It won’t summon the shriveled, etiolated ghost of D*vid M*b*s if I post a Depeche Mode video, will it?
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
It won’t summon the shriveled, etiolated ghost of D*vid M*b*s if I post a Depeche Mode video, will it?
Sorry PZ but kill mother fucking Depeche Mode.
And enjoy the silence.
Glen Davidson
I will fucking gag anyone who brings up People Are Peo…
*gagged*
Finally, my computer was starting to hate the last thread.
“The uploader has not made this video available in your country.”
(Thank FSM!)
It seems that I had a request near the end of the last thread.
A friend who claimed to not like the band could not get this melody out of his head.
Makes No Sense At All
59 Times The Pain
An other friend claimed that she could hear why I loved this band but for her, it was just too much.
Warning. Rape and murder trigger for the next song.
Diane
She Floated Away
still catching-up on the end of the last Thread:
but in tonight’s news, I dropped my netbook and cracked the screen. It still works but there is an abstract design of black blobs in the lower right.
—
Nutmeg
I’m an archaeologist.
chigau: You’re having terrible technology luck aren’t you?
I think I’ll sacrifice some DNA to the PCR gods tomorrow for all those who are having a rough week. There seem to be a lot of you.
(Does anyone else’s lab have PCR gods? No, my lab is just weird? All right, then.)
chigau: If your technology woes will permit, feel free to tell work-related stories anytime! I’d love to get up north someday, but I haven’t made it much further than 55N so far.
A. R
and the light on the back porch keeps burning out.
Nutmeg: Have you had your thermocycler serviced recently? I assume your primers and water baths are good.
More!
Is it a film or is it real?
Eiffel Tower High
Charity, Chasity, Prudence and Hope
Masochism World
Crystal
Did someone mention Nanci Griffith?
Also, in case anybody cares, there’s a flicker of life at my recently-mostly-dormant blog.</blogwhore>
1. Thread bankrupt.
2. SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE!!— Francine came out of winter hibernation today! Good girl started right up just like her battery hadn’t been sitting outside all winter. Thank you, Chrysler, for the slant 6 engine.
gratz Josh!
—
Labs of mine have had cloning gods, PCR gods and tissue culture gods. I specifically inherited a snarling rubber rat clutching a pipette tip in each forepaw.
Waiting for My Cappuccino
I Drink Beer
Work Song
You’ll Never Surf Again </janine>
.
.
.
.
.
I stumbled across Dan Reeder listening to Weekend Edition on my way to a 5k race a few years ago; dunno why I flashed on him tonight. He makes all his own instruments. Weird dude; weird songs… but I find him oddly compelling.
And. . . . I want a cigarette so bad right now it’s a good thing I’ve had too much to drink to drive to the store. Cuz I’d totes buy a pack.
I’ve got a fruit fly god in my lab.
Love Is All Around
Yes, that song.
I Will Never Forget You
Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely
The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill
Books About UFOs
Yeah, twenty five years after they blew up (I was not just a break up.) they still remain pretty much my all time favorite band. In a recent interview with Bob Mould, he did take great pride in point out just how great they were.
He was not wrong.
Here is a song by the Dead Milkmen. It name checks the members of Hüsker Dü.
The Thing That Only Eats Hippies
I have not heard this song in over two decades.
Life is short and filled with stuff.
I love making cold cream. It’s so quick and when I’m done there’s, you know, real cold cream, that looks like it came from a store and everything. Only better smelling.
Nutmeg, I must feel slightly offended at being compared to Americans! Except in the sense that we are the big country and NZ the small neighbour. But Canada – well, I lived in the US for a couple of years, and visiting Canada felt like a relief – it was just so much less foreign. We have a huge and mostly empty land mass and a British heritage; so do you. Home away from home, except with more water :)
Help! I am stuck in an Eighties flashback again!
It Could Be Sunshine-Love And Rockets
A Way-The Bolshoi
Everything’s Explodin’-The Flaming Lips
Human Cannonball-The Butthole Surfers
Cannibal-Scrath Acid
I like this
http://constitutionalprogressives.org/action/whole-constitution-pledge
just for fun I bought a 7 dollar hatchet. It’s a piece of shit, and it was the least shitty in the bin. But this is a good thing, I intend to use it for throwing, so I want something shitty that I won’t cry if I ding the edge.
I have a feeling this is gonna be a good summer.
Also I modified it and made it look cool despite the shittiness.
TLC: I have a rather nice hatchet in my hunting kit. Got it for $30 IIRC. It hasn’t dulled yet, even with extreme use. Granted, said extreme use occurred exactly once when I had to get a tree limb off of my car.
A.R: I bought myself the Cold steel Norse Hawk for 30 bucks, it’s my favorite bush axe. Its only drawback is that it doesn’t split wood well, but whatever. I did decorative filework on the back, sharpened a bit of the beard, and carved a neat pommel on the handle. It matches my homemade short sword. Which I also recently did a bunch of decorative filework on.
(The sword is what I used to butcher up the deer we killed last fall, including splitting up the ribcage and removing the head)
A sword to butcher a deer? I must sat that that is quite unique. Speaking of hunting swords, I do actually have an 18th century hunting sword I bought at a garage sale. Looks a bit like this actually.
@ Josh
TBBB…. we can haz pix soon?
@ A.R
Oi! Don’t go waving that about TZT. We don’t want it to escalate….
theophontes: I’m afraid to say that things have already gotten a bit crazy on TZT. Darth Benedict is zapping the population with lightning, and there is a LOLstar orbiting the thread…
A.R: Beautiful. I know the style. I really enjoy the german ones with the antler handles. Such class, though I’ll never be able to afford one.
My short sword has a ten inch roughly leaf shaped blade, five inch handle, it’s kinda like a smatchet, kinda looks like a bronze-aged short sword (but isn’t truly double edged and is more obvious now with the filework), kinda hilted like a gladius with a blocky wooden crossguard (nicely carved and polished though), and kind of just a big knife. Made from flattened leafspring. My favorite bush implement. Have used it for many years, though I’ve been filing it into a more manageable shape the whole time (painstaking, but worth it).
Anyways, yeah, it clove that deer’s ribcage and sternum like nothing. It’s also the sword I badly injured my left thumb with, but that’s another story.
Swords can do these things you know! :)
Yes A.R, if you forget what they do, they will bite!
Apple sharlotka is in the oven, I’ve cleaned all the windows and I can’t piece together that big whirl in the middle of the Starry night puzzle which is now annoying me beyond reason.
Unemployment is driving me crazy.
Uff, coffee
What a morning
First to the doc, then to gran.
We still can’t decide if the kid has an allergy or an infection, but in case we find out we have medication.
Bittersweet:
#1 noticed that my gran is totally lacking a plushie of her own. They’ve constantly supplied her with some of theirs, but that wasn’t right. So we bought her a little kittycat.
I mean, yeah, 4yo empathy. They’d need their own plushie, so gran needs on, too.
The sad thing is that they were right, of course, and gran is totally happy with her new plushie kittycat. And not because it’s a gift from her great-grandchildren.
A.R.
Nice. I looooove things with blades. Mr always tries to gently steer me away from any place where they sell them.
Oh, and our last couple of lessons in French class were about employment so the three essays I have to write are all about that topic: summer job, experiences in any previous jobs, work conditions, difficulties of finding a job in Croatia these days… you get the picture.
Just the thought about writing those is depressing me.
In the discussions about unemployment in class, there was more than just a whiff of “people are just not trying hard enough to look for work” and “you have to be imaginative and make up something profitable”. Yeah, that didn’t make me feel like a total lazy loser. Not. At. All.
I’m currently finding going over all the verb tenses preferable to writing those essays.
And my hands are now shaking almost all the time. It’s seriously annoying and more than a little embarrassing when in company.
For us out-of-towner Pharynguloids/FTBers who are in the D.C. area this weekend (or indeed, er, now) for the Reason Rally, is there any way to find out where folks are gathering to do atheist-social stuff?
Obviously there’s the Rally itself on Saturday, followed by the FTB/Friendly Atheist gathering—but between now and then, I think there’s a need for a clearinghouse for “Where’s the FTB crowd hanging out at the moment?” information.
Is the Endless Thread a good place to do that? Does it deserve a Pharyngula post of its own?
Another shitty night. I’ve got some leftover hydrocodone. I wonder if I should pop one of those before bed?
Sailor:
Thanks. After I dropped that comment, I actually looked at what I was dealing with but wasn’t able to get back and say nevermind.
It took our union nine years just to get this much done. This is one reason I need my pre-agency test — and I’ll take both to an audiologist through my insurance. Just a starting point.
Please, please, please tell me that there are no recipes for SPAM in aspic. Please?
In some communities, it is considered a pre-antidote to Jell-o salads.
What is this? I tune in and it’s all, like, ‘ME, ME, ME!’ You sound like seagulls.
Have fun. Just curious — AmTrak runs a really good service from Boston to Washington, was that an option? (Personally, I would always rather be on a train — safer and, more important, when my knee starts cramping, I can go for a walk).
In the Army, I sang in the choir at the church. Until the minister found out I was a Unitarian and I was asked to leave. And this was an ‘ecumenical, all faiths’ service.
Yes.
Not likely. In two hours, I have to give a gour to twenty members of the Pennsylvania State House — the tourism subcommittee. I consider it a compliment that the park, and the local visitor’s bureau, wants me to do the tour but, damn, it’s just another way of punishing the competent.
Yeah. My brain doesn’t seem to realize that the more stress it creates, the less time my body will be supplying its energy needs. Stupid brain.
Probably not, but why risk it?
I haven’t done that. Yet. I’m sure I will at some point.
Have you tried working on the problem with, say, a hand axe or a bone needle?
When I was in college, one of the guys in my dorm had an old Aspen with a slant-6. The car needed about $1,500 worth of used parts just to pass inspection so he decided to kill it. He drained all the oil (yes, he did take it to a garage) and then started it up, put a brick on the accelerator, and let it run at 3krpm. After a half-hour, the paint on the hood (bonnet) was blistering. At 2h20m, the engine finally blew. Impressively. Those engines are damn near indestructable. And they shouldn’t be as they are, basically, half of an unreliable v-12.
Yeah, well, most gods come across as rather whiney so it is appropriate.
Recipe? Girl goes through that stuff faster than a freshman goes through beer.
Never would have thought of seasoning venison with cloves. Then again, I don’t like venison or cloves so season away! (Yeah, I know, I am deliberately misunderstanding for humour. At this point, I either make jokes or, er, something.)
@Gilliel:
Aww :3 That’s so cute. Of course you need a plushie kittycat! It’s only a part of reality! I have plushes in my apartment and at my cubicle.
Katherine
Oh, I have plushies gallore. My gran, well, not so much.
I must say that I’m terribly proud of my kids for how they’re dealing with gran, especially #1. The little one is still at that age where “things are the way they are”, but for #1 it was a shock.
We accidentially lied to her when grandpa died. We told her that everything was fine, grandpa would be home from hospital soon and things would get back to normal.
The day before he died.
Because that’s what we thought was true.
And then grandma fell, broke her arm, had to go to the hospital (a bad idea in hindsight) and it was not clear if she’d come home again and when she came home she was completely changed and that was hard on the kid.
But by now she has adjusted her mental picture of gran, she cares for her lovingly, brings her cushions and cake, combs her and includes her in her games.
Lolz. ME= Mass Effect.
BUT the way you read it (or jokingly read it) is ALSO correct. The whole success of the franchise has been player agency? What sort of space opera hero do YOU think is best…that’s the one you get. It is all about you you you you you! You’re co-author. We provide the possibilities but you provide the preference. It’s your Shepard, your story. To in the end remove all of that and then defend the decision because it’s the artists right and it’s THEIR story? Not saying they can’t do whatever they want with the product but it is actually hypocritical to the theme and motif. It’d be like if Harry Potter suddenly in the last book had the author explain exactly why Voldemort was right and the lesser races are lesser.
What’s funnysad is that Bioware in a the latest response where the realization that “Oh fuck all anyone is talking about the game is how much the ending sucks and people have raised 70,000 dollars for charity just to draw our attention to how much it sucked” is that they tone trolled and chastised people for destructive rather than constructive feedback. And defend the artistic integrity.
Now I’m sure people did fly off the handle, but really defending artistic integrity? No no no no no no. Defending artistic integrity of a project is when you refuse to remove the gay option because it’d hurt feefees (a GOOD mark for Bioware) when someone returns your first draft and shakes their head and says “I KNOW you can do a lot better” staying by your original draft isn’t really upholding integrity…especially with a commercial entertainment project. Sorry the point of the game isn’t to give the developers the David Lynch Fantasy Experience at being all “deep” but to entertain their co-authors of the story (ie the players).
@Giliell:
I have my stuffed yellow chick that is nearly as old as I am (got him when I was 2, I think.) He’s got one eye and his fur is falling out in all sorts of places so you can see the underlying mesh. I have a big Cthulhu plushie (a little one is at work, as well as the Common Cold Giant Microbe.) I have the World of Warcraft Griffon and Wyvern plushies. I have a little frog and a little kitty.
Kids are interesting people. Sounds like she cares alot for your gran :)
@Ing:
“Artistic integrity” in that case would’ve made me not care that I had gaping plotholes, chapters of boring tripe, and aspects of the story that were bad or made little sense with my novel. I had to rewrite everything just because of how dumb the original draft was when I reread it.
Sometimes authors (and video game writers) just have to step back and do a rewrite.
@Katherine
Yeah when *checks pole* 98% of your dedicated fans start to independently come to the same Alternative Interpretation of events, either you’ve successfully manipulated a good mind screw or suck.
If it’s not the sucking part you should take pause and be proud that you’ve made something everyone loved exactly as much as Matrix 3
@Ing:
Wait. There was more than one Matrix movie?
When are they coming out with Mass Effect 3, by the way?
Katherine
Meet Boomer.
He’s about 4 years younger than me and one of my best friends. Bith ears have fallen off in the mean time, he’s got a big fat scar where a friend ripped him almost in two, and he’s getting bald.
And I really can’t name all the others if I want to finish today
Well I played the Beta and it seems solid, but the ending isn’t finished…but you can imagine that they’d want to spend a good chunk of time on that given how much focus the fans put on it. Extensively different CGI scenes to block and voice actors to record and all.
It’s out.
-_-
*taps foot*
Well you can buy it Amazon.co.uk
-_^
Go to your room
Sorry ?
@Giliell:
Ehehe. I’d take a picture of Chickie (my yellow chick) but he’s at home on my top shelf in a place of honor!
@Ing:
Oh yea, that might be difficult. The Beta seems really well done though. All the way up to the ending sequence where you’re, well you’ve seen it so you know what I’m talking about.
@Matt:
The point
Your head
@Katherine
Yes my copy right now has the Silent Hill Dog Ending Equivalent Easter Egg Joke ending in as a place holder
You asked a question, I answered it.
Sorry if that causes you a problem. Now please stop being a fucking idiot.
Both my spawn (I have one of each of the two most common flavours) have still got some of their stuffed toy animals from when they were in single digits. I don’t think either of them is hugely attached to any of them any more, though the family will of course continue to house el osito teddy and el monino with a nostalgic tear in its collective eye (spawn could not at that point pronounce “monito”). But I still have the white cat my mother made for me when she was ill in hospital; that’s special, of course, as she made it for me her very own self (when she wasn’t busy being a research scientist. Yup, my mother was superwoman in disguise, right down to the very real flaws and the never ever implying I really ought to be more like her. Which I’m not.)
I hope your shitty week gets better, Og, or at least a lot less shitty.
I actually just realized that probably if I gave my spoiler without the tags people actually would presume that I’m joking.
Oh I thought you were joking.
Stop being a fucking idiot and realize that Kat and I have been talking about ME3 for the last two threads and gave the warning that “yes the Ending is as bad as you’ve heard”
I can see your confusion though, it’s not like Kat actually said “They never made any other Matrix movies…” before cracking the joke about denial concerning ME3. That sort of context would help.
My son Connlann had a stuffed teddy bear he was extremely attached to when he was in the single digits. It’s long gone now. But it had a name: RAGEY. I don’t know why, especially since he was a darned mellow kid.
@Matt:
I was joking in the same way that I was joking about the previous sentence:
“Wait, there’s more than one Matrix movie?” I am keenly aware that the Matrix is a part of a trilogy and all three movies have been made, it’s just the latter two were terrible and so, in joking, I’ve suggested they never made them.
Similarly the question, “When are they coming out with Mass Effect 3, by the way?” echoed the sentiment that I’m keenly aware (as I’ve finished it in its entirety) that Mass Effect 3 was released earlier this month, I (along with Ing) am merely disappointed with the ending, so in jest I suggested the game is not finished. This statement was then echoed witH Ing and my joking about the Beta version.
And I can’t believe I had to explain that.
Esteleth, #691, last thread: Yes, I’ve heard shape-note singing before. It’s pretty, although it doesn’t captivate me utterly.
Also, I’d definitely be up for a Western Mass., or Cambridge, meetup on the weekend of 20 May.
Nigel, I thought you were off to your daughter’s wedding? :) I became a NG fan in the late ’80s, when the singer/songwriter thing was making a comeback. It took me a while to get used to that tart voice, but once I did, she became one of my favorites. Her music and the Indigo Girls’ first album got me through one of those gawd-awful jobs one takes when one graduates into a shitty economy. That one lasted a year and a half.
Bill, thanks for the video — which song is it? Work blocks YouTube. I’ll have to watch it later.
Josh — Yaaaaaay! Next time I make it up there, I can haz ride in Francine? :D
(Also, uh, yay for getting drunk, if it stands in the way of your buying cigarettes?)
Beatrice:
Sounds exactly like the mindfuck they pull here in the U.S. Except we also have self-styled “employment experts,” a/k/a bullshit artists, who get paid for saying this to groups of the demoralized unemployed. They even get paid by state unemployment agencies to say this shit.
Og, sorry to hear you had another poor night’s sleep. Hope the tour went well enough.
Matt, Ing was scolding you mildly. I do not know the specific reason UK Amazon would be impractical for him, but I suspect it has to do with shipping charges.
Sorry I have not been able to keep up and missed the point.
You could of course pointed this out to start with.
And as I side note, I’m not even entirely convinced the “The Game isn’t finished yet” is actually 100% joke. I sort of cynically think it might be a ploy to release the product before completion and sell the core content as DLC
Oops, I mis-guessed, mainly because I’ve been skipping over the gaming comments. Sorry.
I THOUGHT YOU WERE JOKING!
*head desk*
Kat, I don’t want to live on this planet, can I crash on your’s for a bit?
I kid, I realize it’s not interesting at all to 80-90% of the people here.
@opposablethumbs:
I think childhood toys are important to us not to forget. That’s why Chickie is in the place of honor. He was a part of my youth ever since I was a baby. He’s been there to comfort me in my saddest moments. He was there to play with. He was there to lull me to sleep.
He’s like a friend, and every so often, when I’ve had just about the worst fucking day ever, he’s there to cuddle.
@PZ:
RAGEY the teddy bear. That’s an awesome name.
Ing, it’s not that it’s inherently uninteresting, it’s more that if you’re unfamiliar with a game, paying attention to conversations relevant to said game is like tuning into an unfamiliar soap opera or trying to start a novel in the middle of the book.
