Yeah, you guys filled up the last open thread with comments already. Since one of the last revelations there was that David MarjanoviÄ has creepy red glowing eyes (and that TetZoo is four years old!), this very cheesy video clip seems most appropriate.
Run away while you still can! Or go ahead, fill this one up, too. They’re cheap.
These threads need more bacon.
Alittle more muscle, Marjanović could be. . .
I still can, but my mile pace has dropped. :(
“Never-ending bull session…” PZ doesn’t realize how important our topics of discussion are to the world at large.
Remember the Jesus rifles with the references to bible verses on the scopes? Stephen Colbert introduced a grenade disguised as a bible, and blew up part of his audience (metaphorically). The clip begins with a skit about the Jesus rifles, “Technically, Jesus rifles aren’t a holy war. They’re more like an armor-piercing Sunday school”. Colbert goes on to introduce the “handgrebible”. “They will instantly accept Jesus into their heart … and skull and abdomen.” “When you look back and see only one set of footprints on the beach, it will be because Jesus blew your legs off.”
I think that it might be wise for the Thread Everlasting to warn lesbians masturbating with bibles about the handgrebible.
Serious actual biology question, and no doubt an easy one for all you bio boffins out there.
Why is it that when the dinosaurs died out (everything from T-Rex to the little chicken-sized ones) all sorts of other reptiles like crocodiles and snakes and lizards survived? And were birds already birds by then?
It’s always bugged me. And I know I’m being lazy here. Feel free to tell me to piss off and look up Wikipedia. :)
I’m sensing some thread envy.
PZ must have something against Sven. Making him work at updating the eternal thread information on his blog so frequently.
“Thread envy” from comment #5 is right. We’re all here in the Pharyngula back room/bar ignoring the other front page posts … but not really. We still love you Poopyhead.
Some of the best coverage of the Prop 8 trial is here. A choice excerpt:
While we’re taling about David Marjanović, I’ve been meaning to ask: Is Marjanović a Serbian surname?
Any fellow Aussies out there have a sure-fire way of getting rid of ring-tailed possums? I’m trying to avoid having to pay someone to capture and release them far far away.
Yes, they are cute as a button, but not when they are urinating and defecating on my third-floor balcony every night of the week. I have no idea why they have chosen my balcony as a litter box because there is nothing there to attract them at all. But it’s their territory now. The smell is appalling, gets into the apartment, and I’m going through a small fortune in disinfectant to clean up after them.
I googled on possible solutions. I found a suggestion to put a rubber snake out and that would frighten them away. As if. The little bastards crapped all over the snake. Seriously, they’re not scared of me, why would they be scared of a rubber reptile?
They have no fear of humans. I go out when I hear them shinnying up the drainpipe and try to shoo them, but they just look at me and wiggle their pink noses. I end up having to gently poke at them with a broom to make them move.
Any useful, non-fatal solutions would be most welcome.
#4:
Birds were definitely birds by then (or, that is to say, the birds back then had many of the features which are recognizable in today’s birds).
But the birds were actually hit pretty hard too. Upwards of half the known species I think were wiped out, and whole major clades were extinguished (like the Enantiornithes).
Mammals too, lost a lot of species (although I think all three (four?) major groups made it through.
It’s likely that most of the surviving clades were in fact badly decimated, with only a few bedraggled survivors squeaking through.
As to the specific whys and wherefores, I don’t think that’s been worked out to any reasonable level of satisfaction yet. Much is going to depend on the specific details of what exactly happened at the time of the mass extinction, and that has not all been worked out. To some degree, in the utter chaos that must have prevailed at that time, some things might not be knowable – it could have been sheer luck that all members of one species were snuffed, while one or two breeding pairs of another made it through to repopulate themselves.
Some theories that I have heard bandied about (all are controversial):
1. All the surviving terretrial/amphibious vertebrate clades had members that burrowed. Burrowing might have constituted a preferred sheltered habitat. Dinosaurs, as far as we currently know, had no members that dug burrows.
2. Dinosaur diversity had in fact been dropping for some period of time (several millions of years) prior to the KT event. There were fewer species, and although those species were successful, they were less diverse, which would have made the group as a whole more vulnerable to the random crap of a mass extinction scenario.
3. Dinosaurs (particularly the big ones) had smaller population times and longer generation times, which would have made their populations more vulnerable to total wipeout. (This doesn’t very satisfactorily account for the many smaller dinosaurs, although as far as I know even though there were small dinosaurs there weren’t any really teeny dinosaurs on the scale of the tiny mini-mouse sized mammals and birds that were around. It also doesn’t account very well for why many mid-sized crocodiles survived, though I think the biggest crocs also perished – not surprising as they were probably dinosaur predators).
#3 may be more relevant to the pterosaurs, who really had, it seems, become restricted to a limited number of really big species with small population sizes.
#3 is really, really vulnerable to the sparsity of the fossil record, as it is entirely possible that the whole hypothesis is based on an artifact of incomplete preservation.
Oops. That would be #2 is vulnerable to the sparsity of the fossil record.
Rorshach @#681 of the Hairy Horde:
It is indeed possible for a filesystem to get into a state where it needs fscking and is not aware of it, although it is rare. Or it sometimes needs manual fscking, which is also less frequent.
======
David M @#693 of the Hairy Horde:
Sigh. This will require more research than I thought at first — Mozilla just now rolled to version 3.6, so their “older” version is now 3.5 itself.
That reminds me of another idea I had: Maybe the problem is with the Flash plugin?
What version do you have? This page has a tiny swf that shows version info:
http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/
There’s a Flash uninstaller here:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html
if you want to see if the crashing still occurs with the plugin removed.
Of course. I spent some time researching which distros would work (Debian and Yellow Dog, perhaps others), but I suppose the point is moot given your programmatic requirements.
I love it when UNIX geeks talk dirty.
For the record, my filesystem is always aware when it needs fscking, and happily accepts frequent manual fscking.
Is this the appropriate venue to gloat about the most recent beat-down of the Hovind-imitating and utterly vile Venomfangx by the likes of atheist heroes DPRJones and thunderf00t on youtube? Good old Shawn/PCS/VFX issued yet another apology, shut down his account, thanked the atheists for their compassionate mercy, and promised to get the professional helps he so desperately and obviously needs. Good times!
Oh shit, I’m famous.
…PZ, the other guy who shoots laser beams from his eyes.
(And those three dudes in Superman 3. :-D )
:-D
It’s because the term “reptile” is best… uh-oh, I’m getting red eyes again. :-) They don’t have anything in common.
The “lizards” (paraphyletic with respect to snakes) were fairly hard hit even if we ignore the marine mosasaurs, but many survived because of their low energy needs, small size (the 3-m-long gila monsters seem to have died out around the boundary, but it’s not clear when exactly) which enabled them to hide, and insectivory (the herbivorous ones died out). Snake diversity wasn’t high yet, and snakes are famous for being able to hide and fast for ages.
Crocodiles… only or almost only freshwater crocodiles survived, with the big exception of the dyrosaurids* which were marine as adults but whose unknown babies probably lived in freshwater. Freshwater ecosystems don’t directly depend on living plant parts, so they fared fairly well in general; the specialist turtle-crunching alligatoroid Brachychampsa did die out.
* Not dryosaurids, mind you. Those are dinosaurs.
Some of them were, yes. The others… the fossil record isn’t good enough to tell when they died out, but the youngest known bird tooth comes from just below the boundary, while only modern birds (Neornithes) have ever been found above it.
(…Assuming that the lithornithids are Neornithes – but if they aren’t, they’re their sister-group, so everything I said simply applies one node further down on the tree.)
Homeopathy well exposed again http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2010/01/homeopathy-by-the-mindboggling-numbers.html
Another story in the vein of mormon wackiness, or insidious evil, depending on how you want to look at it. Information is coming out in the Prop. 8 trail showing more of the extent of mormon involvement, and “the church”‘s desire to maintain plausible deniability in their efforts to deny the rights of others. http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2010/01/20/19726#more-19726
From the previous eternal thread:
David, an afterthought. You should check to see if Tiger or Leopard compatible mission critical programs for your computer are available. Tiger wasn’t too bad with incompatibility, but Leopard was a major rewrite, and many more programs wouldn’t work without also being upgraded. It won’t do you any good to install Leopard if it won’t work with a statistical program. So, you might need a Panther partion and a Leopard partition on your HD.
An old homeopathy thread here kicked off again recently.
Hi Amphiox,
Thanks very much for that. I hadn’t given much thought to the large numbers of non-dinosaur reptile species that must have died out too. It’s a pity that a few little non-bird dinos didn’t make it through.
Is the importance of burrowing in that hypothesis just to keep warm throughout the asteroid winter? Would that mean that almost all modern tetrapods (fancy new word I learned on ScienceBlogs) had to be descendants of burrowing animals? Including burrowing birds and crocs?
Pity all the plesiosaurs (apart from Nessie) died out as well. It would have made summer at the beach more interesting. :)
OT, but that’s what we’re here for…
It’s not a “Chariot of Iron,” but even better: a Gastropod of Iron, apparently a guard of R’lyeh, which is apparently off the coast of India. Cthulu fhtagn!
From
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100118153250.htm
In this case, yes, though it’s at least as commonly Croatian as Serbian.
Remember that “Croat” and “Serb” are traditionally defined by denomination; the former are Catholic, the latter Orthodox. A few conversions here and there to suck up to some state religion, and confusion breaks loose.
Not true anymore – Oryctodromeus and probably various relatives.
Wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
It just looks that way because 1) the Campanian (2nd-to-last stage of the Cretaceous) terrestrial fossil record is richer than the Maastrichtian (last stage) one, 2) the Campanian was much longer than the Maastrichtian, 3) when making long-term comparisons, people used to lump all of the Campanian into one bin and all of the Maastrichtian in another. When this is taken care of, the trend disappears according to research that was presented at a conference 1 or 2 years ago and should be published soon, if it hasn’t been already.
Within the end of the Maastrichtian, there’s no decline, as papers have been showing since the early 1990s.
The Late Cretaceous fossil record of pterosaurs is pretty poor and probably quite biased. Research presented at a conference last year shows the apparent diversity of pterosaurs (throughout the Mesozoic!) correlates exactly to the amount of pterosaur-bearing rock known from each stage.
Good idea, I’ll look into this, thanks.
I have Internet Explorer 5.3.2 for Mac installed here. Needless to say, it’s utter crap that can’t display anything. So I peeked into microsoft.com… IE 8, 7, and even 6 can still be downloaded, but all of them are only available for Windows.
No space on the HD. :-)
…Wow. Reality is a lot weirder than fiction.
You might try the old apps copy of firefox. Not proof, but I’ve used oldapps for other things before (iTunes, most recently).
From the previous subthread:
…?
Thanks, downloading 2.0.0.20 right now.
Turns out I already have the latest Safari version that would run on 10.3.9. I’ll look for Netscape and Flock… and Opera, if it’s not crippleware…
No Netscape, no Flock, but even Opera 10.10, released on November 23rd last year, is supposed to run on OS 10.3!!! Let’s see.
Doesn’t matter. OMG he’s cute.
Look at what I miss when I pass over these threads because they’re too long and I can’t figure out where any of the topics started, or where they’ve been — or commit to going where they’re going.
David M. @25: About that “giving up on your whole hermit thing”, I felt like you were hiding. But that wasn’t clear from the comment, only applies to not being able to find photos of you online (except perhaps for the long-ago offer of a brain scan?) …. so, basically a failed joke. Apologies.
The adds on your blog crashed Safari which proceeded to crash my notebook, PZ. I demand reparations! lol
Kind of like Hui and Han Chinese, except that Han Chinese have multiple religions while Hui is thought to be associated with only Islam.
This is Opera 10.10 speaking. It looks fairly good so far. I just need to find out how to turn the stupid spellchecker off. (…It doesn’t know the word “spellchecker”, BTW.)
With that nose and that chin? Srsly?
The Hui are a pretty close analog to the Muslims of Bosnia.
re: #22
Thanks for those corrections, David. I always did suspect that the diversity trend was bogus (see #11).
What you said about Pterosaurs was new to me. I had been under the impression that the fossil record was better than that and there actually was a consensus. It made such a nice story – competition from the birds driving down pterosaur diversity, etc, etc, etc. Ah well. Reality is always more complicated that we think.
Every time I post here on a topic outside my area of expertise (or even inside!) I run to risk of saying something embarrassingly stupid or out of date, since for the things I read about for fun (or read about in the past) a lot of times my sources are secondary and rapidly become out of date.
But I just can’t resist! It’s not even SIWOTI. It’s more like SIAQOTI.
After spending most of my grad school career listening to people talk on and on about transgenetic mosquitoes, I have learned that unless the eyes glow green, it’s not science. So do red glowing eyes mean that it’s the opposite of science? Do creationist eyes glow red?
Nautileaster.
You are at least from that angle. That’s why I said if you bulk up. Otherwise you make a passable twink. *flees
*comes back
Are you referring to the fact that Bosniaks speaks a similar language to Croats and Serbs, just as the Huis basically speak the same languages as the Hans?
Dammit! What a depressing week. First the Massachusetts clusterf*ck. Then I look at an editorial by Bill Sweet over at IEEE on climate change and the comments look like they came right from Anthony Micro-Watts’ site Watts-up-‘is-arse. These are frigging engineers spouting absolute denialist bullshit as if it were commonplace knowledge.
These are engineers who evidently believe that all scientists are on the take. The STUPID has even taken over people who should be smarter than that. As our Xtian brothers say: We are truly in the end of days–and they’re the asshole jerkoffs causing it!
Srsly. Adorable.
But, maybe you should rethink tucking in the t-shirt.
Red Eye were a great band. I can’t find them on youtube but their single ‘Special Delivery to My Heart’ can be downloaded from here;
http://www.pukekos.org/2008/04/red-eye.html
Here’s your appetizer.
My pedantry is forcing me to suggest that was actually Superman 2 – if you were referring to General Zod and co :)
David Marjanović:
The last time I saw eyes like that they were attached to a monster who used them to destroy cities. Be gentle.
Any useful, non-fatal solutions would be most welcome.
paintball gun?
NPR’s Fresh Air, has a podcast about the Prop. 8 trial in California.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122763122 Excerpt:
As was recently said elsethread: I CAN’T FAP TO THIS!
Sorry, David.
This.
Took me long enough to learn.
If your midriff gets cold, wear two T-shirts and only tuck the innermost.
:googles self:
Seems I’ve managed to drop off the web by now. Being ill has its minor benefits. (Haven’t been on the frontpage of Crystallography News for years either – for much the same reason.)
Red eyes?
Get the red out?
Oh dear, this could slip into the territory of a rather dishonest eye drops spokesperson.
@ #1 “These threads need more bacon.”
Ask and ye shall receive: Behold! Cider bourbon braised bacon: http://www.salon.com/food/feature/2009/12/09/ian_knauer_braised_bacon/index.html
I made this a few days ago and it almost convinced me there is a heaven. At the very least, I’m going to have a hard time going back to pre-sliced bacon out of a package.
While your cider bourbon braised bacon sounds fantastic, your link sends me into a having to sign in kind of thing and that makes me very very angry.
SMASH
The Muslim nation was created by Tito… :-)
The language has a large dialect diversity (ironically, all three to four standards – Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, and now Montenegrin which is controversial within Montenegro – are all taken from just about the same dialect in southeastern Hercegovina!), but the boundaries between the dialects have never lined up with the confessions.
The Hui started as a people with a Turkic language that intermarried with and assimilated to the Han, till Mao declared all Chinese-speaking Muslims members of the Hui nationality.
Of course, more traditional peoples usually aren’t more biological entities either. All those Migration Period peoples originated when someone said “I want to go south to plunder, who comes with me?”.
