I just stagger back from yet another long day of travel, and what do I discover? You’ve filled up the las entry in the endless thread again. Does the horde never sleep?
Anyway, we will launch this one with a mystery. Watch this video of an Oregon bigfoot:
Now the mystery. Why is it that all sightings of bigfoot are such obvious scams? They are typically badly done messes like a poor and shaky camera recording, or a pile of rotting meat in a fur suit. This one suffers from overly slick choreography — isn’t it nice how the camera zooms into focus only briefly, just as Bigfoot turns to look at the cameraman? At least this guy invested in a nice hairy man suit and put some effort into the makeup, but it’s still a guy in a costume.
And wait — the creator’s name is “John E. Walker”? Yeah, right.
As if you need anything to talk about, at least you can start by ripping into this video. I have no idea where you’ll end up from there, of course.
I hate vans
must be a cousin of the Geico Cavemen. The face shows distinct family resemblance.
That video would be a lot more convincing if the silly bugger had resisted the temptation to include a face shot.
Yes, yes we do. Poopyhead. :)
I don’t hate vans, I just think converses are much better looking.
You call that a video? I saw more writing than action. Still, call the National Enquirer. Looks like Bigfoot had Elvis’ baby…
Obviously an evolutionist scam, trying to cover up the lack of transitional forms between apes and humans.
And if they were ever proven to exist, well, then we’d have to ask why Bigfoots still exist if humans evolved from (something like) them. If the premise is that evolution is impossible, then the conclusion is that evolution is impossible.
On a different tack, the “films of Bigfoot” remind me of creationists and their many incompatible “ideas” of how it must have occurred. That is to say, this “Bigfoot” doesn’t look like other “Bigfoots” (Bigfeet?). The face is some hideous Halloween mask, while others look (sort of) like gorilla faces.
So there will likely be fights over the “true Bigfoot,” akin to the fights over which site on Ararat is the “real site of Noah’s ark.”
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
No, we think this thread pays for the Trophy Daughter’s™ tuition.
He’s following the most noted mythical creature the US has, and he puts his camera down at his side as he runs after it? Guy can’t run and hold his arm up at the same time? Sheesh.
And yeah, if you have a cheap costume, hi-def isn’t the way to go.
I prefer the 1970’s In Search Of-type bigfoots. You know, the ones that throw rocks and grab people through living room windows.
Anyone seen aronra’s “five facts” vid where he describes his bigfoot story? It’s hilarious!
It’s a bear!
http://worldofweirdthings.com/2009/07/08/where-the-sasquatches-roam/
HA, love it. Almost seems like a tribute to classical footage… or viral marketing. Setting aside reality – even if bf’s did exist, footage like this would still be bogus. The hoaxer has zero knowledge of animal behavior. It would be nearly impossible for someone to be following such an elusive animal at a casual stroll for 5 minutes, especially in such close proximity. You would think there would be some sort of behavioral response, unless it was habituated to humans. If that were the case, we’d see these alongside the elk in Estes park.
A sasquøtch once bit my sister…
Just a couple of days ago I finished a good book on the history and scammary of bigfoot. The guy had some questionable ideas about the psychology behind the legends, but it is a good read.
Buy it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Bigfoot-Legend-Joshua-Blu-Buhs/dp/0226079791/
Steal it here:
http://avaxhome.ws/ebooks/biography/Bigfoot_The_Life_and_Times_of_a_Legend.html
The sound on the camera is on, but he says nothing when he first sees BF! Come on, its a definate WTF moment and he says nothing? Also, pretty brave of him to follow such a huge unknown creature when he was hiking alone in the woods….
Yeah, I’m convinced. (not)
These people must have way too much time on their hands to make this sort of thing. Either that or reaally bored.
If it was at least half decent I could see the point, but they are always pretty much drop dead boring.
When I was 12 I had a close encounter with what I thought was a sasquatch. I almost ran it over on my 10 speed bicycle on my way to the bus stop around 6:00AM in the morning.
This was almost 20 years ago, and to this day I do not know what I saw, but I definitely saw something. I wish I could go back in time and have a do over, I was such a chickenshit, I sped away scared for my life. If I had the hindsight I would of followed it and tried looking for evidence. Nowadays it just a good story for people to laugh at.
I read somewhere that Jane Goodall believes in the existence of bigfoot. Its kind of interesting that someone as prominent as her would go out on a limb like that and speculate the possibility of their existence.
Its hard to imagine that a species like this would exist alongside homosapiens without anyone finding any fossils whatsoever. Until I see real evidence I am going to assume it is nothing more than cryptozoology and lore.
There’s another clue in the intro: this was shot just north of “Green Horn, Oregon”. I assume there is such a place, but together with “John E. Walker”, at least the guy is signalling pretty plainly that this is a hoax! Crap footage, though.
First of all; Paul, is it that they’re all scams, or because you need them to be scams? Seeing what you want to see is not a trait exclusive to woo addicts.
BTW, there are people out there with names like “John E. Walker”. Check out the blog of one Zoe Ellen Brain (nee Alan E. Brain) some time.
On the video itself, it stinks of scam. Another Blair Witch in my estimation. Just the way it’s put together. Shorts are unclear, and the editing is (deliberately) confusing. If the aim was to intrigue and confuse, Mr. Walker succeeded. But if your aim is to inform, then Mr. Walker failed spectacularly.
For David @ #7
Agree. Hoaxers would have better luck if they just studied the sparse authentic footage. The Patterson/Gimlin film for example. One thing people keep missing is that Patty does not have a gorilla face. Patty has a very human face. May be the source of the legend that Patty was a man in a suit. (That face might be the source of the legend that sasquatch are descended from neanderthals, though cranial morphology argues against it.)
Whenever the sasquatch/human split occurred, it may have occurred at a time when the basic human face had evolved, which would make the sasquatch a descendent of Australopithecines, or even an early Homo. Though I don’t think sasquatch is a member of the genus Homo, but belongs to a new, related genus that split off from Homo very early in our genus’ history if it is not an Australopithecine.
But don’t people say that sasquatch is a modern Giganthropithecus? Doesn’t fit. Giganthropithecus goes back a lot longer than Homo or Australopithecus, and is considered ancestral to Gorilla. The sasquatch-Giganthopithecus connection may be a link to the the “gorilla face” legend prevalent in the believer community. If sasquatch are descended from Giganthropithecus, of course they’re going to have a gorilla face.
For My Loyal Readers :D
I know PZ is having fun with me. No biggy. As long as he’s amused, and he has a topic for this iteration of the Thread Unending. From what I’ve seen, the typical woo addict suffers from a total lack of a sense of humor. God take my life if I ever lose my sense of humor; it’s the only thing that makes my depression tolerable.
So a few guidelines for fake bigfoot footage…
Does the subject have a gorilla like face?
Does the subject move like somebody in a costume?
Are the body proportions human. Do the limbs appear to have the proportions of human limbs?
Does the subject walk like a human? Does it stride? Patty’s walk is not a human stride, but has been compared by some as looking like what Australopithecines may have walked. (Note that while we can emulate Patty’s walk, it’s not natural to us and is fatiguing.)
Is the subject playing to the camera? Are his behaviors studied? Is he putting on a performance? Patty acts naturally, completely naturally through out the film. She shows no indication she as any idea as to what a camera is, or what a rifle is. She is responding to the two humans, and she don’t like them. Could it be acting? As the Mel Brooks stand-in said to the Errol Flynn stand-in in the movie My Favorite Year, “Nobody’s that good an actor!”
When you’re performing for stage or film, your behavior is studied, rehearsed. Even Harrison Ford couldn’t avoid performing when he played an usher on an older film he appeared in, the one where studio executives complained his acting was too natural.
The footage above stinks of fraud, but that does not in and of itself invalidates any other sasquatch footage. Each film or video stands on its own merits or lack thereof.
Just remember, you are not immune to seeing things as you would like them to be.
Correction: #20
Oops, that should be Glenn @#7. Sometimes my memory retrieval system mishandles the file system.
Carlie, 14
That was no sasquatch, that was a linebacker.
Sure, or how else do you explain this photo of a woman harvesting thread? It’s at least as convincing as the bigfoot video!
But I would like to know if this thread is fair trade and ecologically sustainable? Or are we heading towards “Peak Thread”?
Killer Bud, #18
When you consider how unlikely fossilization is, what’s amazing is that we find any fossils at all. goes to show you how much live our world has seen.
Then there’s the fact we’ve been looking in the wrong places for sasquatch fossils. Rapidly eroding locations like mountains really aren’t the places. Swamps and flatlands on the other hand have problems with rapid decaying. Stream beds where the current suddenly slows are better spots to look, but as far as I know nobody’s looking there. Taking a course on fossil hunting would do sasquatch hunters a lot of good.
windy, she is harvesting spaghetti.
BS
PZ, what are your criteria for considering a particular thread “filled”?
I remember stopping by a place while driving from Seattle down to see Mt. St. Helen’s. The cafe or restaurant had a ‘Bigfoot’ museum with some plaster casts of feet, etc. All I could think of while I looked at them was ‘what a load of b.s.’ considering how bad and fake looking they were. I was a kid when the bigfoot craze/patterson film came out and so I really believed/hoped it existed at that time, but I’m a lot more skeptical now. Admittedly it would be great if it does exist, but some actual evidence would be nice eg. fur/hair we could do a DNA test off of.
I agree that if I had a camera rolling if I saw one, that I could not lower my arm/camera while I ran after it.
Which reminds me of a really bad B movie (was in the World’s Worst Film Festival years ago) called ‘Shriek of the Mutilated’. The plot concerns a professor and some grad students searching for the abominable snowman in Canada (!!!???), but it turns out the professor belongs to a cannibal cult and the students were being brought for dinner…
It’s not the Vans I mind, it’s the Vons.
Van Schuyler, say, vs Von Manteuffel.
glenister M., #27
What do you know of footprints and forensics? I know very little and I would have trouble separating the fakes from the authentic, but not knowing the difference does not make all the samples fake. Nor would it make all the samples authentic.
God, PZ, did you have to do that ? Now MM will be all over this thread for days to come…..
Nerd synaesthesia FTW!
—
The Thread has grown past this point, but I just wanted to point out that some text editors have HTML syntax higlighting, and some even do HTML syntax spellchecking, such that misspelled tags show up in red.
<blokcquote>
<blockqutoe>
<blockquote>
This will not fix all blockquote failures, but it might help somewhat, at least.
I use Sc1, a tiny 500K editor, from here:
http://www.scintilla.org/SciTEDownload.html
Which is a win32 app, but it also runs under wine, which runs under MacOSX and Linux.
Sounds as plausible as the notion that a large ape could maintain a viable population on the north American continent with out detection.
BS
DLC, #28
It’s really very simple, van is Dutch for von, while von is German for van.
Vons, on the other hand, is a southern California grocery chain infamous for their (comparatively) high prices and their chintzy promotions.
Fox News token priest mascot who looks waaaay tooo much like the evil priest dude from Angels & Demons…
http://www.atheistmedia.com/2010/01/father-knows-best-how-to-dodge-good.html
I’m not sure if those answers were made up on the spot or if they were just your typical standard theology. It’s hard to tell the difference! I’m not kidding!
BS, #32
Things don’t happen because they should, things happen because they do.
Then you have the fact that some people overestimate human wonderfulness and the depth and breadth of human knowledge. There are things we know that aint so, and things we say we know we really don’t.
And don’t confuse visiting a location with knowing it.
Here’s a touching tribute from our friends, Tenacious D: Sasquatch
#36, Blockquote Fail!
The horde is legion, the legion is made up of cats.
On a personal note, I’m now waiting for the backed up data on my external harddrive to copy to my new internal harddrive. An 12 hour marathon in case you’re wondering.
You remember when 800 megahertz was blazing fast?
The donation of a 2 gigahertz mactel iMac would be eagerly accepted. :) I may be able to pay for shipping.
whoops, here’s the version of the video I wanted, including all that fine acting at the beginning and end.
Sasquatch
More personal news…
The San Diego Chargers lost. They lost because the New York Jets took advantage of the Chargers’ tendency to slack off and not take the game seriously, until the other team reminds them that this game is serious. The Jets did what the Chargers’ regular season opponents didn’t do, refuse to give the Chargers an opportunity to correct their mistakes.
See how erroneous assumptions can come back to bite you on your ass?
mythusmage, I love it. Apparently, absence of evidence is evidence that it’s real.
Absence of evidence doesn’t mean it isn’t.
I mean, look how long it took for proof. But proof is here. You may say it’s different, but just because some of the small details were wrong… there are people in every field who aren’t up on the current state of the field, or who are in it for their own gain. But now, everyone will have to stop laughing. Iridology has been vindicated:
An eye test for Alzheimers (please to kindly ignore any differences between this and discredited claims of iridology, as No True Iridologist would make those claims).
Windy @23,
Thanks for reminding me of the BBC Swiss Spaghetti Harvest April Fools hoax – one of the best filmed hoaxes ever. John E. Walker and his ilk could learn a thing or two about creating a convincing filmed hoax from this:
Windy #23
As Blind Squirrel FCD so accurately points out, that woman is harvesting spaghetti. Here’s a somewhat better picture of a girl picking the fruit of the spaghetti tree. It looks like a particularly good crop, probably due to a mild winter and a low infestation of the spaghetti weevil.
Hmm. I was thinking of the bigfoot from the beef jerky commercials that seem to play endlessly.
386sx for a hundred, Alex!!
Did you notice that the female robot was placed in the kitchen? Probably a coincidence…
And talk about dime store theology! Free will in heaven, but we won’t want to use it for evil.
BS
Oh for goodness’ sake. Some sort of blockquote fail
Any fule kno that it grows on the Red Planet and travels to our world through the vasty reaches of space. Why else do we have Dragons?
That’s not bigfoot. It’s my brother Ed walking around naked again. Just ignore him.
Still catching up on old(er) topics:
Lynna, condolences on the brain thing. Heal well!
Quoth Fr. Johnathan Morris (from 386sx @ #34):
This doesn’t answer anything. Why would a powerful and loving God have ever created us to be “disunited” from it? And where the fuck do they get off thinking they can be “united” with the supposed creator of the fucking universe? Why would there ever be “evil” or suffering at all?
This is the kind of crap that may seem like a harmless delusion for some. For others like Pat Robertson, it’s an excuse to condemn Haitians when their island is destroyed by an earthquake. Obviously it wasn’t an all-powerful God who did that, it was because their evil free wills have sided with the fucking devil. It’s all so stupid that I want to vomit on small woodland creatures.
Blind Squirrel FCD #48 And talk about dime store theology! Free will in heaven, but we won’t want to use it for evil.
Yeah, and besides, that didn’t work out too well for Satan and the other rebel angels. They were pretty freakin close to God too.
Besides omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and omniscience, it would also be inconsistent with a belief in God’s omnipresence.
Besides omnipotence, omnibenevolence, and omniscience, it would also be inconsistent with a belief in God’s omnipresence.
True, but there’s probably a smug answer for it though. The easier the refutation, the smugger the answer. :P
First law of apologetics: The easier and more obvious the refutation of a theological point, the smugger and more obtuse the theological counter-refutation.
way to spoil a joke, guys…
Owlmirror and other friends, thanks for the good wishes. Per advice from John Morales, I am still kicking, and avoiding kicking the bucket.
Now to the Bigfoot issue. As is all too often the case when it comes to being truly strange, our craziest contestant for Bigfoot Freak is a mormon. We’ve talked about this guy, Meldrum, on other threads. I reintroduce him here with his “EVALUATION OF ALLEGED SASQUATCH FOOTPRINTS AND THEIR INFERRED FUNCTIONAL MORPHOLOGY”. This paper is very sciency. Enjoy.
Thread history update.
Blogospherical Science.
Bold prediction.
Jeepers Lynna OM hope you’re feeling okay dude.
I don’t think I have the stomach to find out how Rule 34 applies to apologetics….
Well, I dunno about Bigfoot, but the skunk ape is totally for real, I assure you…
And I’ll be riding mine at Whistler-Blackcomb in just six more short days–not that I’m counting.
If you follow the link to the homepage you can see that Johnny Walker also got a hair sample… I’m guessing polyester.
Mike, #42
Why the need to deny Bigfoot? Were you ordered to? Is it because you disagreed with His message of peace and love in favor of violent revolution? Did you deny Him three times before the cock crowed?
Peeps, back in the previous thread episode somebody (I forget who) pointed out that people with Aspergers are peer pressure resistent. I have Aspergers, of course I’m going to resist your pressure. Especially when I just don’t see you providing valid evidence to support your claims, only assertions and declarations.
Keep this fact in mind, I’m not doing this, presenting these arguments, to convince you, I’m doing this to make you doubt your self-assurance. For absolute assurance is the enemy of science. For science is not about confirming your beliefs, science is about learning things you didn’t know before and learning better about things you think you know.
Some years back an East Coast US university ran an experiment to see how fast cats learned. Cats were placed in cages with the cage doors modified so jostling a bar inside the cage would open it. Then the students started to observe.
What they observed was the subject cats weaving back and forth and rubbing against things. On some point they would rub against the bar and the cage door would open. The routine didn’t vary.
After a few months of observation they concluded that they had no idea what was going on. One possibility raised was that the cats were engaging in some sort of arcane ritual. That was a popular hypothesis in the media.
Then a West Coast US university decided to replicate the experiment. In their observations they saw the same behaviors, with different cats, as their eastern colleagues.
Then a grad student noticed something. The cats only engaged in their strange behavior when they knew humans were around. When cats didn’t know humans were around they tended to sleep.
So the researchers changed things. They removed the interior bars so the cats couldn’t open the cage doors. The cats continued to weave and rub when humans were present. Then they removed the cage doors, and the cats continued to weave and rub whenever a human appeared. Finally, they got rid of the cages and — don’t get ahead of me … That’s right, they continued to weave and rub upon the appearance of a human. The researchers in this running of the experiment concluded that the most likely interpretation of their observations is that weaving and rubbing is how cats say hello to humans.
What’s the connection with Sasquatch? The researchers at both experiments recounted above made no firm conclusions. In Either case they made their best guess based on what they had observed, the later group based on additional observations they made after a crucial observation was made by one of the researchers.
My best guess, based on the viewing of the Patterson/Gimli film, is that the subject is a sasquatch. An adult female sasquatch with a bad, possibly painful, leg injury. My best guess after watching the video PZ embedded above, is that Mr. Walker is a conniving bastard with a deep contempt for people as a whole.
The only thing an absence of evidence shows is that you have no evidence. That is all it shows. It does not show that a proposition must be true because there is no evidence for or against it, only that you have no evidence.
