For some reason, the Trophy Wife™ said I needed to share this video today. Since the enormous thread has grown again, I figure this is as good a place as any.
It’s not often you hear about testes weighing a ton and pumping out gallons of sperm from David Attenborough.
Man. I always figured that guy had some cojones. But seriously?
(/Oh. Wait…)
Nope. Usually I hear about testes from my son and his friend, during a conversation about whether they are or are not part of one’s anus. I think I prefer David Attenborough’s narration.
Sweet mystery of love
At last I’ve found you
“12 feet long, and highly mobile”
It’s the typical, if the female mates with many males, the male has to produce huge amounts of sperm.
Chimps have rather larger testes than humans, but on the other hand, we have rather larger testes than the huge gorillas. Which suggests that we’re somewhere between the two in female promiscuity.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
It is indeed rare to hear David Attenborough talk about his sex life.
12 ft long in 40 degree water, just imagine they’d have sex somewhere in the tropics …
Sven:
How appropriate that “Going Mobile” should appear on the album “Who’s Next” – which is what the whale mating scrum appeared to be all about.
Mu (@7):
“I was in the pool!! I was in the pool!!”
CHIMPY!
During that first half one can’t help but wonder whether she didn’t give some serious thought to leaving the males at it and having a coffee instead.
White whales plural? There is only one white whale, and I have pledged my life to hunt him down and kill him. These look more like southern right whales to me.
Cetacean ‘tentacle’ porn.
Speak for yourself, Poopyhead.
What did I do now?
But you hear Oprah say it all the time.
Also, if that’s a right whale, I don’t wanna see a wrong un.
And, because the last Thread struck me as a little light on the subject…
BaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconBaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconBaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconBaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconBaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconBaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconBaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconBaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconBaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconBaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconBaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbaconbacon
Ouch! Right in the humor gland…
Damned Thread ate most of my bacon!
*DING*DING*DING*DING*DING*DING*
You really do live in a very a narrow slice of time, space and culture, don’t you Walton?
Odysseus might be weaker, and he’s not 2/3 divine, but he’s smarter. I expect a Combat Pragmatist moment.
Might turn out the same way.
What?
And what… the fuck… makes you think so?
I suppose your strawman’ll finally burn (and brightly at that) if you pour some chlorine trifluoride over it. If all you have is oxygen, you’ll have to wait till it dries, you’ve wanked so much over it.
A fictional ad-hominem argument! LOL! Haven’t read such silliness in a long time. :-D
:-D :-D :-D
A few subthreads ago we discussed our ages. Our educations and occupations have also come up repeatedly. Maybe you’d like to keep up? Nooo, you’re just bullshitting.
??? ??? ???
??? ??? ???
??? ??? ???
Wow. That was so bizarre I didn’t even understand it at first.
How many people here, Quack, do you think have ever looked at a photo of you? What do we care what you look like?!?
<headshake>
Or, at best, “I think someone should help you, but I’m not going to do it – I’ll just sit down and fantasize about it happening on its own, somehow”.
<pft> Why not just “if you feel like wasting your time, go ahead”? Maybe print out one of those studies on the effectiveness of prayer and hand it to him.
LOL!
I linked to that? I don’t even remember… and I don’t read that blog in the first place… oh, there’s a connection to the WordPress blog that got shut down because it exposed Andreas Moritz, so maybe I found it in a Pharyngula thread about that incident… still don’t remember it, though.
It’s quite the trouncing, though. A study says something about the common cold, and Maloney pretends it’s about the flu!?! That’s… rich.
Ducks are interesting. Cool, however? Ducks regularly engage in gang rape.
Well, that’s what it is in the original French.
LOL! Yes, right, not white.
Chimpy, because of your cursed typo virus, I typed “love” instead of “life”, thus fucking up my attempt at a joke.
…and now for something disturbingly different. Dan Savage may well have hit it on the head this time.
Very old riddle:
What’s gray and comes in quarts?
An elephant.
David:
Yah, I know, but that’s a bridge too far for most ‘Murricans I talk to about my name. Frequently when I have to give my name for some official purpose, I’ll spell it, and then add “like the French prince; not like the fish.” Occasionally I’ll get a patronizing little correction about the fact that porpoises are mammals, not fish, and in those cases I’m compelled to remind my instructor of the existence of mahi-mahi. “Like the French prince, not like the popular marine mammal” just wouldn’t have the same euphonious charm! ;^)
BTW, your quote is the only the second bit of evidence that anyone read my just-under-the-portcullis comment. Good to know it didn’t go entirely to waste.
Gallons? Eww! I’ll never swim in the ocean ever!
Don’t worry; they use a condom.
#22 David Marjanović
And gang murder of a different variety – I witnessed 4 larger white ducks killing a mallard by pecking it and forcing it under the water.
Yep. “Right” whales – as in the right ones to hunt – some of the others get really viscous when they are harpooned …
Mind you, ducks can be nasty to humans too:
My money’s on Gilgamesh. Odysseus /is/ smarter, but Gilgamesh’s varying beatdowns were on things that Odysseus could at best only co opt. When faced with Scylla and Charybdis, Odysseus… just lets scylla eat his dudes. Maybe Odysseus with some muscle, like help from Achilles, but then fair being fair, Gilgamesh gets Enkidu.
Oceans have sex lives? And use condoms?
Vaguely wonders how Rule 34 applies here…
Does killfile work with IE?
David Marjanović (#22)
Gah, sorry, it was ambulocetacean who linked to it. Dunno how I mixed that up.
For shame. It took 12 posts before someone rightly corrected PZ about the wrong whale. Losing pedant points …
And Alan @29: You definitely don’t want a whale to turn “viscous”. They’re much harder to reel in if they turn into a gooey blob.
Well… I was going to say something, but Mike Wagner thinks such behavior is allowing the creationists to win.
I couldn’t chance it…
For anyone who recalls the hilarious incident when Pandit Surinder Sharma, a self-described Tantrik Magician, tried, on Indian TV, to kill Sanal Edamaruku, president of Rationalist International, with magic, Edamaruku has a penned a piece in The Grauniad about it: The night a guru tried to kill me on TV.
I can’t imagine this hasn’t been shared yet, but I will anyway, just in case.
You can now get a LOLCat Bible.
Here’s the website:
http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
MikeM
This part of the column that blf linked if absolutely fucking terrifying.
Just for that, Sanal Edamaruku has achieved greatness.
Givesgoodemail (#24)
Somewhere around 5:30 on that top video, Keith Olbermann says something about “strip the religion out of it and stick to the ethics of religion which is often very useful even to people who don’t believe…” *sigh*
#34
FareFair cop!“It’s not often you hear about testes weighing a ton and pumping out gallons of sperm from David Attenborough.”
I always hear about how much sperm David Attenborough can pump out. You don’t want to hang around my circles, is what I’m saying.
Something disturbing to chew on…
“Fair play also rose substantially among volunteers who subscribed to Christianity or Islam, as opposed to local religions. ”
Via Science News:
_Farming’s rise cultivated fair deals_
http://sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/57417/title/Farmings_rise_cultivated_fair_deals
A. Noyd (@39):
That, once again, is the problem of conflating the fact that religion often encompasses laudable humanistic values with the notion that religion is somehow responsible for same. Unless I misunderstood, that’s what PZ was getting at back in the Even the Nice Theologians… post: The genuinely praiseworthy “ethics of religion” (i.e., the ethical assertions that are not just the arbitrary rules of an imaginary angry, self-indulgent deity) are really just ethics of people, and any attribution of them to religion, per se, is cooption.
An old zoologist friend of mine, when a young and naïve student, was sent by her department to retrieve the testes of a whale that had washed up dead from the Atlantic. Being unversed in marine mammals [and even less versed in homo sapiens], she took her car, a Volkswagen Beetle. The grizzled marine mammalogist on site sent her back for a pick-up truck.
You can’t have a thread XLII without some Douglas Adams:
http://www.ted.com/talks/douglas_adams_parrots_the_universe_and_everything.html
Did the quack really try to insult us by saying we hang out on the internet too much?
lol. There’s a reason they call Gen Y the Net Generation. The internet is our natural habitat, and trying to insult us by pointing this out really just reveals how deeply behind the times the Quack is.
Oh, and as someone who used to have those painful week-long periods, let me just say that Menstruation is not a disease, you misogynist fuckgnome. Also, it wasn’t quack pseudomedicine that helped against the pain. It was real medicine, from Big Pharma and Evil Doctors In White Coats. And it came with the bonus of birth control. And I didn’t have to pay for it. l0z3Я.
Jadehawk (@46):
Fuckgnome FTW!!!
You now join SC (author of assclam) in the Profane Neologists’ Hall of Fame!
PS: The copyright folks at Travelocity may want a word with you…. ;^)
Hmmm… I also like to inject most of my days with a little musical solace from Scott B. Adams
Hrmmm… my reference @47 should’ve been to trademark folks, not copyright. </PetPeeve>
Just read in the Intersection comment section:
Guess who! He likes to complain about Pharyngula and poll crashing, but when it reflects teabag sentiments somehow online polls are as legitimate as Pew.
Yesterday Bush and Clinton visited Haiti. Here’s a newsreport in French.
The Haitian “welcoming crowd” was rather clear:
“A bas Bush! Welcome president Clinton!”
they booed Bush and hurrayed Clinton…
Bush “Oh a helicopter ride” had the time to get a few snashots of him with a few Haitians.
Meanwhile, many Haitians were saying that Clinton is the man they put their hopes with, as they’ve lost complete trust in Préval, and want a return of Arisitde.
Haiti is asking for $8.5 billion in reconstruction/aid funds. How much of this are going to end up in the pockets of Préval and his friends and in those of the mega-rich owners of the large US and other private companies who are going to be contracted (many of whom are Bush friends)?
Haitians need help, they are facing a huge amount of immediate problems and they are hungry. How do we make sure that the aids funds get used to help solve these problems and not build government palaces, airports, highways and beach resorts?
Or is this going to turn into another Iraq/Afghanistan disaster?
Meh… kwahk-a-doodle-doo understands politics about as well as he understands anything else. Pretty poorly.
He still thinks the bill can be simply repealed if the rethugs win back the house and senate. Forgetting of course that they’d have to win back a full filibuster-proof majority (pipe-dreaming, buddy) and that a repeal also requires a presidential signature. Ain’t gonna happen.
Not to mention, I’d love to see the repugs try that one out… tell the american people “oh, you know that law we have where insurance companies can’t deny coverage to sick kids and can’t drop coverage for people who get sick? Yeeeeaaahhhh… we’re gonna go ahead and overturn that”. Good luck with that. (Those changes go into effect in 6 mos… not 2014 like other parts of the bill)
I’m going to assume that’s a purely rhetorical question.
The presidential signature doesn’t matter, that Dick Morris guy he’s been thoroughly rimming sez that not only will the Repubs win the House/Senate, but Obama signed himself into a one-term presidency with Obamacare.
More possible than you’d think. If it was going to be done, the taxpayer wouldn’t even know. It would just taxed onto another military spending bill. AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!
Did Kwok ever give up on his birther stance? I’d ask, but I’m trying to minimize engagement, and he can really go off the rails when you talk about past engagements or statements he’s made.
Oh… i don’t doubt it’s possible… i just really want to see them try it. And in this day and age, I think it would be pretty hard to do in a way that the taxpayer “wouldn’t even know”… especially on legislation this important.
Blah, blah, blah… I’ve heard it all… “Obama will be a one term president if he doesn’t pass health care”, “Obama will be a one term president because he passed health care”.
Whatever… anyone who thinks they know what the temperature of this country is going to be in late 2012 is fooling themselves. Tell me what the economy looks like and where we are with the wars in the middle-east, not to mention what other things could happen between now and then before making stupid predictions about Obama’s reelect-ability.
I’ve actually watched these guys breed off the South African coast. I just didn’t realise they were so awesome at it.
(And my pics aren’t as good, either.)
C-E (@55):
Indeed. Now that health care reform has passed, I figure people will begin to remember that the stuff that’s actually in the
billlaw — as opposed to the scaremongering fictions they’ve been being fed for almost a year now — is stuff they’ve really supported all along, and in fact, stuff they voted for back in 2008. In fact, it seems that process is already happening.I think the Rs are going to find that taking reform away from people after the fact is going to be a much harder sell than scaring them about it in prospect was. Especially after a few months, when they start to notice the utter lack of Soviet¹ tanks in their streets!
¹ Yes, it’s an anachronism; how is that not appropriate to a discussion of Republican tactics on this issue?
I want to know if Kw*k has ever repudiated this bit of treason:
Would this qualify as whale porn?
Where’s the white whale? I don’t see any belugas.
I remember seeing this clip a number of years ago and being deeply alarmed by the mobility of the animal’s penis. No means no! Even if your penis can still reach her when she’s upside down, trying to avoid you.
Our humpbacks are “in season” and the males are becoming very aggressive. I haven’t witnessed any mating yet (I always turn away anyways because I feel like I’m invading their privacy) but the boys are rough housing a lot. One of the younger guys had a number of tubercles on his rostrum torn off and was quite bloody. It was upsetting.
My guess is hoter.
Whatever the exact size of the teabagging contingent, what’s worrying is that the republican noise machine (Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity & Co) has managed to get several million white male supremacist libertarian Christian fundie anti-science militant nutbags go nuts with this healthcare reform.
Now you get this reaction by Bob Herbert in the New York Times yesterday:
I hope there will be a happy ending to this. The economy will get better, the situation with the wars in the middle east will get better, and the teabaggers will gradually fade away. But my best guess is that the economic situation isn’t going to get better, we’ll still be stuck with wars in the middle east and I hope this doesn’t degenerate into a violent clash between teabaggers and those fighting aggressively to stop the garbage that comes out of them.
These teabaggers are scary. Firstly because they are completely deluded and ready to believe whatever lies the noise machine will come up with to get them more paranoid. Secondly because they believe they are many which helps them gain confidence and get even more paranoid (network effects).
And it seems nothing can be done to stop this.
Another scientific “that’s funny” moment.
WorldNutDaily will now wage war on Easter.
Which is all fine by me, since I’ll spend it on Songkran.
I…what…blargh.
Jadehawk: What’s a fuckgnome? I haven’t heard that particular epithet before.
(I’m now getting mental images of specialised garden gnomes being used as sex toys. I’m sure there’s a pun about fishing rods in there somewhere.)
I image googled it and the results were NSFW.
The “teabagger” movement is an embarrassment to intelligent conservatives everywhere. In my capacity as Pharyngula’s token voice of conservatism, I just want to restate my firm opinion that Glenn Beck is a blithering moron.
As far as I can tell (though I’m not an American, and am no expert on the healthcare reform legislation in its current incarnation), there are plenty of good reasons to criticise this legislation. However, “OMG it’s going to create evil fascist socialist godless death panels!!!111!!” is not one of them.
And when I describe myself as “Pharyngula’s token voice of conservatism”, what I mean is that I don’t support taxing the pants off the rich, abolishing capitalism, expropriating the property of corporations, or establishing a new socio-economic order based on democratic workers’ collectives. This makes me moderate by the standards of everywhere else in the world, but makes me a right-wing troglodyte by the standards of some of the regulars here. :-)
FTFY. At least, it seems you don’t really hold Conservative positions anymore. You simply like the label. Of course, this leads to promoting positions you don’t support by implication, but at least you get warm fuzzies by identifying with the right sort of people.
arakrys,
You know, they shit in the ocean too. Think about all the marine animals swimming about, shitting in our beautiful oceans. Fuckers. :)
What’s wrong with this? If you truly care about liberty and individuality wouldn’t you oppose the current corporate system, where people are essentially bossed around for 8 hours a day?
Paul, “conservative” can be a relative term. I’m “conservative” compared to the more hardcore left-wing regulars here, such as Knockgoats, SC, negentropyeater and Pygmy Loris, who advocate radical changes to the current socio-economic and political order. It just depends with whom you’re comparing me.
…… and in many cases paid significantly less than their work is worth in that scared Market, just so’s those who do none of the work can stack up a whole set of mansions.
Walton:
Who here does?
I feel neglected ;-)
Feynmaniac @#71: It sounds great, but it wouldn’t work in the real world.
Now, was that error @ 73 a typo or a Freudian slip?
Sorry, Jadehawk. For the avoidance of any doubt, I hereby award you the title of Hardcore Left-Winger. :-)
says who?
Based on your past statements, your positions generally do not fit with the Conservative party in England. That was the frame I had in mind. It seems odd to call yourself a voice for conservatism when your positions are more liberal than those currently in place (what are you trying to conserve, aside from the monarchy and fox hunts?).
Walton @76, Feynmaniac @71 asked you two questions.
You answered the first, but kept conspicuously silent on the second.
Come North, young Walton, where all things are possible.
This, for instance.
Do you have any evidence of this besides bare assertion?
:-)
Jadehawk,
Don’t worry. The Wild Women of Pharyngula has a place reserved in the left-wing just for you ;)
I should be clear that I’m fully aware of (and have mentioned in the past) the existence of co-operative businesses run by workers or consumers, such as the John Lewis Partnership or the various Co-operative Societies in the UK. I’m fully in favour of these kinds of co-operatives. In a free society, people are free to choose other forms of business ownership besides the traditional corporation. If they can compete with other businesses in a free market – as they clearly can, since the businesses I mentioned above are very successful – then there is no reason why anyone should be against it.
But I don’t see that this has any broader application for the wider economy. I would obviously be strongly opposed to the idea of expropriating corporate property and transferring it to worker ownership.
John Morales,
I support taxing the pants—and scarfs—off of rich people! :P
Walton,
What created the value / wealth / whatever to which those very corporations now cling so determinedly?
the “wider economy”? you mean the one that just caused a massive crash, and the one that is causing global warming, and the one that is polluting the fuck out of our planet, destroying our soils, and using our scarce resources to produce plastic sporks and singing fish?
yeah… I no longer care about it all that much. It’s time for Plan B.
aratina, heh.
Of course Walton was snidely referring to progressive taxation, because percentages are what matter to him, not the net benefit.