Never. I physically can’t stand that. It’s extremely uncomfortable.
In other words, you are in all seriousness suggesting I should suffer just to be fashionable.
While I am at it, putting the belt on the hip bones hurts (there’s only skin on them). That’s why I have to put it on the belly, where I like having a bit of pressure anyway (a common trait of Asperger’s). Buying pants is a time-consuming ordeal for me.
Oops. Yes. It’s been quite a while since I watched those.
Laughably cumbersome.
And the cold isn’t even the biggest problem; that’s the feeling itself.
We Brits have fuckwit plonkers too!
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/geraldwarner/100022443/government-scientific-advisers-who-needs-these-nuts-in-white-coats/
David Marjanovi?, nice pic ;) …but those are some seriously dangerous looking eyes. Your wrath shall be felt by all if not by a comprehensive textual smackdown, then by your piercing stare of DOOOOOOM!
@ #45 Oh for fuck’s sake, is Salon doing that again? Bastards. Ok, so here are the instructions – pretty simple and very worth the effort:
“First step, find a thick chunk of slab bacon. You’ll have to go to a butcher for this. When you do, ask them for the thickest chunk they’ve got. The amount is up to you. How much bacon do you eat? A lot? Then get a lot. Just make sure it’s all in one piece. The fine specimen above is Polish double-smoked bacon and was smoked for 24 hours.
To cook it, place your bacon in an appropriately sized baking dish. Then, pour apple cider and some bourbon over the bacon until it’s not quite covered. The proportion is mostly cider and a little bourbon. No need to heat the liquid first and no salt required; bacon is salty. If you want to be fancy, add a bay leaf and some peppercorns. But you don’t need to be fancy. It’s cider-braised bacon; it’s not fancy. Cover the dish with foil and braise it in the oven at 350°F for 4 hours. Don’t skimp on the braising time. When it’s done, the bacon will fall apart when you poke it with a fork and feel like a baby’s butt when you poke it with your finger.
After the bacon is braised, uncover the dish and let it cool in the liquid. This is an important step. The meat absorbs a lot of flavor and moisture as it cools. When it’s finally room temperature, you can keep it chilled, wrapped in plastic wrap.
The bacon can live in your fridge for a month, but it won’t last that long, because it’s just about the best thing you’ve eaten.
When you think you’re ready, slice 1/4-inch-thick slices and sear them in a skillet. They brown quickly, due to the sugar in the cider, so pay attention.
Serve the bacon with eggs for breakfast, on the-best-BLT-you’ve-ever-had-in-your-life for lunch, or as dinner with sauerkraut.
Fried egg + hot sauce + cider-braised bacon = breakfast”
—from Ian Knauer, chef, country boy and former food editor at Gourmet.
Or you can just cook it and eat it, period. Also, it’s sort of fun tossing cooked pieces into your group of bacon-loving pals and watching them scrabble for it.
Worst movie that started out good but pooped out real bad towards the end: Chinatown
I dunno. That sounds more dangerous/potentially expensive, to me…
(/My insurance agent, to me: ‘Kay… so let me get this straight: there was a brawl in your dining room, and now you have to replace a table, several chairs, all the windows, and several wall hangings?’)
Worst movie that makes no sense at all: Mulholland Dr.
@ #51
That’s why you remove all the furniture/breakables from the room beforehand. Can’t have any of that getting in the way of a BACON RUMBLE!
Amphiox has this admirably covered @#10, and then David “El Diablo” Marjanović* @#15 & #22…clearly it’s not an “easy one” at all! Also, the crisis was certainly manifested in different ways and times in different local areas. So generalizing will always get us into trouble with apparent counterexamples. When many variables make things messy and complex, best to remain pluralistic.
I think that it was not burrowing per se, but the ability to tolerate starvation that was important in most cases. Ectotherms that routinely take months (and in several documented cases) years off were
preadexapted to survive the crisis. Among extant endotherms, physiological torpor/hibernation is probably ancestral for mammals, and I think all birds (not sure about ratites) can do some degree of temporal hypthermia. There is also the possibility for most amniotes of surviving a months-long crisis in the egg stage.No shit, man. Fortunately I recently automated the thread markers, so that makes updating much easier. Still looks like an easy 20K by 1 y.
*
Wow, dude…if it ain’t broke…(though my unsolicited advice would have been to lose the little bangs and fly your freakflag a bit)
I guess there’s shortcuts, too…
I mean, in the summer, if it’s warm enough, you can just take the panes out of the windows, ‘stead of bolting the bullet-proof sheets over ’em…
And I’m thinking if you spray a little Scotchguard on the fabric hangings first, you probably don’t even have to remove ’em…
Blood does wash right off that stuff, right?
(/Credit given to Martha Stewart’s Practical Guide to Houseproofing for Jailhouse Riots)
Looks good Pint.
I’ve done a fair share of braising pork bellies before.
I’ll have to give this one a swing. I mean duh, ity has both bacon and bourbon.
birds: hypothermia
So, to emphasize my point, burrowing best served those animals that were not keeping warm.
And all kinds of scenarios of isolated refugia are possible. It was a long time ago.
#9: Why is non-fatal so important? Hand-cuff us like that, and we have little solution space to explore.
Regarding prop 8 trial (#41)
I a especially bothered by this argument. While it seems that at least some variation in sexual preference is genetic, often phenotypic variation of complex traits (e.g. behavior) is determined by multiple contributing factors. But so what? Why does it matter? Why can’t I choose to be gay and still have all of the rights I did before I made that choice? It’s not illegal. Is there a similar precedent for any other such choice (ermm…you choose to do something that is not forbidden by law, and on the basis of that choice are deprived of a basic right)?
I think ultimately, using genetics as a justification for equal rights is riddled with problems. First, as I said before, inheritance of traits is not always straightforward, and phenotypic variation often arises from the contributing factors, some genetic and some environmental. Second, the kind of experiments needed to quantify genetic contribution to variation in sexual practices would certainly be unethical when applied to humans (not to mention unwieldly given our slow generation turnover). Finally, it places the burden of explanation on the pro-rights side. And the explanation can be a bitch, even to people who are open-minded enough to hear it. Quantitative genetics requires no small amount of statistical acumen at even its most basic level. Politicians don’t even understand things as simple as descent with modification. It opens itself up for strawmen argumentation…not acceptable to a scientific audience, but often persuasive for voters.
I suppose the opposition is not all that interested in human rights either, but we have a constitution that is deaf to such disinterest. Regardless of the sensibilities of the religious majority, denying equal rights on the basis of a) genetic proclivity, or b) the choice to engage in a legal activity is unconstitutional.
Ranticule over…jeeze. I’m really worked up now.
neon-elf @9,
Possums are hard to manage. If the only way the buggers can access your balcony is by climbing the drainpipe, perhaps you could install some sort of a shield that they can’t get around. Something like an inverted half-cone shaped thingy* surrounding the pipe about a meter or so off the ground? Don’t buy any of the advertised repellents, they don’t work.
On the other hand, if you’re willing to get over the non-lethal requirement there’s always this.
* It’s a technical term, look it up. :)
Martha Stewart’s Practical Guide to Houseproofing for Jailhouse Riots?
Now there’s a homestyle guide that’s actually useful!
But if you’re going to do it in the summer, just move the rumble into an outdoor pen. Set up a couple of lawn chairs and/or benches and put up a betting pool on the last one standing. Why not make some extra cash off of all this bacon-induced violence?
I am especially bothered…
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
AE@#59 is dead on.
Bad, bad idea to couple demands for equal rights to putative genetics (or, indeed, any causal hypothesis).
What do you mean?
Well, I’ve always found it so…
But then my in-laws do visit a lot…
(/Thank you, here all week, try the roast beef…)
*swivels head* Did someone mention D&D?
I willingly play a Pelor-worshipping cleric in my regular D&D group. Loads of fun. Bit of a healbot at times, but still.
With mostly the same group, I recently played a bible-quoting nun in a quick Savage Worlds adventure set in 12th century England. Not so fun.
The between the two wasn’t the quotations but the internal knowledge bases of the adventures. In D&D, deities exist. Every character in the game knows it. In SW, a deity was merely believed to exist.
Turns out that I can’t even fake being a believer. Bad actor! Bad!
#38:
Kneel before Marjanović!
He looks far younger than I pictured, from his level of erudition. It shouldn’t be allowed.
Just positing a role for heterogeneity and stochasticity in determining the survivors of the extinction event. To cite the extremes, some places were probably blown completely to smithereens and all endemics were immediately extirpated; other areas (perhaps islands in the hemisphere opposite the impact, for example) were relatively unscathed initially but suffered delayed reactions. The possibility of local refugia mentioned above.
I just doubt there is a single answer, or even a few, to the question of why clade x survived and clade y did not.
Just click on the ‘enter salon’ text at top right – worked for me on FireFox (there was a popup, too, but FF didn’t let it see the light of day).
I’m 27. I’m told I look more like 17, fitting my average mental age :-)
Oh. I agree completely.
@ #56 Rev. BigDumbChimp –
Hope you like it. Got any tips you’d like to share on braising pork belly? This is the first time I’ve ever braised bacon before and oh dear lord. I think I’m going to become a regular at that delicatessen since it’s the closest place that carries slab bacon. They even have Hungarian salami, which I LOVED but haven’t had since I was a kid since my mom got it from a specialty store far out in the ‘burbs.
routine update
General Zog?
Terence Stamp?
Well…
Just click on the ‘enter salon’ text at top right – worked for me on FireFox (there was a popup, too, but FF didn’t let it see the light of day).
Re the dinosaurs/reptiles/birds thingy, did anyone see the new discovery that alligators have through-flow lungs? So that creationist objection to the dino to bird evolution has been removed? How does that affect the dino->birds line?
Mike @14: I’m interested. Link(s)?
And, yes, this is the appropriate venue for everything you can get away with.
Oops. Sorry, neon-elf. I hadn’t realized that possums are protected in Australia. Please disregard the link to the recipes.
@Antiochus Epiphanes
I agree with you that it shouldn’t matter whether homosexuality is a choice or biological or environmental or a combination or whatever in determining whether gays should get equal rights.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that the ‘it shouldn’t matter if it’s a choice’ argument would do anything positive for the cause of equality. In fact, it might even hurt it. Which is unfortunate because we would all be better off if the case for equality for everyone were built on the idea that whether you choose it or not is irrelevant.
The problem is that there are still a lot of people that think homosexuality is evil. It is much easier for them to persist in their prejudice if they believe that gay people are the way they are because they CHOSE to be that way. The idea that it is out of our control is unsettling to their particular theology. So while it shouldn’t matter whether it is a choice or not, in effect it does matter. It frustrates me greatly because it has really put a strain on any effort to have an honest discourse about this subject. It is frustrating when you effectively have to choose between advancing a cause and discovering the truth.
There is also another problem. A lot of anti-gay assholes like to argue that homosexuals already have the same marriage rights as heterosexuals in that they can marry anyone of the opposite sex that they please. This is of course a stupid argument. But if we start to even mention the possibility that homosexuality is in any way not biological or a choice, they will immediately grab onto that and say that gays could choose to be straight and therefore they are already equal. Or that we could be fixed with therapy or some other nonsense. As much as I would like to think that such an argument would be laughed out of the courtroom, I am too scared to test it.
This is ultimately the problem with having such intellectually bankrupt opponents. You can’t simply present the best arguments and expect them to stand on their own. And you are right–the biological argument is not exactly airtight either. This whole thing really is frustrating sometimes. Sigh.
re 58:
I agree, and was going to write pretty much the same thing had you not beaten me to it. This has come up here before, that rights protected by the constitution are not all related to inherited characteristics like race. For example, the 1st amendment is ultimately about protecting one’s right to choose: a religion, to assmeble and to speak. Would anyone even conceive of a law denying, say Rotarians, the right to marry? After all, they choose to be Rotarian, its not like race or eye color. The point is that whether homosexuality is inherent or even a momentary “fling”, it is of no relevance to the argument that the law is discriminatory and unconstitutional.
@31
You describe yourself as much uglier than you actually are. ~:-)
It means that, via “phylogenetic bracketing,” it becomes most parsimonious to hypothesize that the entire clade of archosaurs for which crocs are the sister-group also had one-way lungs; this includes all of the pterosaurs and dinosaurs (including the ornithischians).
Now, the advantage of a one-way lung is two-fold: first, cross-current perfusion produces a higher extraction efficiency (i.e. a higher proportion of the oxygen in the air in the lung enters the blood), and second, there can be relatively oxygen-rich air entering the lung on both inhalation and exhalation.
The advantage of bird-style respiration over mammal-style, however, is trivial except under conditions of low oxygen supply (e.g., altitude). It does not automatically signal endothermy nor even high aerobic performance levels.
re Rox:
I agree with you, but I wonder if the question of whether it is biology or a choice could be dropped altogether? Just argue that the current marriage laws do not allow people to marry anyone of their choosing and that it is inappropriate and unconstitutional to restrict people’s choice based on the sex (not sexual preference) of who they want to marry. That it is no different than having two different tax rates for men and women.
That the issue is not about creating “gay marriage”, but making marriage blind to the sex of the couple.
So that’s what David looks like. Did not expect that, though to be honest I don’t know what I was expecting.
Gonna be weird come march where I meet the Aussie contingent and suddenly people become more than text associated with a username.
BBC4 now – Chemistry: A Volatile History
You should take your shirt off then and wear a sarong. Free those fellas below.
I went to the bookstore to replace the lab manuel that I lost. There was a huge line there consisting of people who needs to buy umbrellas. lol
Presenter Jim Al-Khalili no (close) relation to Al-Qali, tho.
Another possible pertinent condition would be the hypothesized low oxygen levels leading up to the Permian mass extinction and enduring(?) thereafter through the Triassic (and early Jurassic?), which may have been a contributing factor to why the archosaurs became so successful while the synapsids that had previously dominated the ecosystem were decimated (except for the lineage leading to mammals).
I’ve always wondered whether this advantage in efficiency may have manifested itself in other more subtle ways, though, such as how the corvids and their relatives manage to achieve primate level intelligence with such smaller brains.
Cindy McCain joined the protest against Prop. 8. This will make her even less likely to be Sarah Palin’s friend. It’s also likely to upset some of her Republican friends.
Photos and story on the Huff Po site
@ boygenius
You have the wrong possum.
http://www.parks.tas.gov.au/index.aspx?base=4877
Right. That’s the spin the authors of the alligator article are pushing. *shrug* Plausible but of course conjectural.
A plausible link between efficiency of oxygen supply to the blood and neural architecture, though, escapes me.
Sink the continent.
I hope this is the distilled version…
thylacine urine.
I happen to have some right here.
neon-elf @ 9
Any useful, non-fatal solutions would be most welcome.
The first thing to do is make the drain unclimbable. Sheet-metal barriers come to mind.
You could also try motion-activated floodlamps at your porch, the brighter the better.
The “I can’t stand it any more” solution: cage the porch in with welded wire mesh (hardware cloth isn’t strong enough). The top cover can be hinged with j-clips so it can easily be folded back when you want to use it.
http://www.louispage.com/miscellaneous/j-clips—j-clip-pliers/
@ Kamaka #88,
Yeah, I know. But… in a blind taste-test I’ll bet you couldn’t tell the difference. Besides, I couldn’t find any good recipes for Pseudocheirus peregrinus. Protein is protein; it just depends on how you season it.
Nerd #91
The first episode just finished, and I thought it was excellent.
Watch it on BBC iPlayer.
Can’t wait for the rest of the series.
BBC 4 has just started a season of science programs.
I love Auntie, sometimes.
Sven,
Do you also have a protective sheath over your external reproductive organs? :)
92 comments already, and Jadehawk hasn’t participated in this thread at all yet, even though she has been sighted on other threads in the meantime. Have I scared her away?
