrote’?

    It’s not just you. I’ve noticed the same thing. It’s getting as popular as screeching “ad hom!” when being insulted.

    TLC:

    I think the ending line about women shopping for ‘better looking versions of us’ removes any doubt about the misogyny.

    Henry Gee’s coy little comment on Womenspace tells all you need to know, at least for those of us familiar with him.

  398. says

    ahs:

    What I find amusing is that he’s closed off any opportunity for you to disagree. If you disagree, it’s because you’re trying to be offended. But men? Men are free to come to whatever conclusion.

    Well, naturally. I’m just an ungrateful, uppity bitch who needs to learn to be quiet and take a compliment, dammit!

    It’s almost as if:

    Rule #1: A man is never wrong.

    Rule #2: When a man might be wrong, it’s because reasonable people can disagree.

    Which works quite well, as long as you leave women out of the equation. I mean we all know women can’t be reasonable. All that super-shopping power takes up too much brain room.

  400. says

    Why do I get the feeling ahs is still having a tizzy over my disagreement regarding plagiarism, and is using every excuse he can to get on my case?

  402. John Morales says

    mythusmage:

    We obviously read different stories.

    The only thing I read before responding to you was your comment; it was that to which I responded.

    (You still don’t get that it was your effort not to be bigoted and patronising towards women that evinced just that attribute.

    But thanks, because I think I *finally* get that oft-quoted dictum: “Intent ain’t magic”)

  403. First Approximation says

    ahs,

    It’s not possible that a woman could legitimately take issue with depictions of gender in the media.

    mythusmage,

    ahs, #382

    Rule #!: A woman is never wrong.

    Rule #2: When a woman is wrong see rule number one.

    Wow….

  404. says

    Caine, #398

    Well, naturally. I’m just an ungrateful, uppity bitch who needs to learn to be quiet and take a compliment, dammit!

    This applies just as much to you; don’t put words in my mouth.

    And don’t tell me you’re merely pointing out what I meant. Unlike some people, I say what I mean and I mean what I say. You don’t know me, and you show no desire to get to know me. I can’t do anything about that, but I can do something about your jumping to conclusions.

  405. John Morales says

    mythusmage:

    No, ladies, I was not out to degrade you, debase you, or force you into slave labor;

    They know that; yet you did so nonetheless.

    (Lightbulb moments are sometimes not comfortable; I don’t look forward to reconsidering certain matters)

  406. Beatrice, anormalement indécente says

    Am I the only one who finds it condescending when someone calls women ladies, in the middle of a sexism discussion? For me, it always has a whiff of “Now, now, calm down, I didn’t mean to upset your little ladybrains”.

  407. says

    John, #405

    They know that; yet you did so nonetheless.

    How?

    (Since ahs is going to accuse me of being obtuse let me assure the reader that I am interested in how somebody could take what I said as an attempt to belittle women, individually or as a group.)

  408. ahs ॐ says

    Why do I get the feeling ahs is still having a tizzy over my disagreement regarding plagiarism, and is using every excuse he can to get on my case?

    Because you’re self-centered, you don’t understand people in general, and you don’t know me in particular.

    What have I gotten on your case about?

    Crank physics, tired overgeneralizations about liberals (I prefer novel ones), and sexist comments. You’ve hit a trifecta of my pet peeves, although there’s still time to hit plenty more.

    You think it’s personal? Think it through, mythusmage. If it was just about getting at you personally, I wouldn’t have taken exception at #306 to unfair insinuations about your psychiatric state.

  409. says

    John:

    (Lightbulb moments are sometimes not comfortable; I don’t look forward to reconsidering certain matters)

    You’re willing to reconsider certain matters and you handle it well when you come to the conclusion that you may have been wrong about something.

    Also, at least you’re not getting the “there, there, Ladies, calm down now while I mansplain things to you” crap.

  410. says

    Beatrice, #406

    Call me an old fogey (but I’m only 57!), call me a hopeless romantic, but until proven wrong I assume that a woman is a lady and a man is a gent. It’s the way I am. Or would you feel better if I had started off with, “Lissen up, broads.”

  411. says

    Beatrice:

    Am I the only one who finds it condescending when someone calls women ladies, in the middle of a sexism discussion? For me, it always has a whiff of “Now, now, calm down, I didn’t mean to upset your little ladybrains”.

