I’m in Syracuse. I had a hellish trip trying to get here yesterday, and now I have to catch a 6am flight back home. I had a grand time with the nice people here last night (including Hank Fox and Carl Buell), but now I have to remain conscious until I get aboard my plane, which feels like it won’t be easy.
At least I’ll be getting home early today! Find something to talk about, I’ll be back in action later.
“There is a single light of science and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere” [-Isaac Asimov]
Number of translation iterations:
10: “Light and joy of every science”
25: “Light and joy, that all science”
Max: “Light of knowledge and happiness.”
“It doesn’t matter if your a christian or not to get to heaven. All that matters is that you accept the Lord Jesus Christ in your heart and truly believe in him and that is all that matters. You don’t have to be a Christian in order to do that.”
10: “Whether you’re Christian or not get to heaven. All these questions will not accept your heart to the Lord Jesus, in his opinion, all issues. Would not the Christian thing.”
25: “You are a Christian or not go to heaven. All these questions do not agree with Heart of Jesus, in his opinion, all these factors. Is this some kind of Christian.”
max: “My God, you can see the sky. No matter lies in Jesus the messiah in all areas. Christians and “how.”
– – – – – – –
“Atheism is an Anti-christian conspiracy created by the Jesuits. The final hoax in this fraud to discredit the Bible is going to be a fake staged alien invasion. Expect that to happen soon.”
10: “Atheism is a Christian Jesuit conspiracy. And fraud undermine the credibility of the Bible was wrong last letter external aggression. I hope that this will happen soon.”
25: “Jesuit is a conspiracy Christian Atheism. Last letter from external attacks and fraud undermine the credibility of the Bible better. I hope it happens soon.”
max: Christian faith in God and morals in the Bible to the sea to attack the Rebels in late really Yessuey”
– – – – –
“If we depended on scientific advance from the dogmatic atheists one sees on these kind of boards, then we would still be in the Stone Age.”
10: “If technological advances make this atheist forum addiction, again and rock.”
25: “Given the advances in addiction, an atheist and rock fields.”
max: “God Delays up outdoors”
Trying to decide what’s more annoying, recipes or translations….:-)
Methinks the CEO has adapted an unhealthy lifestyle ! All this hurried jumping in and out of planes/cars/taxis can not be good for you !
Try night shifts some day. By 0730 I usually find myself in a state of logorrhoea and emotional disinhibition.You learn to control it somewhat over the years…:-)
Fundie: “I am a bit troubled. I believe my son has a girlfriend, because she left a dirty magazine with men in it under his bed. “
10: “I’m a little disappointed. I think my son has a girlfriend, it’s because men are in bed, dirty magazines.”
25:”A little disappointed. I think my son with his girlfriend, because people are in bed, dirty sheets.”
Max: “She Disappointed, I think people are Sleeping sepram gross”
“EARTH HAS 4 CORNER SIMULTANEOUS 4-DAY TIME CUBE IN ONLY 24 HOUR ROTATION. 4 CORNER DAYS, CUBES 4 QUAD EARTH – No 1 Day God.”
10: “4 4 24 cubic geostationary rotation. Four corners and four out of four countries – God № 1”
25: “4 4 24 cubic centimeters in a circular geostationary satellites. And the four corners of four states – God № 1”
Max: “Four weeks – № 1 Lord of around about 44 of 24 cup meter.”
I can’t tell whether the Tc factor is increasing, decreasing or remaining constant…
“Never let your schooling interfere with your education.” [-Mark Twain]
10: “Never let your education interfere with your education.”
25: “Research to delay school enrollment.”
Max: “Although the registration page.”
Rorschach, I was a shift-worker¹ for just over 10 years, and it got harder — not easier — as time went by.
Yeah, one learns to cope, but it fucks you up.
Made me grumpy, too (well, even more than I am now).
I’m so very glad I quit!
—
¹ The worst kind, too: rotating shifts, morning, afternoon and night on a weekly change-over (6:15am, 2:15pm, 10:15pm) with an additional 12-hour on/12-hour off every 4 weeks.
Plus I was on-call.
It happens to me every night
Can’t sleep, the clowns will eat me
They always want to take a bite
Can’t sleep, the clowns will eat me
And if you think this isn’t real
I’ll show you wounds that never heal
To them I’m just a happy meal
Can’t sleep, the clowns will eat me
“It happens, I am every night, I could not sleep, clown I’ve always thought, do not eat the meal and sleep clowns will eat me if I do not think you really need to solve this problem, “Happy Meal plans can not able to sleep, Clown I commas”
“This happens every night, could not sleep, eat and sleep clowns clowns have always thought that if I do not really problems, food can not sleep, clown or a comma, plans must be resolved”
“To sleep, eat night Clowns, Clowns and eat in my sleep, even when ilteoir.”
Speak for yourself, dear Sir ! It’s obviously not good for you in terms of health, and family life, and social life, and uhm, pretty much everything else, but these seem to be effects confined to the time you’re actually working.
It makes me grumpy during the night, but not in general, or afterwards….But yeah, probably not good to be my Intern/resident during night shifts.(The one I had last night was actually almost reasonable, I don’t think I growled at him too much)
:P
What’s the link to the generator again? I don’t want to have to sit for ten minutes while my agéd PC loads up the old thread.
Against my better judgment, here is the link to the translator:
http://www.conveythis.com/translation.php
i despise alice cooper.
“But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.” [Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress]
10: “But I always returned to the top of the cruise, and the future of all ages will be a great bonus.”
25: “But I still go out winners in all age groups, and in the future, the road is a great gift.”
Max: “But there is always the future, as a great gift for all ages, go sailing.”
“Speak for yourself, dear Sir ! It’s obviously not good for you in terms of health, and family life, and social life, and uhm, pretty much everything else, but these seem to be effects confined to the time you’re actually working.”
10: “Self-evident, the Ah! Obviously, this is not your health, family life, social life and institutions, risk management, and other large, but the actual time may be limited.”
25: “Oh, yes! Of course, this is a serious health problem, family, social life and institutions, and other significant risks, but in real time may be limited.”
max: “Oh, yes! But more serious health problems, family, social institutions, and other Risks in real time.”
*runs out of thread
maddling giglygiggling madly**collapses on the bed from exhaustion and falls asleep*
Fulton, Ms. may be the skeeviest town in the U.S., still lots of contestants for that “honor”, but Virginia has gone out of its way to take the title of skeeviest state in the Union. The tea bag sucking governor has declared April to be Confederate History Month. The original proclamation led to outcries that he did not mention slavery so he issued a codicil agreeing that slavery was bad. How noble of him. Gads, why not just be honest and name April as Treason Month, since that is what the founding of the Confederacy actually was. Better yet, Treason and We Like Keeping Slaves Month, a better title.
I was born and raised in the Deep South. A great-something grandfather died with the 15th Alabama facing Chamberlain’s 20th Maine at Little Round Top on the second day of Gettysburg. As a military historian specializing on the Civil War I have often been conflicted on admiring the valor of both sides and just being interested in the Confederate Armies due to past and proximity. That said, and after 50 plus years of formal and informal study, my firm conviction is that the Confederacy was founded as a act of treason and the central point was slavery.
I have read most of the discussions about state’s rights and attended seminars and lectures on the causes of the CW. Bottom line, the “unique lifestyle” that the founders of the Confederate States of America was slavery. The Confederate Constitution states it quite clearly (1) and the VP of the CSA, Alexander H. Stevens was also clear on the point(2). It was only after the CW that much time and effort was spent by southern historians on trying to make the CW as about more than just slavery. Of course, there was more than just slavery, it was a conflict between agrarian and an industrial societies. However, the core driving force, the thing that allowed the wealthy of the south to live a sylvan existence, was slavery. if you are going to have a Confederate History Month, then make it complete. There should be open discussions, displays, and mandatory talks to schools about: the meaning of treason under the U.S. Constitution; the emphasis of the Confederate Constitution on slaves as property and not humans; the KKK and a century of lynching; Jim Crow, the Loving decision; the Civil Rights fight; how Reconstruction failed and how blacks were abandoned to the political control of their former masters; and the grinding poverty and stupidity engendered in the south by its self imposed cultural isolation from the rest of the country.
I know I am a little worked up by this. The Fulton, Ms. nonsense and the Iraqi video had already put me in a pessimistic mood. So, this latest action by the Virginia Governor just makes me weep the harder for my country and my world. I am so tired of lies.
(1) Confederate Constitution – Article I, section 9, clause 4: No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed. (Note, the Constitution mentions slavery many times, always enforcing the idea that slaves are property.)
(2) On 21 March 1861, in Savannah, Ga. Stevens gave the Cornerstone Speech – Two excerpts follow:
“The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution — African slavery as it exists amongst us — the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact.”
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. ”
Alright one more, a classic:
“Suppose you had a very sacred book outlining your philosophy on life. This book also happened to be stitched together and bound in the skin and flesh of a loved one who had recently passed away.” [-Pete Rooke]
10: “Suppose you have a Bible, and his philosophy of life. The book also happens to be connected zashitata skin and meat lover who has recently died.”
25: “Suppose that the Bible and philosophy of life. This book is the skin and meat lovers zashitata connection just died.”
Max: “This book is the Bible, meat and skin zashitata dead links, so that this philosophy, which can be months.”
Off to bed…..
Feynmaniac, that’s gold!
Anyone who wants to read the original thread with Pete Rooke’s creepy analogies can go here:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/priorities_1.php#comment-1004473
It was almost two years ago and I still got a few great laughs reading that thread.
Now, seriously, sleep.
The perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum
10: The universe is not fair is often greatest.
25: Universe is often correct.
Max: Always true.
Q.E.D.
I hear from one of the organisers that the event at Syracuse was excellent.
I wonder what happened at Syracuse? *Scratches head, perplexedly*
Random bad translations not withstanding, back to night shifts: what about those of us who are naturally nocturnal?
I feel jet-lagged all the time when trying to keep standard hours. When working nights, however, I have less trouble sleeping and require fewer hours’ sleep to feel refreshed. I am more alert and more contented. I’ve always been nocturnal, even as a baby (much to my poor mother’s dismay!).
Some more Pete R**ke, from the linked thread, put through the translator:
Original: ‘Young ladies like to wear an item of clothing called a mini-skirt these days. The material is often sheer and by its definition does not even come close to covering the knee roll.‘
10: ‘He called on young people wearing these days, small skirt. These materials tend to be more clear and defined, not even close, sir.‘
25: ‘Encouraged young people today, in baptism. These substances are usually explicit and exact, or near, sir.‘
Max: ‘Today young people are invited to court. This information is correct, most of them are almost equal and teachers.‘
Gold!
Jebus. It looks like a Melbourne abortion anaesthetist deliberately infected 12 women with hepatitis C. I wonder if it’s a religious thing or just a plain psycho.
Jon Stewart on the Catholic church scandal
I’m having way too much fun with this thing…
“I would never inflict oral sex on a women.” – Pete R**ke
10: “I will not give a woman oral sex.”
25: “Oral sex is not a woman.”
Max: “Mouth sex with women.”
I love how the translations are more grammatically correct than the original.
I’ll refrain from speculating about motives until we know more, but I was thinking about how he would have done it.
Anaestetists are tidy people, they draw up the drugs they will need between cases, put them in a dish or something, together with the cannulas etc they are going to use, that’s when they are usually by themselves, or at least not closely watched.Once the surgeons and other folks come in, I don’t think there is opportunity.
This is ugly. You would hope the guy is not middle-eastern too, given we currently have the Doctor Death court case in Queensland, and since that scandal asking for a locally trained white doctor has become more common.
Addendum to my @26 :
No such thing as an “abortion anaesthetist”, what you do is do anaesthesia for surgical lists anywhere, so for example morning list with an Ob/Gyn, afternoon with an ENT and evening with an Orthopod, say, would be an average day.
“NOTE: If you doubt this is possible, how is it there are PYGMIES + DWARFS??”
10: “Note: If you suspect this is possible, short-term and +?”
25: “Note to remember: If you are a little bit?”
Max: “All children need to consider the issues?”
Of course!
Oh, OK. I thought maybe he just worked at the clinic.
I don’t know why people worry about being treated by Asian doctors. I know I’m stereotyping, but I always imagine that they actually studied in med school instead of getting drunk and stealing cadavers…
Geez. I’ve been out of clinical way too long. I was reading about the Hep C thinking, “what the heck?” So I utilized U of Google to learn that Hep C is apparently what I learned of as “Hep Non A Non B”.
What I learned of as Hep C, IIRC from my training, was the result of chronic Hep B infection. Guess I need a refresher. And, since I have to get some CEU’s (yay for free online nursing CEUs), guess one of them will be on Hepatitis!
Rorschach,
Sounds like some sort of weird phylum. :)
(Straight-feet? No joints, presumably.)
—
[Yeah, I know you referred to Orthopedic surgery.
Weak joke.]
I think there are only four of us here hailing from North Dakota, but this issue has been prominent in state politics for about 20 years. The State Board of Higher Education voted yesterday to retire the “Fighting Sioux” nickname and logo.
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/157079/
Much acrimony to follow. I’m expecting some threats and harassment of Native faculty and students (to be honest) in the near future. But, we finally are getting rid of the damned thing!
@24 Rorschach
I stopped watching Jon Stewart a couple of years back (after the election) but maybe I should start again…
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” – Hunter S Thompson
10: “If you are weird, surprising experts.”
25: “If you are curious, surprised analysts.”
Max: “Shock to Analysts for interview”
I have no ideaq what happened after 25!
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” -Voltaire
10: “Those who can you believe that violence can be very interesting.”
25: “Who believe that violence is very interesting.”
Max: “He believes that violence is interesting.”
Ok, enough silliness, something serious:
“Monocyte chemoattractant protein-1, included within the CC class of chemokines, mediates chemotaxis of monocytes to inflammatory sites via interactions with its receptor, CCR2. CCR2, a member of the G-protein-coupled superfamily, is most abundantly expressed on monocytes.”
10: “Proteins that are involved in quimioatrayente – C chemokine 1, monocyte as recipients, seven hundred ninety-one respondents para role of the media site of chemical inflammation of the situation. 791 boxes of the survey, members of the protein in combination with ultrasound, monocytes and rich.”
25: “Press protein Quimioatrayente – C-receptor-1, Monocyte inflammatory material status military press, ninety-seven beneficiaries in half the respondents. 791 protein, ultrasound, monocytes, looking for members, clubs and rich.”
Max: “Receptor Protein koymyoatrayente – – 1 97 791 soldiers of protein products of inflammation and Ultrasound monkeys monkey the Clubs”
What I like is that for many people, the translated text is more comprehensible than the original. Mind you, when I’ve taken enough mushrooms….
I also like the fact that certain words and phrases persist in all languages, like the number 791 in the above. Finding the languages which start these trends is interesting…..well it’s interesting to me.
Ok, I can’t resist one tiny quote from Einstein: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”.
10: “Both are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I certainly do not know the universe.”
25: “Both are infinite: the universe human stupidity, and I am not sure whether the universe.”
Max: “Large: the universe and human stupidity, and I am sure that I am the world to you all.”
Slow to get there, but great when it does.
Louis
Thank you, JeffreyD.
I live in Virginia and am livid over this. This horrible man that got elected governor is going to take this state back a hundred years. The “good ol’ boys” that have gotten a leg up on their hate with the teabaggers now will have even more reason to raise their ugly heads in stupidity and anger. And no doubt, the textbooks will be changed next. I fantasize about making a long term visit to my brother in NZ, but I’ll be damned if these bastards will make me leave my state or country.
Alice Cooper is frigging awesome. I saw him as a guest star on the Muppet Show when I was a wee babe (Ok…like, 5 years old)…not my favorite rocker, but a great entertainer, up there with Kiss and GWAR*.
When the last of my grades have been entered this summer, I will open the door to my office, and from my prodigious office computer speakers, all will hear “School’s Out For Summer”. Those who are prompt with their grading will rejoice. Those who have procrastinated will cringe.
Then I will drink beer in the warm sun until sleepy.
If you hold a different opinion or have a criticism of this plan, I rebuke you in advance.
*Excellent live band with albums not really worth listening to.
The NSF has decided to leave the topics of evolution and the Big Bang out of their polls of the American people “because the survey questions used to measure knowledge of the two topics force respondents to choose between factual knowledge and religious beliefs.”
Okay, the Orlando Sentinel is having a poll this morning on the acceptability of Confederate History Month. Thus far, ignorance is winning:
Confederate History Poll
Who can forget Barb
10: “Identity: How men and women, sexual and reproductive tract infections, skin and life, healing the heart with no external power supply, computer, brain, eyes and can see colors?”
25: “: Identification many men and women on sexual reproductive health, heart, skin infections, without external power supply, computer, brain, eye, seen live paint?
Max: “Forses outside the family, women and men sizes, leather, computer, brain, eye health, heart disease, I lived?”
Leather?
Not that I know anything about the ICZN beyond what David’s told us, but it sounds like they need to chill the fuck out. They have become too enamoured of The Rules™ and rather than having the system serve us to make life easier, have – as so often happens – switched to worshipping the system as infallible and perfect, no matter how cumbersome it becomes.
Yuck!
TM, I think you misunderstood David in his statement about the arbitrariness of “planet” – he did go on to explain how it’s defined to encompass something useful. But Nature is Nature no matter what words we put on it. So for now we call the inner eight big lumps “planets”. We may end up deciding the first four are “thingummabobs”, the next two “thingummajigs”, the next two “whatsits” and all the teensy ones on the periphery “whatchamacallems”.
–o–
I just don’t have the instinct for hearing and seeing these things. I can only say that there are minimal /l/, /ð/ pairs. I’m harder pushed to think of any /d/,/ð/ pairs, though.
@JefferyD and ursulamajor:
I also live in Virginia, you guys hear about the armed 2nd Amendment marches? One on Richmond and one more or less on DC (they’ll be doing it across the Potomac from DC – which probably means Alexandria / Arlington, which is where I live!)
Church news roundup:
Oddball Heterosexual Stalker/Rapist Priest Case Settled.
Canadian Priest/Alterboy Dating Scene Coverup
Becoming the Norm
One more:
Poor Speller Embarrasses Freethought Movement
It’s always nice to find a decent sci-fi show. A guy from work recently put me onto a Canadian show called Regenesis. So far, awesome!
Last night was great, thanks for coming! Did you at lest get to stop by the starbucks right by the hotel for some coffee?
Good post on the Sophophora melanogaster issue, complete with a phylogenetic tree of Drosophila and friends. I knew Drosophila as currently understood was huge, but I didn’t know it was so huge… 1,450 species, at least!
It has a link to what it calls hate mail from third-graders the AMNH got when they updated their displays about which bodies are planets. Too cute.
It also has a link to the Nature News article on the S. melanogaster issue. Amazingly, that article is not behind a paywall!!! (I fear it might get there later, though.) … Just why do they call the ICZN “London-based”? That’s ridiculous. It’s like calling the Endless Thread “Morris-based”.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
LOL. What other uses are there for hemo- and neurotoxins?
No, there are no grooves on the teeth whatsoever.
No idea. Perhaps it’s not that easy to track a single Komodo monitor for days, and people confused different individuals?
Has this ever been tested? Has there ever been a phylogenetic analysis of all these species?
Throw them all into a phylogenetic analysis, name the best-supported clades, and stop pretending you can apply interesting species concepts (Biological, Ecological, Evolutionary…) to a skull roof and a few teeth. :-| Next time someone is looking for a fight over whether Homo ergaster should be considered the same species as H. erectus, ask them what, if anything, they mean by “species”. I predict huffing, puffing, and blushing.
:-)
>
Or just simply <blockquote style=”font-family:Comic Sans MS”>. That’s what I use.
This is… so… awesome…
Keep going for a few days, and we’ll have amassed more wisdom than Epicurus, Cārvāka, and Sastra together.