The term “possum” is misleading. All Australian marsupials (plus the monito del monte from southern Chile) are more closely related to each other than to any American marsupials.
The Australian possums also have gnawing teeth.
Evidence for such a system is already known from the bones of pterosaurs and saurischians (…and the birds are saurischians), but has so far been conspicuously absent from ornithischians, except IIRC for a few somewhat ambiguous hints.
Well, the alligator version of it doesn’t. :-) Although… how endothermic the basalmost crocodyl…omorphs were is still not clear. Some look like rabbit-sized long-tailed horses.
The usual “conference surprise” phenomenon. :-)
That would change absolutely nothing. OK, a sarong is probably softer than jeans, but that’s not enough.
Ack! #94 was supposed to read: “Yeah, I know that now.
For David Marjanovic;
Your web browser problems may be less to do with what version of safari you have but the version of java that is used by the problem sites. To eliminate safari, try firefox; the panther version you can get from here;
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/513681?s=panther
while for java, this is bundled by apple and you can use their software update service to get the latest for your OS.
Pay no mind to me. I’m replacing the water heater in my 1960’s vintage home; all galvanized pipe with 40+ years of corrosion. Additionally, the cabinet was built around the old unit, requiring the removal of the face-frame to allow enough clearance to get it out.
When the frustration overwhelms me, I pop in to read a few posts. Apparently my reading/comprehension is suffering. (I can’t believe how much beer is required to swap out a water heater!)
Now if I could just find my left-hand monkey wrench.
aww, I’ve been missed :-)
neon-elf @ #9
A small amount of blood and bone tied up in an old sock / scrap of fabric will do the trick. Tie it to the balcony railing. The smell makes the possums think there is a predator around and they go somewhere else. It’s also a useful trick out in the garden. Either sprinkle some on the ground or tie a sock of it to a stake to stop them eating your tomatoes and roses (or whatever this weeks culinary delight for possums is). It does need to be replaced every now and then, particularly if you get rain.
I have a sad piece of news.
For over a year and a half, I had been cultivating a rather fine moustache. It was the only part of my physical appearance which was actually interesting. Unfortunately, in a shaving accident today, I clipped part of it off. The resulting lopsided mess looked so bad that I had to shave off the whole thing.
I am now moustache-less, and looking at myself in the mirror forlornly (is that a word?), thinking that I now look about fourteen, and wondering how long it will take for my facial hair to grow back to its former glory. I am fully expecting to be asked for ID next time I endeavour to purchase an alcoholic beverage.
Poor Walton. :-(
Thanks, as explained above I installed the latest Opera version, and it works.
I expected you to be the first one to comment on my appearance, as interested in photos of me as you recently admitted to being.
I’m not specifically interested in photos of you. I was interested in what you look like, plus I like snooping around the internet for information on people. Having it handed to me like that is just no fun.
all galvanized pipe with 40+ years of corrosion
Use a small torch to heat up the female side of the connection.
*no burning down the house*
:-/ Are you sure it was interesting? Many moustaches look more like people desperately trying to look more adult or more badass or more like how they imagine a Latin Lover. In other words, there’s a non-negligible risk that your moustache actually made you look ridiculous.
Here I am, looking like seventeen, and liking it. It only leads to trouble when people don’t look like their mental age.
<diving under desk>
Full disclosure: I have always wanted to have a full beard like my dad (and PZ) when I grow up. That just hasn’t happened yet.
re the Science season on BBC4 – this was a good one
Aristotle’s Lagoon
(and it’s got lots about squid :) )
but I didn’t think much of tonight’s starter in the series about Time. Disappointing.
I don’t think any Pharyngulist would learn anything from it that they didn’t already know.
Tell me more about those “more issues than two Waltons put together”.
;-)
386sx for a hundred, Alex!! @52:
Mulholland Drive was a great filum! Of course the plot was difficult but once you get the gimmick it’s very enjoyable.
Also, Kirsten Dunst! EeeEeeEeeEEe!11!!
@ me,#108
You fool! You inserted the wrong link. Here’s the right link to Aristotle’s Lagoon.
Er. Um. Naomi Watts. Sorry. It’s amnesia.
and
this is funny
my boyfriend is the same, but he has the excuse of Native American blood. The one time I actually bothered counting, it took him 8 days to get a 5o’clock shadow.
he does not look his mental age though, which tends to oscillate between 5 and 15 :-p
Horror with physics and Wookieepedia. But read the last few paragraphs in any case. And the comments are delightful.
oh my dear, cyberstalking-as-a-hobby doesn’t even scratch the surface of my issues :-p
Well, some people (mainly women) certainly thought so. But personally I liked it.
There was even a time (immortalised in my Facebook profile photo) when my moustache curled up at the edges in a very nineteenth-century fashion. It went well with full evening dress.
see now THAT is actually awesome
The technical term is rat guard. They’ve been used to keep rats off ships for centuries.
@SteveM #81
That is a good way to frame the argument. One of the worst things to happen in this fight was the adoption of the phrase ‘gay marriage’. I honestly don’t know who coined it or made it popular but I think that it has been nothing but a bad thing for us. The term ‘marriage equality’ was the one we should have used all along. Just as you say, it is not about creating some new gay form of marriage, it is about making the institution equal for everyone.
And frankly, the less we make this about homosexuality, which is still quite unpopular in this country, the better off we are. Sad but true. In any case, I hope the lawyers know what they are doing.
@David Marjanovic (sorry I can’t do the little accent…)
I can sympathize with not looking your age. I basically look the same as I did a decade ago. I also look like a boy (I’m female). Once I was even mistaken for my older brother by people who hadn’t seen us in a long time. XP
If anyone’s interested, here is the only picture of me I admit is on the internet. It’s about ten years old, my beard is much whiter now, my face somewhat
fatterfuller and I’m in shadow. But it is more or less what I look like.Well, it’s back, but for some reason the old picture seemed much funnier
*shrug*
had to be posted here anyway
We need a song. Here’s David Crosby and Graham Nash singing “Marrakesh Express”:
If you cut their tails off, then they will just be possums.
[My first ancestor in the US came from Australia (OK…he came through Australia)…so I’m like 12% Aussie.]
Nice, ‘Tis. September 11, 1970. That’s a sweet guitar Cros is playing…watch as they swap right at the beginning of this one:
I agree with the Rev BDC. More bacon. When is Patricia going to post another bacon recipe?
(btw, i suspect the reason they swap guitars is so Cros can tune em)
(I could be wrong)
‘Tis Himself @#120: Strangely, you look almost exactly how I imagined you.
======
In other news: waaaaah, I want my moustache back!!!!!
(Multiple exclamation marks: sure sign of an increasingly deranged mind, as Terry Pratchett says.)
(I was wrong: Nash tunes his own at 4:44)
on a slightly different topic, but something that’s been fucking with me all day:
reports from various people in Port-au-Prince keep on saying that there isn’t any violence looting etc. to speak of*; but I’ve been bombarded with pictures of exactly that (by photographers for getty images, mostly) from Haiti**
is there any way to figure out WTF is up with that?
——–
* like here and here
** like this and this
Walton made a funny !!
But srsly, moustaches are so 80s pornstars….
Given that ‘Aussie” is more a description of a geographical location then anything else, and Australians themselves came from everywhere and anywhere, I’m not so sure what that makes you !
:P
Woo cute Pharyngulites! Everyone with pictures looks fabulous.
Walton,just don’t be this guy (at about 25 seconds in)
Jadehawk @ 129
There’s what the media feeds us, and then there is cold, hard reality. When I heard that people were without drinking water for days (just horrible!), I knew violence was inevitable.
NPR is playing the “peaceful struggle” card. Perhaps the media is colluding in the interest of not “making matters worse”.
I found out not that long ago that I’m part-American, since my great-great-grandfather was from New York (state) and was stationed in Australia (not sure why) in the late 1800s and ended up getting married and staying here.
that doesn’t really explain anything. all my sources are “media”, as well as being eyewitnesses to what’s going on. I’m not quite sure what motivation PiH would have to deny if there was violence, especially if it was the sort that was harming and even killing people
WTF? Say what?
You must have moustache envy.
In case any one was wondering, I am devastatingly handsome. Or at least that’s what my mom tells me.
When I used to log in with typekey, you could have your own page, with pic and links to recent posts and the like, MT doesnt have that option, but it works instead.So no more peeking at my pic !
oh, lol, I’m an idiot. I completely forgot that there was a picture of me in my typekey profile :-p
I’m in a couple of theatre promos you can find on YouTube, but I don’t think I’m ready for people here to see those…
Mulholland Drive was a great filum! Of course the plot was difficult but once you get the gimmick it’s very enjoyable.
Yes it is a great film, but it is the worst of the David Lynch films of the year 2001.
Also, Kirsten Dunst! EeeEeeEeeEEe!11!!
Yes, she and Megan Fox were very good in it.
SteveM:
Very well put. That is, of course, the most desirable way. Unfortunately, the opprobrious Religious Right has successfully made it into a two-pronged issue by focusing on the term ‘gay marriage’. They cannot oppose marriage, which they claim to be under the dominion of religion. But they are fulminantly opposed to homosexuality, and have carried their bigoted opposition on to any issue that speaks of according equal human rights to gay individuals; in other words, ‘hate gays, and therefore, hate gay marriage.’ If it were possible, they would extend it to other manufactured issues as well, such as ‘hate gay homeownership’, or ‘hate gay free speech’. Uganda is already a case in point with ‘hate gay right to live’.
Funny how it never extends to ‘hate gay christian priests abusing under-aged altar boys’. Such is the mind control of religion.
Therefore, IMO the fight for ‘gay marriage’ rights is just the beginning, just to get a toehold towards the struggle for much larger issues, of equal human rights for all, at stake.
The existing terminology has other problems also. As a heterosexual, I am considered ‘straight’ as opposed to ‘gay’. I don’t know who coined this usage of the word ‘straight’, but I can’t help feeling that it was deliberately and specifically used to project LGBT individuals as ‘bent’ or ‘crooked’.
Mulholland Dr. (2001)
Director/Writer: David Lynch
Cast: Megan Fox, Kirsten Dunst, Frank Sinatra, Samuel L. Jackson
‘Tis Himself @120: Handsome, in a real man’s man way. Luckily, I didn’t have a very different picture of you in my mind. I don’t like adjusting my mental pictures of friends. They should all stay the same forever. The strikeout through “fatter” was a nice touch. :-)
Long time listener, first time caller :)
I was hoping someone could help me out. I understand that our chromosome 2 is the result of the fusion of two chromosomes present in apes.
I have never been able to figure out how the fused chromosome would have propagated. Is the mutation that causes the fusion common enough for it to be present in a population in large enough numbers that it could become fixed?
(I am assuming that persons with 23 pairs of chromosomes could not mate successfully with those that had 24 pairs of chromosomes.)
Please don’t think i am trying to make some sort of argument from ignorance and claiming this is proof that evolution is false. This is simply one of the mechanisms that I don’t understand, and I am hoping someone out there can enlighten me :)
It’s been proposed that ejecta from the Chicxulub impact may have heated the sky to hundreds of degrees upon re-entry. If that was the case, some animals may have survived because they happened to be underground or underwater at the time.
they can. here’s PZ’s explanation (scroll down a bit. it’s the part with the (a)(b)(a:b) in it).
erm. link fail. go here: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/09/luskins_ludicrous_genetics.php
I completely forgot that there was a picture of me
Haha, got me!
AJ,
it’s not a mutation, it’s a telomere-to-telomere fusion event, the genetic information stayed the same IIRC.
I would guess that all that was required for this to propagate is not to be harmful.
But I’m not a geneticist.
I have been saving a special bacon recipe for Chimpy for months now. But I fear it may be even too daring for him. It’s called Pig Nuts .
Thanks so much for that!!
The link doesn’t seem to be working though, but I assume you mean this?
hmmm, good questions, mostly out of my league, but here are a few thoughts:
The fusion is the mutation. It’s non-Mendelian. It probably happened only once, in a single egg or sperm cell to which our whole species can trace ancestry. Fixation was likely via drift, not selection.
That’s your invalid assumption. The offspring of a fused and an unfused individual would have 47 chromosomes per nucleus but no gene-dosage problems. For mitosis it’s every chromosome for itself, so cell division works fine. At meiosis-time in the gonads, the homologous chromosome-parts can still pair up (two on the fused one), and (here’s where I get sketchy), I don’t see why functional, fertile gametes shouldn’t result.
like PZ sez
There’s a new study that suggests a link between having sex and carpal tunnel syndrome. (Abstract only, I’m afraid, full study costs $$).
Ahmm. That’s not what I do with my hands during sex. I must be Doing It Wrong. Or something.
huh?
If the link was between sex and suprapatellar bursitis I would be more worried :-)
This link sounds just like the one between the pirates and global warming….
A few more choice bits from the Prop. 8 trial in California:
Gentle people, did I not say that the mormons help set up these state PACs just so they could operate behind the scenes, just so they could pull the strings and donate money or services in a secret manner?
Martin D45, maybe? Not enough detail there to be sure.
ok, so it lets me sign in with Yahoo but I dont see a way to use my usual nick, anyone got some advice here ?
As a reward, here are two great looking recipes with bacon from my favorite blog from down under:
Salted Bacon Honey Maple Caramels
and Bacon Jam
Make sure and let us know which is best.
And for all you folk headed to Oz, check out the blog for good places to eat.
Oh, Alan Clarke, your web page is STILL BROKEN !!
Britomart
Jadehawk @ 155
With the silly picture at your typekey profile per @ 138
I’m mildly worried that you’re not seeing what I’m seeing, but I suppose since it is a picture of me posing in a Halloween costume, it could be described as silly.
David Marjanović (#46)
Be sure to thank your Y chromosome for making you a dude, then. I promise you it would be about five times more exasperating if you were female.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Walton (#127)
Have you considered a prosthetic?
~*~*~*~*~*~
Kausik Datta (#141)
Perhaps, but it backfires so easily into making straights sound inflexible and unvarying. Mwahahah. Wait, some people consider that a virtue. Dammit.
Jadehawk @ 161
Oh, so that is you, with the dark lipstick, head tilted back, clutching your pearls?
@ …#b3dc9 #159:
Basically, you need to set up an “alias” for your Yahoo account, activate it as an openID one and then use that to sign-in here instead. But unless your desired nickname works out as a valid alias (full name rules not disclosed by Yahoo up front!) and isn’t already taken, you still won’t get it (and even if you do there’ll be a small amount of junk appended to it).
More info in previous thread.
yup, that’s me. though, this isn’t the sort of picture that will help you identify me on the street, what with the wig, the heavy make-up, and the pearls. :-)
yup, that’s me.
Oh, no way!! Ha Ha!
But was Walton’s late, lamented soup strainer one of the manliest moustaches of all time, hmm?
I’m sorta sympathetic, I guess, actually. Tho’ I don’t so much do the ‘stache thing, I did just get that unruly bird’s nest of mine (pictured somewhere in a recent thread) cut today… this is a practical necessity, but annoys me… Always feel a bit naked up there until it starts looking a little less in control again…
(/Or at least like mebbe I’m misrepresenting myself or somethin’… It just seems somehow dishonest to wear hair that’s too much more together than the rest of me.)
Which merely brings us back again to Cros:
Oh, hell, I don’t know. I guess I assumed those guys were playing custom boxes even then. I just liked all the sniny abalone.
Is there anything off topic on this thread?
Sara Benincasa does the best Palin this side of Tina Fey, but her reaction to Pat Robertson’s recent lunacy is priceless.
Enjoy!
Hi Amphiox, David M, Sven and Mal.
Thanks for all your answers. Fascinating stuff. I’ve decided that I like AQOTI.