@Ing:
I dunno… my planet has a requirement that you have to wear funky fruit hats. Think you can do that? *reaches up to nom on a banana*
Maybe Bioware is just massively trolling us?
Hi, everyone! Emergency glitter and plushie parade!!! With extra chocolate bonbons!
*rains down glitter and plushies and bonbons on everyone*
Ok! Now we are all shiny and cuddly and chocolatified and happy, yes?
carlie: Can we haz bacon?
And bacon! Except that it is hot and therefore dangerous, so it will be handed out in carefully wrapped packets.
Here’s what I dreamed last night:
Reason Rally was in Boston, and I had just gotten off the plane. I walked into a diner and PZ was in there sitting at a table with his personal bodyguard, a huge Samoan guy. I sat and chatted for a minute, wore out my welcome (the bodyguard told me so), and left through the restaurant’s backdoor.
Out back, there was a huge group of Juggalos. I did what anyone does when confronted with a large group of Juggalos: got out my weed bag. This didn’t have the intended effect, because they all started making fun of my weed. Even though it was all broken up from whatever method I had used to have it on my plane ride, the Juggalos knew somehow that it was all male plant matter and began circling me, closing in slowly for some psycho clown justice or something.
Just in time, Greta Christina rode in on the back of a mountain lion, wielding a novelty sized (i.e. six feet long) leather paddle, and ran the Juggalos off.
Anyway, that all bummed me out a bit that I’m not going to the rally.
Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort ° 44:
“Sometimes authors (and video game writers) just have to step back and do a rewrite”
Peter Watts made a brilliant retcon of the game “Crysis: Legion” when he wrote the novel version. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Watts_(author)
BTW, Watts became a casualty of the ubiquitous use of pepper spray by cops when crossing the US border in 2009.
Oh, yeah, Apisaloma is rather intimidating. When he tells you to back off, you back off.
I wish. This would save me a ten-hour bus journey each way.*
(*Not a continuous bus journey; it includes a short layover in New York City. Hence I can technically claim to have visited New York City. Though the Port Authority bus terminal may not exactly be its finest visitor attraction.)
Well, you know, he needs protection from the legions of adoring fans who want him to sign their cephalopod memorabilia.
Predator, your dreams are almost, but not quite as scary as mine. I keep getting the Alien as a visitor, 33 years after the fucking film.
— — — — — — — — —
PZ “My son Connlann had a stuffed teddy bear he was extremely attached to when he was in the single digits. It’s long gone now. But it had a name: RAGEY. I don’t know why, especially since he was a darned mellow kid.”
.
It makes me think of the small but homicidal robots in the film “Screamers”, a rather mediocre rendering of a Philip K. Dick story. Also, the robotic cuddly toys in The Simpsons.
—- —- —- —- —-
“I’ve got a fruit fly god in my lab.”
A fairly common occurence if you have been without sleep for 48 hours.
How come PZ’s posts now appear in sinister-looking red letters? Is he living up to the archetype of the Evil Atheist by writing them in dried blood?
Yeah. It really is.
(that’s my OPINOIN)
nevertheless, all Hordemembers need to get with the program and pay close attention to any discussion Ing is involved in. There will be quizzes and heads may roll.
…The heck with her book cover, I want THAT on a T-shirt.
I have a stuffed lion that is pretty much identical to this one.
This was a gift from my father’s mother, and was quite literally placed in the bassinet with me in the hospital the day I was born. So, it’s actually older than I am.
His name is Leo. He stopped playing music when I was about 5, and while it may be possible to get the music box fixed, the idea of anyone cutting him open and fiddling with his insides makes me squeamish.
Other than that, he’s intact if a little old. He sits on the headboard to my bed.
(Oh, and, he flies – he spins his tail around like a helicopter and zooms after bad guys.
(When I tell people I’m a 6-year-old in a 35-year-old’s body, I’m not kidding as much as they think.)
A bona fide reason to criticize Obama
“Naïveté about politicians” http://freethoughtblogs.com/hallq/2012/03/22/naivete-about-politicians/
Fuck all repressive leaders, and their apologists And, yes, that includes the Republicans too.
When I was a kid, I had a sock monkey. Her (yes, the sock monkey was female, as she had a skirt from the cuff of one of the socks) name was Iggy-Poo.
Iggy-Poo is so named as that is the traditional name for sock monkeys in my family. Tragically, my Iggy-Poo got lost at some point, when she got left behind in a hotel.
I also had a pillow that had a face, arms, and legs. His name was Mr. Sandman.
Ugh ugh ugh.
So, my doc has decided to change my meds to one that is apparently more effective. Okay, no prob. She gave me a sample pack to try out. Works great. So, I get a scrip, drop it off at the pharmacy.
I filled the scrip this morning. My out-of-pocket cost has gone from $20/month to $120/month.
Now, I can afford that. But seriously, WTF? I have an appointment with the doc soon to discuss how the new meds are doing. I plan on complaining about this. If it really is that much better, okay (but I don’t feel 6 times better on the new meds), but if not I want to go back to the old meds.
Goddammit.
Ok despite the fact that I said that I understood that it was a minority side discusion and joked with people about that you’ll attack that as if it’s my position.
Ok I’ve had enough. I have ignored Chas for fucking MONTHS as he does this. And it’s just about every single fucking thread. Why is this trolling of his tolerated?
I was just thinking, would “I got bored with Church” be a good “why I am an atheist” post?
Esteleth, last thread:
20th May is likely to be awkward for me, unfortunately, since it’s the weekend before commencement and I have a parent visiting. But it might be possible.
Ing, #86,
Is it because he has previously written lucidly about the Congo?
Louis
@Louis
Loled
Birger, Kevin Drum has never struck me as the most clued-in of commentators. Note that there is a reply to him from Greenwald in comments.
Tangentially to the topic but relevant to our interests, in the same thread, another commenter complains because, earlier this month, Greenwald asked rhetorically whether Dennis Kucinich’s “wackiness” was any wackier than Obama’s belief that “Jesus turned water into wine, rose from the dead and will soon welcome him to heaven.” The commenter is complaining less about xtianity (or all major religion) being attacked than about Greenwald “just mak[ing] something up in order to get a shot in.” So, basically, another whiny Obamabot.
I never got into Depeche Mode at all.
Is PZ’s book out yet btw ?
Daisy, Walton (possibly others):
I have an event that I have to go to on 19 and 20 May, in Northampton (this is ~15 miles north of Springfield). I’ll be tied up all day on the 19th, and on the 20th until noonish. But – I was planning on arriving in the area the evening of the 18th. That, and later in the day on the 20th, are both open.
I could head Boston-ways, or whatever. FWIW, the biggest yarn store in the Northeast is in Northampton :D :D :D (also many excellent bars & restaurants).
I ALSO will be in Western MA next weekend (that is, the weekend of the 30th). But I have much less free time that weekend and am near-totally tied down. Nonetheless, if there was great interest I could swing something.
Introspection about race and gender from a friend who has given me permission to post. Her name is Kate Bishop. She is a playwright and a wonderful person, among other things. I thought many of you would find it interesting.
Two full hours. Two full hours. With twenty state legislators. Who are also conducting business, by phone, during the tour (they are up here taking a look at a new room tax proposal). And I think I made about the same impression that a dragonfly makes on a windshield.
And my CMS system is systematically screwing up every bit of content I ask the system to manage.
And there was an unexplained $15.00 charge on my credit card from the rental car agency in El Paso which was removed after I called them but I still don’t know what it was for but I am still supposed to have a reciept for it. And my boss and I have now put in two hours (a GS-9/09 and a GS-11/07 pay rates) trying to explain $15.00.
I am so fucking glad it is Friday.
Ing,
Turtles, Congo, tomAYto, tomAHto, potAYto, potAHto, let’s call the whole thing off.
Louis
Urgh
Today is one of those days I’m not doing anything much being occupied and working all day.
I mean, by the end of the day I’ll just have kept the entropy at bay.
PZ, your blog’s layout is not working here (IE 7, workstation), your recent posts are not showing up, there’s only the FTB recent posts, and Pharyngula’s recent comments far, far down. The clickety link on “recent posts” does nothing.
BTW, anybody want to come over for dinner?
I think there’s at least one serving more than we can eat,
It’s Giliell’s version of Mrs. Colon’s Curry.
It theoretically has prawns in it.
@Giliell:
Sure, I’ll head right over!
*humdedum*
Wait, where do you live again?
Giliell: I’m having steak pie and potatoes with peas tonight!
It’s snowing.
They™ say 5cm.
It is Spring.
I am NOT shovelling.
Ooh, sounds… interesting. I don’t really know you all that well, but… I shall come over forthwith!
AE, 94: Your post is sadly accurate. Replace black with aboriginal, and that’s what happens in my city, and probably in a lot of other Canadian cities. Similar processes happen in my own head.
I have a black and silver plush chibi Cthulhu on my desk, right now. At home I have a whole shelf-full of Cthulhu plushes looming over the bed (together with one Nyarlathotep and Darth Tater).
–
No.
–
Son still has the plush anteater (named “Thing”) that was the first toy he picked out for himself, back when he was two. His fur is matted (turns out that Thing wasn’t as washer-safe as we hoped), I had to re-paint the pupils on his eyes at least half a dozen times, and his nose is getting threadbare, but he’s still hangin’ in there.
–
Apparently there’s a Reason Rally app for Android (I don’t think there’s one for iphone).
Speaking of the Reason Rally, I’m leaving for DC in 4 hours (it’s going to be a 14 hour drive). I found out yesterday that one of the people I’m going with bought our group (4 of us, including him) VIP tickets. I’m going to be sitting in the VIP section :D
Hello horde.
Og,
sounds like serious suckitude. Pour yourself a glass of wine (or other drink of your choice), you certainly deserve it. Congrats on having enough composure to not kill everybody. ‘Cause from the sound of it, I might have.
Fingers crossed you dream of jostling legislators around rather than of shitty PTSD-crap.
Re dinner, I’m making bruschetta with a side of left-over bratwurst – yesterday we celebrated the first bbq this year. Many more shall follow.
The protoHusband (thanks Og!) and I deep-cleansed the flat, including windows and all that jazz.
As a reward, we got our first ice cream this season, I choose a marvelous raspberry sundae with vanilla, yoghurt and raspberry ice cream and a humongous helping of whipped cream.
And finally, I got an appointment with my examiner to go over the requirements for my oral exams. She’s also my future boss and eager to have me in her team, so I’m looking forward.
My day was pretty orsum, so everybody in need of good vibes plz now touch their USB port. I’m sending some.
I am moderately amused by this “dinner” talk (yay time zones). I finished my lunch and am now enjoying some tea. I’ll be having dinner in maybe 3 hours.
That said, the plan is beef ravioli with marinara sauce. Om nom.
One of my most prized possessions is a vintage mid-80s Opus plushie I found at a con several years ago. He sits in mint condition (well, not quite mint since I cut his tag off) on top of my bookshelf. At my office, I have a Folkmanis badger finger puppet that I stole from a store I did inventory at, and a little Audubon plush cardinal that sings a little cardinal song (that one I paid for).
Esteleth: I’m having some Darjeeling at the moment.
This seems like as good of a place to ask as any. Daughter’s first science fair is coming up. We want to go with giraffe evolution because giraffes are ridiculous and it seems like this would be easy to explain to 4th graders. Now I’m reading that Darwin’s explanation (and what seems obvious) has been debunked and it has nothing to do with getting at the higher leaves and we really don’t know why they stretched so much? Can anyone confirm that?
Rey Fox:
Folkmanis plushies/puppets are gorgeous.
I have the big gryfin and we have several of the smaller ones and quite a lot of the finger puppets. I love that they have such unusual animals as tree porcupines
Art Vandelay: I’ve heard some stuff about sexual selection, but I’m a virologist, not an evolutionary biologist, so take that with 65mg of NaCl.
It has nothing to do with stretching. It’s about selection over multiple generations.
Unless you’re planning for a science fair a few thousand years in the future and have a remarkably large yard, you aren’t going to be able to do any experiments on that, but only a descriptive survey of published data and explanations. That won’t do well at a good science fair. You should aim to do something experimental, which rules out giraffes, and if it’s coming up soon, you won’t be likely to be able to do multi-generation work, either.
Art Vandelay: Um, debunked where? Why else would giraffes have long necks but because it let them get the leaves nothing else could get?
Ultimate science fair!
Art: How about something with fruit flies? You can catch your own, and observe the frequency of mutations in normally breeding wild flies.
Necks for sex.
It’s not really a settled issue either way.
There’s a good comment thread over at Laelaps.
Esteleth and anyone else in New England considering a meetup: Unless my work situation changes between now and then, I’d be happy to take a trip out to Northampton on the evening of 18 May. It is a delightful little city.
There’s a good comment thread over at Laelaps.
Oh yeah…I know it has nothing to do with stretching. Just using that term in a colloquial sense.
Of course we don’t have the benefit of time to physically demonstrate any of this. We were just thinking of models. You have a line of acacia trees that get progressively taller with higher leaf lines. Each tree has some creature eating it that looks more and more like a giraffe until we get until the end. I mean it’s primitive but we’re talking 4th grade here. I just don’t want it to be wrong.
A.R., my mid-day tea is usually masala chai with lots of sugar.
Whee!
*bounces off walls*
My science fair projects were things like “blow up a watermelon using a tesla coil.” But then, I was not allowed to take biology in high school (state standards be damned, the public high school I went to taught strike>creationism “intelligent design”), so I took all of the chemistry and physics available. End result: I graduated high school with a middle-school understanding of biology, which I suppose put me ahead of my classmates.
Still, it did make college biology fun (and by “fun,” I mean “mind-blowing”). Somehow, I managed to get all B’s.
Well, I borked my tags. Let’s try again:
A.R., my mid-day tea is usually masala chai with lots of sugar.
Whee!
*bounces off walls*
My science fair projects were things like “blow up a watermelon using a tesla coil.” But then, I was not allowed to take biology in high school (state standards be damned, the public high school I went to taught
creationism“intelligent design”), so I took all of the chemistry and physics available. End result: I graduated high school with a middle-school understanding of biology, which I suppose put me ahead of my classmates.Still, it did make college biology fun (and by “fun,” I mean “mind-blowing”). Somehow, I managed to get all B’s.
re: giraffes necks
gee willikers!
Does everything always hafta be about SEX?
Yeah, I really do feel like this whole week has been just like an electric guitar.* I plan to put to rest four fingers of Johnny Walker Black. Tidy. And I’m not sure if the legislators would be better than the smell dreams. Really not sure.
No problem. Put it on the shelf with ‘strumpet solo’ and Tpyos.
Wife has fallen in love with the Folkmanis goat puppets. We now have six — named Flannel Butts, Feta, Pete, Johlbak, Ophelia and Briar.
I seem to remember reading that it may be a result of sexual selection via mating fights — two giraffes slamming their necks into each other’s necks until one backs down.
With this grope, I swear anything can become ‘about sex.’
“With this grope”
I don’t care if that was intentional or not:
+1
Trayvon Martin stuff.
What do you make of this video?
I’m conflicted, but at the same time, it seems like the city manager is protecting the police chief.
Everything has to be about sex. Fuck it…we’ll just blow some shit up, then.
Subtract 9. It was unintentional. Giving me a net of -8.
Art Vandelay:
Add alcohol, and we have the makings of a hella fun equation.
(imagine this in a faux German accent) Well, you see, a man’s fascination with blowing things up shows the masculine obsession with his penis and with ejaculation. Even the terms used in third rate pornography — ‘he erupted’, ‘he exploded’ — are redolent with the imagery of an explosion.
Kat, my impression was that he can’t afford to appear biased against the police chief; if after sufficient investigation he determines that the chief needs to be fired, everything will have to look fair, and it won’t be good for the city manager to be denouncing him on cable news beforehand.
That’s me being cynical. It could be that he’s just the sort who really believes in being fair, which means going through the standard procedures and having a full investigation before he comes to any conclusion.
Og —
1/4c oil. Mineral oil is fine. So is any other sort of light non-smelly oil like grapeseed or light olive. I’ve been using rice bran oil.
2 Tb water
2Tb orange blossom water or rosewater
2 tsp beeswax (in pellets or grated and packed in there pretty well)
1/8 tsp borax
small dab of honey, optional
This is a non-preservative recipe so be careful to use scrupulously clean tools, store it in the fridge, and take cream out of the jar with a clean spoon instead of your grubby mitts. It keeps a good two weeks.
Warm the plain water and dissolve the borax in it. In a separate container heat your light oil and beeswax until the wax is melted. Combine the borax mixture and oil mixture and whisk till it’s thickened and cooled a bit (you can whisk by hand, I use a stick blender w/ whisk attachment). Add the orange flower or rosewater and the honey if you’re using it, whisk vigorously till incorporated. Spoon into a clean jar and refrigerate.
If you don’t have or don’t like orange flower water or rosewater, you can omit it and use 1/4 cup plain water to dissolve the borax instead of 2 Tb.
“For the moment, the question of ‘How did the giraffe get its long neck?’ must be answered with ‘We do not yet know'”
sez Laelaps. At length and with currency.
Chigau, #123,
Why yes. Yes it does.
I always post in true rugby lad style, cock out, beer in hand. I thought everyone did. Especially the ladies.
Louis
I’m finding reasons to love the Spreading Santorum blog besides the definition: “Do Liberals Need to be More Careful With Our Language When We Talk About Women We Do Not Like? Probably.”
Chigau, #123,
Yep, sometimes is has to be about teh ghey secks with Brownian.
Better than the other way around, natch?
“The longer neck gets the girl” doesn’t sound terribly convincing tbh.
It does when the males are bashing each other’s heads in over which girl they get.
Bioware responds to ME3 critics.
*plops down in lab chair with dramatic sigh*
Hopefully that’s the last batch of [study species] I have to euthanize and dissect for a while. The little numbskulls are trying to incur massive tissue damage, I swear. I think I’ve foiled them for now – we’ll see what new tricks they come up with next week.
Now I’m going for a nice long walk around campus so that I can behave like a human being this evening. I’m really not in the mood for a public lecture and reception, but that’s apparently what I’ll be doing.
One more month, and then the winter term is over. It’ll be nice and quiet on campus, and I’ll have minimal non-research obligations. I can’t wait.
@Esteleth,
I feel your frustration. I seriously think that prescription coverage in medical insurance can be (and often is) nearly criminal.
We have not been treating my spouse’s (almost certainly permanent) colitis for almost a couple years now because we simply can’t afford to. When you look at our (state employee, supposed to be great, right? wrong) insurance approved medications, it seems like they cover the condition, but then when we go to actually fill a prescription, you find that because of dosage restrictions, it’s utterly pointless.
For you to pay a normal co-pay, they cover so little medication that it would treat ZERO inflammation. So you end up covering over half the cost of the drugs out of pocket. I fought and called for months trying to negotiate, and finally they said it was just fine, so I tried to fill it again last year. At the everyday maintenance dose (not a crazy high one either) he is prescribed, our monthly out of pocket for this one prescription was $380. And that was after the “good deal” I was supposedly getting after working with the insurance company. (Previously, the drug manufacturer had a card reducing each out-of-pocket month to $60. $60 was freaking awesome.)