When a person A (who earns 12x what person B earns) only ends up with 8x times the disposable income of person B after tax, Walton is appalled at such injustice.
JM: No, I wasn’t referring to progressive taxation in general. Having considered the question further, I support the current system of progressive taxation. At current levels of overall tax revenue, a flat tax rate would fall very hard on the poor, and would therefore increase poverty and suffering without achieving very much.
But I’m still much more moderate than most people here. IIRC, at least one person on a previous subThread (Pygmy Loris?) advocated raising inheritance tax to a point where it would effectively abolish inherited wealth. And Knockgoats has talked about a “maximum income” and advocated much higher income taxes on the very wealthy. That’s what I was referring to when I talked about “taxing the pants off the rich”.
Feynmaniace #71,
That sounds an awful lot like what I think. Walton was wondering several threads ago what kind of cultural crises lead to major structural changes. I think we may be approaching that sort of severe crisis now. In the next few decades there are several major influences that are probably going to cause major crises in the distribution of the necessities of life. Peak oil, global climate change, labor excess due to rising population, rising population itself, are all serious issues on their own. The confluence of these issues is going to be very very bad if we, as a species, cannot abandon our short-term views for rather long-term ones.
Walton’s concerns for civil liberties are noble and I share many of those same concerns, but people as a whole tend to care far less about liberties when they are scared or hungry. It is very worrying that in the next few decades we are probably going to see much higher levels of fear and hunger as food security decreases due to various pressures (transportation costs, fertilizer shortages, rising populations, climate change, etc.) This is the main reason I want major changes now.
If we have systems and structural institutions in place to help people during times of desperation, our social systems, including various forms of democracy, are more likely to survive. I don’t particularly care for the idea of living in a dictatorship (notice I’m not trying to move to North Korea or Cuba), so I want these problems addressed before people become too willing to sacrifice liberty for food and physical security.
Walton,
Oh yeah, that’s me. I don’t think ascribed status, which is one of the major consequences of inherited wealth, has any place in a democracy or free society.
You’d be considered a liberal here where I live. I remember the first time some one called me a liberal as an invective. It was surreal. Some one said “Human beings weren’t created to drink milk.”
I replied, “Well I don’t think we were ever created but some people certainly can drink milk,” and shrugged.
“Ugh. That’s because you’re a fucking liberal.”
Ummmm…evolution is not a political ideology.
FIN
Walton,
Fair enough.
I note that in neither example you’ve given (regarding what you meant) would the “rich” lose their pants, either literally or metaphorically.
Abolishing inherited wealth would mean everyone would “lose their pants”; establishing a “maximum income” would still leave an income distribution where (definitionally) those at the upper end would be the “rich”.
(No disputing your broader point regarding your conservatism as compared to most other commenters.)
indeed, personal liberties have only become such a major rallying point because we live in a post-scarcity bubble. I bet once it bursts group rights will become far more important than individual freedoms again.
Me.
From the mid-1930s into the late 1970s, America invested a large proportion of our GNP in public infrastructure products — rural electification, irrigation and hydro-electric, the interstates, bridges, environmental projects, national parks, schools, colleges, and kicking money back to states and local communities — and had a budget which was, by today’s standards (I’m thinking Reagan and the two Bushes), rather close to being balanced. America had the financial wherewithall to fund massive projects — the space program, for example — which not only pushed the frontiers of science but also paid off economically. Taxes on the richest Americans ranged from around 70% to 50% for the top bracket (and (mindblowing to today’s conservatives) there were still rich people who tried to get richer, and there were still poor and middle class people who worked, invested, invented and achieved wealth). Now, we are told by the nattering nabobs of neoconservatism that raising the tax rate on the highest brackets to a level still less than it was during the reign of St. Reagan will lead to the collapse of America and either socialism or fascism (or both (they’re a little unclear on the concept)). Higher tax rates on the rich do not stop people from becoming rich but the higher tax rates would allow us to keep up with our aging infrastructure. We have spent the last 30 years of neoconservatism consuming the investment in public infrastructure made before 1980 and unless we begin, now, to create a new infrastucture (while keeping the good parts of the old), we are in deep, deep whale doo.
not just a liberal, but a raging communist nazi.
I actually had someone once proudly tell me that their family (farmers) was hiding most of their crops during the Great Depression to avoid redeistribution. And all I could think was “you’re proud that your family caused others to suffer starvation?”
I’d just like to say the obvious, and say I’m agin’ taxing the pants off the rich purely for the selfish reason that really, there’s an awful lot of ’em I never want to see with their pants off…
Actually, come to think of it, I guess I’m kinda rich, really…
But, right there, see, is just another case in point. Trust me. This is just for everyone’s own good.
(/No, not like trickle-down economics was. Really this time.)
Ol’Greg,
I’m not surprised. I’d probably be considered a flaming liberal in many parts of the US, by virtue of the fact that I strongly oppose creationism; support full equal rights for gay, lesbian and transgender people; am pro-choice; think immigration is a good thing; and believe that everyone, including “terror suspects”, is entitled to a fair trial, freedom from arbitrary detention and freedom from torture. Reading Pharyngula and Dispatches regularly reminds me that many American “conservatives” are, to put it bluntly, batshit insane.
((iambilly), nice rant! :))
—
AJ, yeah, I guess pretty much every american is rich by the standards of most people who have ever lived.
The space programme “paid off economically”? How exactly?
iambilly,
Don’t forget that expensive foreign war we fought in the 60s/70s. Somehow we managed to draft, train, equip and ship out hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and fly to the moon all while having much lower federal debt. Amazing when you think about it.
The neocons really do have a great racket. Cut taxes and underfund government so that there is great difficulty fulfilling government obligations without incurring staggering debts; then run around telling everyone how government doesn’t work and we need to kill it before the debts become too much to bear. Fucking hell, they make me sick.
Walton, miniaturisation, just to name one outcome, was not of insignificance.
Walton,
Well, according to British colonial practices, we (Americans) now own the moon. You’re just jealous ;P
John Morales: Thanks, but you forgot some parenthese — I am (((Billy))) The Atheist (the only reason I go by iambilly here is because of WordPress passwords).
Walton: Communications satellites, miniaturization, computer technology, communications technology — Fox News couldn’t beam necon propaganda around the world without some of the advances financed by NASA and created through public/private partnerships.
Pygmy Loris: And it ain’t a new strategy — during the civil rights era, local law enforcement officers and politicians claimed that civil rights marches would lead to bloodshed and then went out and created the bloodshed which they then pointed to as proof that the civil rights movement was evil.
I don’t like paying taxes. However, with an effective federal tax rate for 2009 of 4.8%, I feel grossly undertaxed considering the (reduced because of GOP mismanagement) services I receive. Even if I include local, state and property taxes, my effective tax rate is only about 11%. No way in hell can we keep this country afloat (including private industry) without an effective infrastructure and the only way we can do that is by actually, you know, paying for it?
NASA Spinoffs – Apollo Inventions
Walton,
It sounds like you’re a social liberal and fiscal conservative. Certainly not unheard of.
@Jadehawk, #46
OMG. Fuckgnome. It’s too, too perfect. I now annoint you the next member of GLOP – Gorgeous Ladies of Pharyngula*, an exclusive club occupied only by Lynna, Janine, and Carlie.**
*Campy original reference found here.
** Attention Caine, Ol’Greg, Bride of Shrek and mah Auntie Ron (Sullivan) – I am accepting new GLOP applications and you’re on the short list.
John Morales and Feynmaniac: Something that the nattering nabobs of neoconservatism fail to understand is the way that these public/private partnerships, partnerships between federal agencies and private companies for the development of new technologies, create jobs, create wealth, and create a larger GNP (which of course, creates a larger tax base which could (prior to our 30-year experiment in fantasy economics) reinvested in new programs to develop even more new technologies). This computer on which I am typing is a descendent of federal partnership (whatever the earlier incarnation of Lincoln Labs was) to create computers (back in the days when ‘debugging’ meant removing the dead moths from where ever they were when they electricuted themselves)for artillery tables.
aratina cage:
Depends on the rich person, IMHO: I say there are some who should be allowed to keep their pants at all costs, though we could tax everything else off ’em! ;^)
The title of the video is incorrect.
They are Southern Wright Whales, not “White” whales.
Unless it is some lame joke about Moby Dick.
I thought that ‘Right Whales’ were considered the right whales to hunt as they floated when dead (Trying to keep a dead whale from sinking using muscle power and animal-bladder floats can be very damaging to equipment, whaleboats and ropes. Oh. And it can create a rather high rate of turnover.) They also swam close to shore which, in the days of sailing, was a definite plus.
I’m for taxing the pants off of the rich.
But only the pants. I envision a ruling class of pantsless elites.
No, I’m not up to writing an essay comparing the American economy of 1960 to that of 2010. Suffice to say the median income of company CEOs in 1960 was only 12 times that of hourly paid workers whereas now it’s 120 times greater.
Walton you’re like meeeee! Oh huggles :D
You’re gonna love it. You’re too hot or too cold in any room you enter.
Although honestly I consider myself a fiscal moderate. Then again consider that where I live fiscal conservative very nearly means somewhere from neocon to far right libertarian.
Josh @109, must be because you’re gay that you forgot to mention the pulchritudinous Patricia.
Sheesh.
Walton,
Here in the states you’re a liberal.
Well, yeah ;P
I’d probably be considered a
flaming liberaltarget in many parts of the US.*sigh*
I do wish that were just an overactive imagination.
again, yet another reason i left the states.
people laugh at folks who try to claim religious preference here, especially if they are also politicians.
‘Tis Himself: Near as I can remember, up until the late 1970s, there was an unwritten compact between labour and management — whenever better technology created higher productivity, the increased income was split among investors, labour and management. Since the advent of neoconservatism, labour has been left out of the equation.
The worship of the almighty stock price has created a dissincentive to any business which decides to treat their workers well. The CEO of Costco provides above-average wages and benefits and it kills the company’s stock price.
How the hell did we end up with a system that disincetivises treating your workers well?
With that, I’m off to bed. Reading a new history of the crusades. Excellent. Deals with the economics, theology, and politics equally well.
Bill Dauphin #111
On second thought, I agree with you. (A certain “RL” comes to mind.) ;>
Not daring to use images.google.com, I found…
“An term used in extreme annoyance and fury to an individual exhibiting the characteristics of an obnoxious asshole, while being extremely unattractive, almost troll-like. A term first used in the early 60’s to exemplify individuals who engaged in unprotected sex with many partners while being unable to afford devices for hair-removal. Over the years the term has varied in accordance with each generat[i]onal use. From the late 70’s to the mid 90’s the term was once again changed to describe an extremely unattractive male actor in pornography, coined by comedian Pablo Garcia in his usual stand-up routine.”
So… it’s a bit like “mendacious intellectual pornography”, only it’s not such a… random assortment of ejumacated words :-)
Plus, it’s the perfect response to his self-description as attractive. X-)
In my defense, I was writing comment 22 while the new subthread was being created. When I clicked on “submit”, I got the usual “comment submission failed – comments are not allowed on this entry” message.
=8-)
The last two sentences are the best!
Just annoying that I get the “an error has occurred” error from the YouTube video.
From the text:
A pig walks around the corner and is gone.
It has been, several times, years ago :-)
For the maximum awesomeness experience, read the beginning of Ecclesiastes.
…I’m feeling… woozy all of a sudden.
Absolutely.
:-D
You hit it perfectly.
See elephants for a remarkable case of convergence.
It will, even if only because the next bubble will come.
Fucking fantastic.
From there:
WTF. Seriously!?!
I like drinking small amounts of seawater. Tastes good :-)
<fist up>
Friendship! ;-)
I don’t think it’s that bad. Education has a major impact. If you don’t know that democracy has ever been tried, you’re hardly going to organize a revolution to install democracy…
I think that genie is pretty much out of the bottle.
i suspect you misunderstood what I was trying to say. I shall have to ponder this some more and then try to explain it better. Because I certainly wasn’t talking about the end of democracy.
Don’t worry Ichthyic, he’s English. English people are treated like gold here although everyone is basically afraid of them… and they’re always socialists.
@John Morales, #117:
God damnit. You’re right. Patricia is, in fact, one of the founding signatories of GLOP. Must be my stressful day.
I don’t know if I want to smack you for your impudence, or thank you for saving me from a far worse (better?) fate on Patricia’s spanking couch.
<facepalm>
I just got carried away and talked about the next step. Through things like unlimited wiretapping and lack of a sufficiently rigorous constitution, personal liberties can go away while a democracy is still there, but I don’t think that’s a stable state for a political system – when the mighty cut freedoms, they make themselves more powerful.
well, that still wasn’t quite what I meant. I see I’m really going to have to think about this and try writing it down more coherently.
OK – Brass bosoms back on deck… the kite flying was…extended a day or two. ;)
Well.
I’m pretty drunk.
Southampton Biere de Mars or Marz ? (my spelling in French is pretty bad); very delicious; and then maybe a Stout or 2? Keegan Mother’s Milk, as I recall…
anyway.
here’s a tune:
slut
Woo-hoo!
*eyebrows UP*
but only because I seldom get…extended any more.
Is that a spring in Patricia’s post, and a sparkle in the wording?
OK slightly mellower
Sven,
You’re pretty drunk, allright.
Josh – Bride of Shrek was the original Queen of Sluts, just because you missed some of her best shashays, doesn’t mean she didn’t lead the way.
For your impudence, I cut your bar tab by half, and hang up your paddle until Thursday. Out of line at the spanking couch my lad. —>!
slut – don’t it make your brown eyes blue?
Haaaaahahaha…
one of these days its the Art Ensemble of Chicago and yer all fucked
Patricia,
Woohoo :)
but in the meantime another one from Cros
Looking forward to it.
:-D
Congratulations, Patricia!
Have you seen the stars tonight?
@Patrici, #137:
Umm. .but. . is there any chance I can shorten my dry spell and take it out in trade? If I promise to polish your Brass Breast Plate with a gentle cleansing powder such as Bon Ami? Remember, it hasn’t scratched yet™.
@Patricia:
She may have been the original QOS, but it was Lynna’ who originally entered the room breastally.
This was the mams-forward move that launched a thousand odes to the breasteses(and from a fag – who’d a thunk?).
BTW Patricia:
Glad to hear you’re still . .ahem. . flying kites with that gentleman. I hope it’s as sweet as it sounds:)
Josh @145, you’ve just redeemed yourself.
Yes, fiscal moderate. That’s what happens when I open my mouth. I say something inaccurate right about the time that people who know what they’re saying chime in. You’d think I’d know better by now.
Walton:
It keeps me employed.
Would that be like the ancient Greeks or Romans, or more like “the Emperor’s new pants?”
Sven DiMilo:
Keep your hands where I can see them. I have some Cecil Taylor, and I’m not afraid to use it.
Epikt,
LOL.
I’m reminded Walton defended not banning fox-hunting on a very similar basis. :)
speaking of recipes…
several asked me to put up a placeholder so we could start putting them all in one spot online, so I did:
http://sites.google.com/a/crackergate.com/pharyngula-recipes/
the domain (guess which!) only costs me 10 a year, and it’s paid for up through the next year, so have at.
send me an email to [email protected] if you want to be able to add recipes directly, and i’ll shoot you a login.
I suppose later we could get all fancy and just have a form to use for anyone to upload a recipe.
I just don’t have the time to set that up right now, so it’s easier if folks just login and add what they want to directly.
questions?
cheers!
David Marjanović just posted a response referring Asimov’s The Relativity of Wrong to a woomeister-godbot, and this impels me to riffing by crossthredulation.
If only Asimov were commenting here.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
Ahahahaha!!!!
Sounds like a Monty Python skit.
Shoulda linked: Wouldn’t it be nice.
Ol’Greg:
I *must* find out where Ornette got that jacket.
I have a question for all of you with real world experience. I’m filling out an application for a position with an insurance company. I’ve been told by someone who works there that the starting salary is in the 30,000/yr range, but they may be wrong. On the application form they ask what my desired salary is. What do I write down?
Bill Dauphin (end of last endless thread),
Yes, unlucky that the portcullis came down on you. PZ can be a harsh mohel.
Um… with your daughter’s friends who were pretending to be bi, am I right in assuming that they were all girls? I imagine that the trendiness of female bi-ness comes directly from the male fascination with “lesbian” porn. I can’t imagine that too many straight boys would go around pretending to be bi.
Re the ambulocetacean moniker: Eh, it’s a bit annoying. I started calling myself ambulocetus when I was arguing on Australian Christian blogs so that any creotard who could be bothered googling the word would get even more annoyed with me. When I came to register here ambulocetus was already taken, so I went with the even longer and more annoying ambulocetacean.
I should really consolidate my online identities. At some stage I’ll go back to calling myself Perentie, which is what I went by when I used to get my jollies writing juvenile stuff like Mother Teresa appears in KY handprint.
Hey, hey – I was no naughtier than any of you imagined. *snort*
Ichthyic @ 153
Who’s going to do the grunt work of gathering all the recipes MAJeff’s recipes he posted? Do straws need to be drawn?
(Great idea, though!)
Josh – No, you may not. Bon Ami *snort* true Super Sluts only use Brasso.
@my 162:
Better yet, who’s going to do the grunt-work of reading my posts before I click submit?
*I also see that the commenting system now disallows multiple posts in a short time-frame…
Perhaps Father Tis Himself will chime in and let us know if a gentleman showing up to veiw and measure a ladies board pile counts as a fourth date?
I gotta get to that magic number six …
I’d hate to speak out of turn, but I was taught that a gentleman never takes measurements on the first date.
Whaaa??? Mammalianism is a liberal trait now?
I want in! What do I have to do? Other than be a saucy minx, I mean. Spanking couch? Pffft. Have I mentioned that i have a 10′ leather bullwhip hanging from my office door?
Patricia honey, you fly that kite for all it’s worth!
Pygmy Loris @ 159–try here for a ballpark figure–adjust your desired salary based on your experience, or however ballsy you feel.
