It had to happen. The last instantiation of the immortal thread started with underwear, so of course it had to progress to what was under that underwear, and relationships, and other such intimacies.
The only place to go now is anthropomorphized penises.
I’m a little concerned about what Episode XXXVII will be about.
:D! Gertrude Stein!
Weird. The Thread seems to me to be eminently egalitarian — there are no prerequisites for entry, and you can talk about anything you feel like, and no one can shout you down as being off-topic. If he thinks this thing is for the “academically or intellectually inclined”, I wonder what he thinks of ordinary talk down at the sports bar.
I just posted at Jerry’s place about how age doesn’t matter here–it’s how thick your skin is and the ability to adapt your thinking if necessary.
Look, I’m probably the dumbest person here, maybe even the least educated, but I don’t feel like I’m looked down on or that people are picking on me. Maybe that has something to do with my, uh, assertiveness? Not sure, but maybe the main thing is that I know I’m not an authority on much of anything (although I’ve come to the thread way too late to give advice about how to get dates/lovers–that, I’m good at!), so I can simply hang out and learn and play and shoot the shit. Getting conversation like what’s here is a real pain to find in San Antonio.
Alan B @ 496:
Erm, you’re not familiar with Gertrude Stein? Speaking of her, one of my favourite books is Waiting for Gertrude, A Graveyard Gothic by Bill Richardson. It’s set in Le Cimetiere Du Pere-Lachaise.
Accusativus cum infinitivo. More common in English and Latin than in German, so I was taught this construction explicitly.
There’s no subject, because “see” is an imperative. Dick is the object (see last subthread)…
Yes. It’s intended to teach the basics of grammar (I mean grammar as a science) in a graphic way. In principle, and sometimes with a lot of effort, the grammatical structure of any sentence can be shown as a tree-shaped diagram.
Haaaaa! :-Þ :-Þ :-Þ
Aaaaah. That must have been satisfying. =8-)
Alcohol in general does.
:-D
Aquaria, you are certainly not the dumbest or the least educated person here. (If you have any college degree you are certainly not the least educated person here.) Nobody would look down on you for the quality of your posts. Picking on you, well there’s a certain amount of background that, LOL.
I’ve been resisting being creepy and asking you if you want to meet up for a chat the next time I’m in San Antonio to visit my (religious arrgh) family. Sometime on a Sunday morning would be perfect, and would mean I don’t have to get dragged to Grace Church again and be impertinent to people who asked me how I liked the service. Again. :)
Grace Point Church, that is. (Yes, yes, I see the Preview button down there, sorry.)
Walton wrote:
Seems to me that the solution is that all the unattractive people who want to get laid need to quit being so damn picky and screw each other. Really.
Reminds me of the situation when I was in elementary school, was friendless, and finally, reluctantly, became friends with the most unpopular girl in the class. She did the same thing.
Better to hang around with other unpopular kids than have no friends at all.
that’s probably still me, sorry :-p
I’m not even touching any of these topics, but wanted to wander in to offer a little public service announcement. Always wear a seatbelt, because if I see your car careen off the road in front of me, flip over, and catch on fire, it would be really nice to watch you be able to crawl out of the car because you’re still conscious from having your seatbelt on and not getting knocked out in the flipover. Do it for me as the bystander, ok? Good. Now I’m going to go get a nice stiff drink.
(yes, they were belted in, yes, they did all get out with absolutely no injuries)
Aquaria #502
While your formal education may not be as good as others here, you’re neither dumb nor ignorant. You can’t argue with David Marjanović about paleontology but who can? You hold your own in conversations and your intelligence is obvious to all of us.
That’s why most of us hang out here. Groton isn’t any more intellectual than San Antonio.
Damn, Carlie.
*reads Carlie’s post*
holy.fuck.
*has a solidarity drink*
Carlie
As Dr Johnson almost said; ‘that would concentrate the mind wonderfully’
Damn, Carlie. Talk about a bad moment. I’ll join you in a drink. And I do wear my seatbelt.
Gertrude Stein was an American writer who spent much of her life in France. She was a supporter of Hitler to the extent that she wanted him to receive the Nobel Peace Prize:
(I accept that this was 1934 and many others were taken in by Hitler but memories persist in wartime.)
She also appears to have been close friends with a significant supporter of the collaborationalist Vichy government and of the Gestapo in France in WW2.
For these reasons, if for none other, I am not surprised she is not universally well known or respected in the UK. We had enough trouble in 1936 and beyond with the adbicated Edward VIII and his American wife with their friendship for Hitler.
I am sure there are many who do know and respect her in the UK but she is not a household name.
Are you really expecting me to believe that she meant exactly what she said by:
If she honestly meant that then I stand aghast. If she did not, she was a liar, presumably trying to con children into accepting “…a solely American teaching perversion.”
The poor family was on the way across the country to university; a daughter had gotten into grad school and they were doing a campus visit during her spring break. I can’t imagine the call to admissions tomorrow to explain why they’ll be late. The bizarrely funny part was me trying to convince the state police dispatcher that yes, the car was indeed on fire (after being put on hold for 2 minutes waiting for a person when 911 transferred me!) He kept asking me if I was sure; yes, I’m pretty sure that big orange flames indicate fire. (!)
Carlie, I would join with hoisting a drink for the accident victims getting out OK, but I have to pick up the Redhead from the train station later (backstage tour of the Lyric). I am not surprised about the skepticism about the car fire. The Mythbusters tried to get a car to ignite with the movie mythology, and finally had to resort to pyrotechnics to get it to happen. Both the Redhead and I always wear our seatbelts.
Especially bizarre given that she was Jewish and an openly-gay intellectual.
Alan, it was amusing that you would suggest that Gertrude Stein lived a sheltered life. That’s all. I have no idea how seriously she meant that remark, but I loved diagramming sentences.
You were kept waiting on the ‘phone having told them a car had crashed and was on fire???
Carlie: you need a stiff drink after that and someone at 911 needs a thundering good hiding!
I learnt to drive while at university 40 odd years ago. Wearing a seatbelt was not considered important but I made sure I did every time I got into the driving seat or the front passenger seat. I have never regretted it. I suspect ‘your’ family feel the same way!
“Clunk* click** every trip!”
* Clunk – door closes
** Click – seatbelt on.
(Widely used UK road safety catchphrase)
TROLIS!!! POŽEMYJE!!!span style=”font-family:Comic Sans MS”>Libertarian sighted in the hoamsgooling thread! Has been observed wanking to phrases like “span style=”font-family:Comic Sans MS”>federal indoctrination”, “span style=”font-family:Comic Sans MS”>fascist gun control”, and “socialist healthcare“.Indeed, you’re getting Molly nominations in the current thread on that. Check it out…
You didn’t go to an American public school. =8-)
…Wow.
<headdesk>
Now that must have been traumatic.
*crash*
<headfloor>
@516: Are you sure she wasn’t being sarcastic? Admittedly, 2010 is not 1934 but if I read an article in which someone was praised for driving out democracy and activity I’d strongly suspect sarcasm. Especially form Stein.
Alan B., IMO you and your fellow Brits need to get your irony meters calibrated if you’re holding a grudge about that quote.
You seriously parse that, from Gertrude Stein, as “supporting Hitler”?
I’m going to have to look into your more serious charges of dalliance with the Vichy and Gestapo(!), but so far I am not convinced.
badgersdaughter:
(I am now writing from home)
The problem at work is that Big Brother really does watch. There’s an icon down in the lower right of the screen which glows at odd intervals — if it is glowing I’m being monitored. Even sending emails to my home address can be touchy if I do it too often.
Also, I figure that the slow computer is actually a blessing: I can look busy as hell (which means that when others come to me to ‘save’ their graphics project I can sigh, look at the pile of work, say something along the lines of “I’ll get to it if I can” and then look like a hero when their low-res graphisaster looks wonderful by that afternoon. I don’t use my mediocre computer to avoid work, merely to look harried enough that people are grateful that I could fit it into my busy schedule.
Then again, if anyone from my office reads this, my secret is out and I’m sunk. But I can’t picture any of them hanging out in a place this classy. More likely they are at a bar.
One thing is for sure: googling to investigate that quotation brings up some scary sites. I feel like I need a shower.
Just had to send Mr.Carlie to urgent care to deal with smoke inhalation aftereffects – he was one of several guys who went running over to help them climb out and got a lungful of burning engine block. (*proud*)
Good point, Nerd – I saw that Mythbusters too. It was the front of the undercarriage; I think that they hit and went over a few sturdy saplings that could have torn through some pipes/wires. It was a pretty small fire overall, but all I could think of was how easily it could travel along the gas lines back to the tank. ExtinguisherMan put it mostly out before it got worse, but even about 20 minutes later when the fire department was flipping it back over it was still smoldering (I’m pretty sure the extinguisher propellant was all gone by then). There were a few people who were saying it was all ok by the grace of God, but mostly I was just glad that so many people stopped. I bet there were at least 8 calls to 911 and 6 or 7 cars stopped with people out running around trying to help.
Ah, Alan’s info and quote (ellipses and all) are straight from ‘kipedia. No context and half the quote missing…that looks like quote-mining to me.
I can’t find a fuller version of the quote, but at least I am not alone in recognizing it as sarcasm
(e.g.; scroll down to “Loopy Genius”).
On the other hand, others take it seriously.
She does in fact seem to have had personal connections to Vichy which she apparently used to escape persecution.