That’s all true. I’m saying that “astronomical sense” isn’t science.
<swoon>
Transkoreanization is so last year.
You know, about once a year I wonder about this myself.
…tssss…
Decreasing. Exponentially. Now it’s only at 0.7 Tc anymore.
:-)
X-D
So cool. Sooo… cooooool….
<thumbs up>
That thread with the Rookie takes me back. Really, with Christians like that we don’t need to do anything more than give them a forum in which they can demonstrate just how ridiculous their beliefs are.
One of the few things I admire about modern conservatism is their message discipline. They show an amazing ability to repeat the same discredited and debunked nonsense again and again and again and again. And it doesn’t vary. Once a neocon meme hits the road, it maintains a consitency which, given the different educational, cultural, economic and intellectual backgrounds of the mouthpieces, should show some level of variation — think of the telephone game. How do they do it?
Well, after an exhaustive study*, I have concluded that the message itself, being so totally at variance with objective reality, maintains the message down to the actual language. Here is an example:
Although, to be fair, there is not 100% message integrity. For example:
which brings up a secondary point — the message itself can morph, but it morphs into a different right wing meme.
*The research, of course, being Bad Tranlator (which (itself) translates to (after max translations) to Glenn Beck (I wish that were true (were I a conservative, merely wishing would make it so) but (since I live in reality) it translates to “error” (which is close enough for to GB for government work))).
And on another note (which would seem to support my hypotheosis (using the layman’s “wild-assed guess” definition), “Glenn Beck” max translates to “He returned to power.”
deliberately infected 12 women with hepatitis C
Wow. My mom’s an anesthetist who got infected with Hep B by a patient who bit her hard enough to break her skin while she was trying to put the tube down his throat. She never blamed him for doing that to her. Not once. I had to learn about it from one of the surgeons working with her that day.
She’d be horrified that someone would deliberately infect a patient.
Curse you Bad Translator!
Rape max translates to Beauty.
Adding further to my hypotheosis.
I’ve always been proud to be a confessing coward instead.
:-|
:-)
IIRC there’s D and E, too.
Good!
B-)
Such an honest statement!
I predict utter and total pharyngulization within two hours.
You don’t need an instinct. (I have no instinct for seeing such things whatsoever – over here, when people talk, you simply don’t see their tongue or even their canines.) Simply experiment on yourself.
At the ends of words?
Isn’t there a governor called Bill Crist somewhere? Florida, right?
X-)
Apotheosis… hypotheosis… sounds interesting…
:-S
I really wonder how that works.
Yeah, he’s asking for it.
“Trying to decide what’s more annoying, recipes or translations….”
10: “You May decide, in an awkward or collection of recipes ….”
25: “You decide, indeed …. Recipes collection seriously”
Max: “…. Director of many”
:)
David:
You asked:
rape to violation via GALICIAN : Violación
violation to injury via GERMAN : Verletzung
injury to damage via GREEK : Βλάβη
damage to loss via ICELANDIC : Tjón
loss to ross via JAPANESE : ロス
ross to bark via PERSIAN : پوست درخت
bark to cortex via SERBIAN : Кора
cortex to bark via SLOVAK : Kôra
bark to ganda via SWAHILI : Ganda
ganda to beauty via TAGALOG : Ganda
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
10: 27 years 4 parents to send them to us to the new nation was born on the continent, dedicated to freedom, all people are equal.
25: 4 years, a new nation was born in Mainland 27, were free, all other things being equal.
max: 4 years 27 days in China, people are born equal, and all free again.
____________
Oh, yes.
Meld (v imp, signal) /mɛʔl/; Med (prp, with) /mɛʔð/.
Meder (n pl, runners) /meðɐ/; Meler (v. prs., flours) /melɐ/.
And what I guess I mean by instinct, is that I can’t abstract from my expectations and hear what is actually there. I guess that account from my trouble with voicing ([s]/[z]) and rounding ([ʌ]/[ɔ]).
No such thing as an “abortion anaesthetist”, what you do is do anaesthesia for surgical lists anywhere, so for example morning list with an Ob/Gyn, afternoon with an ENT and evening with an Orthopod, say, would be an average day.
True, although some anesthetists do have positions where it’s the same type of surgery day after day, say cataract surgery, or always work within the same specialty.
My mother worked exclusively in obstetrics during the late 70s to mid 80s. I always knew when one of my old high school classmates had a baby–my mom was usually there to discuss options like epidurals, C-sections, etc. It was hell on my bank account, though, because I always felt like I had to visit and bring a little something for someone I barely remembered. Argh. No wonder I was always broke!
Isn’t there a governor called Bill Crist somewhere? Florida, right?
Charlie Crist, not to be confused with a former cat-killer Senator, Bill Frist.
School lunches are on my mind today; hyperglycemia is doubtless on the minds of those who eat them these days.
jidashdee @ #40:
That poll actually has a response that I agree with 100%, instead of the usual “I wouldn’t word it that way, but I understand what they’re trying to say and it’s the best choice available so I’m going to hold my nose and vote:”
Ugh…shift key fail…
jidashdee @ #40:
That poll actually has a response that I agree with 100%, instead of the usual “I wouldn’t word it that way, but I understand what they’re trying to say and it’s the best choice available so I’m going to hold my nose and vote:”
“Pharyngula” max translates to “Abate”. Intermediate forms include “Sly”, “Circuit”, “Orbit” and “Obiti”.
WTF…
@chgo_liz
Yeah, I was kind of surprised that they’d be able to sum up my position so neatly.
It’s not going well without the imprimatur of the Dear Leader.
Oh well. The driving range beckons!
Very very sorry…TWO DIFFERENT shift key fails…must drink tea now…
jidashdee @ #40:
That poll actually has a response that I agree with 100%, instead of the usual “I wouldn’t word it that way, but I understand what they’re trying to say and it’s the best choice available so I’m going to hold my nose and vote:”
this is the part I wanted to emphasize
Succinct and accurate.
QFT, man. I seem to be transmogrifying into the crusty old Mr. Wlison of teh THread, but jeez with the silly “translations”. When people fuck up translations, it’s funny (see Hengarian Phrasebook sketch); but when it’s a computer programmed to yield bad translations? Why is that funny? Not getting it here and am ANNOYED so GET THE FUCK OFF MY LAWN YOU SNOTNOSED PUNKS
not a phylum, no; a weird Order. (As if they existed.) (Orders in general, I mean, not the animals called orthopods.)
oh, he is not.
As will those with some taste in fucking music. I am cringing already. Yes, I have a shitload of lab reports to grade.
Weird comment. The ICZN exists solely to codify and enforce The Rules&#trade;. They made the decision they did because from the standpoint of taxonomy (their bailiwick), it was far easier and less cumbersome than the alternatives. (Not necessarily so for geneticists, but fuck ’em.) Look here, the current situation. It’s clearly massively stupid. The official and realistically unchangeable Type for the genus Drosophila is the clade indicated by the orange arrow. Whateverthefuck melanogaster is in the red-arrowed clade.
But as always, nomenclature is the least interesting aspect of biology. Call em whatever you want (as long as it’s unambiguous), what do they do?
No, Walter Auffenberg was not that stupid. I suspect that a) the venom evolved in smaller monitors for use against ectothermic prey and is not optimized for effectiveness in large mammals; b) the delivery apparatus is so inefficient that very little venom may be transferred in a single quick attack, or c) all of the above.
Like all herpetologists, I am a Hypotheist. I believe God is under that next log.
I have a headache
10: Hurts my head
25: I have a headache
Max: Sherman
and fuck you, Chimpy, for the typos ‘n’ shit
Lab Reports = BAD MOOD
How about we just call the next planet/planetoid/plutoid/FBR (fucking big rock) that we find “Drosophila” and call one of the new fruit flies “Pluto”? Then everyone can be happy.
At the risk of horrifying people who see my login name yet again on this thread, I threw something else in the bad translator and was completely flummoxed by the response:
How easy could that be, right? Hah!
10: Over the years, Nadal has over the years to celebrate the hospital’s daughter, Pengpeng Peng
25: Over the years, he went to the hospital, the girls thought Peng Peng Peng
max: Pikirnia hospital in tennis.
WTF?
Incidentally, this is the subThread of 40K.
39409
I did read the post – and see the arrows. After commenting.
Yes, calling Drosophila Drosophila will result in the renaming of 1100 species instead of howevermanyfewer it was. So from that particular point of view it makes sense. Within the System.
My point is: Not all species are created equal. So what if ‘we’ have to rename 1100 species, if most of them never see the light of day? How many instances need be changed? I think that’s the more pertinent metric.
As I said, working for the System instead of letting the System work for us.
PS: Pluto is soooooo not a planet. But the kids’ letters were kinda adorable. It’s nice to know they care. Let’s just hope their parents and schools don’t kill that spark.
Not getting it here and am ANNOYED so GET THE FUCK OFF MY LAWN YOU SNOTNOSED PUNKS
“So, I said that I personally visited the curse of evil SNOTNOSED grass”
I am easily amused by the dada.
“I said the wrong patch-nosed grass nitty”
I think of it as a high tech version of Burrough’s act of cutting up and rearranging paragraphs.
“I know that information, plants and other resources for women.”
Come on, did you ever play telephone in school?
I do what I can
Don’t let the Colgate Twins hear you saying that. The people who decide what is and is not a planet are not the planetary scientists but the American public. Not just any public mind, only the American public.
Just so you are clear on this. The Oracles have decreed it is to be so.
Fuck’s sake… take a nap, Sven…
OH… let me give you that translated…
MAX: “Sven, Hammer network”
There. ;^)
All I know is that my 8 year-old daughter wrote a report on “Why I love Space”, which had a cover with a picture she drew of the Solar system, with Pluto at the outer edge, and her hand-written note next to it: “Not a Planet!”.
That’s good enough for me!
(PS… I know I’ve regaled you all with that story once already, but it seemed relevant to the discussion, and I’ve never felt such a sense of pride and adorable-ness in my life, so too bad… I’m telling it again).
As we all know, Pluto is a sovereign United States territory. Every red-blooded patriotic American knows that when Armstrong and Aldrin planted the Stars and Stripes on the Moon, they laid claim to the entirety of the solar system on behalf of Uncle Sam. When Chuck Norris becomes President, he plans to start shipping “suspected terrorists” (read “anyone who looks kinda foreign and doesn’t vote Republican”) out to Pluto to undergo enhanced zero-gravity interrogation techniques.
The Democrats will oppose this authoritarian measure, of course. They will argue that shipping terror suspects to Jupiter is much more consistent with core American values, as well as being more cost-effective (as the radiation and massive gravity will kill them instantly on arrival).
What’s the name of that Pluto apologist who used to show up here occasionally?
You know, that singularly obsession somewhat scary person whose sole purpose in life is to complain about Pluto.
Walton, number 79 is a keeper.
I think her name was Lauren.
She thinks highly of the Colgate Twins.
Mickey Mouse?
Laurel Kornfeld
Have I ever mentioned I fucking hate you people? This Bad Translator has ruined my afternoon’s work. I will have to make up time this weekend….damn you Pharyngulan Procrastination! DAMN YOU!!!
{Shakes fist}
However, on a happier note, the self loathing “I am scum” becomes “I am not stupid” after max translation, whilst “I am a genius” becomes “I am wise” after the same amout of translation. This seems to mean to me that, whilst I am not stupid to think I am scum, I am wise to consider myself a genius. On balance I can live with that.
The comment “my genitals are pleasantly sized” becomes “We are very proud of our family.”, which seems to imply that my bragging is well founded, and indeed somewhat well known. However “I sexually satisfy my wife” turns into “My wife is very happy with results.”, thus I can only conclude all is good in the bedroom.
For those who doubt the progression of this self indulgent trend in translation, the phrase “I am assured of winning the Nobel Prize” becomes “I think the Nobel Prize in literature”. Clearly my writing is of a higher standard than I realised, Literature isn’t even my field!
Worryingly “creationists are wrong” becomes “poor”. This inspired me to look for “god does not exist” which became “A”, perhaps this is the prefix for “theism” one requires. However, “god exists” became “God” and this concerned me. Perhaps God does exist and is using the Bad Translator to inform us. I thought I’d check. The various Judeo-Christian-Islamic deities seem to have a problem with Teh Gay, so I thought a “litmus test” on this issue would suffice. “Homosexuality is a sin” became “Gay Son” after max translation. I think this indicates that either the scriptures have something very wrong and Jesus was Of Teh Gay, or our deity is not abrahamic. I double checked with “eating shellfish is a sin” and got “oyster season”. Clearly the god of the bible is not at work here. Phew!
I aimed my sights at deism, surely the “null hypothesis” of the god friendly. “Deism is not merely wishful thinking” becomes “you can see the sun”. Clearly an indicator that an anthropomorhised intelligence is just not required for stellar evolution. This had to be put to a sterner test, “the universe and life originated via purely natural processes with no divine involvement” became “Agriculture and life sciences, and does not conflict with God.”, whilst “The origin and evolution of life and the universe was accomplished by purely natural processes” became “Background, family life and peaceful change.”. I think this suggests that a philosophically naturalistic outlook on the world is congruent with a bucolic and wholesome family existence, if a distressingly accomodationist one.
Heartened I tried the contentious “belief in god is utterly stupid” and recieved the terrifyingly pleasant “belief in god is not stupid!”. Removing the “utterly” garnered “love god”. Hearken Phellow Pharynguloids, God lives and he lives in the Bad Translator. How do I know god is a he? The phrase “god is a myth” became “Mr.”. Evidence I tells you.
Desperate to get some solace from this machine I feverishly typed in “atheists are more intelligent than any other demographic” and got back “better than atheists”. Oh dear. We are in trouble.
So brethren and sistren, we are not brighter than everyone else, I’m a wise, scummy genius with a satisfied wife, marvellous genitals and a forthcoming Literature Nobel, farming proves abiogenesis, god exists but has nothing to do with the abrahamic faiths, Jesus was gay, and accomodationism is the right path.
Luckily, “too long, didn’t read” became “you have seen the story”. Which is some consolation.
Louis
P.S. Psychological evaltuations based on this post will be wrong because, as the translator accurately surmised “I am sane” becomes “humor”.
I like snarky Walton.
By the way, the nutter people are wondering about is Laurel Kornfeld. If you want to meet her personally (well, on the internet), write a blog post on a blog with a decent Google rating mentioning Pluto. She seems to have a feed to let her know whenever Google finds someone talking about Pluto.
You fools! You have spoken her name thrice!!!
Now, this is funny.
Hmmm. At least some mormons are not in love with Glen Beck.
I can’t see Russia from my kitchen window, but I can see a lot of mormons and they are all Republicans, and they love Glen Beck. The fact that there are some mormons (mostly younger) who dislike the guy is encouraging.
As for not alienating rational people with the rantings of extremists… it’s too late. Mormon leaders are spikes on the extremist scale for most of LDS church history. They can close the barn door now, if they like, but the extremists bolted long ago and spent their crazy mormon lives being quite public and proud of their fanaticism.
As for “moderate” politics, the mormon-backed Prop 8 campaign didn’t look moderate. And kicking Peter Danzig out of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for speaking his mind doesn’t look moderate.
I know!
My Political Views
I am a center-left social libertarian
Left: 2.44, Libertarian: 7.63
Political Spectrum Quiz
Well duh. I dunno if that link will work. Look ma’ I’m a hair away from an anarchist :D
And so but about the
fruitfly-taxonomy thing, what’s going to happen:The official Latin binomial will be used in publication, but more informally the initial cap and italics will be dropped, and “drosophila” will become the universally-recognized common name for the ubiquitous lab species.
See amphioxus, brontosaurus
#77:
Stop! Hammer time.
MAX: Hammer temporary situation.
Can’t touch this.
MAX: Beauty.
Re: Nomenclature, Drosophila, Sophophora.
This isn’t Nam. This is nomenclature. There are rules.
Every nomenclatural act is inconvenient for somebody. But a taxon (whether you are a Phylocodist or a Linnaean) should represent a hypothesis of monophyly. Drosophila has been falsified. Let’s make the change and get on with our lives.
From personal experience: Both the genera that I worked on as a graduate student and the one that I have been working on these past few years have been moved to different families since I worked on them. The move in both cases is justified, because the resulting familial circumscriptions represent better hypotheses of monophyly.
eohippus
(although I sem to remember Tom Holtz or somebody saying that Eohippus was recently re-validated)
On a more serious note, Bad Translator reveals that Emperor Palpatine was only trying to do some good:
maxes to:
Jesse Ventura just had the best lines written for him.
The Atlantic published an article on mormon food. Warning: Your arteries may harden after reading the closing paragraphs.
Apparently, not smoking buys you some time, since all this fat-rich eating kills some, but not all, mormons before their time.
Rev BDC is an Iraqi spy.
maxes to:
I am not fucking kidding.
Ol’Greg @#89:
I got
Sven: I have the feeling that were we in the same department, you may have choked me to death by now.
OK…so now Alice Cooper for you. As an alternative, you could blast this upon completing your lab reports.
(OK…Detroit Rock City by my childhood idols, KISS)
ursulamajor and Kevin – I retired and left Virginia in 2005, but my eldest daughter, her spousal unit and two of my granddaughters still live there so I try to keep abreast. Daughter is in the Fairfax County school system and keeps me up on shenanigans from that source. She is very aware about any attempts to Dixie-ize the lesson plans.
I truly am just shocked and depressed that anyone, no matter how thick, no matter how red the neck, no matter how low the IQ, would think reinstating Confederate History Month was a good idea. Hang in their ursulamajor, still some hope for Virginia, let us not treat it like Miss and have all the good people leave.
Kevin, heard about the marches. Cannot imagine either the marches or CH month are popular in NOVA, but I could be wrong…and probably am.
At least the Va Gov did have the decency to issue the amendment agreeing that slavery was bad. What a bold step into controversy that was. Confederates in the Attic (great book) are bad enough, looks like they are moving back onto the front lawn. Guess they can keep the black jockey lawn ornaments company. Surely those will be making a comeback, at least at the Gov’s mansion. Ah well, I guess I should not be surprised, the people in the SoCV* don’t have a problem with integration, they have a problem with emancipation.
*Scum of Confederate Veterans, or sons, not really sure.
No surprise:
I’m a far-left social libertarian.
Left: 8.05, Libertarian: 6.45
This is right about where I always score on these tests, if a little lower on the libertarian side than usual. I think the concern scale had something to do with that. I can agree/disagree with something, even strongly, but it’s not a huge concern for me. Ex: controlling violence in video games. Yeah, I disagree, even strongly, but it’s not way up on my list of concerns.
Ol’Greg
Apparently, I am a far-left moderate social libertarian.
Left: 7.51, Libertarian: 3.03
“no” Alice Cooper for you, Jean Claude van Dammit!
-Also disgusted by Confederate Pride…not uncommonly, I have white students who wear confederate gear to class…it is hard not to interpret this as anything other than a great insult to democracy and freedom.
I got this result:
I cannot help but think the people behind the test were using Left and Right in the American sense.
So far, I can confirm my status as the most right-wing Pharyngula regular (admittedly out of a sample of three).
I took a subjective approach to the “concern scale” on the test: I tended to ascribe low priorities to the more technical economic issues, not because I don’t care about them but rather because I’m not certain that my views on many of those issues are correct, and therefore don’t feel strongly about it. For instance, I think minimum wage is a bad idea, but I’m not completely certain – the evidence, as I understand it, is ambiguous – and I certainly wouldn’t go out and campaign for the abolition of minimum wage, because I might well turn out to be wrong about it. So I corrected for this by putting those issues low on the concern scale: while they are objectively important, things like minimum wage and taxation are not high priorities for me because I don’t feel like I know the right answers to those questions. By contrast, when it comes to supporting gay marriage or freedom of speech, I am 99.9% sure that my opinion is correct, and so I put those issues very high on the concern scale: they are big priorities for me because I’m pretty sure I’m right, and so I can actively campaign on those issues.