    Jinx! I owe you a drink. :) (See mine @ 409)

  412. ahs ॐ says

    ahs, #394

    Let Caine speak for herself.

    It would be interesting hilarious to hear how anything in my comment could be construed as speaking for Caine, rather than replying to her.

  414. TLC says

    Beatrice, in my younger and unenlightened days, I can recall using “ladies” and “lady” to intentionally be dismissive and condescending. So yeah.

    MM has admitted to having aspergers. This does not excuse his ignorance, in fact as an aspie myself I feel like we have a bit of a duty to educate ourselves more on these things, since we tend to have difficulty understanding the perspectives of others.

  415. ahs ॐ says

    Tone matters, old chap, tone matters

    Whiner. Go look at how I talk to Coco Jumbo.

    Regardless of what you think of my tone, you are unable to contest this point:

    If it were true that I was using every excuse I can to get on your case, I wouldn’t have taken exception at #306 to unfair insinuations about your psychiatric state.

    Do you comprehend this argument? It is straightforward enough. There were other ways to get on your case, I not only refrained from those tactics but discouraged others from using them; therefore I must not be using every excuse I can.

  416. says

    mm:

    Why do I get the feeling ahs is still having a tizzy over my disagreement regarding plagiarism, and is using every excuse he can to get on my case?

    Cupcake, it’s not because you’re a man, it’s not because you’re non-neurotypical, it’s not because you disagreed about certain things, it’s not because of any other excuse you manufacture.

    The reason people are “getting on your case” is simple: you are an obnoxious asshole who indulges in wholesale fuckwittery.

  417. ahs ॐ says

    I note mythusmage ignored this question:

    I’ll have to try that on her there.

    It appears from your description that she does not look forward to your company. Why don’t you just leave her alone?

    I worry he ignored it because to answer would be to admit that he plans harassment.

  418. says

    ahs:

    It would be interesting hilarious to hear how anything in my comment could be construed as speaking for Caine, rather than replying to her.

    But, but…you must be speaking for me, ahs! That’s what men do, right?

  419. says

    Caine, #409

    Also, at least you’re not getting the “there, there, Ladies, calm down now while I mansplain things to you” crap

    Let me repeat myself, stop putting words in my mouth. I’m quite capable of making an ass of myself by myself, I don’t need your help.

    Fine, I said something you disagree with, so address yourself to what I did say, not what you wanted me to say. Now that it’s been pointed out to me I can see why you, and other women, could take it in the worst possible light. That my words offended I do most heartily regret and I do apologize for it. Twas never my intent to insult and I’m sorry it happened.

    And before you accuse me of something else; no, I am not attacking your status as a capable human being. Nor am I calling you a ‘bitch’ in any manner or form. So think of another way of getting me wrong.

  421. Beatrice, anormalement indécente says

    Oh good, I thought it was just me, getting bitter and resentful.

    Caine, I’ll take you up on that one after a workday. Something alcoholic.

    TLC,
    Yeah, I’m working with such a specimen. Somehow, he always makes sure to call us ladies right after one of his “jokes” about women isn’t received very well.

    It’s difficult not to recall that when I read mythusmage’s comments.

  422. says

    ahs, #417

    Okay then, let me address your question.

    It’s a small venue and we’re both (potentially) going to be there. John suggested a humerous way I could address her bigotry, and I took him up on it. I am well socialized enough to be courteous in person, and I have decided that teasing her about her failing would be an unsocial thing to do.

    I shall restrain myself to a “Good evening” followed by, “How was your day?”

    As a possibly mythical fellow is once recorded as saying, “A soft answer turns away wrath.”

  423. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Henry Gee is a first-rate Simon Pure sexist douchebag.

    And you, mythusmage, are a similarly unreflective sexist douchebag. Not because you’re “aspers”*. Because you’re an unreflective sexist douchebag.

    *Just stop it.

  424. says

    Beatrice, #421

    Yeah, I’m working with such a specimen. Somehow, he always makes sure to call us ladies right after one of his “jokes” about women isn’t received very well.

    So perforce I must be just like him.

  425. TLC says

    It’s a small venue and we’re both (potentially) going to be there. John suggested a humerous way I could address her bigotry, and I took him up on it.