MM et al.,
Please provide the predictions of your hypotheses concerning BF and then provide the evidence in support of those predictions. So far, every bit of evidence brought forth by BF hunters to support their claims has failed to support the hypothesis that BF exists. Otherwise, be happy to be taken as a joke because that is the best that you can aspire to be.
BFF — Big Foot Forever!!!!
Correction, #64
The Patterson/Gimli film is said to show a troll walking about, all unpretrified, in broad daylight. Not to be compared with the Patterson/Gimlin film showing a sasquatch.
Here’s a video produced by Professor Meldrum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHrn4nru6iY
Scientific American story about Meldrum’s theories:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=bigfoot-anatomy&page=2
Reviews of Meldrum’s book:
http://www.cryptomundo.com/bigfoot-report/sas-lms-review1/
excerpt:
home page… I meant his “blog” with exactly two entries, this being #2. #1 is “hello world.”
I have no idea where you’ll end up from there, of course.
Like hell he doesn’t. Start with the three B’s…
Oh horse shit. It’s my brother Ed. Similar video was taken of big foot swimming in Joe’s Lake and then mooning the Amtrak, it was Ed.
Are any of you old enough to remember the big foot center in Oregon was run by a guy named Peter Burn? (That bit is true.)
#65
My prediction? That we have a large, native bipedal ape living in North America. The best evidence I know of consists of the Patterson/Gimlin film shot in 1967 showing a sasquatch walking along a dry creek bed. I have not seen any solid evidence showing that that film is a hoax.
Showing that A is a hoax does not show that B is a hoax.
…once we were lovers (bigfoot and I)
MacGyver vs. Bigfoot
“I have not seen any solid evidence showing that that film is a hoax.”
As soon as you provide any evidence that it was a real animal and NOT a hoax, we’ll get to work on it.
Lyanna, #67
So the reviewer you got the excerpt from doesn’t believe in photographic evidence. By his reasoning the numerous photos we’ve taken on deep ocean expeditions tell us nothing about the subjects photographed, and so zoology has a number of phony species listed.
Indeed, all the photographic evidence we’ve gained over the years regarding the presence of recognized species and their behavior have to be discarded, because photographs, video, and film are evidence of nothing.
You get right down to it, if the reviewer is right, we have no reliable evidence that PZ Myers even exists. All we have is a picture purporting to show PZ Myers, and as the author says, “[I]t is simply a pattern of colors on a two-dimensional medium and cannot yield a shred of hard evidence or conclusive information about Bigfoot.”
“…once we were lovers (bigfoot and I)”
Same here. I met him in a Bear bar sometime around 1996. We dated a couple of times, then he suddenly stated that he wanted to move in. I felt kinda sorry for him, so I agreed. Dude didn’t have many friends.
He seemed nice at first. But that shit-ass broke more of my dishes than the Loma-Prieta earthquake. When he totalled my car (after borrowing it without asking me) joyriding around Big Sur, I’d had enough and called it quits.
Sometimes I miss him. Sometimes.
Patricia, #70
I bet he went through razors at a blazing speed.
#74
Sorry Mike, butyou made the claim that the film is a hoax, providing no evidence that it is. You do provide a fine example of “dodging the issue”, that I will give to you.
You asked me for the best evidence I can find demonstrating the existence of sasquatch. I pointed to that evidence. It’s now your job to show that the Patterson/Gimlin film is a hoax, and not with unsupported claims and assertions. That is how science works; I present a claim, you ask for evidence. I provide that evidence, you prove that evidence false. Want to continue this game of “Moving the Goal Posts?”
Gentles all, it is not my goal to convince you, it is my goal to make you doubt your conclusions.
I am surprisingly tired, but otherwise apparently functioning near normal. I attribute the fatigue to the fact that the brain is a very demanding organ, and when it wants time off for repairs, it demands sleep.
I played a game of Scrabble with my daughter today as a sort of test. We played through the facebook version of the game. I put up a score of 460, which is good playing against my daughter, as she is very intelligent and a great player.
The craving for oranges is still hanging in there. I figure it’s okay to feed that craving, as it seems harmless. It’s a sign though that there are still some feckin’ wires crossed somewhere.
Are you really being serious here? Your one bit of evidence is a film. Everything else is extrapolated from that. The burden of proof is on you to show that what was seen in the video is representative of what is actually real.
What you’re doing is the exactly the same as a fundie saying that I have to disprove their god.
You haven’t provided any evidence. You’ve asserted that this film is evidence of a creature that has no other evidence for its existence! Why on earth should we conclude, upon seeing this film, that it’s an actual animal? Support your claims!
Observation:
It is very easy to see the creationist in others, it is very hard to see the creationist in you.
(Cue irate response from John Morales in 5, 4, 3…)
we have no reliable evidence that PZ Myers even exists
Humm, sightings of the beast in the wilds of a creation museum don’t count? His lovely offspring and trophy wife with solid gold taste in socks don’t count?
I know Mythusmage, call Bill Donahue at the Catholic League, he can tell you all about PZ.
MM, until you show hard physical evidence for sasqauatch, like a body, or at least turds with DNA, you will not be believed. There is no reason to, as your evidence does not rise to the level required for serious scientists. That is what several of us are telling you. So drop your BF idiocy until that evidence is available. That will help you maintain credibility. Which you lose with every weak evidenced bigfoot post. Welcome to science, where real hard evidence rules.
Then quit pretending that you have any interest in logical argument or scientific inquiry, because you clearly don’t. You want to present us with a video and then have us say “Oh, wow, maybe it’s real after all.”
Sorry. No. Science operates on the NULL HYPOTHESIS. In this case, that would be “This is not a real animal.” You would then provide a collection of evidence to either confirm or refute that hypothesis. You have done no such thing. This is not scientific, so stop pretending it is. It’s anomaly hunting and nothing more.
“Gentles all, it is not my goal to convince you, it is my goal to make you doubt your conclusions.”
Then you are using the most asinine example possible.
Observation: mythusmage has no sense of irony.
#81
No Mike, what you have demonstrated is the need for sasquatch to be a lie. I offer the Patterson/Gimlin film as is because it is the best bit of evidence I can find. You claim it must be a hoax, and the only reason I can see for your claim is because you have problems with the idea of sasquatch and the presence of such an animal in North America.
Frankly sir, it doesn’t really matter what I present in the way of evidence, because you show no sign you’d would even give it due consideration. I could present you with a fucking corpse, and you would call it false.
You just can’t bring yourself to doubt what you know. That is the tragedy here.
Patricia @50: I thought maybe it was Floyd Rubber.
Errr…now Nerd you may be being hasty.
MM could be proof that there are sasquatch turds being used for brains. Or at least the copralites of some pre-jebus creature.
MM, film can be easily faked. Which is why it isn’t considered good evidence except for carefully controlled video. This is why your films are not sufficient evidence. As I said, a skeleton, body, or skat would be good hard physical evidence. Until then, the soft evidence is insufficient.
#81
How am I asking you to disprove your god? What I’m asking for is evidence, solid evidence, that the Patterson/Gimlin film, is a hoax. Note that small word, that word that gave former President Bill Clinton such trouble, “is”. I’m asking you to prove a positive, I’m asking you to prove the Patterson/Gimlin film a fraud. If you can’t prove a positive, then science is not the career for you.
So let’s go over this again; you’re saying the Patterson/Gimlin film is a hoax. I’m asking your for proof that it is. Stop your dancing, collect that evidence, and get it verified. Or dance on and demonstrate your words have no backing.
Lynna – No, it’s my brother Ed. He’s well known for sending ladies shrieking from the frozen food department of the supermarket when he bends over the burrito section.
You have this ass backwards. It is a hoax until proven otherwise. And no corroborating evidence has been forthcoming, like a body or skeleton. That is how science works. And will continue to work.
Disprove my gods MM. I worship the god of bacon, Moccus, and the celestial Jack Ass, Mullo.
mythus magee:
I assume that the plural “conclusions” here refers to more than just Sasquatch-related ones, so would you please expand on this a bit?
How do you know what my conclusions are, and what reason have you given to doubt them?
It’s fine if you don’t have a good answer, but then perhaps it shouldn’t be your goal.
Nerd, #91
Does the fact a film can be faked mean all films are faked? More specifically, does it mean the Patterson/Gimlin film is faked? Or is it more that you are troubled by the mere possibility there is a large non-human primate native to North America?
Is the film a hoax and where is your evidence showing that it is? I’m not asking you to disprove your god, I’m asking you to prove your claim. Unlike Mike the Infidel I see no reason to doubt your ability to give it the good old college try.
mythusmage (#79)
One and the same. No one’s being unreasonable about their standards of evidence other than you.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Lynna (#80)
I’d mail you my neighbors if I could. They use some sort of orange-scented cleanser that comes through the ventilation system in the bathroom and makes that side of my apartment absolutely reek of oranges for days. (Though, if I’m granting myself unlikely abilities, I might as well just wish you all better!)
when he bends over in the burrito section.
Sheesh!
Patricia, #95
Prove the Patterson/Gimlin film a hoax.
Here, let me rewrite that as a creationist claim:
Do you REALLY not understand that the reason I doubt it is because you haven’t given any evidence?
A video is not evidence. A video is the beginning of an investigation. So far, the investigation has turned up absolutely no evidence supporting the hypothesis that the video is of an actual, legitimate unknown animal. The null hypothesis – that it is not a real animal – has not been refuted, or even had doubt cast upon it!
Oh, for fuck’s sake!
Here, let me rewrite that as a creationist argument:
HELLOOOOO! Earth to MM! You’ve made an extraordinary claim. A videotape is NOT extraordinary evidence. Get to work, or stop trolling!
MM at #100 – You can’t be serious. It’s already been proved a hoax and several TV shows, and newspapers have covered it.
I’ve been to the now gone Bigfoot Center in Oregon run by Peter Burn and the “evidence” was laughable bullshit, just like your hoax of a god.
Mythusmage, if all you’re doing is mental masturbation, you really should pick a better topic.
How about UFOs? A lot more people have claimed to see them, and there are a lot more alleged photos floating around. And the lack of hard evidence of visitation by a technologically advanced species would be a somewhat easier to justify, since they can have any abilities you want- memory wipes, rays that destroy evidence of landing sites, hell, pretty much anything.
But a population of man-apes living in the Pacific Northwest (not at all a remote unpopulated area) that stringently avoids detection, and removes all sign of its existence for no reason other than to befuddle curious humans is a ridiculous claim, to put it mildly.
Forget the animals themselves. Where are their dwellings? Where are the bones of their dead? And even the most skittish of species excretes.
In short, bring me some shit, and I’ll at least begin to take you seriously.
Nerd, #91
Additional: Sometimes photographic evidence is all you have to go by. When all you have is photographic evidence, then you look for additional evidence. You don’t de facto decide the photography is faked and refuse to look for anything that might confirm or refute it. That is what I keep hearing here, “It must be fake, so there’s no reason to go looking for evidence supporting it or disproving it.”
I don’t have the resources, but I can’t be the only one with a functioning pair of arms. You want to go looking, don’t let me stop you.
Don’t forget, it’s a semi-invisible psychic bigfoot. That’s why nobody sees the bodies and it knows when people are coming. Its only time of weakness is when it’s walking off to use the restroom, as was the case in this video and the Patterson/Gimlin film!
I dare mythusmage to prove that I’m wrong. After all, I’ve made a claim and my talking about it should be construed as evidence in support of the claim. Now you have to prove that I’m lying!
[/brokenlogic]
Occam’s Razor alone is enough to make that the default conclusion. Which is more likely: that a reproductive population of bipedal apes inhabits North America and is capable of hiding any actual traces of its existence beyond fuzzy, distant video tapings, or that it’s a prank?
Oh, bullshit. You just heard the opposite from me.
Well, I saw this movie once where a guy was taking video at his friend’s going-away party, and a giant monster attacked the city!!
Prove it’s a hoax!
I also love your blatant false dichotomy: You claim that I have a problem with the idea of Bigfoot based on the fact that I think the Patterson/Gimli film is a hoax.
Nice try, but “This film is real” and “Bigfoot is fake” is not a dichotomy. There very well may be a sasquatch, but we have no reason whatsoever to believe that this is a film of it.
Bigfoot debate? I think the eternal thread has jumped the shark.
Alan K:
I cannot prove that the Patterson film is a hoax. (Here‘s the best version btw.)
I myself have questions about the biped seen in the Patterson film. (So does Darren Naish).
OK?
Nevertheless, as evidence for the existence of a large bipedal primate in the forests of northwestern North America, it’s pretty crappy evidence.
So it’s still extremely unlikely.
More better evidence and I’ll believe.
#101
I have, Mike the Infidel, I have pointed you to the best evidence I can find. It is you who keeps rejecting it, making no effort to demonstrate it is false. I ask you to prove a positive, you keep refusing to. Truly, if the film is a hoax the evidence showing the hoax is out there. Why is it so hard to find?
Or do you refuse to look because you fear what you would find? Are you afraid you’ll learn that the Patterson/Gimlin film shows the real thing, and your dearly held belief regarding sasquatch is wrong.
All I’m hearing from you is denial, and the refusal to give what evidence I can present an honest appraisal. Fuck God and fuck Him with a spiky gherkin, show me the Patterson/Gimlin film is a lie.
Your message is loud and clear, the sasquatch can’t be real because if it is real then you are wrong. It is being wrong that bothers you and causes you such distress. Continue demonstrating this and know you can do little to further degrade my opinion of you.
We don’t give a fiddlers fuck what your opinion of us is.
Mythusmage doesn’t ever seem to take into account the motive one would have for wanting to fake such a thing. Publicity and attention, and I’m sure some $$$ came his way.
But since he’s blind to people’s motives, I’ve got a really first rate piece of Arizona beach front property I’d like to show him….
“Publicity and attention, and I’m sure some $$$ came his (Patterson’s) way.
You know what? I’m going to tell you something, Alan K: your behavior on this thread has finally pushed you into my killfile. The plate-tectonics bullshit was bad enough, but yeesh, dude. I do not care whether the reason is Asperger’s or obtuse idiocy; I no longer care to read anything you write on the internet.
From now on (unless I peek), here is what you are to me:
MM – Prove to us that we are wrong. I will be the first one to drop to my knees and kiss gawds ass if you can produce him.
Amazing. You’ve just proved your illiteracy twice on the same page. First, you claim that I think the investigation stops at the video; then, you claim that I have a “dearly held belief” that sasquatch can’t be real. This despite the fact that I just said:
Could you possibly be any more daft or dishonest?
MM, you don’t get it, but then, you aren’t a scientist. Film evidence of deep sea critters may be the only evidence, due to lack of other mean to detect the critters. But then, the film has to be handled under forensic conditions to make sure fraud doesn’t occur. The problem you have is that the pacific northwest forests, while very sparsely populated, is somewhat trafficked. By hunters, hikers, fishermen, trappers, loggers, and even a few scientists. The fact that no bodies, skeletons, or unknown skat has been reported speaks volumes. And as I scientist, I must listen to the lack of hard evidence. So, you can believe what you want from possible hoaxed films. I will continue to require a body or some skat with DNA to confirm said creature. That is how science, not credulity, works. So, you don’t do yourself any favors for later ideas by continually pressing this weak and possibly hoaxed evidence. Wait for the real stuff.
MM, the P/G film may be a bit of a sort of evidence, but it has been shown that there exists the possibility that it (the P/G film) may have been faked. When compounded with the total lack of remains and spoor, the overwhelming probability is that, despite the evidence of the P/G film, there is not an unknown biped living in North America.
Whenever I talk about bigfoots, I have to mention the fact that, in the 80’s, a project was undertaken to tag as many Florida panthers as was possible in order to help save the species. There was only about 50 of the cats in existence, and they lived in the Everglades, as daunting and inpenetrable an environment as any on Earth. Regardless, nearly every single cat was found and tagged.
How?
Simple, because they exist, there is ample evidence of them.
#111
Sven,
I admit the film has problems. There are so many questions regarding how it came to be shot. But the claims of outright fraud lack proof themselves, and that is what I’d like to see. I’d like to see verified proof Patterson and Gimlin and whoever else conspired to fake footage of a sasquatch, carried it out, and have kept knowledge of this conspiracy secret ever since 1967. What’s that saying about keeping secrets?
Is it weak evidence to prove anything? Of course. The best such evidence can do is provide leads to possibilities. Such as the possibility such an animal exists. I base my conclusions regarding sasquatch on that film because it is the best evidence we have, but there is better out there.
Such as scat for instance. Google “bigfoot scat” and you’ll find pictures purporting to show sasquatch shit. Now google “bear scat” and compare those pictures with the reported bigfoot scat pictures. I just don’t see how one could confuse bear shit with sasquatch shit, unless one was obsessed in denying sasquatch.
Further research is needed, and what disheartens me most is the insistence that the lack of evidence means we can’t go looking. That we must discourage others from looking themselves. It hurts me to see the denier in others, it hurts me even more to see the denier in those I thought otherwise sensible people.
My goal is to make you, my friends, to doubt your verities. Isn’t that what science is all about? For science is not just about learning new facts, it is also about learning facts you already knew might be wrong.
Mike, if sasquatches have restrooms, then I bet they would be larger than human restrooms. Where are they? Are they also invisible? Isn’t it also possible that they eat their own shit?
In other news, I have four and a half testicles. I am fourth cousins with Elvis Presley, Benjamin Netanyanhu and Gary Coleman. For a small fee, I can commune with the spirits tell you your horoscope, read your palm, and realign your chakras. I am the only conscious being and all of you are merely figments of my imagination.
Wheee! Making up false stuff is easy. Have fun disproving all of it, everybody!
No, your goal is to be completely ignorant of how science functions, and to tut-tut those of us who actually understand it and claim that we’re being closed-minded for not accepting flimsy evidence and for refusing to play your childish games.
As Mr. Vonnegut so eloquently wrote, you can go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.
Nerd: Scat is feces, skat is a card game.
BS
#120
Autumn,
There is always a possibility that evidence has been faked. There is no absolute proof for anything. Sometimes the fake is easy to show, sometimes showing it is nigh impossible. And sometimes we learn that a conclusion derived from evidence is wrong and that there is a better conclusion to be derived.
Mike the Infidel,
The key is easily within reach, anytime you wish you can open that cage door and walk outside. I hope you can do so soon and join me in the greater world.