Ah, well, if we’re posting spectra:
I am a far-left social libertarian.
Left: 7.7, Libertarian: 3.98
Too good to pass up:
“Someone set us up the bomb. We get signal!”
Max: “We Raided the public library.”
Dunno, they measure against two axes. One is authoritarian to anarchic, the other is communist to extreme capitalist. That would put most American politics into the upper right(they put Thatcher and Blair over there too) quad and some one like Stalin waay in the upper left quad , some one like me nearly in the center but all the way on down there in terms of social liberalism.
I’m not really sure how that aligns with “Left” and “Right” internationally.
I hear this lovely little screed in mother’s voice…
Here’s mine:
which is odd because I consider myself center-left. And in the world, I probably am; but this is ‘merkuh and we have different standards.
Gah! I am choking you virtually even now!
wtf?
Where, again? East Texas?
I consider myself centre-left as well. In UK terms my views coincide with the Liberal-Democrats more than any other party.
What age group do you teach ?
Here is a test of just how strong your SIWOTI syndrome runs…
Dig Miracles by Insane Clown Posse.
Warning: The stupid here is deep, dark, and will melt iron. If you are sensitive to stupid, or need to keep your intelligence from draining through your ear because of some important task you have later this week, DO NOT CLICK THE LINK.
The test was very accurate for me, even within the British political spectrum, so I don’t think it’s particularly biased towards American politics. I consider myself moderately conservative on economic issues and radically liberal on social issues, and this was reflected perfectly by the outcome of the test.
Awww Walton you’re like a political mirror image of me.
I suspect that an opposition to unchecked capitalism has to provide challenges that keep a free market from becoming un-free and becoming, in a sense, controlled by a new state of corporate power. That is probably what lands me more in the left.
What’s funny is that here (admittedly in Texas) I am considered a liberal extremist.
Yeah I’m with you on minimum wage on the lack of understanding really. Except I *think* there should be one as opposed to not. It’s too easy to abuse people, and once some one has lost the ability to make a free choice about how they will work they are no longer selling their labor. Extreme exploitation hurts everyone and stagnates I think, so I would then say, yes I *think* there *should* be a state set minimum wage. But I can’t weight it very high. As some one who worked in my state’s amazingly low minimum wage (well below cost of living for a single person in the city) I can vouch for the fact that if they can cut costs by throwing a cot in the back of a store and feed you bread from the dumpster and the water they mop the floor with… they *would* do it.
Uh, but we’re not supposed to talk about that here :P
I apparently am very much a Centrist, which is not surprising. (Left 0.04, Libertarian: 1.65)
@JeffreyD:
I wouldn’t have had a problem with it if he took two seconds to realize ‘Oh, people might be offended by this’ and changed the proclamation to ‘Civil War History Month.’ I like Civil War History, I’ve visited almost all the PA, MD, VA battlefields. I see no problem bringing tourism and interest in that period of American history, just… don’t call it ‘Confederate’ month – cause that’ll seem like you’re honoring them.
It seems to me that most NOVA and DC folks are very offended by the armed marches and CH month, but we’re also the ones who voted against Bob McDonnell.
@A.E:
That’s precisely why it’s such a problem.
Matt: Those classes are university undergraduates. One of the trends I notice which is reassuring (maybe) is that the frequency of such behavior declines from freshman to senior year.
Here’s what I got:
That sounds about right.
Neat quiz, Ol’Greg. I’m in the area I expected to be on the political spectrum: left social libertarian.
Left: 6.62, Libertarian: 4.7 (I think my agreeing with Sam Harris on morality might have bumped this one up toward “authoritarian” a bit.)
International Bloodlust: -4.57
USA Culture Wars: -8.58
Is there no means by which you can request they leave the class and come back more suitably attired ?
The political axis quiz was clearly invented by a libertarian. The opposite of “libertarian” is authoritarian? Please. Government can’t ever be a mutually agreed on social contract?
Did anyone else see that an atheist in Illinois is suing the state for funding construction projects for religious organizations?
http://secularspeakeasy.com/2010/04/09/illinois-atheist-sues-state/
Well done!
@Dianne:
I’d understand it more with Libertarianism being Anarchy. Anarchy is kind of the opposite of authoritarianism.
I agree with that in principle. Don’t misunderstand me – I wasn’t making some ivory-tower Randian argument about how the employers should have unrestricted freedom to exploit workers as much as they feel like. Rather, for me, what inclines me against the minimum wage is the pragmatic consideration that, if low-wage employers are forced to pay higher wages, they will just lay off workers to save money, and stop hiring new workers – which will lead to more unemployment and poverty among the most vulnerable part of the population. And some businesses, if they are required to pay a minimum wage, will just leave and relocate somewhere with no wage restrictions.
Rather, I’d prefer to see welfare support provided to those who are in work but earning below a basic subsistence wage. All workers should have enough income to enable them to maintain a civilised standard of living; but rather than achieving this by requiring employers to pay higher wages, I think it’s more practical to supplement low wages with welfare payments. That way, employers are not discouraged from taking on workers, but the same positive result is still achieved.
While we’re on the subject: The justification for easy gun ownership is usually protection against tyranical governments. So, does this work? That is, are there any examples of tyrannical goverments or foreign invaders being overthrown by militias or, even moreso, unorganized individuals with guns? One might argue that the Somalis ran the US off like that, but otherwise I’m not sure I can come up with an example.
Sven: Right. E. Texas.
Matt: I don’t think such gear is a violation of University rules, offensive as it may be. I’ll look into it. If I find it is, and I eject a student, though, I had probably better be prepared for a total shit-storm.
I’d understand it more with Libertarianism being Anarchy. Anarchy is kind of the opposite of authoritarianism.
Maybe, depending on how the questions about corporate power changed one’s rating on the scale.
I hadn’t seen that, but it’s ridiculous! That shouldn’t be happening.
@Dianne:
I disagree with gun control laws cause I think it’s stupid. Gun control laws are a weak attempt to get guns out of the hands of people who will use them for criminal motive.
Unfortunately, those people who will use them for criminal motives are NOT the same people who will be inconvenienced by stricter gun control laws. Criminals being, by nature, those who do not follow the law.
Rachel Maddow discussed President Obama’s successful negotiations to reduce the nuclear arsenals of both Russia and the USA. She went on to contrast this diplomatic success with the speakers featured at the Southern Republican Leadership convention (Sarah Palin and Ron Paul, for example).
In this video, Maddow also covers the story of the diplomat from Qatar who triggered a false alarm on an airplane, and who was scheduled to meet with a jailed foreign-born prisoner (a Consular visit). Apparently, all parts of this story have been blown out of proportion by Faux News. Republicans have suggested that the diplomat pay the USA for the trouble he caused …. trouble caused by misunderstandings for the most part. “Spun out of control” as Maddow’s guest noted.
Stay tuned for Maddow’s next story in the line-up, “Living Large at C Street” — just when you think the demonic doings of C Street can’t get any worse …
How does your system stop the race to the bottom where companies refuse to pay a working wage since people can just get the money from the government if they don’t pay enough? I mean, I don’t subscribe to “people won’t work because they have welfare”, but a variant applies here: when all businesses know that people receive supplementary welfare if they are not paid a certain amount by their employer, and there is no mechanism to keep employers from underpaying their employees, what is to keep all employers from cutting wages knowing that the government safety net will make sure their wage slaves have food and shelter?
@126
I don’t think we’ll like where that argument goes. If you grant that “easy gun ownership” is for “protection against tyrannical governments, and then recognize that guns are not enough to overcome tyranny, the wingnuts will insist on the right to easy tanks, anti-aircraft missiles, and possibly their own nuclear enrichment sites to assure MAD against tyrants (pity the states with no bodies of water to dissipate the heat to allow for nuclear reactors).
“All your base are belong to us.”
Bad Translator:
“All your base are belong to us.”
What does this mean?
Just take a look at the results here. Pharyngula regulars are libertarians!
Actually, There are two senses of the word ‘libertarian’. In the US it tends to means right wing, pro-private property, anti-statist. Elsewhere it just means anti-statist (i.e, opposite of authoritarian). In terms of the graph, the first sense refers to the lower right quadrant, while the second sense of the term refers to the negative part of the y-axis.
Some in the US see the term “social libertarian” as a contradiction. It’s not however because libertarian is being used in the second sense.
I would argue that if a business cannot afford to pay a decent wage to its staff then it is not a viable business.
Why am I short? Why are living things the size they are?
Unfortunately, those people who will use them for criminal motives are NOT the same people who will be inconvenienced by stricter gun control laws. Criminals being, by nature, those who do not follow the law.
Do you also disagree with laws that restrict access to certain substances (from outright bans on some drugs to age restrictions on others to prescription requirements on others) on the same grounds? And what about nuclear weapons treaties? Should they be voided because some countries will ignore them and they only inconvenience the law abiding ones?
Additionally, I don’t think you can divide people into those with criminal intent and those without in a blanket manner. Most studies of firearm ownership suggest that people with firearms are more likely to commit suicide than non-owners. Many probably didn’t buy the gun with the intention of shooting themselves, but access to a quick method of suicide makes it easier to go through with a momentary impulse. Same with homicide in the midst of an argument. Many people may buy a gun for self-defense but end up using it to shoot themselves or relatives-intentionally or accidentally. That subset of the population, the mostly law abiding, would benefit greatly from sensible gun laws that require them to at least think things through before buying a gun.
I’m not in favor of a blanket ban on firearms, mostly because there are places in the US where you need to shoot rattlesnakes now and then, they can be useful for hunting, etc. But why not put sensible restrictions on them. No one living in a city ought to have a gun: the risk of shooting the wrong person is higher than the potential benefit of shooting a threatening person. I’d really rather the police didn’t carry them either, at least not as a matter of course.
Silly, no I’m not.
Now just have a sip of this wine I just opened while you were not looking.
Fruit-eating lizard is described as “giant” and as “spectacular” — see article in Scientific Computing. Excerpt:
Oh wow, took the Political Spectrum test and am a left social libertarian.
Left: 5.97, Libertarian: 3.94
All this time I thought I was a conservative fascist.
Ah yes that’s her.
Fermi Maps Active Galaxy’s Smokestack Plumes. Excerpt:
The newest member of the Alaska Board of Game thinks wildlife should be managed according to biblical principles
http://ap.juneauempire.com/pstories/state/ak/20100409/603770367.shtml
@Kevin:
Uh, yeah, they are. Very few criminals are evil masterminds. In fact, the vast majority of them are opportunists with no penchant whatsoever for long-term planning (if they did, they’d be able to hold down jobs). Most of us have little to fear (in terms of violence, that is) from the planning type of criminal who will get ahold of whatever it is he or she needs to commit a crime, regardless of difficulty.
The ones you do have to worry about (and the ones that gun control laws are aimed at, theoretically), are the vastly more common ones that steal a gun from somebody in a home invasion. These types see a liquor store, decide to make a few easy bucks, and end up shooting up the place because they totally didn’t anticipate there’d be customers at 10:45 PM on a Friday night.
Brownian, OM: left moderate social libertarian.
(Left: 5.44, Libertarian: 3.09)
Ha! My middle-school principal: “I don’t need Budweiser T-shirts! I don’t need Archie Bunker T-shirts!” Dude would have aneurysmed over a Stars ‘n’ Bars.
And rightly so.
Lynna talking of a new species of lizard reminded me of a TV series the BBC is currently broadcasting on Thursday evenings on BBC2.
It is called The Museum of Life and looks at the work of the Natural History Museum in London.
Two things stand out for me about the series.
The first was footage of Richard Fortey, who has worked in the museum for over 30 years, getting lost when trying to find a store room.
The second was how proud I am to live in a country where it is considered worthwhile funding the museum, and essentially allow people to carry out research that interests them regardless of any commercial benefit.
I disagree that gun ownership protects from tyranny.
Gun ownership is, in my opinion, socially neutral. It does no good, and yet regulation of guns I think also does very little good.
Gun ownership increases the likelihood that you may shoot some one or yourself and increases the likelihood that some one may shoot you. We tend to think of criminals only as people who go out with specific intent to commit a crime, but an angry domestic situation with a gun can quickly turn into a homicide. This is coming from some one who has looked into a gun several times in the hands of a drunk angry psycho while getting myself ready to die.
Nonetheless, I do not see this as a great moral wrong that society can control with regulation of guns, although if you want to reduce the amount of gun related deaths you reduce the amount of guns. It will do nothing for all the other ways people hurt each other, for instance.
I don’t think the regulation has the massive effect people hope it will, but I also do not think that having gun owning citizens does very much in terms of protection from government. Most people will never be in a position to use them to oppose tyranny, and even if they did all that matters at that point is who doesn’t die.
Protection from government is acquired with money and through lobbying. All the people you could kill wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans and at best you’d just set yourself up as the new tyrant on the block.
@Dianne, Brownian:
Probably why I’m a Centrist – heh.
I do agree with Dianne though – in that gun control laws cannot be blanket laws. Sensible laws are good, too. I’m not saying that anyone can go to a store and get a gun and leave that store, either.
Gun control laws cannot paint a law-abiding citizen as a criminal. It’s like the DRM Ubisoft is putting on their games (terrible analogy, but work with me here.) In order to prevent their games from being pirated, they make it necessary to have a constant Internet connection to play single-player games.
The immediate effects of this are that people are not going to stop pirating the games, they’re going to make cracked versions that don’t have to call home, and people interested in the pirated games are going to be able to still get them.
Paying customers, on the other hand, are inconvenienced, they have to have a constant, steady connection to the Internet, they cannot play in spotty areas or places with no connection. The paying customers are treated like criminals, while the criminals are only slightly more inconvenienced.
Oh and regulation of guns certainly *does* help contribute to a black market and to guns being acquired illegally. I don’t, and never will, understand how people can get so angry about illegal immigrants stealing money from our government but willingly support laws that push MASSIVE amounts of money into criminal organizations that are nested in other governments.
Thanks for the confirm that the Confederacy was about slavery. I understood that Virginia’s joining in the Revolutionary War was motivated by England’s trying to eliminate slavery. Which means that the great state of Virginia has twice gone through bloody rebellion in order to keep slaves.
Shouldn’t the governor have avoided calling it the “Civil War”? A civil war is what happens within a single nation, and the South’s view was that the Union was not a nation, but that each state was a nation, which is why they called it the “War Between The States”, at least. “Second American Rebellion” and “War of Northern Agression” were also used, I think. The gov using a Northern term was just wrong.
Speaking of terminology, the rednecks who fear the United Nations are really flashing back to the Civil War. To the Southerners, the United States was supposed to be like the United Nations are now. The terms are equivalent, indeed. Us USAians forget that “state” once meant “nation”, and still does, for many cases. Southerners have done the “united independent-political-units” dance before, and they couldn’t get out of it.
I think the idea of an armed populace as a guard against tyranny was coherent in the eighteenth century, when the Second Amendment was ratified. However, weapons technology has moved on somewhat in the past 200 years, and it is now rather less plausible that a chaotic rabble armed with handguns and rifles would be able to fight off police or military forces of a tyrannical state.
Humm.
Left 4.73
Libertarian 5.9
Just to add the “stealing money from our government” bit *does not* reflect my views on the subject and should have been in quotes.
@Menyambal:
The vast majority call it the Civil War, so it’s appropriate.
But they can shoot the shit out of some varmits
International Bloodlust: -4.57
USA Culture Wars: -8.58
Love the way you describe that. :)
Here were my scores:
International Bloodlust: -7.46
USA Culture Wars: -8.8
Which raises the question: How did I turn out this way, when I’ve lived in Texas most of my life, including growing up here?
Must have been all those commie books I read as a kid.
#117 – Kevin, I am a big CW fan and know pretty much every battlefield in MD, Penn, Tenn, Va, SC by heart. The can be useful as teaching aids, Gettysburg especially has a lot of good living historians covering the gamut from slavery to medicine and women’s issues each year. My kids practically grew up at Gettysburg because it was cheap and fun. Both daughters and most of the sons can name the types of every cannon on the battlefield with only a quick glance.*
Yeah, I knew that NOVA have voted against the tea bag sucker, glad there are still some sane people in Va.
*Daughters especially loved Gettysburg and Antietam because they tended to be one on one time for each of them in turn with Dad. One time at Gettysburg, my eldest daughter noticed one of the two Whitworth cannon on Oak Hill was missing (for those who have no idea what this means, they were rare in 1863 and rarer still now). At her insistence we immediately drove to the museum/ranger station. Fifteen year old daughter rushed in and told the ranger on duty she had a question about the cannon. He gave her a smile and said, “and how can I help you little lady?”. She went cold and informed him that she wanted to know where one of the Whitworth’s from Oak Hill was, giving the serial number, which I did not know she knew, and expressing her firm opinion that it was an irreplaceable relic and she hoped it was only in for refurbishing and that he could take little lady and shove it up – at this point I stepped in and allowed the Ranger to stumble his reply that yes it was being repainted and would be back soon. Satisfied, daughter snorted and left. I smiled at the Ranger and told him I was sure he now regretted the little lady comment and chuckled my way back out to the car. Rest of the trip was fine, fun as always.
@JeffreyD:
I loved those kinds of trips with my father. Though It was when we lived in Germany that we went to a lot of places – I was only about 5-9 there, and my father loved the old WW1 and WW2 forts (Maginot Line, Forts of the Meuse.) He took my brother and I all over the area, visiting forts and such.
It’s always a great time to see things with parents. I know when I have kids (after I get married… after I get a girlfriend… I’m working on it!) I’ll be quite happy to take them to see history and nature and science and art. I’m a 26-year old living in my own place a few hours from family, and I still enjoy the weekends when my father and mother come down and we walk around DC and see some of the museums.
I did a political compass quiz a couple years ago, still have the printout posted on my cubicle wall.
Economic Left 2.88
Social Libertarian 3.95
Looks like I fit right in here! Shocking!
I share the same sentiment as Louis @85. I have spent far too much time on this thread and now am behind in my work. Normally I wouldn’t mind coming into the lab on a Saturday for a few hours, but this weekend is different since my sister is visiting. All thread posters please send me your addresses so I can get samples to each of you for testing. Please complete analysis promplty as I am on deadlines…
Thank you all in advance!
@Kevin:
I think your analogy isn’t that far off. But I don’t consider myself a doctrinarian with respect to gun control. If it actually results in reduced morbidity and mortality, then I support it. If it doesn’t, then it’s a waste of time and money.
Here in Edmonton (“Stabmonton”, according to at least one Facebook group based on news articles), knives are the weapon of choice for street punks. Guns are usually reserved for gang-related nightclub shoot-em-ups.
What does it mean??
Some of the questions are dodgy, however, e.g. false premises.
Walton, believe it or not I view unemployment as less of a problem than potential exploitation. I’m not sure that creating too much dependence on state support is good for people in that it can also limit their ability to support themselves in the future. I think like this:
Some one makes 5.00 ph and lives in Dallas. They perhaps live with some one else in about the cheapest place they can find. Maybe 500 per month and utilities. They purchase some clothes, food, have to pay car insurance and maintenance because it’s very very hard to get around without a car here and you will probably lose your job if you depend too much on the bus. You will have to go to the doctor at some point. That may eat up your rent and leave you in the lurch. If you have credit you will likely have more debt than you can pay off in a month. Now this person is not in a good situation, but if they are put at that point on state support they have another problem. They’re now subject to specific limitations, they will lose support and possibly face consequences should they look for better employment.
I guess I’ve just seen people pinned in that odd situation, and for some I suppose it works, but if something else should change (they have a child, for instance) now there is a nightmare in the sense that they may not be able to get themselves in a better situation at all. Of course by this all I am talking about some one who is able bodied and generally well.