Now to be really annoying, is genetic diversity really all that important for species survival?
I ask because we always hear “OMG! There’s only 50 tigers left! They have no diversity!” But so often tiny numbers of individuals are able to colonise whole continents.
Forget ringtail possums (which are gorgeous and can poop all over my balcony any day). Does anyone know how to get rid of cane toads, European carp, European wasps, rabbits, foxes, feral cats, feral goats, feral water buffalo, the crown of thorns starfish and those stinking bloody Indian mynah birds?
Hey, here’s the same guitar and the best Joni Mitchell cover of all time. (yeah, one more…sue me)
tee hee
Actually, I too am perplexed by any change in chromosome number in vertebrates. Now if it were a plant, no big deal. Selfing, polyploidy, any number of mechanisms might restore homologous pairing for the meiotic dance. But as far as I know, hominids (or whatever they call the lineage including humans, chimps etc. nowadays) don’t do these things.
My best guess is that it required a little bit of …erm…how shall we say, inbreeding. And probably a little drift too. Offspring getting 24 chromosomes from the moms and 23 from the dads would obviously have meiotic problems because the fused chromosome (2f) would be homologous to two of the chromosomes (2a, 2b) from the maternal lineage. This means that anaphase in Meiosis I could produce any one of these combinations for that chromosome:
1. 2a
2. 2b
3. 2f
4. 2a and 2f
5. 2b and 2f
6. 2a and 2b
The gamete from scenario 3 (~1/6 of gametes) could result in a viable zygote if it united with another 2f gamete. If breeding s constrained to sibling pairs, the odds of this are 1/36. However rarely this might have occurred, in small, subdivided populations, drift may have quickly fixed the fused chromosome in the population.
However, I just made this shit up…it’s a plausible scenario, but that hardly equals a corroborated scenario. I suppose someone could do a quick lit search…maybe I’ll get around to that tomorrow.
Yeah, but a D45 was custom back then. :) After pausing that video and doing a google image search for D45, I’m about as sure as I can be that that’s what they’re playing.
I don’t know or even care about what make and model guitar it is, but he sure sings pretty.
But it is also viable with any wild-type 2a+2b gamete. No problem, and no mating with sibs required. Drift is still the likely scenario for ultimate fixation, though.
Did you read PZ’s posts, linked above?
Not too bad a singing. I never really liked that kind of guitar sound though. (Dunno why, because allegedly it’s a good sound, I guess.)
I can see it sounding good in context with other stuff, but solo it sounds like total crap, IMO.
Most imitated music video in history:
Bald guy w/ beard is Ginsburg.
With lyrics:
Ginsberg
other guy is Bob Neuwirth
Yes, because with insufficient diversity, their options are limited for responses to environmental conditions. Just look at what happens to human populations exposed to fun new (to them) diseases to which they have no inborn resistences. Entire villages were wiped out in England due to plague; if one of those villages was the total species population, then there’s your species extinction, right there.
Think of it as not putting all your species’ eggs in the same basket.
@ #159
Salted Bacon Caramels?? Genius! That’s going on the list of upcoming bacon experiments. Thus far I’ve done bacon chocolate chip cookies & cider-bourbon braised bacon – there is no going back to pre-sliced packaged bacon after that (I posted the recipe up at #49). I’d found a recipe for bacon caramel popcorn, too, so maybe I’ll just try making that and the caramels at the same time. :-)
Sven…Right. Two wild type gametes will also produce viable offspring…but they won’t result in the fixation of the fused allele in the population. The assumption I made is that the fused allele occurs one time in the germ line of a single individual, and therefore two descendant copies of the same fused chromosome would have to recombine at some point for the chromosome to become fixed. What I hadn’t considered is that it doesn’t need to happen right away. Alternatively, it seems clear that selection will favor individuals that have either two copies of each fused chromosome, or two copies of each unfused chromosome because these produce a higher proportion of viable gametes (no triads during meiosis). Selection might therefore also favor assortative mating, which can be a reproductive isolation mechanism. I totally missed this obvious alternative…I have a weird tendency to consider drift/population substructuring scenarios without considering selection at all. Call it neutral theory bias.
Actually, I hadn’t read PZ’s post but it does introduce another important point; some of these fusions occur over and over in parallel. The structure of a chromosome is not homogenous along its length, and some tend to have points that are prone to breakage and fusion.
Anybody got time for another evolution question?
The Nature program on hummingbirds mentioned an evolutionary feature I’m not familiar with. For one species (sorry but I didn’t get the name) the sexes have evolved different bills, both length and shape, and feed on different flowers. Sounded to me almost like the males and females were occupying different niches in the ecosystem.
How unusual is this? I’m familiar with coloration and size differences between the sexes, but this seems a little different. . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subterranean_Homesick_Blues
I wonder, who is this mysterious “fourth man”!
check the Grassy Knoll
It’s unusual, I think. Ecological dimorphism is often considered as an alternative hypothesis to sexual selection in studies of the origin of sexual dimorphism, but I don’t know of any documented examples off the top of my head.
one more step towards the Corporate States of America.
whee.
Walton,
My condolences on your lost moustache. My facial hair also keeps most people from mistaking me for an adolescent. It also provides me warmth during cold Canadian winters and feeds me in the form of crumbs lodged there from previous meals.
Hi Cicely,
Yes, I understand the importance of diversity on that level, but I don’t understand why it doesn’t seem to be a requirement for so many invasive species.
Though perhaps things like cane toads and Indian mynahs are exceptions to the general rule. Maybe there were thousands of other (attempted) invasive species that never got a foothold here in Australia because they didn’t have enough genetic marbles in their furry little bags.
Flat 7th 386sx Blues @#189
Anthony Blunt?
Also, thanks to various people for the possum suggestions.
In some contexts, and if you can actually pull it off. The worst-case scenario is to come across as self-parodying.
Fresh Prince & Ben Kenobi on Christian TV
Christ TV Rickrolled
Hooray. Blockquote fail.
And despite all registration, the “too many comments submitted in too little time” error still exists!
Or you can do like me and type “ć” for “?”. Yes, I tired of having to copy and paste your name.
Brilliant red squid pendant (via bioemphera.) (Unfortunately the person wearing it backed with a red-orange dress which makes hard to see – she should have worn dark blue. Still, it is beautiful, and there are two photos of it without the terrible dress behind it.) It tells her dirty jokes. Should fit in well here.
See also the striking octopus, black with white stones, she wears on her shoulder.
Yeah, but unfortunately, the homeopathic apologists are out there in force in the comments with their anecdotes, outnumbering the sane people by 3/1 or so. One poster even said that a homeopathic remedy ‘cured’ an ear infection, that he’d had for 2 years, *overnight*! My theory on that one is that the infection had long ago spread to his brain, liquifying it.
I now equate belief in homeopathy with creationism. It is blind faith in the long-ago discredited Hahnemann dude (complicated by the placebo effect).
ambulocetacean #171
I thought the way to get rid of cane toads was to lick them to death? :-)
There’s been some research suggesting that sexual dimorphism in predatory birds (e.g. hawk, owls) is at least partly an adaptation for utilizing a wider range of prey sizes. Larger adult birds prefer larger prey, so competition between the sexes is reduced. Nestlings, OTOH, have access to the range of prey sizes provided by both parents.
As with a lot of adaptationist arguments, other ecological explanations for sexual dimorphism don’t necessarily conflict with the prey-partitioning idea.
BTW, in most predatory bird species, females are larger than males. In other bird species, as with mammals, it’s typically the male that’s larger.
Here’s an interesting take on “looting” in Haiti or anywhere.
Also, some powers that be (including some prominent faculty members who are gay/lesbian) have started to take notice of the Bruce Malone appearances scheduled on my campus. i was even asked for input and directed them to the dissections of Malone provided here on Pharyngula.
I love this blog.
Faithful reader
Work was quiet, so in the tearoom the TV was on, and my most-hated movie of all times was showing, Love, actually.
Does anyone else hate it ? Schmaltzy piece of rubbish….Bill Nighy was the only saving grace !
If I’m not there then start without me. :-P
1) I’m too tired to scroll all the way back up there. (Thread fatigue.)
2) I wish this thread were a lot bigger. (Thread envy.)
3) This thread does not exist. (Thread denial.)
Given the lack of comments, did anyone get the joke in comment 503 of the previous subthread…?
I much prefer the cuddly version anyway… Someone should upload that one at Cute Overload ^_^
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
“Pancho Villa started life as a poor Mexican sharecropper on a[n] hacienda. He grew a mustache, put on some bandoliers, and became the Mexican version of Robin Hood. His mustache inspired thousands of oppressed Mexicans to revolt against the oligarchy and establish a [slightly] more democratic Mexico.”
From the comments…
“For a list of manly mustaches, those are some of the gayest examples I’ve ever seen. Mark Spitz and Errol Flynn? Maybe manly men, but seriously homo-licious pics.”
“One of the Manliest Moustaches is a Moustache of Science: The one worn by Max Planck.”
“Salvador Dali anyone? His mustache was so epic it had a mind of it’s own! Crawlin across his face like that all the time, making seussian shapes and what not…”
Answered Questions On The Internet?
You just don’t hear of the cases where that doesn’t work.
There’s hardly any problem, because both 2a and 2b can and readily do pair up with 2f (as long as they’re similar enough, which they are in this scenario).
The “similar enough” part is gradual, not either-or. Even some mules are fertile.
<headdesk>
TSIB!!!
If it’s really constitutional to just fucking buy the country, the Constitution must be amended. Why isn’t that obvious? Mooooorooooons!!!
:-) :-) :-)
Or indeed ć. Test: ?
That’s the explanation I was taught as textbook wisdom for why…
Intraspecific competition is always stronger than interspecific competition, because it takes place between more or less identically adapted individuals, and it can’t be avoided by evolving into a different niche. Things like sexual niche dimorphism and metamorphosis* are therefore strongly selected for.
* Most tadpoles are mostly or entirely herbivorous. No adult frog is.
@ Rorschach # 205
I remember taping that one for a Rickman fix. I agree, it was not a keeper.
To whose death exactly?
Don’t tadpoles frequently eat each other? I guess that makes them herbivorivorous <- I love this word and the too much coffee that created it.
That AFAIK depends on the species and comes late in development.
While I’m sure our Ms. Jadehawk is quite lovely ‘neath all that, my first reaction to that pic was more something like: ‘ZOMG! It’s got her face! It’s some sorta fuzzy shag carpet/alien facehugger hybrid! Get it off! Get it off!!’…
(/I know, it seems histrionic ‘n all… But I’m thinking if we let it get to the chestburster stage, the whole damn ship’s gonna look like Austin Powers’ airborne lovenest a half second later…)
*serious wine spill*
No, David. The Spanglish h is aspirated, so “a hacienda” is correct.
I think it means “Asking Questions On The Internet”. AQOTI often leads to less brutal responses than statements that aggravate SIWOTI syndrome unless the questioner is TSTKTS.
Regerding yesterday’s Supreme Court decision selling our national soul to corporations:
OK, any other disgruntled civil servants out there? I say we take this as precedent and challenge the Hatch Act–that lovely piece of legislation used as a political gag on civil servants. I mean if free speech is sacrosanct…
Anyone with me?
A photo of the truth machine has surfaced. Sort of.
Obama wants to increase regulation of banks, following the recommendations by Paul Volcker who already did that in the 1980s (stopping the galloping inflation after the Savings & Loans scandal)… but there’s no source given. (And the whole thing is in German.) If all of that stuff passes Congress… <drool> hey, I can have a dream, can’t I.
@David Marjanović #212
If toad then mission accomplished.
If (atheist) licker then he/she no longer cares about toads (dead or alive)- mission accomplished.
If both toad and (atheist) licker then neither care – mission accomplished.
A win win win situation!
*gasp*
This day has proven to be quite extraordinary in many regards, one of my co-workers,a lesbian, is pregnant (don’t ask), the Bride of Shrek is of royal blood or something, and truthy is posting pics of himself on the net !!
I need to sleep.
a_ray_in_dilbert_space, (comment #217), are the military forces included in the category “civil servants”? If so, I think they spout off too much already on political issues. And it’s strange to have a General in the armed forces spouting christian-crusade-like and republican-far-rightish reasons for prosecuting wars.
First thing I thought of when I heard about the Supreme Court decision was that the LDS Church owns/runs many for-profit corporations. This law will make it easier for them to donate big bucks and services to anti-gay campaigns.
Speaking of the mormons, it can be amusing (in a black comedy sort of way) to watch the defenders of the Prop 8 campaign trying to squirm away from their past associations. The Source is Huff Po. Sorry for the Huff Po link, but they had good coverage. Example:
Those of you who remember the discussions about the kill-the-gays law in Uganda will recognize the arse-originated statistic of “12 times more likely to molest children” as coming from Scott Lively and others who happily spread such lies, along with other inaccurate representations of gays. Best coverage and timeline for the Uganda “Homo Terror” campaign is here, at boxturtle, Jim Burroway is the writer.
I tried not to, but I can’t help myself.
Well, duh. He considers God the one and only major player.
David M. @223, it gets worse with the Tam dude. More squirming was apparently done, and pressure applied to Tam during a five-minute break.
So, in other words, Tam embarrassed the lawyers for the Prop 8 homophobes, and damaged their case. So they pulled him aside during the break, scolded him, and forced him to distance himself further — when in reality he was a major player, and he and his organizational contacts with christian fundies were used and advertised during the Prop 8 campaign. But, of course, Tam is an obvious idiot, and now the Prop 8 lawyers need to present a cleaner front, with fewer obvious idiots, and fewer ties to bogus statistics.
David Marjanović (c&p) #218
Everyone in the US government except the hard core free marketeers realize that financial reregulation is needed. Some of it’s already in place. H.R. 4173, The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, has already been passed and sent to the Senate. The Party of No is fighting the bill, trying to weaken it.
If you’re really interested, here’s the Treasury’s green paper on financial regulatory reform (pdf).
Lynna, I appreciate all the coverage you’ve been giving to the Prop8 trial. The US Supreme Court’s corporatocracy ruling had a surprisingly related and prejudicial section inside it by Clarence Thomas that argued for greater protection of anonymous political “speech” (by which he means money) by referring to the whining Mormon bigots who don’t want the public to know how much money they donated to anti-gay hate campaigns. (Thomas probably doesn’t even realize that he is stereotyping gays as an “angry mob” when the true mob is the Prop 8 supporters who tore apart millions of families.)
So yeah, it’s scary what we are seeing come out of the US Supreme Court right now considering all the intermingling and sometimes dual ownership of religious and corporate interests.
There are no other threads in the known universe. (Thread myopia.)
@DavidM
Actually, it is potentially a problem. With 2 centromeres and 2 kinetichores, the fused chromosome can be pulled to either side of the cell in anaphase I, resulting in some gametes that have both fused and non-fused chromosomes. This would result in a condition similar to trisomy for two chromosomes if such a gamete fused with a normal gamete. That’s not to say that you won’t have some separation events that pull 2a and 2b to one pole and 2f to the other. However, some gametes will be fucked up.
The thread continues on, and on, and on through the labyrinthine corridors, larger than it appears at first glance, slowly entrapping the minds of all who enter. (House of Threads)
aratina cage @226: Thanks for the additional info. I read in other sources about the pumped up Persecution! coverage. Naturally, the mormons were best at spreading the persecution virus. NPR bought the “persecution” stories and included it in their recent podcast. Protests do not equal persecution. The actual amount of persecution was small, and no one should excuse it, but it has been massively spun into a big story.
The anti-gay forces consider it persecution when protestors complain about a business owner contributing to anti-gay hate campaigns. They consider it persecution when protestors have a rally outside a diner in a mostly gay neighborhood to make the point that the owner is funding hate campaigns against her own customers. They certainly don’t like it when free-speech is turned against them.