MM, we aren’t denying the possibility that sasquatch exists. We simply say that the total hard evidence to date is insufficient to conclusively prove the existence of sasquatch. You are attempting to use one of the proofs for god, where the sheer possibility of existence means it exists. That is a fallacious argument. Same for sasquatch. Parsimony requires non-existence be the true until existence is scientifically demonstrated. Which requires the body/skat. There is nothing here to stop a scientist from looking for sasquatch, but unless he already has tenure, that would be a foolish research project.
My goal is to make you, my friends, to doubt your verities.
OK, that is SO easy. Trot out gawd. We all know what gawd is, what he does, what he looks like, and where he lives, we have the Holy Babble to inform us.
So show us. We are open minded. Trot the old boy out. Show us your facts that aren’t wrong.
OK, Morpheus, but you can still get fucked.
Gawd dammit PZ these Dollar Store trolls taste awful.
Sorry, you are wrong. Hard evidence is required to make us doubt the conclusions of science. What you offer is not hard evidence. It is soft, possibly hoaxed evidence. So science goes YAWN, because we have seen too many idjits like yourself who think that the new scientific discoveries are made by outsiders. That is good fiction, but bad science, as anyone who studied the history of science will tell you. The new paradigms are made by those trained in science, and make sure they apply those principals properly to the observations in question, including the hard evidence available. And they publish those findings and ideas in the appropriate journals. Which is why we find you aggravating. You are wrong, but can’t shut up.
How is it that mythusmage has thus far avoided my killfile?
Has this guy always been a manic airhead determined to present as an uber-skeptic?
Or is he/she in the throes of some kind of seizure and normal, cogent programming it set to resume shortly?
#127
Nerd,
As hard as this may be to accept, I agree with you. The sole bit of reliable evidence I’ve been able to find falls far short of conclusively proving sasquatch exist. My point is that the evidence we do have is the closest we can come to proving the existence of sasquatch, and that additional evidence is needed.
Where is your proof that I am using a proof for the existence of God? I have no proof for God’s existence other than personal experience, and that in a milieu I have no proof exists either. What I offer is a proof that might be faked, but for which no proof has be presented showing that it is faked.
What I’ve heard from some people on this subject is a need to deny their imperfection. Being wrong is hard for people to admit, as I demonstrated with the North Atlantic/North American kerfuffle a couple of thread episodes ago. Please, stop telling me I have to be wrong; show me that I am wrong and do it with evidence.
After all, when you go looking for evidence demonstrating one thing, sometimes you’ll find evidence demonstrating just the opposite.
To reiterate, you’re right; the total hard evidence to date is insufficient to conclusively prove the existence of sasquatch. What say we find what there is to find?
BTW, thank you for adopting my usage of sasquatch (singular) and sasquatch (plural). Don’t know about you, but I find “sasquatches” such a clumsy construction.
One more thing, you may call me “Mythus”. :)
oh my are people still referring to that bigfoot footage on creek bed.
The Patterson footage has been exposed as a hoax. The guy in the suit lives in Yakima, WA. He walks just like he did in the video.
mythusmage (#121)
Forget bigfoot. Give evidence that anyone is actually saying this. In fact, shut the fuck up till you manage that much. Thanks.
~*~*~*~*~*~
MrT (#122)
Well, gorillas do that and it still comes back out one end or the other eventually. Maybe I’ll mail mythusmage some for comparison to potential recycled bigfoot shit.
#128
Patricia, if I trotted out God wouldn’t that convince you of His existence?
I’m not doing this to convince you of anything, I’m doing this in the hopes of getting you to doubt what you are convinced of. For before you can accept new possibilities you must first doubt the truths you knew from before.
Let me put it this way. Were this a creationist blog with a truly open policy concerning commenting and you a creationist (God forbid), I would be working to get you to doubt any conclusions you may have made regarding Genesis.
“There is no absolute proof for anything.”
Oh, OK. Sophistry.
Skepticism and science aren’t about doubting the popular idea. Jesus Christ. Killfiled.
Mythus, on the proof of god issue, you were pressing that the possible existence of sasquatch meant sasquatch existed. There is a proof of god (ontological?) that uses the very same logic.
I expect to learn something new every time I open a Scientific American or American Scientist. Some of those ideas are different than they were when I was in school, but no problem. They have evidence. And what they say integrates into other knowledge that I have. What irritates me as a scientist are ignorant people deliberately trying to make us look like ideologues, which is what you are trying to do (upset the present ideas). If you want to look at things differently, do it right. Don’t put those ideas out here, but rather write up a scientific paper for publication and submit it. People who are afraid or find excuses not to do that are not worth listening to.
#135
A Noyd,
I can’t. Because I didn’t say it, I typed it.
#139
Nerd,
Ah, but testable evidence for sasquatch has been presented. Accepted or not, it has been presented. Last I heard nobody has presented testable evidence pointing to the existence of God. There is more to reality that our philosophies admit of, the trouble is finding the evidence for it.
OK so far I’ve avoided these thousand-post threads (I mean, come on!), but a bigfoot believer? Count me in!
Why would you want to killfile a bigfoot believer? That’s crazy!
MM said,
How childishly fucking pedantic is that? Way to meaningfully engage with people, MM. Go away already, you’re wasting people’s time and insulting their intelligence.
MM- Look sonny boy, I was one of the most god fearing, believing, scripture award winning fundamentalist Old Believers ever.
But the more I studied it, and the more I tried to believe it, was the more I could see it was bullshit.
Don’t even try it with me. Genesis is such horse shit that if you can’t see the huge gaps I think you are a child or an idiot.
mythus:
I’m not trying to convince you there’s no reason to believe in a god. I’m trying to get you to doubt your convictions.
(Note that I’ve written the previous two sentences in present progressive. However, these are just assertions until I actually do it. At the moment, I’m tired and slightly drunk, so I’ll stick with that.)
My post above inspired by flyonthewall who jogged my memory, so I did that thing with the Google and it popped right up.
BS
If even the catholics (ex-me!) are too embarrassed to believe the old testament literally that’s got to tell you something.
#143
Blind Squirrel,
Are you sure of your source, and do you have evidence the author actually knows what he’s talking about? What I hear from the author are assumptions based on a priori reasoning. Can he demonstrate his assumptions can be verified?
I point you to a pro sasquatch forum can you consider the possibility they might actually have something valid to say? Fuck God and the leviathan He rode in on, without reservation can you consider the possibility sasquatch believers have something valid to say?
mythusmage (#140)
Lamest dodge ever. First, I asked for evidence of what you claim other people are saying. Or typing. Or whatever floats your fucking boat. Second, you’re not “hearing” what other people are typing, but you were happy to use the metaphor up in #105, so where do you get off going all literal on us now? Ridiculous.
Shut up until you can give evidence that anyone is actually saying (or typing or posting or whatever-verb-you-need-to-understand-what-I-mean-ing) that “the lack of evidence means we can’t go looking.” A simple quote from anyone here (or in previous threads) will do.
mythus:
If you quote Shakespeare, then quote Shakespeare.
Ironically, ghosts (including Hamlet’s father) are not one of those things.
In the utmost of fairness and irritation, I will point out that technically, Blind Squirrel is supposed to point out the evidence that contradicts the whateverthehell it was video. At least, that’s how I learned in better depth the Scientific Method, but eh.
That said, no body, no bigfoot (Like no flag, no country), is my stance. And I was incredibly sad on realizing that PZ was referencing Bigfoot this endless thread because I knew this one sided snowball fight would happen.
hey anyone watches late night talk show comedy? I usually don’t go for the entertainment news, but it’s gotten the funniest in years since everyone is angry now, and Leno is getting his dues.
Of course, I’m on Team Conan. Also check out Andy Richter’s answer. A bit wishy-washy but good in comparison to all the other tripe.
awesome t-shirt designs!
one for David,
one for Josh and Alan B,
and one for Nerd
:-)
#146
Mr T,
You doubt I doubt? I doubt the existence of reality, for ultimately our proofs come down to what we observe and how we interpret it. That there is a reality out there we can experience and experience in common I am convinced of, but I am not absolutely convinced of it.
The weight of the evidence comes down on the side of the proposition that reality is pretty much as we observe it, and that reality is independent of us. What we believe and what we need to be true has nothing to do with reality, but more with our need to be special; with our need to be something separate from the world, not of it but of some greater realm.
You make a mistake in observation, you correct your mistake in observation. That is my understanding of science. I may be wrong about that, but I see no reason to have faith in any alternative that does not allow for the recognition and correction of error. For is that not the path to religion?
Without reservation? Certainly (heh) not. I’m going to go with the preponderance of evidence.
Bob Heironimus passes lie detector test:
http://www.bigfootencounters.com/articles/polygraph.htm:
There are a few other interesting articles under Bob Heironimus You might want to read.
#151
Mr T,
I reserve the write to restate Shakespeare. After all, isn’t West Side Story a restatement of Romeo and Juliet? :)
while i happen to think that an unknown great ape in america is slightly more likely than, say, UFOs or the loch ness monster, i still refuse to believe bigfoot actually exists.
why? because the self-proclaimed bigfoot experts don’t either.
you know how i know? because i’ve seen hours upon hours of them out in the woods hunting for the thing. and if they actually seriously believed that there was a 8-foot tall, 500-lb, potentially dangerous wild animal in the area, they would bring fucking rifles.
mythusmage #20, I have seen a Bigfoot footprint. It was all part of the culmination of a spooky story told to a bunch of kids while out on a trip in a snowy wilderness. The magic of the story of Bigfoot is much the same as the magic of the story of Santa Claus (Bigfoot hunters and “finders”, for that matter, are not much different than people who make movies about Santa Claus or sell reindeer trinkets for the Xmas tree)—they are both a fun inside joke for adults and a sort of fable that serves as a warning to children (in the case of Sasquatch the moral is to not venture off in the woods alone). That is really all it is.
Nerd – Since this is an open thread – have a look at #31 Lace Stockings, Vogue Knitting Spring/Summer 2009 – on YouTube it’s my next knitting project. The Redhead may want to try it too. It’s naughty.
And now back to the idiot.
Working on it. Here is a video of Bob H walking with bigfoot from the Patterson video along side. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCzRBzBmUjE
BS
#156
Blind Squirrel,
Didn’t think so. From what you’ve posted on this subject I have come to doubt your willingness to be honest.
Where polygraphs are concerned, research — the last I heard — has shown that the lie detector is no such thing. It shows responses to questions, not whether the respondent is lying or not. Polygraphs show the possibility of the intent to deceive, they do nothing to show that a person is lying or telling the truth. Read up on the available work and see what it has to say.
Where Bob Erroneous is concerned, keep in mind that pathological liars have fooled polygraphs before. Also keep in mind that if you think Patterson has a spotty past (and he does), compared to Heironimus he qualifies as an honest man. For the life of me I don’t see how such a dumpy little twerp could ever pass for Patty. Unless, that is, they needed to believe he was Patty.
BTW, thank you for reminding me of the man’s name. I tend to forget details like that, and that trait does nothing positive for any claim I make.
I keep telling you people it’s my hairy assed brother Ed.
Also Bob H dressed in a bigfoot suit Imitating the Paterson video. That’s all I can be bothered with on this subject. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMPmMJeEoqY&feature=player_embedded
BS
“I point you to a pro sasquatch forum can you consider the possibility they might actually have something valid to say? Fuck God and the leviathan He rode in on, without reservation can you consider the possibility sasquatch believers have something valid to say?”
I, for one, would not. Because it isn’t arguments that would convince me. Not only is talk cheap, it’s an enormous waste of time.
Hard evidence. Bring it. I’ll consider it.
#161
Blind Squirrel,
You are aware that the mash-up was produced to show that Heironimus was not Patty? Can you show us that Bob matches Patty in size, in proportion, in stride without grossly manipulating the images? Can you explain why the reddish hair of Bob’s costume differs so much from the dark brown of Patty’s hair? Can you explain why the hair on Bob’s costume differs so much in length and texture from Patty’s hair? Why is the face on Bob’s costume so stiff, when Patty’s face is so expressive.
BTW gentles, this is what I mean by raising doubts.
One more thing before I go — for I am getting a bit worn out: Can you be sure, truly sure, I’m not PZ Myers doing this to hype Pharyngula and increase traffic? I know I’m not PZ Myers, but how do I prove I’m not? :D
My honesty? Where does that even enter in? I honestly found these links. This can be verified. I admit to a little concern about the clarity of your reasoning, however.
BS
Sorry, but this I must answer…
#165
Rick R,
Did I ask you to be convinced by them, or to consider the possibility they might have something valid to say?
Shame on you RickR – The Holy Babble says:In the beginning GOD created the heaven and the earth. Genesis 1:1
Now how can you doubt such a thing? It’s in the book.
“Did I ask you to be convinced by them, or to consider the possibility they might have something valid to say?”
I’m sure they must have many valid things to say. Probably on a variety of topics.
However, I would only be convinced about the existence of something called “Bigfoot” by hard evidence. When that has been obtained, please, let us know.
MM – Yes we can be sure it’s not PZ because you are an idiot, and he has no reason to morph idiot trolls.
Fool.
And this…
#167
Blind Squirrel,
Your honesty about your arguments and your conclusions. Are you honestly considering the question, or doing your best to avoid addressing it? Are you going by what you think I want, or by what I’ve been asking for?
(Night all, I’ve got to go plan my next nefarious scheme to promote this blog. I mean, it takes a lot of money to keep me and the trophy wife in a manner we’ve become accustomed to.
PZ My… Mythusmage
Damn, but this is the reason I gave up riding Greyhound buses. I get someone like mythusmage for a seatmate every time. Give me a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses any day. At least I know the ground rules.
BS
mythusmage (#162)
Because hoaxes are usually perpetrated by honest people, right?
Before you sneak off, give me the damn evidence I asked for.
Fucktard.
Well, rats. Maybe he’ll suffocate in his own fog of irony and not come back.
The christards always come back.
They have no proof of their gawd or big foot, but they always come back. Fools.
“01/17/09 SQUIIIIDS
We just need 18 more squids! We’re so close I can practically smell the vinyl. Please don’t let us get this close and still fail (sad face). If you can spare $10 to show your love of the comic please order you Billy the Space Squid.”
What this thread needs is lesbian nipples wrapped in bacon nested in Hickory chips.
It’ll do for a start. :)
“What this thread needs is lesbian nipples wrapped in bacon nested in Hickory chips.”
That goes without saying. ;)
OK, well how about some brass bossoms, burnished by bacon?
The Chimp is going to swoon shortly with all of this bacony goodness.
Now I’m hungry.
I do not have any lesbian nipples (though I could probably ask friends for some help in this matter but that has to wait until tomorrow), no bacon, or hickory chips, but I have some beer and I have been indulging. It does certainly help me stomach the troll.
Uh, hey guys, I don’t think y’all should be messing with Sasquatch
Wait, wait, wait. Was that PZ fucking with us this whole time, or just him editing the last post from mythusmage?
After long consideration of the matter I think I’ve solved several mysteries. First, is there no bigfoot scat, no bigfoot bodies, no bigfoot laterines, no bigfoot children, nothing but rare sightings, even rarer strands of fur, and some strange footprints? Second, where does bigfoot hide or live? And finally, third, where are the Entwives?
It’s obvious: Bigfoots are the Entwives.
Ents are known to only drink. So no scat.
They drink water. I presume the urine, if any, would be very hard to distinguish from other normal stuff in the forest.
When they don’t move, Ents look like trees. So there could be lots of bigfoots, only not moving. We only occasionally spot the restless ones.
And since the Ents lost the Entwives a long long time ago, all the Ent children have grown up. Which is why no bigfoot children are known.
It all seems to fit. Bigfoots are the Entwives.
Q.E.D.
This Monster Talk podcast makes a compelling case that the Patterson/Gimlin film is a hoax.
http://monstertalk.skeptic.com/media/skeptic/002_Monstertalk.mp3
Even when I was a Sasquatch believer, I thought the PG film was probably a hoax.
My hypothesis is they are alien tourists on “back to nature” holidays in the galactic boonies. They are supposed to avoid any contact with us, but a few of them can’t resist scaring the bejeezus out of the rubes. This would explain the lack of scat and bodies.
MM would have us believe there have been collisions between small cars and Sasquatches. If this occurred at any significant speed, the results would be catastrophic for both parties.
If you haven’t seen the Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious world Sasquatch episode, you should watch it for the footprint hoaxing demonstration. The large old guy running while wearing wooden Sasquatch feet is simply amazing.
I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long for Bigfoot to disprove the Laramide Orogeny.
Yes.
Perhaps we should look in Universe 5.
Bigfoot?
Nah, just Robin Williams on holidays!
Let’s see now. Many videos- blurry, low-quality videos with poor provenance- show hairy bigfoot-type creatures walking around in North America.
No bodies or physical evidence of such a creature have ever been found.
In most cases the creature on the videos can be identified as a guy in an ape suit.
The entity in mythusmage’s favourite video (the gospel according to sasquatch) is either (i) a real bigfoot or (ii) a guy in an ape suit.
We know that guys in ape suits exist.
What’s our default hypothesis here? Don’t all shout at once.
The sasquatch films always look and move like humans in hairy suits. And that’s not as simple a statement as it seems.
The sasquatch is always larger than a human – such that it could easily be a human in a hairy suit. There’s no part of any sasquatch which is smaller or slimmer than human. Whereas among the real great apes, there’s some variation in proportions. Eg much longer arms and shorter legs. The gait of real non-human primates differs far more from human norms than that of any purported sasquatch does.
The modern software packages which analyse images, eg for police or film industry, could probably do a good job of showing that the joint positions (ie limb proportions) and ranges of motion of an alleged sasquatch match up all too well with those of a human.
PZ, spammer “indogreenteak” is polluting old threads.
—
MythusMage:
Hi everyone!
I have decided to come in from the lurkers.
MM shows a severe lack of knowledge of mythical creatures – Yetis and Bunyips for starters… *LOL*
Gee MM – looks like everyone has their own BF.
Am I the only one who’s always baffled by the presence of a SINGLE sasquatch in all these videos? As far as I know, all primate species are highly social, and with the exception of a silver-back gorilla enjoying some alone time and some poor monkey being scorned from the group, whenever I’ve seen filmed footage of non-human primates in their natural habitats they’re always in groups.
The lone sasquatch doesn’t just need family, it needs ancestry. How is it supposed to have traversed to the US from Africa/Asia (where the great apes evolved) without apparently even being tool-using (not just on film footage but also because that would mean another strand of physical evidence found wanting)?
If the sasquatch had boats, why aren’t they spotted out fishing in them? Did the “native” american humans ever mention seeing them before? Did they sneak over on European boats just before the earliest reported sighting?
Then there’s the too-rapid evolution of specific features of the sasquatch (not just differences across long-standing legends). Eg the changes in the sort of foot-prints allegedly left by them.