Sven, if you haven’t passed out yet, cheers :)
Jen,
Thanks! I just bookmarked that website. I never know what to ask for salary.
pcarini – We’re going for the fourth date here…the gentleman is coming to check out my board pile.
Tis said no sex until the sixth date. This board pile thing could be some manly rite that us gurrrrls just don’t get…
(imagine if I didn’t Have any boards)
As they say, if the board pile doesn’t stack up…
Seriously, though, us guys are truly, profoundly lazy creatures. If he can be arsed to come over and measure boards I’d call that something, at least.
Unless you offered him beer to come check them out, in which case I’d say you can definitely call it a date ;)
Who’s going to do the grunt work of gathering all the recipes MAJeff’s recipes he posted? Do straws need to be drawn?
the other jeff has been doing that, actually.
I set this up to make it easier, so someone wouldn’t have to KEEP doing that.
Josh:
Why thank you, Darling. If it were me, I’d add Patricia, Jadehawk, A. Noyd, Pygmy Loris, Carlie and Jen to the list. That’s jus’ me though. ;) Here’s my app: Oh, for Fuck’s sake, another thread about Walton’s politics. Now, where are my clothes…
Patricia:
Ooooh, you must part with some small details here, M’lady. Were your socks knocked off? Or perhaps gone a bit askew?
Icthyic:
http://sites.google.com/a/crackergate.com/pharyngula-recipes/
You’re a doll! Thank you.
David,
You can keep hoping. Which bubble will that be ? For the next bubble to grow you need to show that total credit money (public+private debt) can continue growing at a much faster rate than the economy, as it’s done for the last thirty years but has reached an inflexion point last year. There’s no evidence that it can, Minsky has theoretically shown why and what happens when we pass the inflexion point.
I recommend you read the economist Steve Keene’s excellent blog Debt Watch if you are interested in following this including its more theoretical underpinnings.
The irresponsible era of building illusory prosperity based on debt ignoring the constraints on the availability of critical resources has come to an end. The only thing politicians and the elites can try to do is postpone/slow down the slide, kick the can as far down the road and avoid that it explodes while they’re still around.
Pygmy Loris #159,
you can check this list to get some ideas:
http://www.salarylist.com/all-real-jobs-salary-at-american-international-group-inc-11.htm?order=2
The irresponsible era of building illusory prosperity based on debt ignoring the constraints on the availability of critical resources has come to an end.
say it ain’t so!
can’t we have just one more little bubble, pretty please, so I can SELL MY DAMN HOUSE!
*grumble*
;)
seriously.
look at the graphs on this page:
http://webpages.charter.net/almadizon/RealEstate.html
Jan 07:
I start planning my evacuation to Kiwiland, thinking my house is worth 350k.
dec 08: I finally complete my plans to get there, only to find my house is now worth…
210K
Brother moves into house, promises to sell it for me when the market comes back up…
current market value…
98K
mortgage:
90k
*sigh*
oh, sorry, reverse those last two numbers:
mortgage:
98K
house value:
90K
Ichthic,
I always think of the quote (by Laurence Peter – just looked it up to make sure I got it right) that “An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today. ”
When the next bubble happens, we will simply hear what initial assumption was incorrect (and you will be able to sell your house). Of course they might be right on this one (make enough predictions and you’ll get some right in the end).
Not directly relevant to bubbles and house prices but Amartya Sen today is good, very good.
Re bubbles (and more): I recommend this public-domain book.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay.
re: the pantsless elite:
KILT THE RICH!
iambilly, I don’t know about that, I’m rather fussy about who I like to see in a kilt. ;)
I go to bed early for once and miss all the fun!
I greatly appreciate being included in GLOP. I don’t have any brass bosoms around, but I bet I can fashion some out of aluminum foil and duct tape.
Also very happy for Patricia! I hope things keep going well and make you happy. :)
Very excited about the recipe site. Thanks, Ichthyic!
Hamana – hamana – hamana
Carlie, just so. :D
Caine: I would much rather see them in a kilt than just plain pantsless.
iambilly, you could just go back to old school depression-wear, stick a barrel over ’em.
Caine, or we could tar and feather these malefactors of great wealth.
Ouch.
I just pictured Dick Cheney in a chicken suit.
Urmmph. I better go get more tea. And some brain bleach.
Things I loathe this morning: spammers and annoying clients.
Things I love this morning: tea, cinnamon altoids and endless threads.
*Grumble* this whole day thing sucks *Grumble*
Caine: I know the feeling. I know have
threefour things on my todo list which are ‘top priority.’ All of which are graphics intensive. All of which take lots of time (no oregano, though). Cherry Coke and Goldfish pretzel crackers are my carbofriends.I just pictured Dick Cheney in a chicken suit.
Is he going to be part of a staged hunt?
Janine:
Read that as “Is he going to be part of a stag hunt?” before cleaning my glasses. Brought up an interesting image.
Quick vote: which is worse — Cheney in a chicken suit or Cheney in a kilt?
I knew there was a reason I could see the point in keeping whales around.
“I never drink water. Fish fuck in it.”
–o–
Walton will be pleased to learn that my “Dagens I-lands Problem” has been solved by capitalism. I found some cheap(ish) knock-off ink-cartridges for my printer. (And for some reason they managed to send an original along instead of one of the copies. I guess I should be honest and pay them the difference, since I’m now opened in the packet …)
In other stupid news, I thought I had an appointment with the GP tomorrow. Turned out to be today … That’s the second time I make that mistake. ARRGHH!
They say that as you get older, your memory is the second thing to go. Don’t remember what the first thing is supposed to be.
(I know, old joke. But I’m old (well, older than some of the whippersnappers who keep commenting here (and flaunting their minimal age most egregiously)) and, well, it goes with the territory (old being over 40 (which my daughter says is ancient (but what does she know? she thinks Twilight (movie or book) is good)))).
Speaking of the mind going, blockquote fail in 195.
At least it wasn’t two wet suits
Constance McMillens’ rights were violated. But the school can still cancel prom anyways. Great news for LGBT teens in school. But it seems that homophobic school officials have an out, turn proms into “private” off campus events,
Yeah, an other link to Pam’s House Blend. Scott Brown pulls out the Maddow Card. If you watch the video, pay attention to the crawlers. Maddow owns a huge dog and claims to be “Gay”. Maddow Concedes That Scott Brown Is More Pretty Than She Is.
Fear of a lesbian news host! I love it so!
/sigh
Is there any way to get Kwok the help he very much needs? I mean, it’s painful to watch.
Another view of #hcr: It’s a blow against economic inequality. The money quote:
Ambulocetacean (@160):
You would think that, wouldn’t you? But no, IIRC, it was about evenly split.
I bow to no man in my appreciation of the fact that, as Jeff Murdock would put it, “lesbians are porn-efficient,” but I don’t think that’s what was going on here. It was actually the gay boys who were the apex of cool in my daughter’s circles, and I don’t think the impulse to claim a share of the gay glory by calling oneself bi was motivated by any het-boy girl-girl fantasies. I wasn’t there, of course, but if it’d been a matter of other girls pretending to be into girls for the sake of turning on the boys, I think my daughter would’ve mentioned that (perhaps more than a little bit bitterly <g>).
I know what you mean, though: In my experience, straight males have an asymmetrical reaction to bisexuality. Bisexual women are (from this perspective) both normal (because they sleep with men, which means they might sleep with us) and hot (because of all the porn-efficient girl-on-girl action); bisexual men, OTOH, are icky (because of, you know, teh buttseks¹), and no amount of sleeping with women can wash away the stain.
But my point was that that’s how the philistines of my generation see it, and my daughter’s experience gives me some hope that that sort of male-centric heteronormative POV is fading away… and relatively quickly, at that.
Either way, though, that’s all primarily about one’s sexual feelings. The thing I found interesting about the byplay between Josh and Caine (et al.) is that it was as much (if not more) about politics as about sexuality: As a sad consequence of the legacy of discrimination, being gay is not only a sexual identity but also a political platform, and I can understand how the mere existence of bisexuality can de-clarify the politics of gayness. Especially for people who’ve staked their gay rights arguments heavily on the it’s not a choice position2, it’s easy to see how the existence of people whose whole sexual identity is based on the fact that they do choose between same-sex and opposite-sex relationships complicates things.
I’ve never been either gay or bi, but I have been in a position where my nominal political allies believed (or behaved) in ways that complicated my political goals… and I can empathize with the cognitive dissonance that arises from simultaneously having sympathy for “fellow travelers” and being frustrated at the political effects of their positions.
Of course, the ideal answer to all of this is to craft a society that’s sufficiently just and fair that nobody’s personal sexuality ever needs to be political at all. My daughter’s HS experience gives me some hope that we’re headed in that direction.
Patricia (@various):
FFS, stop counting dates and enjoy yourself! It is, as the song says, later than you think.
¹ Yes, I know not all gay (or, by extension, bi) men have anal sex… but remember, I’m attempting to describe a stereotype here, not a rational, fact-centered POV.
2 I do not mean to restart that whole discussion, nor am I attributing that argument to any actual person in this thread.
If you want to be depressed, the Biocentrism guy has another post up about Huffpo titled Do You Only Live Once? Experiments Suggest Life Not One-Time Deal. It’s really sad, how he has to resort to quantum woo about there being an infinite number of universes/possibilities to cope with his dead sister. I guess this is religion for people too smart to believe in the bearded dude in the clouds. Wouldn’t be surprised if more people start going down that path.
Paul:
I suggest not watching.
oo, ouch…that might be worse than “poopyhead”
It’s like a car accident…can’t look away…
But they still don’t *choose* their sexual identity.
I never sat down and said to myself, I think I’ll relate to people this way. Hell, I thought I was normal.
Like a car accident, it’s best to look, maybe comment, but just don’t participate.
Trust me.
Ol’Greg, that’s not what Bill meant. Bill was referring to what I said in the previous incarnation. In my experience, at least, one of the reasons people in the gay community have problems with bisexuals is that on a political level, they are seen as people who can make a sexual choice.
Idiots who oppose gay rights can fasten on to that as “evidence” that being gay is a choice. It’s not and as I pointed out earlier, neither is being bisexual. However, bisexuality tends to make the politics more complex.
On top of that, bisexuals are also often viewed as someone who can consciously choose a hetero relationship, thereby bypassing the difficulties and obstacles faced by others.
But…but…SIWOTI…
/cry
Oh, I get it Caine. Wouldn’t be the first time I misinterpreted BD. He’s probably getting used to it now :P
J’adore la Maddow.
It’s ok, Paul. We understand.
You could try Stealth Kiwi, an update of Kiwi Cloak, which itself was an update of Invisibility Cloak.
A couple of notes re the US tax system:
– The US no longer has a progressive tax system. Take a look here to see how the top taxpayers fared from 1992 to 2005. By 2007 the top 400 paid 16.6% of their adjusted gross in federal taxes. I paid a larger percentage this year (yes, it was a very good year, one which will never recur.) If the truth were known the percentage of actual income paid as taxes is probably close to a standard bell curve.
– One advantage that the ultra-rich have is they have the ability to hide income. For me, like most of us, every penny I made was reported to the IRS by the payer. I have zero ability to hide income. For a great exposition of how this works for the ultra-rich see David Johnston’s book “Perfectly Legal.” Somewhere along the line I’ve read that only 50% of the legal income in the US is reported on IRS tax forms. The rest of it is invisible to the tax system.
Opus,
I, too, have read Perfectly Legal. Before I read it, I knew our tax system was screwed up, but afterwords I was in a mindless rage over how the rich get out of paying taxes while the wage slaves have very few options. Everything in that book in emblematic of why our country is falling apart. Grrr.
Caine:
Right, that’s exactly what I was getting at. I’m relieved that you understood, and are not (apparently) offended that I said it. And thanks for helping square me with Ol’ Greg: No doubt you explained me to her better than I could’ve myself.
Actually, I suspect sexual identity is both more fluid and less volitional than the politics can really encompass, given how inhospitable to nuance political discussion generally is. Take, for instance, the one “out” lesbian I know well:
My wife and I first met this woman more than 20 years ago, when she was a fellow English teacher with us in Korea. At that time she was already in her mid 30s, and AFAIK had never had a serious relationship with anyone of any gender… and she was seriously boy-crazy. I know that sounds like a funny term to apply to an adult woman (as opposed to, say, an adolescent girl), but it’s the best description I can come up with. She was a tough romantic “sell,” though: Not pretty in any widely recognized sense, smarter than almost everyone else, and possessing a fairly aggressive personality expressed through a painfully biting wit. In all, a fairly intimidating, challenging package, and while we were together in Korea, she never had any success in attracting a man. But she never stopped trying.
At the end of our contract in Korea, we left and she stayed on, but we kept in touch. Several years later, just after she returned to the U.S., she wrote to tell us that she’d fallen in love… with a woman. She and her partner have been together as a couple now for roughly 20 years, and are deeply involved in the lesbian community where they live. From the moment she met her partner, our friend has identified as a lesbian, and as nothing else.
The thing is, based on knowing her before the fact, I’ve always believed that what she really was was incredibly thirsty for love, and that she was ready to fall in love with anyone who would love her back. I could be wrong, of course — who among us ever knows what’s really in someone else’s heart? — but I suspect she could just as easily have found a male soulmate, if the Brownian motion of her life had been a bit different.
If I’m right about that, what is she? A lesbian, as she sees herself? Or a bisexual woman who happens to be monogamous with a female partner? Quantum indeterminacy seems to be my go-to metaphor, but it seems to me possible that her sexuality existed as a fog of probabilities, and was only really determined when she finally met her lover.
The ideal, utopian answer is, of course, who cares? She is who and what she is; she loves who she loves; she’s happy; we don’t need no stinking badges, right? But as long as people’s sexuality is a political question… a matter of social policy… we’re somewhat forced to counterfeit the continuum of reality by forcing it into a finite number of labeled boxes.
‘Tis a puzzlement, eh?
Bill, no worries. I had actually pointed out the bisexuality/political situation earlier in the previous thread, in response to Rorschach.
As for your friend, she might very well fit into the current definition of pansexual, which defines itself as gender blind, with a focus on romantic love. I expect she’s the only one who knows how fluid her orientation is; there are other reasons she may have not expressed her preference during her time in Korea. She may not have realized her orientation at that time, either. Some people don’t come to it until later in life for a variety of reasons.
I got to thinking about whales and their reproductive and excretory habits. My first thought was, “Who cares, it just gets diluted by a huge amount.” I then thought, “Maybe it gets so diluted that there’s hardly anything there. Maybe not a single molecule in some samples.”
And then I realised. Dilution to nothingness. All that percussive thundering of surf on rocks. The effect will be magnified so much that we will all be affected! The entire human race is being treated with ultra-potent whale semen and whale poo!!
Who will save us? Quackalicious, we need you after all!!
“What can we do to be saved, O Wise One?”
And then I woke up.
Ol’ Greg (@206):
I know. As I said (@215) to Caine, she’s probably already done a better job of ‘splaining my position to you than I could have myself.
But so what if we did choose our sexual identities? The only reason the choice-versus-nature question even matters is that we, as a society, continue to demonize sexuality. If we saw all sexual identities as equally OK — as we would in any rational, non-demon-haunted world — it wouldn’t make any difference whether sexual identity was chosen or indwelling.
IMHO, the fundamental argument for the social equality of all sexual identities should be based on the principle that sexual desire is personal, and that there’s no compelling public interest in discriminating between private sexual feelings, nor in regulating private adult sexual behavior (as long as it’s truly consensual, of course). Regardless of the truth of the matter, basing the political argument on it’s not a choice risks being mischaracterized as equating non-mainstream sexualities with disability — “Don’t discriminate against my disability, because I can’t help it!” — and even successfully winning rights on such a basis fails to advance the ultimate cause (well, at least my ultimate cause; YMMV) of building a society in which sex is OK!
So, is this yet another “random biological ejaculation”?
Bill:
Which is where religion looms over all. It’s religion which is ultimately hung up on sex, in one way or another; religions want to control sexuality, and you can’t do that if people aren’t listening to the rulez. People who don’t really care about the religious aspect but have a personal “oh, that’s not right!” reaction shelter under it to condemn any orientation they don’t like.
ok, so how do you guys keep up with this site? I’ve currently got 10 tabs open to Pharyngula threads as it is – I barely caught up when PZed was in Australia. Good thing I don’t have a job! (other than kid chauffeur, that is)
Kid #2 is dissecting a sheep heart in her human biology class today – They look at human cadavers next week. And this in a junior college! Is that cool or what?
Certainly didn’t look random to me.
Caine (@220):
You and I are of one mind on this point!
Kilt, obviously. At least in a chicken suit he’d look like… well… a chicken. In the kilt he’d just look like a creepy, evil old man in a skirt.
But hey, thanks for the imagery… I will now go light my eyes on fire.
Keltic Evolution — I thought it was goats on fire?
Bill: building a society in which sex is OK!
[snark]This goes against everything for which the Christian Right stands. Why do you persecute them so?[/snark]
Party people, just for effluvients and chuckles, count the what-the-funnelcakes in this nugget from our old friend Kwok:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2010/03/21/health-care-passes-the-house/#comment-54255
Neither. I’d rather see him wearing this.
MrFire: I bow to you. You are good.
MrFire, very nice. Personally, I’d rather see Cheney in one of these.
Bill D, Boys pretending to be bi, eh? Wonders will never cease.
Mr. Fire #227
Ok… but only if he were also wearing these.
ambulocetacean:
Well, I can’t swear to it, but that’s certainly what my daughter and her friends suspected.
One can only hope, eh?
Thanks guys, I have my moments.
As Bill says (about his daughter’s observations), there are circles (at least there were when I was in high school) where it’s “cool” to be gay/bi. This was a very small circle, mind, in the middle of an overwhelmingly homophobic atmosphere. My HS friends and I sometimes wondered if a few other kids were merely feigning interest in the same sex as part of fitting in with the “artsy” crowd, but second-guessing other people’s claims about their sexuality is a fraught thing.
Unfortunately, that’s a lesson many (including me) took too long to learn, which contributed to the marginalization of bisexual people by a “community” who ought to behave better.