Of course, there are always a few crazies on both sides who send out threats. Examples from your link:
They can exercise their first amendment rights, they just can’t expect that no one will object when they do.
I wonder why this persecution story says nothing about the decades-long “cottage industry” of displaying wanted posters for abortion doctors on fundie sites, for listing the addresses of abortion clinics, for listing the addresses of LBGT organizations, for listing gay legislators, gay-owned businesses, and for soliciting violence against gays?
Then, of course, there is the ultimate threat of hell and damnation, or at least of excommunication, if one doesn’t vote the right way on all anti-gay initiatives.
Mormon Stake Presidents and Bishops actually called donors of small amounts and “suggested” that a larger donation would be needed. That sounds like persecution to me.
Politics in Utah: “Before each general session, GOP and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate sit down separately with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints special affairs committee, a group made up of church general authorities, church public relations officials and their lobbyists, to discuss any items on the minds of both legislators and church leaders.”
http://asoftanswer.com/2008/01/22/lds-representatives-meet-with-utah-legislature/
Gah! The head is shown extending outside of the mantle! Basic cephalopod-anatomy fail!!
Dude, it is the duty of the linker to provide the link (as you did, thoughtfully, for the TM pic later).
eh, except when they’re not. I mean, ontogenetic niches like tadpole –> frog or caterpillar –> butterfly might reduce competition between parents and offspring and therefore be directly selected. But afaik, better explanations invoke the use of temporarily rich food supplies to fuel rapid growth in larvae rather than intraspecific competition.
As for sexual niche dimorphism, raptors are a plausible example I forgot. Can you supply further examples? I doubt it’s strongly selected very often.
Only a few species show this (spadefoot toads, Scaphiopus, are the best known), ususally in situations where development time in drying temporary pools is a serious crunch.
Right, the problem being approx. 1/3 inviable gametes. A much bigger problem, in general, for a female than a male…suggests to me the likelihood that the original fusion event occurred in somebody’s balls.
2/3 inviable
And PZ already did in the very first line!
All those spiders with drastic size dimorphism probably count (though I don’t know what any of them actually eat). Anglerfish (with dwarf parasitic males) sort of count, because the males need so much less food than the females. Lions would more or less count if they were solitary…
Not very impressive.
Of course, in many populations, most adult male lions are solitary, aren’t they?
T-Shirt for previous thread
Octopus Angst
One half cup baloney.
Three slices bread.
Pickles.
Onions.
Two slices muenster cheese.
Mustard to taste.
Salt.
Pepper.
(Official pharyngula baloney sandwich.)
Giant Squid vs Sperm Whale vs Godzilla vs Lightning Storm
Oh yeah, one can Pabst beer too. (Thanks Owlmirror.)
Official baloney sandwich. ®
Worst beer: Milwaukee’s Best
(We call it “Milwaukee’s Beast” down here in these parts.)
Timothy Kincaid, on the Box Turtle Bulletin, is coming up with some interesting analysis of the Prop 8 trial: Example:
And here’s an example of Kincaid destroying the myth of persecution, of using the simple expedient of the truth to douse the inflamed language of the “We are persecuted!” squad:
Spiders…probably…anglerfish…sorta…
lions ? Do males scavenge more than females or something?
Of course there is the perennial chicken-&-egg problem here. Sexual dimorphism itself in all of these taxa has a better ultimate explanation than any ecological dimorphism, which is likely to be a subsequent development.
We all know that “Reparative Therapy” to cure teh gayz is a crock o’ crap, but the religiously-inspired just won’t give it up.
Emphasis mine. A pay-to-publish “journal” like this would not be recognized for the propaganda that it is by many non-experts. This makes it useful in Uganda. This makes it useful as a source for people like Mr. Tam, who revealed himself to be extremely gullible during his Prop. 8 trial testimony.
Treason. That’s not Godzilla, that’s an ordinary Tyrannosaurus blown up to at most twice linear dimensions.
In those cultures where they seriously participate in the hunt, they hunt bigger, stronger prey (like cape buffalos) and/or the females chase prey toward the ambushing males who finish it off. (Dramatic scene on TV where some chased antelope jumps over a bush in the Okavango delta and a male lion jumps vertically up from behind the bush and plucks the antelope out of the air.)
In others, there’s only one adult male per pack, and the supernumerary males are solitary, which means their method of hunting differs from that of the packs.
Asking if anything is OT.
Also answering such OT questions.
So either they made it up, or they made it up.
I think my cholesterol went up about 15 or 20 points just READING some of these posts. This is the first time I’ve set myself down and read from the Horde…. I now see the fascination.
Will you join the Mutual Intellect Appreciation Society?
Owlmirror
Combine 236 and 239, and you get this!
And how do you paste images directly into the thread? I tried [img src] and the URL of the image on some webpage; it doesn’t work in the preview.
Indeed. If everyone pulls at the thread at once, will it unwind so fast the SciBorg can use it to tunnel its way out of the secret reinforced underground lair where it’s been safely kept, and start threatening the world with Bacon Armageddon?
I’m embarrassed to admit that more than twice I’ve clicked on one of their links and then been disappointed that it wasn’t actually about box turtles.
(There used to be the Box Turtle Research and Conservation Newsletter but it got subsumed by the Borg.
Rorschach @220: Are you sure your prejudices are not showing?
Srsly, what’s so wrong with a lesbian woman being pregnant? Can a lesbian woman not want a baby of her own? Can she not choose to carry her own baby, after (perhaps) being artificially or naturally inseminated, or having eggs implanted? Perhaps she has graciously agreed to be a surrogate for someone in her immediate family?
Besides, if someone amongst your co-workers becomes pregnant, irrespective of her sexual orientation, why is that such a skin off your nose?
P.S. No wonder you don’t like ‘Love, actually’. Figures.
It’s actually a very pertinent domain name. It comes from a slippery-slope statement by US Senator John Cornyn (Republican from Texas) who said:
Dave, I will join the MIAS .. provisionally. It’s that “Mutual” thing. I appreciate intellect, for sure; why else would I be here, but (insert western Minnesota self-deprecation here) I don’t know if I bring any to the table.
Oh, I know; I think it’s very pertinent and clever and everything.
It’s just that I’m one of those (presumably few) people who see an idiotic quote like that and think “Texas? He could be referring to either Terrapene ornata or T. carolina triunguis.”
LOL Sven. :) The editor there, Jim Burroway, has a long write up about the website’s name with a great ending line:
@#250: Black magic. Use the following incantation:
[p style=”margin: 0pt auto; background: transparent url(Ia! Ia!) no-repeat scroll center center; width: 666px; height: 666px;”][/p]
Replacing the cultic cries and the numbers of the beast with more appropriate strings and values.
also, perhaps replace the ‘[‘ and ‘]’ respectively with < and > characters?
Thanks Owlmirror…Hmm…typing this:
[p style=”margin: 0pt auto; background: transparent url(http://www.pbrart.com/images/uploads/107/151/large/pbr_rex.jpg) no-repeat scroll center center; width: 300px; height: 300px;”][/p]
gives me this:
…which is about one-tenth the image…alas I don’t know how to shrink the image to reasonably fit the comment box…is it possible o High Priest of Pharyngula?
this deserved a repost (from the thread on grant money), imo:
alas I don’t know how to shrink the image to reasonably fit the comment box
you can’t do it via inline coding.
you have to resize the image first in an image processor like photoshop.
once the image is resized, you can then upload the much smaller version to whereever, and then use the link in an inline comment.
…and in the future, please please please don’t link huge images via inline tags people!
sciborgs WILL pull the ability to use inline style tags if it becomes an issue of bandwidth bottlenecks
10 day weather forecast. yay!
*throws snowball at Pharyngula*
thanks; that article was… fierce; and interesting.
And in any case, after posting about my confusion yesterday, two things happened: for one, a BBC article came out that sort of described the situation as a whole, saying that isolated pockets of violence exist, but that for the most part people have organized themselves to keep the dangerous elements separated out, and overall the streets are mostly safe.
secondly, the update from Mercy Corps came, and it had pictures of people walking off with stuff, too. They were shot much differently, but the subject matter was quite similar; and yet, they were subtitled as people finally recovering their stuff from the rubble, not as looting. Comparing both the different techniques of these shots as well as the captions was an interesting lesson in context and composition. Who knew almost getting an AA in Art History would ever come in handy like that :-p
and
riiiiiiight…. well, the friend who insisted on taking that picture said I looked like Elmo. I don’t know which of the three options is worse: being on Cute Overload, being attacked by a fuzzy version of Alien, or looking like Elmo :-p
Re ursulamajor @170;
Sara Benincasa is a deeply sick individual. Awesome funny but deeply sick.
Also, wow. Less than a hundred comments behind.
@#259: Quite often, magicians will, in recording successful spells, leave out a simple but crucial step which is remembered or strongly encrypted. This is done to help ensure that theft of intellectual property by rival mages will result in the misperformance of stolen spells by said rivals, leading to them being devoured by ravenous demons.
I, of course, hoped that Mr. Fire was clever enough to deduce this for himself and compensate accordingly.
Alas, given the alarmingly large and sharp teeth shown by his summoning, it would appear that my hope was in vain…
====
@#260: I’ve always had problems with resizing images with HTML on Sb, and I suspect that it may not be possible (that is, certain crucial tags/style modifications are not accepted).
That having been said, I note that the site itself has smaller images to begin with. Thus:
[p style=”margin: 0pt auto; background: transparent url(http://www.pbrart.com/images/CACHE/images-uploads-107-151-large-pbr_rex-270-270-1387373.jpg) no-repeat scroll center center; width: 202px; height: 270px;”][/p]
*Throws baloney sandwich at monitor*
I believe we’ve got a major problem with the braising instructions for the cider-bourbon bacon. Braising is a low-temperature cooking method. Cooking at 350 degrees isn’t braising and would leave a very short window between under-done and over-done.
The best method, per Harold McGee, is to place the meat and braising liquid in a cold oven with the lid ajar. set the oven temp to 200 degrees so that the braise SLOWLY comes to 120 degrees. Raise the oven temp to 250 degrees so that the braise slowly warms from 120 to 180 degrees. Check every half hour until the bacon is tender. Cool in the cooking liquid. (NOTE: All temps F.)
For those who may not know:
Harold McGee:culinary arts::Chris Mooney:butt-smoochery arts
Over on Tet Zoo, someone claimed someone has managed to get some yowie hair.
Hair can be identified down to species, so I asked why that hasn’t happened.
Well, read the comments that follow. Especially mythusmage.
:-| That’s normal. Politics in Austria: Before each session of the council of ministers, the Federal Chancellor (prime minister) phones the boss of the biggest and worst newspaper and asks if the topic is appropriate. Said newspaper (which can’t even spell its own name right) is xenophobic and stuff… By “biggest” I mean that half of the country (4 out of 8 million) reads it daily. And all this applies no matter which parties are represented in the administration.
<headdesk>
Ironically, most of the teeth are a bit too small, though less so than usual. (Sometimes reality is more badass than fiction!) And their 3-D shape isn’t right.
Because she’s not pregnant from him <diving under desk just in time>.
(Also, those who cannot spell Iä shall be eaten next to last.)
:.-( <– tears of envy
Ngf.
OK, so I know what not to google for. :-)
Is there any regular here in the US or UK that uses Steam? If so, would you be able to do a favour? My steam ID is Anarchy1984, username “Kel The Antisocial”. Add me
My brain hurts.
Please note the first half of #266.
Plumpfth noraghfsz YARLY megaphlumphth K”þøûooollhú !!
A-ha! So that’s why you never run out of steam.
[*ducks]
Also, I see that the “too many comments in a short term” error is back in full glory. I thought this system was fixed?
One advantage of resizing the image in Photoshop is that you end up with a much smaller download size.
Open the image in Photoshop. Save the image using a different name so that your original is not compromised. If there are any layers in the image, flatten them (unless you are flaunting your skills and want to alter individual layers first, then flatten the damned thing). The “Mode” (found under the “Image” menu) should be set to RGB.
Select Image Size from the Image menu. In the size window, enter the size in either pixels or inches. The default for the resizing window is set to Resample Image, to Constrain Proportions, and to Scale Styles (unless you have changed these defaults), so you only have to enter one measurement, either width or height, and the rest will be automatic.
Before you click “OK” be sure to set the resolution at 72 pixels/inch (or certainly no more than 150 pixels/inch) for use online.
For use on Pharyngula, you really do not have to bother changing the resample options, which are “Bicubic”, “Bicubic Smoother”, “Bicubic Sharper”, “Nearest Neighbor” and “Bilinear”. Bicubic (best for smooth gradients) is the default, so just leave it that way.
If you are a graphic artist, and you know what results to expect, and what you want to see, then you can learn to use Bicubic Sharper (for example) when reducing a huge image to a much smaller size.
In the Photoshop “File” menu, select “Save for web and devices”. This action will further reduce the size of the file without unduly compromising the quality. Save the new “for web and devices” image under a new name, just in case. Use this “for web and devices” image that you have created for your upload to Pharyngula.
I think the JPEG of ‘Tis Himself crashed my Photoshop application the other day, but I might be misremembering that incident.
Feature, not bug. Cuts down on the spambots for sites that do not require comment registration. I doubt PZ has the access to change that here only.
Hooray! Official recognition of the fact that baptisms into the mormon church are down, down, down. And you know that they are specialists at spinning statistics, and at hiding them when necessary, so if they say baptisms are down, they truly are.
Even with decline in baptisms, the church is still true writes McKay Coppins in the Mormon Times. Excerpt:
SciBorg software has shut me out of all other threads. You may have to carry on without me. Spewcifically, when I hit submit, I get preview and when I hit submit again I get one of two submission error messages.
BS
Oh yeah, finally thought of it: twink and fap are not in my dictionary. Help, please.
(…Except… based on what little context there is, I’m not sure if I actually want to know what twink means.)
Kausik @ 253,
Long story involving grave health concerns, medical complications and the like that is none of your business, and in no way anything to do with me clutching pearls at the idea of a lesbian having a baby.
But thanks for playing, better luck next time.
David, my boy, there are times when this needs to be your dictionary.
You know what to do.
David – Um, ah, um,….. well, let’s leave it at Urban Dictionary is your friend.
It’s an in-joke.
*da-boom tish*
@ Blind Squirrel #277:
It’s possible that the page jumps while forming within your browser window (in #261 Ichthyic reports on your complaint of slow loading). So whereas you believe you’ve hit one button, it decides you’ve hit the other – or possibly first one and then the other.
The submit action goes ahead even if you can’t see it happening at your end via your browser window being updated. ScienceBlogs still sees it as having occurred. So if you try to hit submit again, on that or another thread, you’re going to be penalised for it, ie in terms of the ScienceBlogs posting timer being reset and hence not accepting another submit operation from you because you’re acting like a spammer.
Just in case it matters for comparison with anyone else’s problems, what computer setup are you using? Minimum useful info would be the names and version numbers of both the operating system and the browser (but hardware specs such as processor speed, bandwidth and internet service provider could also be relevant).
Ignore this, just testing something.
Blind Squirrel (#277)
Have you tried logging out and back in? I just tested it and it resolves the stupid forced preview bullshit for me. Dunno if it would help you, though, since I haven’t had submission errors mixed in.
~*~*~*~*~*~
And speaking of Urban Dictionary, why the isn’t “sniny” in there yet?
Hmm, editing fail in that last sentence. Just pretend that “the” isn’t there or “hell” is still following it.
I was afraid that would happen when Ichthic didn’t nest the quotes; I did not complain about slow loading. That was starfart!