No, but spaghetti does:
Judy L., SEF,
While I’m almost as sure there’s no Bigfoot as I am that there’s no Loch Ness Monster (and for similar reasons – no good evidence, implausibility of a viable population existing), I don’t think your latest points hold: orang-utans are solitary, and many large mammals have spread from Asia to North America via the intermittently-existing Beringia land-bridge. If Bigfoot existed, it would most likely be related to Gigantopithecus, which lived in SE Asia until at least 300,000 years ago, and may have been bipedal.
Poor MM just isn’t getting it. Just like creationists and their imaginary deity. He can harp all he wants about his soft, inconclusive evidence, but his harping is meaningless and useless. He needs that body. Without it, he cannot make any scientific conclusions about the existence of sasquatch.
And he can keep his ideas about “shaking things up” to himself. To date, he has presented very silly ideas without conclusive evidence. That convinces nobody, and makes him look like a fool.
Well, belief in Bigfoot is at least more rational than creationism….
Alright, I’ve learned my lesson. Already pipped at #45 with the BBC spaghetti tree hoax. Will read entire thread before posting from now on :-/
Sasquatch is real? Seriously?
Is this supposed to be clever? Or humorous?
ugh
Something you are demonstrating quite well with your Bigfoot wooism.
No excuse me, I’m off on a snipe hunt followed by a Jackalope trapping session.
But then reports of it and physical evidence of it would have to match that route (as well as each other!).
If anyone here is tired of the same old creationist trolls, you might want to try out this wackaloon. Scroll down to find the evolution stuff.
http://zdenny.com/
Enough Sasquatsch already, I want our endless thread back !
Here are a few educational clips :
Sean Carroll-EvoDevo lecture 2007
Brian Cox-What is time?
Richard Feynman-Take the world from another point of view
I don’t see any bacon flavouring in this recipe/design. Someone should remedy that. Or perhaps do an octopus/squid cake.
Just the other day, I was wondering whether there was much in the way of cheese-flavoured cake (I’m not counting cheese-cake because that’s an entirely different animal). It might be harder to flavour a spider cake realistically.
Hmm. I agree with John Morales that mythusmage is usually a decent commenter. The wife must have put the blue pill in his cereal this morning by mistake.
I disagree.
Anyhow, which particular blue pill would that be to give the alleged personality change?
The absence of evidence isn’t evidence of anything except that we haven’t any evidence. Accepting the absence of evidence as evidence of anything but our lack of evidence is evidence of lack of common sense. Of course, common sense itself has been much tarnished by the simpleton punditocracy but a good rule of thumb with regard to common sense is that any claim which begins, “It’s only common sense that blah blah blah” lacks any real sense, common or otherwise.
The absence of evidence isn’t evidence of anything except that we haven’t any evidence. – IanM
Garbage. There is a complete absence of evidence of live Apatosaurus in central London. this is conclusive evidence that they do not live there.
A.Noyd @98
Thanks for the thought, but please don’t send me your neighbors. By the close of the season in which I hiked most of the Idaho/Montana portion of the Continental Divide Trail, I could smell food cooking up to half a mile away, and the people in my neighborhood who used softening dryer sheets that were scented drove me crazy. Yuck. They filled the air for blocks around with orange or lilac or “mountain spring” scents … and all of them were horrible riffs on the real thing. Poison, I tell you.
My nose seems back to normal (for human beings) now, so I only smell dryer-vented scents when I pass by the house that is exuding them.
Actually, real orange oil is not quite as bad as all those blended fake scents, but it’s still way too strong.
The heated scents out of the dryers are the worst. Someone will eventually discover how bad they are, and that they trigger allergies. Outlaw them, I say.
Seein’ as Patricia’s outing her brother Ed, I guess this is only right, now. Even overdue…
See, the truth is, I’m pretty sure I’m the Yeti…
And no, I’m not (quite) that big, and definitely not that hairy.
But it’s a funny story… It involved what was stacking up to be a lovely evening with a local Brahmin’s daughter being cut short by the unscheduled appearance of her brother and several of his alarmingly well-armed friends, an escape from a hut in the dead of winter while wrapped in the bearskin rug that just happened to be awfully close at hand at the time, a coating of snow on said rug making it look all streaky white, then this mutually alarming encounter with some local farmers…
Anyway. That and my size 13 clodhoppers sealed the deal, I’m afraid. My sincerest apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused anyone.
Oh. I’m pretty sure I’m the skunk ape, too… Similar story, oddly enough…
(/And as to the smell, what can I say, but Betty Sue always said she preferred it when I hadn’t showered for a week or two.)
The absence of evidence can be meaningful. If people have been looking for years, and nothing conclusive is ever found, it can have meaning. So the absence of evidence is meaningful for sasquatch, Nessie, and present day Apatosauruses. It doesn’t have as much meaning for a hard to find, but known bird, that might be on the edge of extinction, and hasn’t been seen for 25 years. It is important to remember that the reason science tends to require positive evidence is that one can’t prove a negative. After a million tests that find nothing conclusive for the existence of sasquatch, the credulous believer in the myth could always say you need to run another million tests.
TMI @ 213,
TMI !
:-)
I’m going to say something which is rather controversial, and which will probably get me flamed by a few people. But it needs saying, and I’ll accept whatever abuse I get as a result of it. This thread is the only appropriate place I can think of to say it, by virtue of its being an open thread.
Pharyngula has a serious cultural problem, due to this ingrained idea that tone and politeness do not matter. A lot of people here regularly point out, correctly, that tone and politeness do not affect the objective truth value of a statement: “Two plus two fucking equals four, you fucking stupid fuckwit fuck fuck fuck” is no less true, in an objective sense, than “Two plus two equals four”.
But the fact that tone is irrelevant to truth does not mean that tone is unimportant. In any environment where people use their brains, people are always going to disagree, sometimes vehemently, about various things. But in a civilised community, people evolve rules of politeness and etiquette for dealing with these disagreements. Civilised people ought to be able to separate disagreement from personal dislike, and to challenge someone else’s ideas without attacking that person on a personal level.
This doesn’t mean that everyone merits respect and politeness. Someone like “Global Warming is a Scam” (et autres pseudonyms), who is just here to troll and flame and repeat the same nonsense over and over, can quite legitimately be told to fuck off. Similarly, someone who intentionally uses offensive racial or gendered epithets, for the purpose of attacking and demeaning others, does not deserve any courtesy or consideration.
But I would argue that it is unnecessary to attack people simply because they have wrong ideas. Some people have been unjustifiably unpleasant to mythusmage, here and on previous versions of the open thread, when he wasn’t doing anything to merit such attacks. Yes, he might be entirely wrong about Bigfoot (I don’t know anything about the issue, and couldn’t care less), and about tectonic plates and various other topics. But he’s well-meaning, and it’s perfectly possible to converse with him and correct any misapprehensions without attacking his intelligence or character.
When I first appeared at Pharyngula, I got a hostile reception from a lot of people. In those days, I held a lot of ideas which I now believe were completely wrongheaded. But life is a learning process, and I come here to educate myself and expand my mind. The reason I stayed was because there were a few people – Bill Dauphin, especially, stands out in my mind – who were willing to engage me in rational, interesting discussion without attacking me on a personal level. And this process has actually changed my life and my worldview on a number of levels. It can, and does, do the same for other people – but it won’t, if everyone who wants to learn and discuss things is driven away by being attacked and insulted.
There are, of course, a range of predictable responses. You can say “If you don’t like it, don’t read the blog”. But as I just outlined, reading and commenting here has actually made a substantial change to my life and my understanding of the world. So it is important. I don’t doubt that someone will accuse me of being a “tone troll”, and I would bet money that someone will reply to this post with words to the effect of “Your concern is noted”. But I hope some people will think about what I’ve said.
Walton, as a regular here you would have noticed by now that politeness and etiquette do not mean for a christian what they mean to non-christians, and that xtians just love to confuse disagreement with personal dislike, because it helps them distract everyone from the fact that they are losing on the argument front.
This is just silly.I’m surprised you would bring it up.
Except for the Spaghetti Harvest, this may be the best of the BBC April Fool films:
They even produced a “How did we make it” film:
I keep pretending to be a flying penguin but my grandson thinks I’m mad.
[Ed. Your grandson is right!]
Sorry man. But y’know… Been carrying that around a while…
Now the Loch Ness Monster, anyway, that’s not me…
But I have heard convincing evidence that that was probably just Walton’s mom, skinny dipping*…
(/*This joke is still pending review by the Tone Police. If it does not pass muster, minors will please try to forget they never heard it. The rest of you may also, of course, choose to do the same, at your own discretion.)
zdenny is clearly a dolt. He(?) refers to his first and second links but even gets them in the wrong order. An extreme case of ‘that source doesn’t say what you claim it says’. Even taking them in the right way they still contraindicate what they’re claimed to indicate
Rorschach, you’re missing my point. Of course disagreement and personal dislike are different things; that’s exactly the point I’m making. But a lot of people here have a tendency to combine disagreement with unnecessary personal attacks. It is possible to disagree with someone, even vehemently, without calling them a “fuckwit” or otherwise calling their moral character or intelligence into question. And there is a good reason for choosing to be nice to people, even where they hold completely wrongheaded ideas: a pleasant, polite argument will often convince them to change their minds. I’m a case in point: I’ve changed my mind on any number of issues, sometimes two or three times, since I started commenting here, as a result of discussions on Pharyngula.
I’m not accusing you particularly, and I apologise if I created that impression.
#52 Mr T said:
Oh dear!
Walton…
That was the longest tone-concern troll post I think I’ve ever read. It’s not new, and it’s not that interesting. There are MANY personalities here, some calm, some entertaining, some acerbic, some downright mean-spirited. They all contribute to the dialog, and frankly, they ALL have merit.
I hardly consider myself to be in the position of being able to decide what tone is appropriate, and I’m fairly sure you aren’t either, Walton. For some, being angry and sharp-tongued, even vulgar, helps get their point across.
I’m sorry, but who are you to determine for anyone the method by which a message is delivered? If you personally think that being cordial, polite and patient is the best way to get your point across, then by all means do so. If you are one of those people who is sick of the requirement of deference to stupid, archaic, insane, harmful and deceitful lies that are the hallmarks of religion and anti-science, then you might strike a different chord with your comments.
And this goes not just for the sender, but also for the recipient… some people respond better to rational discourse, some need to have it beat over their head to get the point. Either way, once again, who are you to determine which method works best?
Either way, I for one am grateful for the vast collection of completely different personalities; the various methods of delivery… from Cuttlefish’s brilliant, often strikingly poignant minstrelsy, to Sastra’s elegant, insightful, articulate prose, to Nerd of Redhead’s simple, direct, take-no-prisoners, indignant vitriol… I love all of it.
I also love that we are all able to take each other to task when attacks are unwarranted or premature… I’ve heard this place called an “echo-chamber” by not-so-regulars and it never fails to make me laugh. This place is anything but, and no-one who’s spent more than a week here reading the comments would ever be foolish able to make such a comment.
You, Walton, should know better than to make such a complaint. I don’t know if you just woke up on the wrong side of the bed today or what but please, get over it already.
Oh… and yes, your concern, IS noted.
Jadehawk @154: I like the Ferrous Wheel best. Good find.
Hm ok, to elaborate on my last comment,
I will concede that for a lot of people, christians or not, the tone will influence the truth value of a statement, as regrettable as that may be, and I will also concede that we are probably currently underestimating the effect this has on debates with believers.
We know it’s wrong, and it shouldn’t influence judgment about a statement, but unfortunately for many people, it does.
On Pharyngula, we can brush it off and logic and rationality, let alone numbers, are on our side.
In a lecture theatre or classroom debating some loon, not so much.
I think we are not doing this very well outside of internet fora at the moment, Walton, so point conceded.
I think it is important that we do, because wrong ideas hurt people, and fuck with mankind.
To the question of how to react to tone trolls, outside Pharyngula and in the public domain, I have no definitive answer, it remains a problem as long as so many people really think the truth value of a statement changes with the number of swear words it contains.
Plato on a pogo stick, Walton, did you really just say that you don’t know and don’t care about the existence of Bigfoot and mythusmage’s advocacy of same? You think Bigfoot is seriously an open question? That level of ignorance and incuriousity does not reflect well on you.
If somebody pops up here saying that a film of a guy in an ape suit constitutes good evidence for the existence of a race of giant hominids wandering the USA, they deserve to be mocked. Your comments on tone are misguided because no argument in any tone is going to correct mythusmage’s cognitive problem. Any idea that stupid, and its proponents, should be mocked pour decourager les autres, not because we think mm himself is even listening.
No, I did not say that. I said I don’t know anything about it, and don’t care. The existence or non-existence of Bigfoot makes, so far as I can tell, absolutely no difference to anything important.
There are lots of issues which are vitally important to society, and affect real people’s lives – global warming, science education, terrorism, religion, medicine, civil liberties and so on – which are discussed here on a daily basis, and which I am interested in learning about and discussing. I don’t see how the existence or otherwise of Bigfoot can be said to fall into that category.
Serious Walton is serious.
Damn, I see this argument a lot anymore… trying to prop up your own silly ideas by calling people that disagree with you as bad as creationists… what the hell?
When did it become ok to assume you have credibility in advocating other stupid, evidentially unsupported ideas just because you don’t believe in one of them?
#154 Jadehawk Thanks for the T shirt.
But I’ve told you and I’ve told you and I’ve told you!
“Don’t mix the mustard with the chilli sauce!”
(Liked the ferrous wheel too.)
Oh yes. When are palaeontologists going to sort out spelling? Chemists sorted out sulfur/
sulphurand aluminium/aluminumdecades ago.(To save David M the trouble, yes I do know the argument about the æ dipthong / ligature.)
blf #186 FTW
Ummm… no, Walton… a discovery that a bigfoot-like creature was real would be wildly important to many fields of study, not the least of which would be biology and anthropology.
Walton, Walton, Walton. Sigh.
Pharyngula has a serious culture, with a great sense of humor. It is too important to be taken seriously, if I may paraphrase Oscar Wilde.
I think I would have to come up with some new swear words to describe the situation if the Overlord instituted a Policy of Politeness (PoP).
I don’t want any whey-faced, fawning tone trolls loving me for my refined, weasel-reeking language.
Pharyngula is rare — that combination of serious chatter about the things that matter, with a dollop of snark spice! That combo indicates passion, vitality and intellectual rigor. Take the “culture” away, or tone it down, and you take the life out of it. No more rigor, just rigor mortis.
Something to add, re blf #186:
When mythusmage was spouting crazy shit regarding plate tectonics, a number of you (Alan B, Josh, David M, Dania et al.*) provided informative responses, and I felt like I was getting a miniseminar in geology. It was delightful. However, this sasquatch business is just lame. There really isn’t anything to learn. Or so I thought. Thank you blf for making this thread a worthy read.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
*Sorry if I missed anyone.
I did not call Pharyngula an echo-chamber. I agree with you that it is nothing of the sort. If anything, the problem is the opposite; the regulars are too ready to turn on each other over political or scientific disagreements.
Walton: if you “don’t know” about bigfoot, you are saying you do not know enough to be able to decide whether or not it is plausible that a race of giant hairy hominids is inhabiting the woodlands of the USA and periodically posing for blurry video stills.
I think that more or less disqualifies you from forming opinions about anything important. If you can’t come to a rational decision on the plausibility of Bigfoot, your opinions on global warming, science education, terrorism, religion, medicine, civil liberties and so on are utterly and completely worthless, because you lack both the knowledge and the reasoning ability to form any useful opinions.
But enough about sasquatch.
Let’s talk about sasquatch’s taste in music:
Interesting that you chose only that segment of my comment to reply to, as it was probably the only part of it not directed at you in any way… I never said YOU called it an echo chamber, I was merely expanding on my point of diversity here in the comments.
As far as the regulars being “too ready to turn on each other over political or scientific disagreements”, I say, good for us! I welcome being challenged if I’m thought wrong, and more than willing to defend myself and engage in discussion over it. I relish being shown to be wrong, and learning from the experience. If I feel the tone directed at me is unwarranted, I’ll address it myself, thanks.
I stand justly chastised. I would hardly be swayed by anyone claiming, in the absence of evidence, that Apatosaurus are living in central London.
Fuck. I had written half of a very long comment, and then I tried to look for a CafePress T-shirt – CafePress crashes Safari 1.3.2. I hate Apple.
Maybe Netscape 7.2 can do it… yes, it just pops up within a second. This is the kind of paleontology T-shirt I like, not one with a random green blob on it!
The geology one is lovely, however :-)
Also, I got this one for Newtonmas. The anatomically impossible hand posture should indeed be forbidden.
Look, everyone. I’m sorry if I’ve seemed pompous or self-important on this thread.
I’m not naturally funny, or naturally good at “snark”, or naturally socially adept. I do try from time to time, but it rarely succeeds. My MO is to write long-winded, rather repetitive posts setting out my reasoning in detail, and I realise that this bores some people. And I’m also a bit more sensitive and insecure than many people here, and don’t always find it easy to laugh at my own expense. I accept these failings.
I’m also not entirely sure whether I’m a liberal, a conservative or a libertarian, or an incoherent mixture of all three. And every discussion I’ve started about politics lately has been a complete mess, because I’m no longer really sure where I stand and keep changing my mind, and/or getting trapped into playing devil’s advocate and talking bullshit.
I’m going to drop this line of conversation now, since it’s going nowhere. I’m sorry if I’ve pissed anyone off. My mind is not working normally today (a friend of mine brought me back some unusual Rwandan coffee from a trip abroad, and it seems to have had a strange effect). :-)
The aliens brought me back and dropped me off at this bar. But I could not go to work that day because Bigfoot stole my car.
I know a mother fucking Bigfoot when I see one.
A while I thought Walton was showing signs of maturity and was learning to overcome his libertarian inclinations. Since Christmas though he seems to have taken a few steps backwards in his progress to becoming a fully paid up member of the human species.
This reminds me of an argument I got into in another of my haunts last year:
http://www.obakemono.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=monsters;action=display;num=1213821146
sasquatch’s favorite tunes 2, w/ excellent vid:
The ferrous wheel graphic goes back at least 40 years.
BS
Walton, you are allowed to, you know, _not_ make tedious long-winded posts setting out your current incoherent opinions. Relax a while. Read a bit. Drink either more or less coffee, as appropriate.
Be sure to pour some Cream in your coffee. It will cure what’s inside of you.
Walton: The real world requires all that crap about civility, patience, concern for the feelings of others, etc. To have a long standing productive community/work/family relationship, these little rules of courtesy are important.