Maddow’s follow-up on the violent responses to health care reform.
This is awesome
well worth a read and a good bit of time following links.
Josh:
Yep. There’s always going to be someone, somewhere, who is making it up, but it’s very dicey indeed to make the assumption that all people in a given group are doing the same. Even if only one person ends up being marginalized or fearful and shoves themselves way back into the closet, that’s not a good thing.
My offhand flippant comment about “taxing the pants off the rich” seems to have metamorphosed into some bizarre fantasy about making Dick Cheney wear a chicken-feathered prison jumpsuit and kilt with clown shoes. Or something like that. :-)
The endless thread is a strange place, indeed.
Walton, you left out my preferred thing for Cheney to be seen in. ;p
Walton: Why do you sound surprised?
Pardons if this has already been mentioned (trying to keep up with Teh Thread but I may have missed this discussion)… but I think it bears mentioning again…
Hopefully, we’re seeing the beginning of the long overdue death of Don’t ask, Don’t tell.
Bill Dauphin (or anyone else who watches Top Chef), how was Top Chef Masters last year? I missed it, because we had to kill off the satTV for lack of money reasons. I just realized they are going to be doing Masters again in April.
Cheney anywhere in the multiverses. I don’t care how it disguises itself…
Somewhat boring, because they were all really good and got along with each other, and then you realize that no matter how much you say you hate the drama and ineptitude, it turns out that there’s not much other than that to be entertaining. Except when Hubert Keller rinsed off his pasta in a dorm shower, which was hilarious. (NO IT REALLY WAS PASTA, GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER)
Heh.
Even looks like him…
Caine (@242):
I loves me some cooking competition shows, and Top Chef (TOS) is probably my favorite. Masters was OK, and there’s something to be said for watching these truly accomplished chefs cook, but the competition aspect of it didn’t strike me as being quite as compelling as in the regular show: Unlike the up-and-coming, mostly young, “chef-testants” of the regular show, these folks are well established, and have relatively little at stake. In addition — and this was a bit of a surprise to me, even though it makes sense once you think about it — many of these executive chef/restauranteur types haven’t done much actual real-world restaurant cooking in years, and that makes them a bit less up to speed than you might expect WRT the time-and-technique aspects of the competition.
Among the shows that have established pros as contestants, I guess I’d put Masters slightly ahead of Food Network’s Next Iron Chef, and I watch them both… but I’d rather see Top Chef or Iron Chef America themselves than either of their “big brother” shows.
Interestingly, the line between cooking show contestants and cooking show judges is starting to blur: I read recently (perhaps on the Top Chef Facebook feed?) that both TC head judge Tom Colichio (sp?) and TC contestant (winner? I can never remember which brother won) Bryan Voltaggio have been named as finalists for the James Beard award.
One other thing: The host of Masters, a Korean woman whose name I can’t recall offhand, is pretty and competent, but nowhere near as compelling as Padma “Salman Rushdie’s beautiful ex” Lakshmi. Jus’ sayin’…
KOPD, that was chilling. Effing frightening.
Carlie:
I’m sorry I missed that. Thank you and Bill for your takes. I probably will watch it. I know I’m in the minority, but the manufactured drama aspects of TC irritate me and bore me. I hit the mute button on Top Chef a lot. In that respect, I think I’ll enjoy Masters.
And hadn’t the adorable Kevin already won a James Beard award?
Carlie, Caine, and other cooking-show fans:
Did any of you notice that former Top Chef chef-testant Richard Blaise was one of Cat Cora’s sous chefs on the most recent episode of Iron Chef America? And, of course, Spike Mendelsohn was the ICA challenger a week or two ago? Seems Top Chef is more like American Idol, whose winners and high-placing contestants go on to real careers, than it is like America’s Next Top Model, whose alums seem to disappear from the face of the Earth (except for appearances on subsequent seasons of ANTM).
Hmmm… have I revealed myself as a bit too much of a reality TV geek?
Everyone knows that in the quantum cheneyverse Cheney exists in a quantum superimposition of the executive and legislative states.
You’d think that no longer being vice president changes this, but that just shows the weirdness of the quantum cheneyverse!
No, no, fuck no.
ROTFLOL! That link’s brilliant. Thanks, Feynmaniac.
Continuing on the Top Chef theme… I recall reading some time back that there was a pastry-focused spinoff in the works — to be called Top Chef Just Desserts, IIRC — but I haven’t heard anything about it recently. Anybody know if it’s still going to happen?
Bill, I think Just Desserts is the theme of the actual next season, rather than a spin-off. I don’t watch Iron Chef America, but that’s just because I think it’s such a pale comparison to the original.
+1
And it’s not like I’m all weeaboo “Japan roxxors” or anything, I’ve seriously tried watching ICA and not found it all that interesting (Alton Brown is the only reason to watch it, and I’d rather watch Good Eats). What kept me watching the original Iron Chef was all the weird stuff they’d make, as well as the overly campy SRSBZNS rivalries. ICA has nowhere near the “wtf” factor. I do watch The Next Iron Chef when it’s on though, as the larger meta-competition at least keeps things somewhat interesting and it’s less of a “here’s a theme, make 5 fairly predictable dishes” event.
Rev. BDC,
Finally finished the main article and a couple of the links in it. A great read. Thank you for posting that. Gave me a few things to post on by FB wall (which I’m positive nobody reads). :-)
That’s a bit disappointing: Just Desserts sounded like fun as a one-off (presumably shorter than a regular season), but I think it’ll be a bit limiting as the single focus for a whole cycle.
Yeah, it took some getting used to… but I have gotten used to it, and now when I check out old Iron Chef episodes on FLN, I find that I don’t enjoy them as much as I do ICA. Partly it’s just familiarity, and partly it’s because the the ingredients and dishes are a bit more accessible than some of the Japanese stuff (“Codfish roe ice cream? Iron Chef, how could you?”). Plus which, I’ll pretty much watch anything Alton Brown is on.
I actually think they did a pretty good job of making an American version of the show. I don’t know if you recall, but there was a previous attempt, called Iron Chef USA, that really emphasized the campier aspects of the original, and had William Shatner as its Chairman. It was a disaster — a real desecration of the original — but I think ICA is a more respectful, representative take.
Wait, I think you were right about it being a spinoff; I found this:
Gaaaaaaaiillll!!! Woo-hoo. I think I had in mind that it was part of the general series because there’s not another Top Chef running at the same time.
Carlie:
*Nods* I don’t like it at all.
A beautiful spring day, room temperature indoors and outdoors (went shopping in the dark without my jacket), the forsythias, hyacinths, daffodils, and some tulips are in full bloom, the cherry tree in front of my window will soon be, and I’ve received some preliminary information on the dig. :-) Jadehawk, check your inbox.
On the downside, I need to learn my talk for the comité de thèse* meeting tomorrow morning, so I haven’t read beyond comment 160 yet.
* Not the jury that will judge the thesis, but a couple of colleagues who are supposed to “follow the progress of the thesis” and prevent me from embarking on projects that would take too long, for example.
In one of the last years of highschool, I was taught “you write ‘I am worth [large figure], and for that I make the following impressive list of my abilities available to the company”‘.
But, again, I haven’t read beyond comment 160 yet, and I’ve never applied for a job.
Oh – while scrolling I came across this from comment 170:
Well, most of us, including most notably myself. But I know one who voluntarily washes the dishes of 15 to 20 people. Again and again. Several times in 2 weeks (at the dig, the only occasion I get to see him in meatspace).
:-S
The considerable awesomeness of the perentie was greatly diminished for me when I found out one was stupid enough to try to swallow a (probably roadkilled) echidna. Darwin Award. Impressive museum specimen.
Meh, I didn’t mind Top Chef for a while, but the non-stop plugs for all the suppliers make it almost unwatchable for me now.
I like Hell’s Kitchen, even though I can’t stand Gordon Ramsay. Where do they keep finding those idiot contestants year after year? None of them can so much as fry an egg but all of them are great at sending raw chicken out into the restaurant.
Bill D, Josh,
I vaguely remember that a few years ago some straight guys (more specifically, straight assholes) would try to pick up girls by coming across a bit “gay” (without outright claiming they were gay) so that women would let their guard down/find them witty and charming or whatever.
David Marjanović — NOOOOOOO! Poor perentie :(
Why would it be dumb enough to try to swallow it whole? Why wouldn’t it just rip the echidna’s belly open and eat it from the inside?
From time to time I wonder how animals know what to eat and what not to eat – and how not to eat it.
I mean, it’s not as if there’s a Swallow-Echidnas-Whole gene and a Don’t-Swallow-Echidnas-Whole gene. If one perentie is dumb enough to die doing that, why don’t they all die doing that?
And is it true that the brain of the giant squid or colossal squid is a donut shape wrapped around its oesophagus? Does that mean it would give itself brain damage if it tried to swallow something too big?
So many, many questions…
Ah, so echidnas have extremely tough skin, but still…
*sighs* I’m sorry in general blog people. I should have stayed in the damned endless thread today.
aaanyway
That’s weird. Did it work? Seems like a shaky strategy. Why not just try to come across as witty and charming? I would never assume some one was gay or not gay. Too hard. Likewise though I’d never assume some one was interested in me. There have probably been frustrated people because of that. I’m one of those frank discussion needed types.
Roy Lewis, in The Evolution Man (also known as What We Did to Father and Once Upon an Ice Age), reminds us that we must remember all those apemen who gave their lives working out what was and wasn’t poisonous.
Giggles. Yeah, here you’re just flayed and eaten alive. No-one bats an eye. (And contrary to rumour, eye of bat is not a acceptable substitute for eye of newt.)
I used to think I could tell and would make a subconscious determination. I later came to realize just how stupid and narrow-minded that was and have stopped.
As am I, which has put me in some very awkward positions in the past. Sometimes I look back on a conversation I’ve had and wonder if there was some subtext I was missing. Being in a stable relationship, I don’t watch for those sorts of clues. If somebody seems like they’re being very friendly, I assume they’re always like that, or that it’s just because I’m personable and people just open up to me. It keeps me out of trouble.
I met Knockgoats and JeffreyD on Sunday. Two more different characters would be hard to imagine :) Pity we didn’t have more time. Barely scratched their surfaces.
blf #36 Thanks for the link, I read the Guardian, but missed that.
Here’s a link to the Sai Baba mentioned in the last paragraph, regarding allegations of sexual abuse of his followers.
BTW Sai Baba’s “trademark tricks” Edamaroku mentions include his favourite one where he miraculously produces gold watches out of thin air as gifts for selected devotees (including my ex mother-in-law). Branded Swiss watches. With genuine serial numbers. Amazing, huh?
Another Guardian article, about another new hominid.
I wish my dog had a clue in this department. Would save me hundreds of dollars a year.
Hi Ol’Greg,
I guess the strategy can’t have worked too well or else we’d still be hearing about it. I’m like you too, I’ve never been good at noticing when someone is interested in me. Usually a friend has to point it out.
blf,
True, we should remember their noble sacrifices and horrible, screaming deaths. But the poor old perenties don’t have the advantage of useful knowledge being communicated from generation to generation.
That’s what you want us to believe.
KOPD,
When I was a kid my corgi came home shitting blood one day. I think the vet said it had been drinking paint thinner or something. It was OK in the end.
I think your dog has a firm gasp on what not to eat: You. It wouldn’t get fed again.
ambulocetacean:
I realize product placement really bothers a lot of people, but I’ve never quite understood why. If the content is otherwise good, how does the occasional mention of a brand name or sight of a logo make it not good? I’m not trying to change your mind, mind you; I just don’t get it myself.
Personally, I’d rather see commercials and product placements than pay premium fees for the programming. “‘To each his own,’ said the lady as she kissed the cow,” eh? Speaking of which…
FTFY! ;^)
I don’t mind some drama — even a certain degree of yelling and screaming — in my reality TV if it’s organic, but I’ve never been able to buy rage, per se, as a form of entertainment. I can’t stand the promos for Ramsay’s shows, nevermind the shows themselves!
Re the pretending to be bi stuff: I don’t mean to make too big a deal about it. I only meant to be saying that if it’s even plausible to speculate about young people pretending to be more gay than they really are, as opposed to feeling compelled to pretend to be less gay, then it probably means the generational trendline is moving in a healthy direction.
That was the disguise. What was under the pasta?
Crispy Christ onna stick, I’m feeling vicious today. Much more than usual. This getting up in the morning stuff was a very bad idea.
Read that as “Is he going to be part of a stag hunt?” before cleaning my glasses. Brought up an interesting image.
Quick vote: which is worse — Cheney in a chicken suit or Cheney in a kilt? – iambilly
I was going to say no-one would be wearing a kilt on a stag hunt – which was, in Britain, a group of mounted yahoos setting a pack of dogs to chase a stag to exhaustion – now fortunately illegal; but one would not put anything past Cheney.
A British man might wear a kilt (not knowing that the kilt was an 18th century invention by an Englishman, or simply wishing to humour his hosts) while deer stalking – which involves a long highland walk through pine, bog and heather, culminating in shooting a stag from cover with a rifle.
For me it’s exhaustion of advertising – I already pay a premium to get the channel in the first place, then I have to sit through commercial breaks, and now I’m getting commercials within the show, too? Might as well just tattoo the sponsors on the foreheads of everyone on the show and get it over with. There was a story I heard on Selected Shorts once about a world where people had chips in their shoes, so that targeted advertising would show up every time they passed by a checkpoint, and you were thrown in jail if you didn’t wear your chip. I forget the name of the story, but product placement makes me feel one step closer to that.
A kilt?
Bill:
Eh, I like Gordon. Especially Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (the British one, not the awful U.S. ones). If I had to deal with those people, I’d be screaming my fool head off too. Actually, I’d most likely be slapping people…
For me it’s the dramatic call to the family about a dying relative (or whatever drama comes up this season), of which the camerawork mostly consists of zooming in on the Sprint logo on the telephone. Situations like that really soured me to their product placement in general. In principle I have nothing against it, though.
The guilty reality show pleasure I have, the one I hate to admit to, is Tabitha’s Salon Takeover. I (heart) her. She is fierce.
What’s morning got to do with it? I find getting up to be very bad.
Carlie, Tabatha kicks ass and takes no prisoners. She is absolutely fabulous.
blf, morning has everything to do with it. I’m nocturnal, morning is when I go to bed. I dislike having to get up early. Actually, dislike isn’t the right word at all. My brain doesn’t want to work, and it makes me grouchier than all hell.
Caine:
To be fair, the promos I’ve seen, both on U.S. TV and on BBC America, have so thoroughly turned me off that I’ve never watched more than a few minutes of any of his actual shows (i.e., when I’ve landed on them by accident, while channel surfing). Maybe he’s better in context… but if so, the people putting the promos together aren’t selling him to me… because what I get from the ads is that he just screams.all.the.TIME!!!
Not that I don’t understand why he might want to scream, mind; I just don’t find it entertaining.
Re product placement (@Paul): I don’t like it when the reality shows get too intrusive into personal phone calls at all… but it doesn’t make it any worse for me if I can see the logo on the phone. OTOH, I find the digital blurs and other machinations some shows use to avoid showing logos really distracting.
I’m nocturnal as well. But that doesn’t mean I like getting up at any time. What does that make me, bedturnal or something?
(Debates with himself for about 3 milliseconds: Do I really want to ask…) So what’s under the kilt?
(It’s pasta all the way down?)
Ancient Scottish Secret…
Deep-fried Wow-Wow sauce?
Not anymore. BWA HA HA HA HAAAAAH…
That’s the normal arrangement for most animals. Chordates are among the notable exceptions.
Of course. But I don’t think cephalopods swallow anything big. With that beak they don’t need to.
Have to go. The stupid Mac in the lab pretended to save the latest version of my talk to my flash drive, but somehow didn’t, so I have to go to the lab even earlier. <facepalm>
blf:
Yes. Right now, I’m really liking the sound of that too. :D
I don’t know. (((Wife))) likes it when I get . . . hmmm.
Sorry.
Shouldn’t have gone there.
But I did.
Caine:
Uh-oh. The Intersection will be on your case before you know it.
P.S. Would you be so good as to save me a leg when you’re done with them?
Ah, now we know what Caine is really liking the sound of…
blf: Are you implying that Caine is Abel?
If you don’t like Gordon, try this
Constance McMillen wasn’t the first student at Itawamba Agricultural High School to contact the ACLU this year.
Hey! Don’t be dragging me into strange beds, I choose my own strange beds, thankyouverymuch.
;D
Guess I’m really an old grouch: I’m still wrinkling my red nose about the original original Iron Chef switching from subtitles to voiceovers. I got no Japanese at all (except a few bonsai terms) (and food) but it was better to listen to.
Caine: Crispy Christ onna stick, I’m feeling vicious today.
(sing)
I feellll vicious!
Oh so vicious!
I feel vicious, malicious, and LOWWWWW…(/sing)
Damn; I can’t remember the rest. You know how Mad magazine and Alan Sherman and Wossname the mathematician’s parodies replace the originals in your brain? Like that.
Swallow-Echidnas-Whole …
Like Never Eat Anything Bigger than Your Head? Apparently I’m not the only one who’s seen gulls with starfish in mutual trouble; there’s a photo of one such in a window show in downtown Berkeley. The first one I saw was in Golden Gate Park, with one starfish leg/ray partway down its throat and the rest of the starfish somewhere between hanging out and hanging on. Saw it three hours later on the way back, same place, same situation. Thought about thousands of teeny starfish sucker-feet. Uh-oh.
… people had chips in their shoes,
Thanks for the change in earworms, anyway. Rolling Stones: “Got to scrape that chip right off your shoes.” Um, “Sweet Virginia”?
If Kw*k isn’t revealed within a year or two as an extraordinarily persistent long-acting character troll, I’ll eat my hat.
Of course I”ll be shopping for chocolate hats in the meantime.
Ugh sad day.
The brilliant photographer that took this picture among many many others died today.
Auntie Ron, did you see Josh OSG’s post at #109? You’re involved. I don’t think our dear Josh saw my response and consequent app at #172. (Yes, I know I mentioned Carlie when I shouldn’t have, in my defense, I was not awake.)