So he has untreated colitis. Don’t worry, he’s getting a colonoscopy again this year to check for more polyps; he’s 28. His first colonoscopy was around 22-3. I almost wish he had Crohn’s like his dad, because it would open up more approved drug options.
But it’s not like the insurance company should actually have to pay for treatment, right?
/rant
Nutmeg: I’ve got a public lecture tomorrow. And one on Saturday. It’s not going to be fun.
I am especially grumpy because they are painting 5 feet from my desk at work. When I’m busy or on the phone, people keep opening the door to the stairwell of fumes, noticing it’s all wet paint and walking away. I think I’ll be tasting paint for a week at this point.
Trying to wrap everything up at work quickly and leave early.
passing this along from Greg Laden’s blog, where he mentions two women at a political meeting spontaneously singing “Bread and Roses”. I recognize it thanks to Walton.
Bread and Roses
Frankly I fail to see how short of redoing the ending they can do this. The setting is literally beyond fucked.
@Ing, I’m pretty sure the answer to games in the ME universe comes down to one word: prequels.
Nutmeg: Would you mind if I wrote a comic book starting with your monologue in comment #140?
Set must be getting easier-
[Today’s puzzle completed 46 Secs ]
via BoingBoing, coverage of the Million Hoodie March going on now in NYC.
http://boingboing.net/2012/03/21/million-hoodie-march-for-tayvo.html
A.R., #136,
Indeed it does. Indeeeeeeeeeed it does.
_______________
Pteryxx, #137,
Out of beer and cock in hand? Yeah, that’s DEFINITELY worse.
Louis
Rey Fox:
Not at all, I think that’s hilarious. Go nuts. Glad my grad student rantings can be of help to someone.
I’d love to hear your plotline sometime.
Very interesting. Although it is one of my favourite songs, I don’t think I ever heard it in English. It has a completely different melody but a very closely translated text. Which is absolutely uncommon, since usually you keep the melody and translate freely.
Brot und Rosen (instrumental with lyrics on screen)
Go ahead and break what’s left of my heart why dontcha?
Something I wish more games would embrace.
Most games are no different from movies (or books) in how they tell a story. You may be in control for the fight against the giant monster but everything else is more or less the same. The game has a sequence of events that will carry you from the introduction to the climax and then the resolution with every point in between already mapped.
And that’s a damn shame as it loses out on so much. The same way I can choose to emphasize a survivability Lilith or DPS Lilith in Borderlands, I should be able to emphasize different themes through out the story. Maybe the narrative I want is dystopian future saved by rogue warrior. Or something else equally cliched. Those story options, dialog choices and alternate paths create a story every bit as engaging and thought provoking as any movie or book.
Developers should embrace the fact that their medium for story telling is different from others. It opens up for a richer more fulfilling gaming experience than keeping the player a passive part of the story.
Not that any of this applies to much to BioWare. They generally are at the front of this sort of thing.
Only if you’re very good, children.
Nice to hear some some folk have successfully finished projects, especially Nutmeg – terminating experimental subjects can be wearing; I’ve just completed our kitchen cabinets a year after making the carcasses! I do have really good excuses for the delay in the meantime. Pictures here
Oggie, wrangling such creatures must be exhausting, like 4 year olds but with less attention span. The bright side might be that the stench of privilege might displace your current olfactory one.
p.s. When I re-read my comment about you checking the link again I sounded, uhh, terse, rude, impatient? I wasn’t, I was just pressed for time.
Having a longitudinal record of your hearing is definitely a good idea.
++++++++++++++++++
On a completely different subject: I got to play with lasers today! And mirrors and beam splitters and neutral density filters, oh my!
I helped 4 post-grads set up a Michelson interferometer. Amazing, bright students, and the most ignorant of any practical application of theory I’ve ever seen. I swear to dog, a screwdriver is a high tech tool to them. I had to explain the concept of a bubble level to them.
OTOH, they had questions that I had to refer them to the prof.
One question I didn’t have to explain was why the interference pattern kept changing. I said, for the first time in my life, “get your elbows off the table!”
Most of the time I had to keep my mouth shut and let them fuck up and figure out how/why they fucked up. Except when they tried to align the beam by bending down to its level and looking in the mirror. I interrupted the prof and yelled “stop!”
Everyone stopped, stood up and stared at me. Mission accomplished.
“Never look into a laser with your remaining good eye.”
*arrrrgh*
Jens Smash.
Must be bad when even a sexist like me gets enraged.
Alive. Threadrupt. Stereospondylomorphs in matrix behave… well, those of them that are considered stereospondylomorphs by other people, mwahah.
And so, to
bedsubway; bed about an hour later.Sounds like someone suffers from a serious case of neck envy.
I find that funny. I think that customer can’t have escaped from learning a lesson! But I bet he’s never ever admit that.
ROTFL!
I think you can eventually beat it into most people’s heads that women can actually, you know, do stuff.
One moment that still makes me smile:
(Background: I’m petite and blonde, and I look like I’m about 14. Hold on to that mental image. It’s why no one takes me seriously at first.)
I go fishing on a river with lots of rocks. Rocks everywhere, hiding just beneath the surface, waiting to rip your prop to shreds. There’s about 40 miles of this river, with its assorted rocks, between the fishing camp and a particular waterfall. Rookies will only go about 10 miles from camp, to the first set of rapids. You don’t make it to the waterfall unless you have a guide or you really know what you’re doing.
Father’s Day weekend a couple of years ago, my dad and I go fishing on this river. We get up on Saturday morning and I take the wheel of the boat. We stop at a couple of spots to fish, but nothing’s biting, so I drive us all the way up to the creek leading to this waterfall. As we come around the last bend in the creek, there are about six boats circling below the falls. That’s about twenty guys. And me.
You should have seen the looks on their faces, to see this little blonde girl pull into the most inaccessible spot on the river, clearly in charge of the boat despite the middle-aged man in the passenger seat. My morning was made complete when I proceeded to outfish all of them.
I got major respect in camp that night. Sometimes people learn.
For Walton or anyone else who’s interested, Hampshire College in Amherst, [Western] Massachusetts is having its 26th Annual Conference for Student and Community Activists April 13-15. Abortion rights are the headlining topic, probably for obvious reasons, but some of the 75 panels and workshops mentioned on this flyer I’m looking at cover immigrant rights, racial justice, economic and foreclosure activism, criminalized communities, and this fall’s elections.
http://clpp.hampshire.edu/conference
From Sili’s link to Not Always Right…
Heh. Reminds me of a story. During the 2008 primaries, I did some volunteer canvassing for the Obama campaign. Almost by accident (she was, at the time, a coworker, and I found her website while searching for her phone number), I learned that the “girl” running the office out of which I was volunteering was actually the woman who owns this impressive climbing resume… better known as “the first African American and the first black woman to climb to the summit of Mount Everest, the world’s tallest mountain” (Pfft!).
When I got home after my first day of volunteering with the campaign, a young woman called our house asking for my daughter, who was at the time going through the college application process. Spawn wasn’t home, but I thought I recognized the voice on the line, so I asked: Turned out it was the very same Sophia, for whom I had just done a shift of doorknocking, who was calling as a local Harvard alum to set up an admissions interview. Small world, eh?
She would later go on to be an Obama delegate to the 2008 DNC.
So, yeah… I don’t know if “girls” climb mountains, but awesome, multi-talented women sure as hell do!
…Daisy, do you live in the Valley? Are you attached to Hampshire in some way?
I know, right!? And their parents get upset too. I mean, they sent them to college to improve our understanding of science and they get all weepy when the kids made the first half of LD 50.
They take no comfort when I tell them their precious snowflake cohort was P<0.001.
But I have confidence in them, the parents are republican & catholic, but for some reason they can't conceive of sending another
subjectchild to us.Esteleth, I’m in southern New Hampshire. Other than a friend whose mother lives near Springfield, I have no personal connections to the Connecticut Valley.
Ok, I was just curious. I lived there (in Northampton) between ’03 and ’07 and still know a bunch of people there.
Speaking of NH… LOLOLOLOL. I missed it, but one of our Rethugs “made headlines [last] month for saying women who use birth control increase the risk of prostate cancer in their male offspring.”
No, on one level, it’s not really funny, but I like to remember Molly Ivins’ advice: that laughing is better than crying, and we’re paying for the entertainment anyway.
One word: magnolias.
Now it’s Spring.
There’s a magnolia tree I see every day that must be a hundred-and-something-ty years old. Right now, it’s a 40-foot high cloud of flowers. (And a robin is using the top twig as a song-perch.)
I also understand that it’s Autumn for the antipodeans. ;)
Indeed it is autumn here
The Pullet Patrol is clamoring for you to drink free tonight after that fish story. *hands over favorite glass of swill*
@Ing
Okay, now that you have told me the ending, I know my brother is not going to be happy with it. That’s too bad because he is the one who invested so much time in this franchise. The only reason I can follow along this conversation is because I watch my brother play them, in part because my own computer can’t handle it, and in part because I love the setting and story they have created. The sucky ending doesn’t impact me as much emotionally as it will to my brother.
@Ibyea
The goodnews is that the reports are all saying new endings are coming…bad news is that not all those reports look well researched.
Yeah that’s why I and Partner play it together.
I have run out of alcohol. There’s no weed in the house, not that I have had any in years, in fact I have no drugs of any kind. The bars closed 35 minutes ago unless I am willing to take a train to central London. I have just watched Jesus Camp and am watching a panel programme with Peter Hitchens on it.
The level of rage I have built up is beyond what is normal or healthy for a human being. For ten human beings.
Not good, not good at all. I blame the Jews, Blacks, Homos and Women. Especially Jewy-Blacky-Homo-Women. In wheelchairs. With disabilities. And poor…crap I forgot the poor. Erm….did I miss anyone?
Louis
You forgot immigrants, lizard people, and the French, Louis.
The French! BASTARDS! Remember Agincourt, or Waterloo, or The Conflict in a Calais Hypermarket Carpark, or something.
Mind you, they do good cheese. And the wine is stunning. How can you hate a people that provided the world with roquefort and Chateau Margaux? Oooooh and foie gras, the cruelty makes it crueltilicious. And ortolans! Oh dear, I appear to have just come.
The French! Lovely!
Louis
*shakes head*
I should have known that Louis would be pro-French. After all, look at his very name!
I know right, clearly a Froggy sympathiser. Bastard!
Louis
P.S. In my exceedingly mixed heritage, I seem to remember there is 12.5% French. I’m a complete mongrel, and exceedingly proud!
exactly. It’s an armamant, not an ornament.
But there’s no reason why sexual- and natural-selection pressures can’t push a trait in the same direction.
Well, sure, but now giraffes are just bragging.
More extreme anti-choice legislation. Arizona legislator says women should be required to “watch an abortion being performed” prior to having it.
I’d be so tempted to fuck with whoever made me watch such a video. “Mmmm…. anyone else getting hungry for stewed tomatoes?”
Those penis-shaped bread eating smelly goose-force-feeding, inefficient farming, wine-drunk bastards! I’ve got more than enough rage about the French for the both of us Louis. :)
Nerd:
Yay! *sips french vanilla steamer*
Yes, it is indeed autumn here. We seem to have skipped summer. The deciduous trees are still green, but I can tell, because the cockies are flinging leaves and twigs down onto the footpaths and roads as they strip off the foliage in search of acorns. Tough little buggers. I pity the cat that tries to take one on.
sili #148
fuck off
(2 minutes and counting)
:) :) :)
*hugs*
caught up now
If there is such a thing as a Louis plushy, I want one.
or we could start another secks Line.
(no offence to Brownian)
—–
oh and 5cm of snow?
Liars.
more like 12.
This got started in the JohnTheOther thread but this goes off topic. But it does continue a conversation.
FossilFishy, I understand exactly what you mean about intellectually understanding a situation but emotionally, thinking you could have changed it for the better.
I blame myself for a good friend being dead even though I had nothing to do with what happened. And even if I were there, the results might still be the same.
For a decade, I worked as a bike messenger. Let’s us just say that there is an interesting mix of people who work the job. Most quit after a week or two because it is rather dangerous. Some have degrees. Some are just passing time in the city before they move on. Some have a darker and more complicated past.
I did not spend much time in the office. But after a while, even though we were very different, I started talking to one of the long timers. We both noticed that the other person kept making historical references that only the other one caught.
In college, I had worked on a history major. But because I was working as a double major and was close to fulfilling the other one and there were history classes that I wanted to take that did not fill my requirements.
My co-worker and soon to be friend had a more interesting past. Born in Puerto Rico, his father was a French sailor who never came back to port. He was raised in the Humboldt Park neighborhood in Chicago, one of the more gang infested ares. He joined a gang in his teens. One day, he was in a bad situation and a random person got him out of it.
He decided he needed a change and left the gang and the hood. He went to college and got a degree in history. He also got married and she had a child. He was planning on working on his doctorate after his wife got her’s.
We became very unlikely friends. He was very upfront about the fact that years early, he would have kicked my ass. As it stood, on Fridays after work, sometimes we would hit a bar and share stories.
One Friday, I did not feel like going for some drinks, I had plans. He went out on his own. This is hearsay but from what his wife had to say, a couple of guys were giving him grief. They took it outside and when they jumped him, he was ready with his butterfly knife. They both died.
A couple of years later, he was killed in a prison.
Where does my guilt come in? I like to think that I could have been a calming influence on him, get him to ignore those two, keep him from going out. But I have no way of knowing what could have happened.
All I know is that I had a friend, a very intelligent and decent person with a rough and scary background. He tried to get away from it, he tried to give his daughter something better. He and his wife were supposed to be very unlikely doctorates. But in one bad moment, what he learned while growing up came back and got him.
And I still think that I could have prevented this if I was there. Even though most likely, I would not have been able to.
janine
*hug*
Janine, thank you for sharing that. It’s hard isn’t it? Being skeptical and rational makes many of life’s problems easier, what with no worries about supernatural punishment for thought crimes and the like. But in the end we’re emotional animals, like it or not, and some things just don’t respond well to intellectual argument.
For myself, I suffer from this a great deal because of my upbringing. My father was an alcoholic who drank himself to death when I was 13. Even though I know, I flat out fucking KNOW, that there was nothing I could do as an infant and child to help him, and despite years of therapy both verbal and chemical, there’s a guilt that lingers deep down in me.
That unwarranted guilt rears it’s head and fastens fangs most venomous on me ever time I’m in a situation where I fear I’ve failed someone. It sucks, but I cope, and I tell myself constantly that at least it makes me more likely to fall on the side of good when issues are in doubt.
chigau
oh, my regards to Katie Morag and all on the Island of Struay!
Louis, when you say train do you mean train or tube?
Good morning
Last night, at about 3am, #1 woke me up because she was thirsty. No wonder since she fell asleep at the dinner table.
No problem, I got up, gave her a drink, went back to bed.
5 min later, when I was just dozing off again, she woke me again, asking if she could sleep in our bed.
No problem either since Mr. isn’t at home.
5 Min later she said that she’d forgotten her drink!
So, kid, get up, get it, go to sleep.
5 Min later she started to cry because she’d forgotten some plushie in her bed.
5 Min later she needed to pee…
5 min later…
Until it was half past four and I was fucking angry. I needed some sleep! Indeed I got so angry that I woke up. The kid was sleeping peacefully in her daddy’s bed. It was indeed half four, but everything after the forgotten drink had been a dream.
Louis
You mean the day-return super-saver ferry trips to French harbour-towns where there’s incidentially a lot of supermarkets with wine-shops bigger than the rest of the supermarket?
I don’t like Roquefort and I never had a Chateaux Margeaux, but i can testify that a well-aged Margeaux A.C. is something worth the travel.
janine
I’m sorry
FossilFishy
I’m sorry to hear. I’m at that point right now and it pains me as an adult dealing with that shit. Much worse when you’re a kid.
Hugs if you want them.
good stuff
-Tonight we’ll have Bettseiersalaad unn Gebroodne (dandelion salad and fried potatoes)
-With all that shit the last weeks I lost a full size
-Forgot to order milk but noticed in time to buy it at the supermarket.
I wish we could have a blockbuster about this book, Kate Summerscale’s ‘The Suspicions of Mister Whicher”. There was an ITV movie made last year, here’s the trailer.
#188: Perhaps we should start lobbying for Louis to have ghey secks with Brownian, and tape it for all of us to watch?
Giliell, thank you for that, and right back at you if you like. It doesn’t matter what age you are, contending with a self destructive parent cannot be easy. Yah, going through that during puberty wasn’t ideal, but it has given me a long time to learn how to deal with the aftermath. Time enough to allow me to write this:
I hope your circumstances are such that you find a measure of peace as great or greater than the one that allowed me to write that.
Hey… NPR is talking about Reason Rally, “the Woodstock of atheism”… I hear Hemant and Greta!
Janine, I’m so sorry.
FossilFishy:
Agreed.
I lost a dear friend to suicide one day last winter (early 2011, that is). I’ve lost a few other friends that way, too, but he was the closest one by far. I cried for three days, and, although I no longer experience a quick spasm of grief when I’m reminded of him, I still miss him deeply and expect to do so for a long time.
That night, maybe fifteen minutes before his partner called me to break the news to me, I was thinking, “I really ought to call [name]; we haven’t talked in a few weeks.” (He lived several hours away from me.)
To be honest, there was nothing anyone could have done. He had even sought out help in the fall, after years without therapy. But then his seasonal affective disorder kicked in and joined forces with his old traumata, and there were a few events in both his private life and in the news that, I and some of his other friends believe, pushed him over the edge. By the end, from what his partner told me, he was almost certainly lying to his therapist that he was doing okay.
If his partner, their good friends who lived nearby, his other close friends (some of whom lived closer to him than I did), and his therapist couldn’t have done anything, neither could I have. But I felt guilty that I hadn’t called him a day or two earlier. Even though it would not have changed anything, except that I likely would have felt even guiltier for not picking up on what was wrong.
FossilFishy, that was beautifully written, as well as moving. I feel as though offering hugs would be inadequate.
I’m just impressed that Reason Rally got mentioned here in east Texas. Link to the little piece I just heard:
http://www.npr.org/2012/03/23/149021993/woodstock-for-atheists-a-moment-for-nonbelievers
eee!
Pteryxx: Ah, I see that professional Liar 4 Jeebus Barbara Bradley Hagerty wrote that story! And it’s surprisingly balanced… but the comments are full of dumb. At least the ones showing by default. /clicks the tab closed
good night last night. No olfactory hallucinations. And no work today. Or tomorrow. I love Saturdays!
I been done waitin’ in this mob (it used to be a line, but it has sort of descended into a mob exhibiting brownian motion) and Louis gets to jump to the front ’cause he’s funnier? I call duck! er. Goose! No. Wait. Fowl! That’s it. Fowl!
Ahh, the first things are sprouting on the balcony.
That’s why I always sow cress: easy, instant success.
Fossil Fishy
That was beautifull.
Funny, my youngest has my dad’s eyes, too. So far the only feature we could link to anybody in the family.