However, following these rules is tedious for some people. The “style over substance” world is a place where many bright and useful people are clearly at a disadvantage. Blogs like this are popular partially because they give people an opportunity to communicate in a way that’s honest.
Some people are advised on job interviews to “just be themselves”. My post-doc advisor gave me some great advice before a job interview and it was this “Man, just be yourself, but maybe a little nicer”…which I did, and I guess it worked. However, doing that all the time is such a goddamned strain. I prefer the company of the vitrioloic and foulmouthed, so I can relax. I like all the nice people, too, but I might be less interested in reading this blog if everyone behaved themselves all the time.
If I may quote George Carlin: “Rat shit, bat shit, dirty old twat. 69 assholes tied in a knot. Lizard! Shit! Fuck!”
[this is where I refuse on ethical grounds to link to Kenny Loggins]
I have to say, Walton, I was truly surprised to see your tone-concern post… I do hope it was just one of those “I’m having a shit-poor day” streams of thought…
# Lynna
You could always try Earl Grey tea. I know it’s only oil of bergamot but it might hold you between your fixes of orange. Alternatively, there’s always Grand Marnier!
OR Cointreau:
Seriously challenged possibility from beginnings to endings methinks!
A hominid striding around…looking for all the world like a six footer give or take a pair socks in the backwoods of beyond!
A gait looking more like an attempt at retaining some upright dignity rather then traipsing to grandma’s house as ya do!
Obviously humanoid development of the pelvic structure and swinging arms to boot.
A side branch of Australopithecus…Neanderthalis…
anyway before Homo sapiens got the modern act together…yeah right…(Not)
More like a renegade from a seedy Charlton Heston B-flick!
And talking about prising cold dead fingers and all that machismo this tangs of prising cold dead inanity and all that fandango from a Blair Witch wannabee clip!
Mythusmage: DO NOT EVER TRY TO PRETEND TO BE ME. That kind of attempt to confuse issues and play identity games will get you banned.
Stephen, I don’t always do the sensible thing. You should know this by now. :-)
Arrgh. I feel really stressed for no reason. I need to go to the gym. Over Christmas and New Year I was going for 5km runs several times a week, and I’m currently rather addicted to exercise and become unhappy and irritable if I don’t do any. (I’m told there’s a biological reason for this; something to do with production of chemicals in the brain?)
Fixed. Sorry.
/pedant
Celtic E: Thanks. Hate to misquote a comical genius.
Mythusmage: DO NOT EVER TRY TO PRETEND TO BE ME. That kind of attempt to confuse issues and play identity games will get you banned.
PZ, anyone who could not smell Mythusmage’s stream of shit is going to be easily mislead anyways. That was the last act of a fool who was out matched by every regular that interacted with him last night.
Walton:
As a constant reader, and infrequent commenter, to this blog, and a person who would rather avoid unpleasant confrontations than seek them out, I think I understand where you are coming from.
However, when you hear (uhm, read) angry and insulting words, it’s important to have an idea of what it is that motivates the use of such words. For example, I know many people who refused to listen to comedians like George Carlin simply because he used such “filthy” language – which is one of the reasons Carlin, a student of the use of language, spoke the way he did in his act. He wanted to cut through any niceties, he wanted to shock people into paying attention, and he was a contrarian par excellence. Did this turn some people off? Of course – but I would say (without a shred of empirical evidence, mind you) that those same people would have been turned off by his overall message anyway.
Do regular Pharyngula commenters sometimes wax profane and personal? Sure. But ask yourself why? If I may use another example to illustrate my point, this one from personal experience:
When I taught in a public school, I needed to explain the same material, over and over again, to people (students) who were generally ignorant (in terms of their not knowing the information I was imparting) and who often asked the same questions, also over and over again, stemming from that ignorance. Do you have any idea the kind of frustration that builds up during even a single day of this? (In my opinion, one must be extraordinarily patient to be a teacher.)
Now, most of the regulars here – very intelligent people, many of them teachers in their own right – see the same arguments, again presented from ignorance, over and over again. The level of frustration only increases when people try to speak authoritatively on subjects they can be demonstrably shown to be not only ignorant of, but willfully ignorant of.
As usual, I can’t be pithy, so here’s the point I’m trying to make: taking offense at the tone of some of the commenters here ignores not only the substance of what they are trying to say, but also the fact that many of them are actually, in my opinion, arguing in good faith – they really are trying to point people to information (and often include links or references to sources). Do they sometimes do that rudely? Sure. But generally speaking, on this board, those who object to the tone of the commenters (you excluded) aren’t going to be convinced by nicely-worded arguments either.
And to this:
This must be qualified. Again referring to my former students, the level of frustration is tempered by the fact of their being ignorant. But when confronted with willful ignorance, I don’t blame people for letting the nastiness fly. Would you not agree that there is a definite difference between the two?
National Geographic focuses on polygamists:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2010/02/polygamists/anderson-text/1
Good photos, as one would expect. You can certainly see the spectacular proposed wilderness area that is north of Colorado City/Hilldale on the Utah/Arizona Border. This is the community that my brother Leland and I drove through looking for trailheads that led up onto the plateau.
It looks like Nat Geo got inside access that is rare. Excerpt:
I am glad that others with saintlier patiences and more sparsely populated killfiles were on hand to note Walton’s concern.
some unusual Rwandan coffee – Walton
Hmm, I haven’t heard it called that before!
Knockgoats: You what?
The substance to which I refer is, in fact, coffee. From Rwanda. I was not making a veiled reference to illegal narcotics, sex, or anything else that might merit the use of a euphemism. I’m not that imaginative, nor is my life that exciting.
Just to make this entirely clear.
(Addendum to #263: It hadn’t even occurred to me that someone would read my post in that way. Apparently I’m rather naive. Note to self: think more carefully before posting.)
Yikes! I believe that’s the first time I’ve ever seen the Overlord type in allcaps. I felt a slight twinge of guilt and I didn’t even do anything wrong. (Aside from that little morse-code episode. Nothing happened and it will never happen again.)
# 263 Walton
“My mind is not working normally today (a friend of mine brought me back some unusual Rwandan coffee from a trip abroad, and it seems to have had a strange effect). :-)”
If coffee has strange effects on you and it is not a strange coffee, you would be wise to visit an MD. Just being concerned…
Walton, seeing that you cannot pick up on all of the humor used by the regulars, I am almost afraid to find out what you do find to be funny.
I was joking about the coffee having strange effects. I’m just a bit stressed and fed up with work (and, as I said earlier, I really want to go to the gym and haven’t been in two days). Nothing suspicious, weird or medically worrying.
I’m going to stop posting on this thread now, as this is degenerating into silliness. Please, go back to talking about bacon and Bigfoot, or whatever it is you were all discussing before.
Reminds me of a really bad work of fiction I read some years ago… a book called Neanderthal by John Darnton.
Interesting premise, bad science as I recall. But a fairly entertaining read, all in all.
But silliness is what I come for!
Well, that and the roasting Christians….tasty.
I’m going to stop posting on this thread now, as this is degenerating into silliness.
Silliness is not a form of degeneration. Dem’s fighting words. I will have to dispatch Bigfoot to find you and bury you in bacon. But only after Bigfoot forces you to consume two pots of Rwandan coffee.
Oh, wait, this could be more messy than silly.
Blind Squirrel, you are correct. I have confused scat/skat. Ah, the problems of spelling seldom used words phonetically in English…
Walton, most of the discussion on this thread has to do with the quality of evidence in order to be considered conclusive. It would be a very good read for you, as it is something you do need to be aware of. For example, the anti-AGW arguments are like MM’s sasquatch evidence. Looks on the surface to be something there, but when looked are harder, the holes appear, and a possible hoax is present. Compare that to the level of evidence we scientists want to conclude sasquatch exists. It isn’t a real high bar, since a live animal isn’t required, but it does require hard evidence with preferably some DNA present to confirm where sasquatch would appear in the tree of life. This evidence could be published in the scientific literature. Which gives one a bit more confidence in the conclusions than something from a web site.
I love Doonesbury.
Bacon T-shirts:
h**p://www.snorgtees.com/baconmakeseverythingbetter-p-758.html
h**p://www.snorgtees.com/youhadmeatbacon-p-916.html
h**p://www.snorgtees.com/bisforbacon-p-1007.html
and paleontologically, the trike on a trike one is sorta funny once.
I love Doonesbury.
Stoopid bacon T-shirts:
snorgtees.com/baconmakeseverythingbetter-p-758.html
youhadmeatbacon-p-916.html
bisforbacon-p-1007.html
and paleontologically, the trike on a trike one is sorta funny once.
Point of info: trying to disguise links by replacing the Ts in ‘http’ with asterisks will get you moderated anyway.
One more for Teh CO.
Lynna (Molly thread)
Thank you for the Honorary Membership of the Wild Women of Pharyngula.
I hope I can live down to the privilege!
So… do sasquatch taste like bacon?
Walton@263,
I was joking! Sorry, when I joke with you, I’ll be sure to include a smiley! ;-)
BTW, if you’re going to be addicted to anything, exercise is about the best – recent work indicates that athletes who exercise hard over decades age more slowly (can’t find the ref. just now, but it stimulates production of telomerase and so slows telomere shortening).
Walton,
Every culture has its norms. Pharyngula is an evidence-based culture. Unbridled speculation presented without evidence will generally not be well received here.
What is more, Pharyngula attracts a very broad spectrum of people, so if you are knocking your pud on a particular subject, you’ll have a hard time keeping that a secret. Post bullshit about biology, evolution, etc. and any number of posters got your backside, which they will be happy to kick for you. Post woo about the 2nd law of Thermo or quantum mechanics or cosmology, I will be happy to politely tear you a brand new and fully functional asshole. Geology? Chemistry? Anthropology? Archaeology? Biblical Scholarship? Got you covered with biting sarcasm in response to all bullshit and woo.
When I post woo, I want you guys to call me on it. Keep me fucking honest, goddammit. And if you can do it with a little bit of humor at my expense, so much the better. I’m a big boy. I’ll get over it.
I don’t know if you have noticed, but Pharyngula is a rather unique oasis on the intertubes. PZ has a very light hand here–unedited commenting, removing only complete idiots like GWIAS. Have you looked in on other unmonitored sites of late? The idiots have taken over completely. Anything to do with climate science is immediately dismissed by half a dozen idjits. Evolution? The creationists are on it like white on rice. Here, they are free to try, but usually retreat from the hornet’s nest fairly quickly.
If it comes down to a choice between civility and a bullshit-free oasis, I’ll kiss off civility.
OK, I’m going to the gym now. I was intending to start an essay this afternoon, but have been completely and utterly unable to concentrate (and may have to stay up all night later in the week to get it done). I don’t know quite what’s wrong with me today.
Some days you just wake up grumpy… go sweat it off… you’ll feel better.
I know that my twice a week volleyball matches almost always erase my pissier moods. I think it’s the release of competitive aggression in addition to the pure workout, though…
#248 Janine etc.
Much to my surprise, I really enjoyed that Cream song. Thanks for putting it up. Was the lead guitarist Eric Clapton?
So… two comments after I write “I can see the next thread coming on the horizon”, exactly that happens. I seem to be getting good at this.
I’d also like to point to this blog post about the Patterson/Gimlin film again, though neither it nor the comments mention the admission by Heironimus.
(…Heironimus? Seriously? Is that the fault of some moron on Ellis Island?)
Exactly. “Associated” means that the bones of one individual form one single heap, “articulated” means the bones stay together like in life.
The one that Jadehawk suggested to Alan B and Josh in comment 154.
<sigh>
Can’t you see it’s a parsimony argument?
Opinions disagree as to how easy it would be for a population of big apes to hide in that kind of forest; there are no bones; the Patterson/Gimlin film has come into doubt; footprints can be faked; and so on. Can you really not see why so many people conclude the most parsimonious hypothesis is that there simply is no sasquatch?
At the same time, falsification trumps parsimony. A corpse would convince everyone, or at the very least everyone on this thread. Do you really not understand this?
Hang on a second.
We have sasquatch crap?
Where the fuck is the Sasquatch Fucking Genome Project?!?!?
Really? I remember seeing one on TV that was… like… in color and stuff. I’m also told much higher resolution is available.
Here is a color version, with a part taken out and played backwards and forwards several times at the end of the video.
youtube.com/watch?v=IJjUt2sXo5o&feature=related
Also… youtube.com/watch?v=r5tvXoGQ4UI&feature=related
<facepalm>
The lie detector measures whether you’re excited. Not whether you’re lying. If you can lie in cold blood, it’ll let you pass. If you say the truth, but are scared, it’ll convict you.
That’s why it’s forbidden to use this thing in court in much or all of Europe.
“Potentially dangerous”… it’s said to be rather on the shy side of things, and I don’t think anyone has ever claimed to have been attacked by a bigfoot.
There are bears in those places, and if they aren’t dangerous enough to warrant carrying rifles around, the sasquatches sure ain’t!
Bears.
Why would anyone need to invent yet another incentive for children not to run off into those woods?
He stretches his knees. The Alleged Sasquatch doesn’t ever do that. Also, his arms are shorter (TAS has arms more like mine).
You can see the face? In that video? What have you smoked???
What do you mean by “truly sure”? You’re hardly increasing traffic, as anyone could have guessed; and what comes through of your thought patterns is completely consistent with your previous behavior and quite different from PZ’s. By far the most parsimonious hypothesis, thus, is that you’re not PZ. :-|
Why would the reports have to match that route?
Of the physical evidence, only the so far entirely absent fossil bones would have to match it.
:-D
It’s frustration.
We’ve all seen it before so often – the arguments listed in the Index to Creationist Claims and strikingly often in the “Lists of Arguments We Think Creationists Should Not Use” by Answers in Genesis and creation.com. The Dunning-Kruger effect. The logical fallacies. Everything.
We simply lose our patience after some time. Some sooner (truth machine), some later (Gregory Greenwood), but we all do. We just haven’t undergone the kolinahr.
Also, different people react to tone in different ways. Some flee at the slightest hint of unpleasantness. Others only take arguments seriously if they’re presented and defended in a way that makes clear the presenter is serious. There are even deconversion stories by people who say they were deconverted by being laughed at. People are too diverse for any one strategy to have the same effect on all.
The only evidence for a suit being involved is Heironimus’ admission, and the film itself argues against that (see the first link in this comment, and this: youtube.com/watch?v=r5tvXoGQ4UI&feature=related). If it’s faked, it could be a rather oddly proportioned guy with thin strips of fur glued to his body, but a suit would be very difficult to square with the film.
Someone should try to remake the Patterson/Gimlin film with someone who has
bacon glued to their nipplesstrips of fur glued everywhere. Has never been tried. Remaking it with a guy in a suit has been tried several times, and looks pathetic each time.I don’t know what you mean. Anyway, biological nomenclature is fixed (Palaeotis, but Paleothyris, because that’s how they were spelled in the original publications), and the rest is left to everyone’s preferences.
(…And a diphthong is one vowel transitioning to another so that both fit in the same syllable. That’s a matter of phonetics, not of spelling. Almost every English “long” vowel is a diphthong; æ isn’t.)
But… but… we are scientists. We have SIWOTI syndrome. We won’t let our friends keep being demonstrably wrong – that would be a serious disservice to them!
See comment 238.
Alan B, (@252), I will try some Earl Grey tea for my afternoon tea. Good idea. Though the Grand Marnier sounds more appealing. :)
I know you wanted the subject dropped, but I feel the urge to comment on it anyway:
for one, those religionists and creationists who come here with honest questions get honest and polite responses; see , for example. It’s only those that come here making arrogant, offensive claims and insult us that get the same thrown at them. And their lack of use of certain words doesn’t make them polite, just passive-aggressive.
secondly, from experience of many discussion threads with creationists I can say that those posters who remain polite (by the creobots definition) aren’t listened to, either; they merely risk being proselytized at.
thirdly, even out in meatspace, politeness is not always the way to go. This may be less of an issue in Britain where atheists aren’t a minority that’s rather heavily discriminated against, but it certainly matters in the US. We’ve had quite a few discussions about how demands for politeness from the oppressors are just a way to put the Uppity [place minority here] down. The accomodationist approach doesn’t show any more success than the confrontational one, as far as I can see.
forthly, religionists confuse politeness with immunity from criticism; they’ll be just as offended, insulted etc as they are by our choice of words. just remember the various reactions to the Atheist Bus campaigns! The religionists were offended! the atheists were attacking their faith! they were being intolerant! so yeah, being more polite with them isn’t gonna help; what they really want is for us to shup up and sit down.
oh look, weird link-fail. oh well, nothing essential got cut out, and the link works.
*goes off to find more hot tea with honey*
@282
Them’s alot of words.
For the purpose of getting a look at the animal, the image stabilization is much more useful than the color IMO. All of these versions are zoomed way in, btw, (here os the original clip) and I seriously doubt that much higher resolution could be coaxed out of 8mm film. (even 16).
#234 Antiochus Epiphanes said:
I don’t think I’ve ever been called delightful before!!
Thinking of putting up a Kemist’s Korner* as soon as I can write it. There may be some more Geology and YEC faux geology in this incarnation of “The Thread”.
*Can you explain how salt works in melting ice and in freezing ice cream? I think I can explain it – unless everybody knows … If you can – give us a chance first – you can always tear it apart later.
Who is acting like a creationist again?
Rorschach @225
There’s lots of advise about how to deal with grizzly bear encounters. Most of it includes being polite, as in backing away slowly, giving way on trails, not making eye contact, speaking softly, etc. But if a bear has an impacted tooth or otherwise got up on the wrong side of den, you had better stand your ground with a gun or pepper spray because nothing is going to appease the beast. Because the beast is stronger, you need numbers of humans with you to even the odds, or you need a weapon such as knowledge — you need to watch for telltale signs, like chuffing, teeth-clacking, head-swinging, or the laying back of ears.
Every bear is different. They are individuals. There are no definitive answers. You judge the individual to the best of your ability and respond accordingly.
Little, polite warning bells do not work for any bears, do not work at all, nada — it’s a myth. Another myth is that most bears run from human. I’ve had personal encounters, close encounters, with 13 bears. Less than half ran away.
Interactions with black bears are usually different from interactions with grizzly bears. Know your bears. Adjust your avoidance and survival techniques according to the bear(s) in question, and according to the situation/environment. You can’t back so far down that you fall off a cliff.
Well, that extended analogy got out of hand. [slinks off]
[insert old joke about black vs. brown bear scat here]
That one did succeed, though. Don’t try to be snarky when you don’t feel like it – but when you feel like it, let nothing hold you back.