:-)
Google “mark weber ihr,” or just go to their home page.
You’ll need a shower, too.
Phew, Carlie, that’s appalling. Hope Mr. Carlie is OK.
Seatbelts have saved my ass on a couple of occasions. I remember the spiderweb of glass after my dad hit the windshield with his head when I was a wee thing. I think he had concrete for brains, as he walked away.
(I think it runs in the family.)
Glad everyone made it out OK. That’s one of the things that have always confused me- people thanking random deity after coming out of a crash unscathed. Wouldn’t said random deity prefer to prevent said crash? I don’t get it. Meh.
well, my personal experience is that it’s really not that hard to set a car on fire. my mom managed by trying to refill oil in a hot car :-p
Uhm, soneone got their feelings hurt ?? I remember astrounit, it disappeared at some point, but I dont recall any big falling out.
I still can’t believe that after the Thread started with a vid about the pitfalls in rationalising sexuality, people spent 500 posts rationalising their sexuality LOL !!
That’s because your posts, esp the rants are funny, and coherent ! And what has education ever done for coherence or clarity of thought ? Look at Walton or myself LOL…:-)
I have caught a bug during latest lot of night shifts, and not feeling very flash right now, that better improve dramatically until the weekend !!
Dawkins interview on SBS
ah, yes, I see. ew.
Figures. What is it with jooz-haterz and their lack of a sense of humor?
oh, and since we’re praising safety features on cars: I’d like to thank whoever introduced shatterproof glass for windshields. If it weren’t for one of those, I would have had my face smashed in by a cantaloupe-sized piece of concrete years ago: my ex and I were driving on the freeway, and some other car in front of us in the other lane run over that loose piece of concrete that was lying on the road. it spun off and smashed into the windshield right in front of me. dented the window to the point where the piece of concrete was cushily embedded inside the dent. but it didn’t get thru. if it had, it would have landed in my face.
scared the living fuck outta me.
#522 & #533
I have already said Gertrude Stein is little known in the UK and the information I gave was to help me to understand and hence to be able to explain to Americans why one of their own might not be held in high esteem in the UK.
I was careful in my words:
The reference was what I have to assume was a direct quote in one of your own newspapers / magazines.
Yes. She may have been using sarcasm but the natural reading of her words was that she wanted him to have the Nobel Peace Prize. Many intellectuals and governments in Europe would have agreed.
Look at the Wiki article on the Daily Mail in the interwar years. Lord Rothermere who controlled the Daily Mail was pro Hitler and a sizeable proportion of the British people felt similarly. The Oxford Union had already voted in 1933 that they would not fight for King and Country and created a major controversy. The British and American governments were actively supporting Hitler in the 1930s.
For Gertrude Stein to come out and support Hitler would not have been unheard of. Also, she did live in occupied Vichy France throughout WW2 and was known to be an American. She was also a Jew but neither fact resulted in her being interned or incarcerated.
I am not a historian but a simple reading of the information available to me seems to be enough to explain the lack of interest in her in post war UK. I am not making any greater point than that.
She simply is NOT well known in the UK.
One more thing–I am no Wikipedian, but I figured out how to burrow back into the editing history of the Stein article. Words like “sardonic” and “sarcastic” and “ironic” seem to have been repeatedly edited in and out in connection with that quote.
What is the relevance of how well she’s known there generally or whether she’s held in esteem or not? This has nothing to do with the fact that you suggested she may have had a sheltered life. She didn’t. At all. So your response to what she said about diagramming sentences was funny.
The full quote seems to be “I really do not know that anything has every been more exciting than diagramming sentences. I like the feeling the everlasting feeling of sentences as they diagram themselves.” It was part of On Poetry and Grammar, a lecture she gave. She then wrote a paper by the same name in 1930 or so.
Albeit my knowledge only comes from the movies, but apparently it is VERY easy to make a vehicle explode.
Alan: but of course,
and
are two different things. You’re conflating them. You didn’t know who she was, and having looked her up you jumped to the conclusion that the reason you hadn’t herd of her was because she was a Hitler-lover and therefore rightly spurned by proper-thinking Englishmen.
You got suckered by Wikipedian culture-warriors.
(And “one of our own”? She lived in France her whole life!)
strange gods, apologies for the late reply. I’ve spent a while formulating it, and have had various things to do in the meantime.
I apologise; my original criticism was poorly-worded. What I should have said was that you have a tendency to assume bad faith when faced with a viewpoint you (sometimes rightly) find morally objectionable. When someone advocates restrictions on abortion, you tend immediately to label that person a misogynist. When an American talks about “states’ rights” or “giving power back to the states”, you tend immediately to label that person a white supremacist. When someone argues, from a constitutional originalist standpoint, that the US Constitution does not confer a right to same-sex marriage, you tend immediately to label that person a homophobe. You don’t account for the fact that these people may be naive or ignorant, or may hold those views out of a sincere consistent ideology, rather than actually being motivated by contempt for women, ethnic minorities or gay people. In short, you assume malice rather than ignorance – when, in the majority of cases, ignorance is the more likely explanation.
All the viewpoints I listed above are, I now think, wrong. But when I held those views, I was neither a racist, nor a misogynist, nor a homophobe. I was, and am, relatively privileged and sheltered, and I didn’t really understand the position of those who actually face discrimination and oppression. But that was ignorance, not malice. I was wrong, but I was never motivated by hatred or contempt. I hope you now understand this, but it took a huge amount of effort and thousands of posts, as well as me changing my outlook considerably, to get you to understand it. I find this all the more surprising, since you yourself have mentioned on several occasions that you’ve been through several ideological phases in your life. Why do you not assume that other people will do the same?
Before I go to bed (it was 00:15 or thereabouts at the start of this comment) let’s get a few things straight.
Gertrude Stein may be a household name in the US. She is not in the UK. She may be well known and loved in arts and literary circles but she is not widely recognised. I understand one of her famous quotes is, “A rose is a rose is a rose”. I suspect that in the UK that is more likely to be taken as a mis-quotation from Shakespeare who 310 years before had written:
(Romeo and Juliet, 1600)
Why is she not well known? Several reasons:
While she came briefly to the UK to give lectures, she does not appear to have been domiciled as far as I can see.
She was an Austrian/American/Jew, not British
She lived in America and France for much of her life.
While she appears to have had a major influence on modern literature, one reference suggests that she was not a major commercial success in her own right.
These appear to be facts, again as far as I can tell. I would guess those would be enough on their own to ensure she would not be well known in the UK.
In addition, there are incidents in her life (e.g. Hitler/Nobel Peace Prize, safe living in occupied France) which, if true, would ensure that someone with this background would not be esteemed in post war UK. We were recovering from a near disaster and from the loss of large numbers of military and civilian casualties. She died in July 1946 so there was hardly time for her to be “re-habilitated” before her death (if this were possible).
Some people take these incidents and comments seriously. Some do not. Which is true? I have no idea. The sum total of all the factors, however, would pretty well ensure she would not become well known post war in the UK. If she had not died of cancer so soon after WW2 – who knows?
Gertruide Stein’s words about Hitler come from an interview with Lansing Warren:
Sex wouldn’t be a limited resource, if (to put it rather crudely) everyone was eager to fuck like rabbits all the time with anyone in reach. But they are not.
In reality, sex is a limited resource. People have to compete for sex, just as they compete for money, career success, and other things that benefit their lives. And just as with money and career success, some people fail and lose out.
Sometimes, Jadehawk (and I apologise if I’m being a little unfair), you seem to have a utopian desire to return to the student hippie culture of the 1970s: free love, free higher education, idealistic left-wing politics, pacifism, and so on. But there is a reason why mainstream society has long since departed from this culture, why we had the Reagan and Thatcher Revolutions, and why the ideals of the hippie movement were never achieved in the real world. In reality, humans are competitive, self-interested bastards who are entirely willing to screw over one another for their own gain. We have to build a society which accepts this fact and channels individuals’ avarice in socially useful directions, rather than expecting people to be nice to each other.
I apologise for the incoherence of this post. I’m not entirely sober. :-)
Alan B @ 542:
I’m perfectly okay with you not being familiar with Stein, but I’m having a hard time buying that she’s not well known in the UK. My main net hangout (besides Pharyngula) is Moblog. Moblog’s user base is primarily out of the UK. Over the years, in various conversations, Stein, or a reference to one of her works has come up. Perhaps I just know a bunch of UK people who are familiar with her work. Either way, I don’t think personal unfamiliarity can be extended to cover the UK.
Butting in, what strange gods is doing is trying to get you to confront the effects of your position. If you are anti-abortion, the political ramifications of you voting your position will hurt women. If a person doesn’t accept gay marriage as being covered under constitutional protections, that is only possible by recategorizing gays as not equal people along with everyone else. Of course strange gods knows your position may come from ignorance; the reason to point out the results of the opinions you hold is to knock you out of said ignorance.
This is not a bar? I thought this was a bar. In fact, I thought this was the back bar of Pharyngula. [Hoists glass.}
Carlie, I’m glad to hear no one was seriously hurt, but sorry to hear about the problem with smoke inhalation. Once that’s all cleared up, hoist a few in celebration … keep us deformed.