Well, if you hang around for longer you’ll notice that I’m in the middle of dealing with my narcistic and alcoholic mother. The alcohol only became a problem in recent years (although, in retrospective, my parents’ alcohol consumption was always problematic. I grew up believing that it was normal for your parents to have one or two 1/2 l bottles of beer every night).
It’s a shitty place to be in and the fact that I love them doesn’t make it easier. But I have a good therapist, a loving husband and two gorgous kids, wonderfull friends and a kick-ass sister.
It pains me deeply that it will hurt my kids and that hurtig is inevitable. I can only try to find the way that has the least hurt and hope that they can forgive me if I fuck that up.
Good news, everyone! Some of you may remember me coming into one of the previous threads for help dealing with a friend I was concerned about. I didn’t hear from her for a few weeks after that and was only getting more worried, but she popped up on my Gmail chat a couple of days ago! It turns out that she had been in a hospital during that period of time and is now taking mood stabilizers and is back to work and everything.
Chigau, #188,
I shall get plushies created immediately, and I am more than content to have new line form. My ego won’t be damaged by the fact that Brownian’s line extends beyond the horizon, and mine will have a mere fraction of the popularity because, well, it’s a Goddamn Secks Line people! That’s never bad.
Unless it’s a Bad Secks Line? OH NOES! NOT A BAD SECKS LINE! A Secks Line that culminates in Secks so arse-clenchingly awful that you can never quite meet the person’s eyes afterwards and that ends with the words “Yeahhhh, erm, we’ll, erm, that was…..okay, see you…around” before the protagonist flees for the door, semi naked, dressing as they go. The next time you see them they are huddled in a corner whispering to a friend, and the friend oh-so-unsubtly glances your way, wide eyed, and you catch an amazed “No WAY!” before the whispering starts again. Neither person will meet your eyes.
Not that that’s ever happened to me you understand. Gosh no no no no no no! No! Not even once! The very idea! Hahahahaha! A friend of mine told me about it. A really sexually inadequate friend, erm, apparently.
Annnnnyway, when I am done talking myself out of Secks by the medium of comically paranoid imaginations, I would be very flattered to have a Secks Line. Unfortunately though, it cannot be a Ghey Secks Line, or at least not just a Ghey Secks Line. Since my wife and I are remarkably open minded, and really want to destroy society and the Catholic church, it’s going to have to be {fanfare}:
The Line To Have Teh Groop Secks With Louis!
I think this way, we can have different lines that don’t overlap too much in function. This way we can cause maximum Breakdown of Society (TM) and optimise our Destruction of Teh Catholic Church (TM). Of course organisation of the Line To Have Teh Groop Secks With Louis will be in conjunction with LouisCorp’s LouisBrand Orgies (TM): Where “Yes” Means “Oooooooh Yes!”. LouisBrand Orgies (TM), Where the only consent that matters is enthusiastic consent. We have bacon!
Louis
opposablethumbs, que le pouce enragé mette les pouces, #193,
Train or tube? A little of both, my old china, a little of both.
Louis
P.S. Saaaaaf of the rivah this time of night, guvnor? You gotta be jokin’.
Giliel, #194,
DON’T. LIKE. ROQUEFORT.
O.o
I…I….I……..{plotz}
[Please wait while your LouisCorp Louis Mk XI is being reset]
That’s okay, Giliel, de gustibus non est disputandum. And I agree, pretty much anything with Margaux on the front is worth the effort.
And yes, I did mean those super saver ferry trips (or when I lived and worked in Kent, chunnel trips). It’s not the best way to do things, if you have a little more time go in land to a cave, but it’s light years ahead of most shops here in the UK. Unless you have an account with Berry Bros and Rudd (which if you have the cash, I HIGHLY recommend).
Louis
P.Z. Merkel (Chancelor of Germany), #196,
As lovely has having Teh Ghey Secks with Brownian would be, filming it would be a little over the top. Unless of course it would contribute more to the downfall of the Catholic church and the general destruction of society. I’d take public exposure for the team on that basis.
After all, we hedonist, perverted, evil, amoral, wicked atheists are simply hell bent on destroying all that is holy by the simple virtue of using our Gentleman Vegetables or Lady Parts in such a manner as to cause unrest in ladies of good breeding, horses, members of the clergy and sundry noblemen. “Wank for anrachy! Come for confusion!” is our cry, and we shall bring down society with a might crash by frottering it into submission one brick at a time.
Excuse me, I go now to cornhole a particularly sexy church I know. Filthy little minx, did you see the way her triglyph was winking at me? I’m going to do her right up the Doric.
Louis
Oh look! I can duz speleng and grmur!
Louis
Also:
Hangovers. They are total bastards. That is all.
Louis
Here is the game show we all have been waiting for, The American Bible Challenge. It is to be hosted by Jeff Foxworthy.
I wonder if there will be any questions about Elisha and the She Bears?
You might be a She Bear if…
Saaaf onna rivah? No chance, mate, ain’t got me passport.
Mind you, I am, in fact (technically) probably going saarf onna rivah very shortly. QEH, dontcher know. (and the gig’s even free :))
Oh my.
Louis, would you like a nice cup of herbal tea?
In which I am left speechless.
re secks film
I’ve never really liked pron but for a Brownian/Louis production, I could make an exception.
Chigau,
I need drugs, woman. Strong drugs. Drugs that would make Hunter S Thompson think twice. And booze. I demand to have some booze. Booze enough to frighten Oliver Reed’s ghost back to life. And then I wish to go on a bender that would have Keith Richards saying “Steady on now, old chap, don’t you think that’s a bit trop?”. I want to go on a Rolls Royce into swimming pool, plane into tour bus, rock and roll lifestyle blaze of glory binge-fest that involves acts illegal in every state of every union everywhere.
But I will settle for a herbal tea from you.
Do you have anything with elderflower?
Louis
Indeed they are. I’m thankful that I haven’t had one in nearly two years. (In my experience, alcohol is overrated; these days I mostly just drink diet soda.)
*blushes*
Oh and any secks film I made with Brownian would be purely for documentary purposes, it would not be pronographic at all, very artistic and tasteful. I promise not to yell “yippee!” at inopportune moments.
Louis
Louis
Coming to your usb now.
Is there somehing wrong with me that I have no idea what a hangover feels like?
Louis: I am beginning to be concerned for your stability I’ve got some absinthe in the liquor cupboard on the Jesus Camp thread.
Louis
Look at my dislike for Roquefort the same way I look at people’s dislike for seafood: Should we ever happen to be at a buffet where said items are served, and some people don’t like them, there’s more of them left for me to eat :)
I remember the wine in Irish supermarkets. It made me weep.
Living 30km off the French border has many perks.
*joins the Line To Have Teh Groop Secks With Louis*
Will I be required to have an aborshun afterwards, for maximum Societal Destruction(tm)?
I also promise to bring my Slut Gear(tm), consisting of hormonal contraception, a college education and a miniskirt.
Walton,
Walton. Walton, Walton, Walton. Waaaaaallllton, Walton, Walton, Walton, Walton. Whatever am I to do with you? I think I must now fly to Boston, come over to Harvard, and corrupt you so vigorously that people in the surrounding area engage in acts of depravity that are moderately out of character simply due to the resonance caused by my wickedness.
With regards to alcohol being overrated, I shall tell you an analogous story that happened to me. Long ago, in the before time, during the Never Never, one of the best places to go out in the city I was in at the time was the local gay nightclub. It was always a brilliant night out and welcoming even to those poor few of us unlucky enough to not be gay.
One night as a group of us entered the club, a very large gentleman, 6’5″ at least, and a huge barrel of a man put his arm around my neck and slobbered into my ear in a deep Yorkshire accent “You’re gorgeous, you are. You’re the best looking bloke in here by miles.”. I was very flattered obviously, but I demurred and said, in a possibly slightly coquettish voice, “Oh I’m not gay! I’m straight and married”. The grip around my neck tightened: “There’s no such thing. Come on, try it, you might like it.”. My whirring brain spat out the only answer I thought would work “Oh I’ve tried it, I didn’t like it.”. The grip got even tighter and a millimetre from my ear my suitor growled adoringly “You’ve never tried it with me”.
Now I won’t relate the rest of the story, suffice to say Simon (for that was his name) and I parted on excellent terms, I remained intact despite his repeated advances and we remain friends to this day. Mainly because he is utterly hilarious.
However, I refer you back to why the analogy is relevant. You say alcohol is overrated. Come closer, closer, clooooossssseerrrrrrrrr…
You’ve never tried it with me.
Louis
Would the Rombot 3000 seem more human like (Would that be uncanny?) if you knew that he broke out in song when riding a horse?
Would it sound anything like this?
janine,
maybe like this:
Oh noes. Sorry for borking this. :( How can I post a youtube link without embedding it?
Chigau,
Ahhhhh thank you. I feel soothed internally and the pressures brought on by The Voices are drifting slowly away. Softly The Voices retreat into the depths and The Urges retreat. Ahhhh The Urges, they seem almost controllable now. Almost…
Louis
All in the Best Possible Taste.
I trust the film will be screened in the Evil Overlord’s Sekret Undersea Lair (with added cephalopods) (world domination, for the planning of) and all good independent cinemas? Or will it only be shown at determined (very determined) hordely gatherings?
Ogvorbis,
I doubt there is anything wrong with YOU. You seem to me to be a wonderful person. However, if your lack of hangovers is due to Not Drinking (for non-medical reasons) then we need that correcting immediately, old bean.
Don’t go hog wild and start at the Ernest Hemmingway level. Begin with the odd vodka spiked fruit punch, perhaps even a mojito if you are feeling racy and top it off with a pina colada. Then you’ll be ready for light beers, lagers, pale ales, ales, IPAs, bitters, porters, milds, and stout. I would advise not tackling farm brewed English West Country scrumpy cider (colloquially known as “suicider”) until you are at least a level 20 British Drinking Federation qualified boozer. If you see anything called “Cripplecock” in a stone jug, avoid at all costs, the name doesn’t lie.
After a few weeks where you have lost daylight totally and drunk through the nights, I recommend moving to spirits. Start with a blended whisky on your breakfast cereal, save the single malts for the evening, and gradually work your way through the day until about 4pm on clear spirits like gin and vodka. Don’t drink tequila at this point, that’s a massive tactical error. As evening approaches a couple of aperitifs are a lovely way to open the account, a Cinzano or Campari is not out of the question, although a gentleman should prefer to stick to roughly clear spirits and/or cocktails, and I would say you cannot go far wrong with a well mixed dry martini. Make sure they only use Noilly Prat vermouth, an excellent gin (vodka is for poseurs) and if they actually open the bottle of vermouth, they must run past your gin very fast. I find it best to wave the sealed vermouth bottle at the gin in a darkened room. A whisky here, single malt of course, is not unheard of.
After dinner, served with wine of course, relaxing with port and cigars is customary. Around midnight move away from port and onto brandy or various other eaux de vie, my personal tipple is calvados, and discuss “affairs” with the present company. I usually excuse myself around 4 am and go out onto the streets to mingle with the people of the night, have sex round the back of Tescos, vomit into a gutter, obtain a kebab and have a fight with a lamp-post for looking at my bird funny. You may of course, retire before that, as befits your station.
Trust me when I say that within mere months of a regime like this, you too will be experiencing hangovers of truly biblical proportions.
Louis
A.R., #223,
I assure you I am quite stable, it’s just that everything else is moving rapidly around me.
The combination of Jesus Camp and Peter Hitchens last night was quite a blow. It’s okay, I’ve taken some Sagan, read a little bit of Feynman and Chigau’s herbal tea has helped immensely. My equilibrium is restored and the chances of me going on a killing spree with a high powered rifle screaming “THERE’S KEN HAM..{Blam}..NO THERE’S KEN HAM..{Blam}” are now reduced to background levels.
I am on a course of intravenous Baron d’Holbach and David Hume until this evening. I think I’ve escaped a course of Bertrand Russel noctem.
Louis
P.S. I’ll have that absinthe though…..YOINK!
Ogvorbis re: hangovers. I don’t think it’s necessarily bad. I’ve never had one because I don’t like the taste of alcohol (yes yes, it’s tasteless, so why does every alcoholic drink I’ve tried taste so foul – unless heavily disguised. I like aniseed but aniseed sweets are a lot cheaper than sambucca).
There is always the chance though that should I ever actually get drunk, that I might not experience it either. Because apparently my dad, who does drink, never gets a hangover. This has been known to irritate my mother.
Keenacat, #225,
Oh we’ll all be having abortions, even we men. I’ve had two this morning dontcherknow. I had a lab culture grown uterus* strapped to each arm just so I could have abortions and cause maximum Damage To Society.I’ll have it all cleared up in time for the orgy though, don’t worry.
You say you’re bringing a college education eh? And you, a woman. Kinky. Training that large sexual organ between your ears. Making it more powerful, more capable, more able to reason and ratiocinate. Ooooh yeah, I can imagine the discussions, the arguments, the to and fro of educated discourse. Dialogue!
Oh no! I’m sorry! I’m objectifying you…I…I…I only want you for your MIND! I’m a terrible terrible person.
Louis
*Sooper Secret Atheist Science.
*lightbulb* Ah, now it all makes sense. Having to endure the stupidity of Peter “Lock ‘Em Up” Hitchens has been known to reduce even the most stoic and resolute of listeners to gibbering wrecks. Between his anti-immigration bigotry, his opposition to gay rights, his support for anti-cannabis hysteria and his advocacy for reintroducing the death penalty, listening to him hold forth on any subject can cause severe cranial damage induced by hitting one’s head repeatedly against the nearest wall.
Walton,
So you are saying I done broked mah brainy thang?
Anyway, I didn’t realise I was being THAT disturbing.
Louis
@ Louis
Meh… At TZT they are handing out entire Bacon Generators ™.
(Be warned, you will certainly need lots of bacon to survive there. It has been carpet-bombed with armour piercing LOLcats.)
@205: That is good news, Predator Handshake!
–
You’re wrong there, Louis. Horses cause unrest; they are not subject to it.
Read my new best-seller, War In Peas, for a thorough exposé of the planned upcoming Equine Insurrection.
–
A ghey aborshun.
–
I suspect an inherited ability to taste allegedly-tasteless alcohol (the queue for the Scientific Study of this hypothesis forms to the left, genties and ladlemen), as both The Husband and Son share this “problem”. I, on the other hand, have no trouble at all missing the taste of alcohol; just add orange juice, or strawberries, or most any fruit. I simply never have drunk to hangover-enabling excess. I don’t like it when the censor between my brain and my mouth clocks out.
–
This. Having grown up in Wisconsin back in the days when the drinking age was 18, it made me a statistical aberration.
You weren’t… I just really, really, really dislike Peter Hitchens.
cicely:
Count me in as someone who can taste/smell alcohol in things. Preferably “smell”, since if I get to the point of tasting it I’m in for a bad time. I’ve had a bartender friend test this by having me smell two different diet sodas to see which he’d put a shot of vodka in – I accurately reported that he’d spiked both (he wasn’t going to let me drink them, he was just trying to eliminate chance), and on a second round picked the correct one as well (he only did one that time).
It does the same thing in my sinuses that gasoline fumes do, if that helps anyone: kind of a warm chemically feel. That’s not the effect it has on my insides, though – that’s more of the “stabbing, shooting pain/nausea/curl up in a corner and die” feel. Well, and the vomiting. Oh, the vomiting…
Walton,
Yeah, well I dislike him more! So there. ;-)
Louis
@opposablethumbs #231 – I see what you did there.
@keenacat <a href=”url of video/whatever”>Link text goes here</a>
cicely, I do note that along with the finding the taste unpleasant, I am sometimes tactless enough without the influence of alcohol that I do not want to cultivate a taste for something that would reduce my ability to be tactful. Closest I get to alcoholic beverages is going to remain to be an LLB, which I suspect has a barely detectable alcohol content.
Add to that watching family members and others when they’ve had maybe one or two too many and it was just somewhere I do not want to go. But it’s something that is my choice, and I do not even remotely insist that anyone else takes this path.
Richard Austin,
That’s not the effect it has on everyone? Drink through the pain man, then you too can have a liver like mine, a blackened, shrivelled husk that growls at other organs and laughs in the face of tumours.
Louis
P.S. Some of this may be an exaggeration.
I can only feel grateful that none of my tumors have faces.
Orsum. It will be ghey and also black. And possibly disabled. A ghey disabled Abortion of Color. I can feel the FuNdaMEnts Of SoCIeTy (now with moar upper case letters) crumbling.
It’s ok. The MRA movement can help! You’ll soon be back on track, negging your way into the nations underpants.
Oh, I can help with that:
Fix a clamp to your forehead. Adjust pressure until uncomfortable. Swallow a good helping of laxative along with a hint of ipecac and chew on a old, sweaty sock.
Actually, I’ve never been much of a hangover person. I dislike the feeling of inebriation, however, so I rarely drink more than half a bottle of wine. This is when I just start feeling funny. I also suffer from pretty severe pain in my legs and buttocks if I drink too much. It’s a fibro thing.
To be honest, when I was around 16, 17ish, man, I was quite the heavy drinker. Half a bottle of wine was nothing to me. My bff and I were able to share a bottle of vodka, down a bottle of sparkling wine each and still go partying. With beer. Teenage me scares me.
I stopped being able to drink like this somewhere around 20 and then fibro came along and made drinking suck balls.
Finally, proof god exists.
…I lost the thread bits I was saving, so *hugs* FossilFishy and Predator Handshake, whose names I can remember atm.
Fix’d.
Don’t worry I’ve been taking up your slack for years.
Reminds me of a story my father used to tell me about his days in National Service (for the non-Brits or very young, think “conscripted army service after WW2 because the politicals liked the idea of enslaving people and/or couldn’t think of anything else to do with young people”) as a Sapper. He was stationed in the south-west of England, an area famous for scrumpy. And sheep-worrying (it’s what yer wellies are for, young’uns!). And being so far from London, centre of the universe, that nobody there actually believed in its existence.
Anyway, he was pretty nerdy guy (still is, wears a tie to garden) and not a beer drinker. Mixed in with a bunch of London wide-boys, spivs, costers and general layabouts that thought not drinking copious pints (real pints, 20 fl.oz, not wimpy US 16fl.oz) meant he must be decidedly dodgy. So one evening at the local he suggested the ring-leader try a pint of real West Country Scrumpy – and he would have two. Ring-leader had to be carried back to barracks, dad helped carry. No more trouble.
Me, I stopped drinking once I turned 18 because there never was any pleasure in it except for the breaking of Da Lore.
Louis #233
bravo
Pteryxx, #250,
Thank you. My apologies everyone. I has a stoopid.
Louis
Louis:
It may be what happens to most people; to me, it takes anywhere from 30 minutes (for a balsamic vinaigrette) to about 5 seconds (for something like a glass of wine). My usual statement is that I go from “sober” to “hangover” without any of the fun “drunk” in between. More practically, I have a problem with poisons in general and alcohol in particular (as well as cocaine – including things like Novocaine and Lidocaine – but at least I know I got that from my dad, who has the same issue but drinks like a fish).
So, I get invited to a lot of parties as the designated driver. And I drink a lot of sodas at bars.