I suppose really though there is and never will be any kind of blanket solution, but I tend to think just forcing employers to pay a realistic wage for survival in the area costs less to all of us in the long run.
Perhaps they will lay some people off, but unemployed people are able to get some government support that is temporary and does not lead to them being stuck there or facing consequences if they do get a better foothold.
Unless the unemployment is endemic they may be able to find other work or it may encourage them to move to another area where more work is needed.
Mobility is hugely important to me, the more restricted people’s ability to move and alter their situations the worse the government is IMO. So something that leaves some people out potentially but does not retain them in that state is preferable to me than something that could lead to generational stagnation.
Keven, DC area was a great place to have kids, battlefields, museums, galleries, the Mall during the Smithsonian American Life Festival (or whatever the name is), 4th of July, Wolftrap, we did it all. I miss the hell out of that. However, my new bride and I get to do it all again, she does not know DC so we will spend some time there. She has heard from the kids about the battlefield thing and is apparently prepared to accept and enjoy same. The poor innocent fool! Bwahaha!
Yes, I agree. Some of them are sort of difficult because I think perhaps I understand the underlying question, but as stated I couldn’t agree.
Left social moderate. I didn’t like the way some of the questions were ambiguous.
Yes, I know the majority call it the Civil War, but the Confederates did not.
@Brownian:
I do expect gun control laws would result in a drop in the loss of life from guns (which is a good thing,) but like my analogy, it really won’t impact people who aren’t already following those rules. They may have to adjust a little bit, but chances are they won’t be drastically affected by any serious changes.
@143: Regarding the Biblical principles for administering wildlife in Alaska, here’s a bit more from Shannyn Moore: http://shannynmoore.wordpress.com/
And, regarding Al Barrette, you won’t be surprised to find that he has backing from the Utah organization, Sportsmen for Fish & Wildlife: http://www.sfwsfh.org/
John Bair, the SFW Chairman of the Board is a mormon. Here’s a story from Deseret News that features a quote by Bair.
SFW put together the talking points for why Al Barrette ought to confirmed (this fact is from Shannyn Moore’s article).
#166 – Menyambal: “Yes, I know the majority call it the Civil War, but the Confederates did not.”
They lost.
HACK THIS POLL!
http://www.zimbio.com/Obama+Clock/polls/1/results/counting+down+days+till+Obama+leaves+office
OK, off to eat dinner and watch the newer version of Fail Safe on the computer. Play nice.
Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | April 9, 2010 12:28 PM
Sven: Right. E. Texas.
Dare I ask which part? If you’re in one of the crossroads towns like Turnertown or New Summerfield, or randomly named spots on the road like Noonday or Shady Grove, you can just name the nearest “big” city, like Tyler, Longview, Texarkana, Corsicana, etc. I’ll know where you’re talking about–and how much consolation you need.
Walton @125, wrote,
The trouble with this view, which is the view of many of the opponents of minimum wage laws, is that it completely ignores the fact the there are constraints on the employer as well.
I’m not talking about constraints imposed by laws or custom, but by the nature of their particular business.
First, employer’s require a certain amount of people to get the work done, and they will always try to hire the minimum number necessary to do the work. The idea that an employer would choose to lay someone off because a minimum wage law is in effect is just as silly as the idea that an employer will hire more people because there is no minimum wage. If x employees are required to perform y amount of work, an employer will only employ x number of employees, not any more or less.
So I don’t think much of the argument that employers will lay people off is a minimum wage law is imposed (or a minimum wage is increased). That would suggest that either the employer is already employing more people than necessary to get the work done (unlikely), or that the employer would voluntarily reduce their output (also unlikely).
Second, many employers cannot relocate, and a large number of minimum wage employees are in jobs which would be very expensive to relocate. There are a lot of local businesses which cannot move. (It’s possible that some of them may be operating with such a low P/L that the imposition of a minimum wage may put them out of business, but frankly that suggests to me that there were probably other things wrong with their business model and they were already in trouble.) But any service job, be it a McDonalds, an auto repair shop, a clothing store, will lose clients if they relocate. People go to these places for the convenience and if the business moves many will find it more convenient to go someplace else.
Finally, economic growth in a region depends, in a large part, on the circulation of money. People who are getting minimum wage are going to spend all of it (and likely more). Businesses as an aggregate benefit tremendously by having more people able to purchase their produce. While an individual business may want to lower costs by driving the wages to the floor, if every business does it, every business hurts. It’s yet another variation on the tragedy of the commons. This problem can be addressed and solved by the commons, i.e. the government, by imposing a minimum wage.
I know these are probably getting old, but…
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
10: What is a hand-line voice?
25: Hand evidence of the Internet.
Max: Try the Internet.
I realise this is a topic shift, but…
…some comedians can be total assholes.
Don’t click on that link (or read the comments) unless you’re prepared to have your opinion of humanity lowered a few notches.
@CButter:
So the answer to that question is… Google it?
I disagree that gun ownership protects from tyranny.
At this point, do we have enough human history to be able to make any predictions about that? It seems that tyrants dislike an armed populace – which doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a protection, but that’s probably where that idea comes from. Historically, insurgencies are much harder to quash in areas where there are lots of weapons ready to hand. Although my study of the history of revolutions leads me to conclude that the tipping point is when regular military forces begin to join the insurgents. Is it their guns that matter? Of course not; this rule appears to have held prior to the invention of the gun.
So, I’d say that gun ownership is not a “protection” against tyranny, per se, but the fact that it’s a concern to tyrants argues that the wise tyrant understands that a well-equipped insurgency is a lot worse than an ill-equipped one.
I just had an experience that I think is an example of some aspects of Christianity and the people who indulge in it.
I had to run an errand and wound up outside of town with some time to kill. It is a fine Missouri Friday morning and I saw a sign that read “Huge Garage Sale”, so I followed the arrow. I followed the series of signs for over three miles down country lanes–which is damn far for a garage sale. The sale turned out to be not huge, but tiny. The stuff for sale wasn’t bad, by garage sale standards, but it was all way overpriced. Most of the material was medium tacky, but all the literature and video was Christian tripe. A radio was blaring an offensive Christian preacher babbling about how atheists are evil idiots.
The classic touch was a range of 3 large stockpots, priced by size. The $10 and $15 ones were cheap, thin, lightweight, worn-out shit. The $20 one, just a little larger, was solid, heavy, high-quality professional-grade cookware, nicely seasoned, that made my mouth water. It was too big and too expensive for my present situation, but it was incredibly better than the others–I picked them up smallest first and went “oogh” when I tried to lift the good one–but this yoyo had just priced them by size.
I left without buying anything, or saying anything to the man running the sale. I thought about snarling at him, but saw no vitamins in it. However, there was another guy talking to him, and I thought I caught the words, “This is not a good witness”, but I couldn’t be sure.
It certainly was a bad witness to me.
PZ gives a great talk, by the way. I have a few pics of him HERE and HERE.
And thank you so much for being there, PZ. I really enjoyed it — and thanks for the terrific advice about the book!
although if you want to reduce the amount of gun related deaths you reduce the amount of guns.
Is that true? For example, if you want to reduce the number of automobile fatalities, do you reduce the number of cars? Or do you look at the problem from a larger perspective and try to figure out what controls will have the most positive impact?
The problem with taking that approach, of course, is that we might discover that (I’m just making this up) people with certain affective disorders are more likely to abuse a gun. Would it then be fair to restrict their actions? Just like the way people like myself are required to wear glasses when we operate motor vehicles. :) We might discover that gun crime is a socio-economic problem or a neurochemical problem and not merely a problem of quantity of guns. Simplistic theories like “less guns will mean less gun crime” don’t hold up when you consider that in the last 10 years the number of privately owned guns in the US has gone up by several million but gun crimes have dropped. So we can see right away that, while “less guns will mean less gun crime” may be true, there is some other factor that is having a greater effect on the problem. What is it? That’s a really important question. (It appears that violent crime correllates more closely with consumer confidence indexes than damn near anything else, but correllation does not imply causation)
20 for a good stockpot is a freaking steal. Man, I’d have snatched that or bought it for you.
I don’t get how that represents xianity though? I’m not being snarky I just don’t understand. Because he had all the bible stuff playing? Or because he priced his stuff like some one who has no idea what their stuff is worth?
It seems that tyrants dislike an armed populace – which doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a protection, but that’s probably where that idea comes from.
Examples?
Historically, insurgencies are much harder to quash in areas where there are lots of weapons ready to hand.
Again, examples? In the context of a first world tyrant-say if the Teabaggers turn out to be correct and Obama declares himself president for life and, for some reason, the military goes along with it-would the sort of weapons that are available to the average person be of the slightest use? And would a bunch of unorganized gun owners even be able to do anything besides increase the chaos? For a successful rebellion I’d think you’d need a fair amount of organization. And, if one is fighting the US, weapons that can penetrate tanks.
Byron Bateman, President of Sportsmen for Wildlife, is also a mormon. He has been active in lobbying in Utah for wolf populations to be reduced, and protections removed: http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_14241339
He has also lobbied US Fish and Wildlife to amend black bear hunting regulations to allow hounds and baiting.
http://wildlife.utah.gov/bear/pdf/00bearplan.pdf
The bear-hunting document includes this (not writen by Bateman, but endorsed by him)
Don Peay, the mormon who wrote the text quoted above, is the founder of SFW. These are some of the people backing Al Barrette in Alaska.
Well that’s kind of my point actually. Yes, you will have less automobile fatalities if you have almost no cars. That is the exact sort of statement I was making.
Now, as I said, I don’t think that really does any good though if your concern is pedestrian safety, right?
I’m not anti-regulation, I’m just anti-gun ban.
What if the business is one with a very tight profit margin, and having to pay workers higher wages eliminates the profit margin?
Let’s say Bob the worker is employed to make widgets for a wage of $4 per hour. Let’s say he produces 5 widgets an hour. Let’s say that the materials to produce each widget cost $1, and each widget sells for $2. So, after subtracting the cost of materials and the cost of Bob’s labour, the employer is making a profit of 20 cents on each widget.
Now let’s say that minimum wage legislation comes into force, and Bob’s wage has to be increased to $6 per hour. This will eat up the employer’s profit, so the employer is now making a loss on each widget. Assuming that the market price of widgets is static, it is no longer worthwhile for the employer to employ Bob; they’re not making any profit out of his work. So they lay him off. And if they can’t find an alternative, more efficient means of producing widgets, then they’re likely to go out of business, meaning that all their workers will become unemployed.
I don’t know how realistic any of the above numbers are. I’m not an economist and have never worked in industry, and I made all this up on the spot. But it’s certainly something that troubles me about the minimum wage, especially in economies with a preponderance of low-wage, low-profit industries.
Lynna, OM @168
I really hope he is not confirmed. But, just the fact that Parnell nominated him, and appointed a similar individual to be the Director of F&G (who does not even have any sort of college degree), makes it highly likely that he will.
Your entire argument hinges on this, Walton… tsk, tsk…
Please tell me you understand why this is unlikely to be the case in your scenario…
@180
Yes, it’s true. Gun ownership is correlated with increased mortality.
I hate widgets! Curse them, curse them to Hell and back again, so I can curse them one more time!!
(I was a business major in college, stupid widgets…)
*sigh*
This is the second time I have seen this analogy used in reference to guns in the past couple of weeks here. It sucked the other time too.
Guns =/= cars, in any meaningful way related to this discussion.
What if there is a neighbouring country or state which has no minimum wage laws, and which also produces widgets? In that circumstance, it’s surely likely that Bob’s employer will not be able to increase the sale price of widgets, since they will still have to compete on price with imported foreign widgets. (I’m assuming for the sake of arguments that there are no quotas, tariffs or other quantitative restrictions on cross-border trade in widgets.)
Indeed, it wouldn’t be unconstitutional to ban cars! (I think, coming from a position of absolutely no knowledge of the constitution, and satirically..)
For example, if you want to reduce the number of automobile fatalities, do you reduce the number of cars?
There are a number of situations in which banning cars makes perfect sense. Dense inner cities tend to flow better without cars clogging up the passage of people. I’d be all for a ban on private cars and most car services in Manhattan, for example.
In contrast, a ban on cars would make absolutely no sense in, for example, outer Montana: there aren’t enough people for mass transit to be of the slightest use and the chances of hitting someone with a car are relatively slim.
The same with guns. Context matters. A suicidally depressed Manhattanite with three small children shouldn’t have a gun. A non-suicidal, non-homicidal single person with extensive training in gun safety living in far west Texas where the nearest neighbor is 50 miles away might as well have one if s/he wants.
The stockpot was a good deal, yes, and I wish I could have bought it. But the Christian didn’t value a good stockpot over a bad one. He just looked at appearances, not at true worth. He couldn’t tell. Pearls before swine, sorta.
That one item was worth the money, through his ignorance. But everything else wasn’t worth the price I’d have had to pay.
And he went to extraordinary lengths to falsely advertise what he had to offer.
And he had a preacher blatting on in what was, temporarily, a public place that he had lied to get people into.
It’s a metaphor.
And, on my other attempt, yes, I know the South lost the Civil War. But the name is important, because the name is what the war was about. The south said it was not a nation, so it couldn’t be a civil war. It was a war between independent nations, so it was called a war between states.
A Virginia governor celebrating the Confederacy should have used the Confederate term. Him calling it a civil war is like the pope saying that PZ has been “throwing crackers away”. The terminology recounts the entire freaking point of the conflict.
Jeez. If I wanted snarky-ass abusive corrections I’d go talk to my daughter.
MAJeff @ 32:
It’s about time! That particular fight has gone on way too long. There will be a lot of ugly reactions.
No, you’re assuming that because if you don’t your argument falls apart… however, as such an assumption bears no resemblance to reality, I’m not sure why I should accept that assumption…
Perhaps, and certainly the US was able to break away from England because it had an armed populace, but that is not really how the amendment is written. If I recall correctly, at the time it was believed that the greatest enabler of tyranny was a standing army. Recognizing that the country would need protection from foreign invaders, the compromise of forming militias from the populace as needed would accomplish both tasks: provide security from invasion and discourage tyranny at home. I do not think that the 2nd amendment was intended to directly oppose (as in a shooting war) tyranny.
citation:
Aquaria–
I’m reluctant to give up anonymity (pre-tenure liberal, atheist professor at a university with a fairly conservative admin), although if anyone wanted to be a total weirdo, they could probably figure out who I am from former posts.
Give you a hint, though…the largest town in my area of E. Tex has an enormous white statue standing to the south of it.
akshelby @186:
I heard from my brother that lives in Alaska that 40 retired Fish and Game employees signed a petition against Al Barrette, but that the petition was dismissed.
Barrette has the christian-domination dogma in common with Palin and Parnell. We have mormon politicians in both Idaho and Utah who go along with the christian-domination idea, but they put a mormon spin on it.
Someone needs to look into how much money Sportsmen for Wildlife has put into backing Barrette. SFW boasts on their website that they can cut through bureaucratic red tape to get things done, that they provide money for litigation, and that they go over the heads of local bureaucrats.
Most of the leaders of SFW that I looked up are LDS, but one guy looks to be a fundamentalist of another stripe. God has a plan for wildlife, and it is to make sure the trophy-hunting industry makes money.
@ 180,
Not this shit again.
And the false equivalence of gun deaths with car accident deaths is particularly annoying.
Antiochus @ 92: Yes!
The rules/codes were originally a set of decision rules to prevent the names of plants and animals being a matter of opinion, where authoritan voices would influence outcomes. Conservation of names crept in during the 1980s and now loud and dominating voices sometimes win against the application of the original principles. IMHO, the Drosophila decision is a return to reason.
In botany, we had the Acacia stoush at the Vienna congress, where the situation was very similar, but the outcome was different. Australian politicians, sports teams and garden clubs lobbied shamelessly (a dozen poster boards covered with faxes and emails from every man and his dog) to conserve Acacia with a new (Australian) type. Someone even said you shouldn’t change the scientific name of the wattle to Racosperma because the Aussie sports teams play in green and gold, representing that plant. I guess he was worried about the cost of all those new uniforms in the colors of Racosperma.
There were counter-accusations that this was racist. But in the end the Australian faction won (although I think the Australian botanists there were pretty much evenly divided on the issue). But I’m told it’s all up for grabs again at the next IBC in Melbourne next year.
Bring soda and popcorn.
Not true. As I understand it, in the US, although there is a federal minimum wage, states are free to set higher minimum wage rates if they wish. And there are no quotas or tariffs on cross-border trade between US states. So if Bob the worker from my earlier scenario lives in State A at a time when State A increases its minimum wage, while neighbouring State B maintains a lower minimum wage, then Bob’s employer will be unable to compete with widget manufacturers in State B.
Similarly, over here, Article 34 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (better known until last year as Article 28 of the EC Treaty) provides that quantitative restrictions on imports are prohibited between EU Member States; so EU Member States are not allowed, with certain exceptions, to impose quotas or tariffs on imports from other Member States. Meanwhile, each Member State is still free to set its own minimum wage rate, as minimum wage is not an area of EU legislative power. So if Bob the worker lived in Britain, and Britain raised its minimum wage rate while, say, Slovakia maintained a lower rate, my scenario would also be entirely plausible.
Walton – I think your assumption that any business will operate with such a low profit margin per worker is somewhat flawed even if all your other assumptions hold – businesses operating in such a manner are likely to be pretty untenable anyway and not really worthwhile considering when looking at whether or not minimum wage is going to have a positive, or negative, economic impact – given that there’s already been an arguement made that the minimum wage would/does have a positive impact in that anyone working on min wage is likely spending 100% of their income (been there, done that, main reason I a) support a min wage, and b) think that in pretty much any instance I’ve seen it it should be higher) – With the implementation Bob the worker may well lose his job at the Widget factory, but will likely find gainful employ elsewhere at what is at least moderately closer to a morally acceptable level of compensation.
Xenithrys: Hope to be in Melbourne in 2011 to watch the whole thing go down in person.
Antiochus @ 204.
Me too, if I can get out of teaching. Beer could be drunk — I bet we could get a Pharyngulites session going :-)
I said, “I do not think that the 2nd amendment was intended to directly oppose (as in a shooting war) tyranny.”
Let me rephrase. That is, the 2nd amendment wasn’t intended to provide an armed populace to oppose a tyrannical government but to provide an alternative to a standing army which they believed promoted tyranny. Kind of a “passive-aggressive” approach. Again, the armed populace was intended to let the government form militias as needed. This so as to prevent the formation of standing armies that could result in tyranny. Militias were to prevent tyranny not necessarily to oppose it.
Having said that, it is certainly easier to dominate an unarmed populace than an armed one, but would it be impossible to dominate an armed populace? Conversely, would it be impossible for an unarmed populace to overthrow a tyranical government? On the other hand, would it be possible for an unarmed government to maintain a tyranny?
So, once again, it is not the armed populace that prevents tyranny, but the lack of a standing army. But without a standing army, it is necessary to have an armed population to protect itself.
Walton, most minimum wage earners here in the US tend to work sevice jobs. McD’s, hotels, etc. Very site dependent. I’m not going two suburbs over (or to the next state) to save 20 cents on Fillet O’Fish sandwich for lunch. I don’t have that much time, and gas costs too. So I pay a couple of more cents for my sandwich. That is what happens when the minimum wage goes up. Everybody in the area recoups their increased cost, and then some.
Most manufacturing jobs pay a premium over minimum wage to reduce turnover.
How much does it cost to make a violin to play a song of lamentation for Bob’s hypothetically moronic employer and his idiotic business that just went under, if we assume that a) the violin doesn’t need to actually make a sound because b) nowhere in the real world would/could this situation exist?
What makes you think that? Considering that, ex hypothesi, Bob is working at the widget factory for very low pay, we can reasonably assume that he doesn’t have a lot of marketable skills or better options: if he did, he wouldn’t be working there in the first place. So on what basis do you assume that he will be able to get another job with higher pay? He’s more likely to become unemployed and get even poorer.