Rev. BDC, damn. I’m really sorry to hear that.
Yeah he took soooooo many iconic photos of music stars.
Why do I only learn about cool people after they die? :(
Yay! for Ed Yong:
As a non-science person, I have always enjoyed his blog and I’ve learned a whole bunch.
Oh my crackers Rev. BDC… I haven’t even had a chance to read back in the thread and I saw your post. That particular iconic pic is on my wall in my music room. Freaking great photography. Damn, it just seems like awesome people are fucking dropping like flies this year.
fire away, my friend
a fashion plate, no doubt. I saw him play twice; coincidentally–or not–it was both of the times he sat in with the Grateful Dead.
teh Thread knows all; tells all
Tom Lehrer
speakin of whom:
Someone is doing a remake of Footloose.
Someone is scrubbing a simulacram of Spartacus
what?
… sven?
Another Jim Marshall pic:
http://content.zdnet.com/2347-9595_22-304437-304439.html?seq=2&tag=content;col1
Re Top Chef Just Desserts
I wonder which Atlanta pastry chef will keep the city’s streak alive by leading the pack the entire season only to fall short the finale. We had Richard Blais two years ago then Kevin Gillespie last season. At least, on the bright side, I can still get one of Blais’s burgers or eat Kevin’s food when I’m in Atlanta. If they’d won I’m sure I’d be missing out on that pleasure.
In the best news of all, Kevin’s plans to open a BBQ restaurant in Atlanta are proceeding. Anyone with that much respect for pigs, especially bacon, will do a FINE job with a BBQ joint.
@Caine:
Oh, yes, now you are an official member of GLOP (Gorgeous Ladies of Pharyngula). See how stringent my application process is? Shhhh. . don’t tell the other members, I want them to feel special (ducking and running). Oh, and fantastic nominations for the others, too!
Opus, I don’t think people who do as brilliantly as Richard and Kevin did lose anything at all by being on Top Chef. Even those who don’t perform anywhere near that level do well from the exposure. They get to meet (and cook for) people they would probably never had the chance to meet. Top Chef has turned into a hell of a way to give your career a boost for a lot of people.
Italics fail.
Pharyngulite Foodies – Ichthyic has kindly set us up a page to dump our recipes if we want. He gave me a log-in, but I haven’t yet put any of the recipes I’ve snagged from here to Ich’s site yet. I will soon. I think he’s also offering log-in cred to Pharygulites who want to post there, but I’m wondering if too many won’t get the benefit of your fabulous Kitchen Foo if they don’t see the recipes on Teh Thread first?
Of course, I don’t know how many readers find our recipe-posting interesting vs. how many might find it annoying. PZ hasn’t said anything, so I assume (hope) it doesn’t bother him.
Josh, hee. Oh, a GLOP should probably not admit this, but I alerted Auntie Ron to your earlier post, I must say I’m looking forward to her response, which I am sure will be singular. :D And thank you so much for honour. I am sincerely flattered.
*sigh* for the honour. I’m still not awake. Honest.
I think posting recipes in the endless thread first is good; then they can migrate to the crackerlicious recipe depot.
*cautiously puts toe in the water*
You know, I have NO idea if I’ve posted in one of the off-topic threads of doom before.
I have a fabulous risotto recipe, as well as my grandmother’s awesome roll recipe. I would be delighted to see the Pharygula Phood Phoo.
Josh OSG:
Count me among those who want to see the recipes here first, before they migrate to the Foodie site.
We can has, pleez?
Pixelfish, just dive. It’s easier that way. Risotto? I have many risotto recipes, I love the stuff. I demand recipes!
Where do we post recipes? In thread?
Yes, yes yes yes. Post.
Yes, right here! Please can haz recipe posts! I’ve taken on the project of snagging them all to my machine (with credit to the author). I’ll later post them to the other site put up by our other resident fish friend:)
Speaking of can haz. . I just made myself a patty melt on sourdough. Whoever thought those up is genius – a grilled cheese sandwich with a hamburger in it. Bloody brilliant.
Okay. Deep breath! Mushroom, Leek and Lemon Risotto (Asparagus optional)
8 oz leeks
8 oz cremini mushrooms
5-6 spears of asparagus, chopped into 1-2 inch pieces (optional)
2 tbsp olive oil
3-4 garlic cloves, crushed or finely minced
6 tbsp butter (3/4 stick)
1 large onion, roughly chopped
1 3/4 cups of arborio rice
5 cups of hot vegetable stock (there’s a broth mix you can buy at thestore that works GREAT)
grated zest and juice of lemon (FRESH!!! lemons here are cheap, but you definitely want fresh lemon zest. I grate my lemon peel first, getting all of teh rind except the nubs at the ends, and then I halve it and squeeze the halves for the juice)
2/3 cup freshly grated parmesan and manchego cheese. (Let me give you a quick tip–make this half grated manchego cheese. SO GOOD! It gives it a new flavour than plain ol’ parmesan. You won’t be sorry. You can find the manchego in your dairy section probably or try whole foods if you have a hard time finding. But Safeway here carries it.)
1/4 cup mixed chopped fresh chives and Italian parsley
(you can also add fresh majoram to this–just remember to pinch the majoram leaves from the stalk)
salt and freshly ground pepper
Optional: Cooking wine:
Lemon wedges and parsley for garnish. (I only garnish with parsley myself)
1 – Wash the leeks well. Slice in half lengthwise and roughly chop. Wipe the mushrooms with paper towels and roughly chop. (At this time, chop your asparagus if you have it.) Make sure your garlic is minced.
2- Heat olive oil in a large saucepan and cook the garlic for one minute, taking care not to burn it. Add, leeks, mushroom, asparagus, and plenty of seasoning. (Save the chives, majoram, and parsley for step sixish. But if you want to be creative and add pinches of thyme or rosemary or a dash of cooking wine while you sautee the veggie part of this meal, this is the time.)
Cook over medium heat for about ten minutes or until softened and browned. (They usually mean the mushrooms and leeks. The asparagus should still be fairly crisp.) Remove mixture from the pan and set aside.
3 – Either in the recently vacated pot, or in a different pot while the others are cooking, add 2 tablespoons of butter and cook the onion for 5 minutes or until a golden brown.
4 – Stir in rice and cook for a minute. Add a ladleful of the vegetable stock broth to the pan, and cook gently, stirring occasionally until the rice absorbs the water. (You don’t have to
CONSTANTLY stir through this part, especially as long as you can see the water, but you want to do it often enough so the rice doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.)
5 – Gently stir in more liquid as ladleful is absorbed; this may take 20-25 minutes in all. The risotto will turn thick and cream, and the rice should be tender but not sticky or gluey.
6 – Just before stirring, stirr in the leeks, mushroom, and asparagus – mix with the remaining butter, and your grated lemon rind, 3 tbspoons
of the lemon juice, half the machego/parmesen cheese, and 3/4 of the chives/majoram/chopped parsley. Stir it all in, add salt or pepper as you see fit, and then serve with the remaining cheese sprinkled on top and the remaining chives/majoram/chopped parsley. Garnish with lemon
slices and parsley. Serve.
(Note: You can also substitute the lemon with lime for even tangier, but I LOVE the fresh lemony taste.)
For yum, snagged, Pixefish, thank you!
Josh, I’m watching Iron Chef, green onion battle and now I’m jonesing for wild rice and fresh cattails, dammit. I have ages to wait for cattails. I’m going to sulk.
Oooh! My first recipe!
Tasse Froide de Graisse Avec des Cheveux (serves one)
Ingredients:
1 cold cup of fat
1 hair (preferably cranial)
Method:
Take cold cup of fat
Put hair in it
Serve cold
OMG. That’s long. I didn’t know it would be quite so long. Next time I will see if I can make a link elsewhere.
Speaking of awesome recipes, here are some of my online favourites:
The Pioneer Woman’s Crash Hot Potatos:
http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2008/06/crash-hot-potatoes/
Vanilla Garlic’s recipes for Tomato Soup Cupcakes (They are good, I promise.)
http://www.vanillagarlic.com/2006/10/tomato-soup-cupcakes-with-cream-cheese.html
My friend’s recipe for Almond Crusted Asparagus Rolls with Lemon Hollandaise Sauce:
http://fotocuisine.com/2009/03/19/almond-crusted-asparagus-rolls-with-lemongrass-hollandaise/
Ah yes, risotto. The yokel’s version of paella.
</hispanic snoot>
Oh, that risotto looks gorgeous. See, your first time wasn’t so bad, huh? Next time it won’t hurt:)
BTW…do you have a brand name for that vegetable broth? The ones I’ve tried haven’t been up to par and I’m looking for a good one.
ambulocetacean, perhaps you should try echidna recipes.
;p
The only recipe I really know:
1 beer
serve cold
Really, though. I’m jealous of you folks that can actually cook. The only thing I can remotely do is a chicken burrito recipe that has been a pain. I finally write it down, and they stop selling some of the ingredients. I was using Fiesta Sides Chipotle Rice and some kind of Ragu cheese sauce. Now I can’t find them any more. I have yet to find a suitable substitute for the rice, but I have some ideas for a cheese sauce recipe that need to be tested. If I ever get it worked out, I’ll post.
Caine: cattails? I had no idea those were edible!
Josh: Sorry, I think it’s just a store generic version of broth that I use.
Oh, and my grandmother’s roll recipe.
http://www.livestrong.com/recipes/grandmas-awesome-rolls/
These are for fluffy crescent rolls. The sekrit ingredient is the powdered milk, I think. I added the Pioneer Woman’s trick of basting with rosemary and sea salt and it worked pretty well, but they are just fine plain too. My whole family is kind of addicted to these and Grandma’s jam.
Larger view of the rolls here with link to Pioneer Woman’s tip:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelfish/4441978493/
Caine,
Sorry, I don’t have any echidna recipes, but I do have one for duck.
Fourche de Canard à Basse Altitude (serves one)
Ingredients:
Whole duck (1)
Method:
John, oh, shut up. ;D
Pixelfish, don’t worry about length. (I will not make the obvious joke here. I’ll leave that to others.)
Josh, I find it’s best to make your own veg broth, I’m always disappointed in the ready made stuff. This is an *extremely* basic recipe, it’s eminently tweakable to individual tastes:
10 cups water
1 medium-sized onion, unpeeled, studded with 4 whole cloves
2 cloves of garlic, unpeeled and lightly bruised
2 celery ribs with leaves, cut into large chunks
8 white mushrooms, halved
2 carrots, unpeeled and cut into large chunks
2 leeks, trimmed and cut into large chunks
2 medium-sized tomatoes, quartered
4 medium-sized new red potatoes, halved
8 fresh parsley sprigs
2 fresh dill sprigs
1 bay leaf
8 black peppercorns
1 teaspoon coarse salt
Place water in a large, heavy pot. Rinse all the vegetables well, then add to pot. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, for 1 hour. Adjust the seasonings to taste and simmer for 30 minutes longer.
Strain the broth; discard the bay leaf but reserve the vegetables to eat as is, or pur ee them and use to thicken soups or sauces for stews. Let the broth cool to room temperature and then refrigerate, covered, in a storage container or freeze. Refrigerated, it will keep about 4 days.
Ambulocecetacean: We have that recipe in my neck of the woods but I think we call it Aunt Nina’s Bezoar.
I was once complimented on my yummy mashed potatoes. Here is the recipe, and very technical it is.
Mashed potatoes:
Peel potatoes, cut into approx. 1 cubic inch pieces.
Put in pot, cover with water, simmer until tender.
Drain water from pot.
Add a knob of butter to pot.
Use masher to mash, whilst adding a dribble of milk until desired consistency is achieved.
Serve.
Count me among those who like to see recipes posted here first, though all of the wonderful things I read about make me drool.
Most of my recipes are pretty simple, and I think I may be developing an inferiority complex. Anyway, here’s one of my favorites.
Pygmy Loris’s Fried Green Tomatoes* (country style)
Ingredients:
Green tomatoes (however many you want, but I usually figure 2-3 per person depending on size)
Flour
Salt
Pepper
Cooking oil (I have taken to using peanut oil because I like the flavor and it has a high smoke point)
Directions:
Slice green tomatoes thinly (1/4 of an inch or so). Place a large skillet over medium high heat and add enough oil to have about a quarter inch with the tomato slices in it. While the oil is heating, put some flour on a plate or in a shallow pan and add salt and pepper to taste. Dredge tomato slices on both sides in the flour. Place in the hot oil and cook until crispy brown. (This takes practice to get right!). Turn at least once for even cooking. Remove and drain on paper towels. Serve hot!
*This same recipe makes tasty summer squash, too.
I hope this makes sense. I’ve never measured anything in this recipe, so there are not times or amount mentioned. Grandma taught it to Mom and she taught me. Every time I make these for the uninitiated, they’re begging me year round to find more green tomatoes, but I believe in using fresh garden tomatoes for the dish. Thus I usually only eat fried green tomatoes from May to August. Also, I only use green tomatoes from regular tomato plants. You can buy special seeds that only produce green tomatoes, but I don’t like the taste as much.
ambulocetacean:
Well, I thought it was funny!
I take it you’re not cooking hobbyist:)
Josh, yes they are! Young ones, and they are delish raw or lightly cooked. Cattail pollen can be used as a sub for flour too. Cattail pollen pancakes are wonderful.
The brilliant photographer that took this picture among many many others died today.
damn.
that’s pretty much the official logo for the site buffybot manages over on Ravelry:
Lazy, Stupid, and Godless
(you have to register with ravelry to see the actual forum)
re “sea salt”: I heartily recommend people use iodised salt regularly, at least for table salt.
Keeps cretinism at bay.
Seriously.
Oh, Pygmy, fried green tomatoes are one of my favorites! And you’re right, you need real, unripe tomatoes, not anything engineered to stay green.
Have you tried soaking the slices in buttermilk first? I find it gives them a delicious creamy tang.
Pygmy Loris, I *love* fried green tomatoes. I’ll happily grab that recipe and try it as soon as possible.
Josh,
My favorite addition to grilled cheese is actually Morning Star veggie bacon. Note, I am an omnivore, but I find that I really like the morning star fake bacon in sandwiches.
Another Pygmy Loris recipe: Grilled Cheese.
Shredded Mexican Blend Cheese
Morning Star Fake Bacon
Tasty bread (I like potato bread for this)
Prodigious amounts of butter (3-4 Tbsp for a small skillet.)
Prepare the fake bacon in the microwave. While it’s cooking, heat a skillet over medium. Melt enough butter in the skillet to form a small puddle in the bottom (I usually use a small skillet for butter conservation). Put two pieces of fake bacon on the cheese and top the sandwich with another piece of bread. Place in the puddle of melted butter. Cook until crispy on one side and the cheese has started to melt. Lift the sandwich out of the skillet, and add a little bit more butter. Flip the sandwich and cook the other side until golden brown. Serve with ketchup. It’s sooooo good.
If you cook it this way, the bread sucks up the melted butter while it cooks and produces a divine flavor. OTOH, it’s probably terribly unhealthy :)
Great veggie stock recipe, thanks! Yes, it’s always best to make one’s own, I just never think to do it (same thing with chicken stock). Then, I find myself without any on hand when I want to make something. Stock is way more important than some give it credit for – it turns something bland into actual food.
@John Morales – Okay, buster. If you’re gonna make fun of us yokels and yanks, then you need to pony up that paella recipe. Right here. in Teh Thread.
John:
No. You’re not getting me to part with my Sel Gros. Nuh uh.
John Morales,
My mother and I have always used a hand mixer for this step, but otherwise the recipes are remarkably similar :P
Pixelfish #340. Ew! And I thought I was being gross.
Josh, Eh, I used to cook lots of stir fries, Thai and Vietnamese noodles and curries, the odd mango salad and stuff like that. Then I got lazy and just cooked simple pastas and burritos and things.
A few months ago I went vegetarian without learning any vego recipes, so now I just throw whatever veg is in the fridge or freezer in the pan with store-bought Indian curry sauce. That’s when I’m not subsisting on cereal and (free range) eggs on toast.
I’m not getting any less fat, though. I should really think about getting some exercise.
I think he’s also offering log-in cred to Pharygulites who want to post there
sure am.
anyone who wants to can post there, make changes, edits, attach files, make comments, etc.
just send your email to ichthyicATcrackergateDOTcom
and I’ll make a login for ya.
note that I just am hosting it and made a basic placeholder.
If someone wants to volunteer some time to make it purty and somehow organized, feel free!
I have job interviews to prep for, liver ailments to overcome, and the last vestiges of summer to try and enjoy before it starts raining here again, so I simply don’t have the time to do any design work on it.
here it is again, for those that missed it:
http://sites.google.com/a/crackergate.com/pharyngula-recipes/
enjoy!
Josh,
I haven’t tried that. Like I said, I learned to make them country style which means nor wet ingredients to get the coating to adhere, but I’m going to try that with my first batch this year :)
Caine,
I have never heard of putting tomatoes in veggie broth. I’ll try it next time I make the stuff. Even though I’m an omnivore I sometimes cook for my vegetarian friends and I end up using canned broth because my freezer only has chicken and beef broth in it.
ambulocetacean, really, don’t you read your
evil manualsHarry Potter? A bezoar is a very handy thing to have around in case someone tries to poison you.@Pygmy – I like meat alternatives when they’re good, so I’ll have to try the Morning Star fake bacon, thanks (we may be excommunicated for this heresy, you realize?).
@ All – My friend just sent me this hilarious email exchange between a fundie “school chaplain” and a very snarky, very funny atheist parent who had fun defacing a permission slip sent to him asking if his kid could go to some kind of Easter passion play. Seriously, it’s really funny:
http://27bslash6.com/easter.html
Josh,
<groan>
Alas, my grandma made the best, my mum (she’s 79 now) makes it allright, and I never quite got the knack of it.
<blush>
Best I’ve made has been kinda soggy, though the flavour was kinda alright. See, the thing is, you don’t stir it, yet it comes out fluffy and a little caramelised on the bottom, if done property. And you need (I forget the name) Spanish rice, or Arborio at a pinch (which is what my mum uses).