It’s also fun to point out that my three major ancestral cultures are Irish, German, and Slavic – some of the heaviest drinking cultures that exist. If I thought God existed, I’d say he had a sense of humor.
Louis:
I’m only an hour away from Boston, if you feel like expanding the radius of depravity a bit…
I need to buy a flask asap as I am in the unfortunate circumstance of having to photograph the Charleston Fashion Week runway tonight. I will need hard whiskey or whisky to keep myself from starting fist fights with every ego fueled photographer in the pit and then jumping on the runway and having a Bill the Cat style meltdown brought on by the sheer pomposity and low hanging stench cloud of aggravated self importance that will be polluting the entire event.
And I lost my flask.
fuck
Rev BDC, #251,
Amen, brother.
And #253, thank you. Gentleman thuggery is an art, dontcherknow. A combination of Chap and Chav, made for maximum enjoyment.
Louis
Maybe they cancel each other out… like soundwaves.
What the fuck is this. Even as a “joke,” this fails, but I’d love to know what the full context was.
Antidote to above: PenguinCam.
“Social commentary”, in full scare quotes.
[Disclaimer: I’m totally talking out of my ass here.]
You mean, what the kids today call a “social experiment”; i.e., trolling?
Why do I always miss the excitement around here?
*shakes fist at work*
I have to admit, I’ve never been hungover. I’ve been flabbergastingly drunk, but hangovers just don’t happen to me. My ancestry begin a mix of Scottish, Irish, German, and Scots-Irish probably has something to do with this.
WRT boozing, I loves me German beer (weissebier, mostly) and vodka.
A funny story:
Back in December, I got all gradumacated with my Ph.D. and went out to celebrate with the siblings, DoctorSib and HipsterSib. We are at a bar, I’ve had … let’s just say several, and HipsterSib announces that she will get the next round. She goes up to the bar and returns shortly with a series of glasses. She hands me one. I observe that it (1) is brown, (2) smells sticky-sweet and (3) contains ice. I take a sip. I am told that my reaction was a perfect spit-take followed by shouting “WTF IS THIS SHIT?!”
Apparently, I don’t like rum and cola. Also, when I’ve got a few under my belt, I become expressive about this.
I traded it for DoctorSib’s vodka and Red Bull. Not entirely sure if I came out ahead there.
Richard Austin, #255,
OUCH! I…I…my sympathy gland just overloaded from reading that. Imagine waking up in the morning and knowing that was as good as you were going to feel all day? Crikey, at least with a hangover the day gets gradually better (considered on the long term!) and you know you truly earned it.
Perhaps it says far too much about my far too dodgy character that, regardless of how serious and professional I am in Real Life (TM), I simply cannot imagine life without some form of intoxicant at some point. Even if my golden days of extreme consumption are far behind me, the simple knowledge that the option exists is sufficient.
The irony of your situation, based on your heritage, is awesome! It inspires awe.
Louis
I am a little bankrupt right now but I just need to shout angrily through text for a second and then I’ll go read.
I GOT ATTACKED BY A SPIDER DURING MY GREEK FINAL. It dropped down onto my paper and SKITTERED at me. And then it got LOST. It was somewhere around for the WHOLE EXAM. With its GIANT HORRIBLE EIGHT LEGS.
Eep! That sucks CC!
*sends Sam Gamgee, toting Sting, your way*
Sam’ll take care of ya. He hates spiders.
I had two spiders waiting for me in the tub the other night. I lifted them out of the tub before I took my shower.
Louis:
Don’t break that sympathy gland on my behalf – a lot of people here deserve it more.
I’ve never been drunk, stoned, high, etc. I’ve been told (by my doctor, who was awesome) that the safest thing for me to do would be LSD. It’s something I’ve thought about, but I’ve never gone there. I’ve actually got a friend who offered to “babysit” if I ever decide to try it. I have cool friends.
I have gotten so wired on sugar that I blacked out for about 7 hours. This was at Disneyland; I ate an entire box (uh, probably 100 cubic inches, 5x5x4, if memory serves) of sweet tarts in the space of about 10 minutes, walking from the candy shop on Main Street to Thunder Mountain. I’m told I had a very good time the rest of the day, but I honestly don’t remember anything about it.
Some day, I’d love to enjoy a really fine cognac, but at this point it’d probably kill me (literally).
CC:
Maybe it just liked your translations? Or, hey, maybe it was actually a nano-robotic spider and it was really your professor trying to sneak you hints! It was going to crawl up your arm and whisper the answers in your ear!
… now I want to go build nano-spiders…
Wait, there are people who can’t taste alcohol? Not that I’ve tested this extensively, but I can sure tell when it’s in something. It’s disgusting.
I am extremely sensitive to pretty much anything that might have a mental effect. I don’t drink, and I have to strictly limit my caffeine intake or I appear to be high. When my friends play drinking games, I take shots of Diet Coke instead of booze, and I usually appear to be the most drunk at the end.
I’m starting to really dislike the feeling of being caffeinated – apart from the anxiety, inability to sleep, and jumping at small noises, caffeine makes me less inhibited. This freaks me out.
(Yes, I am a Type A control freak. How did you guess?)
It’s like something from Silent Hill. One of those details that is Juuuuuuuuuust off enough to be noticed and indicate that we’re in a world being skewed towards a nightmare reality.
)h, you so don’t know me.
I do drink. I average three or four beers every week and can go through a bottle of scotch in 12 to 16 months.
The last time I got drunk was when I was a sophomore in college. And I still have the scars in my hand to remind me. I still drink, but I drink because I enjoy the flavour. Is this weird?
Wouldn’t it be simpler and quicker (not to mention cheaper) for me to drink just one Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster?
Sounds like an odd reason to not get hungover.
====
I also need to know the proper procedures for filing a complaint. Louis has stolen half of my style (he stole the funny part (and I am funny on my good days (but (damnit!) this Louis commenter has nothing but good days!))). And not only that, but now I am the only one standing in the brownian mob for ghey secks with Brownian and everyone else, INCLUDING BROWNIAN!!!1!11 is now over in the Group Sex with Louis line. (He has left me (poor me) with nothing but my (well-earned) psychoses and my (odd, though (usually) grammatically correct) penchant for parenthesae.)
Anyway, anyone want to clue me in as to how to file a grievance ’round heree?
CC – It’s ok to be afraid.
Ogvorbis,
When the orgy starts, I will personally see to it that the {insert act of your choice} is performed upon your {insert part of your person} by the {individual(s) of your choice}.
It may even involve Ghey Secks with Brownian. Walk with me.
{Puts arm around shoulders}
So let’s talk about not filing that grievance. Now cigars, you like cigars? Nice place you got here. Shame if anything were to….happen to it. Oh hey! That corner looks like it needs a plant. Tell you what, here’s £2000 to get a plant. Now you were saying something about aaaaaa…..grievance, was it?
Louis
Og – I’ve secretly replaced myself in both the Brownian and Louis lines with an exact duplicate replica mannequin, so let’s go out for a burger.
I have pie!
I made them last night.
This one is very berry-cherry. It has strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and red cherries in it. It is rather soupy and didn’t thicken quite enough.
This one is a lemon meringue. I put just a hint of lime juice in it, to give it a more complex flavor.
*shares with the queues for Ghey Secks and Groop Secks*
jaycubed is back to tell us which women (and gay men) are cunts.
@SGBM/Lipshtick
Responded. I’m just shaking my head. I hate this “uncivil” disobedience thing. Now we all know that I am not in favor of being nice just for the sake of niceness, but damn it there’s no reason to act like a jackass to a perfectly reasonable request even if you don’t agree with it. Seriously if they were at the Met and someone with a sketch book asked them to move a step to their left because they were in the light would they throw a fit and stand their ground?
What is wrong with these people?
A case in point: Horsegate!
Ha!
Went Inline-skating for the first time today.
Well, I took two rounds around the playground and I didn’t fall once.
I suspect that I’ll be in for some sores and pain if I do that for longer.
Also, if we’re going to this playground more often, I need to learn Russian.
Also, I will have Whisk(e)y later.
I usually try to avoid getting drunk. I like mildly intoxicated.
Cicely and KG,
Whilst horses are sources of unrest, they can also be caused unrest.
Louis
I dunno, Ogvorbis. I don’t think Louis is ripping you off. He seems a little more…Smoggy…to me.
–
KG, that is only the tip of the manure pile, I assure you. Not for nothing did Richard III offer his kingdom for a Horse!
–
(A Horse de combat, to be exact.)
–
Yeah, I’d love to know where they’re going to get that footage. How about a chemically induced abortion? Woman takes a pill on camera, gasp!
Cicely,
If you are insinuating that I am Smoggy….which I hope you’re not, I can only say 3 things.
1) Smoggy is a genius, I am very flattered.
2) I am not Smoggy, nor ever will be.
3) I am a pervert and deviant of entirely my own stripe, order and confection. Smoggy is a separate pervert. Even on the internet, not all perverts are the same pervert! ;-)
Louis
Oh and I am an original. I have no need to rip other people off.
Where’s the fun in that? Although sick minds do think alike…
Louis
Not for nothing did Richard III offer his kingdom for a Horse! – cicely
Or as 1066 and All That has it, complaining about the poor quality of the kings of England during the Wars of the Roses:
I don’t think I’ve ever had a real hangover either. I’ve just woken up feeling a bit worse than I usually do in the morning, but at the same time somewhat accomplished.
Rey Fox, you know they wouldn’t use footage of a real abortion. It’d be The Silent Scream or some home movie made with a lot of ketchup and raw hamburger.
And maybe men should be required to “watch a vasectomy” prior to having one.
But only after failing to acquire the wanton ambling nymph that he called for in his opening soliloquy.
In sports/religion news, Pat Robertson has weighed in on the trade of Tim Tebow to the New York Jets:
Funny how often his spokesmen have to clarify shit like that.
Louis, I didn’t claim that you are—or were—or will be—(The Once and Future Perv???)—Smoggy, only that you seem Smoggy-like. Smoggalicious, if you will. And, anyway, all perverted deviants look the same after midnight. Granted, it’s now something like 15 hours after midnight, but still….
–
I don’t know, Rey; some of them have real problems with the very idea of women taking Pills.
–
I realised that Cicely…after I typed.
I has a shame.
Louis
There, there… I’ll make it all better. First you just have to let me cut to the front of this line here…
Carlie,
Seems eminently reasonable. How was the burger?
Louis
Louis – it had bacon. I got you one too. :)
The Jesus Mall in Salt Lake City is finally open. (“The Jesus Mall” is local slang, not church-approved.)
The Lord’s only Prophet on Earth, Thomas Monson, was there with the entire First Presidency of the LDS Church. The old guys stood in a line in their suits. They prayed, blessed the place, cut the ribbon, and shouted, “Let’s go shopping!” [YouTube video of that moment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBEQzib3AP8&feature=youtu.be ]
The mormons spent more money per square foot to build City Creek Mall than was spent building the tallest building the word, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. I’ve seen estimates ranging from $2 billion to $5 billion, but I think the $5 billion includes three blocks of condos built to provide views of the mormon temple. The $2 billion for the mall itself seems to be agreed upon by most reporters.
The famous creek of “City Creek” looks a little paltry in the photos if you ask me.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/22/city-creek-mormon-mall_n_1372695.html#s806024&title=City_Creeks_waterfall
Excerpt from link above:
Here’s official confirmation of the “$4 billion to $5 billion” figure: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765560418/LDS-Presiding-Bishop-H-David-Burton-says-part-of-City-Creek-project-goal-has-been-met.html
An ex-mormon pointed out that the burning fountains are a mormon/biblical reference: “The Spirit of God like a fountain is burning.”
I hear the parking is good, if you’re willing to pay $20/day for it, and if you don’t mind Mormon Senior Missionaries greeting you.
So I just got word from my boss that company mucketies want me gone sometime this summer. Job lasted much longer than I expected and is awesomely flexible around classes and the like, but I’m just a bit sad at the moment. I really like the people here and it’s been nice to be able to work my way through school.
@Lynna, that’s nice slang. Friends of mine call it Shitty Creek.
The Mattir household invasion has begun. Ibyea is here, Ursulamajor is here, Normal Teen Boy, Jessa, Jack, & Bridget arrive later this evening, and SallyStrange and SallyStrange’s Mom arrive tomorrow. Spouse, sensibly, has fled for the weekend, having the houseguest tolerance of Tom Travers from the Bertie & Jeeves novels. Brownies and soup are underway, SonSpawn is playing something on his amazing new Pharyngula-built gaming computer (thanks to kaessa’s amazing skype patience!), and Ibyea has explored the Mattir Academy’s library and settled on Steven Pinker’s Language Instinct.
Life is good.
slignot – oh, I’m sorry. I hope you find a good replacement soon.
Six pages in, I’m already in love with Life Ascending, which I’m finally reading. I started with the photosynthesis chapter, and I have to say I’ve never read such a beautiful and understandable description of element and gas cycling. I hope the rest of it lives up to this part. I’m kind of jaded on popular science books, but something about this style is really striking to me.
(disclaimer: book was free from publisher for possible course adoption)
I just can’t figure this shit out. They want to force women to watch an abortion video, but ban sex ed, mention of the word “uterus” and actual medical training in how to perform abortions…
…Okay, now I’m thinking that to comply with everything, this mandated video should be a training video in how to perform abortion. Then every patient, nurse, physician, and Crisis Pregnancy Center patient who’s forced to watch this video anyway, would at least leave with the knowledge of how to perform an abortion safely. That’s going to be useful, soon.
Well, I agree that the creek is shitty. Especially when one considers how money they spent to bring the creek up from its underground pipe and into the glory of the Utah sunshine. Piddly little creek.
For those interested in the financial aspects, the Wall Street Journal posted a fairly comprehensive article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303717304577278993475062000.html
I could be Trayvon, the website.
I just found our stupid cat’s collar and tag, on the roof, over the porch. I had to climb a tree with a broomstick, knock the collar into the gutter, put the ladder against the side of the house and climb up and grab the damn thing. Wouldn’t have bothered if it weren’t a one-of-a-kind hand-stamped tag I got for Mr Kristin as a present (I say “our stupid cat” but it’s really Mr Kristin’s stupid cat; I have stupid cats of my own).
He’s not even supposed to be outside in the first place, the least the little jerk could do is leave his collar on while he’s out there, but no. >.>
What’s all this talk of alcohol being tasteless?
Because I can DEFINITELY taste it. Unless what I’m experiencing isn’t so much the ‘taste’ of the alcohol, as the physical effects of alcohol on the tissue in my mouth?
I bought myself a Khomus yesterday. So far, The Kid is the only one who likes my playing. Also, fucking hurts the teeth if you play it wrong. Yeesh.
Who says alcohol is tasteless? It totally is not.
It smells too. Seriously, having spent today decanting bottles of 200 proof ethanol, I can say with certainty that alcohol smells.
Ethyl alcohol has a distinct taste. Get a bottle of Everclear and take a sip. Then you’ll know the taste of alcohol.
I know. All straight hard liquor tastes the same to me, the alcohol taste predominates. Any discussion beyond that point (oakiness, peatiness) is wasted on me.
Protip, by the way: 150 proof EtOH cut with denatured alcohol also has a distinctive smell, that is subtly different from pure ethanol. That said, after handling it, one should be very careful with hand-washing and never ever ingest the shit.
Methyl alcohol will kill you dead. If it somehow doesn’t, it’ll make you go blind. Fun stuff!
Carlie, #298,
Nice one! Thanks. I’ll save it for later. These orgies are very physical and I don’t want to get indigestion.
Louis
While it started quite sucky, today turned out to be good after all.
protoMIL took me to a vaudeville show (I hope dict.leo.org is not lying to me about this term, it was a music theatre circus thingie with a live band and some acrobatics, no strippers). I lurve protoMIL, so I enjoyed it tremendously. The show itself was pretty awesome as well.
Then I got home, checked my mail and found that an argument had been resolved. I had some serious crying over it earlier this day, so this was a relief.
Then I log on to pharyngula and am treated to Louis’ “cunt” recital and mental illness rant and it was just the icing on the cake.
I swear, for next Molly I’ll vote for Louis and continue to do so until justice is served and he is Louis OM.
(I also hope to get preferential treatment in the Groop Secks Line.)
[Today’s puzzle completed 1 Min, 30 Secs ]
Still not too shabby for me. I guess playing live against the masters musta done something for my skillzz.
Fun fact from the emergency room/intensive care unit:
In case of a methyl alcohol poisoning, we’ll give ethyl alcohol orally or as an i.v. until a BAC of about 0,1 percent.
This will stop your enzymes from breaking down methyl alcohol into its toxic degradation products and allow it to be excreted via your kidney. Because your enzymes like ethyl moar than methyl and will work on it first, while the methyl alcohol is excreted in the urine.
Medicine is awesome.
keenacat, I’m pretty sure there was an episode of “House” about that.
But yes. Best way to treat methanol poisoning is to get shiftfaced.
Out of curiosity, what is the best way to treat isopropanol poisoning? Is there one?
keenacat, Louis is OM.
I checked the therapy recommendations for isopropanol poisoning. There is no causal therapy avaliable, ethyl alcohol will only exacerbate the symptoms. So after first line measures (stomach irrigation, washing if skin is contaminated) its down to supportive therapy and dialysis.
Oh noes, borkquote.
First sentence is John Morales, second sentence is me.
Alrighty then. I’ve never ingested isopropyl and never intend to.
Keenacat,
{Blush}
Thanks. Hardly my most coherent or thought out rants, but nicely cathartic. I think shorter me is “Context, motherfuckers! It matters”.
And yeah, I got an accidental Mollying a few months ago. They let anybody in nowadays. I, erm, know someone on, erm, a subcommittee. For the proper fee, erm, I could, erm, make an introduction. ;-)
Louis
True perhaps, but what bearing does that have on 99.9% ethanol?
The issue with absolute alcohol is, that to get rid of those last 4% water, it’s necessary to add benzene (or possibly toluene) to distil off the last water as an azeotrope. That means that those 0.1% impurities left are more likely to be benzene than water. And bad though methanol may be, you do *not* want to drink benzene.
Absolutely true, Sili.
Methyl alcohol is more of a risk in hooch than anything else. As delicious as well-made hooch is, it is very very important be careful about it.
An irony of hooch is that what gives it it’s hoochiness are the various pentanols (and possibly butanols, Iono) in there; the “fusel oils”.
Those same fusel oils are what gives booze such as whiskies and the like their distinct booziness.
Just goes to show that the poison is in the dose. Just like the lovely smells in coffee are due to sulphur compounds that stink to high heaven if getting over ppm concentrations.
Chemistry is love.
Sili,
Huh.
—
Next: why doesn’t coffee taste as good as it smells? ;)
Just gave my public research lecture, three hours after my departmental lecture. Exhausted beyond belief. Need tea.
Do you really think I can be bought? Just how low do you . . . .
Are those Cubans?
I agree. Though, given the circumstance, I think Fuddruckers would be appropriate.
That’s the cigar smoke.
No, boring people are all the same. Every sick mind is sick in its own individually sick way.
I once had a test in an English history class in which one of the questions was, “Why was William Orange?”
While other students filled up half a blue book answering that one, I just wrote,”Yes, 1066 and All That is a good book.” I recieved 11 out of 10 for that answer.