Windoze xp pro ver 2002 service pack 3; Firefox 3.5 pentium 4 2.41 GHZ 1.00 GB ram Band width sux, bottom 3% of country (USA)
BS
Sorry Sven, cross-posting same idea.
sorry Ichthyic
BS
A. Noyd: Tried that, no dice. Wonder how much longer I have on this thread. You may assume I am lurking if you don’t hear from me. Air going bad, save the children first, I’ve lived my life.
BS
great minds and all that.
Wish I could see David’s face when he looks up “twink” though.
Whoa, a lot of apologies there. “Sorry” all over the place. Is there anyone to whom I can apologize? I feel left out.
you can apologize to me for… ah… um… sorry, can’t think of anything.
Nope, can’t think of anything you can apologize for. Sorry. Better luck next time.
Jadehawk, I can apologize for not marrying your metalhead cousin. (That was the offer, right?)
I’m so sorry, but I didn’t think it would work out because he’s addicted to metal and I’m addicted to oranges. Nerd, or some of our other chemists, can tell you about the effects of citric acid on metal.
I feel so much better now.
“Spewcifically” has made it into the lexicon, no? It is a good new word.
And starfart?? Really? Someone used that as a handle?
*Fame by meltdown*
Said I’m sorry. Now it’s your turn to look me in the eyes.
@ A. Noyd #285:
Who else has (and on what other combination of software etc) been getting a forced preview? I haven’t seen one on Windows Vista with FireFox 3.5.1 (and no silly toolbar junk installed) at all.
Could it be that one only gets the preview if (a) the window form / Sb doesn’t believe you’re logged in or (b) you’re already marked as having used your posting allocation for the next few minutes?
actually, the metalhead is my brother; my cousin is the banker :-)
This may constitute a tiny baby step in the right direction for muslims, especially women, in Saudi Arabia. I’ll believe it when I see them actually pass a law that prevents 12-year-old girls from being married to 80-year-old men.
Source
Oh, my gawd, I am sooo sorry. Please apologize to your brother. Please apologize to your cousin. Can I marry them both to make up for the error?
Wow, contrition is fun — I wonder if this orgy of apologies offers some insight into the psychology of politicians and religious nutters who get caught in the wrong, ummm … sexual situation, and then apologize not just to their significant others, but to the WORLD! Yay! In a press conference! Pity parties, sorry syrup, apology apoplectics.
How could anyone read that and not laugh, I ask you?
Sun Valley has five inches of new snow — and this is over a nice base. Anyone want to go skiing?
I laffed.
I gave the name a chuckle or three.
@Lynna. Sounds nice, but I don’t think I’m up for the 12 hour drive.
Thanks, but I’d rather go ice boating. This video was shot on Lake Winnebago, about eight miles from where I grew up in Oshkosh.
*jumps up and down, waving her hand in the air*
oh!ooh! me! me! pick meeee!
Lynna,
Nice. I guess condoning ephebophilia¹ is better than condoning pedophilia.
—
¹ Depending on who their marriage is
sold toarranged with.Coming close to earth gives an asteroid the shakes.
Source
Depends upon the metal. Citric acid is weak acid (like acetic acid, or vinegar), which means it shouldn’t react with metals like copper. But it is also a chelating agent, so it can help dissolve metals like copper by forming a complex. The same thing is seen with gold. Gold won’t dissolve in concentrated nitric acid, but will dissolve in a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids (aqua regia) because the chloride complexes with gold ions. Metals like gold, silver, or stainless steel should be uneffected. But a metalhead? Definite dissolution through the bleeding eardrums…(see today’s Doonesbury cartoon)
Wow, contrition is fun
are you trying on Walton’s shoes for the day?
maybe you just meant this in the context of marriage; and maybe even only in the context of marriage to old dudes, in which case I apologize for the following rant in advance; but this ephebophilia stuff, especially when we’re about 16-year-olds, just fucking pisses me off.
teenagers are sexual beings, too. teenagers fucking teenagers, or young adults fucking teenagers, is just a non-story. it’s not sick; it shouldn’t be a crime. it’s not creepy or disfunctional or anything.
it only goes into that territory when severe power imbalances are concerned, which is no different among adults; which, considering the context here, might be well what you meant. But yeah, this issue peeves me. sorry.
Owlmirror, Ichthyic, Lynna: Thanks for the imaging advice, and sorry to all for committing HTML howlers.
Watch a stereotypical mad prof discuss how aqua regia dissolves gold!
And of course, the BBC classic:
Alkali metals reacting with water
Francium is even more reactive than Caesium. Alas, it is extremely rare.
And radioactive. Stay away from it.
Mr. Fire, that was interesting video showing the aqua regia and gold dissolving. I liked the story about the Nobel Prize medals. Tricksy chemists!
What the utube video didn’t mention is that the vigor of the reaction is highly dependent on the temperature of the water. Did this demo for kids just last year with sodium and hot water. That’s one less plastic dishpan in this world.
BS
Truly wonderful. Although the Saudi thing has depressed me again.
Fewer damnit, fewer!
BS
lol — blowing things up! Explosions for everyone, please. the Caesium really took that glass beaker out. The sodium looked like it could drive a boat, though control might be an issue.
Ichthyic, regarding the apologies and all, I was just feeling left out of the general and widespread expressions of sorrow on this thread, so I thought I’d give it a try and see how it felt. Walton sets a standard no one can match. (This fake contrition on my part has nothing to do, of course, with real sorrow over tragedies in Haiti, and other events of moment.)
Dammit,dammit!
BS
Nerd, loved the Doonesbury cartoon (see comment #311). Where is our Janine when we’re discussing bleeding ears and music and professorial takes on music?
David M., check out the link at 318. Fun with language.
Blind Squirrel FCD @319:
d
Blind Squirrel FCD @312:
You should apologize. Say you’re sorry. Express abject sorrow because there’s no space after the comment in “Dammit,dammit!”.
I see Mr. Fire apologized up-thread for committing HTML howlers. We have apologies from me (admittedly fake), Carlie, Blind Squirrel (but not for his latest errors, only for past errors), Walton, and a Muslim Cleric … and probably more “sorry” expressions that I’ve missed. Jadehawk half-assed apologized for not being able to find any reason to request an apology. This is becoming the Thread of Never-Ending Sorrow.
s/comment/comma
Unless this is a regional variant ;_-)
I refuse to apologise for getting my smiley wrong.
eddie:
apologize!
I’m sorry for crossing comments with eddie.
Not only do I apologize, but I am going to give up the sport of golf.
BS
Very nice image of human neural stem cells from fetal cortex, along with other award-winning images, at Scientific Computing’s coverage of Cell Image Winners.
More interesting science news:
The article is How Brain Cells Deal with Mathmatical Rules. This article leads me to believe that I’d better not have a stroke in my frontal lobe. It might lead to problems worse than an addiction to oranges.
zorry.
eddie – I thought your smiley just had an interesting facial scar. Possibly from a bar fight or a battle with a wild bobcat or something.
I’m sorry I assumed your smiley had a checkered past.
This is becoming the Thread of Never-Ending Sorrow.
can we haz lamentations, too?
Not only do I apologize, but I am going to give up the sport of golf.
At least until the troops are out of Afghanistan and Iraq?
Oh, fuck! [checks twice to make sure “fuck” is spelled correctly] What was the name of that law, the one that states that if you correct a person’s grammar or spelling, you will certainly commit your own error within the correction?
I’m so very sorry!!!!! I can barely hold my head up long enough to type this. Now where did I put that rock I usually hide under?
Furthermore, I apologize for excess use of exclamation marks. Oh, the shame.
Lamentations for Ichthyic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hoivtJ6Dpk
I’m off to beat my breasts, or to hire someone to beat their breasts for me. That’s how we do it in the US of A.
Lynna @330, thanks for the links.
Isn’t nature wonderful.
I’m guessing you’ve handled its lovely, fuming cousin, trifluoroacetic acid, plenty often.
You’re just saying that because you don’t want someone else to get superpowers too.
I first saw the film when I was 11. That part was where I decided I wanted to be a chemist :)
BTW, before you make a bad habit of it like I do, in the US it’s spelled cesium. Vestiges of my British upbringing.
Jadehawk,
Yeah, I guess I should’ve said it explicitly; I’m referring to regulations regarding arranged marriages, where a girl is told she’s marrying some guy. These guys are generally of mature age, because they’re the ones that can afford it.
I meant that they’re considering sparing pubescent girls this ordeal (or are they? Maybe being promised to someone is nearly as bad) is something, but not much.
Smile of a Never-Ending Sorrow, for Jadehawk’s metalhead brother:
Jadehawk wants to go skiing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGPoEfngNao&feature=fvw “Heaven ain’t close in a place like this.”
Oh, pffft! “Caesium” is far prettier than “Cesium”. Caesium the day.
I doubt I will live that long.
BS
That’s what fume hoods and PPE are for. Although I avoid it if I can. I prefer my strong acids fairly non-volatile.
Oh John: Nancy is looking for you to step into the ring in the Jesus and Mo thread.
Be gentle with her: she was punch drunk long before she showed up here.
Have a great evening, everyone!
oooOOOOooohhh!!!!
of course, I’d die attempting any of that stuff. My skis mustn’t ever be more than a foot off the ground.
Holy fuck, it’s the Bride of Kw*k!
Heh, Brownian; my Khmer empire is not doing too bad in the early stages of a “future war” epic, ancient scenario, but I can spare a few clock cycles for her… ;)
Joining in. A political apology.
I apologise for having nothing to apologise for.
Looks like I’ll have to apologize for going to bed in a few minutes–have to go into work tomorrow morning.
With arrogance to match. Better not mention cameras to her.
@349: Ha, excellent apology link! Squabbling little toadies… :-)
I like the cut of your jib, son.
Match?
I am also enjoying this little bout of interthreadularity; something to explore in the future, perhaps.
Bride, I hope your reference to singleness wasn’t the tip of a bad situation iceberg. If so, (wait for it…) I’m sorry to hear of it.
Brownian et. al. survived the Bride of Kw*k! And she came in disguise, only revealing her name-dropping credentials when cornered for the umpteenth time.
You learn something new everyday. I just found a phrase(@ http://www.urbandictionary.com) that I predict will become a significant new part of my vocabulary: Seduciary Responsibility
Rihanna and Bono sang a duet in the “Hope for Haiti” show that included lyrics about offering something better than prayer, offering hands to help (sorry, I didn’t get the exact wording). Nice of them to get practical and real.
@ SEF (#298)
Mine would be: Windows Vista, FireFox 3.5.7, no toolbars. And it happens after I do use preview once. Thereafter, till I relog, SB forces me to preview before posting. It did it to me over on Respectful Insolence as well, which doesn’t require logging in but recognizes Moveable Type (or whatever the fuck the blue wrench is).
Yeah, I also have been wondering about the Bride. How did this happen? I am hoping that it is the result of a divorce. And does this mean that a new moniker is needed?
Even Nancy’s in on the interthreaduality:
It’s a wacky interthreadual fiesta of apology!
cicely @350, I lament your lack of a suitable excuse to apologize.
Nancy has a nasty cold (info at Sven’s link @362), so it’s a damned good thing that only bacon, and not cold viruses, can be exchanged on Pharyngula.
Oh and I forgot to mention the big kahuna: triflic acid. What a beauty. Pure evil. I’ve never had a use for it, but I did see an ampoule of the neat liquid once.
Shrek’s ex?
Sven, “interthreaduality” is a keeper. We should add that to “spewcifically” in our box o’ new linguistic jewels.
Shrek’s ex?
Humm, funny. But I would like her to have a moniker that reflects who she is as opposed to what relationship she is to someone. But it is up to her.
Perhaps we need a huge build up to the unveiling of a new moniker.
Yeah, I noticed it, too. Thought I must have missed something when I wasn’t around. Sorry to hear about it, BoS.
An ampoule of triflic acid? You should wear one around your neck. That would be truly badass. Spewcifically, even more badass than Angelina Jolie wearing an ampoule full of Billy Bob Thornton’s blood.
From the last few weeks between the lines, yes.
Haven’t worked with the pure acid, but have worked with the anhydride.
Sorry, my lovelies, but I’m off to bed.
Ho boy, that comicstrip thread is a horrible trainwreck. If I hadn’t resolved to not talk about people I’d have some observations about one from over there.
Sven: Word. I avoided it all day, because as it turns out I don’t give a shit about comics. Its not really about the comic anymore.
“Interthreaduality” is not mine; it’s been used in the Chronicle of Higher Ed forums for a long time. (Man, there’s a peculiar bunch*. They’d say “fora,” for one thing).
*bunch of, like, historians and rhetoricians and sociologists and the like hanging around…
What’s wrong with fora?
“In this particular site, we see how the fora and the flawna cooperate and compete to provide a rich e-loam that promotes fruitful discussion.”
for example
Sure, OK, or, like:
“offer available fora limited time only.”
That kind of usage is fine. It’s the pompous plural that gets my goat.
Speaking of words and the trainwreck thread, I’m surprised “smugnacious” isn’t coined/used more often.
Its not really about the comic anymore.
it never was, really.
I’m sorry…
but what’s all the hubbub about BoS?
divorce? what?
That’s what I was wondering. Can’t find any of her recent postings.
Wasted way too much of my evening on the comic thread. Found out it was ongoing after the train was well and truly wrecked. *sigh*
Always late to the party. That’s me.
ok questions i need answered:
Why are people implying Bride of Shrek is:
of royal blood??
single now?
ircnfzd
Ichthyic, see here and here
Here you go, Ichthyic. The thread turned when it was revealed that the author of the article shot a baboon because it was the closest creature to a human he could shoot. Walton piped in that he disapproved of the action but supported fox hunting. I got very strange after that. Near the end of the thread, Walton compared his support of fox hunting to that of his support of LGBT marriage.
Just read it. There are some laughs to be had.
Holy shit, I think Nancy just got it.
No, it’s “By George, I think she’s got it,” right?
BoS’s titularity (tee-hee) is (as I noted on the other thread) going to make the AGC even more memorable as event for me, since I’ve never met anyone with a hereditary title before. Not that I consider it to be anything more than the relic of a bygone age, but it’s still kind of interesting.
On a vaguely related note, one of my (distant) cousins was knighted but a) that’s not hereditary – he got it because he attained the rank of Admiral; and b) I never actually met him while he was alive.
Jeez, Jadehawk. Why didn’t you let me know you were on the case?
‘raspberry’
from the first thread:
ROFLMAO!
perfect.
all up to date now, thanks.
I will miss being able to see BoS in person in OZ myself in March.
*sigh*
re: the starfart
Research has revealed disturbing signs that warning tremors may have been detected just two hours before the historic esplosion but, apparently, and tragically, these potentially thread-saving harbingers were ignored by the responsible authorities. Involvement of Teh CO has been neither denied nor confirmed at this time.
More as the story develops.
it’s too bad you can’t come, many beers would be had by all.
Nancy and starfart are two of the more interesting types of critters to have wandered in here. It makes for a nice change of pace from the likes of Dendy and the poorly masked Hoax.
it’s too bad you can’t come, many beers would be had by all.
next time. oh, and I will be around for when PZ tours across the pond in Hobbitton!
The crazy rant and hilarious comments on it had me literally laughing to tears.
Anyone who who doesn’t know who Harold McGee is should be fed to Chris Mooney or one of the other ravenous demons.
And I have a few spare apologies if anyone’s running low. I don’t use ’em much. Instead, I just feed the wronged to… well, um, let’s just say if I ever offer you the recipe for a spell as way of an apology, don’t read it.
Not aware of any divorce.
But “single”, uhm, well, happens to the best !
Test your nobility skills here :
If one is a duke or marquis, can you address them [title] [first name][surname] or not ?
:P
Agree 100 %.
(havent followed the Comity thread yet, will do that now, but pssst, even Nancy agrees with that !)