Obviously, the overall impact of the minimum wage will depend on what the economy in Bob’s area is like. But for the sake of argument, let’s say Bob lives in an industrial town where most of the working population work long hours in widget factories for minimal pay. Introducing a minimum wage, at a time when the local manufacturers have to compete with imported foreign widgets, is likely to lead to large layoffs: not only will Bob lose his job, but so will most of his neighbours, and there won’t be anything else for him to do.
States (like California) sometimes choose to offset a higher cost of living with a higher minimum wage. But they can offset this state by state with things like retail sales taxes… and, while there are not tarrifs interstate, per-se, there is taxation on inter-state commerce.
But there is a minimum wage, Walton, for all states, and there are tarrifs on trading with other countries. They are not nearly high enough for places where they absolutely should be (China, most obviously), but they do exist, else a minimum wage would probably not be at all feasible.
This is the entire point. Minimum wage ensures a minimum standard of living. Tarriffs on international trading, various taxes, taxation on interstate commerce and other means help maintain some level of viability for businesses to be able to operate while offering a minimum wage.
As I said, the simplistic scenario you envision is not representative of reality, I don’t believe.
…will explode if he gets fired. Not emotionally; he will actually explode and take out a small town. A small town full of, hypothetically, orphans. And kittens. Orphans with just the right combination of genetics that they would grow up to cure cancer, athlete’s foot, and shitty television, and kittens whose dander self weaves into magic space cables that would allow us to flit about the galaxy spreading a message of peace–oh yeah, the kitties’ buried feces causes spontaneous breakouts of peace and agreeableness among humans if they defecate within a month of being stroked by magically medicinal orphans–to aliens. So, in this hypothetical scenario, Bob’s fuckwit boss is actually serving the galaxy by netting $40 a week off of Bob’s labour.
Gee, when looked at it this way, instituting minimum wage is like bludgeoning paraplegics to death with whiffle-covered aluminum bats.
I’m a free market convert!
I see you travel all over the places; yet I don’t see you complaining about Jet lag. Does the FSM or Cthulhu protect you, from suffering the aforementioned condition?
:D :D :D
FTW !
So you think American workers are more important than Chinese workers, and that their livelihoods should be artificially protected against competition from better and cheaper Chinese products? Why do national borders – which are, after all, just imaginary lines – matter so much to you?
Protectionism is morally wrong. There is no reason why trade should be restricted by national (or subnational) boundaries. I am in favour of global free trade, and the progressive abolition of tariffs, quotas, “anti-dumping” laws, customs duties and other restrictions on trade. Yes, this will mean some businesses can’t compete; but I don’t think the state should artificially protect Western businesses against competition from the developing world.
Brownian, I was trying to make a serious point.
But I have to admit, that was funny. You win this round.
God, I LOVE the Coop.
BTW, that’s not from “Dragontown”…. nvm, it IS on the re-release.
@Brownian:
Trying not to laugh too hard. Thank you for that.
Oh, and since it’s obligatory:
10:
25:
Max:
Oh, I know, but what makes your theoretical hypotheticals more serious than mine?
WTF?? You pick that point out to rail against and go completely off-topic? It’s a separate conversation to the topic at hand, Walton…
But I promise you, if you want to get into a pissing match about you calling what I said “protectionism”, I’m all for it buddy. Bring your helmet and tighten your chinstrap… but for now let’s try to stay on topic, shall we?
And how the FUCK you ever got all that shit you posted in #214 from my suggestion that our tariff rates with China are unfair in their favor is just fucking incomprehensible.
When Sven wakes up from his nap, I think it’s your turn.
Governor Otter of Idaho said on the news last night that he intends to make repealing Health Care legislation his first priority, and that he thinks the Republicans will make repeal the major issue in the next political campaign.
Here’s a look at some of the misinformation Republicans have been spouting (some of you may have seen this before, but it was news to me):
Joking aside: do you really deny that there are businesses which operate on very tight profit margins and which subsist by underpaying their workers? Do you really find this no more plausible than Bob turning into a heap of exploding cat faeces while being beaten to death by an orphan with an aluminium bat, or whatever you said?
Ok Menyambal I get it. You could almost turn that into a neat short short story. Kind of Flannery O’Connor like.
Sorry for making you clarify so much. I actually have a problem picking up intent or understanding metaphor. I have to really work to parse it. For that reason I actually like poetry because it’s hard for me to figure out what is going on or being talked about. I’m very literal minded and some times don’t even notice obvious sarcasm so thanks :P
What if the business is one with a very tight profit margin, and having to pay workers higher wages eliminates the profit margin?
Why does it always have to come from the pay of the grunts, and never from the guys at the top who give themselves huge salaries and bonuses and perks, whether the quarterly statements show profit of loss, and/or who use ridiculous business models that are destined to fail?
This is the problem with your batty assumption, Walton: You seem to assume that executives know what they’re doing and care about their employees, at least enough to do right by them. You seem to have this idealised image of them as these brilliant, take charge, can-do kinda guys who are masters of human motivation and insight. But they’re not, because they’re human, just like the rest of us.
Metaphors be with you, Ol’Greg.
Xenithrys: Bet we could get some Pharyngulites together. And just so you know, I love to drink beer, and I was planning on doing that anyway.
Where is it that you hail from? I have a long way to travel to get to Melbourne, so I have to get some grants. But with a ~5-8% funding rate this shouldn’t be a problem with the US-NSF, should it?
*Lip begins to tremble*
*One tear wells slowly in left eye. AE looks down, as the tear breaks free from the porches of his eye, and makes its way slowly down the tip of his nose, where it resists gravity momentarily and falls utterly into his coffee*
Its just my allergies, man. Did you catch the last (game/match/tournament) of (whatever professional sports figure/team you support)? What a (game/match/torunament)!
I see your point. But this, too, surely depends on the amount of the minimum wage.
Let’s say Bob’s sister, Bobbette, works as a cook at a local family diner for $4 an hour. With lots of competition from McDonald’s and other chain restaurants, the diner already struggles to make a profit, and only just stays afloat. Then, the new minimum wage law forces the diner to raise Bobbette’s pay to $6 an hour. With having to pay higher wages to all the staff, they can’t compete, and the diner goes out of business. Bobbette is out of a job. What does she do?
@224 – goodness, are you talking about Borders? (where I work a grand 4 hours a week) – sure sounds like it. I swear, top management is getting huge bonuses for driving a perfectly good company into the ground.
Where in my scenario did I make any such assumption? Quite the opposite, in fact. I’m assuming that Bob’s bosses at the widget factory are only interested in maximising profit. Hence why, when they can no longer make a profit from Bob’s labour due to minimum wage laws, they fire him. My scenario is, in fact, perfectly consistent with the assumption that Bob’s employers are total assholes.
And exist in towns wherein they’re the only sizable employers, except for all the competing businesses that operate under the exact same model? And widget prices are unfavourably fixed by OWEC?
No. I contend however, that such situations are few and far between, and are not indicative in anything we’d consider to be a healthy economy anyway, so to suggest that minimum wages are de facto bad because they have a slim chance of harming bob and his family in such unlikely conditions is about as serious as positing magical cat feces, no matter how many times you use that mainstay of economics texts, the ‘widget’.
#209
I was working under the hyopothesis that Bob was working in a relatively typical town, rather than an invented one – I’m reasonably sure that were the majority of the town employed at the Widget factory then said Widget factory owners would not be operating in a fashion whereby a $1 p/h increase in wages for the bottom of the pile workers like Bob leads to dissolution of the business, or even dissolution of the Widget manufacturing arm of their operations, while maintaining steady production of Thingumabobs where the margin of profit is more realistic.
Argueing against the minimum wage to protect large business, as opposed to small business (which is the general arguement you hear) is at least a novel tactic, but the arguement holds that if a business is so shoddily run that increasing wages $1 p/h is enough to make it fold… well, it’s a crappy business anyway and would likely fold in coming months regardless.
While you’re taking the moral stance (in #214) can you explain why you can get so incensed about protectionism, but don’t see anything morally wrong in paying people less than it costs to live comfortably (and here I probably don’t mean my comfortably, or your comfortably, but more 3 meals a day, being able to make rent, and living a somewhat satisfying life) in their given situation.
Also clarify how the government funding the difference between what you are paid, and what is an acceptable level of pay, is anything other than as bad as (or worse than)the protectionism you’re railing against – essentially all businesses could pay their min wage workers nothing, with the government subsidising the workforce, thus allowing businesses to outcompete foreign interests with less insane business setups – why pay Indian kids $1 a month when you can pay Bob the Widget maker from Arkansas (he deserves a back story I feel, particularly given that he is apparently explosive) absolutely bugger all because Uncle Sam will cover the difference.
For the most part, yes. If they pay minimum wage, they are either service oriented, like McD’s, or on the edge of bankruptcy due to high labor turnover, which would be solved by paying slightly higher wages. Your hypotheticals aren’t real enough.
Menyambal – apologies for the snark. It was a throw away line on the way out, hardly abuse. I still think the Civil War is the only thing the Gov could have called it without drawing down even more opprobrium on his head. Calling it The War for Southern Independence, The War of Northern Aggression, The War Between the States, or The Second American Revolution (all common) would all have raised an even bigger storm. What the Confederate States called the war at the time is, to me, immaterial. I do not think I get your point. Please educate me as I am missing something.
Walton, the point is that your argument falls apart in any and all situations that resemble reality, and are only plausible in the shiny, invented confines of your hypotheticals…
Walton (@185):
Then that business will — and should — go out of business: Any business selling goods and services at a price it cannot sustain unless it pays less than a living wage for labor is parasitic on the society it sells to, and has no inherent right to continue to exist.
(@191):
Depending on the details of the case, that might be a justification for trade sanctions or, in very extreme cases, possibly even war; it is not a justification for preemptively screwing your own citizens to get out ahead of the neighbors who plan to effectively screw them from across the border.
Being required to “sell” your labor for less than you can actually live on is little (if any) better than slavery… and no society can morally tolerate the enslavement of its citizens. Not by businesses within its borders, and not by proxy from next door.
Am I really suggesting literal war over the neighboring nation’s lack of a minimum wage law? It’s hard to imagine a real situation that would rise to that extreme, in fact. But I do quite seriously believe it’s unconscionable to tolerate businesses that can’t survive unless they pay less than a living wage for labor. I consider this a matter of social justice, rather than of economic policy: Labor, unlike raw materials, finished goods, etc., is not merely an impersonal input to the economy.
And if a minimum wage means that a net positive number of businesses fail, causing a net loss of jobs (neither of which I actually believe is likely), guess what? I still think it’s better to have people on public support than to tolerate a system that abjectly exploits labor: Life on the dole may be undignified and unfulfilling, but it’s got to be better than killing yourself for the right to slowly starve; paying for the dole may seem unfair and frustrating, but it’s better than participating in the exploitation of your neighbors.
IMHO, of course.
It’s spectacularly impossible that this will ever happen in the U.S., but if I could wave a magic wand, I’d create a truly comprehensive Social Welfare program that would encompass public single-payer health coverage, a true public retirement pension (i.e., not just the supplemental retirement income currently provided by Social Security), disability and unemployment coverage, and a living wage guarantee for all. (And people think Obama’s a socialist! ;^} ) Of course, paying for all this (my wand only produces political magic, and so can’t make these programs free!) would mean significantly higher taxes for everyone… but the overhead cost to businesses associated with labor would be drastically lower, and the difference could go into higher wages, lower prices for goods and services, or some combination of the two. On net, I suspect most people would be better off economically, and even those who weren’t wealthier in strictly material terms would receive significant compensatory intangible benefits from living in a more just society with a higher overall standard of living. A rising tide really does, IMHO, lift all boats, even if some of the boats are a bit smaller and less luxurious.
I’m sure there’s no shortage of people here who can explain why this vision is naive, but never mind: I said from the start that it’s an impossibly utopian dream, and I don’t even pretend to be trying to bring it about. Instead, I work to support candidates and initiatives that I judge will move the world-as-it-is as far in the direction of my utopian ideal as is actually practical and sustainable.
And support for a strong minimum wage law is, in my judgment, in that spirit.
Interesting, indeed.
My Political Views
I am a left social libertarian
Left: 4.83, Libertarian: 3.82
#227
I guess she goes and works for McDonald’s as they’ll have increased custom due to the diner shutting down.
Although it should also be noted that in a lot of areas (not sure how universal this is) servers at a Diner aren’t held to the same minimum wage as others – generally a chunk of their wages comes from tips, so an increase in minimum wage is likely (and again I’m not sure of the impact this has on tipped employees, but I’ll blunder on anyway) to impact McDonalds and other fast food, non-tip employers a lot more than a diner where unless it’s in a really crappy area msot of the wait staff probably live on tips rather than an hourly wage.
Let’s say she cooks 6 meals an hour. They raise the average price by 25 cents. McDonalds will likewise have to increase prices to pay their employees $2 more an hour, each, so this has no potential to hurt them relative to the McDonalds (and it will actually hurt them less, since the family diner has fewer employees than the family diner).
This is why your examples are stupid. You make too many unrealistic assumptions, and when people call you on how full of shit they are you change the subject or just throw out another example. Seriously, it’s sad to watch.
Walton @185 wrote,
In the first place, employers are always on the lookout for efficiency improvements to reduce costs. So, our hypothetical employer should have already found any possible improvements and laid off Bob. (Well in theory they should be. Yet, from 20+ years of personal experience many employers already are operating very inefficiently. They don’t care because their income and balance sheets look good.)
I did point out in my original e-mail that if a raise in the minimum wage could result in closing a business, assuming the businesses P/L were already being squeezed. However, that is a different situation than an employer choosing to employ one less person. There are already probably other things wrong with their business if that occurs.
The biggest thing is that your numbers are unrealistic and exclude some major factors. A (very) simplified version of your example would include overhead, typically estimated at twice the cost of wages. So your model should be $4/hr wage, $1/widget BOM, and $8/hr overhead. Which means that your widget has to sell at a minimum of $3.40 for there to be any profit at all. The business in your example is already losing money.
The scenario you are suggesting is unrealistic in other senses as well. You stipulate a completely elastic demand, the widgets sell for $2 no matter how many are available. In certain commodity items with a lot of manufacturers this can get pretty close from the perspective of an individual company, but in those cases you are producing at far greater rates than 5/hr. For example, pencils cost what, $0.20/each regardless of the supplier? Maybe they’re cheaper than that.
I once looked at the economics of a plastic blow-molding plant. The line workers were getting just over minimum wage, but the throughput was on the order of 200-300 gallon milk-jugs per hour per machine, the difference in cost/part for a wage increase from $4 to $6 would be a little less than $0.01 per part. An inexpert operator caused more loss to the company by breaking a machine for an hour than a $2/person wage increase would do.
The only way you can get such an elastic demand curve is with high volume, undifferentiated, products in a mature economy.
In your model you want a widget produced at low volume, but not differentiated from other widgets. This is a business strategy guaranteed to fail because anyone who can produce at a higher volume will take all your business. Wages are the least of your worries.
A build rate of 5/hr/worker is more in line with Dell’s computer assembly or other very high material cost items. First of all, because of the need of skilled labor in those type plants those workers are already getting more than minimum wage. Second, the material cost and the final selling price makes the percentage of the labor in the cost a much smaller fraction.
Finally, the employers who are mainly affected by minimum wage increases are not manufacturers. Minimum wage requirements are mostly aimed at those jobs which hire unskilled or temporary workers, and those are precisely the industries which can pass much of the wage increases onto their customers. If every employee in a McDonalds has to have a $0.25/hr wage increase, that might translate into an additional $60 cost/day to the restaurant. If 125 people stop in a day, raising the price by $0.15 on each item passes the entire cost of the wage increase onto the customers. And you are not likely to lose many (if any) customers over such a small increase.
This is, of course, ignoring that the family diner would likely be able to legally operate similar to restaurants, where they don’t even need to pay minimum wage. It’s assumed that the employee gets a certain percentage of tips, that count towards their “minimum wage” even though the employer is not paying it.
After having worked for several years now in large corporations (dang, doesn’t anyone else here?), having seen salaries across the board and how workers fit together in a large business (consider, for instance, Walton that several companies will probably be within one corporate fold) I definitely think they are more emergent than top down.
Any re-arrangement is stressful and any change results in some power shift and layoff. Why do people always pretend there is a clear unbroken line from factory worker to executive? Hell a good portion of workforce will be contracted from overseas via another corporation entirely. It’s more like a big slime mold and less like a tree.
All I can say is when you get out of school you don’t use those models. AFAIK no, executives really don’t. They actually analyse the information coming in and going out which has been condensed and reported via separate channels. They can make mistakes but it’s not a top down decision because there are hundreds of people reporting and analyzing with their own goals in mind. And yes, some execs are actually brilliant at it but most companies just trudge along with all the grace of a garden slug.
Scary, no?
Yeah, I admit that idea wasn’t well-thought out. But my general point stands.
=====
Bill,
I wasn’t claiming that it’s somehow morally good, or even morally acceptable, to operate a business model which relies on underpaying one’s employees. It certainly isn’t. Rather, I was making a purely practical argument; given that such businesses exist, putting them out of business by enacting minimum-wage laws will tend to increase unemployment.
It may be, of course, that you consider it better to have higher unemployment than to have people earning below-subsistence wages. From the individual’s perspective, that, of course, has to depend how much welfare provision is available for the unemployed. (Though, ex hypothesi, if people are choosing to work in below-subsistence jobs rather than claim welfare, we can assume that the amount of welfare support available to them is less than the wages they’re earning.) From a governmental perspective, it also has to depend on how big your potential tax base is, and whether you can afford to support an increasing non-working population.
Let’s say Bob’s sister, Bobbette, works as a cook at a local family diner for $4 an hour. With lots of competition from McDonald’s and other chain restaurants, the diner already struggles to make a profit, and only just stays afloat. Then, the new minimum wage law forces the diner to raise Bobbette’s pay to $6 an hour. With having to pay higher wages to all the staff, they can’t compete, and the diner goes out of business. Bobbette is out of a job. What does she do?
She gets a job at the diner down the street which pays $8/hour. As a result of the higher wages and better working conditions, this diner has staff with a high morale and produces high quality food and services. They have a great word of mouth reputation and have been written up in a number of guides as a “hidden gem” in Bobbette’s city. People line up out the door to eat there. Bobbetter makes more money, has more fun, and the diner prospers.
Isn’t this the pro-capitalist/total free market argument: That the best will win in an open competition? If so, then a company that fails because of a little thing like having to pay its employees marginally more deserves to fail.
Eh, you have my vote.
Flex @#239: Thanks for that detailed analysis. I will admit that I know almost nothing about the workings of manufacturing companies, as I don’t study economics or business and have never worked in any sort of industry. I made my model up on the spot, so I’m unsurprised to learn that it wasn’t particularly an accurate reflection of how manufacturing works.
I should really get back to work now (I have exams to study for).
Oh and sorry I didn’t mean to imply no business models are used, just nothing that simplistic. Yet in common discussion it is almost always reduced to that. It doesn’t make sense if you look at budget from within a business KWIM?
Possibly if these businesses exist in a complete vacuum, and that is making the rather large leap to assume that these businesses exist in numbers large enough to have any effect whatsoever – both of which require pretty hefty leaps of the imagination IMO. In terms of existing in a vacuum – here you focus entirely on the negative, and not on the positive aspects that a min wage increase will have on the local economy – again getting back to the fact that even if you drive all local business profits down by lets say 5% due to the wage increase, you equally drive spending by minimum wage earners up by exactly the same monetary amount – cycling more, rather than less, money through the local economy (unless you exist in some weird utopia where money generated by businesses doesn’t tend to accumulate in pockets that technically don’t really need it any more) – my guess is that the balance is mroe likely to be in net job creation, rather than net job loss, due to enactment of minimum wage laws, although I would guess the effects are such that they get hidden in the noise of the overall economic conditions currently prevailing (I lived through the enactment of min wage laws in the UK, and have seen min wage hikes here in MO, and haven’t seen any evidence that there were massive job losses or gains either way)
Poor Walton, you’re so good at getting off track from studying. You go do your work. People need a good lawyer. You’re letting them all down :P
What the hell are you trying to demonstrate with your asinine examples?