I always wake up feeling a little bit worse than I usually do in the morning.
And all who believe that, raise your hand.
Thought so.
Would you rather have a horse? It can be arranged.
And where is my Cuban (cigar this time!).
No. Too much alcohol can lead to tasteless behaviour.
Wait. The treatment for being blind drunk is getting drunk?
Ask the horses. They know.
Alright, I just watched this YouTube video. It features Neal deGrasse Tyson ranting and pictures of space.
It is beautiful.
The other night, I looked up through my windshield and said to myself, “Hey, that’s the Big Dipper!” I was seriously impressed.
Pardon me, I’m going outside to look at the stars.
Ogvorbis,
Cohibas good for you?
Louis
Esteleth,
I’ll join you. Albeit on a different continent, but I’ll join you.
And then I’m coming in and writing to my MP and the Science Minister.
Again.
Louis
A. R,
1. Grats!
2. Hyperbole.
3. (Damn, I can’t think of the antonymic to hyperbole! :| )
Ogvorbis,
No, thanks. Neighsayers, they are.
A.R.: When you said you had lectures to go to, I didn’t realize you were the one giving the lectures. I hope it all went well!
Here’s some *coffee cake* to go along with that tea.
“Acceptance,” season two, episode one, co-starring LL Cool J.
It sort of bothers me that I knew that.
Louis, I am not sure why, but I thought you were American. Hmm.
Judging by (1) the fact that you have an MP and (2) how it is apparently night-time where you are, may I presume that you are European (most likely British)?
feralboy, I used to watch “House” religiously. Then I stopped living in undergraduate housing. *shrug*
Esteleth,
I am indeed a British national. My heritage is rather mixed, I am basically the European Union, and I have lived in the USA (and other countries) for extended periods of time. I retain a great fondness for the USA and her customs and people, so maybe I ‘Merkin-it-up a little here. ;-)
Louis
OK. I must admit, I did check what time it is in Australia before guessing Europe. But unless night-time in the Southern Hemisphere works completely differently than it does here, the stars are not out at 11 am.
But then, I am pedantic like that. I also read Wikipedia for fun. I’m currently reading about Nell Gwynn, who apparently slept with like half of England (while Charles II watched). Wacky fun.
Annnd I guess I’ve assumed you’re an American too, Esteleth. Forgive me if I am in error.
I’ve found it’s a good first approximation here, but since I could well have been wrong twice today about this topic, I’ll bin that heuristic!
Louis
I am American, Louis! In terms of ancestry, I’m a mutt, but mostly WASP. So you were right about that one.
Well, I’m an American who doesn’t know how to close an html tag.
Silly Yank. *shakes head*
I figgered Louis was English. Especially when he offered 2,000 pounds (no, I am not going to look up the stupid f+L for that).
And though I live in the USA, I am, apparently, not an American. My local representative has sent me letters telling me that evil federal workers are out to destroy the jobs of real Americans and that when he gets rid of the evil federal workers then I will be able to keep more of the money I make as a real American worker (ignoring that he wants to put me out of a job).
No no! Not “silly Yank”! If silliness were predicated on not closing an html tag then I would like 2378542987356375345635 previous crimes to be taken into account, M’Lud. ;-)
And that’s just by me.
This week.
Anyway, mutts of the world unite, we have nothing to lose but our pedigr….waaaaiiiiit a minute!
By the way, you do know you have now given me a brain worm. I am reading Nell Gwynn’s write on Wikipedia too. :-)
Louis
Louis, as a Brit (may I call you a “limey”?) who has spent time the US, you are doubtless aware that “Yankee” means something different in the US and everywhere else?
By one heuristic, I am a Yankee, 100%. By another, I am vaguely maybe Yankee on one side. Another side of my family would shoot you if you called them Yankees – and a third group would demand to know why you’re talking about baseball, don’t you Brits follow that cricket game?
This has always amused me.
Esteleth, you’re a septic much like Louis is a pom.
(Me, I’m an aussie)
(Croweater type of aussie, to be fair)
John, WTF is a septic? I only know that in the sense of “contaminated” and in the sense of septic tanks. :/
Esteleth,
You can call me a limey if it makes you happy. And it wasn’t the “yank” part of your brief, self-deprecating description I was ever so mildly objecting to! ;-)
John raises a good piece of Cockney Rhyming Slang: Septic Tank = Yank.
Now I am not going to claim that my countrymen from the East of London chose that particular rhyme because they considered Americans to be large and generally full of shit, but I think we know that Cockneys can be brutal when provoked! ;-)
Louis
P.S. Yes some of us “follow” cricket. I say “follow” because a Test match lasts days and can end in a draw. The only thing to do is drink heavily. And I MEAN heavily. Discover the antics of the “Barmy Army” via your google machine. They are not hooligans like the soccer supporters, you have to be capable of standing upright to be a hooligan, and drinking the way cricket fans do is not conducive to any form of standing.
Oh, Cockney Rhyming Slang. *shakes head*
You Brits are odd, you know that?
American ingenuity is geared towards ways of deep-frying shit and/or blowing it up (for an example of the “and,” google “deep-fried turkey”). You guys come up with creative ways of saying “cunt” and “bollocks.”
Incidentally – bull bollocks are not bad, deep-fried. I’ve never seen one explode, though.
I mean, I guess bull balls could explode, if something went wrong during the frying process. Dunno.
They are good on toast, though. Use a marinade that has hooch in it to really bring out the flavor.
Yes, I grew up in farm country, why do you ask? I have all my teeth!
I had an egg roll explode while I was deep frying it. Does that count?
Oggie, what was the egg roll stuffed with? Testicles? Or just random pig-matter?
Ground pork, rice vermicelli, snow peas, onion, mung bean sprouts, sweet pepper, chile pepper, bok choy, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, szichuan pepper, sherry, and a touch of corn starch. No testicles. Been there. Done that. Lost my breakfast.
Esteleth,
Oh yes, we Brits are odd. There’s an old English saying:
Everyone’s queer but thee and me, and even thee’s a bit queer. ;-)
The “cunt” thing is being done to death on the other thread. I refuse to satirise wanton sexism on two threads simultaneously. As for English speakers, British English, we have a very euphemistic culture. We are remarkably creative with our rude words. I’m pretty sure this cannot be unique to these isles, but we do seem to put in a little extra effort. A case in point.
As for the stuff about testicles….what a load of old bollocks.
Louis
Oggie, when eating testicles, one of two things are required:
(1) the consent of who the testicles are still attached to, or
(2) ketchup.
Actually, ketchup is good either way.
Esteleth: Mountain oysters again?
Louis: Pure WASP who has a family that thinks they’re English (not British, no association with those infernal Irish and Scots) here.
Ogvorbis –
I sent my senators and representatives a letter this week asking them to protect the park rangers in the budget. I specifically told my representative that park rangers are necessary for ensuring that our children are well informed about what makes America great. Do you think Ms. Bachmann will accept my reasoning?
My state representative sent a mailing assuring us that the next time there is a state government shutdown, it won’t be painful for the citizens because the state parks, race track and alcoholic beverage commission will continue to operate. Apparently as a state bureaucrat who doesn’t work for those particular agencies, I am not a citizen of my state.
Louis, I will happily concede your point with satirizing wanton sexism.
The bollocks shouldn’t be too old, though. Best if eaten within 48 hours of castration.
Okay, I’ll stop talking about mountain oysters.
In most ways, I am not sorry that I left my hometown. Too much racism, sexism, and homophobia. But I haven’t had a good bison or ostrich burger since I left.
No. You see, what makes BachmAmerica great is unrestricted free enterprise. And National Parks restrict free enterprise. There are restrictions on hotels, gas stations, minimarts, restaurants, logging, mining, hunting, etc. in these protected areas and they are thus evil socialist creations. Except for Mount Rushmore (as soon as they add Reagan, anyway).
Depressing, ain’t it? The right has been demonizing public workers for so long that we are no longer even considered to be actual people.
Louis,
Cobblers!
Esteleth: I don’t have a problem with the swinging beef, I just think it’s funny that you enjoy talking about it so much. Wonder what an MRA would say about it? ;)
Probably plenty, A.R., given that I’m a lesbian.
Esteleth: I can just imagine their weird psychology BS they wold come up with…
Esteleth,
[Old Joke]
Oh really? And when did you move here from Lesbania?
[/Old Joke]
{Tumbleweed}
Louis
P.S. I shall be guided by your excellent mountain oyster advice above. In future I shall only eat them within 48 hours of severance, or fresh from the {ahem} “bush” with ketchup. Although, running after a bull with my teeth poised for a good chomp strikes me as a sub-optimal body position for speed…
Louis, I have never been to Lesbiana. I have, however, vacationed in Lesbos. I was a bit perturbed by the lover I took there, who claimed to be a fellow lesbian. Spyros was rather odd, what with the handlebar mustache.
I think my lesbianism really got its start when I was in middle school, when I got hired by a farmer to castrate every other corn plant. That’s when I discovered that I’m allergic to plant semen.
Esteleth
<groan>
Your seminal experience is duly noted.
(No less than your stamena)
Jobbers cobknots ya mucker!
If chemistry is love, then I’m a noble gas.
Very good, John!
You are now allowed to graduate to Biology 102, where we shall draw Punnett squares until you want to cry.
Boy has good news and bad news. The good news is, he got a free bottle of beer. The bad news is, it is Heiniken.
What, you glow when subjected to electrical current?
AFK for quite some time, so I depart with the observation that events in the USA have made our news: Obama urges ‘soul-searching’ after black teen’s killing.
Esteleth – exactly where were the testicles you were hired to remove from corn plants? All I’ve ever seen was a nubbin oddly placed here or there.
Esteleth: What Biology class do I get into if I can explain the mechanism of Ebolavirus entry into Vero E6 cells?
God damn it!
Same thing happened to spouse again that happened on Sunday, but without any triggers at all. He woke me up with stomach cramps, couldn’t breathe, sweats. Called paramedics and he took oral benadryl at the same time, when the first ones got there he was pretty rotten, by the time the whole team got here he was already getting better. So they just gave oxygen for a few minutes, and I felt
kind oflike a big idiot in front of the kid down the street (who’s a paramedic and got here first) and the parent of a kid in my kid’s class (also paramedic). Plus I couldn’t find my son’s epipen right after they asked if we had one, even though I always know exactly where it is, and it took like five minutes for me to locate it, proving me even more of a dumbass who is likely to just let everyone in my house DIE. (the hospital didn’t give him his own on Sunday)So now I feel dumb, and we have another paramedic co-pay (which I’m not even sure how much that is because we haven’t gotten the first bill), and it’s pretty clear that it’s not a peanut allergy but what the hell is in the house that’s doing this? Suspecting mold maybe now, but I’m not sure why it would set off only occasionally. He got an appointment with his doctor, but not until next week, so hasn’t even had allergy testing yet. Fuck.
Oh he doesn’t do it to annoy my mother. He just doesn’t get hungover. We don’t remember him ever becoming so. He just gets up in the morning absolutely fine. When they had been drinking at a party that I had ferried them home from so I know they were both inebriated it cannot help but be a bit annoying to my mum when she’s feeling a bit delicate the next day and he has no ill effects whatsoever.
He also doesn’t tend to get sunburned. Goes in sun, slightly red (but not sore) that day. Next day brown. Since I inherited my mother’s celtic skin I did envy this a bit since I tended to go red, ow, ow, ow, and then a few days later the layer peeled off with the next layer down maybe a tiny bit darker.
Patricia, I was hired – like many kids in rural areas – to detassel the plants so as to promote hybridization. That is, you pull off the stamens (which look like upward-pointing tassels, hence the name). As the stamen is the male sex organ of a plant, you are castrating them and make them female.
In the midst of this process, you get coated head-to-toe in pollen, which is plant sperm.
SCIENCE!
A.R., that sounds like 300 level class to me.
Ahem. I’m sorry about that little outburst. I’m really tired, and cranky, and embarrassed.
Wonder if the male parts of corn would taste good deep fried…
carlie:
There are few things worse that no knowing what’s wrong :(
Only things I can think of are panic attacks and/or something like hypoglycemia. Has he had a blood workup done since the last episode? Iron levels, blood sugar, etc.?
Doubtful, A.R. They’re mostly fibrous tissue and cellulose.
Carlie, fresh-baked cookies and cocoa are coming from your USB. I second Richard’s suggestion that the blood sugar be looked at.
Well I’ll be damned. That’s a much more titillating explanation than just plain old ‘suckering’ corn.
Richard – panic attack I wondered about, but the benadryl helped both times, placebo? They took blood at the hospital, but the ER doc told us absolutely nothing about the results other than everything was ok. I keep telling myself that paramedics get called for stupid crap all the time, and that us not knowing exactly what was wrong less than a week after it happened and it happening again isn’t our fault, but I still feel dumb.
Thanks, Esteleth.
I grew up in the midwest, but wasn’t quite rural enough to end up doing detasseling. Drove past many, many acres of corn in my time, though.
carlie: That really sucks. I’d be frustrated too. I hope the doctors figure out what’s causing this, and quickly.
Esteleth: Very true. I saw a recipe for deep fried sweet corn a few weeks ago, very unusual.
Yes, but only for a little while.
Deep fried sweet corn actually isn’t that bad. I prefer the traditional boiled method, or the grilled method.
But yes, corn detasseling (and growing up in the rural midwest in general) did suck hard. I am massively allergic to corn (and soybean) pollen. Going to college was a revelation – I could breathe!
ot: I’ve been searching background info on the Treyvon Martin case (some of it in that thread) but there’s some good news. The Justice Department’s investigator, assistant attorney general for civil rights Thomas Perez, will be looking into the situation.
http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/03/tom-perez-justice-department-trayvon-martin
(oh for petes sake, the Rocky song “Gonna Fly Now” came on the radio as I’m typing this)
carlie: I can’t imagine benadryl having an effect in less than a half-hour unless administered by shot, so I doubt the drug itself is doing anything, and almost certainly not that quickly.
Is he taking it with water or milk or something?
carlie: Sorry to hear about your spouse. I clench a tentacle in your general direction. OTOH, Life Ascending is one of my favorites…I used it in an undergrad seminar with much success and happiness and fulfillment all around.
You just had to mention grilling corn…
Dammit, we still have snow on the grill!
Regretfully, I have now exhausted Murdock’s website.
It had so much great content.
9/11 was an inside job,
apologia for Rick Warren on Uganda’s kill-the-gays bill,
vaccines cause autism,
Bigfoot,
ancient aliens,
Burzynski’s cancer quackery,
and possibly some mild AGW denialism, though I’m not completely sure about that one.
But I wanted so much more! Oh wait she has another website which goes all the way back to 2006! Ahhhh nope I just don’t have the stamina.
And I just know I’m probably missing an awesome Bigfoot-did-9/11 essay.
Richard – it was liquid, so absorbed somewhat through mucus membranes, I thought it worked within 10 minutes or so? If not, then I guess panic attack with placebo seems more likely, still with no known cause.
carlie: {Clenched tentacle salute}
Okay, yeah, looks like the suspension works in about 5-10 minutes. So, could still be something allergen-related.
Weird. Hope you guys get it figured out, but still might be worth a full blood workup and physical.
*Sending hugs and sleep aids*
Obama :
Maybe demilitarizing and disarming the populace might help ? Works like a charm in the first world.
pitbull @ 394 – Now see here, just what do you have against Bigfoot?
Research scientist Peter Burn had a research trailor right here in my county, and he had maps and plaster casts, and all sorts of proof that Bigfoot is here.
So there.
Bit of free will reading material here, if anyone is interested.
Well there ya go!
And was Bigfoot sighted on the morning of 9/11?
No?
Isn’t that convenient.
rorschach: Bad idea. Something similar still happened in the UK (I’ll have to find the case)
Here we go. Another racially motivated murder. Without a firearm. The racist fucktards will always find a way.
Anyone who feels homicidal will find a way. But why make it easy ?
Pitbull in lipstick – Now hold on, has Peter Burn filed a report on Bigfoots whereabouts on 9/11?
You’d better take Professor Dumbledore’s advise on using extra caution until you hear the true story from an inquiring mind that knows.
There could have been poop samples that you simply weren’t privy too.
rorschach: Actually, IIRC, non-weapon objects are more commonly used in random homicide, and firearms are used more often by criminals, gangs, etc. At this point, The most responsible gun policy the US can implement would be to strengthen the restrictions on firearms purchases and how they may be transferred. I actually can’t think of any democratic western nation who’s citizens are truly disarmed.
1) The poop samples have been lost.
2) Bigfoot poop burns at a temperature hot enough to melt steel.
Coincidence?
Coincidence?
Holy shit, how could it be?!
Good to see that Coyne takes the simple route of physics instead of neuroscience. That’s the way to do it. Although I’m not sure that his “prediction” necessarily follows. I’ll have to think on that.
Couple of good works recently, on what the lack of free will means for law and social psychology, respectively.
John A. Humbach; Free Will Ideology: Experiments, Evolution and Virtue Ethics; doi 10.2139/ssrn.1578445
James B. Miles; ‘Irresponsible and a Disservice’: The integrity of social psychology turns on the free will dilemma; doi 10.1111/j.2044-8309.2011.02077.x
Humbach makes the mistake of stumbling into neuroscience, but it’s not critical to his more interesting point: compatibilism is actually virtue ethics, as it justifies hurting people because of who they are.
Now that I think about it, it’s getting clearer. Has anyone confirmed that Timothy McVeigh is not a Bigfoot too?
Have we even stopped to wonder why the Hutaree militia spent so much time in the woods?
Just curious, why do you think that neuroscience is not going to provide any meaningful insights into the debate ?
Good night sweethearts,
I’m toddling off to bed,
With visions of Bigfoot poop,
Dancing in my head.
dammit.
rorschach, because free will is a non-starter.
It’s physically impossible, as Coyne explains.
Even before that, it’s philosophically impossible, as Thomas W. Clark has explained.
Neuroscience comes “too late” to the game.
(Really, physics comes too late as well, but most people have a harder time appreciating that it’s absolutely a philosophical non-starter. The answer from physics is the simplest, and so will probably remain the most effective.)
I get that (now), and agree with it. But wouldn’t it be interesting to see neuroscience contribute to the “why”, for example with regards to qantum indeterminacy ? What we find on the molecular level in brain cells must corroborate the theory, after all.
Anyway, these were a couple interesting articles I thought. I’m not sure I want to buy Sam Harris’ new book tho. Victor Stenger’s new one about the incompatibility of science and religion looks much more promising.
No, because free will via quantum indeterminacy is a simple non-starter: a random event is not a willed event.
Stronger effects from indeterminacy would only mean that we sometimes randomly fail to act upon our desires, or our desires fluctuate randomly.
I mean, quantum indeterminacy probably has a some interesting effects upon the brain, but none of them can even theoretically offer free will.
The theory that most events have causes, and uncaused events are not willed? I’m pretty sure that’s already corroborated by everything ever.
I was looking forward to pirating it, but the summary there suggests it’s neuroscience-heavy. Which I suppose I should have expected, since that’s apparently his field of late, isn’t it? I’m afraid that will weaken his case, but maybe he covers the better arguments as well; tactically there can be a place for the neuroscience arguments, when the listener can’t or won’t grasp the stronger argument from physics.