:-)
Just watched the BBC documentary about ID / Dover Trial A War On Science, it was a reminder of how much of a sleazebag Dembski and Meyer are. Meanwhile Behe comes off as a nice guy, even if he’s misguided and ridiculed by the scientific community.
It was also interesting discussing it with my wife, who because she’s from Finland doesn’t see how it’s possible that so many religious people can take the bible literally. How they can see it as anything other than myth, well that’s just crazy talk.
Am I missing something? I thought you were still engaged – when did you tie the knot?
Yup.
:D
We’ve had a few really weasly sophists through in the last few days haven’t we ?
The AJKamper guy, that turse fellow, and jdmuys are all quite sophisticated in their weasliness, are we witnessing some kind of D.I. graduation class field trip or something I wonder?
:-)
Found my worn copy of TGD in ex’s garage today, this reminds me, how wonderfully unindoctrinated and open-minded people can turn out to be when not brainwashed at early age, and when economical and social conditions are beneficial to education and development of a rational worldview.
I think it’s a new focus on concern trolling. I’m noticing a lot more “I am an atheist, but…”, “I support gay rights, but…”, “I am an antitheist, but…”.
Perhaps, they&trade think that we™ will be nicer to “one of our own”. It certainly fits with the “echo chamber” complaint. Disagreements within the group are dismissed as trivial, disagreements with them are vicious attacks and piling on.
There has been a big win for science and skepticism over the woo merchants that developed over the past few days. Remember the bogus electronic dowsing rod that a UK company was peddling to the Iraqi government that could supposedly detect explosives up to 1km away? PZed covered this briefly here:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/rudeness_required.php
Well… the chickens have finally come home to roost. The device was exposed as a sham on a BBC Newsnight special over here just last night. The associated article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8471187.stm
I believe that a few of the JREF forum members in the UK may have been instrumental in helping to track this McCormick fellow down and reveal his little scam. I’m heading over there now to see if there’s anything on the forums.
My own take on this situation is: how did he even remotely think he could get away with this? You tend to piss off people big time when you sell them $85M worth of bunk and make them look silly in public. This scam was always going to be found out sooner or later. It was only a matter of how long it would take.
Worse yet, these people are military. They have guns. And to top it off, they don’t have fatwa *envy* like some of the right wing nutjobs here do. They have actual fatwa! And at the very least, they are going to want their money back. He better have some left.
My guess is that McCormick actually believes these devices work. Somebody else convinced him they worked and used him as a frontman/dupe. Betcha at least one internet beer that will be his defense.
They, and you, clearly haven’t witnessed me or anyone else of the regulars for that matter, in disagreement with SC, strange gods or truthy.
;)
That’s true, I’ve noticed that too.But again, it’s just a natural development, if you are devoid of any argument, what have you left other then complaints about tone ?
Testing the Preview/Submit problem (on WinV + FF 3.5.1 + MT login). This post will be previewed before being submitted.
I don’t think disagreements within the group are trivial, I think it’s a convenient dodge to claim that they are (and perhaps even believe it).
Part of that springs from ignorance, e.g., two physicists arguing about string theory are having a serious disagreement; if you can’t comprehend either side, it might not look like much.
Continuing the Preview/Submit test (on the same login): this post will attempt a submission without going past preview (hopefully with a large enough time-gap not to trigger the anti-spam guard).
Janine,
I retract that statement. It wasn’t a good analogy. In my defence, I wrote it at 3am this morning when I was drunk.
There is hope for you, after all…;)
That said, this practice has cost me an estimated 13 mollies over the years :-)
No sign of preview on the previous test. Now to invoke the anti-spam guard …
… I got the “Comment Submission Error” for too many comments in too short a space of time but no sign of preview interfering before or after that.
So the reported problem isn’t simplistically an MT (or a TypeKey/typepad – my usual sign-in) thing.
“They, and you, clearly haven’t witnessed me or anyone else of the regulars for that matter, in disagreement with SC, strange gods or truthy.”
I somehow feel lacking having had never argued with SC.
5th of November, it’s a pretty easy date to remember :P
This makes me think of visits to the Dentist, somehow…:-)
*ducks*
Congratulations – and yes, it’s a memorable date. I’m tempted to make some crack about fireworks but I won’t…
Subjecting me to Little Shop is definitely *duck* worthy.
What eternal thread incarnation did I post the Eminem links in, I can’t remember ?
Anyway, here’s a couple :
Stan ft Dido-Original movie clip
Mockingbird ( makes me fucking cry that one)
Ah well, here’s an antidote :
PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins- 1 of 10
Wow! I take a couple of days away from Pharyngula to tease various Christians on their blogs, and there’s several thousand new comments. Don’t have time to catch up with them all – but if I left any ongoing arguments with anyone who would like a response from me, you could point it out on this very useful thread.
I was trying to convert the rhyme in order to proclaim it, but the 9th Island Sav Blanc has messed a bit too much with my linguistic faculties to be clever.
Oh, I see the reference now to November 5th. It took me a minute, as I’m not Spanish, English, Protestant, Catholic, or an MP. I can see it would be easy to remember, though.
What was the announcement in the newspaper?
“Guy Fawkes, finally. And by guy we mean Kel.” ?
JadeHawk:
Ok here are some secular sources about bloodless medicine and a few videos/newsclips that show the health benefits.
short video clips:
CBS4-Bloodless Medicine Makes Doctors More Efficient
North Jersey Hospital Healthwatch Report
info & literature references:
noblood.org (a non-relgious site about medical professionals who pursue alternative treatment options)
Wikipedia info & references about bloodless surgery
From the original conversation we were having I wanted to make it clear that the legal freedom which has been established wouldn’t have been possible at this point in time, without the Bible’s position on blood to back it up. There have been numerous court cases where defendants had to make a very strong defense case with *only* the Bible to support their position.
So the Biblical side of the issue can’t be overlooked since it was very instrumental in getting those laws established. Only in recent years has the medical community begun to appreciate the health benefits which were overlooked and fought against for so long.
If the Bible’s position on blood had never been ‘put on trial’ in this regard, the medical community would not have felt the need to pursue this avenue of *alternative treatment* as much, which is turning out to have so many positive benefits for everyone (not just JW’s or strictly religious people).
It benefits both the patient and the hospital itself, because aside from the health aspects, it’s also turning out to be far more cost effective, and it also speeds recovery time for the patient (meaning less time spent in the hospital post-op).
So it’s provided people with more freedom of choice, whereas in the past, doctors could have a court-ordered blood transfusion forced upon you against your will no matter how hard you tried to defend your beliefs against it…(and in some countries they can still do this which is just as much a violation of your basic human rights as being raped).
Yawn, KLT no scientific evidence, just inane evidence from True Believers™. Just like most “evidence” for homeopathy. If you believe in lies/myths like the babble, you can get yourself into a logical corner. Your extreme and idiotic beliefs shouldn’t be coddled, but challenged. You have nothing cogent to say to us, but keep trying to say it.
Yeah, because medical researchers the world over are just sitting around twiddling their thumbs and would never have come up with it if they didn’t have a bunch of cultists that even other Christians make fun of and their wackaloon interpretation of a book of antique superstitions to inspire them.
Say, have you spoken to any animal breeders about using striped sticks to alter their stocks’ appearances?
Ahhhhhh, fond memories !!!!!
Expelled from Expelled !!
Still funny to this day….:-)
The economic benefits of “bloodless medicine” outlined in the cited articles all seem to be contingent on the price of blood units and the reimbursement policies of insurance companies. Is there any evidence that, on the whole, the Biblical injunction has not done more harm than good, retarded progress more than not?
I ask, because so very many of the Biblical injunctions have caused needless death, destruction, misery, and injustice. Assuming that the “bloodless medicine” is a net benefit, I don’t think this exonerates the Bible or even brings it even near parity.
I say this, and I have personal investment in the improvement of techniques that don’t rely on allogenic transfusions. My wife has a heme disorder, she’s unable to give blood, and allogenic transfusions are likely to kill or cripple her.
Leeches have some uses, too, but far fewer than was claimed. As a thought experiment, if we direct the money spent on religion to medical research, what would be the result?
If we listened to the bible for medicine hospitals would provide precisely two services: 1) anointing the sick person with oil and 2) praying for their recovery.
So it’s probably a good thing medical experts don’t pay it that much attention.
Now that’s a universal health care bill that the U.S. Republicans could get behind! Government money for oil and prayer.
KLT, you appear to be operating under the delusion (one of many), that if JW’s do good deeds they aren’t delusional fools. Sorry. That won’t work with us. For us not to consider you a delusional fool, and your religion a bunch of rotting baloney, you have to show conclusive physical evidence for your imaginary deity, and conclusive physical evidence that your mythical/fictional babble is inerrant (so far, nothing). That is the only evidence that will work. So, go find that eternally burning bush, because that is essentially what is required.
And if you find an eternally burning bush, there’s medical help for that. (Probably NSFW.)
You should try it sometime. Everyone needs a hobby.
I seem to have missed out on something about apologies.
And BoS,OM’s divorce? I’m sorry to hear it, BoS,OM.
I’ll have to catch up at some point (when I’m not forcing myself to bed at 20.00).
–o–
Did someone say Caesium?
Speaking of which: I move that we all call Copernicium Copernicum in the vernacular. I understand the reason for the -ium, but it sounds horrible. Nothing wrong with a nickname; I’ve never met anyone who called Antimony Stibium after all.
Also, how does one get a suggestion to the Darmstadt people that the name next (last?) halogen, Ununseptium, after Scheele and Ununoctium after Ramsay?
–o–
Yes, if by “can” you mean “able to”. Otherwise, no.
–o–
Finally, the reason I logged in in the first place: I’ve just bought a scrumptious piece of Stilton (I think). What should I do with it?
When an adult refuses certain medical treatment because of religious reasons then they should be put out of the hospital and told to see their mullah for any further treatment. “You’re dying of trauma but don’t want a blood transfusion? Go see your bonze, maybe he’ll get you better.”
If it’s a child that’s being refused treatment by the parents because the parents want to leave it in gawd’s hands, then the parents should be immediately arrested for willful neglect (and attempted murder if the problem is potentially fatal).
KLT’s “bloodless treatment” is just one more example of the incompatibility of religion with real life.
Goodness gracious! I go to catch the forty winks and here are hundreds of comments that I missed already!!
But then, this is one of those threads.
Here is one that I must address:
Rorschach @279 (yeah, slightly upthread, I know) –
Of course, none of it is my business, and the health concerns and medical complications have nothing to do with the fact that the said woman is lesbian.
But then, I wasn’t the one who made it a point to mention your coworker’s ‘lesbianness’ in the context of her pregnancy with a typical eyeroll expression (“don’t ask!”) in Comment #220, was I?
Since this thread has a surfeit of apologies, one more wouldn’t matter. Perhaps you should offer one for your unthinking prejudice and move on – instead of being so smugnacious? (love that coinage!)
Here’s something I like to make whenever I have a good stilton or gorgonzola:
Pear Crostini
4 tbps butter
3 ripe pears, cored, peeled, and chopped
½ tsp salt
baguette
6 sage leaves, chopped
¼ cup crumbled stilton or gorgonzola
black pepper
Preheat oven to 375°. Melt 3 tbsp butter in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add pears and salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, until pears are soft, about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, cut baguette into ¼” slices. Spread slices with remaining butter and arrange on a baking sheet in a single layer. Bake slices until well toasted, 10 to 15 minutes.
When pears are soft, stir in sage and remove from heat. Top toasted baguette slices with pear mixture and blue cheese. Grind pepper over crostini. Serve warm.
I’ve been missing in action for a while but had to pop in and piss on this thread as proof I was there. Carry on!
You mean like the way Aluminium became Aluminum in this country? Thanks, but no thanks. I shall stick to the original moniker.
I don’t understand this enmity towards the ‘i’ (since I am sure you are not all becoming old Hindu philosophers hell-bent on renouncing the ‘I’, the ego, the expression of self)…
Imagine how it would sound: Radum, Rutherfordum, Stibum, Tellurum, Barum and so forth – a lot of ‘dum’, a few ‘bum’, and (hooray!) a lot ‘rum’. Hmmm… May be that ain’t so bad!
(Begin stoner/ski bum voice)
Sweeeeeeeeeet….
(/End stoner/ski bum voice)
… oh, and also, I’m not sorry. For anything! Baby, if I had to do it all over again, I would do it all over again…
(/Probably even with way more whipped cream, if I can stockpile that much somehow.)
People long claimed that such a creature existed -a claim that was dismissed as laughably implausible. At last, evidence!
:D
***
By the way, a belated thanks to Sven, Janine, and Wowbagger for recent music links, and to Janine also for the book mention and the reminder that one of these days I have to read some LeGuin…
Hi, mayhempix! Hope you’ve been well!
‘Tis @432, I understand your frustration, but what you’re suggesting can lead to some really bad places, particularly for women.
That is fucking outrageous.
From the piece:
Then he’s not really her doctor, now is he? I see this as a real problem with prenatal care.
Thought so, thanks.
Join and add it.
Fairly harmless. I’m more surprised about “fap”. Why do they talk about a sound? What sound? There’s supposed to be a sound? ~:-|
Not me…
^_^ ^_^ ^_^
But you can’t throw it on water.
The moment you lift it, it’s gone.
I understand next to nothing and therefore don’t find it funny, but I gather it’s this kind of thing (in German; starts at 1:15), where someone takes his dialect and explores creative ways of writing it and of interpreting common phrases. Unfortunately I can’t find any of the other lessons on YouTube or video.google.com… I was looking for the one with the sentences a, e i, i e a, and a, e i a… :.-(
The Bierce-Hartman-McKean-Skitt Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation states that any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror.
Nice, but a bit steep for me, and… erm… there are scarily many instances where they don’t show you the guy’s impact after he jumps off. And triggering that many avalanches can’t be healthy either.
This (in southwestern Viennese) will cure you forever from associating skiing with music. Warning: it’s Austropop. Not only does it advocate drunk skiing, it’s absolutely horrible to listen to (completely masking the fact that the rest of the text isn’t actually all that bad).
I haven’t managed to find the obvious, but absolutely great, parody yet.
<google>
Trifluoromethanesulfonic acid!!! Wow. I can hear the pH drop with each syllable of this word. <rubbing hands> Excellent. B-)
Its anhydride is almost too much to behold!
Not all of them are all that antique. Keep in mind that the New World Translation is full of distortions.
Are people always so god damn cheery at Starbucks? I haven’t been in a long while and it was disturbing.
I prefer my baristas to be flippant, overly pierced and with a highly tuned sense of entitlement.
Those people today were terrifying.
Still a brave soul. Did you use it to make aryl triflates, or Friedel-Crafts chemistry, or something else?
What a fuckwittedly evil analogy fail. 0.9 Hyperons.
Used it to form alkyl triflate esters, when mesylate and tosylate esters wouldn’t react with certain nucleophiles. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it decomposes before substitution occurs.
Whoah there!
I only suggested this for Copernicium. I wholly support -ium in all other cases (I think). Including Aluminium.
But Copernicium /kopə’nɪsɪəm/ makes it sound like the man was called Copernisius not Copernicus.
For all his faults I’d still like Lavoisier to be acknowledged, too, but even I cannot pronounce Lavoisierium with a straight face. But I approve strongly of Scheeline (Scheelium) and Ramson (‘Ramseyium’) for 117 and 118.
–o–
Thanks, ‘Tis. Sounds good. My sister gave me a bag of pears this Autumn, so I have a lot of pickled ones. They’re done with vinegar rather than just sugar, so they might work. Don’t have any sage, though. I’m not really familiar with the taste – any alternatives?