    Huh? Her bigotry?

    women are just as capable of being bigots as men, but uh… are you sure she’s the bigot?

  428. says

    TLC, #425

    However I did it, I got on her bad side. Then again, she started treating me as scum as soon as she could. So yes, bigotry sounds like the right word to use.

  429. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    MM. Shut the fuck up. You don’t even deserve half the incisive, reflective, and accurate commentary ahs and Caine have leveled at you; you don’t take any of it on board. You are unreflective, and it makes you behave like an asshole.

    So, yeah. Shut your fucking mouth. Go think about why you get this reaction for a while.

    But most of all, shut the fuck up.

  434. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    TLC – yeah, it’s rampant, as Caine said. All insults are now ad hominems, all legitimate references to prior quotations are quote-mining, and all negative reaction is bigotry (especially if that negative reaction is to actually object to genuine bigotry).

  435. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    You don’t like what I have to say nobody says you have to read me.

    And I don’t have to skip over what you say without comment, either. You’re shitting up the place here and you’re going to get told to shut the fuck up until you stop doing it.

  438. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    No one is prejudging you, dipshit. They’re judging you on your demonstrated track record. Are you addled as well as an asshole?

  442. TLC says

    Josh: Yeah, really. A girl is a bigot now because she doesn’t like him?

    If so, then everyone who isn’t my friend is FUCKING RACIST against coyotes.

    Even if her reasons for disliking him are completely stupid, it doesn’t make her a bigot. Furthermore, accusing someone of bigotry for disliking him makes him look like a self-pitying fuck with no sense of proportion.

  443. says

    While ahs is not out to get me, something tells me that Josh has a bodacious bug up the bum about me, and no matter what I say he’s going to have a snit about it.

    How may I distress you, oh font of reasoned discourse? What can I do to raise your blood pressure even higher. Far from me to deny you your daily tirade.

    I cannot placate the man, then let me…

  444. Sili says

    First Approximation says:

    Massless spin-1 particles have two polarization state and massive spin-1 have two polarization states. The photon, a spin-1 particle, is observed to have two polarizations.

    Thank you. I knew there was a better argument. I really enjoy being educated by a real physicist. I need to chat to you more next year in Rhinebeck.

  445. says

    Josh:

    They’re judging you on your demonstrated track record.

    Indeed. I’m not even counting the stupid shit he said at Pharyngula sciblogs, even though he didn’t come across as quite this stupid back then.

  446. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    While ahs is not out to get me, something tells me that Josh has a bodacious bug up the bum about me, and no matter what I say he’s going to have a snit about it.

    This is of a piece with your inability to understand that people who criticize you aren’t “bigoted.” It’s not about Special MythusMage, it’s about your behavior. People are reacting strongly against you because you’re acting like a fucking asshole. Not because they’re “bigoted.” Not because I have some special rhetorical hard-on for you (seriously. . .how self-important can you get. . . I don’t even know who the fuck you are aside from your behavior here). Because you’re acting like a first-rate jerk.

  447. says

    Sili, #441

    I suspect there’s more to Steven’s life than what you see on that comic. Note that he did catch a cab, and where I come from they tend to be pricey.

  449. Sili says

    mythusmage says:

    I suspect there’s more to Steven’s life than what you see on that comic. Note that he did catch a cab, and where I come from they tend to be pricey.

    *BZZZZT*

    Read again. You missed the punchline.

  451. says

    Josh, #446

    When did I, in this thread, accuse somebody here of being a bigot? I spoke only of one particular woman, and her actions regarding me remind me of bigots and bigotry.

  454. TLC says

    NSFW Bacon!

    Bacon and oral sex. Two great flavors on their own, but combined? They sound unappealing.

  455. opposablethumbs, que le pouce enragé mette les pouces says

    mythusmage, look at the name of the building – it’s visible in the final frame.

  456. Rev. BigDumbChimp says

    Since folks are going to discuss my posts at PZ’s blog (and how rude is that?), here is one to sink your teeth into.

    *sniffle

  457. says

    (Caine had to ask for it. :) )

    If you thought I was bad before, let me tell you a secret; I believe in God

    I know the arguments against the existence of God, and I agree with them in-so-far as they deal with the God of the Bible, or the Koran, or even the Bhagavad-gita. As far as I know nobody has ever written down God’s word and nobody’s going to convince me otherwise.