Let’s try it the other way, shall we?
Bob and Bobette’s employers are free-wheeling business people in Bobville. (Like most small business people, they haven’t a fucking clue how to run a business, as evinced by the multitude of failed business ventures and the resultant “How to run a small business” courses offered by their local community college, business association, etc.) A new law institutes a minimum wage, forcing them to pay their employees a living wage for the first time. Now, both employers run a tight profit margin, because they’re idiots. And greedy. However, Bobette’s boss decides he’s not ready to go back to the daily grind at the widget shop, as he much prefers being his own boss to his previous job working alongside Bob for Mr. McSkinflint–who always seems to have enough money for imported Cuban stogies, even if he claims a 31 cent/hr raise for his two employees is beyond his means. So, rather than closing up the diner, Bobette’s boss takes a couple of courses and learns he can streamline his operation by cutting out some of the poorer selling items from his menu, and he’s left with enough to refurbish the kitchen and pay Bobette the legally-required wage. He also learns something about bookkeeping, and realises he’s losing his shirt on food wastage. A local farmer’s market provides some alternative sources of produce, and so he rebrands his diner to capitalise on the ‘shop local’ meme. Further, now that Bobette is making a few more bucks a shift, she’s able to upgrade her apartment to one a little closer to work, cutting down on her commute. Her improved attitude (she doesn’t have to dodge as many meth-heads on the way) brings in more customers, who prefer sitting down to fresh, local food served with a smile by their favourite server ‘Bobbie’. Things chug along smoothly, and fame spreads. People from neighbouring towns hear about “Bobette’s Boss’s Diner”. The expanded kitchen, longer hours, and packed dining room requires a full-time dishwasher. Luckily, unskilled Bob has found himself out of a job, and is interviewing for the position when Bobette’s boss realises that he could open a headquarters into the newly shut-down widget factory and start selling franchise rights…
Can you think out your analogies before posting them like they demonstrate something meaningful? It would really save a lot of people a lot of desk-inflicted cranial trauma.
How so? You haven’t yet made a plausible, realistic argument about anything you’ve stated on this topic. You’re back to arguing by your gut, siding with what “feels right” while pulling nonsensical examples out of your ass to support your feelings. At least you’re recognizing that your model doesn’t really fit when you’re told so by people who know things, but why do you use them in the first place if you have no reason to believe they are in any way realistic?
Brownian, you and I are now pretty much writing the script for a TV drama. :-)
590-165=425 left!
Joking aside: do you really deny that there are businesses which operate on very tight profit margins and which subsist by underpaying their workers?
Well, that’s pretty close to what Wal-Mart does…
Seriously, Walton, do you understand that a business that is operating on that tight of a margin is making some serious mistakes in one or more areas of its business model, and that those choices have little to do with employees?
I’d say that 99% of businesses struggling with a tight profit margin are there because they don’t understand their market and how to reach it, or the costs of production, the costs of turnover, how to re-invest in the company correctly, how to deal with people effectively (including employees) and so forth.
*claps*
Will I get in trouble if I fall a little in love with Brownian?
Ah, yes. The adventures of Bob and Bobbette Bobblehead in Bobbletown, USA. A classic. :-)
hmm now only 407
I’m assuming that Bob’s bosses at the widget factory are only interested in maximising profit. Hence why, when they can no longer make a profit from Bob’s labour due to minimum wage laws, they fire him.
Okay–we crossed wires then. I was also taking into account the bosses that just didn’t know what they were doing, and hence were tightening the margin purely through business incompetence, not malice (unlike, oh, American Airlines).
On actual impacts of minimum wage, rather than Bobworld:-
first one
second one
third one
You can probably only get the abstracts, rather than the full articles, however it appears from these two that there is at least no reason to believe that Bobworld is an accurate representation of what occurs when min wage is implemented, or increased – it appears you don’t get much of an effect on employment either way (although the third article suggests an increase once you do all kinds of manipulations)
Does peer reviewed economics carry the same weight as peer reviewed science?
(I’m guessing given the awesome state economists have imposed upon us the answer must be yes)
AKA, “Walton’s Hypothetical Mountain”.
Well, I said right at the start of the discussion that I wasn’t at all sure I was right about the minimum wage issue. I started this discussion in order to hear some alternative views and learn things. In that regard, it has been very successful. (Though, regrettably, the adventures of Bob and Friends have also been very successful at allowing me to procrastinate from work.)
Or a comedy! “He’s an ambitious, conservative law student, who just wants to serve the constitution. His roommate is a flaky, public health wonk with utilitarian ideals. But can they agree on more than “there’s probably no God?” Watch the politicoeconomic sparks fly on ‘Opiate of the Masses’, Thursdays at 9!”
You did that just for the halibut, didn’t you?
Sorry Walton. I’m sure you don’t just want to serve the constitution, but we’ve got to appeal to American audiences if we’re to get a prime-time spot.
Or were you angling for something more akin to a high-production value HBO/BBC miniseries like Rome? ‘Cause I’m down with that too.
Oh, no… you had to go and do that, didn’t you Sili…
Ok, then… here you go…
“She gave me that same old line: Not tonight, I got a haddock”.
;-)
He’s an ambitious, conservative law student, who just wants to serve the constitution.
I’m confused. I thought walton was British. Shouldn’t he be serving the Magna Carta or something?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8612457.stm
Razi’s signature is on a letter saying that the “good of the universal Church” needs to be considered in defrocking a rapist priest. It resulted in the priest staying a priest for two more years.
Also,
Any Catholic that does not refuse to tithe until the Pope reverses that position (or at least makes serious steps towards apologizing and restructuring the church, as well as paying reparations to the victims and their families in the cases where they subsequently killed themselves) is morally culpable. There is absolutely no more wiggle room left with that statement.
I see quite a lot of this argument has gone on while I was laboriously composing mine @235!
Walton (@214):
While I confess I feel a greater sense of duty to my actual neighbors than to strangers on the other side of the global, still of course Chinese workers are not morally less important than American workers. Human beings are morally equal, regardless of what flag they salute, just as they are morally equivalent regardless of the color of their skin or what genital configuration they possess or who they want to screw. It’s just as morally wrong to exploit Chinese labor as to exploit American labor.
That said…
…national borders matter not because of arbitrary geography, but because they mark the limits of my capability to directly affect the law: I can vote for a minimum wage law (well, by way of voting for lawmakers who support it, that is) here; in China, not so much. The only way I can influence Chinese law at all is by influencing U.S. policy — including trade policy — toward China.
Maybe so, but IMHO, paying less than a living wage is morally wrong, as well. My interest in potential trade sanctions is not so much in protecting American jobs as it is in protecting laborers’ rights around the world. My preference would be that laws everywhere would protect all workers’ right to a living wage (and to a safe workplace and reasonable hours). As for my own country, I can work for that end through direct political action; as for other nations, my only recourse is to support policies that make worker abuse/quasi-slavery less profitable.
When we have global guarantees of decent treatment of labor, then your hypothetical unfettered free trade might be morally preferable; absent such guarantees, it’s just cover for the exploitation of your fellow humans.
Celtic_Evolution:
Pure, Grade A Win.
“scum. filthy,degenerate scum. every man jack of ’em.”
…54 translations later we get:
“In October the decision.”
Is Bad Translator quantum entangled with Lenin and Trotsky c.1917?
left 3.5 lib 1.54
Certainly not Magna Carta; very little of it is still in force, and it has remarkably little relationship to our modern constitutional order. Its significance is more romantic/historical than real. But maybe I should be serving the Bill of Rights 1689. Or the Act of Union 1701. Or the Parliament Act 1911. Or the Supreme Court Act 1981. Or the European Convention on Human Rights. Or the Constitutional Reform Act 2005. Or…
(But not the Treaty of Lisbon. Trust me on this.)
Not all that surprising:
You are a left social libertarian.
Left: 5.94, Libertarian: 4.81
Funny how I’ve grown redder over the years.
He is. I was just riffing on Walton wanting to do constitutional law (unless I’m mistaken). Look, that was just a teaser I threw out while I’m at work. I promise you that the writing will be much tighter once this project is green-lit.
Yes, do not do what I did today. I don’t think I have ever procrastinated so much. I eventually got to a point where I just said to myself “Fuck it, I won’t be doing anything productive today so I might as well give up trying”. Oh well, I just wasted a whole day. And I also have exams to study for. But fuck it, I won’t be touching those books till tomorrow.
But consider this. Exploited workers in the developing world work in sweatshops, in bad conditions for long hours and low pay, because it’s the best of the options available to them: in general, those other options tend to include begging, prostitution or starving on the streets. So if well-meaning Westerners, by way of boycotts and trade sanctions and the like, manage to close the sweatshops, what do you think happens to those workers? They become unemployed, and, in a country with no welfare infrastructure, that may well mean begging or starving. If you close the sweatshops, they won’t magically be instantly replaced with ethical businesses that pay their workers fair wages.
In the end, it would be great if everyone in the world had fair pay and decent working conditions. But that isn’t the world we live in, and it isn’t going to be achieved by making some of the world’s most vulnerable people unemployed.
More likely that once the project is green-lit you’ll be turned into a reasonably straight-acting gay guy and Walton will be replaced by a woman. 50% chance she’s a hot blonde, 50% chance she’s Debra Messing.
You don’t really expect a show centered around 2 male characters would take off, did you? Well, maybe you can both stay male and just add a kid to the main cast. But no way the execs don’t throw you a curveball.
Walton (@242):
Yes, this. I consider it much better to have high unemployment (if that were to be the result of minimum wage protections, which I don’t actually think it would be) than to tolerate business models that are just barely this side of slavery, in moral terms.
Brownian (@263):
Given the content of Rome, I can’t help wondering if you’re actually coming on to our little Extra Special Dumpling of Awesome? ;^)
Give you a hint, though…the largest town in my area of E. Tex has an enormous white statue standing to the south of it.
Oh dear. If I’m right about where you are, my cousin went to your university.
You don’t forget that statue.
#251
You are. It’s called Chef Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares.
It’s a great show. I wouldn’t mind a Bobville spin-off.
№2 – Jadehawk OM
“Atheism is an Anti-christian conspiracy created by the Jesuits. The final hoax in this fraud to discredit the Bible is going to be a fake staged alien invasion. Expect that to happen soon.”
Reminds me of Yellow Blue Tibia – good book,really entertaining, but the ending was lame.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/10/yellow-blue-tibia-roberts-review
I’m looking for slashfic already.
*clenched tentacle salute*
hope it’ll go over without permanent damage to anyone/anything.
*facepalm*
that quiz was kinda too generic for my taste… half the time I felt like the answer should be “depends…”
anyway:
You are a left social libertarian.
Left: 6.54, Libertarian: 5.9
I guess I’m an (almost)anarchist, too :-p
indeed. plus, some actual studies on the effect of minimum wage on employment showed absolutely no negative correlation, so this whole “minimum wage causes unemployment” thing seems to be a right-wing myth.
holy crap, I agree with Walton *deadfaint*
:-p
you’re right, which is why benefits tied to a particular job are fucking vile. I agree btw that unemployment is less bad than exploitation in the workplace, and like I said, it seems the claim that a minimum wage is a myth similar to the Laffer curve: sure, in theory eventually these effects can happen, but not here in the real world, where taxes aren’t 100% and minimum wage isn’t 1 million dollars.
then said employer is a net drain on society for the reasons Ol’ Greg explained, and doesn’t need to exist.
way to miss the point. see, this situation is a standard Tragedy of the Commons type of situation, because we have no lawgiving and -enforcing body above the multinational corporations. So, the only way to not fuck everybody everywhere up, like it generally happens in these scenarios, you have to use a form of peer-pressure to enforce a standard. Tariffs that are based on worker and environmental protections are precisely that. Manufacturing counties bow to pressure from their export markets all the time, might as well use that to improve people’s lives, rather than participate in the race to the bottom and enslave the vast majority of the world’s population in sweatshops.
Thanks!
Congratulations! We made it! Pharyngula is now banned in the PRC. ;-)
~:-| I’ll need to hear this firsthand in Copenhagen.
That, too, is a matter of practice. I used to have serious trouble hearing whether a lenis consonant is really voiced (like in Danish, /b d g “z”/ are all voiceless in southern German), enough to distort my pronunciation of English, but reading about this issue and living in France for 5 years have helped.
Because of the unintended wisdom that so amazingly often results!
Try to regard it as one of those computers in comic books that you ask something (anything) and it replies like an oracle.
What the fuck. That name – for something like Dinosauria – was probably only used in a single publication ever, yet Webster’s Revised Unabridged picked it up in 1913 and ran with it!?!
I so hate everything general dictionaries say about science. Everything.
That makes sense, of course. Should have thought of it myself.
…okaaay…
It is sort of cute, though.
Only one scientist ever uses the latter. That’s Bob Bakker.
Under the PhyloCode a named taxon must represent a hypothesis of monophyly.
Under the rank-based codes you can do whatever the fuck you want in this respect; there are no rules, not even recommendations, on this.
It is, however, true that most people now insist on monophyletic genera, and that most likely means Drosophila funebris and D. melanogaster can’t stay in the same genus (unless the species count of D. is allowed to shoot through the roof). The question is which of the two should keep the name D.. The Code says the one with D. funebris should keep it. Van der Linde et al. said that’s horribly impractical and petitioned for the one with D. melanogaster to keep the name. The Commission said no.
Indeed, because Hyracotherium had become what Drosophila is now (on a smaller scale). Here is the abstract of the resulting splitter orgy.
I used to have the pdf. It has somehow vanished. ~:-|
It is UP US!!! Up whom? Up us! On us!
<sigh>
Of course. They’re proud of it.
As I mention in every single gun control thread, this is true in the USA, because the USA has an unusually large black market for guns. Where I come from, most bank robberies are committed with toys and other fakes, because guns are so hard to get even illegally.
To some extent, of course, this is a vicious circle: when there are more legal guns, more of them get stolen…
That you’ve found a universal truth, and that we’re on the way to destruction. We have no chance to survive make our time. HA HA HA HA . . . .
One word: Saddam. During his reign, every Iraqi man who considered himself one possessed a Kalashnikov and the ammo for it.
And so is some of the symbolics. “We the Peoples of the United Nations”…
LOL!
At 305 votes, it’s 78 % derangement syndrome : 22 % hope dies last.
And indeed, the Internet provides the answer in PZ’s quote folder:
CL. THE OTHER HAND MAKES THE AP.
– Death
Unless the tyrant has WMD, or simply a big army with tanks and bombs and all.
That would mean that something is in the water in the USA.
FLUORIDE!!! WAAAAAH!!!
;-)
Ehem.
When people get higher wages, they can afford paying higher prices.
“Who’s going to buy my products?”
– Attributed to Henry Ford.
Sorry be herring it, CE. You’ll always have a plaice in my hart if it’s any consommé.
Walton (@275):
Aren’t you supposed to be the one who believes in market forces? If we can change the market imperatives such that businesses that aren’t sweatshops are more profitable than those that are, then perhaps the former will replace the latter, not “magically” but by the very mechanisms conservatives always say rule the world anyway.
In any case…
Maybe so, but I can’t see how contributing to this fate is really any worse, morally, than contributing to their enslavement. OTOH, constructive trade sanctions may lead to a more orderly conversion (see above). And if they don’t… well, once a certain critical mass of a nation’s workforce is unemployed and starving in the streets, the political regime that put them there will fall. Ultimately, even despots cannot rule without at least the tacit consent of the governed.
fuckin’ A
I once knew a woman who really was named Bobette. Guess she still is.
You are clearly not a San Francisco Giants fan, or you would not say that so glibly. Yeah, sure, they’re 3-0 now, but you wait–there will be plenty of “Jesus fucking Christ, can you believe that game?” morning afters.
Hmm. I was hoping I could get away with being myself, a reasonably gay-acting straight guy (I don’t mean to; it’s just how I kind of come across). Can’t we cite Bosom Buddies, Frasier, and Two and a Half Men as precedents? We’ll definately need a kid or a retiree thrown into the mix. Or, a hot neighbour à la The Big Bang Theory for us to fight over.
Not where I was going, but that’s not a bad idea. We’ll save that for a third season cliffhanger, should we go that long. Because really, what would the show be without the two main characters constantly looking for love but being thwarted at every turn? Walton falls in love but she really wants me; I find someone who I figure I might be able to spend the rest of my soul-crushingly depressing years with–did I mention my character is older and jaded, perhaps a semi-bitter single 34-year-old?–but she’s the head of the local chapter of Libertarians Without Borders. But eventually something’s gotta give, especially when I invite the whole gang from the pub over for a pot-fueled Rock Band party on the night Walton has to study for finals…
Man, this show practically writes itself!
AE, you might know a herpeto-eco-physiologist named Bill?
It’s impossible to tell, because you can’t control for the effects of all the other complex factors that affect unemployment rates at any one time.
That’s what I was thinking.
I checked now, and /l/ has obvious lateral release whereas /ð/ has the blade of the tongue staying nicely nestled in the floor of the mouth. It’s the tip that darts up the lower front teeth.
The closest I can come to a threeway minimal set is Mad (v imp, feed) /maʔð/; Mal (v imp, paint) /maʔl/; Mat (adj dull, lacklustre) /mat/, but Mad (n food) /mað/ is the better match for the latter, if you include stød. And of course there’s the whole issue of fortis/lenis vs. voiced/unvoiced/ vs. aspirated/unaspirated. To me it’s /t/ at the end, but for all I know it might be /d/ to you.
You’ll just have to chat up lossa chicks when you get here.
I fucked up one of the quotes that should be:
then said employer is a net drain on society for the reasons Ol’ Greg explained, and doesn’t need to exist.
—–
yes, but it would cost society as a whole less to have fewer people working below a living wage in general, even when a larger proportion ends up unemployed. unemployment is what happens when you have a global labor glut; might as well use it to everybody’s benefit instead of inanely fighting it on principle.
Walton, why do you do this? we just had this conversation over on my blog, and yet you pretend like it never happened and regurgitate your refuted assumptions? how very creationist of you :-(
the sweatshops didn’t plop down into a jobless, choiceless landscape. they replaced a different landscape, and they in turn can be replaced by yet another. I see no evidence whatsoever that the sweatshop model is the best for anyone involved.
In some ways this makes sense, given the purpose of the survey. The reponses are supposed to be reflective of a persons knowledge of science, not their confidence in it. There are two reasons that a person could answer “false” to the following question:
“Human beings, as we know them today developed from earlier species of animals.”*
1. They live in a cave and have never encountered this idea, or don’t remember encountering it.
2. They willfully choose to remain ignorant regarding human evolution.
We really need to reach the first group of people with all kinds of basic education. The second group of people either do not understand the meaning or importance of science, or do not believe that the universe is real. As we know, these people can be difficult to reach.
*Actual question from the NSF survey.
Brownian: What does Libertarians Without Borders do, exactly? My curiosity is piqued. :-)
“It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying beware of the leopard.”
10
“The bottom of the file is locked bathroom door dirty flag and said, look at Tiger.”
(How topical!)
25
When a file is locked bathroom door, dirty flag Tiger.
(Uh-oh)
Max
Communications Co., bathroom, Tiger dirty work.
(Indeed.)
OK, then. Prior to industrialisation, what options were available to people in, say, rural China or rural India, other than gruelling subsistence agriculture?