Do you seriously get runner’s high? That would be endorphines to make you stop feeling the pain and the exhaustion.
I find some bears to be quite enjoyable.
watch out Walton…those endorphins to which you are addicted are binding to opiate receptors…you’re getting a whisper of a heroin buzz there…careful now…
@ David Marjanović #282:
When I was looking on the interwebz earlier, I came across a claim that fur had been found from two individuals (black and brown) which allegedly didn’t match known life-forms and yet somehow didn’t have enough DNA for any sequencing to be done. Not particularly impressive.
If it bimbled through pre humans, the reports (pretty much nonexistant at the moment!) of finds (fossils, graves, tools or whatever) would have to match it. If it bimbled through with or post humans, then the human legend reports would have to reflect that.
Walton,
That sentence alone proves you desperately need to try at least one of those things, ;).
@188
lol — funny enough to read several times. I do loves me some whimsical jokes that require insider knowledge of geology.
Lynna (#212)
Oh, hell yes. And the plug in air fresheners, too. They don’t work to cover up smells unless you count making me stuffed up by setting off my allergies.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Celtic_Evolution (#238)
Pretty much the crux of it, if you ask me. If people have a problem with tone, they can point it out. When they do, often as not, they’re focusing on the presence of insults and swear words while being just as condescending and disrespectful themselves. Some merely are upset by people getting the verbal better of them and want to level the playing field. And then there are the Karen Armstrongs who thinks pretending all sides have something worth saying, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, makes talking about nonsense less pointless.
Given that offense is so personal, it might be an interesting study to see how on highly moderated message boards the censorship evolved to suit the collective sense of propriety. Or how much censorship vs. permissiveness influences the tone threshold of contributors to various blogs/boards. Do people here get less sensitive? Does hyper-moderation make people more sensitive? Etc.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Walton (#264)
Where’s the fun in that?
See, Walton? SIWOTI syndrome. ^_^
Bah, just over 5 screens. I’ve written many ten-screeners. That’s just what happens when I reply to an entire thread at once.
Yes…
David M @240
I love the T-shirt! lol. want badly. Is that you in the photo? The guy does have a big nose. ~:-)
Hehe… sometimes it’s the simplest jokes that give me the best chuckles…
Could depend on the mode of preservation… dried, sun-bleached, moldy, whatever… But hairs alone can be identified down to species by just looking at them under a microscope. If that had been done, had found a new species, and had been published, I’d know about it :-)
not him. and I know this because there is a photo of David M floating out there in the depths of the internet [/creepy]
Wait…
Ok… I lost the pace of the conversation, there… I thought David M was answering the question affirmatively and then leaving off the explanation intentionally to be funny… re-reading the conversation between them, I’m not sure it was intended as such…
Oh well, I thought it was funny anyhow.
Alan B
Practice, Alan B. Practice!
Janine, thanks for the Cream. You had me getting out the actual vinyl and cranking up an actual turntable. Nobody beats Cream.
No, the hair color is all wrong, and, erm, all the rest is, too :-)
I feel honestly flattered that you have bothered to look for one.
But <reaching through intert00bz, grabbing Jadehawk by shoulders, and shaking her> you must tell me where it is! :-) I have no idea where there could be one. I just double-checked: the only halfway logical place lacks one.
I know – I was the one who said so on the previous incarnation of the thread! That’s why the absence of proper publication for everyone to see (regardless of any DNA failure) is so unimpressive.
It wasn’t. I did leave the response off deliberately, but that’s because of the “give us a chance first” part.
…Not that I understand why Alan B speaks of himself in the plural, though.
pffft, and deprive any other potential cyberstalkers of the pleasure of finding it? I think not :-p
…Not that I understand why Alan B speaks of himself in the plural, though.
Gollum speaks of himself in the plural. Could have Alan B lost his precious?
There are too many David Marjanovićs on the web! How do we know which one is him? This will take a little work…
maybe he’s including Ed?
n00b
ok, I’ll stop bragging about my stalkerific google-fu now :-p
No, seriously, drop me an e-mail. I want to know if it’s really me, and how old it is, that kind of thing.
Oh, that makes sense.
Srsly?
OK, there is a guy with my name at the same bank who lives in southern France, but apart from that… My surname isn’t especially rare in Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, but my first name is, so the combination shouldn’t be common.
As, everybody knows by now, not only are the mormons anal-retentive when it comes to controlling their members, they also think they can control the actions of people leaving their church.
There’s a great post on exmormon.org today that includes some telling details about how frustrating the procedure can be when members try to leave the LDS Church. Basically, the church’s head honchos will do anything to get enough information to send the local Bishop and Stake President
gunning for your hide, umm, to talk things over with you. Excerpts:David – actually, it is fairly common – you don’t seem like a Facebook kind of guy, but there are 7 of you there already. :)
Jadehawk – I’m sure I could narrow it down fairly easily, just haven’t put in the effort. I was just surprised that so many dopplegängers showed up.
I’ve now been to the gym and run two miles on the treadmill, and feel somewhat better.
Sorry to anyone I annoyed earlier. Today has not been my day. I intended to start work on an essay, which I have not done due to procrastinating all afternoon.
People are still surprised when Walton gets his feelings hurt and posts another concern trolling screed? Just because it only happens every month or so doesn’t mean it’s a surprise when it happens…
#282 David Marjanović
The Concise Oxford Dictionary, Ninth Edition, definition of “diphthong*”:
1. a speech sound in one syllable in which the articulation begins as for one vowel and moves towards another (as in coin, loud and side).
2a. a diagraph representing the sound of a diphthong or single vowel (as in feat)
2b. a compound vowel character; a ligature (as æ)
* Your spelling is correct, mine was in error.
I was using the word diphthong in the sense of 2b.
Found one! Not a great shot, though. Too dark and far away. Could be a different one than Jadehawk found.
Is this like hunting for a sasquatch?! Do we get to compare fur, gait and DNA samples next to determine which are the real ones?
Contender for the best paper title of 2003:
Yang Ziheng & Anne D. Yoder: Comparison of likelihood and Bayesian methods for estimating divergence times using multiple gene loci and calibration points, with application to a radiation of cute-looking mouse lemur species, Systematic Biology 52(5), 705–716
Disappointingly, however, all three figures show unadorned cladograms. :-(
<headdesk>
You’re right, I’m not a Facebook member and don’t intend to ever join either it or Myspace or anything similar.
Interesting. Never encountered sense 2 before.
(I do hope 2a says “digraph” rather than “diagraph”, which doesn’t exist?)
~:-|
There are any photos of me from too far away? Even in meatspace I’m not aware of any.
:-) :-) :-)
Fur sample.
New update, unveiling a cleaner, more streamlined, more sophisticated look that I think you’ll like. *wink*
*giggle*
I did send you that e-mail, in case you haven’t noticed (or in case gmx once again swallowed it whole and you never got it)
Hello PZ and Pharynguloids!
long time reader, first time commenter.
not sure if this is the right thread but lets see.
I saw PZ’s lecture on design vs chance and i have a question about the Receptor tyrosine kinase (boy it took forever to find how to spell that from listening to PZ).
if this protein tells cells around it which type of cell they should be, how do the cells connecting the various organs know not to change? how does the kidney for example not grow infinitely?
i get that whatever mechanism that does this is the one at fault in many (or all?) cases of cancer but i wanted to get some more detail on this.
i’ll add that i have no real knowledge in biology but my wife does so feel free to go all sciency in your replies :)
thanks!
Amir
#323 David Marjanović
Yes, it did say “digraph”. The Rev has been tinkering with my keyboard again.
I suspect usage 2b will die once those who were taught that meaning at school (probably including the editors of the Oxford Dictionary) have shuffled off this mortal coil. “Ligature” (Printing) 2 or more letters joined is also in the Oxford Concise.
Antiochus Epiphanes@234:
blf to ego, blf to ego, please return to base…
If you’re trying to wrangle a place to crash in South France, you’re doing a good job.
Thanks.
@324, very nice, Sven. Even with the ugly vestige, it’s quite clear. I applaud your refusal to bow to the Overlord.
#309 David Marjanović said:
Explanations so far:
#311 Janine, Mistress Of Foul Mouth Abuse, OM
H’m. Lost his precious mind / marbles?
#313 Jadehawk, OM
Ah, this sounds like there could be an element of truth (just an element, not a whole Periodic Table – sorry, chemist’s joke. [Ed. Chemist? Yes. Joke? …?])
It’s the royal we, closely followed by the royal flush!
#309 David Marjanović said:
Explanations so far:
#311 Janine, Mistress Of Foul Mouth Abuse, OM
H’m. Lost his precious mind / marbles?
#313 Jadehawk, OM
Ah, this sounds like there could be an element of truth (just an element, not a whole Periodic Table – sorry, chemist’s joke. [Ed. Chemist? Yes. Joke? …?])
TRUE REASONS:
“Give us a job/quid/money for a Rolls Royce etc., mate” is a common cockney, Eastend of London, expression. Usually aimed at someone of a higher social standing in the hopes that the [higher] other will treat the person with kindness because they are just like them but fallen on hard times.
OR
It’s the royal we(e), closely followed by the royal flush!
did did you you just just say say that that twice? twice?
Ignore previous post.
Oh dear, Oh dear! Not my day [Ed. But it’s his fingers!] Shut up, Ed.
#309 David Marjanović said:
Not that I understand why Alan B speaks of himself in the plural, though.
Explanations so far:
#311 Janine, Mistress Of Foul Mouth Abuse, OM
#313 Jadehawk, OM
Ah, this sounds like there could be an element of truth (just an element, not a whole Periodic Table – sorry, chemist’s joke. [Ed. Chemist? Yes. Joke? …?])
TRUE REASONS:
“Give us a job/quid/money for a Rolls Royce etc., mate” is a common cockney, Eastend of London, expression. Usually aimed at someone of a higher social standing in the hopes that the [higher] other will treat the person with kindness because they are just like them but fallen on hard times.
OR
It’s the royal we(e), closely followed by the royal flush!
David – also sent link by email, assuming that was the right address.
Very sniny, Sven! I get endless chuckles from the spat you have with the ECO over the anastomosing of The Thread.
Alan B’s not only lost his marbles, someone’s made them into a voodoo doll and now has control of both Alan and Ed.
It’s the royal we(e), closely followed by the royal flush!
See the glory of the royal scam.
SEF, hi,
*Sigh* obscure film reference fail. In which film was the protagonist offered a choice between taking a blue pill and a red pill, and what would have happened had he taken the blue one like mythusmage did this morning?
Then I’m going to guess the film’s The Matrix; but I haven’t seen it so I have no idea which pill allegedly did what or even that there was more than one pill and that it was a choice. The other pill references would be literature ones.
David Marjanovi?
I’m not sure about the warning thing but it seems to be part of the tale (my perception of it at least) and I offer it as an example of how childish belief in Bigfoot is. Bears are not humanoid enough (can’t throw things or kidnap you) or rare enough in Sasquatch country (no mystery unless the bear is a giant or something peculiar). I’m not sure where you have heard that Sasquatch are peaceful, and I believe that one of unique the things that Harry and the Hendersons did was turn the fear of a Sasquatch attack on its head, making Harry into a gentle giant. You have reminded me of another aspect of the Bigfoot mythos which is the tall tale or the attainment of secret knowledge which pays off well for bullshitters.
#355 blf
We deny it … don’t we Ed.?
Ed. Ed. You can’t leave me now … Agh!!
I’m being taken over by the Pharyngulite Zombies©
No. It’s not them. It’s worse than that, Jim, it’s …, it’s …, it’s the other Alan.
Will Alan B escape?
Will Ed. come to his rescue?? [Ed. Not a chance!]
Will “Share and Enjoy” ever be the same???
Does anyone care?
And the Universe said, “No!”
See our next exciting episode of “Alan B, Special Chemist” in “The Thread That Will Not Die!”
Or not if you can’t be bothered!
Fair enough. I don’t like to spoil plots on people, so we’ll leave it at that.
When you’re speed dating, you’ve got to handle the big, hairy ones with kid gloves. If half of them are running away before you even get to talk to them, yer doin’ it wrong. I reckon it could be the stare.
What do you do if it’s small and flaccid?
Wow. 340 comments already, and already rank 9.2 in the “Top Posts” widget.
…So, I got an e-mail from a certain “Jadehawk ^_^” which informs me that photos from the 2009 dig in Krasiejów are online. I am indeed shown in at least two of them.
(I check my e-mail only once per day while at work, mainly to delete the spam. Now I’m at home and not limited to webmail. GMX doesn’t delete anything that’s not on my blacklist.)
Now, Jadehawk, is there a photo of you somewhere? Or should I not bother launching images.google.com…?
Carlie also found me – one of the participants in the dig was also present at the 5th Symposium on Permo-Carboniferous Faunas and took a photo of me from behind. But beware! In that photo there’s a very strange reflection on my sniny hair that looks like naked skin… like a rift between two continents… <headshake>
Sounds like a good point.
That reminds me of one of my fav Hunter S. Thompson quotes, from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:
“I tend to sweat heavily in warm climates. My clothes are soaking wet from dawn to dusk. This worried me at first, but when I went to a doctor and described my normal daily intake of booze, drugs and poison he told me to come back when the sweating stopped.”
…while we’re waiting for some creotard or AGW-denier to stumble onto this thread. Just to pass the time, like.
David
Krasiejów 2009 – picture of you with Jakub and Daniel.
Duh! by the time you get a comment on, someone has already beaten you to it…
see, this is why i didn’t want to send you the pictures. spoilsport :-p
upon googling myself, I have discovered that most images are by me, not of me. I found two though: one from 10 years ago, and another from Halloween 2008 :-)
also, “Silesaurus opolensis” is an awesome name. I shall have to visit that excavation site someday, since it seems only a few hours from where my dad lives
News just in;
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/gay_teen_worried_he_might_be
Generally, I assume it’s a priest, then point and laugh.
Yes. Who are you? Do I know you?
I’ll try to participate in the dig again this summer. If they still take me (in theory it’s only for students, and by then I’ll most likely have my doctorate, though I’ve seen exceptions), I might be able to bring a friend (that seems to happen a lot)…
…?
Oh. Have I made searching too easy? You see, I have a phobia of misunderstandings, so I wanted to make sure that anyone here who finds those photos knows it really is me. After all, as I have learned, there is potential for confusion.
Bizarrely, I found only one.
Your drawings remind me of my uncle’s. He makes storyboards and got involved in Star Wars. Incidentally, his name is probably nigh ungoogleable (he’s my biological aunt’s husband, so he doesn’t share my surname).
Understand I’m not an expert on breasts, pendulous or otherwise, but the idea that another great ape species would have the same kind of sexual selection as h sap sap while not having the same selection for hairlessness seems weird to me.
And that one looks big, but in fact it’s so small that you could look like three or four entirely different people I know! :^)
…and, especially, that anyone who finds photos of someone else can figure out they’re not of me.
I’ve watched a bunch of the bigfoot movies on youtube and I now believe…
…it is Patricia’s hairy-assed brother, Ed.
I suspect that trying to coordinate that with my only visit to Europe this year (i.e. during the worldcup) would be impossible, since I can’t just stay in Europe for several months. I’ll go broke if I don’t get any work done for that long, and for some reason I don’t get any work done when not at home.
yes. where’s the fun in cyberstalking if you’re going to hand out the information just like that? :-p
well, they’re avatars/profile pics, so of course they’re tiny.
come to think of it, it’s rather amusing and weird that there aren’t any more pictures of me, since I have a Webshots account.
You wouldn’t understand! You’re just a cog in the socio-normative, oppressive machine.
If it’s the one on the site I found, the label has your names.
#207 SEF
Better late than never
http://www.finecheese.co.uk/cheese-wedding-cakes.html
Enjoy
I have returned, mostly refreshed with the Diabetes Type 2 and all (taking metformin for it). Since we’re just going round and round on sasquatch I’m going to lay out my thinking on the subject.
1. I am convinced there are native North American apes (hominids maybe) roaming the countryside.
2. I am convinced by the Patterson/Gimlin film from 1967.
3. I am frustrated that better evidence has not been found yet.
4. I am ticked at those assholes manufacturing fakes that poison the subject.
5. I’m certain that science and believers alike could be handling the matter much better than they are now.
That said, what do I think is the most likely manner in which the sasquatch will be discovered will occur like this:
We start by considering the fact that between births and immigration the United States has a growing population over all. There are locations, entire states even, where the population is declining, but otherwise we’re adding people on a daily basis.
More people means more development. Even in rugged terrain as is found in Maine and Alabama (and Washington State, but mentioning that would be sort of cliche in an essay like this). More development means more buildings, in more places. The extension of Man’s footprint into once wilderness areas.
With our extended presence in the world has come a corresponding counter movement of the world into our domain. Bears and deer are now traipsing into suburbia in the Eastern US. Here in Southern California reports of cougar sightings (the cat, not the randy broads) in neighborhoods has increased. As human development continues to expand, and sasquatch habitat continues to shrink, I see a day when the animal may well decide to see what it’s like in the human world and go sightseeing.
That is how I see the sasquatch being discovered; when a young adult male decides to scope out human territory and is observed by the neighborhood residents. He may be recorded on video or photograph. He may interact with some humans. This first “close encounter of the third kind” will no doubt be dismissed as a fraud. But should our young explorer may decide to return, and may even by emulated by other young male sasquatch, and their adventures will be recorded.
Records of their visits, and records of their appearance. Which will include comprehensive looks at their anatomy, including their junk. Their package, their flugelhorn, their genitalia. The hoaxers tend to omit that in their costumes?
Then comes the day when a sasquatch tourist takes a dump on camera. (Like he knows what a camera is, or has any idea what the taboo against public shitting is all about.)
And speaking of shit, with sasquatch traipsing around suburbia there will be many opportunities to collect fecal samples. And hair samples. And samples of skin, blood, and other substances. Sasquatch start touring human lairs forensic evidence will be widely available.
Yes, I know that this all depends on the existence of sasquatch. I’m also aware that there is little evidence of any sort pointing to that existence, and what evidence as does exist may have an alternate explanation or be faked. Still and all, what with the present situation it may be such a scenario that leads to the formal discovery and naming of the sasquatch.
We’ll just have to wait and see if it occurs.
BTW, I am aware that the above is an open ended prophesy. It could happen tomorrow, it could happen a century from now. It could be happening right now, we just haven’t heard about it. It may never happen at all and we’ll learn for certain and for sure that the sasquatch does not exist (evidence of absence you know). All I can ask for is patience and forbearance on your part. I hope the above helped clear things up regarding my sasquatch stance and gave you something to think about.