Carlie,
Perhaps you’re right: I don’t know. In some ways, being confronted with the practical ramifications of my ideological beliefs was good for me. I’ve gradually learnt that it’s all very well to hold a consistent and internally coherent philosophy, but if it demonstrably worsens the lives of vulnerable and oppressed people in the real world, then the philosophy needs to be revised. So maybe, in a weird twisted way, I actually benefited from strange gods (or Grammar RWA, as he was then) calling me a misogynist when we first encountered one another. But then again, I don’t think this approach is helpful for everyone; some people genuinely benefit from a more gentle and civil approach to discussion.
I don’t think there’s a categorically correct answer to this. It really depends on the person and his or her preferences.
#540 Sven DiMilo
February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946
Not true. Check your facts.
#537 SC OM
If you don’t like my phraseing then just leave out the esteem bit. I included it in acknowledgement that she does appear to be held in esteem in the US (as well as being better known in the US than the UK).
What a surprise: that was the idea! Ever met irony, hyperbole and English people using a phrase to mean something rather different from what seems to be the immediate meaning? For effect. For humour??
If this is a bar, I should be thrown out now for being far too drunk. I’m going to bed. *yawns, and sways slightly from side to side*
Alan B., apologies if my tone was a mite strong there. I am in no way criticizing you for not having heard of Gertrude Stein. Rather, I am poking gentle fun at you for uncritically promulgating
possibleprobable misinformation from Wikipedia.rat, nice find. As I said, some take it seriously. Mostly, seemingly, those with an ax to grind.
*shrug*
better?
pedant
Walton, I wouldn’t have picked you for as a bad a misanthrope as myself LOL !!
I think the trick here is to find a person who is not like that, they are out there, but a limited resource for sure !
And you know, one good thing about a great relationship can be the fact that you form a dynamic duo with someone that, while not screwing people over, achieves lots of common goals together.
I know plenty of people who are not like that. And perhaps I was being unduly cynical. (As I said, I’m not entirely sober right now and really need to sleep.) But the point still stands that, in our society – and probably in any other free society – sex, dating and relationships are fundamentally competitive enterprises in which some succeed and some fail, based on a range of factors such as looks, wealth, social status, physical fitness, skill at social interaction, and other abilities and traits.
Walton,
But Walton, think of Roxxxy and successors, and of how capitalism will service the needs of the consumers! ;
Sex/getting laid has got nothing to do with wealth or social status, if it did I should be getting a lot more of it ! (Then again, Im not looking for any…)
Social skills and physical fitness, maybe, if you mean going out to the local in-club Saturday night trying to score, such settings certainly favor the bold and beautiful, but that’s not the only way people hook up fortunately.
Well… dunno if we’re still on college campus but when I went through what I did there the answers would be….
No. No. No. Yes.
Don’t overgeneralize. In some times, places, cultures, and local situations it sure as hell does. It would not surprise me if Oxford was one of ’em.
Sven DiMilo:
I agree. The one thing I mentioned that Walton leaves out of his “can get sex” equation is personality. He still leaves it out. Maybe it’s just because I was surfin’ on that ’70s groove, but from where I sit, personality seriously counts.
I have no idea why you’re on about this. With whom and what are you arguing?
Who cares? What has this got to do with anything?
What are you talking about? Are you now suggesting that your remark about her having lived a sheltered life was written with the knowledge of who she was, for comic effect?
Explains a lot, in my situation. I wasn’t born rich. I’m good lookin’ instead.
The eyes of Rasputin and whatnot.
Caine,
Roxxxy is offered for purchase with the buyer’s choice of five different personalities.[9][16][2][12] She is also able to talk about sports and cars.[16]
Ah Walton but the women are competing for things too, don’t forget that.
It just doesn’t all boil down to status and competition, or else it would be a lot simpler wouldn’t it? For one thing a lot has to do with your social scene, with what kind of people are around you.
One thing I’ve noticed about my male friends who say all women this or all women that is that they have a terrible tendency to surround themselves with women who confirm their bias. It’s like the rest of us are off the map, and not only that… they’ll often criticize or even show outright contempt to those who don’t meet their standards for contempt. I don’t know if you have that tendency or not but it is something to watch for. Who do you see when you look for people or at people. Are there people you think you might be not seeing?
Although some times it is out of your control, say, where you are geographically and a certain social scene may prevail. But you can try to get out of this by going out wider. Hey, have you ever gone to some place or event you wouldn’t normally and try talking to a girl? Then if she asks you if you typically like whatever event it is you can say “no I just came here hoping to meet an interesting girl.”
Sorry, I digressed. I just think that would be really funny!
Think about it this way… what would a girl have to do to get your attention?
I’m not speaking of myself specifically, but I mean in general?
John Morales, thanks, but no. I didn’t play with dolls when I was a kid, still not my thing. ;p
Walton, the sooner you put away your sex-as-economics theory the more likely it is you will get some. I’m thinking maybe we should restart Operation Get Walton
LaidA Hooker, but it might only reinforce his view.Sheesh, don’t confuse the way things went down with the laws of nature. You could have given the same argument for any set backs suffered for the civil rights or the women’s rights movements.
True, but incomplete. Humans are also capable of cooperation and altruism. Anyone who forgets this is just as wrong as an over optimistic utopian (not that I think Jadehawk falls in this category).
Caine, not even Blade Runner-type dolls? :)
(Actually, I was using you to rib Walton (cf. #555))
John, well if we’re talking Blade Runner, mrrowrr, baby. :D There’s always Real Dolls, too. Not my cuppa, but if that’s what someone wants, it’s good with me.
Holy kadiddley. OK, I will stop teasing you now…
If I was 20 years younger, and Walton wasn’t a fucking drunk procrastinator (just kidding, babe), I would consider meeting him for drinks sometime. Of course, he wouldn’t have been even the slightest bit interested in the young woman I was when I was that age, and I can well understand why. I wouldn’t take all the money in the universe to be that age again (and I wouldn’t take that squared to be a teenager again).
Ol’Greg (#563)
Soooo fucking true. I so want to drop a dump truck on all the guys who whine about how shallow their girlfriends are. And the women who wail about their awful men. Don’t like the type? Then don’t mate with it. I’m not really partial to people in general, though, so it’s easy for me.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Concerning the sex robots/dolls: They’ll be so much more appealing when they’re advanced enough to clean themselves up afterwards and put themselves away.
This is also true. Learning to look at what you’re looking at is hard work.
Haha… maybe Walton just needs to consider older women!
If I were near his city I’d dare him to meet me for a drink, although I’d have to stipulate that only a drink and conversation is implied.
Unfortunately, even if he was obliging I have no plans on being there anytime this year.
I will be in Paris though in May. Anyone from here there? I’m nervous. Very nervous about Paris.
Guy called Marjanovic lives there, seem to remember he’s posted here before….;)
again, a quick reference to a< =href"http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/012244.html#012244">Making Light, where people are posting words to proposed “rejected” hymns. I highly recommend #54:
and it goes on from there. fun stuff.
ARUGH! html fail.
Making Light
the political concept of backlash is foreign to you then?
no. in real reality, as opposed to reality as narrated by capitalism, the most “natural” human societies are cooperative; the most healthy and happy societies are the most cooperative ones, not the most competitive ones.
and seriously, what the fuck do you have against free love?
Thank you! So true, that!
Therefore, I am announcing that I am fucking sick to projectile vomiting of having boyfriends with potential. I want one who’s realized some goddamn potential, for fuck’s sake. If I can get a nice home and career put together, even though I don’t happen to have the academic credentials necessary to qualify to give David Marjanovic’s least promising student a blowjob, anybody can do it.
Jesus, this invective stuff is addictive. I’ll let it stand in case somebody gets a chuckle out of it, at least.
@badgersdaughter (#576)
Chuckle, nothing. You made me laugh blueberry crisp down my chin.
:D:D:D:D:D:D:D
Unfathomably awesome even to imagine!
I’m sorry for dropping a grammar turd earlier and then buggering off.
Diagramming See Spot Run.
To be honest, my wife is one who introduced me to this, and I still don’t fully understand it.
Diagramming sentences.
I did some of this on a basic level in elementary school, but probably would not remember it at all were it not that it features prominently in a tense exam scene in one of the Little House on the Prairie books.
Oddly enough, that’s one of the main reasons women wail about their awful men. :)
don’t do anything I wouldn’t donevermind, move along, nothing to see here
I have been grading all fucking day and I am going to have to keep going all fucking night. I am consequently ornery as hell and so even though I doubt I’ll be doing any arguing in this area any more, I am moved to stir the pot regarding the now-dead conversation on human genetic variation (don’t call it “race”!).
Recall that this all started up again here recently when I claimed that, although I was not (and am not)(seriously, no kidding, NOT) defending classical, typological conceptions of human races, they were not completely fictional; they were based on easily visible phenotypic traits that were geographically clustered, and that this itself was strong evidence for genetic differences caused or maintained, in part, by limited gene flow. And I got arguments about every detail: genetic variation is all clines, no clusters; every gene has its own cline and there is no intercorrelation of variation geographic or otherwise; gene flow is not limited at all but is instead swamped by strong local selection; genetic differences among populations are actually few and trivial and most variation is within populations. Et cetera.
So I like to know stuff and I prefer it when what I think I know is correct, so like I said way up above someplace, I read the Social Science Research Council web-forum on ‘Is Race Real’ for edification and I found it unhelpful. All rhetoric and passion and assertion and little evidence. And what evidence could be gleaned basically suggested that, well, yeah, human populations do show genetic variation and this variation correlates pretty tightly with geography, and we need to figure out a way to talk about the reality of this geographic variation BUT without referring to ‘race’, which of course is a social construct, not a biological reality as every right-thinking social scientist (plus Dick Lewontin) knows.