    How do I know God exists?

    I wouldn’t be alive today if he didn’t.

    Nope, sorry, this is not a near death experience, they never recovered the body.

    The year was 1953, I was a soldier serving in Korea. I got a message from my girl telling me she had found someone else. I got upset and some days later, during a landing exercise, I said something akin to “sod this” while descending the cargo net and jumped off. Made no attempt to save myself.

    When I awoke it was to a lot of pain, and despair worse than anything I’d ever experienced before. Have no idea how long I was there, for I bawled for help in a trice. Next thing I know I’m in someplace quiet, serene, where the pain is gone, and weight too. On March 19th 1954 I was born into a new life with a new family.

    I cannot prove this, all I know is that it happened, and all that came before my current incarnation came before my current incarnation.

    I find creationists to be full of it, and godbots to be a waste. I accept the Theory of Evolution because it explains so much. As does the sun-centric Solar System, plate tectonics, and the Special and General theories of Relativity.

    Yes, I’m aware of how crazy it sounds, and I realize that without proof I’m not going persuade anyone that what I just related is what I have experienced. So I’m not going to fret about it. I may be wrong, but you’re not going to convince me until you find some way to test my claims, besides calling me a loony that is.

    So now you know a truly creepy thing about me; I believe in God and I believe in reincarnation.

  458. says

    Opposablethumbs, #455

    Ah, now I see. (Sometimes it does take me awhile to catch on.) Thanks for pointing it out.

    But there is the matter of the taxi Stevens gets in the second to last panel, and I doubt many cabbies extend free rides. I could be missing something, but something tells me Steven has more going for him than we think.

  460. Sili says

    But there is the matter of the taxi Stevens gets in the second to last panel, and I doubt many cabbies extend free rides. I could be missing something, but something tells me Steven has more going for him than we think.

    Yes. Stevens isn’t the guy with the coffee.

  461. says

    I believe in God

    No one cares, fuckwit. There’s more than one OM here who is a theist. There are other regulars who aren’t atheists and are not considered to be dimwitted asses.

    The only thing anyone here cares about is you shutting the fuck up, as you seem to be unwilling to stop being such an obnoxious asshole.

  463. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Oh for fuck’s sake. That’s just pitiable. I get up at 6 a.m. on a Saturday with insomnia, and this is the quality of entertainment I get for the next few hours?

    Need. Better. Trolls.

  468. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    You find it so easy to hate. Why is that?

    You.

    And it isn’t hate, sweetheart. You’re not that compelling.

  469. Rev. BigDumbChimp says

    If you thought I was bad before, let me tell you a secret; I believe in God

    Not shocking as you also have a hard on for Bigfoot.

  470. says

    Josh, $463

    I can make it even worse, I believe in bigfoot. Not that I could ever amass evidence you would accept, but I found what evidence as is available to be convincing.

    Yes, I know about the frauds, but the fakes are not the whole of the evidence, and just as Piltdown Man does not prove evolution false, neither do the fakes prove the sasquatch fraudulent.

  472. Rev. BigDumbChimp says

    The year was 1953, I was a soldier serving in Korea. I got a message from my girl telling me she had found someone else. I got upset and some days later, during a landing exercise, I said something akin to “sod this” while descending the cargo net and jumped off. Made no attempt to save myself.

    When I awoke it was to a lot of pain, and despair worse than anything I’d ever experienced before. Have no idea how long I was there, for I bawled for help in a trice. Next thing I know I’m in someplace quiet, serene, where the pain is gone, and weight too. On March 19th 1954 I was born into a new life with a new family.

    Wait this? this? is your reason.

    sigh

  477. Rev. BigDumbChimp says

    RBDC, #472

    Yes.

    #476

    So you don’t have a thing for Bigfoot contrary to your #470 (and a number of comments here at Pharyngula and posts on your blog)?

    or are you going to complain about me using “hard on”?

  479. says

    MM,

    again, as I keep telling theists on this site,

    whatever happens inside your head, is NOT evidence for the existence of a god/sentient universe.

    But you know, after what you’ve told us about the Herman Cain conspiracy theories and your various misogynist comments you’ve lost pretty much all your credibility in my eyes, so whether you believe in god or not, is really just a drop in the ocean compared to that..