@ SteveV #358:
Those aren’t so much cakes as they are mere piles of cheeses with flowers on! :-D
muthusmage – Why do you dismiss all of the evidence presented that the Patterson film is a hoax?
mythusmage (#359)
Enough with the mental diarrhea. Fulfill my simple request from #135. Give evidence that anyone is actually saying* that “the lack of evidence means we can’t go looking.”
……………………
*If you’re not sure what I mean, refer to #150.
mythusmage,
The metaphorical sasquatch has been well and truly beaten to death at this stage in the proceedings. You may feel re-invigorated, but we don’t.
Now for some observations regarding Jesus of Nazareth.
1. Jesus existed.
2. He was born in the village of Nazareth in Galilee, birth date unknown.
3. His parents were Joseph and Mary (Yosif and Miriam if you must).
4. Joseph and Mary had premarital sex, the result of which was Jesus. (Yes, I am aware that the Jewish community of the time had rules against premarital sex, but people don’t always follow the rules.)
5. It was a shotgun wedding. Mary’s family confronted Joseph’s family and they came to an agreement whereby Joseph agreed to wed the despoiled Mary.
6. After some years of unhappy marriage — and a few more kids after Jesus — the two divorced and Mary returned to her family for support. (This would go a long way towards explaining Jesus’ antipathy to the institution of divorce.)
7. Jesus did think he was the Messiah. (He knew nothing of this Christ critter, which is a different thing than a Messiah.) Jesus was wrong.
8. During his vigil at Gethsemane he realized just how wrong he was, but decided to stay and face the music because he thought God demanded it of him.
9. He was crucified, but he did not die. There were people who actually survived crucifixion and went on to live for years. Crucifixion did not kill you quickly, it killed you slowly with the end coming by strangulation.
10. He awoke in his tomb, thinking he had been raised from the dead by God. Not knowing the true extent of his injuries he went gallivanting around talking to people and bleeding. Naturally he collapsed and died for real as he was walking with his followers discussing what they were to do next.
Note that there was no competent physician present at his crucifixion. Luke the Physician was hiding with the rest of Jesus’ followers, it was his family and personal friends who attended. Besides, I’d hardly call a lying bastard like Luke a competent physician. (Compare Matthew’s account of the Passion with Luke’s sometime. Luke fibbed is the nicest thing I can say about what he did.)
11. Jesus did say he was going to return someday. Jesus really believed that. Jesus was wrong. Not lying, wrong. He assumed things that were not so, and was shown to be in error.
12. Finally, Jesus could be a jerk. To his friends and admirers he could be gracious and charming, but to his enemies he could be a royal asshole. So remember the next time you hear the phrase “Prince of Peace”, remember that to people he didn’t like Jesus of Nazareth could be a sarcastic bastard.
You know, if you think about it, with Jesus’ visits to publicans and sinners and the spots they frequent, what was stopping him from schtupping a hooker or whore? Not being real people, sex with them wouldn’t count.
And there you have my observations on Jesus of Nazareth.
Yes.
No.
BS
MM, we don’t give a shit what you think or believe. Right now you are showing yourself in a very, very bad light for any future discussions here. Your credibility is heading into negative numbers, like godbots and creobots. So, either cite the peer reviewed scientific literature, or shut the fuck up. Welcome to science.
#361
Carlie,
Has that evidence been verified, or only attested to?
observation doesn’t work like that. those aren’t observations, those are speculations.
Walton is back in full swing with his remorse trolling I see.
allintext: walton – sorry | apologize site:scienceblogs.com/pharyngula
Hi Walton, we’ve never spoken but I’m speedweasel and I’m sick of reading your numerous apologies.
Could you knock it off please? Thanks.
When did ire and outrage become legitimate reasons to reject a proposition?
you confuse our feelings about you and your trolling with our feelings about the stuff you present here.
#366
Nerd,
In time the kidney stone will pass.
MM, let sasquatch, who never lived, die in piece (STFU about him). Quit trying to upset the applecart with inane speculation. We really don’t give a shit what you think with those airy (non-evidenced) speculations. Rehabilitate yourself. Start by taking your speculations elsewhere
Citation, please.
A much more parsimonious explanation, if we accept that a historical Jesus existed is that Jesus had a twin brother that the disciples dug out of some 0 century ale house, dried out and paraded around for a few days.
BS
#371
Sorry Jadehawk, but what I see is you confusing your feelings about me with your feelings about what I present. What I see is people saying, “This is wrong, the man is a jerk.” Equating the messenger with his message, and damning both because you don’t like what the message says. The existence of sasquatch will be proved or disproved on its own merits, on the evidence gathered whichever way it points.
You shant persuade me with invective and bile, but with facts and evidence. But first be sure your evidence says what you think it says, and has been proved itself.
You think that those are observations? I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
#360 SEF
Whadda yu mean ‘mere’
You some kind of cheese hater?
FYI they also sell bacon – really good bacon.
Sadly no nipples.
Fixed for accuracy.
On other subjects, just recently I saw something about a coming bout of rampant inflation. May happen, may not, but I have seen one sign of how this round may play out.
While shopping for comestibles at the neighborhood Ralphs (Southern California chain owned by Krogers) I spotted a price change on two liter sodas. The recommended retail stayed at $1.99, but the discounted price had risen from $1.25 to $1.79.
That got me to thinking, and my thinking is that this round of inflation will be marked by retailers and discounters raising prices, while the manufacturers will stay the course, and may even lower prices. Discounters, such as groceries, will reduce their discounting and prices at the store will come more in line with retail pricing.
There is also the possibility I’m wrong and the manufacturers will start raising prices themselves. Time will tell.
Any chance of a link to the Cheese Shop Sketch?
speedweasel, believe it or not, calling me a “remorse troll”, after all the years I’ve been here, actually hurts. If you don’t like my posts, don’t read them.
Yes, I apologise a lot. I will admit to this failing; it follows from the fact that I get things wrong on a regular basis, and that I am aware of my own mistakes. Apparently this particular character flaw makes me a “remorse troll” and means that nothing I say is worth taking seriously. This is something I never realised.
#377
SteveV,
SEF impugned cheese? :rage: Why that cad, that bounder, that hamster! Impugn cheese? He may as well as declare the pizza unfit for human consumption!
Mere cheese indeed.
#381
Walton,
After all the creationists and God annoyers that have visited here it becomes easy for some to yell “troll”. Outrage and frustration ends up hurting those outraged.
mythusmage, your perceived persecution doesn’t make you into a Jesus.
People don’t like you and your postings for very simple reasons.
You are not offering anything new and useful about Sasquatch. You are just rambling on about what you think, and you don’t seem to think very well.
You are talking down to folks–don’t do that–by telling them what and how to think–don’t think that helps your case–like some sort of superior jerk. I am just trying to help you out, here, because you make me feel all maternal, you little fuzzy lumpkin, you, sweetikins.
You won’t listen, read or shut the hell up.
You believe in Sasquatch, which pretty much makes you a crazy person. This is not a crazy person site, nor a believer site.
Most folks here see little probablity that Saquatch exists, and great probablity that everybody who has “evidence” is a hoaxer and that everyone who believes that evidence is making a mistake, and is probably not qualified to participate in an intellectual discussion.
Trolls, on the other hand, exist. At least the internet variety. You, mythusmage, are very probably a troll. You are certainly in the wrong place.
all the years I’ve been here
has it been that long?
OTOH, sure seems that way whenever i see you post your endless ignorant drivel.
I get things wrong on a regular basis, and that I am UNaware of my own mistakes.
fixed that for you.
It would just be two weeks. The FIFA World Cup® ends on… <wikipedia> July 11th; one such time slot should start around July 15th.
“vanitas” isn’t a name.
<think, think>
Dawid Mazurek? That kind of throwing Latin words around looks a bit like him. Sort of. And the two one-liners don’t contradict that. Cześć, Bosmanie! <wave> :-)
“Observations”, or “Jesus of Nazareth”? :-)
The speculative scenario you unfold is entirely possible*, but there’s no evidence for it whatsoever, and it’s not even terribly parsimonious. I will therefore blithely ignore it.
* Except for one problem: how does one get out of that kind of tomb without several people rolling the stone away?
@ SteveV #377:
I mean not made into cakes (those spongy and generally sweet flavoured things) as one of several ingredients. Those cakes of cheese you found are more along the lines of cakes of soap (which are just moulded soap).
Even his Jebus plot is a repeat. Research. Keeps one from reinventing the wheel…
OK, well, the angels rolling away the stone really happened, but the rest was a Big Hoxe!
<sigh>
Then look again.
Off-topic:
“I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.”
– Stephen Hawking
mythusmage (#375)
These “conclusions” and “feelings” you refer to are the product of your imagination. You’re trying to make us doubt something you invented. If you weren’t a coward, you could quote someone saying something like “the lack of evidence means we can’t go looking.” (Doesn’t have to be those exact words.) I should think, given how many words you’ve already wasted on this, that you would want to make sure you understand how we feel.
Huh? No, I meant that vanitas could have just read the names listed below the pic, like I did. (I have no idea – vanitas could know you, but one wouldn’t have to to describe the picture that way. Were you going by the fact that vanitas referred to you by your first names? I’m confused.)
Deep cover concern troll gotcha @216!
OTOH, pharynguloids all have their own personalities and act and react as the current situation arises. C’est la vie.
Here’s something to be outraged by…
Pumping Autistic Children Full of an Industrial Chelator
Read the whole thing, and write to the FDA or your country’s equivalent about this crime.
dude, vanitas could be anybody; the picture is labeled with your names (and you look nerdy as all get-out!)(tee-hee!)
Walton have you been tested for PMS?
PZ will be :< about having to put up another endless thread in a couple days.
….Oh, I get it.
:| about making a new Endless thread so soon, then. Apparently you can’t use open Lesser Signs in emoticons here?
@ Rutee #398:
You can but you have to know what you’re doing.
<•##
<><
Since they are used for the HTML tags, no. < Done using ampersandLT.
The answer is, or should be, common knowledge:
Sasquatch migrated to North America riding on invisible flying pink unicorns.
Don’t forget: Blessed are the cheesemakers
Cheese shop sketch
Pick your favorite version:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cheese+shop+sketch&search_type=&aq=f
Damn, I wish Walton had come back to discuss tone rather than mythusmage coming back to discuss Big Feet.
Hmmm…
Santa’s reindeer :: invisible flying pink unicorns
Santa’s helpers :: Sasquatch
Santa :: Wild Uncle Bill with a .30-06
I think I’ve finally caught up, but missed a few comments due to hiding from the tone police. David Marjanović, OM, are you the one kneeling down on the right hand side of a group photo linked to above?
My mam makes good scones with grated cheese through them. You gotta use a hard cheese that won’t be too badly cooked and roll the grated cheese in. Never had both cheese and fruit in a scone, tho.
There are some contests which one has no choice but to engage in, but cannot be won solely by playing nice. A vital part of winning any PR battle is convincing those who had not previously taken a side, that if they take the side of your enemies, their reputation will be damaged. It is very important to convince all onlookers that if they agree with the creationists, the anti-vaxers, the AGW-denialists, or the anti-science groups, they will be seen as either deluded, dishonest, or stupid – and rightly so.
Want greater and less than signs? Use:
< instead of <
> instead of >
And because I’m an idiot, it took ages to figure out how to get < to show up instead of <. I only stared at the ampersand entity for ampersand itself for forever before* realizing I use it to replace the ampersand in <. Now it’s so obvious I want to cry.
…………………
*Hmm, the for’s is strong with this sentence.
In meatspace I’m generally a polite, soft-spoken, mannerly man even when I’m disagreeing with someone. On the intertubes I’m somewhat cruder, although I try to be polite when the person I’m addressing is making an honest effort to discuss rather than rant or proselytize.
In discussions on Pharyngula there are generally two things that set me off:
(1) The creotard who says “evilution is on its last legs and is only sustained by dogmatic fervor from atheists” probably believes it. The creotard rarely if ever will look at evidence to show this belief is wrong. Willful ignorance makes me rude, crude and socially unacceptable.
(b) I get quite annoyed by people who tell me what I think and why I think it. “Yer a atheist ’cause you hate gawd” will get scorn as a response.
That seems to be a common problem. Quite recently someone else (I think!) was annoyed with themselves for having to have the ampersand for ampersand thing pointed out to them.
Meanwhile, other people get annoyed if you do pre-emptively point out the obvious.
You don’t say.
:)
If you had seen any good movies, the answer would be obvious to you: zombies are really fucking strong.
Over 400 comments in a thread I just opened yesterday? Yikes.
People, please!
There is a simple, obvious compromise solution to this Deep Rift ™ that is plaguing us:
The video is indeed a hoax; the Patterson-Gimlin video is indeed also a hoax. But Bigfoot hoaxes have a purpose. They are part of a disinformation campaign waged by and for Bigfeet (or Sasquatch-Americans).
The point is not to convince humans (Homo [so-called] sapiens) that Sasquatch-Americans (Homo maxipodus) are real, but rather that Sasquatch-Americans are no different from humans in furry suits.
Yes, this is somewhat demeaning to them, for now. But they want to be able to stand up for their rights in court and be considered as human as Diné, Cymry, or Suomalaiset.
They have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”
But first they have to be considered to be exactly equivalent to men.
Over 18,435 comments in a thread Teh CO just opened last February? Yikes.
I R laffin.
PS: “I believe the truth always lies halfway between the most extreme claims.”
Owlmirror, #416:
If it’s true that “the truth lies halfway between the most extreme claims”, then I am awfully confused.
Let’s say we start with an extreme claim. To get to the opposite extreme, we first have to get halfway there. One would think this is enough to get us to the TruthTM, but I’m afraid nothing is ever so simple. In order to get halfway there, we first must get to half of that distance (a quarter of the total distance from one extreme to the other), and so on ad infinitum. Clearly then it’s not important what the actual distance away from the TruthTM is or in what units it is measured. Therefore, unless we start exactly at the TruthTM, we can never arrive at the TruthTM.
Q.E.D., and stuff, etc.
I cannot possibly be the only one here who regularly reads xkcd.
Hi, Walton.
To a certain, limited, extent, I feel that you have a point. I, myself, have always felt that once you call someone an asshat, they stop listening to your logical, well-reasoned arguments; but I think that there’s an element of projection involved on my part, because I know that I tend to stop listening to yadda yadda, after they call me an asshat. But the thing is….your mileage may vary. And Lynna’s mileage may vary. And Sven’s, and Owlmirror’s….you get the picture. For dishing it out, as for taking it.
Not everyone is receptive to the same style, and I say, a good thing, too! Monocultures aren’t necessarily the healthiest cultures.
#408
Tis Himself,
What annoys me is being told how I must think. Outrage and ire are no way to get me to change my mind either.
BTW, I support your right to be a God denying, baby eating, Darwin adoring atheist.The lemur porn goes to far however.
You’re getting paid for our posts, right? Ka-ching!
cicely, JNOV came on here the other day and called himself/herself an asshat. That’s one way to get over it. I’m aiming for Petite Poopyhead.
In other news: Haitians everywhere are united by faith according to CNN. This coverage bugs me. It’s like seizing the opportunity to proselytize.
you’re not, but I do sometimes forget that there’s extra commentary when you hover the mouse over it :-)
Speaking of the Beast That Shall not be Named, here’s a Beast That Shall not be Named video from NatGeoTV. The episode itself is supposed to air on the 24th.
(Haven’t seen it myself, Safari keeps reloading the page, and I’m now waiting for Disk Utility to finished doing the checksum on my new harddrive, so Firefox is not available to me.)
You’ll pry my lemur porn from my cold, stiff hands.
News flash! Chupacabra discovered. Identified as Eddie’s cousin, Milton. Milton now undergoing treatment for his advanced exzema.
Update: Milton’s vampirism is proving resistant to treatment.
#425
Tis Himself
You ever wonder why your hands are cold and stiff?
Owlmirror:
You’re definitely not. I had thought it was a funny quote wherever you had come across it, but hadn’t gotten my dose of xkcd in at least 24 hours. My deepest apologies.
I don’t think that’s the most parsimonious compromise, though. Obviously, the government only used half the amount of explosives necessary to take down both towers, and it was an unfortunate coincidence that at exactly the same time the terrorists crashed the planes into them.
Mythus magoo: your first “observation” that Jesus existed is not substantiated by anything. A character named “Jesus” was mentioned in the Bible, and that’s all there is. You may as well be talking about Zeus or Poseidon. From there, it goes downhill.
Sorry, but Sasquatch/Bigfoot are “big” no-nos. Lemur porn is acceptable, however.
The BBC recently did an excellent program about chaos (in the mathematical meaning, not the colloquial). As stated at the beginning, the show is about the question “how did we get here?”, and it nicely concludes that chaos theory and evolution quite cleanly explain how systems with simple rules will manifest incredible complexity in entirely unpredictable ways. It’s something I expect many readers will enjoy, so I wanted to share it with you all.
I’m sorry if this isn’t the most appropriate place for this, but there hasn’t been a creationist thread in a while. Although, PZ could make a thread about this program…
MM, a word of advice. You are trying too hard to get a number of discussions going. Back off for at least one full day. Then, only try one topic, or join in what we start.
hmmm…. that might actually be doable. I shall have to think about it :-)
Sorry, that link failed. I’m new at this, so I’d appreciate suggestions. Until then…
joshua.dittrich:
No, this is an open thread. Pretty much anything goes, but your link is borked.
BS
Thanks for your posting, joshua.dittrich. I studied this stuff in grad school and one of the things I do for money is build models (of the mathematical variety). It’s of great interest to me, and I didn’t realize a televison program had been made about it.
If I had to venture a guess, I would say that MM has entered into a manic phase of his bipolar disorder.
And to jadehawk and David M, I have cut my Europe visit short and instead added a week of lavish decadence in Thailand to start the holiday off with, so I won’t be around until June 27, and then the schedule will be pretty tight until July 11.
For you vomit fetishists :
Palin on Beck
Having said that, the train from Cologne to Paris takes, what, 2 hours ? So not an issue really…:-)
you two are going to make me travel across half of Europe this summer, aren’t you? :-p
Anyway, let me know if you can make enough free time to watch one of the games and have some beers with me. Hannover to Cologne isn’t that horribly far, either :-)
Oh !!! Now that would be awesome…:-) My brother lives near Hannover, that’s really just a Katzensprung !
Haven’t had time to read all the comments in this thread. Hope this hasn’t already been posted repeatedly.
Satan’s reply to Pat Robertson.