Since the whole shebang was a response to an editorial by geneticist Armand Leroi, I got to wondering whether Leroi had responded anywhere and I found this:
Snap!
Another interview in the series was with Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, the Stanford human population geneticist. He was asked:
and I also can’t resist quoting his take on cultural anthropology:
Ha!
Finally, looking for relevant data in a nice digested internetty presentation, the same site yielded this: Race: the current consensus. Look! Data!
Executive Summary:
My point? That my half-formed ideas and gestalt impressions on the subject are not iconoclastic or at all out of the biological mainstream (and, I hope it should go without saying, not racist). The subject is by no means closed just because the Social Science Research Council has Spoken, as (it seems to me) is often implied around here.
and now that I have no doubt pissed off various friends, back to grading exams
My final, rambling thought before going to bed:
Since coming to the US, I’ve learned about the Phelps clan, NRA rallies, and Paula Deen’s cooking.
But nothing scares the fuck out of me as much as those people with dog heads on Sesame Street.
We’ve got a live one: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/03/sunday_sacrilege_it_rhymes_wit.php#comment-2331253
Sven, I think I have radiation burns from standing too close to some of the more bitter zingers you quoted. That’s some VSOP snark, there. :)
Sentence-diagramming challenges:
http://www.slate.com/id/2201158/
Sven, I think you scared everyone away with your diagram link.
I think the biggest problem kids have with diagramming (in schools that still teach it) is that the teacher doesn’t give them enough foundational grammar skills first. The year I home-schooled my (then) sixth grader, we spent an entire semester on English grammar, and only diagrammed at the very end as a means of “putting it all together.” It isn’t that hard if you already know what the various parts of a sentence are called.
test
exxxcellent. now I can have my sniny new blog as the link in my name :-)
Alright, Jadehawk! Bookmarked and going to read now.
I was going to comment, Jadehawk, but the ‘post a comment’ isn’t working for me.
hmmm…. I checked the settings… what isn’t working? i made a test comment from a different browser, and picking the name/url option for ID seems to be working just fine
All I see is ‘post a comment’, but there’s no box, no link, nothing. Maybe I have to be signed in with blogger? I’ll investigate.
Works fine for me…:-)
that is really really weird. you shouldn’t need to be signed in since I allow even anonymous commenting, so there must be some miscommunication between blog and browser
Arg. I can’t comment on Jadehawk’s blog either. I tried google, typepad, openid, name/url, and anonymous. No, no, no, no, and no.
Yeah, I tried to leave a message yesterday just to warn Jadehawk that I found the blog and to take the necessary precautions. But, alas, she already did.
ok, I’ve no idea what’s going on… any chance y’all’s browsers don’t like word verification? because I really have no clue what is going on, since both firefox and google chrome are letting me post, and word verification is the only “restriction” on posting I put in there :-(
Well, I got the comment box to show up, and I posted, but my comment doesn’t show up. I’m not sure what the problem is, but it’s probably lurking in the list of cookies I have blocked. I think. Anyway, here’s the comment:
I know I haven’t commented in many months so you may have no idea who I am, but, yeah jadehawk, I can’t get through either. I’m on safari (I know, I know) in case you’re wondering.
Whoops! Made it on google, third try was a charm.
I use Firefox. What’s word verification?
ok, I run out of browsers to test: chrome, firefox, safari and opera all post :-/
word verification is that thingie that makes you type nonsensical letter combinations before letting you post. you know, to test if you’re really human.
the word I’m looking for is CAPTCHA [/brainfart]
Caine, if you go through Name/URL and hit post comment you will get word verification. I also use Firefox and that is what happened for me.
Oh! No, didn’t get one of those.
How to post on Jadehawk’s blog :
1.Read post
2.Read comments to post if available
3.Type own comment into comment box
4.Choose name/anon/identity etc
5.Click on post comment
6.Insert captcha when asked to
7.Enjoy !
Janine, I tried that, it didn’t work. I’m still trying to figure out if it’s something on my end.
Okay, I got it to work, Jadehawk. I had to enable 3rd party cookies and turn Ghostery (Firefox add-on) off. It seems unless ‘google friend connect’ is allowed to track, there’s no go.
Dawkins talk at Sydney Opera House yesterday
Richard Dawkins will be dabating Senator and Family First wingnut Steve Fielding on Q&A on ABC1 tonight at 938pm ,for you aussies out there….
Cannot sleep, damn cold, so might as well catch up on the thread.
Jazuz H. Zeus, Walton at #544 (headdesk – brain bleach) I am so glad you admitted to being drunk, it allowed me to only headdesk once. Can I ask you a simple question? Do you actually wish to date and/or have sex? If you do, then stop coming up with nonsense reasons why you cannot meet anyone and/or get laid. Either summon up your courage or seek therapy if you have a serious issue. If not, then stop talking about things of which you admittedly have zero knowledge. You remind me of one of my maiden aunts who would talk to her nieces about sex – giving advice with both enthusiasm and ignorance. The Hippie Culture of he 1960‘s and 1970‘s, which was not as wide spread nor as lengthy as thought, to my memory of it, was more a reaction to the 1950‘s culture of conformity back to which Reagan and Thatcher tried to drag society. The actual free love and love and hug part did not last long, but some of the sexual freeing did take hold and is still there. It is rare to be stoned by the community now for having engaged in sex and people do live together, openly, without benefit of clergy (gasp). Maybe not in some small town, and not all the time, but I believe sexual activity is far, far less restricted now than it was even in the fabled 70‘s. I do not have ready access to statistics, but would be amazed if far more women were not sexually active now than even at the height of the Summer of Love. Over simplified, I know and I throw myself to the wolves for clarifications and questions. If you are competing for sex, you are not doing it right. Just seems to be an excuse.
(Oh, by the way, I will personally come over to England and forcibly wash your mouth and fingers with lye soap if you ever bring Thatcher and Reagan into a sex discussion again – I will have nightmares for a freakin’ month!)
I am confused. This is a biologist’s blog, right?
Walton whether drunk or sober may not like the particular configuration of physical characteristics with which he has been landed. Few of us did at his age, making an exception for the beauty queen faction. Those very beauty queens who are my contemporaries have by now discovered – including my best friend at school who looked like Marilyn Monroe – that it don’t last and it don’t get you far, either.
But back to Walton for a minute. Unless he has been exposed for most of his childhood to an incredibly harsh environment – seems unlikely – then every last one of those characteristics was inherited. Which means that generations of, armies of people with those very characteristics have been fucking away merrily for millennia.
Just on a statistical basis it seems improbable that Walton and Walton alone got the particular combination which condemns him to lifelong celibacy.
The problem must lie elsewhere. Could it be his insistence on using the Milton Friedman model of human relationships?
Love ya, Walton, but start using that brain of yours!
If I may wager a guess here, I think his brain is what gets in the way of him getting laid….:-)
Let’s just say that I can somewhat relate….
Walton,
And there are many reasons why so many of us realise how damaging the Reagan and Thatcher “Revolutions” have been to society and to sustainable developement, and that some of the ideals of the hippie culture of the 70s weren’t that wrong afterall.
NB : I put quotes around the word “Revolutions”, because I just don’t think that is the right word to describe what happened.
Kellach @ 612:
Afuckingmen. I have a pretty good idea of why Walton isn’t enjoying a healthy, active sex life; however, if it’s going to change, that change has to be effected by Walton.
I expect you’re right about that. The sexual revolution, while not massive, had an incredible effect that is still felt now, whether people realize that or not. (At least in the U.S.)
Oh man, must remember to download this tomorrow (about to watch a movie)
grrr, just woke up, have to be on a conference call with Hannover in forty minutes, do not want to talk about economic sex, or sexy economics, or whatever the hell. getting coffee now.
Rorschach @ 614,
Brainwise, it’s not the hardware. It’s the out-of-date and corrupted software he keeps running on it.
[transthreadual nitpick]
Rorschach, there should be no separator between the last letter of a sentence and the interrogative sign (it’s a punctuation mark which replaces a full stop).
Ah, coffee…. You know, I noticed that. I thought it was an artifact of the software Rory was using for typing; it was that consistent.
You guys do have a life, right ??
I always make that mistake ! (blush)
caus in French, there is a separator.
Q&A question : Steve Fielding, do you think one can believe in god and evolution?
Fielding : I think people will come to their own conclusions.
Dawkins is wiping the floor with the freak, how wonderful !!!
We’ve just got it here in SA (half an hour behind Rorschach) – I think it’s more accurate to say Fielding is so clueless that he’s mopping the floor with himself.
The audience are cracking up. I don’t know if this clown is up for re-election this year (if he’s a senator then he might not be) but I really hope if he is there are enough people seeing what a dolt he is that he won’t get back in.
#552 Sven DiMilo
Yes, that is better. She seems to be accepted as an American writer (not surprisingly, as she was born in the US!) so she can hardly be said to have lived all her life in France!
I have been picked up before by several people for slight inaccuracies in grammar and in facts (like suggesting that she lived in both America and France). Why should it be a surprise if I follow house style?
Rorschach | March 8, 2010 2:37 AM:
Prior to enabling “third party cookies”, after I would click “post comment”, the comment box would redraw, empty. I would see no captcha at all.