  481. says

    Pelamun, #479

    Not in my head. I died in 1953, to be born again in 1954. Whole new body, whole new head.

    No way, at our current state of knowledge, to prove it, so I won’t try. Just accept that you’re not going to convince me, especially not with contempt.

  482. Josh, Official SpokesGay says

    Somewhere along the line I got lost and I could use a bit of explication.

    Hoo-boy, and how.

  483. says

    Not in my head. I died in 1953, to be born again in 1954. Whole new body, whole new head.

    Well the “new body” part should be easy to prove, medical records etc. Probably also through media reports because if such an event had really happened, it would have made world head lines.

    Idiot.

  485. KG says

    Thoreau’s self-reliance is Thatcheresque in its antiscientific denial of human social interdependence. – ahs

    What’s more On Walden Pond is somehwat dishonest: he wasn’t living there full time, and his mum was doing his laundry.

  487. KG says

    I’m quite capable of making an ass of myself by myself, I don’t need your help. – mythusmage

    QFFT!

  488. says

    MM,

    most of us aren’t really interested in changing YOUR mind (I’d wager to say), but some of us have SIWOTI syndrome, and some want to make sure that incoherent nonsense does not go unanswered on this site, for the benefit of others, or in the name of rational skepticism…

  489. Carlie says

    Only if it is President Garfield without Garfield.

    I rue the fact that I did not create that website.

    There is a President Garfield as Garfield site, but doesn’t look like there is one where Pres. G replaces Jon, though.

    TLC – ugh. Hopefully they can treat it now.

    chigau – not a bad scrape, I hope?

  490. says

    BTW,

    Where I erred with certain people was saying something thoughtless. So let me compound my mistake by assuring people that…

    I am not here to put down anybody, to oppress anyone, and if that be the impression I gave I apologize for it.

    It is my belief that, so long as it harms none, everyone should have the right to live their lives as they choose. Follow your dreams to the best of your ability and the best of outcomes for you and yours.

  491. says

    Pelamun,

    Not that sort of reincarnation. :)

    I used to have a birth certificate, but I lost it in all my rambling. It was at 7:38 am Central Standard Time in Elyria Ohio on March 19th, 1954

    I gestated in a standard female human body, as nigh everybody has, unless somebody has gestated a human baby entirely in an artificial womb.

  492. says

    Theophontes

    I’m having trouble getting to sleep, so it could be fatigue intoxication. Then again, I do see the world differently than most people, and that may be the result of my Aspergers.

  496. First Approximation says

    Me,

    Massless spin-1 particles have two polarization state and massive spin-1 have two three polarization states.

    Fixed.

  499. says

    What’s more On Walden Pond is somehwat dishonest: he wasn’t living there full time, and his mum was doing his laundry.

    I haven’t read On Walden Pond, so I’ll refrain from commenting on the book itself.

    But the fact that Thoreau’s ideas about self-sufficiency and simple living were not realistic – like I said, he was a poet and a dreamer, not an economist – does not mean that his work in moral philosophy is not valuable. Resistance to Civil Government was described as an inspiration by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, among others. He should get enormous credit for his principled opposition to slavery and imperialist warfare, at a time when many people either supported these things or failed actively to oppose them. Not to mention his early advocacy of environmentalism (which was not a popular position in the nineteenth century).

  500. ChasCPeterson says

    All insults are now ad hominems, all legitimate references to prior quotations are quote-mining, and all negative reaction is bigotry

    Language evolves. Deal with it, descriptivists.

    Oh, hi Sili. Excellent comic; thanks.

    look at the name of the building

    you missed more than half of the punchline

    the taxi Stevens gets in
    I could be missing something, but something tells me Steven has more going for him than we think.

    amazing

    Who projectile pooped in your corn flakes?

    Kellogg! Get it?

    On Walden Pond is somehwat dishonest: he wasn’t living there full time, and his mum was doing his laundry.

    Yes, and he walked to town to visit friends as well. Did you have the book confused with Cast Away? It would only be dishonest if he asserted something to the contrary in there.
    I’ve been to the cabin site several times. It’s pretty isolated even today. I think ‘dishonest’ is unfair.

    Fixed.

    Thank you. I was beginning to wonder about physicists. It didn’t make any sense.