Nothing the government tells them to do.
STOP DISSECTING MY PITCHES, YOU PHILISTINES!
Jadehawk (@282):
Are you channeling your inner David M? Based on formatting and layout, I couldn’t tell the diff between your post and his that followed! ;^)
Brownian (@288):
That expression reminded me of a fascinating book I read called Accidental Playboy, a memoir of a writer named Leif Ueland who, as a neurotic, sexually unconfident man raised in the most radical feminist tradition, somehow fell into the job of web correspondent for Playboy magazine’s 1999 bus tour in search of the Playmate of the Millennium! He mentions in the book that, to that point, his biggest writing job had been an online essay for Nerve entitled “The Trials of a Gay-Seeming Straight Male.”
I recommend the audio version of the book: It’s sexy, funny, poignant, and thought-provoking, all in one.
Well, yeah, but if you’re using Two and a Half Men you need to add a kid like my previous option B. If you’re doing Frasier, you need the retiree that the average Joe can relate to. But then, you caught this yourself. You just might make it, boy!
I was thinking the same thing. Sad. Also, you don’t blogwhore enough. The discussion thread is here, for everyone else.
Oh, and you never answered my question about illusory choice, but since it was more idle musing and you had Walton to be mad at I can’t blame you :-).
Antiochus @ 226
All I’ll say here is I’m a lot closer to Melbourne than you are and we have a statue of a man with a dog downtown.
And I sympathize with the funding problem; we have that problem every time a conference is in the northern hemisphere. And even the Melbourne IBC is timed to suit the northern botanists who’ll be in mid-summer, but we’ll be teaching.
Sounds exactly like the Cubs fans. They just know that the losing string will come. Could it just wait until after the playoffs? NEVER!!!!!
Man, no reaction on the new Razi letter? I’ll include more information from the article.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8612457.stm
Caine, Fleur de Mal,
Happy Baudelaire day.
interesting that you exclude the replacement of agriculture with even more grueling and dangerous sweatshop work from the conversation.
the agriculture of a lot of the now industrializing places was not subsistence agriculture (the stone age parts of china excluded, but those are still stone age parts with subsistence agriculture, so nothing’s changed); it was turned into such by the trade-offs required for the opening of markets for the products of their sweatshops, and eventually it was made entirely unprofitable, so now you’ve got farmers committing suicide left-right-and-center because industrialization has destroyed their livelihood.
My point was specifically that sweatshops didn’t make things better; they replaced what was there with something that was worse for the majority of people involved. Better alternatives do exist, but not as long as the western world continues on its current trajectory. Hence the suggestion for tariffs based on labor and environmental standards.
hah! I find his way of catching up to the Thread to be very convenient and efficient, so I stole it :-)
Okay, it’s time for Ye Olde Œconomyst to pontificate on minimum wage.
In 1999 a minimum wage was introduced in the UK. The business community and the Tories wept bitter tears over this, claiming it would cause the end of British civilization as we know it. Now the concept is no longer controversial and the Conservative Party have reversed their opposition to it.
Since its introduction, minimum wage has been extensively studied by government and non-government economists and particularly by the Low Pay Commission. It was discovered that rather than make employees redundant, employers have reduced their rate of hiring, reduced staff hours, increased prices, and have found ways to cause current workers to be more productive (especially service companies). Neither trade unions nor employer organizations contest the minimum wage, although the latter had especially done so heavily until 1999.
I refuse to link to the blog, but there is some OLYMPIC-CLASS STUPID going on over at Anthony “Micro” Watts “Watts Up With That” anti-climate-science blog. Some guy named Wilde is doing climate science in 6 dimensions:
The guy is a lawyer who can’t be bothered to write equations but is convinced he’s single-handedly overturned all of climate science. Comedy gold!
[emphasis added] Er, I rather think that supports my point.
I really should stop procrastinating and go to bed now, so that I can get up and actually do some work tomorrow morning.
If I start posting another story of Bob and Friends, tell me to shut the fuck up and do some work. I’m aiming to limit myself to no more than ten posts tomorrow.
Sleeping is good for forming long term memories. Dream well Walton, and may it be in legalese…
Err, I note you didn’t bold “increased prices”, something you were completely ignoring as an option. And nobody said that a minimum wage couldn’t result in reduced hiring, so if that’s what you thought you were arguing against you were just arguing with yourself.
‘Tis Himself,
Was the reduction in rate of hiring with a corresponding reduction in the rate of employee churn? One idea has been that a higher minimum wage could result in less need to shop around for work, and thus fewer employees leaving needing to be replaced. Without that information, reduction in rate of hiring doesn’t give the whole picture. I don’t have time to dig through the LPC’s reports right now…
Ocean-powered underwater vehicle
Okay, but I’m going to have some scripts I’d like you to look over, so save some of those for feedback. I think I’ve got the pilot episode outlined. There’s a wisecracking senior and a smartassed young teenager in the mix now, so that should take care of Paul’s concerns.
Rest up, m’boy; the next step is going to be the most difficult: deciding which starlets we’re going to be romantically linked to in the tabloids.
Cyber Espionage Report
World’s Smallest Microlaser
Excerpt:
Oh man. The subthread almost doubled while I was writing comment 283.
I’ll take the test tomorrow. I predict I’ll complain at length about the short-sighted and generalizing assumptions in almost every question :-þ
Saddam proved the opposite.
Within living memory: Serbian, Ukrainian, Georgian revolutions… there was help from outside, but it was financial and logistic.
Probably not; can’t think of an example right now.
ROTFL!
What I just said :-)
Repeated for truth.
:-D :-D :-D
:-)
?
But we’ve been through this on Jadehawk’s blog: in China, if a sweatshop decides to pack up and leave, where is it going to? Some have already gone to places like Ghana. Once they reach Ethiopia, it’s over, and wages can only rise anymore.
Within the last 20 years, jobs migrated from Germany to the Czech Republic to Ukraine to China, and AFAIK always the next step was taken because the wages had become too high in comparison. What happened? The Czech Republic has joined the EU, the formerly poorer Slovakia has even adopted the €, and Ukraine has started applying for EU membership (I don’t know how official this is, but the idea exists).
ONE – MILLION – DOLLARS!!!
– Dr Evil
I didn’t previously have a coherent opinion on tariffs. Tired as I am tonight, it took me some time to understood yours, but now it’s mine, too. Thank you.
Paul @303
I heard the story on NPR. Sickening to hear about a priest actually tying kids up before abusing them. It’s so ugly that I have a difficult time responding and find myself hiding from the information.
To be perfectly fair to Walton, his “Bob and Friends” argument is something I’ve heard before. As a way to introduce students to some basic economic concepts in an introductory economics course it seems to be pretty standard. (Although Walton puts a new twist on the idea by suggesting a increase of 50% rather than the usual 10% or 25%. :) )
The problem I find, which cropped up when I was taking engineering classes, is that many students get this far, don’t realize how oversimplified the model is, and never take another economics course (or self-study) to learn that there are other factors which affect the outcome. Then, being the arrogant bastards we engineers are, we assume that we know everything about the subject.
But this discussion does remind me of my favorite Rodney Dangerfield movie, “Back to School” where at one point the economic professor starts talking about widgets and Thorton Mellon pipes up with a dozen different things the economics professor leaves out. Of course, in that case he’s talking about greasing the palms of politicians and the teamsters, but the principle is the same.
I wish I could contribute more here, but my time is limited. Good night everybody.
Merci beaucoup, a_ray_in_dilbert_space.
:-)
it might have helped your understanding if the above paragraph wasn’t such a grammatical clusterfuck :-p
And it should be noted that the vast majority of currently existing tariffs don’t work like that; but they can, and they’re a way to use your own democracy to effect positive changes elsewhere.
David Marjanović:
A reference to an American TV show, The Waltons. They lived on Walton’s Mountain.
For the laughs, here’s one of Joseph Smith’s love letters, written to Sarah Ann Whitney (oldest daughter of Joe’s friend Newel K. Whitney and his wife) on August 18, 1842:
Translation: I am really horny. I am so horny that I can’t spell nor write coherently. Please bring me your 17-year-old daughter that I might
fuckbless her.My head hurts. I spent a minute or so trying to figure out who Safty is…
Good news! Tiger Woods wore shoes decorated with pink stitching! No, wait, that’s not news. That’s crappy pop culture that was aired on NPR fer fuck’s sake.
Now this is good news: Alaskan Legislators have rejected Al Barrette.
That’s one vote against the establishment of an Alaskan theocracy backed by Utah mormons.
0. All the graduation ceremony speeches about values and traditions and honor and respect and all that crap was just exercise for your jaw muscles, which are apparently so big now they press in on your skulls and restrict the size of your brains.
10. All of these discussions on values, tradition, honor, respect, all this nonsense jaw, it now appears, a huge burden on private brain the size of the skull is limited.
25. Any number of values, traditions, respect, reputation, inability to talk about everything always takes a whole lot of stress, there is a skull and some personal.
max. Several popular culture and popular. But all the seeds and other tests should be considered.
Speaking of teen girls…
I want to apologize for any and all confusing posts over the last few days (and probably this post, too). The teen girl of the family is having a birthday, and chaos reigns. This is the girl who was a spoiled, selfish, only child all her life, and who recently went into her rebellious-teen drama-queen stage, which was a bit like …
Holy shit! There is a spot of light and shadow that looks just like Jesus on my wall!
… adding amphetamines to a rabid wolf. Well, the birthday girl feels that it is her time to be treated extra special, and indulged in every way, which is a bit like … like … it’s like Emperor Nero in drag, testing sleep deprivation as a torture technique.
Don’t tell her mom I said that.
The Jesus is gone now.
I wouldn’t be worried, except I am listening to muezzin calls on my MP3 player …
I live under a rock. That’s why I didn’t know Jadehawk had a blog. Care to post a link (probably again) or do you intend to exclude troglodytes?
Shit just got real for the Pedophile Defender in ChiefTM
Yahoo News:
I made a mistake in my comment #200. I wrote:
The “petition” was a letter, not a petition, and it was against the appointment of Corey Rossi as director of the Division of Wildlife Conservation. Full story here.
You would think that loading the Board of Game with trophy-hunting religious nutters would be enough, but before she left office, Sarah Palin created a job for Corey Rossi:
And, once again, in the “No Surprise Department”, we find a connection between the Utah mormons that run Sportsmen for Wildlife with Mr. Rossi (emphasis added):
Link.
My results:
Left: 3.08, Libertarian: 3.42
Antiochus Epiphanes:
http://jadehawks.blogspot.com/ If you have trouble commenting, try enabling third party cookies.
Ad at the top: http://www.mypyramid.gov in Spanish.
So… economics is forever unknowable…?
…I think I get it now. That’s a surprising sound, but being surprised about Danish seems to be a rather pointless enterprise anyway…
Bingo.
Great minds think alike <duck & cover>
I had forgotten about this, but I’ve heard of it. Just to offer some confirmation.
<headdesk> X-)
See that six-screener up at 283? Aim to limit yourself to a number of screenfuls. Maybe 5.
I didn’t even notice :-)
:-D Thanks!
They should have pulled the Deseret Alphabet through instead of chickening out. (I’m too tired to spell the Wikipedia link out. There must be one.)
*phew*
Lenin has appeared, on Phil Plait’s shower curtain. The photo is somewhere on Bad Astronomy.
Lynna@316–Very cool. I’m going to have to check out that Science article. I wonder if you could scale it up to emit in the near IR. If you could do that and scale the laser down to submicron dimensions you’d really have something.
№327 Menyambal
I wouldn’t be worried, except I am listening to muezzin calls on my MP3 player …
Better call in OSS 117,
Sorry, couldm’t find it with subtitles but it shouldn’t matter.
a_ray@334: sounds good to me. I guess you have your work cut out for you. Keep us deformed regarding your progress. We expect great things from your development of a laser that emits in the near IR and is submicron in size.
In the meantime, it’s a great basis for a sci-fi story…
Ted Zissou, thanks for the vid. I lived next door to a mosque during Ramadan, and often thought of doing running over and wrecking up the place.
It wouldn’t have been so bad, except they always cranked the volume up to 11, and distorted the hell out of what were actuially some amazing voices–well, that and the fact that we had supplied the speaker system and had left the volume set at 9, and I had pled to be allowed to take the knobs off and pour glue into it.
So now I have choice of material and volume and can enjoy.
P.S. And thanks for the language practice. My MP3 player also has beginner French lessons.
Yusuf Islam, that’s Cat Stevens, doing the Adhan call to prayer.
Flex #319
An analysis of supply and demand of the type shown in introductory economics textbooks implies that by mandating a price floor above the equilibrium wage*, minimum wage laws should cause unemployment. This is because a greater number of workers are willing to work at the higher wage while a smaller numbers of jobs will be available at the higher wage. Companies can be more selective in those whom they employ thus the least skilled and inexperienced will typically be excluded.
I’ll introduce a word many of you won’t know but should: monopsony. You’re familiar with the concept of monopoly, where many buyers have to deal with one seller. A monopsony is when many sellers deal with one buyer. When there is significant unemployment, an employer can chose between several applicants for each job. This tends to reduce the equilibrium wage since an applicant is more willing to accept a lower wage rather than be unemployed.
*Equilibrium wage is a theoretical concept. It supposedly happens when workers and employers adjust the quantity of labor supplied according to price until the quantity of labor demanded is equal to the quantity of labor supplied, reaching an equilibrium where the supply and demand curves intersect.
Near-death experience’ explained by carbon dioxide
Menyambal,
That sounds uncannily similar to the saeta, a chant often performed “spontaneously” during Semana Santa (Holy Week) celebrations in southern Spain.
I wonder why? ;)
(‘Tis very Christian, to a Spaniard.)
Ooh, Left 7.32, Libertarian 4.84.
I came out a bit closer to the raving communist extreme than I thought, but I suppose that depends on where you put the centre. I don’t like being called a libertarian, but when the alternative is authoritarian I’ll take it.
Ok, totally offtopic, but I’m casting Summon Pharyngula Horde to help a friend. =)
Please for #13 here:
http://rolleasykansas.com/Page-Five-Girl-Contest.html
I’m not even sure what she’ll win.
Thanks all.
wylann, girl #13 is the only ones draped over a half-decent bike, so it’s no contest, really.
…
Oh yeah, that sexist shit ain’t really welcome here.
—
PS This might come as news to you, but the contents of the book are much more important than the cover, you know?
I’m on it.
*evil laugh*
There is something really screwy going on with that poll. The total percentages keep changing quite a bit, and both are hovering somewhere in the 30s. Since there are only 2 options this leaves 40% of the vote unaccounted for. Although now that I think about it, I might be responsible for 40% of the vote, so maybe they stopped counting mine but didn’t subtract them from the number of total votes. Whatever the case, I think having such wonky numbers clearly illustrates the uselessness of the poll, which is the whole point anyway.
Ahem.
“That’s what she said.”
(Could it be that I’ve been spending too much time in the company of my son and his friends?)
Iâm sorry to have missed the intellectual furor that is the endless thread. Iâm back for a brief, desperate visit to see if any of you have any scientific evidence for any of your opinions on alt. med. Zero. I am heartened that much scientific data has appeared on other subjects. We even have math equations, and recipes.
Dear AJ Milne: Youâre right that most of the airline mag stuff is junk, but I want to give you a couple of data. First a negative JAMA study (for Nerd really, because it will make him drool) showing that magnetic insoles didnât do more than regular insoles, but that putting insoles in your shoes does really help. http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/290/11/1474
In terms of acupuncture, weâve had fifteen thousand studies. Itâs time to move forward. Hereâs the latest Cochrane analysis: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20070551
Nerd: You have cited no studies of any kind. Here is a JAMA article on moxa use for breech correction.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/extract/282/14/1329
Kel: Thanks for the link. As Iâve already mentioned, you are far too reasonable to be a big pharma shill. Perhaps you could share this link with Rorschach for his back pain.
http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/161/8/1081
Rorschach: Hey, magnets change morality? You said it, I didnât. Hereâs the link again for those who missed it. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125304448 Full credit goes to Rorschach for providing the evidence for magnetic effects. Kind of makes you wonder about MRI effects.
Paul W, fermenting things is a risky business depending on the sterility of your starter cultures and kitchen space.
David or any other biologist: I thought the Komodo used bacteria. What poison does the platypus use in its hind leg spurs?
and just to make myself look less original and brilliant, and add
an appeal to authoritygravitas to my argument, I figured out where I encountered that particular argument for tariffs recently. And by a real true economist, even!source
at least in your case it’s your kids.
My boyfriend has that on a T-shirt
oh no. I need to keep a sharp eye out now >_>
39676
You are a left social libertarian.
Left: 4.77, Libertarian: 4.59
Yep! Leinster 29 Clermont Auvergne 28. Didn’t get home ’til after midnight, many beers, and some sushi.
Walton,
It’s not impossible. That’s a big part of what statistics is about, controlling for factors. Now it’s often far from being crystal clear from the data what’s true. However, it’s a much better approach than these gedankenexperiments of yours. When studying something as simple as two falling objects in a vacuum or chasing a beam of light thought experiments can be useful (though they are only part of the research). When looking at something as vastly complicated as human behavior you end up oversimplifying so much it’s practically worthless. There’s a reason people here have told you to look at history rather than these oversimplifications.
_ _ _
Look at my comment at #135.
It’s sort of a like a “lie you tell to children”. They aren’t really “lies” just simplifications, but ones that are accurate and pedagogically useful. In video games you need to fight rats in basements in order to work up to killing bosses. In many field you look at these oversimplifications before you approach the complexities of the real world.
Very good point. I think part of the problem is that because we’re social creatures and we’re conditioned/equipped to handle social interactions we tend to underestimate the complexities of them. People sometimes look at me funny when I say math/physics is simple compared to the humanities. Yes, people tend to be more comfortable looking at the humanities (for the reasons I mentioned), but they are intrinsically much more complicated than anything studied in math or physics.
Lynna @330
Not sure if you’ve heard or posted (I was busy with my last day of work at this job before moving up north) but: Al Barrette’s appointment to the Board of Game was Rejected, as was a anti-choicer to the Board of Nursing. I was astonished.
http://www.themudflats.net/2010/04/09/al-barrettes-nomination-to-alaska-board-of-game-is-denied/
With 20 Pharyngula regulars having taken the political spectrum test and posted their results, I’m still the only one to the right of the centre line. Thus confirming what we knew already: the views of Pharyngulites typically range from centre-left to raging anarcho-communist. I’m an outlier.
I also note that there is no one here who came out as socially authoritarian.
I tried to be a wingnut (I imagined myself as The Rat, or Cheney), but I could only achieve:
I did manage to get a “perfect” 10 on the “conservative” (wingnut) cultural, but missed some tricks on foreign policy, where I could only get 8.24. ;-(
Does this mean I’ll be kicked out of WND, KKK, AiG, Faux News, Discovery Inst., and Rapture Ready as unacceptably libturd?
Well, this is a conundrum.
I think the Kaczyńskis are near the top of the list of people I despise, but I didn’t exactly wish for them to die in a fire.
But what worries me more, is that their disgusting party will get a surge of votes in sympathy.
So a Pharyngulista society would look something like Annares from The Dispossessed. :)
This version of the test puts many world leaders in the right-authoritarian quadrant. Wouldn’t surprise me if there were some truth to that. Oddly, it also puts Pope Benedict in the “left”. (Note: I also took this test a while ago and I remember getting basically the same results I for the one we’re using here.)
[misanthrope]this is almost enough to make one believe in Karma[/misanthrope]
You are a far-left social libertarian.
Left: 8.53, Libertarian: 3.91
It kind of defeats the purpose. Like being a conservative libertarian, an absurdist pipe dream with no basis in reality.