<slinks away in shame>
@Josh,
If you’re going to eat the Morning Star stuff straight up I recommend preparing it in a skittel. It gets a bit crispier than the microwave.
Pygmy Loris, as I said, it’s a very basic broth, and seriously tweakable. I don’t put the tomatoes in, I don’t like ’em in broth. :D Mine is much more herbed, and I do a bit of veg roasting before tossing them in the pot and all. I don’t think I ever make it the same way twice. Then my husband will go make it, and tweak his way, so…it varies!
But which color? They come in rainbow variety. . .
ambulocetacean,
Don’t worry. A lot of my “recipes” that I cook on a regular basis are some version of cut up veggies, stir fry, add store bought sauce of some kind.
BTW I just realized that should be skillet in my last post not skittel.
Josh,
I see you caught that before I could submit my correction :)
Caine, Oh really? I should stock up on bezoars then. I shall start slicing open the local wildlife immediately.
Pygmy Loris, Yeah, the random stuff I’ve been throwing together doesn’t taste too bad. I guess food is food. I love my rice cooker.
Pygmy: I couldn’t help myself. It was so cute and funny:)
Caine,
All broths/stocks are tweakable if you ask me. I have a recipe that calls for beats, but I don’t want my stock to look like blood :)
My garden goal this year is to grow everything I need for stock, except the chickens. Even though my garden is in a tiny, tiny village, there are ordinances against “farm animals,” so I can’t have any chickens. Cows are also out of the question, but that’s mostly a matter of cost and space.
Gah, not again…that should be beets not beats!
ambulocetacean,
Leftover stir-fried veggies make a great filler for wraps. I like to put a couple of pieces of provolone cheese on a tortilla, add some rice lightly drizzled with what ever sauce I used on the veggies and the add the leftover veggies. This has served as my lunch many a time. For omnivores a tasty bit of sliced oven roasted turkey or chicken is good too.
Pygmy Loris, yes, I can’t wait to get the garden going here, but we aren’t free from frost danger until May 15th. Chickens. My husband wants to keep chickens. I keep pointing out that the zoo is big enough already. I don’t know, maybe. It’s not like we can’t get fresh, organic eggs or fresh, organic chicken meat. Hell, you can wander over to the Muddy Creek Saloon for fresh eggs. We already get beef, organic and grass fed, local. We go in with some other people, for a 1/4 cow.
I would like a goose or two though. Just because they are mean bastids, they are great watchbirds. Had one when I was a kid, used to chase people walking by. We haven’t ever bothered to dig a pond though, and you have to have one for geese.
Pygmy Loris, Oh wow. That sounds great.
BTW, before the q-u-a-c-k comes back, are you guys all across Google Sidewiki? It lets you post reviews for websites that anyone can see by clicking their Sidewiki button when they’re looking at the site.
The awesome Dr Rachie, of the recent Twitter awards fame, did a great one for this slimy Australian homeopathic vaccination site. I added a much inferior one, which pushed hers down a bit, which was annoying.
I don’t know if site owners can get Sidewiki entries taken down, or even how long the whole thing can last, since it seems a free-for-all for defamation. But it seems like there’s effectively no such thing as libel on the internet, except of course in Britain.
Dr Rachie’s review seems to have disappeared altogether. I wonder what’s up with that.
I’m hoping to start my first container garden. I’m tired of all the herb bundles we get from the store going bad before we can use them again. It would be nice to pinch them as needed.
Pixelfish, herbs do very well in containers, as long as they have good light. It’s fab to have fresh, nothing like it. You can cut and hang the excess, so you have dried too.
pixelfish,
There’s also the issue of cost. I was at the store last spring to buy a few things including fresh basil for Thai curry. The little package was just over $3.00, but I could buy a whole plant with way more leaves on it for $3.50. Needless to say, I bought the plant. Usually I buy my annual herbs at the farmer’s market, though. They usually have the varieties that do best in this area.
Caine,
Last freeze is usually the first week of April around here, but it looks like we may not have another one this year. My garden chives have already come back. I used a few clippings on my baked potato tonight :)
BTW I just realized that should be skillet in my last post not skittel.
FTR that’s my second-favorite kind of typo.
John M., re “sea salt”: I heartily recommend people use iodised salt regularly, at least for table salt.
I kinda think sea salt has iodine in it in decent proportions—iodized salt is mostly recommended for folks who live inland and/or don’t eat seafood. Iodized salt screws up some kinds of recipes, though tonight I can’t think of what kind. But it prevents goiters as well as cretinism.
… mah Auntie Ron (Sullivan) – I am accepting new GLOP applications and you’re on the short list.
I much appreciate and am flattered the inclusion, hon, but I’m No Lady.
I am fairly short, though, and sometimes I list a bit.
Holy good lovin shit, as my sainted mother would say—it’s raining!! Outside! On my street! All over the damned mulberry flowers! It’s knocking the pollen down! I may live!!! I’m gonna get up and dance a little Irish jig! And then I’ll take a deep breath!!!!! Joyjoyjoyjoyjoy!
Ambulocetacean, I love your recipes. More please.
“Wossname the mathematician’s”
Tom Lehrer
Yes, him. Thanks. Seriously.
Is this where I go on a rant about being a professional writer who never did learn to touch-type and is now enjoying what will probably be a rest-o-life spell of (OK, not stroke-grade) nominal aphasia?
Ach, I’ll leave it to your imagination.
But. RAIN! I can open the windows! Whoopeeee!
Good night or good day, gentle people. I sign off with some Joy Division. This is the way we step inside.
Good night, Janine. I have to go off myself, I find myself having to do another morning thing.
Pygmy Loris #366
re: the beet colour problem
Include the beet tops as well as the roots. The resulting hue is kinda browny-grey, but that is easier to deal with than that old-blood-clot colour with just beetroot.
I have also used spinach and swiss chard.
Good night Janine and Caine. I’m going to finish watching Star Trek: TNG and then off to bed.
John Morales on iodized salt – yes, for standard table salt OR for general recipes, iodized is probably the way to go. However, for salt that is kinda crusted or sprinkled on, sea salt provides a wonderful flavour that can NOT be emulated with mere table salt. I first learned this when I tried to make the Pioneer Woman’s potatos (see link above) and she recommended using it liberally. (Sea salt used liberally on things like potatoes ends up bringing out the flavour, whereas the same amount of table salt….tastes SALTY. You can also brine meat with sea salt without going overly salty as well.)
But the iodine in regular salt does keep a lot of people from having goiter or other thyroid issues. I keep both in my cupboard.
ronsullivan, please don’t encourage me.
Arsch des Kindes durch einen Bambusstuhl (serves one)
Ingredients:
1 baby
1 bamboo chair
Method:
Sit baby on bamboo chair
Crawl underneath bamboo chair
Nibble off bits of baby arse that push through gaps in bamboo weave
For larger portion size, apply downward pressure to baby.
ambulocetacean,
All of the raw meat recipes are creeping me out. Everyone knows that baby tastes best roasted to medium rare in a convection oven :)
kiyaroru,
I’ll have to try that. Maybe I’ll make some small, experimental batches of stock to discover what new combinations I like.
Pygmy Loris, just think of it as infant tartare. It’s not to everyone’s taste, but still.
ambulocetacean#382
I think you are deeply disturbed.
Is it easier to unload a truckload of bowling balls or a truckload of (dead) babies?
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m still posting this. Please don’t dungeon me.
Contradictory lore: I once heard that cannibals think the tastiest part of a human is the palms of the hands. But I always remembered that story from the Holey Bib-blee where the rebellious general throws Jezebel down from her tower and the dogs of the street eat all of her but the palms of the hands. (There was an excellent engraving in my copy of the Bib-blee showing a defiant Jezebel, but strangely no hungry dogs.) Anyway, so who was right? The cannibals or the biblical dogs?
Ah, I have my satellite dishes back, yay !! My only hobby so to speak, long neglected, but today I did some serious retail therapy in the satellite store !
From the news desk :
New human species discovered in Russia
Irish bishop resigns
kiyaroru, I’m not really all that disturbed (I hope). I’m just reformatting colourful old Australian sayings like “I’m so hungry I could eat the crutch out of a low-flying duck” and “I’m so hungry I could eat a baby’s arse through a bamboo chair.”
One of my all-time faves is “I’d fuck a black snake with a festered arse as long as you held its head.” That’s not really a recipe, though.
Anyway, you’ll get a break from my blathering for a while. Tomorrow my girlfriend and I are flying up to Queensland so she can pick up a car. We’re gonna take our time driving back to Melbourne.
From the article linked by Rorschach: “This really surpassed our hopes,” says Svante Pääbo, senior author on the international study and director of evolutionary genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
That has to be the coolest name I’ve ever seen. Double diaereses = awesome.
WRT Cannabilism.
When I was gorwing up in the deep north ( cue Deliverance music) my old man was the closest surgeon of ANY type to PNG so he used to fly up there (on his own dime- what a trooper) every month or so for a few days and just operate the “living shit” (his words not mine) out of anything that moved. The PNG government has officially banned cannablism for about 50 years or so but tell that to some of the more remote hill tribes that very rarely see anyone outside their tribe let alone give a shit about any legislation that interferes with their long cultural practice ( am I being too PC there? It is about eating another fucking HUMAN afterall!!). Anyhooo Dad reckons some of the older folk, ones that had come down to intergrate for whatever reason into the urban areas, could actually remember eating people flesh. Weirdly I am more intrigued as to why this was even a topic of concversation with the average patient but Old Man cannot remmeber.
This was confirmed to me by an Anthropologist I studied under during my B.Sc and who had done her PhD in something or other up there. She went one step further and theorised that the practice was possibly still alive and kicking up in the hills. But no one was gonna drag her up there to study it. Just in case.
At any rate I have googled a news article that possibly has the COOLEST title in the planet. ….enjoy, for your mirth and possible envy
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1560483/Cannibal-tribe-apologises-for-eating-Methodists.html
Bride of Shrek,
Your old man sounds like a groovy old man. And you have a science degree as well as a law degree? Wow. I went to university once, but only to see a concert by Scatterbrain – remember that song (Hey Dude) Don’t Call Me Dude?
I thought I once read something about cannibals in Papua New Guinea getting some sort of human mad-cow prion disease, but Wikipedia reckons that’s not entirely confirmed.
Re: Missionaries getting eaten, well, they should stop being fricking missionaries. If not for their own good for the good of the people they convert.
Whenever I read about Christians being slaughtered in Nigeria, India or Indonesia, I get pissed off at the missionaries who converted them as well as at the Muslims (or whoever) that killed them. I even despise the Protestant dicks who are converting Catholics in Latin America. What is there to be achieved by fragmenting relatively religiously homogenous societies that already adhere to a slightly different form of your own stupid religion?
Oh, and the Muslim missionaries who are f*cking around with the Mayans in the f*cked-up southern Mexican state of Chiapas. I despise them too.
Ambulocetacean
well yeah, there’s a couple more there also but this should not be assumed as any form of intelligence nor love of academia. It’s because I still haven’t fucking worked out what I want to be when I grow up.
I actually thought that was an absolute fact. Must do some more reading and see what the latest research says. Personally I would always err on the side of caution and pass on the human brains on the menu though.
See now, I think we should extend this train of thught to anyone who “missionaries” to your front door. If you could fire up the BBQ and cook up the latest of the bloody mormons/jehovah’s witnesses/whatnots that come to your door it could provide a reasonable form of sustainance whilst simultaneously doing the rest of the neighbourhood a favour.
Also, I am now the extremely proud owner of a real Crocoduck tie !! Since I haven’t worn a tie ever in my life, I have hung it from a wall for now, but who knows, it might come in handy at TAM or something in the future !
Well if they thought this was something that could happen to them it would surely separate the wheat from the chaff as they say, and they would have to be really really committed to the cause to knock on your door ! I have a suspicion my new neighborhood might be fishing grounds for JW and the like, see what happens !
In more random news, I bought a bottle of Ouzo 12 today, and am looking forward to drinking it over the next
weekyear, 1/3 Ouzo 2/3 water or with a bit of ice half half, that’s the way…:-)In traditional “spam the open threads” fashion, here’s another link to one of my rants.
http://www.kobrascorner.com/fury/skeptic-critic.php
Oh, and I got up at 0630 this morning to fulfil patriotic duties, and had to wait 112 minutes to see the winning goal .
pics?
It’s because I still haven’t fucking worked out what I want to be when I grow up.
wait, what’s this all this talk about “growing up”?
I recommend avoiding that at all costs.
oh, and don’t get old, either.
two worst things that could happen to anyone!
I don’t know how to bind a tie, otherwise I’d put a pic on FB lol…
And here I was having a crisis about my chosen profession at age 25. Being a programmer sucks majorly at times.
25
25??
lol
I’ve know people to go back and get their PhD’s at 45!
you still have time.
I, too, appreciate all the recipes, but I have to say that I really can’t do those that call for hours and hours of boiling, roasting and simmering.
As it is I try to limit cooking time as much as possible and preferably leave stuff to finish on the latent heat. Electricity isn’t cheap.
25…1992, I was in med school, one way ticket, no way out and I wasnt totally happy with my choice at the time.
I do think your choices around that age are vital, had I done law I could own some small city’s forest by now, instead of being in debt over my ears lol.
But hindsight is always 20/20, so in reality you just have to do what seems right at the time…:-)
@391: I don’t think you need to worry about PCness in re funerary cannibalism. I wouldn’t care to chow down on my dead relatives myself, but unless you’re killing them off specially, I don’t think it’s that big an issue.
@403: I recommend to you large, heavy-lidded cast-iron casserole pots such as from Le Creuset. Lots of dishes can be pot-roasted or smoored in a heavy dish like that over a very low heat or in a very low oven.
In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have juxtaposed those two responses in the one reply. Allow me to specify that I have no experience of cooking human flesh in Le Creuset pots.*
*As far as you know.
Kudos for knowing what a diaeresis (or two) is (are), but these are umlauts – or whatever the Finnish equivalent name is. I think &lgä> is /æ/while &lga> is regular /a/. There are two “ä”s to signify length, so it’s just /æː/, not /a.a/ as I guess it coulda been with a diaeresis.
Thanks. But I’d like to make some money first.
My guess is that it’s be like with other meat, young and tender baby meat should be grilled, barbecued, or fried. Old one should be stewed, the older the longer. Le Creuset type pots guarantee best result for that. But I guess it also depends on which part of the flesh we’re talking about.
Disclaimer: these are only wild guesses. I have no experience with cooking or eating human flesh.
Ichthyic – Buffybot haz Ravelry? Is it an open group?
Heh. That’s been my lunch every day for the last week – I’m on a vegetable kick something fierce. Finally made some naan bread yesterday to go with, but I wasn’t to thrilled with the recipe I used for it.
As for salt, I’ve bizarrely become a real snob. I’ll use the iodized in recipes so I get my iodine in, but for table sprinkling I almost only use kosher or sea salt now. This has just happened in the last few months, and I’m not sure what to think about it. It’s not that I’m trying to be a snooty gourmand, it really does taste that much better.
Pixelfish #329
Or you can make your own vegetable stock.
2 tbsp olive oil
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and cut in half
2 large onions (yellow or Spanish, whatever’s on hand)
2 leeks, cut in half length-wise and thoroughly cleaned
6 ribs of celery, cut in thirds
8 carrots, unpeeled and cut in thirds
3 parsnips, unpeeled and cut in thirds
1 bulb of fennel, cut in quarters
14 cups (3.5 liters) water
2 bay leaves
Heat a stockpot over medium-high heat and add the olive oil. Add the garlic, onions, leeks, celery, carrots, parsnips and fennel. Sauté for ten minutes, stirring frequently. Add the water and bay leaves. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes to an hour. Strain through a fine mesh strainer or a colander lined with cheesecloth. Discard solids.
The stock can be refrigerated for a week, frozen for six months, or pressure canned for a year.
Never, and that’s NEVER, cook with a wine you’re not willing to drink. Most of what’s called “cooking wine” is nasty stuff the vintners couldn’t even sell on the bum wine market.
Back to the roots of the endless thread….
Rorschach’s journal, October 13, 1985
Funny you should say that – my wife has just got hers at exactly that age; clearly it can be done.
I’m a bit late on the cooking-on-TV shows and I blame the time difference (might even be partly true!).
I enjoy Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. Yes, he can swear away like a trooper but usually when the situation warrants it – like when the food storage is so bad (good word that – garbage is even better) that the owner risks poisoning his clientele. And the owner does not seem to either know or care. There are strict laws about that in the UK (as I hope there are in the US). What’s more, they are applied. (** digression)
Welcome back if you went to the digression … As I was saying before I so rudely interupted myself … Gordon can swear like a trooper and he is better at it than most. However, there are many times when it just is not appropriate and he uses a quiter approach. Last night there was a programme where he was working with a great sushi chef who needed no one to tell him how to cook (or not cook). He and his family, however, were disfunctional and while there was cooking and restaurant management there was a need for gentleness and helping a family to come back together again. Somewhat gooey and over the top for my taste but he does seem to know how to work with different sorts of people.
Some of them need the full-on treatment. Many do not. It should also be remembered that the restaurants have cried out for help (and, boy, do they need it). Sometimes that needs rough treatment to wake people up to reality. Sometimes it does not. Gordon seems to know the difference.
** In the UK there is a trend towards hygeine and food safety audits leading to the awarding of stars which locally have become a feature of point of sale advertising. For example, the local chippie was the first in town to get the top-rated 5 star award and he has mounted the certificate (enlarged) where customers can see it. As I see it, the fish and chips might be aweful (they aren’t, see previous) but at least they won’t give you food poisoning and kill you.
[end digression]
Ichthyic – Buffybot haz Ravelry? Is it an open group?
LSG is the “engaging” :) part of ravelry.
unfortunately, yeah, you have to ask for an invite.
usually takes about a week.
I know there are a few pharyngulites that spend time on LSG too.