–o–
Lovely chemistry discussion, but I always was a klutz in the lab. *sighs*
the reminder that one of these days I have to read some LeGuin. – SC,OM
(:-O)3
The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe of Heaven and The Dispossessed are all brilliant – although a mite woo-ish in places. The Wizard of Earthsea series (now five books) also very good.
Rorschach:
No. The correct form of address, when addressing a Duke or Duchess, is “Your Grace”; for a Marquess or Marchioness, it is “My Lord” or “Your Ladyship” respectively. (Don’t confuse a form of address with a style; they are different things.)
The full formal style for a Duke is “The Most Noble [first name] [surname], Duke of [place name]”. Similarly, for a Marquess, the style is “The Most Honourable [first name] [surname], Marquess of [place name]”. In ordinary parlance, they can be referred to, respectively, as “The Duke of [place name]” and “The Marquess of [place name]”.
The style “Lord [first name] [surname]” is used for the younger sons of a Duke or Marquess (the eldest son would generally have a courtesy title). A famous fictional example is Lord Peter Wimsey, from the novels of Dorothy L. Sayers; he was, if memory serves, the younger son of a Duke.
Knockgoats, I did reply to you over on the Massachusetts thread (though the discussion there has petered out, so don’t feel obliged to reply if you’re busy).
I know, I know. People have been recommending her to me for years, but I really was not big on scifi. Much more likely to read some more after enjoying The War with the Newts so much, though.
Which should I start with?
Miki Z (#403)
I dearly want to know what they think the crucial difference is between people individually taking issue with their wrongness and people ganging up on them out of some echo chamber, group-think fear-of-a-contrary-POV reflex.
~*~*~*~*~*~
‘Tis Himself (#434)
*drooooool*
~*~*~*~*~*~
David Marjanović (#442)
I would, but I missed the first two times it was brought up so, even reading old threads, I don’t feel I have the best understanding of the context around it.
?
There’s a Danish sentence, though I’m so bad at the language that I can’t tell what specific dialect it’s in: “A æ u å æ ø i æ å” – “I’m out on the island in the stream.”
–o–
*fap*fap*fap*fap*
Rorschach @417: Hey, I liked the Eminem links. No antidote needed. That’s some creepy basement in the first link! Wonder if Mr. Fire’s basement compares.
Regarding the degree of vituperation toward outsiders and members of “the group”: I’ve noticed this technique a lot in climate and evolution discussions. A concern troll chimes in under the guise of “merely seeking information”. They then escalate the stupid until somebody rips them a brand new rhetorical asshole. Then they selectively quote mine the exchange on one of the blogs where stupid people hang out to show what meanies the scientists are. Final step: they declare victory. It really isn’t that hard to avoid the wrath of the regular commenters. Just don’t say anything astoundingly stupid, and in the event that you do, admit it and accept the correction graciously.
I really think that there is a certain type of idiot that takes pride in pissing off intelligent people–and thanks to the Intertubes, there are now clubs for them.
Indeed. The duke of Denver. Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey further graduated from Balliol which in typical absurd English fashion is pronounced as if it were spelt Baliol.
Just as a LeGuin note— there’s an excellent made-for-TV (PBS?) version of “Lathe of Heaven” from back c. 1981. Very much worth finding. But avoid at all costs the re-make done maybe c. 1999 with James Caan. Just pretend it never existed.
correction: this is The Thread.
19194
SC, I would suggest Always Coming Home. It is not really a novel but a history of the future that has yet to have happened. It is fragments of stories, narratives, recipes sayings and other assorted things. After a while, a narrative does comes out of the stew about the various societies that come out of the end of society as we know it. (Though what kind of apocalypse is never alluded to.)
It helps to know that both of Ursula’s parents were anthropologists and this informs her work. The basic theme is that societies become the stories that people tell each other. In order to have a character who is torn between the more anarchistic ways of her mother’s people and the war waging ways of her father’s people, there had to be a breakdown and rebuilding of societies.
One could skip about the book, read pages 50-80, go to 160-170, go back to 1-30 and not really lose anything.
Sorry that I do not have anything deeper, it has been decades. But much have stuck with me.
But perhaps one should start with The Left Hand Of Darkness.
David @442:
Thanks. I knew I could count on your apparently infinite storage of amusing but otherwise useless information.
That skiing video that Jadehawk, AJ Milne, and David were ooohing over shows terrain too steep for me as well. But, I used to do flips on my skis and other tricks as well (many years ago). I find icy moguls much more difficult to ski than steep-and-deep. Video link repeat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGPoEfngNao&feature=fvw
David noted that they don’t show all the landings, or rather that they don’t show the guy skiing out of the landing. But I’d like to point out that this video shows more successful landings, and skiing successfully out of said landing, than most extreme skiing videos! As for the avalanches, I agree. But they did scout a line to ski that, for the most part, exited the avalanche chute after they had triggered it.
Jadehawk, if we go skiing, we can stick to gentler terrain, or we could even enjoy some of the cross country trails, of which there are hundreds of miles. Even slower, and one of my favorites, is off-trail snowshoeing for the purpose of photography and squandering time.
For those catching up, rampant apologies and lamentations begin somewhere above #292. I apologize for the inaccuracy.
I just wanted to repeat that.
Yay sidebar random quote generator!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6032236535078716306#
Cool. Will watch.
Rev BDC @443:
If you want to truly terrified, show up at a mormon sacrament meeting as an “investigator.” They will love bomb you with smiles and either dead eyes or god-addled eyes.
Starbucks should hire baristas that despise the job and themselves for taking it. That creates the right atmosphere.
Ah, I see. Sorry about that, then. This discussion made me look up a periodic table online, and goodness! So much has changed since I paid attention to one! I didn’t even know about the existence of 113-118.
What’s the definition of latte grande? $5 cup of coffee.
I don’t do Starbucks.
Sili #446
I have no idea about how pears pickled in vinegar would work. I’ve never had a pickled pear so I don’t know how one tastes out of the jar, let alone in the recipe I gave. You notice there’s no sugar in the recipe. Using vinegared pears might give a somewhat tart taste.
The sage isn’t really necessary. I like the taste of sage and grow it year ’round (we have a little greenhouse used to grow herbs, ginger and the like. You can omit the sage. In fact, do away with sage all together. Get yourself a baseball bat and stand guard at the door of your domicile, inspecting all persons and packages for the least hint of sage. If a sage-smuggler appears, then beat them to death with the bat. One or two instances of that and nobody will bring sage within miles of you.
Just made a small video today from where I live in the south of France, dedicated to all Pharyngulites.
Winter Sunset at the Col de Vence, on Franz Schubert’s Piano Trio in E Flat
Wishing you a relaxing moment.
Don’t care one way or the other about any of that. What matters is they are capable of making a bloody good café… so I avoid Starfucks like the plague. Fortunately, this is quite easy, as there are none (that I know of) in this part of France, albeit I have seen one in Paris. Of course, I also tend to avoid Paris like the plague…
Is someone discussing the elements?
BS
Hi SC!
I’m preparing to move back to the US after 6 years in Buenos Aires.
Definitely check out LeGuinn, well worth it. She is an anthropologist and sociologist. Not the usual hardware futurist scifi.
Once I settle back in LA I will probably start commenting again.
Good to hear. Have a good move.
…
You certainly don’t do things by half, do you, ‘Tis …
It’s not all vinegar, but I chose that recipe since I was worried that using just sugar and vanilla wouldn’t make for much choice once I got around to eating them. Haven’t actually come around to tasting them yet.
–o–
No worries. I wasn’t really caught up either, but I recently relearnt the table since It’d been nearly three years since I last thought much about chem. Thought I might as well get them all down by heart.
The RSC has a shibby table as well.
According to my oracle, it was first referred to by Humphry Davy as alumium. Some time later, he began calling it aluminum. Some apparently objected to the way that sounded, and proposed aluminium in its place.
An oblique observation: wars have probably been fought over sillier things.
Some of us still are :)
Never fear; you shall soon see it. AND NEVER LEAVE. MWAHAHAHA
“When reason starts to fade and fall away,
I wanna take a gun to you.”
I’m sometimes surprised when a song comes up on my iTunes shuffle, that I haven’t heard in a while. I seem to like a lot of what could be called religious music. No Bach, tho.
Warning: The track linked a) takes two minutes to get going and b) doesn’t have the poetry sample on the album version.
Them’s fighting words……
Do you know who I am? Do I know who you are?
–o–
I know. If only you people would just cut your boiled eggs from the pointed end, we wouldn’t have all this trouble.
that’s what you get for not following The Endless Thread diligently. Kel stopped by here, on his wedding day, to announce his state of not being engaged anymore :-)
IIRC, that was pretty much my introduction to Pharyngula, due to temporary insanity that manifested in me wanting to defend something SfO said.
well, I’m glad you found the thread, but I did say you should try to find something from the scientific literature about bloodless medicine. the media is notoriously unreliable for this stuff; they also keep on spreading the lies about vaccinations and other settled scientific matters, so I have no reason to believe them about bloodless medicine, either.
what this “freedom” of yours has accomplished is the religious freedom of people to kill their children, and of women to die in childbirth. do you have anything to refute the statistics that show that women in labor who refuse blood-transfusions have a significantly higher chance of dying?
What I’m saying is that religious freedom cannot and must not extend to the right of murder by religious belief; parents shouldn’t have the right to refuse medical treatment for their children based on their own religious beliefs. I can support your right to commit suicide by religious belief, but even then I will reserve the right to call such a belief a murderous cult.
And that’s what the JW obsession with blood transfusions does. It causes innocent people to die. It’s murder by religious belief, nothing more
and lastly, the bible doesn’t support your position. a blood transfusion isn’t “eating blood”.
fuck, no it isn’t. though, like I said, i’ll support the individual’s rights to all sorts of idiocy, it’s you guys who opened the can of worms that lets people murder their children (and endanger children of others) by using their crazy beliefs to deny their children medical care. and that’s vile. and I will fight these sort of beliefs from spreading, because they kill innocents and drive people to harm themselves and their families and friends.
And any claims not supported by the scientific literature that bloodless medicine is on the whole better for people than blood transfusions are simply lies. and by spreading them, you become a liar, whether you want to or not.
we’re not allowed to have real personalities on penalty of death. fake hyper-happy personalities are ok though.
I feel the disturbing urge to explain where the sound comes from, but I think I won’t. There’s enough men on here, they can take care of this.
I’ve never done snowshoeing yet, and it sounds like a fun way to run around in the snow. as far as skiing goes, I do prefer the downhill version… it’s the jumping that’s out of the question. :-p
why?!? are you a masochist? :-p
@ MrFire #473:
A shame that “alumnium” was missing from that series of transitions.
‘Tis Himself (#465)
Not only are the prices stupid, but people have lost the ability to understand pre-Starbucksian coffee lingo. I once watched a guy fail to order a cup of coffee because he didn’t know to call it “drip coffee.” He was specifying “plain” coffee and the barista kept trying to give him an espresso or an Americano.
~*~*~*~*~
Jadehawk (#477)
Oh good, I’m not the only one.
I wonder if Tom Lehrer will show up at Pee Zed’s talk tonight? He’s now retired from UC Santa Cruz, but still lives in the area.
Look forward to it! Happy move to you.
Holy shit! I remember that, but had completely forgotten that was you! I don’t think it was temporary insanity at all. (er…allow me to explain:) Being new, there was no way you could have been familiar with the whole history of propertarian infestation at that time. For someone unaware of the context, my (and others’) responses to the odious SfO would have seemed completely out of proportion. I get annoyed just thinking back to those months before the election/around the “crash,” which were even more complicated for me with my view of elections…
Anyway, I’m very happy you stuck around after that.
:)
oh trust me, so am I. this place is ridiculously informative, and brutal about destroying any misinformation that has accumulated in my brain.
If/when I go back to school to get a degree, a large chunk of it will probably end up being getting official credits for Stuff I Learned On Pharyngula™ ;-)
Better known as the school of hard snarks. ;)
Also known as Lesbian Bacon University, whose mascot has many tentacles. The Poet Laureate is a Cuttlefish, and it awards PoopyHead degrees.
Quickspace.
More Quickspace, but when they were Th’Faith Healers.
Th’Faith Healers live.
Guitar is god and Tom Cullinane is it’s prophet.
I’m up to #420. Back in a bit.
must…resist…some kind of…crap creationist…joke…
Though to make yet another oblique observation, I don’t if chemists are blessed or cursed in not really having creationist loonies trying to invalidate our research.
Oh, and grats to Kel, OM and ex Bride of Shreck for their wedding and divorce respectively.
To give David M. the benefit of the doubt, I don’t think he was asking where the sound comes from, but whether that… activity… would generally make a sound.
(I think generally yes, but ‘fap’ doesn’t sound right. Maybe it’s a US-Europe thing *runs away*)
I will fight to keep my sausage bloodless and my medicine bloody, TYVM.
Speaking of which, has anyone here seen “There Will Be Blood”?
It’s a period piece.
New? It comes and it goes. I started seeing in 1995, the first year I got regular internet access. By 1996 I had seen so many abuses of it, I began to automatically distrust any post that starts out that way.
I’m sorry, but Kausik Datta @436 just won teh thread. Need I read further?
I will, if only to hear the answer to that question.
Not tonight (KD, two thumbs up BTW), but PZ lets these eternal thread go for 700 posts, give or take, so you might want to check back. Plus, the Trophy Daughter Tuition Fund© needs the traffic…
I think this is generally true. I’m reasonably competent on some pretty steep stuff even when it’s very icy, tho’ at a certain point this isn’t so much skiing or boarding anymore–rather a deeply masochistic version of vertical skating, in my ever so humble opinion. And as we’ve had a really pretty awful season for snowfall on this coast, so far, I’ve been dealing with a hell of a lot of this nonsense in the past few weeks. And am getting really pretty tired of it. Come on, Whistler powder*.
Hard, icy moguls, on the other hand, I just don’t do those. At all. Softish ones, okay, but hard ones, no, I wish to live, and this sorta thing makes about as much sense to me–and seems roughly as deliberately self-destructive–as trying ride across a cheese grater.
(/*This written at less than a day to my flight… Yaaaaaaaaaay!)
Well, first of all there are two different words pronounced [a] here. The first is the good old international interjection. The second is what’s left of auch. In a similar shrinking process, which has been paralleled in English, [i] is what’s left of ich. The [ɛ] is a particle that sometimes surfaces as eh [eː] in more-or-less Standard German and means nothing shorter than “conforming to the best (or most sarcastic) of my expectations”.
So, [aˈɛi] means “oh, so it is me, good”, [iˈɛa] means “me too, as I had or you had or you should have supposed”, and [aˈɛia] amounts to “oh, so, me too, as I had thought, good”.
All this holds for probably all Bavarian/Austrian dialects, including mine.
So we missed a palindrome.
I save quotes as draft e-mails.
They freak me out.
I humbly submit that whoever manages to make a sound that way is doing it wrong. Ejaculation itself is after all silent.
:-D
:-) :-) :-)
=8-)
Who needs a cultural tradition… for… ?!?
oh yeah, and I forgot to add that working at Starbucks also means you’re banned from showing any piercings or tattoos. which was especially fucking stupid in seattle, where all our customers had more tattoos and piercings than we did, and it resulted in a lot of baristas that looked like weirdos, with random band-aids, arm bands, etc everywhere. For example, one of our shift-supervisors had to run around in long sleeves even in the worst summer-heat, because hes arms were completely covered in tattoos.
The only reason I could get away with not taking out my piercing was because I can talk to people without opening my mouth wide enough for them to tell there’s a piercing in there. and in any case, the store managers were the only people who ever cared about this shit.
ignore test only
It’s not the finish that makes the sound… and… um…
no. i’m not getting into that conversation. i refuse to.
I so hesitate to ask this, but how could we best go about creating a list of upcoming palindromes?
X-D
Then they’re still doing it wrong.