Correct, don’t, because “race” has a meaning and “genetic variation” has a meaning and they’re not the same.
First, note that these conceptions are what “race” is about. This is where the concept comes from. Then people try to find races in the variation that conform in some way to the classical conceptions. There’s nothing scientific about it.
Anyway, what conception are you defending? How many races are there? How are they defined?
Which traits? Why those?
From Ann Morning’s “On Distinction” (part of the SSRC set):
What is your response to this?
What are you talking about? This is not a meaningful engagement with those articles.
Duh.
?
People can talk about genetic variation as genetic variation. “Race” didn’t arise from the data as a scientific concept, and it has no scientific value.
It’s scientifically useless and socially pernicious.
Look, you’ve dismissively referred to social scientists enough. It’s a fucking stupid ad hominem, and it’s particularly dumb in this case, since the disciplines of the contributors are listed on the main page:
http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/
Yeah, a lot of content there. Very substantive reply.
I fail to see the significance of this.
Try. These ad homs aren’t helping your case.
What does “relevant phenotypically and informative about race” even mean? Personality is a phenotype?
Wow.
The “mainstream” as indicated by Razib? Does it bother you that people are starting with basically “classical, typological conceptions” of race and trying to shake some support out of data on variation?
See also:
You’re confused. It’s a set of articles collected and made available by the SSRC, not the organization saying that. Anyway, you haven’t presented anything to support the relevance or usefulness of “race” to understanding genetic variation. You haven’t even defined “race” or “races” as you understand them. Until you do, there’s really nothing to talk about.
A little pissed off. Mostly saddened. Live and learn.
Loved the bible cherry-picking that ensued, Dawkins just quoting the NT and Bishop and the other parliamentarian going like, “yeah but those quotes arent really meant like that”….
This confirms my suspicion, aussies are not prepared for a serious discussion about religion, they’ve never been exposed to the hardcore stuff that goes on here or in other places on the net or in the US…
Wow. I am seeing awful mpeg artifacts on that video of Richard Dawkins’ talk. Among other things, the shadow of his left cheekbone ends up looking like a star-shaped tattoo at times. And he occasionally seems to be wearing some sort of weird highly mobile goggles. Fortunately the video, as it nearly always is in these talks, is entirely superfluous. Well, not entirely. It wastes bandwidth.
#560 SC OM
Yes. Because it was.
Not, of course, in total knowledge but enough to know she had lived a rather more exciting life than portraying the arcane side of the English language in diagrams.
The statement claimed to have been made by her (about diagramming) seemed to me to be stupid and pretentious. I was sending it up. You may not like my style of humour … tough.
Pharyngulatable poll detected!
Is it OK for home-school textbooks to dismiss the theory of evolution? over at MSNBC. Already at 2/3 no, but it getting that percentage up wouldn’t be a bad thing.
(Or has this poll already been featured here?)
In college, I was a professional proofreader. I got paid to notice little things like extra spaces. I’m surprised I was previously unaware of the leading space before sentence-ending punctuation in French. I think my French co-workers in Pau, with whom I communicate using IM, follow English rules when typing in English.
About a year ago I got reprimanded for not inserting spaces after commas, thereby upsetting
grammar naziseditors like Bill Dauphin.I’m not going to un-insert spaces now, sorry….Then what was all the business about her not being well-known there about? What difference would it make how well known she is there if you knew who she was? Why can’t you just acknowledge that you didn’t know who she was when you made that first comment? You seem to think people were criticizing you for not knowing who she was of for not holding her in sufficient esteem, but that’s not the case.
You’re also having a really disproportionate response to her remark about diagramming sentences. I really don’t know how serious she was, and I doubt it was very; but even if she was being entirely serious, so what? What does it bother you if someone finds diagramming sentences exciting? How is her personal preference stupid or pretentious?
Weird; I’ve gotten used to the level of commentary here and tend to expect that every discussion of religion is going to be as high end.
But yeah, the Aussie panelists were just embarrassing – not because they’re religious (though that is embarrassing) – but because it appears they haven’t met a logical fallacy they don’t like. Of course, they’re all politicians, so dodging and handwaving rather than engaging is pretty much their forté.
SC my friend, will you please go and have boxing classes or something…
I’m not your friend. Fuck off.
Happy to, I just find your recent fight-picking attitude here a bit silly.
Show where I picked a fight with Alan B.
Is this on the ABC site to download yet?
SC:
Not to join a jump on SC movement or anything, but you don’t get it. Humans represent a biological population (or metapopulation for those being picky) that exhibits phenotypic variation. Some of the phenotypic variation has been used historically to identify “races”. Sven is just investigating the distribution of that variation.
In fact, I am happy to never use the word ‘race’ again. The geographic patterns of genotype and phenotype I’m talking about remain. What should we call them?
Um, no. You don’t get it. I’m asking for a clear statement of which phenotypic variation he’s talking about. Which traits are being used to define “races,” what are these races, and and how are they scientifically relevant? Did you read the quotation from Morning I posted above, or watch the YT video I linked to (especially the last 15 minutes)?
Great.
What patterns, specifically?
What should we call what? You’re presenting this like “races” exist out in the world and people are simply afraid to call them what they are. Do you have any response to Morning?
NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH
Today is apparently PZ’s birthday!
Happy birthday, oh great tentacled overlord!
Happy birthday, PZ!
Happy birthday, Professor Myers.
By which, of course, I don’t mean to include race as a social construct, which is very real and has real effects, as has been discussed here.
On wikipedia it says March 9th is his birthday.
Same day as Amerigo Vespucci, Yuri Gagarine and two beautiful actresses, Ornella Muti and Juliette Binoche.
Yay, it’s PZ’s birthday in Australia!
Ah, I think that’s right. I seem to recall him saying he would be on his way to Australia on his birthday.
LOL!
Ah- facebook had a list of birthdays today, and his was listed at the end. Didn’t notice it said “tuesday” instead of “today” because the font is SO DAMNED SMALL and I’m not used to how it now tells you birthdays way in advance for no good reason now.
BUT HAPPY FUCKING BIRTHDAY ANYWAY, GODDAMN IT.
It’s dead?? I thought it was just a slow cooking pot. (I was meaning to get back to David about #435.) Sometimes I’m not sure if you’re more interested in being the lonesome pot-stirrer on this issue, than also engaging with people who agree with you on some things.
See, I thought I was dealing with the Data! that shows a large amount of recent positive selection in the human genome, and thought that this might have some interesting parallels to what is termed ecotypic variation in other species. But apparently talking about selection wrt to human differentiation is now somehow suspect, since Lewontin likes the idea?? (I’m as surprised as you are, btw)
And did you read what it says about selection right below that Venn diagram?
Since PZ won’t be here tomorrow to see the greetings, Happy Birthday to our Cephalopod Loving Overlord…
I’m an asshole troll…I drop a big stinky load and then disappear…I’m sorry, though, seriously, no time today.
I’ll be beck.
Jesus fucking shotgun-toting Christ. I can’t take a weekend off. Not only is a new NET topic posted, but it’s almost full.
Not that I have anything to say at the moment. I just wanted to express my amazement and dismay.
You weren’t kidding when you said you’re an asshole troll. Understatement, even.
(Get it? Beck? As in Glenn . . . Ah, nevermind.)
No problem. I don’t have time today, either.
I watched a show on public TV, hosted by Henry Louis Gates, in which celebrities were given a chance to investigate their ancestry. At the end of the show, their DNA was analyzed. Steven Colbert’s came back as “100% White Man.”
Faces of America story in the NY Daily news
Faces of America website, which also hosts a video in which Colbert interviews Gates on the Colbert Report.
Lynna, you know that “White Man” part was in keeping with his “Colbert” persona, right? That it was tongue in cheek?
The real interview, at the Faces of America site, was actually very interesting. He talked about his (Irish) family traditions, and how he discovered – after he was married – that his wife’s ancestors were granted land that had originally belonged to his ancestors, until the Crown drove them from it.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/facesofamerica/
Caught a segment on CNN this morning where they interviewed Angie Jackson re: her YouTube video and live Tweeting of her RU486 abortion.
She did a great job explaining her reasons for going public and talked about some of the reactions (the good, the bad, and the violent) she’s garnered.
The talking head was pleasantly even-handed, even supportive afaict.
Give ’em hell, Angie! You’re doing great work.
Hi, Katrina, Yeah, I got the tongue-in-cheek part, but IIRC Colbert didn’t have asian (native american) or african percentages in his DNA like many of the other celebs. Again, just going by memory here, but Meryl Streep was also 100% European. Colbert had a cousin with some african DNA, but she got her cousinage with Colbert on the European side.
Anyway, the take home was, as Gates said, that when it got dark at night, everyone was sleeping with everyone else. Assuming that you’re not related to the rest of your fellow humans is a mistake.
Water Practically Flies Off New Spider-like Surface Excerpt:
The snow is melting out of my yard rapidly. I got my bike out and rode around yesterday (gloves and hat required, but otherwise pretty nice). So, now I’m itching to get going on a backcountry expedition. I’ll leave sometime later this week and will be absent from the endless thread for awhile. I’ll travel with one or two of my brothers. Still too early for Idaho’s mountain roads to be open, but southern Utah will be good (unless it rains and bentonite-based mud sucks us to our doom).
Happy Birthday to the tentacled overlord!
