Oh, my…the meeting looks very interesting, especially that one titled “Cephalopod Neurogenomics: Insights into the evolution of complex brains”. Can I escape to Florida that early in the semester? Can I afford it? My schedule and my wallet are moaning “noooooo…”
I have a question for the partnered gay and lesbian couples out there. I know you get the question, Which one of you is the “man”, and which is the “woman”
from ignoramuses who are unable to think beyond their narrow sexual biases, but I’m wondering about a subtler, messier question.
Do you ever get asked, Which one is the mysterious one with incomprehensible desires?
I’m curious because the BBC aired one of those science of sex shows titled, The MYSTERY of the Female Orgasm, which seems to be the standard question. Woman is mysterious…must seek out a pick-up artist to explain the cheat code (it’s up-up-left-down-down-right).
Atheists neither need nor want martyrs, so could the mindless fanatics of the world please stop creating them? Niloy Neel has been hacked to death with machetes in Dhaka.
Imran H Sarkar, head of the Bangladesh Blogger and Activist Network, told the BBC that Mr Neel had been an anti-extremist voice of reason.
“He was the voice against fundamentalism and extremism and was even a voice for minority rights – especially women’s rights and the rights of indigenous people,” he said.
This is an unfair comparison to clowns.
You are either lucky or wise. It was a terrible portent of worse to come as this nightmarish campaign season progresses.
But if you want to figure out what was said without the agony of watching those ratfkers writhing on stage, this summary by Robin Marty is good. A sample:
As the dust settled from another struggle between Fox and Trump, somewhere in there Rand Paul was asked a question and I missed it, but the answer was that “I don’t want my guns or my marriage registered in Washington.” You can insert your own big government question yourself and likely be close enough. Soon after there was a literal 20-second dash in and out of the #Blacklivesmatters debate, where Walker answered that we need to better train police officers then danced away without actually discussing racism or police violence.
The answer still probably had more depth than Governor Mike Huckabee’s next answer, which was that trans people should not be allowed into the military because, “The point of the military is to kill people and break things. It’s not a social experiment.” Maybe Huckabee should tell that to the 15,000 trans military members currently serving.
There was so much more: Paul and Christie bellowing at each other about who had hugged the most right people, everyone agreeing to defund Planned Parenthood, that fanatical gleam in Huckabee’s eye, Carson’s tax plan that is modeled after tithing because “God is a pretty fair guy”, the terrible moderators, and the amazing ability of the ‘debaters’ to dodge questions completely.
And it ended with Megyn Kelly asking the candidates if God talks to them. What do you think the answer was?
I mentioned before that my wife has betrayed me by getting one of those accursed Windows PCs. One thing I’ve been worried about is those filthy viruses that infect PCs — I can cope with my Mac, with years of technical experience, but no, I am a novice when it comes to Windows.
So you can imagine my relief when I learned how easy it is to keep Windows computers virus free. All I need is a malachite crystal!
So easy…
Every once in a while, I get some glib story from believers in the Singularity and transhumanism that all we have to do to upload a brain into a computer is make lots of really thin sections and reconstruct every single cell and every single connection, put that data into a machine with a sufficiently robust simulator that executes all the things that a living brain does, and presto! You’ve got a virtual simulation of the person! I’ve explained before how that overly trivializes and reduces the problem to an absurd degree, but guess what? Real scientists, not the ridiculous acolytes of Ray Kurzweil, have been working at this problem realistically. The results are interesting, but also reveal why this work has a long, long way to go.
In a paper from Jeff Lichtman’s group with many authors, they revealed the results of taking many ultrathin sections of a tiny dot of tissue from mouse cortex, scanned them, and then made 3-D reconstructions. There was a time in my life when I was doing this sort of thing: long hours at the ultramicrotome, using glass knives to slice sequential sections from tissue imbedded in an epoxy block, and then collecting them on delicate copper grids, a few at a time, to put on the electron microscope. One of the very cool things about this paper was reading about all the ways they automated this tedious process. It was impressive that they managed to get a complete record of 1500 µm3 of the brain, with a complete map of all the cells and synapses.
After years of affirmation and endorsements, he has finally sunk to a depth of evil and depravity and corruption that even I can no longer abide. Cthulhu has joined the Republican party.
I could forgive him if he’d become a Christian or a Muslim, I could even look the other way if he started blogging at Patheos, but a Republican? Intolerable.
Anyway, I’m now in the market for a new evil god of nightmarish wickedness to which I can give my sarcastic support. Suggestions welcome.
I’m kind of leaning towards Jesus.
As you may have heard, Ed Brayton is leaving FtB. His health has suffered, because he is the point man here, and one of the defining features of the current atheist movement is that it is populated with assholes who hate the idea of any kind of social justice movement, so they’ve been making life hellish for a guy who has had more than enough work trying to keep the lights on and the engines running.
So why am I leaving? Also omnipresent since the start of FTB, as I’m sure you well know, has been controversy. The bloggers here have often gone on crusades and launched battles, most of them necessary and justified. But along with that has come a great deal of drama and stress. I’ve endured several threats of lawsuits against me as the owner of the network over the words and actions of others. I’ve had continual demands that I do something about this or that blogger, that I throw them off the network or censor them. I’ve been caught in the crossfire of a great many fights, continually taking shrapnel in battles that I wasn’t even involved in.
He’s basically retiring to Patheos, where all the lazy slackers of atheism go to avoid controversy and get money. I can’t blame him. He’s been tortured enough.
The rest of us are still here, though, and we’ve got a committee that will be stepping up to take the place of one guy — we hope that will diffuse the attacks, although I’m pretty sure they’ll start ramping up now.
So nothing changes.
She has written an excellent post on abortion.
I cringed as I watched Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards, apologize in a YouTube video last month for the lack of “compassion” in two doctors’ language at supposed business lunches arranged and secretly recorded by the anti-abortion Center for Medical Progress.
Not because she wasn’t eloquent, but because of what her words said about the impossibly narrow path abortion providers now are forced to walk. After all, have you ever heard an apology from a crisis pregnancy center for masquerading as an abortion clinic? What about the women in Texas who lost access to gynecological care when the state defunded Planned Parenthood and did not, as promised, adequately replace its services? Has anyone said sorry about that?
A commissioner of Lincoln County, North Carolina, Carrol Mitchem, was told by the courts that he could not continue to require sectarian Christian prayer to open meetings of the commission. This prompted him to open his mouth and let the dumbassery flow, like a rippling river of sewage and ignorance.
Changing rules on the way the United States was founded, Constitution was founded (I don’t like),Mitchem told the paper.I don’t need no Arab or Muslim or whoever telling me what to do or us here in the county what to do about praying. If they don’t like it, stay the hell away.Mitchem echoed that sentiment to WBTV on Friday.
I ain’t gonna have no new religion or pray to Allah or nothing like that,Mitchem said. He added that anyone who doesn’t want to hear a Christian prayer can leave andwait until we’re done praying.
We’re fighting Muslims every day. I’m not saying they’re all bad,Mitchem said.They believe in a different God than I do. If that’s what they want to do, that’s fine. But, they don’t need to be telling us, as Christians, what we need to be doing. They don’t need to be rubbing our faces in it.
But rubbing everyone else’s faces in his vile religion, well, that’s perfectly OK.
Not only does this man vote, he’s active in local politics. We’re doomed.