So says you.
Anyway, I’m off to watch The Descendants. Later !
This comment suggests you still don’t understand the basics.
Quantum effects are random. Random effects are not willed to occur. Therefore, quantum effects cannot be caused by free will.
Random effects could only cause a change of will, or no change of will (law of excluded middle). If no change of will, then tautologically there’s been no effect upon will of any kind, free or otherwise. If there is a change of will, then it was random, so the change of will could not itself have been willed. Therefore, quantum effects cannot cause free will.
Will can have no effect on randomness, and randomness cannot offer a causal chain — the choice of making another choice — which is required to call decision-making freely willed. I presume your error may be the one I worked out with John.
“A freely willed action” would be an action which is proximately caused by the individual’s will, if the individual’s will is not determined via a causal chain that begins beyond the individual’s will.
You should see that’s impossible. It would mean being an unmoved mover. (And so free will is called the little god; it requires the human being to be such an omni-god as to be able to transcend logic.)
ॐ,
The question of free will as you and Jerry Coyne define it just strikes me as specularly irrelevant. Maybe that means that you’re right, I don’t know, but it sounds almost more like an argument about time travel than about anything to do with the mind.
You’re only thinking about the implications for the past, though. That perspective can make it seem irrelevant.
Not only does it mean you could never have chosen to choose differently than you did,
it also means that for everything you do in the future, you will not be able to choose differently than you do. You are never confronted with the option of choosing differently.
Now taking bets on how long before rorschach starts yapping about microtubules.
+++++
NuMad, consider it from the other direction; take seriously what free will would offer you if it could exist:
Who ?
It’s Saturday stay alone at home night, like every Saturday, so I’m going to watch another movie ! Your microtubules can’t touch me.
Free will discussions make my brain hurt.
Is that why fertilizer can be turned into explosives? It’s made from bigfoot poop?
Citation needed. For the hallucinogen that caused this statement.
Semi-threadrupt and headed out.
For everyone but especially Janine, Nigel (when he returns), Bill D., and Ogvorbis: Bill Kirchen’s cover of “Hot Rod Lincoln.” If rockabilly isn’t your thing, fast-forward to about the 2:27 mark and listen to the rest of it. Just trust me.
(Side note to Bill, way up at #14: Eeee, “Lookin’ for the Time”! I’m actually about to burn a few mix CDs for the car, and one of them will be all Nanci Griffith.)
But you are. I quite agree with you that contra-causal freewill is a non-starter, but that doesn’t change the fact that we are indeed frequently “confronted with the option of choosing differently”, we need a word to distinguish those cases from others, and “freewill” is the most appropriate I can think of.
That I don’t choose differently is indeed either determined, or has a random element; but that doesn’t make it any the less my decision, since it proceeds from my motives, history and thinking – and I’m free to decide otherwise (say in the case of spending $1000 on a good cause or personal enjoyment) in the sense that if my motives were different, I would. OTOH, if I kick my leg in a reflex when the doctor taps my knee, or perform some action while asleep or in an epileptic seizure, it’s not in the same sense my decision to do so, so it’s not an action perfomed out of freewill and I am not responsible for it – note that courts routinely if not exactly frequently acquit people who have killed while asleep. Even believers in contra-causal freewill are likely to exclude such actions from the class of those to which the term “freewill” applies. Other cases again are borderline: insanity, dementia, infancy, drug-induced hallucinatory states, and again, the courts spend a lot of time on decisions about responsibility in individual cases – just as we might expect if the concept of freewill is one on a different level of description from quantum physics or neuroscience, one concerned with agents’ perceptions, motives, beliefs, actions and interactions.
In fact, “Yankee” is hardly ever used in the UK except in the shortened form of “Yank”. Even that (which is distinctly but not viciously derogatory), I almost never hear in everyday life, and my impression is that it’s much less common than it used to be: most of us call Americans “Americans”. (I admit that for a while I used “Usanians”, along with “Ukanians” for citizens of the UK, but I tired of the jest.)
In the UK, a yankee is more likely to be taken for a betting term. A Yankee is a rather complicated form of bet in horse racing where the bet covers four horses, and at least two must come in the top three or four in order to get a pay-out.
All fine.
Typical compatibilist obscurantism! :)
What this means is “I’m free to decide otherwise in the sense that if i were a different person, I would.”
But you’ll never have different motives than the ones you’ll have! (This is why compatibilism is virtue ethics.) And if, at any given time, you’re changing your motives, then you’re not free to change them in any way other than how you do, which is a function of your prior motives, which you were not free to change in any other way than how you did, et cetera. In other words, you may do as you will, but you may not will as you will.
It’s not you who could be free to decide otherwise, because you’ll never have the necessary motives to do so. It’s some hypothetical alternate KG who will never exist in our universe. To be most generous, we can take the Many Worlds interpretation seriously, so there really are these alternate KGs who have different motives because quantum fluctuations influenced their decision trees differently. But they’re not you; we only name them after you because they’re more like you than other people.
What it takes, to be free to decide otherwise, is the motive to decide otherwise, but you will never have that. So you are not free like that.
So these are apparently your reasons for thinking we need the term “free will”, or rather the compatibilist equivocation “freewill”.
Don’t you notice that we already have more specific terms for all these things, which are not so metaphysically laden? You list some: “reflex, epileptic seizure, insanity, dementia, infancy, drug-induced hallucinatory states”.
And there’s still other terms we can use to talk about the important phenomena in this vicinity: inner strength, willpower, self-efficacy, constitution, diminished capacity, irresistible impulse, opportunity, power, ability, privilege.
We have all the necessary language, all of which can be understood without terminology that’s metaphysically contested. Neither “free will” nor “freewill” does any extra work.
Another compatibilist trick of language. Look how that very same claim can be reforumulated accurately without the most heavily-contested metaphysical baggage:
“the courts spend a lot of time on decisions about responsibility in individual cases – just as we might expect if the concept of responsibility is one on a different level of description from quantum physics or neuroscience, one concerned with agents’ perceptions, motives, beliefs, actions and interactions.”
Again “free will” does no extra work.
In truth we already have strong evidence of, and can confirm with experimental philosophy, what people really consider necessary to “free will” (rather than simply redefining it to avoid upsetting the legal status quo, as compatibilists have done).
When people are confronted with the fact that they could not have chosen differently than they did, they either reject that fact or decide that it means they were wrong and they don’t have free will after all. (See also the fallout from compatibilism.)
As above, that’s impossible. That would require being two people at once, two different KGs with different motives. A single KG only has the option of choosing what he chooses, never differently.
No, there are much better terms. “Self-control” is one.
Compatibilism, because it relies on a term which most people take to mean the ability to have chosen differently, is probably more socially destructive than incompatibilism.
From Miles, cited above:
«Philosophical compatibilism dates back to the early Stoics and is the idea that free will is compatible with a fully deterministic universe, a universe where all current events are necessitated by past events, and that free will can co-exist with the understanding of humans as fully determined persons. (For humans, you can fit quantum indeterminism into a deterministic picture of actions because the quantum event may be uncaused but our resulting actions would be caused by the quantum event.) But how can free will be compatible with, at the human level, a fully determined universe? Because, for free will compatibilists, free will is simply redefined as being something other than freedom of choice, something other than freedom to have done otherwise, something other than freedom to have willed otherwise.
This is ultimately what all compatibilism boils down to; this is why Kant in 1788 called compatibilism a ‘wretched subterfuge . . . petty word-jugglery’, why William James in 1884 called it ‘a quagmire of evasion’ (James, 1884/1956, p. 149; Kant, 1788/1956, pp. 189–190). Within compatibilism, the general rule is that free will can be defined as anything, so long as it is never defined as freedom of choice, freedom for any actual individual to have done otherwise. So, for example, Susan Wolf has redefined free will to mean sanity (1989), whereas others have redefined it as freedom from constraint, as unpredictability, as acting in accordance with ‘reason’, and many, including the doyen of modern philosophical compatibilists Harry Frankfurt (1971/2003), as acting in harmony with your basic – causally determined – personality. The philosopher of science Dan Dennett (1984) has defined free will as mechanical self-control. Free will, according to Dennett, is possessed by yeast, chrysanthemums, and some plastic toys. Under Dennett’s formulation were you to take your child’s toy car, put in new batteries, and then set it to race away, it would not have free will; however, as soon as you turn your back and walk away from it never to return, you have blessed it with free will. In other words, free will has deliberately been defined so generously it becomes a meaningless term, a morally empty concept, a capacity we can share with both the Energizer Bunny and fungal infections.
There are some who continue to argue that the compatibilist project is a noble one, trying to steer a just course of limited human freedom through the murky waters of determinism, but I argue Dennett gives the lie to the suggestion that compatibilism is about advancing human understanding or justice. Dennett, one of the world’s leading compatibilist scholars, tells us he finds facing up to the absence of free choice ‘almost too grim to contemplate’ (1984, p. 168). But what exactly does Dennett not wish to contemplate? As a free will theorist it is his job to contemplate the non-existence of free choice, so it cannot be his own contemplation he fears. No; what scares Dennett is not the fact of no free choice, it appears to be the risk of the public being given the chance to understand that fact. Motive becomes almost irrelevant; because, in a world without free will, ‘luck swallows everything’ (Strawson, 1998), one effect of denying the electorate such knowledge is to pretty much ensure that the lucky stay lucky while the unlucky remain unlucky. […]
University of Illinois law professor Michael S. Moore is possibly the most influential retributivist scholar in Western legal theory, and Moore calls himself a compatibilist of the variant that holds determinism and free choice to be compatible. They are not. Moore notes that all we need to show to prove that an actor could have done otherwise is that he could have done otherwise ‘if he had chosen (or willed) to do otherwise’ (Moore, 1985, p. 1142). We need a conditional definition of the word ‘could’, says Moore, but to say an individual could have done otherwise if he or she had willed to have done otherwise is the logical equivalent of saying a dog would have a curly tail if it was a pig. Conditionality is not applicable here as no individual ever could have willed to have done otherwise in either a deterministic universe or an indeterministic universe. Two factors – and only two factors – determine human behaviour, being biology and experience, nature and nurture. At any particular moment, an individual could only have willed to have done otherwise if their biology or experiences to that date had been different; hence an individual could only have done otherwise if, in effect, they had happened to have been a different person. Person A is being judged as person A for not being person B[.]»
So, gamers: quit angsting about ME3 and play Journey on the PS3. It’s a rather sweet little thing which seems designed to promote companionship at a basic level: just sharing an experience with another person, maybe showing them the way a little. Given how often multiplayer produces assorted douchery, it’s rather refreshing to find a game where about the only bad thing you can do to someone is ignore them. If you’ve got a free evening (it’s a short game), give it a try: it’s quite lovely.
Skimming Humbach again, I see he provides the term you’re looking for. “Free agency” is uncontroversially the ability to act in accordance with one’s motives, and sufficiently distinguishes those times from reflex, legal insanity, duress, or other forms of diminished responsibility.
«Compatibilism is the idea that free will can, if properly understood, be compatible with determinism. But the compatibilist version of free will turns out, when viewed from a different angle, to be essentially just a repackaging of the virtue- ethics foundation for justifying inflictions of human suffering based on character.
From the outset, the basic idea of compatibilism looks like a pure contradiction: How could a rule-bound individual possibly have a free will? The two seem mutually exclusive. Compatibilists accept that human acts are determined (rule-bound) but they insist that there remains, in the springs of human behavior, a residue of freedom that can serve the same moral function that has been traditionally served by free will, namely, provide a basis for condemning those who commit dangerous and abhorrent acts and justifying the infliction of suffering. While there are many varieties of compatibilism, what they all seem to argue in common is that this crucial residue can be found in the freedom of the person. The freedom needed for accountability does not literally require the will to be free. The important thing that the person be free—free to do what she wills.
This move, shifting the focus of inquiry from the will to the person, allows accountability (and, therefore, inflictions of suffering) to be based on something that can plausibly be called ‘free will’ without running head-on into the objection that freedom of the actual will rests on a dubious and mystical (non-deterministic) factual premise. In classical compatibilism (e.g., of Thomas Hobbes), the shift in focus seemed to be enough in itself for moral accountability. Freedom of the person to do as she wills was treated as the essential equivalent of free will—at least the important part of free will.
There is, however, a problem with focusing on the freedom of the person to do as she wills rather than on freedom of the will itself. The problem is that such a shift in focus glides over the key difference between free will and free agency. When a person is free to do what she wills, she is a free agent, but that is not the same thing as having freedom of will. To have a free will (as opposed to mere free agency), an individual’s choices in a given situation would have to be free of constraint not only from her current external circumstances but also free from her internal state—probably meaning her internal neuronal state. A free agent can do what she wills, even if her will is determined. But for her will to be free, the will itself must be non-determined. This would mean, in neuronal terms, that in order to have a free will the individual must be able to break free from the mechanistic electro-chemical processes that otherwise would rule her muscles and direct what she does. An individual who cannot break free of these electro-chemical processes, which is to say everybody, may be a free agent but she does not have free will.
Although free agency may superficially seem a lot like free will, it cannot perform the role that is attributed to free will in making the case to justify punishment. It cannot perform this role because free agency does not regulate or guide human behavior. Indeed, rather than being a source of behavioral constraint (regulation or guidance), it is an absence of constraint. And obviously, an absence of constraint cannot ‘determine’ how a person acts. When a situation is such that people are free agents and therefore able to act in different ways, it is not their free agency but something else that decides what they do. That ‘something else,’ if not some external force, is the person’s disposition, or character.»
John Morales – 3. litote
carlie – sounds very frightening. Hope you are both OK, and that it proves possible to pin down what’s causing it.
Worst abortion analogy, ever. At least for one of those pious “I’m pro-legalization of abortion but I personally oppose it” dipshits. I left a reply and my slapping hand still itches. (Oh, noes, violence!!)
Alaska Rep Says Women Should Have To Get Man’s Permission To Obtain an Abortion
lilapbwls,
The passage you quote is fundamentally dishonest, in that it emotively associates compatibilism with justification of the infliction of suffering, when there is clearly no necessary connection; it would be just as dishonest for a compatibilist to maintain that your position justifies the infliction of suffering because of course those who inflict suffering cannot, on your view, do otherwise. It is also dishonest in talking of the compatibilist position is based on a “residue” of freedom, as if it is an attempt to rescue some part of contra-causal freewill. But this is not the case. As you and I are agreed, the idea of contra-causal freewill is incoherent; it is not something we might have had, and so can rationally regret not having. The compatibilist position is, instead, a recognition that we do need to make distinctions based on the capacity to exercise free choice, which those in the categories I listed (infants, sleepwalkers etc.) either do not have, or have to a more limited extent than sane, wakeful, sober and mentally unimpaired adults. If you want to insist on confining the term “freewill” to the incoherent pseudo-concept of contra-causal freewill, and using “free agency” instead when referring to these distinctions, fine, I’m not interested in squabbling about definitions.
I count over ten uses of the word “analogy” in that thread and yet no one has brought up Judith Thomson’s violinist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Defense_of_Abortion
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thought-experiment/
KG, you’re overreacting.
Humbach is a law professor. He is writing to other legal theorists, on the topic of legal compatibilism,* that subset of compatibilism which is concerned with using the criminal law to punish.
Now I don’t propose that that’s the whole of compatibilism, but it’s relevant to this discussion after you’ve brought up criminal law.
I suggest that instead of taking Dennett and other philosophers at their word on how compatibilism “could” be used, you should dip into the law journals to see how it really is being used. Actually-existing compatibilism should and probably will upset you; Humbach wasn’t responding to nothing. It’s quite a good article, at least in sections I, II, and V (the other stuff is too basic, but it was written for legal theorists).
* cf. Anders Kaye; The Secret Politics of the Compatibilist Criminal Law
No, the comparison is not apt. You’d be making an is-ought error there, while Humbach is simply reporting on what legal theorists are actually saying about desert.
I don’t see how that’s dishonest as you word it. I’m also not sure that you’ve worded it as he meant it. But in any case here’s the citation he used on that claim; I don’t see anything dishonest in his portrayal of it:
“For the most part, what philosophers working on this issue [of free will] have been hunting for, maybe not exclusively, but centrally, is a feature of agency that is necessary for persons to be morally responsible for their conduct.” STANFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY, supra note 2, at 3.1.
I wonder if the word “rationally” is doing too much work there. People frequently do regret not being able to have chosen differently. And others, like Walton and Coyne — “knowing that we don’t have free will can perhaps temper our sense of regret or self-recrimination, since we never had real choices in our past” — find it a cause for relief. A person learns their older ideas were wrong, and they lose the hopes and fears that cohabited with those ideas; hmm, well, I’m not persuaded that this regret and relief is irrational.
No it is not. That’s the hard determinist position, and the hard indeterminist position, and the libertarian position, and the illusionist position, and the compatibilist position. Everyone agrees on that much. Therefore it cannot be claimed as a distinguishing feature of any one position.
I insist on natural language — using the term how most people use the term — that for at least one choice you’ve made, you could have chosen differently than you did. And if the common meaning of it happens to be incoherent, then so be it. That doesn’t necessarily imply we should redefine it. It doesn’t imply any reaction at all. We can just as well say it was incoherent, like other supernatural concepts such as the soul, and just stop using the term instead of trying to “salvage” it (which, considering the evidence I’ve provided, is more likely to be socially destructive).
Of course you’re generally interested in squabbling about definitions; that’s why you’re a compatibilist. That’s all compatibilism is, a word game.
And of course you’re interested in squabbling about definitions this time around; that’s why you proposed that «we need a word to distinguish those cases from others, and “freewill” is the most appropriate I can think of.»
It amuses me to no end when compatibilists insist that they have the right way to redefine “free will”, yet when others don’t want to go along with their counterintuitive rebranding, they complain that they don’t want to talk about definitions. Compatibilism’s distinguishing feature is only a stance about the definition of these two words, “free will”, that’s all it ever was or will be.
There’s a reason why “agency” (I’m not really sure that “free” agency is any more meaningful, so I’ll drop it for now) is preferable to “free will”. Agency is not so metaphysically contested.
So with agency — as with diminished capacity, irresistible impulse, opportunity, power, ability, privilege, duress, locus of control, reflex, epileptic seizure, insanity, dementia, infancy, drug-induced hallucinatory states, willpower, self-efficacy, constitution — if we see someone misusing these terms they can easily be corrected. They are often very clear on their face, while we frequently don’t know what all is bound up in someone’s notion of free will; it sometimes takes hours or days and many thousands of words back and forth before everyone understands each other. And there’s less opportunity for equivocation, or the “negative illusionism” that occurs when compatibilists don’t actively challenge common misunderstandings about free will.
That’s why all these terms are superior to both “free will” and the equivocational homophone “freewill”. (And the fact that people tend to understand “not being able to have chosen differently” as not having free will is why compatibilism is generally false. If it’s true for anyone, it’s true only for a handful of philosophers and their fans.)
Anyway, I gave you a sensible argument about how “I’m free to decide otherwise (say in the case of spending $1000 on a good cause or personal enjoyment) in the sense that if my motives were different, I would” is equivalent to “I’m free to decide otherwise in the sense that if I were a different person, I would.”