Here they use smileys. It has to be very happy, or they’ll return to ensure their recommendations are being met. And the certificate has to be displayed publicly. There’s no pride involved, it’s a simple matter of being allowed to sell food.
But hindsight is always 20/20, so in reality you just have to do what seems right at the time…:-)
that’s true too.
I’ve often wondered how my life would have turned out if I had taken my undergrad prof’s offer to do my grad work in marine chemistry at UCSB, instead of doing fish behavior at Berkeley.
I can’t see I would have chosen chemistry over a chance to study fish in the tropics, though.
I figure I’m more “interesting” now, if not perhaps as financially sound.
:)
working on that last part, though. fingers crossed.
May I suggest a career as an economist? There’s no heavy lifting. You spend time in the outdoors while walking from your car to your office. The pay can be generously described as mediocre. Plus you get to use words and phrases like hyperbolic discounting and nonparametric.
.. amd I’m starting mine at the age of
2940.[dry humour] Apparently us old farts aren’t completely washed up and have something to look forward to other than Soylent Green.
It’s not umlaut either since it doesn’t indicate sound shift, it’s an independent letter.
Pääbo is Swedish, though. That explains the -bo suffix (‘dwelling’), but I don’t know whence ‘Pää’. (It’s a Finnish word meaning ‘head’, but it could just as likely be a twisted spelling of something else. Like the name “Wahlöö”)
You can always use Christian Salt.
Reading all these recipes has made me hungry. I’m currently sitting at my desk, sipping some peach ginger tea and munching on a half-loaf of home made light French bread.
What the hey, here’s the recipe:
(Also makes a great pizza crust. Roll it out flat instead of rolling it (or was that too obvious?)).
Thanks, windy. I should leave the armchair linguistickery to David.
–o–
Bah!
You call yourselves atheists?! I use nothing but baby-tears to salt my food.
BoSOM
Young lady, you can’t officially be considered an old fart until you have your AARP card or the Aussie equivalent.
;)
A 40 year old claims to be an “old fart”? It is to laugh. She’s barely a middle aged fart.
Old Fartiness is a state of mind, not a number on any certificate.
Oh, thankyou people who deny my my “old fart” status but you know, I kind of like it. It gives me the leverage to me a bit cantankerous an tell poeple to get off my lawn and get away wih it.
On the flip side, as I sail into my 40’s (only having been here for 2 months) I find I’m in a new bracket in terms of sexuality.
I find women my age really, really stunning but this doesn’t seem to be so for men in general. We might have a few more wrinkles, we might not have have the taught thighs of a 25 year old and *shock horror* we may even have some stretch marks on our belly from pregnancies but why does that seem to bring us lower down the spectrum of “hotness” for men?
Wait… you mean I’m not allowed to be cantankerous at age 20? :-)
Walton
You are the exception to the “rule”. You honey, are allowed to be cantankerous, you have a brain bigger than I ever did at your age and you certainly use it better than I ever did way back then.
I went back to uni at 27 and finished my BS at 29 and have finally started my chosen profession. Sort of. I had started my chosen profession, but that didn’t work out and now I’m doing something close but not quite, but I’m happier because the workplace environment is much better. Did I have a point or am I rambling again? Oh yeah. 25 is not that bad, that’s pretty much the same boat I was in and it works out fine. Though I did get asked a lot if I was a grad student. Shoulda just said yes.
My wife is
18 yearsolder than you but I still find her extremely sexy. So go ahead, flaunt your stretch marks at me, I’ll take my wife’s slightly less than nubile body any day.Why, thank you. *blushes at unexpected compliment*
I think you overestimate my intellectual abilities, though. I’ve spent the last few days immersed in revising contract law (which, as I’m sure you remember, is quite sensationally dull), and it is not going well. :-(
Nerd of Redhead @ #422:
I’ve been getting membership offers from AARP since I was 25. So do I qualify?
I recall a professor once defining middle age as when you stop eying the coeds, and start eying the coed’s mothers. An extension of that would be you are an old fart when you start eying the coed’s grandmothers.
The hottest part of any woman is what is between her ears. And we have some very hot women here.
BoSOM (@425):
Not all men, thank you very much!
First, we could quite obviously fill the remainder of this subThread with the names of women internationally renowned for their hotness who are north of the 40th parallel… not to mention an equivalent number of famous lovelies who’ll be reaching 40 Any Second Now™.
But I grok that you’re not necessarily referring to women whose profession is, in some sense, being beautiful. Even there, though, I suspect the degree to which men fetishize visible youthfulness is overstated. There are certain things “everyboy knows” about What Men Want in a Woman© that are, in my experience, greatly exaggerated, and the idea that men won’t look at you if you look older than 20 is one of them (the other big misconception is that men only like enormous boobs). 30 has always been a hot age, and I honestly think 40 is the new 30.
To invoke the meatspace equivalent of Rule 34, I invite you to sashay on down to your local Emporium of Adult Arts and Literature, where I’m reasonably confident you’ll find a section titled Mature. Of course, I would never suggest that porn is any sort of reliable guide to how women (or men, for that matter) should feel about themselves, but the existence of this market niche should serve as a corrective to the assumption that men only like youth. What’s more, I’m guessing most women who are, like you, just barely 40 couldn’t get cast in 40+ porn… not because they look too old, but because they don’t look old enough to fit the niche.
IOW: Don’t worry; be sexy!
OTOH, I’m the guy who’s confessed to thinking Helen Mirren and Judi Dench are hawt, so you might need to calibrate my opinion a bit! ;^)
‘Tis
You’re comments are heartening because it’s kind of strange being in this bracket. I’m 40, single but have small children. This is really unattractive to a lot of men. I’m not looking for a partner in any way but, as most humans would admit, I’d like a companion on some level that I can enjoy and relate to.
Damn…Pharyngula is now becoming dating website.
Caine..my love, my honey, can you chat to your hubbby, I’d consider consider to the US?
25?
I’m 28, dropped out of grad school, and don’t know what I want to do anymore.
It sucks.
I keep thinking. I can’t turn thirty like this. I never once felt young but now I feel like a waste.
*sighs*
But if it will be fine for me eventually it will be fine for you eventually too. I don’t think there’s any shame in being older in school.
So funny. I was under the impression you were more like 23. You know what, Walton? I don’t want to scare you but I was much more cantankerous and stodgy when I was 20 than I am now :P
It falls to me to be the dick:
There is nothing quite so boring to me (personally, your M obviously Vs) as reading recipes.
Bo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-RING!
that is my OPINOIN
To be completely honest, even skimming past them–seriously, 2 full laptop screens to make a loaf of fucking bread?! really?–is becoming a Problem for me. Don’t get me wrong (jus’ git me) I do not expect nor even request that anybody change their Threadbehavior on my account. As with most of the rest of life, ever the iconoclast, I am resigned to the reality of permanent low-grade annoyance. What’s more, I will never mention this again. [/whine]
And–but wait–am I given to understand that many of you otherwise fine folks actually choose to spend leisure time watching other people cooking, on TV?
*shakes head slowly in befuddled wonderment*
What if you eye both? Hypothetically.
Walton
Honey, I’m feeling for you at this point in your studies (because I know it’s totally hard shit and you’re not seeing the end as clearly as you could be)and and because I know you have a bent for NGO work can you email me sometime at laingshort at hotmail.com. I have a few contacts in the UK that may be able to help you in your post grad work if you want to get in our field.
BoS, people are still interested in my mother and she’s almost 60.
My aunt got married at 55.
The people who wouldn’t even give you a chance because you’re 40 aren’t worth it. It’s good. You have one more asshole filter than I do :(
There was a time, and not so long ago, really…OK it was long ago…when I would have laughingly agreed wholeheartedly with such sentiments, and raised my beer and/or bong to toast PeterPanism with all jocular sincerity.
Then I had a kid.
About three months before, I “grew up” and about a year afterward I “got old.”
Wouldn’t change the situation for all the world. A few pesky details such as personal happiness aside.
@436: Nigella Lawson is a big hit on UK TV for her cooking shows. She’s gorgeous, smart, cooks fantastically self-indulgent meals and eats them with gusto, and is… nicely curved. Many people would love to spend some time with Nigella and a large bottle of olive oil. Mmmm.
On an entirely different note, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is great, partly because he looks like he’s just climbed out of a hedge and gives the impression that he would happily eat a human being if he could get away with it.
Shorter version: it’s not just about the food.
I think I can trump the PhD-age brackets. My dad just signed up for a PhD at age 67. I feel somehow miffed that he gets to be a student again.
Either young middle age, or a dirty (old, middle aged, young; pick one) man.
Or normal.
[/Hypothetically
Ol’Greg, you’re still nowhere near the wasted stage. I’ve known 35 year olds who still live with their parents (and have never had a job for more than 6 months at a time). Heck, I know someone who was crashing on a friend’s couch until the age of 43 before he got a decent job and enough money for his own apartment.
How “old” I am (mentally and physically) crystallized for me the other day when my son was getting a haircut and I found myself arguing about how long he wanted to keep it. Not that I wanted it too short, just trimmed up nicely, and suddenly I thought “I’m not just an old fuddy parent, I’m an old fuddy parent from 1963“.
.. see this is why, whining about how men don’t find 40 year old women attractive aside, I’m SAVING MYSELF FOR SVEN
Since Pygmy Loris (@349) mentioned grilled cheese sandwiches and somebody (Opus? @?) chimed in from Food-lanta, maybe I can get my memory refreshed on something:
Years ago, I had the Best.Grilled.Cheese.Sandwich.Evarrrr at the Buckhead Diner. I remember that it was a double-deck sandwich (i.e., 3 slices of bread) and incorporated 3 cheeses, one of which I’m pretty sure was Jarlsberg… but otherwise I’ve forgotten the details. I’d like to try approximating this sandwich at home: Has anyone else here had it? Recall the other ingredients? Enquiring minds want to know!
I’m aware of that on one level. I look back and I’ve done a lot and overcome a lot. I have a good job that some people actually study just to get. I have a house to live in. I just…. had bigger ambitions, and I can’t stand feeling like there isn’t anywhere to go from here or rather that I have another limit imposed on me as I continue to age.
Back when I was young I had promised myself that if I didn’t have a book published, a PhD, or anything from a list of things I do that I wanted to be successful in by the age of 30… well let’s just say I don’t have much sympathy for myself that way. It’s all pass/fail but then I’m kind of brutal at my core. Especially when it comes to myself. I can do a lot of things.
I’ve done a lot of things and had unexpected success in many areas.
It’s not enough. I want to do something extremely well. If I did something extremely well I wouldn’t be here right now. So whatever it was, it wasn’t good enough, obviously. And here I am.
I know it’s stupid but I was sad to think that I’m too old to try out for American Idol. I would never want to. But I don’t like being too old to. I’m just not ready to settle down and compromise, buy some symbols of material success, and wait to die.
Ol’ Greg:
Paint! Write music! Sing!
OK, that’s selfish of me to want for you the life of a Starving Artist®… but the world would be better for it, I’m quite confident.
Damn, woman, don’t you have any taste? Sven’s a Deadhead. That’s almost as bad as a Parrothead (except Jimmy Buffett is still alive).
A song just for Sven:
That’s a feature, not a bug.
A song for Ol’Greg:
Well. Dames Judi and Maggie (Smith) are hawtsome.
Becoming?
hehe… sorry guys I guess I’m just a little disappointed in my level of achievement.
Whining about it won’t help though :P
Sili (@403):
Wow, that’s a reality check for me: I never would’ve guessed there were places (among places that have electrical service at all) where the incremental cost of a kW/hr was so high that limiting cooking time was a significant economic matter. Yowzah!
My reading of The Thread has been fairly haphazard, so I apologize if I’m saying anything that’s been said already.
Interesting typo; funny response [giving Josh a spelling berth].
Gordon Ramsey… I think part of the problem is that some people have only/primarily seen the US version of Kitchen Nightmares, which is at times entertaining but quite bad generally. The ads are even worse. In the British version (available on BBC America), he behaves quite reasonably, often in the face of abject stupidity. This (the original) version is very good. Hell’s Kitchen is painful – I’ve always said that Top Chef shows the fun and exciting side of professional cooking while Hell’s Kitchen shows the unpleasant side. (They all smoke far too much, though. …Cigarettes, that is, not meats or cheeses.)
I love Top Chef and have been watching since the first season.* I liked Masters, though not nearly as much. I’m so glad someone else brought up Just Desserts! I saw the promo early in the last season and mentioned it to some people, but then that was it. I haven’t heard anything about it since. What happened? If were going to start in April, I’d think they’d be hyping the hell out of it.
As to why I enjoy these shows, I would say for many of the same reasons I enjoy watching sports. I find aesthetic pleasure in watching people who are highly skilled at something and passionate about it perform. The more I understand about the difficulty and the history, the more interesting it is. I love food(, dance, art, music,…), but I imagine that even a well done Top Quilter might capture my attention.
:(
:)
Oh, and please put more of the recipes on Ichthyic’s site.
*The vegetarian episode this season made me want to throw a pot through the screen, though.
Well, I haven’t pinned down the exact wattage of the stove yet (I’m working my way through the appliances), but I’m not enough of a gourmet that I want to cook something for eight hours, if I’ll appreciate something done in less than an hour just as much.
I guess if I did soup or the like in the 10 l pot, but I don’t have enough room in the freezer to then save such a portion anyway. As it is I’m loath to fire up the oven unless I make enough bread to fill it. And if I’m going to cook something else in it, I like to get some bread done while it’s warm anyway.
Last year I paid $0.32/kWh, dunno what it’ll be this year, but I don’t see any reason to crank up that number. (We don’t have nuclear here because of the scaredycat polis, so power=coal.)
Heavens, you’re all so young! I’ll be 60 this September (and still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up). I’ve got two kids just about to embark on college, and in so many ways they’re wiser than I am. Neither was raised with religion: David just doesn’t care, and Tori is too logical for it. Tori and I took a comp. religion class together at her junior college last spring, and Tori just doesn’t understand why people would make up stories like that. She wasn’t raised with a sense of guilt for simply existing (original sin) and so doesn’t understand the “charms” of the whole notion of salvation.
I know I’ll never get that PhD I promised myself long years ago (anthropology) or publish that novel (can’t write dialog to save my non-existent soul) or any of the other things I wanted to do when I was 25. But what the hell. I’m hanging out at places like this (and getting the nerve to post every now and then) and still learning stuff, so in the immortal words of Granny Weatherwax, I aint’t ded yet.
In the vein of “I have accomplished nothing with my life”, I was grading assignments today and found one student had linked to a neat PBS Nature video – starring someone I went to grad school with.
*sigh*
Back to telling students that I would prefer if they write in complete sentences.
WOW! That is high…
I use Green Mountain wind and I think that’s only at $.12/kWh. That price would kill me! Especially in the summer here. Even keeping the house at 80 F the cost of air conditioning in 100+ degree weather is pretty nasty.
Ol’ Greg: You have one more asshole filter than I do
Funny, I’ve been using something like that about a few of my own less-than-fashionable features. I generally bowdlerize it to “fool filter” for general use though.
Janis Joplin (someone else who Jim Marshall photographed) got asked if her habit of beating everyone else at pool wouldn’t put some guys off. She didn’t use the “filter” phrase but did say something to the effect that she wouldn’t want to waste time on such guys anyway.
I’m not going so far as to say “I have accomplished nothing with my life” – just that what I *have* accomplished is very different than what I’d planned when I was 25. I’ve had difficulties to overcome that I had no sense of back when I was young and invincible. I’ve had achievements that seem now to me to be greater than what I’d planned, even if they wouldn’t be so by anyone else’s standards (raising two special needs kids, but that pales by one of my best friends, who has 3 high-functioning autistic kids).
So even though I don’t have that PhD or that novel, I wouldn’t change a thing with my life, except what I can change by going forward with it.
I’ve repeatedly complained about the rents here in and around Paris. Well, for over two years now this ad has been hanging around on campus. The text says “some claim that university students don’t have housing problems” and “Damien and Mélanie, 22 and 23 years, each live with their parents”. Most likely NSFAW (not safe for American workplaces).
And while I am at it (“it” being the campus), yesterday the cafeteria served a cheesecake so, well, cheesy that it looked almost like cheese!
“WE’RE EXPERIENCING
UNPRECEDENTED TRAFFIC!
Please Wait A Few Moments
And try Again…”
The water-vascular system only works in water. It’s open to the environment.
Gulls, however, are among those that will swallow anything that fits between their jaw joints.
…interesting…
Isn’t there enough iodine in sea salt by default? It isn’t, after all, like if sea salt were NaCl pro analysi.
You must admit, though, converting to Islam in rural Mexico is an impressive act of giving the finger to the dominant culture and the expectations of society. It might also end up as part of the national identity of the Tzotzil Maya.
There was that mathematician who calculated all possible tie knots a few years ago; most are ugly, but some are appealing even though nobody had discovered them. Anyone remember details?
See, that’s where a little dose of autism comes in very handy. My career was set when I was 7. =8-)
(Assuming, of course, that I’ll ever find a job. This, too, is where the same dose of autism comes in very handy: denial of the far future, and completely misundreshtmatin’ what “far” might mean, is easy. =8-) )
No diaereses, just a typical case of Latin-Alphabet Failure: the Latin alphabet provides 5 to 6 letters for vowels, yet the Finnish language distinguishes 2 x 8 vowels… so new letters were invented* by putting dots on old ones.
* Not originally for Finnish, though.
Yes.
And “less than” is < (FIFY).
The English one even: [ɑ].
Correct.
In this spirit, I give you the infamous Estonian ice edge: jäääärne, composed of jää and äärne.
(What? No, I don’t speak Estonian. I’ve just spent one too many half nights on Wikipedia.)
Maybe you need more of some mineral or other, and the less pure salt contains it.
Or you just like the taste.
Like how true blondness comes from within.
…let’s look at it this way… if you were stupid, you’d have flunked long ago. If you had ever got in, that is.
Remember all your Molly nominations and the remarks that “this would be like giving Obama the Nobel Peace Prize”? You’ll get accepted into the OM in a couple of months. You’re slowly but surely deserving it.