PZ, Professional Poopyhead, so tomorrow is your birthday! May the Australians fete you properly, or improperly, whichever suits you best.
PZ will be crossing the international date line on his birthday so we should probably have celebrated it last week, or something.
Happy Birthday PZ. I hear they have drop-bears where you’re going , so watch out.
Finally, an explanation for why, when the sun came out and dried up all the rain, the itsy-bitsy spider dared to try climbing up the spout again.
holy shit
I may not recover from that.
Office mates just peeked in the office to make sure I was ok.
whew
Jadehawk@76:
Wow. I got some really negative and contemptuous reactions to comment #144.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/03/episode_xxxvi_the_predictable.php#comment-2328456
Let me clarify, so it’s clearer that I don’t deserve that—or, perhaps, clearer exactly how I do deserve it, so people can straighten me out rather than just flinging brickbats.
Right.
There are interesting differences in how people schematize sex, in particular with respect to why you would want to do that activity with somebody you didn’t love and maybe have a long term interest in.
Many people seem to regard sex as an entirely different activity than anything else, such that they can’t compare it to many other activities that are fun to do with people that you like, even strangers that you just like in the moment.
Few people have a problem understanding how it can be fun to do other activities with strangers, including physical activities, but for some reason can’t see why the same principles could possibly apply to sex.
For example, people often like to play tennis with somebody else, rather than just lobbing a ball off a wall. There’s something fun about interacting with another person, even a stranger, who’s a suitable temporary pairing that’s obvious when it comes to games, but somehow mystifying to some people when it comes to sex.
Think about playing a pickup game of doubles tennis. You find somebody complementary, e.g., with an appropriate skill level, who’s available, and you play.
Typically, if it’s a fun game, you like the person you’re paired with, in the moment. You may not be friends, and may not particularly know if you want to be friends. You may even suspect that you don’t, but find it fun to play tennis with that person.
You’re cooperating with them for mutual benefit, and that’s good even if in other ways you might be incompatible. (It can even be fun to play tennis with somebody you mildly dislike; you can put the dislike aside, and still enjoy cooperating with them on that issue—making tennis fun. You have shared goals and can put your differences aside temporarily and “like” each other in that respect, on that particular common ground, and for that purpose —and since that’s what you’re focused on, it’s good enough; the other stuff recedes from your consciousness for the duration.
I don’t actually play tennis myself, but I’ve sometimes had a similar experience snowboarding. I’ve “hooked up” with strangers of comparable skill level, and done a few runs with them, or even just a one-run “quickie” with somebody I met in the lift chair, because it’s just extra fun to do something energetic and physical and exhilarating with somebody else to share the experience with—grinning at each other like maniacs and grooving on the sharedness of the experience. Solitary snowboarding is great, but sometimes you want to share the experience, even if it’s with a stranger who you don’t know much about except that they’re digging it too, and happy to be sharing the experience with you. It’s just nice to have somebody there, if only so you can say isn’t this cool! and have them say yeah! this rocks! (And snowboarding isn’t a particularly socially interactive activity, as tennis and sex are.)
Even when it’s somebody you vaguely dislike and are directly competing against, the same thing can hold. You may appreciate the person, in the moment, and what they’re doing for you—they’re giving you a good game, and appreciating you for giving them a good game, or whatever.
That can even happen when you’re arguing on the internets with somebody you have serious reservations about liking overall. You may in fact despise them in a sense, for some of their views, which you think are reprehensible. And yet, if they argue well—including treating you respectfully enough to argue seriously—you may like them and appreciate them in that respect only, and maybe for the duration of that argument only. You can focus on what you have in common, and the aspects of the situation in which you do have shared goals—e.g., getting at the truth—and appreciate them in a limited way that’s useful for that particular purpose.
That’s not for everybody. Some people like arguing with people they don’t particularly like, and other people can’t stand it. They can’t or won’t put aside their feelings about other aspects of the person and focus on what works, so it just doesn’t work. They may even feel morally obligated not to treat the person they’re (not) arguing with respectfully in that way—they may regard them as a reprehensible troll it would be wrong to show that kind of respect to, and to reward by treating them as though they were a person worthy of serious and civil argument. They may even condescend to people who do like to argue with trolls or “reprehensible people”—they may think they’re just “feeding trolls” and rewarding them when they should be unambiguously punishing them; civil treatment should be reserved for people deserving of civility.
A lot of people also seem to be unable to imagine how sex for money could ever be a reasonable arrangement. They see sex as entirely different from other activities it’s reasonable to do for money, and intrinsically horribly exploitative under any circumstances. Those people should not engage in sex for money under any circumstances.
Some of us don’t see sex as being that qualitatively different from everything else. Because we don’t, it might be reasonable for us to consider engaging in sex for money—even sex we don’t actually enjoy, but don’t loathe—because it would not be that exploitative for us. We can see it as work for hire, like anything else. The more unpleasant it is, the more we want to get paid for it, of course, like anything else.
I’m going to make a weird analogy that’s going to lose a lot of people, but what the heck.
Consider women doing each other’s hair. Some women really enjoy that. (Some men, too, assume.) They like doing a friend’s hair, and having a friend engage with them and pamper them in return. It’s a pleasant social activity, and involves physical touching, and is rather intimate.
But some women pay to get their hair done, and explicitly say that they enjoy being attended to, touched, and pampered, even if the person doing it is not a friend, and is doing it for money.
My wife’s one of those people, in a funny way. She’s not big on hairstyling and fashion, but on the rare occasions she goes to a pro, she likes the feeling of having somebody else wash her hair. It’s a warm massage-like thing, and a sensual pleasure. It’s just pleasant, for her, to be touched and pampered in that way, even by a stranger, as long as it’s not a stranger she’s afraid of, or in a situation that she’s afraid of because she doesn’t know where it’s going.
She’s not going to go out and ask strangers to wash her hair, just because she likes having it done and a stranger might want to do it. That would be too weird, and she’d have to worry about why the stranger wanted to wash her hair and what else they were expecting. So she might go to a salon now and then, and pay somebody to do it.
Is that person being exploited? Are hair dressers like prostitutes, because they get paid to manipulate other people’s bodies in pleasant ways that might be “better” if done intimately, between friends?
Consider a hairdresser I know in LA. She’s a hairdresser for some high-end clients, including at least one whose name practically everybody here would recognize. She gets paid money to pamper people, as well as for being very good at making them look good for TV shows and concerts.
She gets paid to be friendly, and nice. She converses with her clients as though they were friends. (And at least one of them is, now; they socialize in non-work situations.)
Being friendly for money is usually not particularly hard for her, because she’s a friendly and nice person who generally likes people and is happy to be friendly and nice to them, even if they’re getting a lot more out of it than she is, and in fact she wouldn’t do it at all if she didn’t get money for it.
Sometimes, the clients are not very well-behaved toward hairdressers. They’re used to being pampered and attended to, and they’re not as appreciative as maybe they should be. They’re rude, interrupting conversations and hairdressing to make phone calls, and then expecting to pick up where they left off on a moment’s notice. They’re in it for themselves, and are not nearly as friendly to her as she has to be to them, and they pay money to get away with it. Sometimes they have bad breath, and keep talking and blowing their bad breath in her face, and she says nothing. And she takes the money and lets them get away with it, and complains sometimes, but doesn’t feel terribly exploited overall. It’s a job, no worse than most, and she gets paid well enough.
I, personally, can imagine myself being a sex worker, and having a similar attitude toward sex work—if and only if the situation were similarly constrained and safe, and not the kind of horribly exploitative, abusive, dangerous, underground, criminal enterprise that *actual* prostitution generally is in the U.S. *now*.
I have in the past, when I was younger and more marketable, actually considered it. If I hadn’t had a union job as a skilled laborer, making decent money, I likely would have done it. (A few years later, they obsoleted our skilled labor with new technology, and busted our union, and the good money disappeared. If that had happened when I lived in a gay neighborhood and was getting offers, I’d likely have resorted to sex work then, and not freaked out about it.)
When I say I think prostitution should be legal, one reason is so that it can be more like the hairdresser situation than like the miserable chattel-like existence it often actually is. If you think a client is out of bounds, and not worth dealing with, you should able to tell them they don’t pay you enough to put up with the way they’re treating you, and to get lost. And that shouldn’t put you at risk of being beaten up by an asshole client, or by an asshole pimp who doesn’t value your well-being and takes most of your hard-earned money, and without police you can trust to defend you if it comes down to it.
It may well be the case that even if prostitution worked that way, it would still generally be unacceptably exploitative and abusive for the women doing it. There might well be too few women who can take the hairdresser-like attitude toward that particular job, and too many who take the job anyway because they’re in dire financial straits, etc. I don’t know. It may not be a good idea—although I find it hard to imagine that would be worse than how prostitution actually works now, which is horrendous.
If, with well-regulated legal prostitution, most prostitutes were still doing what they consider a horrible job out of desperation, I think the big problem would not be prostitution per se, but the desperation that would drive women to do it anyway. Prostitution would be more a symptom of exploitation than a cause. The main problem would be with the way we run our economy, such that poor people get the short end of the stick, and women get the short end of the stick, and poor women are often desperate enough to do things they really don’t want to do, just to get by. The main problem would be lack of basic social justice and equality, not prostitution itself.