Why does mm think anyone is interested in the random fanfiction he writes about leprechauns and Mithras? Sorry, bigfoot and Jesus.
The Astronomy Picture of the Day is interesting. It’s a Martian landscape that looks surrealistic.
Another example of where the UK bottlenecks are for medicine – over whether or not to make expensive treatments available at all (rather than rationing initial access to services based on wealth or possession of reluctant insurance!).
Yesterday I was helping a friend with his model railroad. He and I were detailing one section and he had a model of a man who was just perfect for the scene except it was looking in the wrong direction. So I put the model in a vise and was hacking off the head with a razor saw when our wives came in. The look on my wife’s face when she saw what I was doing was, um, interesting.
Here you go, Alan: Bigfoot in Oz?
#444
Wouldn’t it have been easier to just turn the model around, so the man looks in the right direction?
Here’s the (eminently sensible) Executive Summary:
Another link (with more numbers but also bonus spelling error).
Consider the case of a hypothetical person with rheumatoid arthritis who is one of those for whom other treatments won’t work but this one will. They are soon going to be so badly disabled without it that they will no longer be able to support themselves (or any family) – quite apart from all the pain they’ll be in. So it’s going to be on their personal must-have list.
The £9K cost per year is about a third of the average gross income here (with a third already going on various taxes) – the sort of income a well educated but undervalued person might get. It’s well over the minimum wage. So that cost would finish off most people’s budgets. The stinking rich proportion of the populace wouldn’t notice a problem of course. But I’m not sure whether anyone’s private health care insurance here would cover it.
So how would that example compare with the US? Would US health insurance cover that sort of drug at all – or have a convenient loop-hole for never actually paying out for it? Would it be too much for most of the population to afford in their own right (assuming they can gain access to it privately somehow). NB this is leaving aside the issue that many people in the US wouldn’t even be able to get as far as having the problem diagnosed in the first place because of the cost of that process being levied on the individual.
Re Rorschach’s link to Palin on Beck, Palin noted that it’s awful when we can’t trust what’s going on in the Whitehouse. She expressed fear (alarming eye-widening), outrage, and her usual bilious nature, … but no irony.
No, because then the body would have been facing the wrong direction. I cut the head off, rotated it 90°, and glued it back on.
Re SEF@448:
It depends entirely on the insurance company. Even the best plans typically have some limit on prescription drug coverage, usually amounting to a hard limit on the number of pills of any one drug that can be obtained monthly.
Some insurance plans offer no drug coverage at all or reserve the right to “substitute” generics for you. Your physician might prescribe drug X and the insurance company will tell the pharmacist to give you drug Y. This is almost universally the case with brand-name vs. generic drugs, despite some (so far not conclusive, afaik) evidence that some generic drugs differ in efficacy from their brand-name counterparts — anti-convulsants in particular.
The companies can also be stupidly retarded in their application of policies. My wife’s insurance policy paid nearly $8,000/month for her to receive treatment several times per week at her physician’s office rather than pay the $900/month that the medication recommended by the physician cost. They would pay for the medication and appointment if my wife received it at the physician’s office, but not if she picked it up at the pharmacy.
If an insurance company will pay for a drug, though, getting that payment is usually not a problem. Most pharmacies receive electronic approval for the prescription while they are filling it, so that you only pay whatever agreed portion (usually a flat rate, differing only between generic and name-brand drugs) at the cashier.
It seems like the analogy is stretched a bit too far to me, but it’s an interesting article nonetheless: Bacteria Provide New Insights into Human Decision Making
Gators breathe like birds:
Lynna,
Palin doesn’t do irony, as that would be bowing to the patriarchal regime. No irony for her.
Also, no cookie, no cleany, and no foldy.
I’ve loved this line for years (WARNING: Janine! Do Not Click!)
… Oh! Oh! I know this one! Pick me! Pick me!
(Ahem…)
What is ‘slash most likely to be classified as a hazardous, export-controlled substance’, Alex?
(/As to her concerns, I’m oh so terribly sympathetic, honest. It must be dreadfully disorienting, after eight years of having a dangerous, sociopathic, brain-damaged far right, manipulative, systematically deceptive, fear-mongering loon in the oval office, to be now stuck with this merely sporadically craven, middle right populist/opportunist.)
Interesting about the breathing of alligators. I sometimes suppose that basic information like this is all studied-out.
It made me curious about the breathing of bats — if parts of birds’ ability to fly (and remain conscious will doing so) is based on their breathing, might bats have some differences from people in how they breathe?
It seems that they may. Here’s an abstract of a study which suggests that bats can passively absorb oxygen into their lungs. They do breathe, but this appears to supplement their oxygen intake.
I haven’t seen the photo in context, so I thought vanitas knows the people on the photo, and I was trying to ask vanitas who he/she/it/squid is.
Probably, if you call that kneeling, but… where’s the link? I seem to have overlooked it in this fast-growing thread.
Anyway, remember I provided a fur sample.
:-)
Looks like Bigfoot and me are good conversation starters <trying to put arm around Chewbacca’s shoulders, but failing to reach them>, even though documentation of me is slightly easier to procure.
(…And… so is lemur porn, apparently. Uh… not easier to procure! ARGH! It’s apparently a good conversation starter!!! :-D )
You’ll like it. Even if it rains the entire two weeks through (hah!) and turns to the site into a mud pit comparable to the one I cited near the end of the previous subthread, so we can’t dig at all, you’ll like it. I promise. I’ve been there 3 times already, I know what I’m talking about. :-)
Probably a bit over three, but certainly not much more – it’s all TGV now, and almost nonstop.
I should start asking today evening whether I should hold the thesis defense in Paris or in Vienna. It’s currently scheduled for Vienna, but there they might not have any money to invite jury members from abroad. But then, I don’t even have a jury yet.
Bug or feature? To discuss this eternal question, we have invited blah blah…
Too cool.
Erm… that abstract says that during their torpor they don’t ventilate their lungs much, but when they don’t, they don’t hold their breath (close the glottis) either, so fresh air diffuses in and stale out (even though it’s not being moved). That has nothing to do with flying.
AFAIK, bat lungs are simply the extreme of the mammalian lung type, plus larger-than-usual amounts of hemoglobin, plus heat being dumped through the wings (birds do it through their respiratory system). In principle, a small amount of gas exchange must occur in the wings, but it probably doesn’t make any difference in such a strenuous activity as flight.
Nothing is scheduled in the sense of “timetable”; there’s no date yet. It’s just that the cosupervision treaty currently says Vienna, but that can be changed.
Would you believe it. I tried to check, but http://www.voyages-sncf.com now crashes both Safari 1.3.2 (“quits unexpectedly”) and Netscape 7.2 (page is loaded, then turns to white, and goes on loading forever). Stupid Apple, where you have to pay for the equivalent of Service Packs®.
oh, I don’t doubt that. I’m merely worrying about travel logistics. Especially flight dates, since flights in summer are getting more expensive very quickly, which might mean I’ll have to schedule them blindly; which I hate doing.
Do you have any idea when you’d be able to find out
1)when precisely this thing is
2)If they let you in
3)If they let you smuggle me in
dunno what you’re whining about: Firefox, Opera, and Safari opened the page just fine. It’s 3 1/2 hours apparently.
Probably a good thing it wasn’t a scat sample.
But if there be giants of the hairy variety (if only in people’s subconscious projections!) then what about the pygmies and dwarfs? Where there’s a wookie there’s an ewok. Yet the small hairy primates which scare people are sometimes real – albeit without the supernatural powers attributed to them!
That poor helpless model! You ghoul! lol
More current affairs:
Cambodia (The Phnom Penh Post)- Christians claims that only they give charity. Buddhist are insulted by remarks.
Nepal (Towleroad)- LGBT persons are now protected by the constitution.
Portugal (Fridae)- gives LGBT the right to merry. I guess God should be sending his wrath to the Himalayas and the Iberian Peninsula now.
Russia (NHK)- People dips in ice cold water to celebrate Epiphany.
Germany (Tagesschau)- “Betriebsratsverseucht” ist das Unwort des Jahres 2009. Was ist “Betriebsratsverseucht”?
Es ist in kein Wörterbuch, das ich habe.
I’ll check the Czech* paleontology bulletin board later today. Usually the overlords** inform people in April or May, and the excavation lasts throughout the summer. Arriving on a Sunday and leaving on the Saturday after the next one seems to be considered the normal state of affairs, but as long as there’s space, anything goes.
* Pun impossible to avoid, so whether it was intentional makes no difference! :-)
** University of Opole, Institute of Paleobiology at the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw).
Depends only on whether there’s still space, and that only depends on how soon they open subscriptions, I think.
Also, I haven’t told you there’s not just Krasiejów anymore! There’s also Lisowice, where they find arguably more awesome animals, Woźniki, which is apparently the same age as Krasiejów but was a different environment, and maybe one or two more. I’ll try Krasiejów first. Maybe it’ll even amount to one week of one and one of another.
Well that gator story now means that I have been WOTI for years, arguing here and elsewhere that there must have been archosaurs with tidal lungs and airsacs. Nope. (Although I did recently back off from this suggestion, over at Tet Zoo somewhere, I think. Thanks to David M. for first jogging my thoughts in the right direction, btw.)
And nothing could make me happier–this study is so cool.
The press release linked, though, is maddening. Zero details on the physiology and instead a bunch of completely conjectural hand-waving about surviving the Permian mass extinction. Farmer does this all the time; she does very cool organismal work but then is always trying to spin a much much larger story of greater significance. As they say in baseball, stay within yourself!!!
The French science budget. Here in the lab I’m stuck with OS 10.3.9.
At home, in IE8 for WinXP, it opens just fine.
Enter the orang pendek.
Verseucht mit Betriebsräten. Infested with works councils. No wonder this is the most disgusting word of the year!
And there you have my observations on Jesus of Nazareth.
And they provide even less insight than your tiresome ruminations on Bigfoot, if that’s even possible.
Demythologizing the gospels is stupid. The accounts did not arise that way, by legendary accretion to stories about an actual historical figure. They are transparent fictions. The mythology is the whole point.
And IIRC, you don’t want Tiger without at least 512 MB RAM (preferably 768 MB or 1 GB) and Quartz Extreme on your video card. But some of us might have a copy sitting around collecting dust. Mine is supporting the almost 9 year old, but heavily upgraded, G4 the Redhead should be using.
But if that one’s mythical, is there any cultural or other environmental reason why some groups of humans make up big hairy men to be afeared of while others make up small hairy men? Is it as simple as the availability of animals to be misidentified? Eg the US has lots of bears – hence the sasquatch is big too. Whereas Asia has a bunch of smaller primates – hence the orang pendek is small.
The UK doesn’t have anything much at either end of the mythical hairy man spectrum. Fairies, pixies and leprechauns tend not to be portrayed as particularly hairy. Though some mermaid legends are of the hairy seal-like kind.
Lisowice, eh? *checks google map* Damn, I could get to that one by bicycle if necessary*! No wonder it sounded familiar :-)
Dunno if I can wait til April with flight tickets, but we’ll see.
I see.
If every word you can make in German actually were in the German dictionary, the damn things would be ginormous.
—-
*Now I just need to convince my mom that she wants to take her vacation at the same time as me, and my intra-European travel arrangements are taken care of :-p
Ich scheitere zum Akkusitiv und Dativ. lol
This here is a G5 with 1.25 GB DDR SDRAM… Tiger is 10.4, right?
<scratching head>
I should have thought of that one myself. Of course, the question is whether the orang pendek is mythical.
Random questions about alligator lungs:
Do the results apply to any other crocodilians?
Are alligators considered particularly primitive among crocodilians?
Is there any evidence for flow-through lungs in other archosaur descendants (besides Aves, obviously)?
The Governor of Idaho, Butch Otter, is campaigning to cut funding for Idaho Public Television. He has a philosophical objection to public-funded TV. Of course, he will not take away the tax-exempt status of the BYUI TV station, so we’ll still be funding them, just not in quite such an obvious way. So, we fund mormon TV to a certain extent, but we do not fund public TV.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/19/AR2010011901619.html
Unfortunately, the smaller communities that most need input from diverse media sources are the ones that will suffer — if the proposal is passed. Larger population centers will still be served by IPTV.
Blasphemous Lesbian Lemur porn! With bacon!
(Well, someone had to see the obvious next step….)
We might be better off without oversight of Idaho Public TV by the state, but there’s not enough money to keep it going without state funds. Most of Idaho is public land, and the centers of population are small, with the exception of Boise, Coeur d’Alene, and a few others.
This issue reminds me that having a conservative majority that is also highly religious, with a big block of mormon voters, is not good for education.
And theropods (at least tentatively).
Do the results apply to any other crocodilians?
Probably. I am pretty sure they all have lungs with the necessary tubular parabronchi and nonvascularized posterior end. Not certain about gavials.
Are alligators considered particularly primitive among crocodilians?
Well, there are only 3 small clades left of a formerly bushy bush, but no.
Is there any evidence for flow-through lungs in other archosaur descendants (besides Aves, obviously)?
Everybody but birds and crocs are extinct; there is evidence (pneumatic bone) for airsacs in dinos and pteros, but no direct lung evidence whatsoever.
Along these lines, this is very cool if you can track down a copy:
http://www.jstor.org/pss/30161087
I should be more patient.
Here‘s the pdf.
Yikes! Don’t get me started on the SCNF site http://www.voyages-sncf.com —it’s one of those split-personality overworked but undercooked jobs: It either works reasonably well or fails spectacularly (changing minute-by-minute it seems), has lots of gee-whizz-bang rubbish whilst is noticeably short of useful features,† and gaahhh!!!1!
† Admittedly, my favourite example of a missing useful feature is (last I checked) now no longer missing: An ability to look at earlier train times when making a booking. It used to be the case you could look at later train times, but could not go backwards (or even back to where you started looking). Made it real fecking annoying to try and work out the best train(s) to book.
Right. A G5 running Panther.
*headdesk*
What a waste. And if the G5 has a Core Image video card, it could run 10.5 (Leopard) properly. It will run OK without Core Image, but some graphics, like the water drop effect opening new widgets, won’t be there. OSX 10.4 would get you Safari 3 and might load Safari 4. OSX 10.5 will run Safari 4. I think both will run Firefox 3.5.
Any European Mac user have a spare copy of Tiger or Leopard to donate to a deserving graduate student?
Oh NOES!!!! Demographic Winter!!! “Certain kinds of human beings [dramatic pause] are on their way to extinction”, and it’s all the feminists’, environmentalists’ and gays’ fault!
It’s raining! People are walking with umbrellas! So much better than snow!
*pokes Jadehawk.
heathen! infidel!
the only thing that’s better than snow is snow on mountains. currently, I have neither :-(
You don’t like watching people freak out due to a little thunder and lightning? lol.
Normally I’m not a big fan of snow (at least the kind we tend to get in England, which tends to be weak and slushy, and often melts and then freezes over, causing you to slip every two seconds while walking). Plus, every time we get a sprinkling of snow in southern England (let alone weeks of snowfall, ice and freezing temperatures, as we had this winter) the entire transport system grinds to a halt.
And I also think the aesthetic value of snow is overrated, for us urban-dwellers. Yes, it looks pretty for a short time when everything is covered in a pristine white blanket. But in a city, it always ends up covered in mud, slush and tyre tracks within a day.
I will, however, admit that Jadehawk is right in one particular: snow on mountains is awesome. I’d like to live somewhere one day that has mountains.
I’ve seen enough of that when I lived in San Jose.
And then again, but about minuscule amounts of snow, when I lived in Seattle.
It’s refreshing to be in a place where people are semi-competent about the weather :-p
On Coast now: Wow! That clam is 250yrs old!
The always well-informed Czechs haven’t started a thread on the 2010 field season yet. But the one on the 2009 one only started in September, while one of the two for 2008 started on January 14th and appears to begin with concrete information, so I think I’ll send an e-mail.
Rorschach? Do you want to join, too, or have I misunderstood?
Most likely all of them.
No, they’re pretty average. In fact, all surviving crocs are rather average.
At a minimum all saurischians and all pterosaurs, probably more. The evidence lies in the vertebrae, which are invaded by outgrowths from the cervical and the abdominal air sac. The vertebrae of most sauropods consist of, like, 80 % air.
Plus, only a flow-through lung can explain how it was possible to breathe through a neck twice the length of a giraffe’s. Already giraffes have a narrower windpipe than usual, so as to reduce the amount of dead space…
Well, duh. Lungs don’t seem to ever fossilize, which isn’t exactly surprising.
Oh yes. If you don’t look at them closely, crocs look vaguely like overgrown lizards, but if you do, several layers of fascinating weirdness start to emerge. I’m telling you, there are reasons why crocodiles grin. B-)
Wow. Never noticed that, but I’ve only been using the site for 2 years or something.
Anyway, I confirm that sometimes it works very well and sometimes it basically just freezes. Definitely too many bells & whistles.
However, all is not lost.
One country has managed to stem this horrendous, horrendous tide.
And that is…
<10 minutes of drum roll>
<entire Also sprach Zarathustra/Odyssey 2001 theme>
…<voice mode=”booming”>France. Rampant socialism, buddies. Crèche and kindergarten for everyone and for freeeeee!!!</voice>
<inhale>MWA HA HA HA HAAAAAH…</inhale>
I think I see quite a lot more little babies in the public transport here than in Vienna, and almost all of them have at least one parent that belongs to <dramatic pause> a certain kind of human being.
Where do people freak out over this?
Also, I don’t like watching people freak out. I prefer snow. <pout>
Tying Light Into Knots
Jadehawk @484: Regarding “Demographic Winter”, you will not be surprised to learn that Scott Lively, The Family (The Fellowship), and other nefarious persons have commented on this, and have pumped up the scare factor.
We discussed this in November, 2009, on the “How not to end the scourge of HIV” thread.
Fascinating cast of characters, etc. There are multiple posts.
I think he was talking about the Party we are supposed to be having to celebrate you getting your degree.
I know many here have given up on responding to mooneyitism but it’s still often interesting when others do respond. Is there anyone called sean carrol who’s not briliant?
Also;
oh, I must have missed that. Thanks.
in California, where anything that isn’t perfect beach-weather is considered a catastrophe of biblical proportions, and every rain-cloud is subject to 24/7 “storm-watch” coverage on the news
I was at my university’s dinning area when we all saw a quick flash and heard a large boom, followed by a bunch of student screaming and the other student giggling.
You’re welcome. You have to read down a bit from the link I gave you to get the full picture. aratina cage made some interesting comments in that thread. Also, see post 154 in that thread,, where Caine calls Demographic Winter “venomous bullshit.”