(…Just… stop apologising. And apologising for apologising. :^) )
And then there are those that are cultural rather than universal even among those who have lived in that culture all their lives.
And even when this is taken into account, there’s still individual variation. Using as always myself as an example… There appears to be sexual selection on women’s lips being highly visible, either bright red or broad. Modern Western culture continues this with lipstick and silicone implants as well as a long list of clichés about “full lips”, “mouths for kissing”, “cherry mouths” and so on. None of that is for me; I much prefer narrow lips (and already did at age 10 if not earlier) and find that lipstick is, most of the time, outright disadvantageous.
(…Hey, it’s not TMI if other people openly lust after Judi Dench in the same subthread.)
BTW, I’m still pondering whether “everyboy” was a typo or fully deliberate. :-)
May I ask why?
(Uh… why you dropped out. Not why you’re 28. :-þ )
I have a great appreciation of food, but the world of cookery is a closed book to me. I seem to be pathologically incapable of preparing even the simplest dish. Even when I put a ready meal in the oven, I generally manage to over-cook it so that everything is burnt around the edges.
Perhaps for this reason, I’ve never considered cooking a recreational activity. Meals cooked by someone else are, almost invariably, much nicer than meals cooked by me; and I’ve never enjoyed the actual process of cooking in the way that some people seem to. On the other hand, I really enjoy eating good meals cooked by other people.
I feel that way even now actually on my better days. I don’t have children though. I can’t imagine. That’s an achievement in itself I think. Raising a family, that is.
I don’t know if I want children. I can’t really imagine myself having one or even being pregnant. I don’t think it has ever fully sunk in that I am female.
Honestly. I don’t even think of myself as “female” and am kind of surprised when I’m reminded that I am.
Walton:
Though I enjoy my job, it can be a very high-pressure environment (I interpret steam technology (up to 300psi) so it really is high pressure) and I am able to relax and untense by cooking. For me, cooking is a recreational activity (especially since (((Wife))) and I have a deal that I cook and she cleans up the gourmet debris). When I come across a recipe (or invent (or alter (or steal by remembering the dish by not the source)) a recipe) I need to share. One side effect of my job (you could call it an occupational hazard) is that I tend to be a story-teller rather than a teller which is why my ramblings are sometimes elyptical and meandering. You are correct. I could have shortened the recipe for the bread but that’s not who I am. When a child, I got a note on my report card that “Billy is a very verbal child.” And I guess that comes over to the writing.
According to the Onion, my horoscope for today is:
So, does this mean I’ll find a job soon?
Linky
Used to work at Company which was founded by 4 guys who met at uni (Cambridge IIRC) 3 were PHDs. The other one ended up as Chairman and CEO. When the Co. eventually went public, his share was north of £50 million (allegedly). He was then over 60, and he went back to Cambridge to get that PHD! I bet his flat wasn’t the typical student pad!
No, no, it actually is kWh, kW * h. Performance * time = energy.
Price of electricity? I pay a default of 43 € per month for an 11-m2 room, heating included. Probably I’ll get a few € back when I’ll leave on Monday, because I use less than average (especially in heating – I let the room cool down to around 18 °C for most of winter), but still, that’s the kind of expenses you have to expect in 85 % nookular France. What is it like in the USA?
I’ll try to look up the actual price per kWh later.
Do they get enough time for an exam to do that? I once flunked one because I just simply can’t write that fast by hand.
…and while fixing it for you, I wrote “gt;” instead of “>”…
Curses on Hartman, McKean, Skitt, and Bierce. Feel free to fantasize about the violence I want to do unto them all.
Billy @#464: Don’t get me wrong: I wasn’t criticising you or other people for enjoying cooking or for posting recipes! And it wasn’t me that commented on the length of the bread recipe. That was Sven.
Walton: Sorry. Ignore the part about my writing and rambling style. The part about recreational cooking was to you.
I’m only 43. But I have a 17-year-old daughter and a 19-year-old son so I claim diminished capacity. Once the kids are gone, my brain will be back to normal. Or whatever normal was when (((Wife))) and I decided to inflict another generation on the world.
I think I discussed it some where. It’s hard to give a short answer. I don’t think I can. I became very unhappy with the program, could not work in what I wanted to within that school, and once I got out of the school I had to pay off the debt I incurred while going there.
I am not usually the sort to quit something. I’m pretty ambitious and persistent, but it was very bad and I realized I was going insane with depression because I hated it there so much. Another factor was money, my parent’s divorce which brought all kinds of psychotic havoc down on the family, my own relationship’s difficulties.
I was doing 20 hours of studio work, attending classes, working 20-30 hours a week, and had a ddeadbeat roomate who left me several thousand in the hole.
I had to live nearly an hour drive from campus for reasons that get take up too much space to type. The commute was happening at a time when gas was at it’s highest and I couldn’t get a job that paid more than $200 a week in the area I lived in (basically no part time work there). Not to mention the only roads that aren’t too congested for use were toll roads.
I was poor, tired, and working my ass off for my art. The school was horrid and I don’t want to go into it but I will simply say that they did not actually have the program I was led to believe they did. I did not like my profs, felt like the criteria for review was moronic, and they did not like me. In fact at one point one asked me why I was the most interesting looking thing in the room (as opposed to the stuff for my grad review). Not to mention one piece I was told wan’t very good (failed for grad review) I later found out the prof hadn’t noticed it was an interactive video piece. He apologized but that does jack for my grade.
I got accused by a psycho art hist prof of plagiarizing my own artwork (not writing… my motherfucking art… by an art history prof!! Had to endure rampant sexism, like the fuck me or fail type. It sucked. It sucked royally. If you’re wondering why I didn’t sue, I had my reasons and those reasons were that I am completely fully aware of what that means and I knew I couldn’t take any more.
At best I felt like it was a complete waste of time and money because it really only seemed to be about how to churn out crap to sell. No one ever needs a graduate degree to figure out how to pimp shit to rich folks.
In the meantime I got a promotion and then another job offer. If I quit grad school and took the job I’d be out-earning my profs. So I did.
It’s a good job too.
When I quit though I thought I’d be more depressed but I wasn’t. I felt like a horrible pain had been pulled from me. I was sad but I really felt like some one had set a broken bone. It was such a relief.
I realized I’d been fighting just so that I wouldn’t lose. I had been fighting for ten years, working towards this and I was terrified to walk away from it. Ten years is a big investment. But ten more years would have been worse!
I didn’t want to be a failure, so I kept fighting. There’s no glory in that.
I said I’d keep making work but I didn’t. Leaving grad school and my relationship before that, I suppose had provided too much scandal. I grew to dread openings. I stopped showing my work. I hated running into anybody or answering questions about my art. I started hanging out with my co-workers more.
And I got happier.
Then I decided to go back to music and try that for a while.
Now my plan, to get my PhD in art history and my MFA in fine art seems silly. I don’t ever want to work in the awful environment I witnessed in academia (yeah I know it’s not always like that but it’s all poisoned for me anyway.) I’m not sure I ever want to make art anymore, my disgust with it all is so high at this point. It just doesn’t seem to be the way to reach people that I thought it would be.
And now… now I don’t know what?
Rorschach,
Everything I know about FC Bayern-München I learned from Die Toten Hosen.
One thing is I realize all these dreams I had in the past that my commitment to my goal pushed aside. I can’t do them all but I just hope, I really hope, that I’m not too old or too useless to do at least one of them.
Sili:
D’Oh! Of course, it’s “kWh,” not “kW/hr”! Units FAIL!
Also…
Well, that’s about twice the highest rate on this chart for the contiguous U.S., but even so…. I don’t know for sure what it takes to keep a pot simmering, but let’s estimate 500W (I suspect that’s way high, but that’ll make the SWAG I’m about to perform more conservative). In that case, simmering something for 8 hr would require expending 4 kWh, which means your cost for simmering would be $1.28. While I appreciate your desires to both be frugal and burn less coal, it’s hard to see a buck and change (or the equivalent incremental increase in coal-related CO2 release) as a real make-or-break here.
Sorry if it’s annoying of me to harp on this, and I really don’t mean to be picking on you… but I’m just now in the middle of a somewhat more consequential example of people Not Doin’ the Math™: It’s budget season in my little town, and naturally our Republican mayor’s proposed budget includes the draconian cuts required so that he can run for reelection claiming to have struggled heroically to keep taxes low in these troubled economic times.
The thing is, the local paper just did an analysis of the budget as proposed, and found that the resulting annual tax increase for an average homeowner will be $249. $249 Less that $5/week! A fraction of the cost of a single cup of coffee each workday! And yet, I’ve had people wearing $500 shoes stand in front of me and say with a straight face that “folks can’t afford these big tax increases”… and then walk to their $40,000 cars to drive away! Mind you, $249/year is the average increase, and we have a number of quite expensive homes in town… which means that the actual impact on people who might plausibly have an actual concern about being able to afford it (owners of low-end homes, renters, and apartment dwellers) will be much less than that! As someone whose income and home value are both middle-of-the-road, I’d happily see my taxes raised twice that much to avoid cuts to education, essential town staff, and maintenance of town-owned buildings and vehicles… and I’d equally happily pay my fair share of the cost of providing tax relief to those among my neighbors who honestly have trouble paying their taxes.
I think if most of my neighbors knew how small the real dollar amounts involved were, they’d agree with me that it’s a small price to pay for an adequately funded, well-run town government… but the Republicans have used some combination of innumeracy, dishonesty, and greed to convince people they just can’t afford to pay any more. This anti-tax religion is, IMHO, the gravest current threat to our society.
Sorry, Sili, to tack this rant onto your innocent comment about cooking time. I am emphatically not accusing you of “innumeracy, dishonesty, [or] greed”; you just caught me on a bad day.
If what is being cooked is a stew, or pot roast, or generally anything with a significant volume of liquid then you can always use a slow cooker. It has the added advantage that once you start the cooking it can be ignored for hours.
kW*ks/hr
Have not previously seen “performance” used that way.
A favorite series of questions for thesis-defenders:
You measured metabolic rates; what physical variable corresponds to your units of kJ/h?
And what is “power”?
And what is “energy”?
And what is “work”?
And what is “force”?
And what are “mass” and “velocity”?
they all hate me.
David:
Heh. Not only not deliberate at all, but I didn’t even notice it — despite vainly re-reading my own words numerous times — until you pointed it out! It’s funny: Earlier in my career, I had a reputation for pounding the keyboard… to the point where a coworker once complained about the noise… and now it seems my most common typos consist of missing letters, in cases where I’m pretty sure I hit the offending key, but just not hard enough for it to register.
Also, I didn’t mean to be denying individual preferences WRT what’s hot. Rather the opposite: I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard people say “well, men like…” only to have the subsequent definition of what “men like” (big boobs, full lips, blonde hair) miss my preferential “sweet spot” altogether. (As an aside, I don’t mean to say I consider any of those things as disqualifiers to hotness; they’re just not my special preferences.) Related to this: I think it’s wonderful for women to get breast implants if they want them (becasue whatever makes anyone feel good about themselves is aces with me), but when women get big fake boobs specifically because they think that’s what men like, I think it’s a tragedy.
RevBDC:
??
I don’t know what ks denotes in your expression (surely not kiloseconds?), but in any case, what my electric company bills me for is kilowatt-hours, aka kWh or kW*h. My original reference to kW/hr was just a brain fart.
Sorry. Kw*k as in “You owe me a camera” Kw*k. A measurement of the rate of how many times someone name drops.
It’s the first thing that popped into my head.
Sometimes it’s just best if I don’t say these things.
I like reading the recipes, even though I know I’m unlikely to try most of them, if only because many of them would be too spicy for my wimpy, wimpy mouth.
Ol’Greg, I’m fifty-mumble years old, and never did figure out what I want to do; at least, not with any consistency. Attention-span of a gnat, too easily distracted by the sniny, pulled too many ways at the same time, talents insufficent to support aspirations. Ah, well.
Abrupt change of subject: I’m planning to (try to) raise a tomato plant in a tub, out on the pation, hopefully out of range of my black thumb. I’ve heard/read that marigolds are good for discouraging many pests, and that basil is good for tomatos—true? Not true? Anybody have any helpful tips, hints and suggestions that they’d care to share?
Well, I think this is potentially valuable metric…
Okay, so mostly potentially amusing. Like, measure Kw*k posts on an Intersection thread, see if you can work out how badly behind he is on his meds/stressed by his own insignificance he is by the Kw*k/s rate he’s clocking…
(/Or Kw*king. Whichever.)
To: David Marjanović
Hi David
Previously in The Thread I called the UK Independent newspaper a disaster which you queried (although not giving any reason why you thought I was wrong).
Last year the Independent / Independent on Sunday group lost over £12M. It has been bought today by a Russian oligarch for £1 to include the website. He has said he will put his family’s efforts and money behind it.
Whatever you think of its politics and approach to news it is still a disaster.
Cicely: Try googling “companion planting” –you should be able to turn up lists about which plants go well together and which ones don’t. Companion planting also keeps you from having monocultured spots in your garden that will be more vulnerable to disease, rot, and insects.
http://www.seedsofchange.com/enewsletter/issue_55/companion_planting.aspx – has one such list…but there are others. (It confirms your idea that basil and tomatoes are happy together–the basil helps repel flies, among other things.)
Kw*k must be feeling ill, he’s only registering 3 kw*k/hr
Or should it be changed to kw*k/p where p=posts or comments
cecily #480
Marigolds and their scent are obnoxious to many herbivorous insects. I’ve never heard of basil being good for tomatoes. Basil adds a good flavor to tomato sauce but that’s the only connection I know of.
Cicely:
Yes, basil and tomatoes go well together. I’m not sure if they grow well together, though. When (((Wife))) and I grow our salsa garden (12 kinds of chile peppers and 5 kinds of heirloom tomatoes (total of 17 plants (we have a small yard))) we sprinkle a little bit of coal ash (about 1 teaspooon) around (not on) the tomato plants. Except for last year (when it was cool and rainy the whole summer) we get good tomatoes.
If it is your first try with tomatoes, I’d go for one of the hardy hybrids available at most nurseries. They tend to be more forgiving (though not quite as tasty) than the heirlooms. If you do want to go heirloom, try a Cherokee Purple/Cherokee Black variety (I’ve seen them under both names) — thin skin, lots of interior flesh and they ripen to a purplish black.
And they are great on a MLT sandwich.
Any herbs or plants with a strong scent (from the foliage, not flowers) are highly likely to contain some sort of natural insecticides, so both marigolds and basil will likely repel some insects. Marigolds apparently repel soil nematodes as well.
Unfortunately, neither does nothin to discourage slugs, which are the historical bane of my tomato-in-a-pot-on-the-patio attempts.
#456 Becca
Hi Becca. 60? A mere slip of a lass. I’m 65 this year and most of the way through a second B.Sc. (in Geosciences) having graduated in chemistry about 45 years ago, had a fulltime career in industrial chemistry and retired from gainful empolyment. Because I am studying with the Open University here in the UK I can do as many or as few modules as I wish.
The only problem I’ve come up with is I seem to have acquired an alter ego going by the name of Ed.
[Ed. Hi Becca!]
who always writes in italics (when he gets the html codes right).
Anyone care to admit to being older???
Since it’s getting close to garden-planting time and gardens have been mentioned a couple times recently, let me ask this: I know at least a few folks here grow hops. Last year, I bought a rhysome (sp?) from a local brewers’ supply store, but manage to procrastinate in actually putting in the ground long enough to kill it. I plan to try again this year; any advice? My understanding is that it’s one of those plants that’s almost impossible to kill once it’s established, but any hints or tips would be gratefully appreciated.
I’ll be 62 next week.
rhizome
Hey guys. I’m in an inrteresting place. How do I put a photo in my postt?
PS Ratzinger; – what a crap Pope,eh? At least JPII had some credility? More than Mrs Theresa anyway,
So how do I insert a pic on my post?
AnthonyK
Can’t kill hopes? *sigh* – I managed to kill off mint in my “garden”. That takes some doing!
*hops* I meant can’t kill *hops*
Find a pic somebody inserted before. View page source. Cut and past. Replace URL with the URL of the photo you wish to embed. Post. Worked for me the one time I tried it.
if your photo has no URL, then fuck, I don’t know.
I know velocity from TMBG.
Becca (@493 and 494):
Dang! You fixed it before I could snark about it (ever so gently, of course)! ;^)
Well, bride of Christ ‘n all…
(/Oddly, this particular phrase always makes me think of ‘Bride of Frankenstein’…)
Really, the mint in my garden are becoming weeds.
Gimbap
Steam white rice (no particular measurement, if you don’t use it all just eat it with something else)
Nori seaweed wrap
4-5 eggs
sesame seed
sesame seed oil
shredded carrots (about 5 cm in length)
cut pickled radish (same size as carrots)
spinach
salt
pepper
Optional but preferred: sliced cooked meat of some edible animal (mostly fish or pork)
Boil some spinach for ten seconds, then wash it with cold water. Squeeze out excess water from the spinach, and season it with salt, sesame seed, and sesame seed oil.
Stir-fry some shredded carrots in salt, pepper, and vegetable oil.
Crack the eggs into a bowl (possibly without the shells, but I’ve never accomplished that) and mix it. Add salt and pepper and fry it. When it’s cooked, cut the egg in a spiral shape to make it a long strip about 1 cm thick.
Mix the desired amount of rice with 2 tablespoons of sesame seed and sesame seed oil. Place the Nori on top of a flat bamboo mat (you can cover it with a zip-lock bag if you are worried about cleaning it) spread the rice evenly on the surface of the Nori. Place the strips of egg, radish, and carrot (and meat) length wise on the Rice.
Roll it and tighten the roll with the bamboo mat. Be sure the roll is tucked in.
This is one serving, so do this as many times as you want to get a desired amount.
On a side note, I hate how spring break is almost over.
One thing I can recommend for having tried many years: piss on them.
To be more precise, mix 1 part urine and 6 parts water. A great fertilizer for tomatoes: they like it, you’ll get a larger production and very tasty tomatoes.