It is, as Miles puts it, “the logical equivalent of saying a dog would have a curly tail if it was a pig.”
That was the substantive objection to your main point, but you contented yourself with complaining that I won’t adopt compatibilist terminology.
Now my ‘fridge is broken.
Aha!
So that’s what they™ use to make those chemtrail chemicals.
jaycubed is back.
He wants us to know that he counterprotests for Planned Parenthood.
This is just a nitpick (or perhaps I’m wrong), but if the universe is infinite, you don’t need to invoke the Many Worlds interpretation to get an infinite number of almost-KG Boltzmann brains (or complete almost-KGs residing on almost-Earths, etc.) making some other choice. It just requires lots and lots and lots of spacetime; entropy fluctuations will do the rest.
The MW interpretation raises the issue of (apparently possible) different outcomes for the exact same state at the same location; but unless I’m mistaken, the concern here should be whether the outcomes could be different for very similar states (which are macroscopically indistinguishable from one another) at the same location. To me it seems more obvious that those Boltzmann-KGs in other regions of spacetime are not the same as the KG we’re talking to, but honestly I’m not sure what I would say about their identities given the MW interpretation. That’s probably because I don’t understand QM.
And of course no one could ever replace the real KG. ;)
Hi to TET from people at the Rally.
lilapbwls,
I don’t have time for a detailed response, so I’ll ask a couple of questions:
Is it your view that people are not morally responsible for their conduct? This appears to be Walton’s view, but I’m not clear whether it’s yours. If this is your view, I have to wonder at the moral indignation with individuals evident in many of your comments at this blog. If it is not, how do you reconcile that view with your denial that people have free will?
What is the force of “could” here? Unless you can say without using the term “free will” or any cognate term, you haven’t really moved us further forward. It can quite readily be interpreted as meaning that there was no external constraint on my choosing differently.
Oh, FFS.
What’s going on with the crank invasion this week? Murdock waving cocks, Warden dressing up sheep, leereed cluttering up Sb.
(And who knows what’s going on on TZT.)
—
Happy monkey all. I now have dog violets and leaves on the apple tree. :)
And dandelions. :-/
Next up, Equisetum. *shudder*
LILAPWL, #442,
He counterprotests for Planned Parenthood? I never knew. He’s been so quiet and unassuming about it. He should have spoken up more, because that TOTALLY lets him off anything else.
Louis
Morning, all. I’m being quiet because I’m having a Dorothy Sayers binge. For some reason, the Vorkosigan saga seems to be next in line for the reread. Is it just me, or do Miles & Peter seem to be similar characters?
Now what time was that train to Kircudbright again?
Some LGBT marchers in Mexico just made me smile.
Your internal conditions may not be externally constrained to one outcome rather than another, but those conditions must be similarly constrained, so there’s still only one possible outcome (leaving MW aside). You couldn’t have chosen differently, because either “external constraints” includes all physical factors, or there are “internal constraints” (presumably referring to your brain state and other bodily states) which are effectively the same, or you end up in dualist territory.
Anyway, as I said in the Pipkin thread, I’ll say something like “I was not coerced” or “no one forced me to do that” to refer to situations like you describe (if I’m understanding correctly). That doesn’t mean I could have had any other internal state than I did; it’s just a claim that my internal state was not affected in any significant way by external constraints which would have affected them if they had been present.
So, for example, no one forced me to write this comment. You might say I did it “of my own free will.” It’s conceivable that someone could have had a gun to my head forcing me to respond to you.* Your original comment is an external constraint on my behavior, as are my internal states which motivated me to respond to it. So when I say “no one forced me,” I’m not talking about your decision to write your comment that motivated me to write this, but the fact that no one had a gun to my head (or something to that effect).
*Now that I’ve submitted this comment, I know such an event never could have happened, however conceivable it was.
KG:
I know it’s a reference to SGBM’s current incarnation but I keep misreading it as “Lilac Bawls.”
This article in the Globe and Mail may win the weekend Sexism and Heteronormativity in Print Award. At any rate, it wins the Pissing Me Off Award.
Seriously, could they at least give a nod to the facts that:
a) Women matter all by themselves! really! not just in relation to men
b) Not everyone in the entire world is straight
Thoughts?
janine, that makes me smile too. :)
Not caught up.
That green ooze oozing out of all your USB ports and dripping on the innocent cats? That’s my envy.
¡Estadounidenses!
Étatsuniens, même !
“because free will is a non-starter.”
Full fucking stop. Just go back and read previous comments & threads on this. Many, many comments & way too many threads.
Some folks just like to fight.
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I’m listening to A Prairie Home Companion. I’ve worked with both Winton & Branford Marsalis. Branford was much easier to work with.
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Ya know who is good at de-balling? Lisa Kudrow. I’ve never seen ‘Friends’ and yet, even I know she was the rat castrater in chief.
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Oh, and …
Put him in the hold with the Captain’s daughter,
Earl-eye in the morning!
Because bitter and sticks to your palate aren’t smells.
Made a nice pot of Roman Bean Soup with three kinds of German sausage and a whole smoked hock.
Explains all the wildland fires in NorCal.
Our Eastern Redbud just bloomed. Like just this afternoon. About a month early.
The amazing thing about spring in the Midwest is that Spring fucking springs! One day it’s just dry, seemingly dessicated trees, and the next day busts are springing out all over!
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Hi Patricia ***waves enthusiastically***
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Ogvorbis, I smoked a hock once. For some reason Holly hasn’t talked to me since.
I’m still not caught up and I probably won’t be today :( So far, I’m back at the beginning of Free Will, which I rather assume goes on for a while…
FossilFishy, your post was beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with us.
*hugs to Janine* I’m sorry to hear what happened to your friend.
*hugs to Patricia* I SEE YOU! *glitterspin*
*hugs to Carlie* I hope that by the time I’m caught up you and spouse will know what’s wrong :( That sounds terrifying.
My day:
1.) I have to go to a party! 2.) I have to pack to go to Utah! 3.) I’m watching Star Trek: The Original Series right now, which prompted the real reason for this post:
WTF NAZIS.
That is all.
I think that was Holly Hobby, not hollyhock, that you smoked.
And I used a Ham hock.
I see that Dick Cheney is continuing to be allowed to live through the world he helped create.
Bigfoots got privies!
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Mine, too; and entirely against my will.
;)
–
Hello, people at the Rally.
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Have fun at the rally.
The weather is here. I wish I were there.
cicely, I was so totally going to go for the ‘privy’ joke, but with dial-up I thought someone would get there soonest, with the mostest.
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Sometimes I listen to music and it inspires me, sometimes it discourages me. I have a guitar that is too good for me. The Folk Sampler reminds me of why I play and why I don’t even try to do it in front of other people.
Ah, they got me, the OWS group downtown. I headed for the bus stop with one book, and wound picking out like 6 more from the free library they set up! Good selection, lots of books I never saw, and one from Noam Chomsky that looked interesting. Sadly, someone else took it and I didn’t think to try and snap a picture of the cover so I could search for another copy later. (It looked like an older edition, with an American flag background. Can’t remember the title, but I remember that it was about how US the has always been about imperialism and marching towards an empire even at the cost of the general public. Ring any bells?)
——————————————————
Got Blood The Last Vampire. Not bad, I think I slightly prefer this version of Saya. Not that the Blood+ Saya isn’t cool -I like her for being sweet and smart as well as being deadly – but original Saya tops her in terms of being a kickass death-dealer.
consciousness razor,
Agreed, but isn’t there pretty good reason to think the universe has only been expanding at finite speeds for about 13.7 billion years?
I’m not sure what the significance of very similar states would be. Starting with the same state, if a change of mind can be initiated by a quantum effect such that multiple histories arise, then the resulting individuals will have different states of mind, but none of them will be the cause of their own change. They didn’t will it; they didn’t choose it; KG-α was never free to have ended up as KG-β, and the earlier KG was never free to decide to end up as one rather than the other (indeed he has no choice but to end up as both); the divergence of KG-α and KG-β was caused by a random event beyond anyone’s control.
So histories can diverge, and every resulting individual KG might have the sensation of having pursued their preferences without being thwarted, but none of them were ever free to do otherwise — this is what I find significant about starting from the same state.
Say there’s a CR-β who used a plain smiley at the end of #443 instead of a winky smiley. Are you him? If I ask you “did you use a plain smiley” you will say “no I did not.” He is not the person to whom your life narrative now refers.
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KG,
I don’t think about it as much as Walton does. What I’m sure of is that people cannot deserve one thing over another because of their actions; that’s as bad as saying the kids with blue eyes deserve five more minutes of recess.
I have these other notions I’ve occasionally tried to advance, about desert and responsibility attaching to everyone equally. One of them is that we should take responsibility, consider ourselves morally obliged to try to achieve a better future, just because if we don’t try, who will? and if not now, when? et cetera.
So I think there is a coherent kind of moral responsibility, concerning what should be preferred and what should be attempted, but it seems to be unidirectional, starting in the present and proceeding toward the future.
Well, even if I didn’t have any notions at all about moral responsibility, I would still be able to recognize that some outcomes are better than others, and people can be motivated in moral terms. It’s better to get to a better world, and moral chatter is apparently the way we do it; all indications are that it would be bad to refrain from trying to improve the world via the only known method.
Go ahead and take it to mean no external constraints: it still was not possible for you to have chosen differently. You already grant that to be free to choose otherwise, your motives must be different. But to say “I could have chosen differently if my motives were different” is to contemplate an alternate KG who does not and can not reside in our timeline. You can’t get there from here.
Clark’s argument would apply to you just as well as to a god who has never had any external constraints and never will; that god still couldn’t choose differently than xe does, because xe cannot have any motivation to choose differently.
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Ms. Daisy Cutter,
Bitter and highly caffeinated!
Part-Time Insomniac,
I dunno, but there’s an American flag on this one.
Ogvorbis:
The weather is here; I wish you were beautiful.
Hi Sailor & Cipher!!!
Roman bean soup sounds wonderful, is it?
I think I inhaled some Bigfoot powder last night, woke up this morning with a damned sore throat. I so do not want to be sick! Monday is mammogram day, just the thought of sneezing or coughing during that makes me cringe.
SGBMs latest incarnation? I sure missed a lot…*snort*
Hello everyone!
I’m watching The Big Lebowski on teevee. Sadly, it’s not the version with the infamous “this is what happens when you find a stranger in the alps” edit. :(
In other news, I made oatmeal-chocolate chip waffle cookies today! Om nom nom!
Hi Patricia! :) The ॐ is me.
What we know is that it’s been about that long since the big bang. It hasn’t been ruled out that there weren’t any states prior to that time (depends on which physicist you ask). We could also be in a multiverse. So I am claiming it’s possible the past could go on infinitely (or for any amount of time longer than 13.7b). In the multiverse case, the big bang in this universe’s past isn’t necessarily a boundary condition for any other — most likely it’s completely irrelevant.
Or maybe we were lucky to be the first ones just like this. I have no idea. I’ll stick with my day job and be a fucking musician. :)
Well I do object to the idea that there is a CR-β…. But never mind all of that.
We should only be concerned about all of the approximate states some individual may be in (as long as they all look the same to us with whatever degree of precision we can have), because the relevance of any quantum mechanical phenomenon is questionable at best and because we cannot know the exact state anyway. That’s not to give free will any more wiggle room. There’s just no reason to believe that level of specificity would make any difference on the scale of macroscopic events like which action a person takes.
Waves back!
Amazing how things don’t stop just because I do… ;)
Alethea: “Kircudbright”. Do remember to pronounce it as Cur-cood-bree. (There should also be a “k” in there to make “Kirk”, for “church”. No, I have no Scottish in me whatsoever. No grandparents called MacLeod. Oh no.)
—
Mrs M asked me to point out that (at least in the UK), when talking about a pitbull, its “lipstick” is the thing poking out when it gets excited. Not sure if this is the angle you’re going for.
Aaaaahahahahahahah! Nah, it’s just a Sarah Palin joke.
Uggggh! I could have went the rest of my days without reading you Brits opinion on pitbull “lipstick”. Dammit, I still use the stuff on occasion.
Sorry. *hangs head in shame*
Carry on!
cm – well it could be worse I suppose.
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Those
luckyselfish bastards at the Rally are all off line enjoying the baby BBQ and orgy. You’d think somebody could come up for air long enough to send us a picture.Trigger warning
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/25/justice/pennsylvania-sandusky-case/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn
Penn State seemingly was warned that Sandusky was a pedophile years before he was caught.
I found some good henna still in the freezer from years ago when I was a flaming redhead. And talked Mr Kristinc into letting me slop it all over his head as a conditioning treatment. (He’s the longhair around here now, and also darkhaired, so it won’t show up very much. But it will be terribly shiny and purty.)
latest SMBC for y’all:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20120325.gif
It’s late, and not one damned one of you has posted a picture or sound bite from the skreit atheist feast/orgy.
I’m going to bed, and I’m in a SNIT.
So there. *snort*
cm the d is almost silent as well.
Actually holidayed there as a child.
Er. The one in Scotland anyway.
lilapbwls,
Well except that kids with non-blue eyes can’t change their eye-colour, whereas people can, in general, change their patterns of behaviour.
This is incoherent. What can be meant by saying we “should” do something or are “morally obliged” to do so, if we have no moral responsibility for things we have done? It’s arrant nonsense.
No I don’t. I say that you are free to choose otherwise if you are not under external constraint, nor suffering from diminished capacity to make considered decisions.
No, it really isn’t, because in practice, such a declaration would usually be made in the context of contemplating changing my motives, so I would be contemplating a future KG who would make different decisions due to having different motivations. I can and do decide to change my motives, and sometimes even succeed.
HI there
pretty threadrupt
Will catch up later (hopefully)
My weekend:
Sometimes you need other people to remind you how perfectly well-behaved your kids are.
We went to town yesterday and had lunch at the Chinese restaurant.
While our meal wasn’t as quiet as they used to be, and it needed a bit of persuasion to make #1 eat more than beetroot and crabchips, no major thing happened.
Then the parents of little Ghengis Khan showed up.
Little Ghengis, please (heavy focus on please) stop burning down villages.
Please, Ghengis, I told you to stop, don’t burn down another village.
Ghengis, you burned down another one. Please stop it or I will have to take away your torch.
Now look at that pile of ashes, you did it again. I told you to please not do it. I really might have to take that torch away from you if you don’t stop…
OK, but only one more!
I am also a bit proud of myself and also quite embarrased.
I’m starting to notice my unhealthy patterns. That’s good, but, uhm.
Can you imagine that I argued with Mr. about the utmost importance of dying eggs with the kids easter Saturday? The day when we’ll have to travel 4hours with the caravan, put up the tent and go shopping?
Although I maintain that we can’t postpone easter bunny to Monday, because they’ll see all the other kids with their stuff, it actually won’t cause permanent damage if they just get to put some stickers onto store-bought eggs. It doesn’t make me a bad mum who fails her children.
I can imagine that it must have been frustrating as hell having those discussions with me.
It was frustrating for me as well, I mean why couldn’t he just do it? I made those sacrifices all the time, this was really important!, when all he did was to healthily assert his own needs.
Well, I’m gettin g started now.
OK, and on catching up:
carlie
Shit that sucks.
I hope you can soon find out what’s causing those attacks
*hugs*
++++
re: alcohol
Did you know that if you get a methanol poisoning, the medics will keep you drunk because that keeps the methanol from damaging your liver?
Sophisticated theology scoring an own-goal on the NYTimes philosophy blog … this part is superstitious groveling at its worst:
Okay, he turns the tables on this near the end, but I’m just stunned that he never gets around to explaining why he never should’ve granted it in the first place. Maybe I should drink more. Does he really think we’re so ignorant that we don’t know eternal suffering isn’t necessary? Why the fuck would anyone need omniscience to know that? And why did the happiness of these hypothetical higher beings ever enter the fucking picture again? Because this looks like a fucking incoherent mess to me.
Heh, thanks for the pronunciation tips. I have not been to Kirkcudbright but I have been to parts of Scotland a bit to the north. But I’ve finished that one now, and I’m off south and east, in the Fens with the bellringers. Cheers!
‘Politely Refuse Resurrection of the Capitalist Zombie Thread!’
Oh. Happy Monday, one and all.
Janine, Ms. Daisy Cutter, pteryxy, Gilliell, Cassandra and any others that I’ve missed: Thanks for your stories and kind words, they’re much appreciated.
Because I feel a bit like the king of downer TMI I’ll add this little family drama:
The Players
Me-A 46 year old with thinning hair who if he’d know just how much time he’d have to spend sitting on the floor would have had children much sooner
Em-My 4 year old daughter who is of course the smartest, most beautiful child ever.
Me: [glances down at Em’s feet] Em! How on earth did your feet get so big?
Em: I’m getting bigger Daddy. Bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger…[repeated until she ran out of breath]
Me: Too true my love. [starts to worry about the cost of shoes] How big are you going to get?
Em: As big as you Daddy…..but with hair!
Me: ……..
If every child is like this it’s a wonder that there are 7 billion of us. :)
Shaking a little bit.
A friend who lives a thousand miles away put up a LiveJournal post just after midnight my time, locked and with commenting disabled, announcing plans to consume enough “liquid courage” and pills to drive out into the middle of nowhere with a shotgun.
One of our mutual friends suggested calling the police in this person’s town. The officer answering the phones said that my friend is “in good hands” and “getting the care they need.” I nearly burst into tears of relief.
I don’t know if this friend will attempt again… they have expressed suicidal feelings off and on for years, and there are various other aggravating factors that I don’t wish to get into here. I am both profoundly relieved and greatly alarmed.
The “40-days-for-
lifejeebus” gang have apparently been photographing people entering and leaving the pro-choice BPAS clinic in Bedford Square, London..
There is a counter-demo next Friday; I hope to be there.
Pro-Choice Protest
Public Event · By Bloomsbury Pro-Choice Alliance
Friday, March 30, 2012
7:00pm until 8:30pm
Bedford Square, WC1E
…. London, UK, that is :).
My eurocentrism is showing.
Though the British Pregnancy Advisory Service might have been a bit of a giveaway.
Ms. Daisy Cutter. Given what you wrote at #200 of this thread I can only imagine how distressing that must have been for you. Please accept the return, with interest, of the hugs you offered me should you desire them.
Happy Sunday, All! I’ll be doing what all good people do on Sundays – worshipping the sun, of course! (I’ll actually be potting plants in the garden :) Love that Sun! )
Ms. Daisy, that must have been a sickly anxious night. I am glad it came out all right, but I hear you on the lingering alarm. Hope you have a much more peaceful day today.
Giliell, I remember those days. I hope your caravan vacation is restful, fun and surprising in all the best ways. Sometimes getting ready for a trip can be a real challenge.
Ogvorbis, Shameful AND Impudent – your posts make me chuckle. Happy Monday to you, too! ;-D
I’m new to these endless threads and very inept. But I’ve been reading for ages. Just wanted to say that you all make a lurker smile, think and often laugh out loud on a regular basis!
Thank you for that. I was thinking you were referring to London, West Virginia.