People do that all the time, e.g., paying a hairdresser to be friendly and touch them in pleasant ways, and to not be as hung up about whether they’re attractive enough to want to do those things for them. An ugly, fat, stupid, geeky, socially unskilled, physically disabled, friendless person who doesn’t smell great can still go to a salon and get their hair done, for money, and I don’ t think that’s an entirely bad thing. Not everything should depend on being valued by others. (If you smell really because you refuse to bathe or brush your teeth, that’s different.)
I don’t think there’s necessarily anything special about prostitution in that regard. People are often exploited—e.g., putting up with inconsiderate treatment from richer people, because they’re poor, and doing shitty jobs for low pay because there’s a glut on the labor market, and too much money concentrated in the hands of too few people.
You’re running a whole bunch of stuff together and that’s largely my fault; I probably should have separated out more clearly sooner.
One issue is what men want, and whether it’s okay to want that. Another is the issue of whether it’s okay to act on that desire, and still another is which actions are acceptable and which go too far.
In the specific case of prostitution, there’s the question of whether it’s ever okay for a guy to want to have sex with a woman who doesn’t particularly want to have sex with him, but is willing to do so for money. (I think it is, sometimes.) It’s a very different question whether it’s okay to do that within the framework of prostitution as it exists now. It’s yet another question what people’s actual motivations are when they do patronize prostitutes under current real-world circumstances—how exploitative is it, how exploitative do they realize that it is, and do they really just not care about others’ interests, or do they fail to take them into account correctly.
Not impressed. That article seems to be doing what you seem to be doing—reducing a very complicate thing that involves many men sucking into a much simpler thing that simply reduces to even more men sucking and it being All Their Damned Fault, when part of the problem is not anybody’s fault in a strong sense—it’s a problem with legitimate differences in what people want, and unfortunate standards by which most people are found wanting in one way or another.
There’s a reason why I brought up the behavior of gay males. If people are going to express simple condemnation for men who want casual, no-strings sex, just for wanting it, I’d like to hear their opinion of the fairly large contingent of gay men who want casual sex, and get it, and as Josh put it in comment 149
I think there’s an important point in there that some people are ignoring. Some people seem unable to comprehend why many men (more men than women) would want and be willing to go for casual no-strings sex. (“Why not just wank?” Give me a break!)
As I interpret some of the comments, maybe wrongly, it seems that some people simply think that there’s something pathological and assholish about men who would even wan that, or at least any who would act on that desire it in a heterosexual context.
It sounds to me like some people—maybe you—think that the problems due to mismatch in distributions of men’s and women’s attitudes about how they want to conduct their sex lives is most or all of the following
(a) solely the fault of the men,
(b) pathological
(c) intrinsically selfish and exploitative, at least to actually act on,
(d) misogynistic in a direct way, e.g., wanting to treat women as “mere objects” in a morally unacceptable sense, and
(e) misogynistic in an indirect sense of having consequences for women so great that it’s almost entirely the men’s responsibility to repress their desires and be more accommodating of women’s desires, and
(f) men’s dissatisfaction with how things work is unjustified, and not worth complaining about, especially in light of greater injustices toward women, such that if a man complains about it, and doesn’t think it’s all mens’ fault anyway, it’s an unfair, sexist attack on women.
I don’t agree.
I don’t see anything wrong with gay men who want no-strings casual sex hitching up with other gay men who want the same thing. I think that’s fine, and kinda cool, if that’s what they want.
Misogyny doesn’t enter into that. It’s not women being “exploited.” It’s other men.
I also don’t think that it’s generally exploitative objectification. It’s generally well-meaning, with people cooperating for mutual benefit, and while it may not be to some people’s taste—people who don’t want sex outside a loving relationship—it’s not wrong for people who do want it to go for it, with another consenting adult.
Given that, I don’t think that there’s anything intrinsically wrong with straight men wanting the same kind of thing with women. I think it’s an understandable desire, and not an immoral one, to want easy sex, “for free.” That is not, in itself, a sign of being a pathological or particularly selfish person.
I think wanting that sort of thing is respectable. People who condescend to straight men who want that, and condemn them for it, just for wanting it, are out of line, just as they would be for condemning many gay men for being promiscuous. They should not impose their values on other people that way, at least not without a really good argument, which I’ve yet to hear. Different strokes for different folks.
I do think it’s a serious problem if more straight men than straight women want that, because it creates and imbalance of supply and demand. (And yes, using an economics-like analysis is valid—there are real phenomena of supply and demand, and shortages of things that are in demand, and gluts of things that aren’t.) You have an excess of horndog men looking for sex. And you do get some of them who feel entitled to easy sex, which I generally agree they are not. Men who want easy sex should be aware that comparatively few women do, and if they’re hitting on women too often, too soon, too aggressively, etc., they are out of line.
(Even if such behavior would be acceptable among many gay men, because the odds are different, and gay men know that, so it’s more often justified to take a shot and express interest. In a straight context, the odds are often so low that it’s obnoxious for people to keep trying the long shots and hitting on people who are likely to be annoyed by it.)
My central point is that while I think women are disadvantaged in our society in many ways, and do get a substantially worse deal than men over all, this particular problem is not entirely reducible to men being assholes or misogynists.
Don’t be obtuse. This isn’t just about men who are too lazy to put any effort into getting what they want, and sit around and whine, and feel entitled to what they want in a sense that obligates anybody else to give it to them.
I think it’s valid for women to complain that the imbalances in attitudes between the sexes make it difficult to get what they want—that there are more men out there who want a quickie, or a sexual relationship with no commitment, than men who want things the way they want them.
But by the same token, it’s valid for men to complain if there’s a shortage of women who think casual sex is okay, and even a great thing, the way they do.
In neither case is it okay for people to complain that the people with different desires are wrong to want something different from what they want.
For example, it’s okay for women who are disinclined to casual sex to express a preference—to say, for example, that they wish more men thought the way they do, as seems to happen in the lesbian community. There’s not the same surfeit of people looking for no- or low- or commitment sex.
If that’s what they’d prefer, it’s okay for them to say so. That does not mean it’s okay to say that men’s attitudes are simply wrong in that particular regard, and that men owe it to them to be different in that way, or that a particular man with different attitudes than hers is a misogynistic asshole simply for wanting different things than she does.
(Don’t get me wrong. There are way too many misogynistic assholes out there—that was the first thing I complained about in my first post on the subject. I am saying that this particular difference does not in itself constitute misogyny.)
By the same token, if men would prefer that more women were more like themselves in terms of attitudes about sex and relationships, it’s okay for them to say so too. It’s okay to say that they wish things in the straight community were more like they are in the gay male community, if that is in fact how they’d like it. (Though they ought to think about that; there are downsides.) And likewise, that does not mean it’s okay for them to say that women’s attitudes are wrong, just because many women want something different than what they want. It certainly does not mean that they are entitled to easy sex, especially from any particular woman who doesn’t feel like cooperating.
Actually, I do think there’s a certain tragedy there, just as there’s a certain tragedy in many women finding it difficult to find men who want the same kind of thing that they want. Both groups do often get disappointed, and it is not illegitimate to be frustrated about it, or to complain about the situation, as long as you’re not simplistically blaming other people just for having different values.
In this kind of conversation, it seems that many people think it is legitimate to blame the problem on men, who are lazy selfish horndogs, and say they “should” be more like women.
Fuck that noise.
I think that’s wrong, just as it would be wrong to simply blame women, by saying they expect too much commitment, too soon, and too much “considerateness,” and are too stingy with the sex.
That’s why I ended that first comment (#144) by saying that this is the kind of thing that convinces me there’s no God—I’m saying that it’s not a simple case of having a group of good people and a group of bad people, such that we should sympathize only with the former and be contemptuous of the latter, and dismiss their concerns, and tell them it’s entirely their own damned fault.
Sven,
Did you read the issue of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology I linked to 2 or 3 threads ago? Here is is again.
There is genetic variation among human populations. That variation does not conform to the scientific definition of race. The variation is simply not enough to call various human populations races. Race is a technical term in biology.
Populations?!
Seriously, linking to Razib is silly. Geneticists are in the same position with regards to the “race question” that biological anthropology was eighty years ago. Replacing the study of proxies for genes (phenotypic variation) with the study of actual genes is not going to magically make the variation in humans racial.
As SC said, using race to explain human biological/genetic variation requires the assumption that humans vary in a racial pattern and then cramming the variation you find into that pattern. Races just don’t arise from the study of the data.
For more information, read the books I mentioned in that post 3 threads ago:
Reflections of Our Past by John Relethford
“Race” is a Four Letter Word by C. Loring Brace
the textbook I used for class:
Mielke JH, Konigsberg LW, Relethford JH (eds). 2005. Human Biological Variation. Oxford University Press.
You know what puts me in a bad mood? The combination of dreadful content analysis and vigorous pearl clutching:
http://scienceblogs.com/clock/2010/03/science_blogs_and_public_engag.php
Evidence? Of course not.
I think both of these judgements are sexist. Within this very thread you have males and females who do not correspond to this dynamic.
It’s idiotic to make statements like “women want this” and “men want that.” I call sexist bullshit on it.
David, male, asks why not wank? I, female, ask why force commitment where it doesn’t make sense (although I do not like hookups and have no desire for random sex with others.
All that the women in this thread are asking is to treat women like human beings, like rational adult people, and not like means to a sexual ends. Respect the fact that one person may not like you and don’t extrapolate that to every human being that happens to have female sex.
I agree with some of your views on prostitution but you seem to be almost willfully ignorant of the fact that prostitution, here in the united states, is more often than not a form of slavery.
Yes, men who patronize that are engaging in the the exchange of slave labor and deserve no more sympathy to me than people who would chain up an immigrant in a compound where they will work until they die in order to have cheap shoes.
Nice takedown by Bora.
Oh, FFS. The types of traits, neutral loci, and data sampling are summarized at the page Sven linked to. This site links to a several open access papers that have been published in high-end scientific journals.
It is apparent that you haven’t followed the thread of the conversation, and this is why the Morning quote is not applicable.
None of the work that we are discussing takes such a typological view of genetic differentiation. There is no expectation that genetic and genotypic patterns should allow anything like the diagnosis of “race” in the shitty Archie Bunker sense of the word, and as far as I know, none of the science that we have been discussing is even aimed at assessing “race” in any kind of social context. This is about human evolution. Sven’s initial observation* on the other thread was that he could guess with a non-random degree of success the geographical origins of a person from phenotype all—therefore, he wondered how genetic variation was distributed. I don’t think that this is controversial. From a population genetics standpoint, this is entirely unsurprising. Widespread populations of any organism exhibit non-random genotypic and phenotypic distributions, and the most common distribution is correlated with geography. So to answer the question “Which traits are being used to define races?”, the answer is none of them. If you want an answer to the question “Which traits demonstrate covariance with genotype as a function of geography?” read some of the articles embedded in the site linked above.
I am also short of time today.
*Beat me with a halibut if I’m over-interpreting.
**Written hastily…need to look at Pygmy Loris’ post.
Oh, crap. In comment 664 I talked about “DNA” in a generalized way, when what I meant was “haplogroups” — so, apologies to all for my sloppiness.
Katrina, I listened to the Colbert interviews to which you linked. Fascinating stuff. His Irish ancestry, and the comments about harboring a hatred of the English for more than 300 years were a bit scary.
I’m assuming this is from that PBS show on ancestry.
I missed the Colbert part but any chance he was trying to be funny?
Yup. Not much to add. Like Ed Yong, I also liked the correction about Karadzic.
Dead link above.
Prostitution would be fine in theory, in a hypothetical perfect society in which no one was desperately poor, or a victim of human trafficking, or addicted to hard drugs, or abused and exploited. In that society, only people who actually wanted to be sex workers would be sex workers. However, we don’t live in that perfect society; and we have to recognise that prostitution in practice is, for the most part, highly abusive and exploitative. As Ol’Greg points out above, it often amounts to virtual slavery. A high proportion of prostitutes are drug addicts, in severely deprived socio-economic circumstances, and recent migrants or victims of human trafficking. And in most countries they receive little or no protection from abuse.
I do, however, agree with Paul that it would be better to legalise and closely regulate prostitution. By bringing it above-board, and breaking the current control of organised crime over the prostitution industry in many countries, this would make it much easier to stamp out human trafficking, and to protect vulnerable sex workers from abuse and violence. The current situation in most Western countries – whereby prostitution is officially illegal, but enforcement is invariably sporadic and often corrupt, and the industry is completely controlled by organised crime – is the worst of all worlds, IMO.
Ah, an essay by Paul W. @671: Thanks, Paul. Very thoughtful.
I will point out that if I play tennis with strangers, they are not likely to give me STDs. So it makes sense to be a tad more careful in selecting sex partners than in selecting tennis partners. Having safe sex is the goal, the ideal, but I’ve been pressured to have unsafe sex in supposedly monogamous relationships that have turned out not to be monogamous. People lie. People have strange ideas, like believing that the fact that they haven’t had sex with any one other than me for, say a year, means they are monogamous and therefore “safe.” Misinformation is rampant. Having said that, I agree with the fun factor you pointed out in sharing physical activities of all kinds with other humans.
I agree that prostitution should be legalized.
Yes the more I think about it your argument bothers me to the core, PaulW.
This whole argument is a giant strawman from the quote you are responding to.
If you had said “I wish I could find more women who are willing to have causal sex” that would have been one thing.
Instead you said “And they don’t want to deal with a lot of women’s hangups about sex and particular sex acts.”
Which says to me that you are making an obnoxious judgment about women and accepting it. Women have hangups about sex acts, ALL OF THEM, and yet it is these casual sex encounters with women who do not have these hang ups that you are defending. You make no fucking sense! One of these things has to be false. Either women do not inherently have hang ups about sex and you are just making a sexist judgement about women by saying so, or women do not ever engage in consensual casual sex and you are then implying that exploitation and slavery inherent in prostitution as it stands are needed to keep a supply of easy sex (it could not be consensual unless your comment “women’s hang ups… is wrong).
No one is blaming men or women for engaging in consensual casual sex. No one on this thread even seems to be saying that the men in their lives have only wanted casual sex.
In fact you have women complaining about some of the problems they have in getting casual sex.
Anything to defend the menz I guess from any responsibility for their actions or from any work an acquiring what it is they want from people by you know… treating them like people. It’s all the fault of those damned women who drive them to it.
You do some really dishonest things like this:
Of course, because you have taken out the issue of women and women’s place in society from it.
You’re right. If women were not treated differently than men these things would not have a misogynistic quality to them. Also if the color green were not green but instead purple it would not look green but rather purple! Go figure. If liquorice was made with mint instead of liquorice root it would taste minty instead. Yes, if you look at another group of people entirely where the single denominator that shapes that sexual relationship is removed (eg. no women) then you will not see the same dynamic. Duh!
Yes, it was part of the show hosted by Henry Louis Gates. Colbert went into and out of his funny character quite a bit, but he was serious about the ill-will toward the English, and backed it up with an anecdote. See Katrina’s link @662.
Funny, because I think casual tennis should be outlawed.
Your link doesn’t work.
Excuse me, but this conversation has been going on for probably more than a year in one form or another. What you note as his “initial” comment was probably comment #143 in this discussion.
Did you watch the last 15 minutes of the video or not?
And he was wrong, as his performance on the quiz was by his own admission “crappy.”
Yes, that genetic variation exists for visible and nonvisible traits is entirely unsurprising. This has fuck-all to do with “race,” or any words that people are trying to use as substitutes. If you don’t recognize that he’s talking about “race” in some form or another and how the Morning quotation is relevant, I can’t help you. Do you have anything to add beyond that human genetic variation exists?
Oh crap, two edit-o’s in #671…
The attribution to jadehawk should not be right at the beginning—I’m not mostly responding to jadehawk, who I suspect gets what I’m saying better than most people do. The attribution should be right before the first blockquote, and I’m just playing off what jadehawk said.
Also, I fumbled the attribution to strange gods later, with the attribution ending up inside the quote, so that it looks like I’m responding to somebody (maybe jadehawk) who was quoting strange gods.
Sorry. (I was rushing to get it in under the porticullis, so that it wouldn’t be right at the beginning of the next installment of the Thread.)
Ahhh thanks. Missed that.
Ultimately I would like to see it legalized and insured, provided legitimate wages, and specialized physical care… also with no resulting stigma.
Most important it should not prevent a prostitute from being able to do whatever it is she/he wants with their life in the future.
It should also be heavily protected from people selling their children into it, or exploiting other people by taking money for sex with the victim. Ideally I suppose it would require a license of sorts.
Even with these situations there would still be a destructive element that would have to be worked against, and it would still be sensitive to the larger problems of poverty, race, misogyny and social class.
There would likely still be an illegal market, and constant work would have to be done to keep problems from emerging the way that they do in low rent brothels in countries were prostitution is legal.
Here’s a little story about the social conception of race.
Once upon a time, a forum I am a member of turned to the topic of how members of minorities are (not)represented in a lot of urban fantasy. One woman went on and on about how she was usually mistaken for black in the USA, but she’s actually Dominican. I countered by saying that more than likely she has enough African ancestry to be perceived as black in the USA where, disturbingly, the one drop rule still applies to many people’s social construction of race. The woman I was talking to simply didn’t understand. She replied to several comments I made with “I’m not black, I’m Dominican.” She (appeared to) never understand that Dominican is a nationality whereas black is a socially constructed group in the USA that means anyone who has visible, recent African ancestry.
The whole point is that the construction of geographic races is largely a product of European/Western history. People in other places and at other times do not have the same social constructions around phenotypic variation.
I can’t accept the “hairdresser” analogy. I pay a hairdresser to touch my hair, something public, something I want any random stranger to see. I don’t particularly enjoy the touching, but I put up with it. And I even care about my hairdresser and consider her a friend; I’ve helped her with some issues in her life, and she’s given me some good advice, too. But just for the plain purpose of getting my hair done, I don’t care if my hairdresser is a flake, or a cretin, or a bigot, or whatever, so long as I get what I want, a nice hairdo.
But sex… I don’t want just anyone touching me like that. It is not public, it makes me too vulnerable, I care too much. It is not a service. It is literally a physical art form, a 3-D multimedia expression of my great esteem and caring for my partner. I give everything to my lover. I’m deeply ashamed that poor judgment in the past has made it possible for me to be touched intimately by ex-husbands and ex-boyfriends who I should not have let get near me in the first place. With what’s left of my personal honor, I have no intention of allowing myself to be used again, nor of using anyone. I’m not cutting myself off by any means. But I have to feel something for my lover, and they have to have earned it by being someone I can legitimately feel something for.
Ol’Greg,
I totally agree.
The birthday party is not here.