I think pretty much the only left-wing social authoritarian I can imagine is a member of PETA… but the test didn’t ask questions about legislating meat and dairy consumption :-p
I disagree, Jadehawk. Maoists like Sunsara Taylor and Bob Avakian could be described as left-wing social authoritarians.
ok, i tried to be as left-wing authoritarian as possible, and all i managed was 1.2, but ended up at 9.5 left wing.
it’s evidently nearly impossible to become a left-wing authoritarian on that quiz. I imagine the more centrist you get, the more authoritarianism from the right-wing you can absorb…
I glanced at the quiz but found it impossible to answer many of the questions in the Likert-scale format, so I didn’t complete it.
Rage, rage against the lying of the Right!
Hee. Not only am I not the first to come up with that, you can even get the t-shirt:
http://www.cafepress.com/myleftwing
(Original thought is clearly not possible for me this early in the day. Nor, for that matter, is particularly coherent thought.)
Help. Can someone please explain to me why macro-evolution is “blind faith”? Thank you.
Xplodyncow, duh.
You can walk from your house to a nearby house, but you cannot possibly walk from your town to another town.
To think otherwise is blind faith, and “travellers” who claim otherwise are just pulling your leg.
Dontcha know anything?
Now I’m not sure if it was that exact one or a very similar one, but my mom got left wing authoritarian.
I could have told her as much.
I’m calling her Ms. Stalin from now on but she swears she’s a Trotskyist.
No, I think that’s because most of the “authoritarian v libertarian” questions on the quiz reflect culturally conservative authoritarianism. Authoritarians who want to ban abortion and gay marriage, for instance, or entrench nationalism and suppress criticism of war leaders, are (perhaps by definition) right-wing, since the goals they wish to achieve are culturally-conservative ones.
But there are also left-wing authoritarians who want to achieve left-wing social goals by authoritarian methods – the likes of Lenin or Alexandra Kollontai, for instance, who sought to achieve a radical restructuring of society, and an abolition of class inequality and bourgeois social norms, through using state violence and other forms of coercion. In terms of her goals, Kollontai was the polar opposite of today’s religious social conservatives; IIRC, she advocated the complete abolition of the traditional family and the raising of all children in communal creches, as she saw this as the only way to achieve full equality between the genders. Yet she, and the other Bolsheviks, were unquestionably authoritarians
In essence, I think the the left-right axis on the test refers to the social goals you wish to achieve, whereas the authoritarian-libertarian axis properly refers to the methods you wish to use to achieve your goals, whereas
Sorry, I hit “Submit” too soon at #369. The last paragraph should have read:
In essence, I think the the left-right axis on the test refers to the social goals you wish to achieve, whereas the authoritarian-libertarian axis properly refers to the methods you wish to use to achieve your goals. So the difference between a left-wing authoritarian, such as a Marxist-Leninist, and a right-wing authoritarian, such as Piltdown Man, lies in the goals they want to achieve: Piltdown Man wants to go back to “traditional values” and an archaic class-based religious order of society, whereas a Marxist-Leninist wants to destroy the traditional class-based order of society and replace it with a completely different socio-economic structure. But both of them advocate the use of state coercion, by a strong centralised state, to achieve their goals.
Walton, your desire to share your political acumen is bor…, um, entertaining, but I remind you that you’re using up your self-imposed comment quota for today.
Exams, remember? :)
John’s right,* Walton. The rest of us don’t have exams to study for. So crack the books so you learn all about who’s liable if a woman falls off a trains and her rescuer gets killed.
*In a “correct” rather than a political manner
Since the sun is shining, the birds are coughing in the trees and, most importantly, the wind is blowing, I’m off to do something on the water.
‘Tis Himself:
[jealosy]Phhhffft!!!![/jealosy]
Meanwhile, I will be spending the next six hours in a fee collection booth which has just been painted. Literally. The paint is still wet.
And it is cool enough that keeping the windows open is not an option.
And they expect me to count money correctly while breathing in paint fumes.
Should be interesting.
I have a Honduras update on my blog:
http://saltycurrent.blogspot.com/2010/04/honduras-struggle-for-democratic.html
***
A belated response to negentropyeater:
As Jadehawk said, your questions were totally irrelevant. I wasn’t comparing certain corporate media shows in the US to others in the French MSM. I was merely challenging your characterization of the French TV news as unbiased. But since you asked… I don’t as a general rule trust the corporate print or broadcast media, including the wire services, and wouldn’t use them as my primary source of information, though some are decent at times on specific issues. The stories they cover are selected in a specific way, and they lie routinely. You can see from my blog where I get most of my news. But in fact, I think (the relatively recent model of) allegedly “neutral” news is a strange and in effect bogus concept and nothing to aspire to. I want people to present the situation as they see it truthfully and to support their presentation honestly with evidence. I also want them to focus honestly on what they see as important. I’ll come to trust or distrust people or organizations over time depending on how honestly, accurately, and comprehensively (in the sense of demonstrating an understanding of global historical context) they’ve presented things.
Honor Code violations at BYU: How they’re handled, example of actual letter spelling out punishment. Excerpt from blog intro that precedes the letter from BYU:
akshelby @353: See my comments #325 and #330. I added some info in #330 that we hadn’t discussed previously.
Seriously pleased to see that mudflatter and others are following up on the rejection of Barrette with letters to the legislators.
A few people are pushing for an investigation of Peay and of SFW. I’d like to see Rachel Maddow rip into them.
Thank you for what you said near the end of #352, Feynmaniac.
I’ve often chided myself for turning my back on math and science while in college (where I made easy “A”s) to focus on the Humanities (where it was highly possible that no student would get any “A”s in an entire course).
I’ve been trying to make up for my science ignorance as a middle-aged layperson, but it’s still nice to get outside confirmation that that shit back then really WAS hard.
Blah, blah, blah. You read Krugman, I don’t, that makes you more brilliant than me already. :-)
(I’ve read one little book by Stiglitz, and Development as Freedom by Amartya Sen, but that’s it.)
I don’t really expect any idea to be original. Good ideas are usually stolen. Even in science, where people go to some length to track citations, discoveries often happen only by combining ideas that had been floating around (often in print) for years, sometimes decades.
Don’t complain about your boyfriend in my presence. It might…
…it might give Sili ideas.
This is not odd at all. The Catholic Church has never preached the Prosperity Gospel; Catholic social teaching has always been to the left of the capitalist mainstream. Together with the Social Democratic parties it is a big part of the reason why things like universal health insurance were introduced all over western Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. If nothing else, it’s why such things aren’t considered left-wing-only over here, in stark contrast to the USA.
“Almost” indeed. Karma wouldn’t have taken out only one Kaczyński.
…Reminds me of an incident at the dig in Krasiejów in 2007. On a Saturday evening, around the campfire, wine was offered. I noticed it said 2008 on the box. Bemusedly I asked how this was possible. The guy who had explained Poland’s proud history to me at every opportunity said “In Poland, everything is possible! <short pause> Even a potato can be president!” And there was much rejoicing.
LOL!
Just back from Padstow where I noiced that Rick Stein’s Cafe is located in ‘Walton House’
For JM #341 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPpxcKNzbjs
um… Walton… that’s precisely what I meant, so why are you making it sound like you’re disagreeing with what I said?
Damn… on another place I hang out sometimes online an article hit the drudge report and it is now flooded with teabaggers. The random capitalization has made me somewhat dizzy.
SOCALISM is coming and the founitin of the CONSERVATIVE party is the BIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!
And now my head hurts from stupid. I better go for a run.
Liveblogging the political-spectrum quiz:
Well, no. “Disagree strongly”. But much exactly does that matter to me? Over here, there’s zero political discussion about it, even the Catholic Church only dares to mention it once every 10 to 15 years. … OK, let’s* think of the USA and take “a lot”.
Agree strongly, matters a lot.
Hm. Let’s say “disagree”, and it matters 4 out of 5? “Allocates resources most efficiently” is such an abstract, general claim (means: libertarian terminology) that I can’t really think it through…
Absolutely, and that’s very important. Not only do corporate broadcasters have their own biases, public broadcasters are expected to be biased toward the ruling party of the moment and therefore tend to work extra hard at avoiding the appearance of such bias.** Also, they’re less dependent on ads. A movie that isn’t interrupted by 20 minutes of ads every 10 minutes is “a valuable service [for] the citizens”!!!
Ouch. … No, I believe people can learn. There are lots of people who have children and simply have no clue what do with them, but I want to believe that’s a lack of education rather than somehow genetic. So it boils down to a human-rights issue, and that means “disagree strongly” and “matters a lot”. Well, does it matter a lot? It’s not likely to ever come up in reality… oh, sorry, that’s not libertarians’ first concern. :-)
Yes, and not going bankrupt or dying from lack of access to healthcare is another right of utmost importance.
Absolutely. Money must be taken from those who have it, not those who don’t. Money must be taken from where it just lies around and generates interest and political power, not from where it’s immediately spent and thus preserves and creates jobs and stuff. Flat tax is horror.
Nope.
<pft> It doesn’t really play an important role, does it. And what does “heralded” mean in terms of actual policy? Anything? Bueller? Bueller?
So, naaah. I take “disagree strongly”. But how important is that to me? … OK, I’ll think of the American situation, like Focus on the Patriarchy and Proposition 8, and claim it matters a lot when in a European context it doesn’t really.
I can imagine such situations. A few have probably occurred in meatspace, but they’re clearly extremely rare. So, what – if anything – did those libertarians mean by “sometimes”??? … Got it: I take “disagree” and “matters a lot”.
Not only that. It fosters similar irrational attitudes, and it leads to killing people. Away with it already.
Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. … No, actually… no. They should be required not to lie and not to knowingly omit, as far as that can be determined, but “balanced” sounds too much like “there are exactly two sides to every question in the fucking universe, and the truth always lies exactly in the middle” – “we distort, we deride”. Full-on “disagree strongly” and “matters a lot”. I’m remarkably extremist on almost everything, eh?
Is it increasing???
Cause and effect of any correlation between videogame and meatspace violence isn’t clear, AFAIK the correlation itself isn’t clear… I’ll take the libertarian position and disagree strongly. And no, I’ve never played anything more violent than Civilization II, where (I think) I used nukes once or maybe twice. (Deterrence doesn’t really work in that game… but SDI works, LOL!)
How much does it matter to me? I don’t care about videogames at all, but if we make a general principle out of it… hm. I’ll be lazy and leave it in the middle.
Fuck you live on national, public-owned TV.
Translation: only UNsAnians will ever take this quiz.
Well, no. In the real world most of us live in, enough oil-producing countries depend economically on Western countries buying their oil, so there are always enough means of pressure available – never mind the longer-term issue that the addiction to oil is unhealthy in the first place. So, I can afford to be full-on pacifistic about this.
Saddam.
Strong gun ownership rights kill people.
Neutral, matters “a little” (strange how “not at all” isn’t an option). Depends all on the definitions, which the libertarians who wrote the quiz thought were somehow obvious in detail.
Responsibility. Responsibility! Obviously, it’s the perpetrators’ responsibility, not that of the paternalistic state who infantilizes the poor little corporations, right? Right? Wrong. Tragedy of the commons, tragedy of economic competition (like natural selection) lacking any foresight. It is the government’s responsibility to prevent capitalism from destroying itself and killing people in the process.
Nope.
Wow. What next? Have I stopped beating my nonexistent wife yet?
Obviously, it shouldn’t be against the law to call someone a demented fuckwit when they happen not to share my almost complete lack of a skin color. That would be ridiculous, and against human rights. But it’s pretty obvious they’re actually alluding to the American “hate crime” debate, which is about a completely different issue (committing crimes that are motivated by racism).
What will happen if I simply don’t answer this question? Will I get an error message?
Yes, in spite of the stomach-twistingly libertarian language which suggests that government should force all citizens to have a certain minimum standard of living even if they’d prefer to live as ascetic monks and even if nobody can pay for it. Morons.
Define “moral”, morons. Killing is immoral, right? So a law infringing upon an individual’s right to chainsaw massacres is right, right? But isn’t it obvious they didn’t even think that far and instead thought of things like what consenting adults do in their bedrooms?
I’ll simply assume they were thinking of the obvious and take the libertarian position on it. <sigh>
They should be allowed to sell their labor domestically at the domestic minimum wage or above. But if I click “disagree strongly” and “matters a lot”, I’ll come across as xenophobic and authoritarian, right?
I’ll try not to answer this one.
See, I disagree more strongly with the part before the comma than the part behind the comma. They’re not the same thing.
OK, “disagree” and matters 4 out of 5.
There’s half a word in this that I disagree strongly with: “-ever”. So… should I say “disagree strongly” and “matters a lot” just because of that part? Or should I answer it as if it were “what maximizes economic growth is good for the people”? Because that’s by no means always true (and that point is very important to me), but it’s true more often than not.
Hm.
I’ll take “disagree”, let it matter 4 out of 5, and be unhappy about the general situation.
This isn’t a question of political orientation, morons. It’s a question of knowledge, an empirical issue, a matter of observed fact.
No. The Cape Verde Islands exist, and races don’t. “Disagree strongly”, “matters a lot”, and I’m almost angry.
(The population there has been panmictic for centuries. There are, for example, people there who have dark brown skin and light blonde, curly hair.)
Disagree strongly. Why should a murderer be incapable of knowing whether the universities should get more money? Why should an embezzler be incapable of knowing whether marijuana should be legalized? Because it’s a human-rights issue, and because of those incredible voter roll purges in several US states, it matters a lot.
I don’t see a reason to treat it differently than alcohol and tobacco; in many aspects it’s more harmless than either, and what exactly you smoke can hardly matter in terms of cancer and other effects of incomplete combustion.*** So, legalize it already. Because it’s a rights issue, I’ll claim it matters a lot, even though it matters jack shit to me personally.****
I disagree strongly, but it only matters “a little”, because it’s merely ridiculous rather than dangerous.
ROFLOL. If you don’t understand the motivations, how do you imagine you could ever do anything against them? Disagree strongly, matters a lot.
Nope.
Surprisingly moderately worded, so it doesn’t even get into the American affirmative-action debate. Good. That means I agree strongly and consider it very important.
That’s dangerous stupidity.
Again an empirical question! Fucking postmodernists!
Based on my limited information, I agree strongly and consider that very important, but that could be the Dunning-Kruger effect at work here.
Now I need to interpret “much”.
I’ll take “agree” and let it matter 3 out of 5… no, 2.
Only if it really spreads democracy, and only if no tyranny finds means and opportunity to use this reasoning backwards. So… disagree, and it matters a lot.
A tax on costly stupidity, with the aim of keeping healthcare financeable, isn’t a bad thing. Disagree strongly, matters a lot.
Badly worded question. Even someone who would only allow abortion to save the mother’s life***** could answer this question with “agree strongly” and “matters a lot” – “teen” and “unwed” are completely irrelevant the way the question is worded! This is, therefore, what everyone who isn’t too high up in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church will inevitably choose (assuming they think that far).
Hey cool, that’s exactly
Jadehawk’sKrugman’s point. :-) Agree strongly, matters a lot!But what if I’m a reactionary and think progress is inherently bad? :-)
OK, I’m not one :-)
Nope.
Funny – a blanket question that I actually can answer in a blanket manner for the entire world rather than just for the USA! :-) Yes, you don’t need to be a pacifist to see that there’s a lot of waste going on here, waste of money that’s urgently needed elsewhere.
Yes. Funnily enough, competition is inherently unstable and can only be kept alive artificially, by a strong state, but that’s not what’s asked…
If they insist on exactly these two adjectives, I agree entirely and consider that important, but I bet that’s not what they mean. Disagree, matters a lot (…like almost everything in the quiz… I find that disturbing).
Who’s “we”?
But I’ll say yes anyway. Watching is not a defensible option.
As long as expressing those views is all they do, and as long as we can reasonably expect that other people won’t go too far in expressing the views in question, no. So I can pretend to be a libertarian, even though I’m pretty fine with the laws of Austria and Germany that forbid “making National Socialism appear less harmful”.
The opposite, capitalism has to be constantly restrained from annihilating itself… OK, that amounts to the same thing. Agree strongly, matters a lot.
Nope.
Yep.
Are chainsaw massacres a moral question? Another I’ll try not to answer… especially because it’s identical to question 22! Morons!
Wrong.
Again an empirical question – Enron, to mention just one.
Nope. Nobody forces me to look at it.
Surprisingly, it allowed me not to answer all questions, though it doesn’t tell me how it counted those that I didn’t answer either. Result:
Unspectacular, I suppose. It is surprising, though, that I’m to the left of Jadehawk’s 6.54. I didn’t expect a noticeable difference, and indeed there is none, but I expected any difference to go in the other direction… are the questions I didn’t answer distorting the results, or did I do more exegesis of the poorly worded questions, or both? ~:-|
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
* I always talk to myself in the plural when telling myself what to do.
** Naturally this doesn’t always work. Demonstrations against the education policy of Austria’s right-right coalition government were underreported, for instance.
*** Of course I’m aware that smoking isn’t the only way of marijuana consumption. Just to show my life isn’t that sheltered. :-]
**** I’m already relaxed, if not too relaxed. I don’t need anything that stinks, tastes bad, or messes directly with my brain chemistry. Rant over. :-)
***** Note how suggestively I said “mother” rather than just “woman”.
David you make me want to parse it out like that. Some of those are significant to me, although maybe I should put it on my blog instead of taking up space here :/
The crashed plane was a Tupolev. Why am I not surprised.
The previous head of Austria’s Social Democratic Party was a certain Alfred Gusenbauer. In the 1970s that guy looked like Che and/or Castro; once he flew to Moscow and kissed the ground when he arrived. Why did he do that? To mock the pope? Nooooo – because he had flown in a Tupolev, says the joke.
Because he’s too distracted by his studies to pay attention to Pharyngula :-) :-) :-)
Remind me to bake brownies for David before going to Copenhagen.
Oh fuck, I filled over 15 laptop screens. <Walton>My excuses are</Walton> that it was liveblogging in the sense that I didn’t know how many questions there were when I started, and that I don’t have a blog.
If you put it on yours, let us know!
Thanks, but… in case you intend to add that famous special ingredient… I really won’t need to relax when I’ll get too little sleep already (I always get too little sleep at conferences), rather the opposite. Plus, aren’t oxytocin overdoses supposed to have some of the same effects? I suppose they shouldn’t be reinforced, then.
Reminds me, what does one drink in Copenhagen beer-wise, Tuborg?
Passes the 12 pint-headache test IIRC, haven’t had any for ages tho…:-)
For what it’s worth, Walton, I’m
But I’m just a regular Pharyngula lurker ;-)
Results for the political spectrum quiz:
You are a far-left social libertarian.
Left: 9.19, Libertarian: 4.89
Questions I had a problem with
I mildly agreed with this, but the term “balanced” really bugged me. News coverage should be fact based. If one position (creationism for example) has no basis in fact, it shouldn’t be given the time of day.
I agreed strongly with this and rated it as very important, but something about the wording bothers me. I feel like the question is forcing me to make value judgments about being a single mother. Jerks.
This one was hard. I do think damaging cultural practices (FGM for one) should be roundly condemned as barbaric and an assault on human rights. OTOH, just because a culture doesn’t follow Western practices doesn’t mean it is “bad.” Gah, couldn’t they be clear about what they’re referring to?
I only disagreed mildly with this. “Young people”
is too vague. Very small children do need to trust authority figures so that when a parent or other adult says “Don’t touch the hot stove.” or something similar, the children listen. This is simply to protect them from physical harm. OTOH, as a child grows up they should be questioning authority and the conventional wisdom. That’s how society progresses.
win
Ha1 Ponn Farr perfume.
Note that also available are Tiberius and Red Shirt colognes.
No, I am NOT making this up. Doesn’t everybody want to smell like a doomed security ensign? Or, worse, Scotty?
Okay, I took the silly quiz. Left: 6.58, Libertarian: 1.46
I had a lot of trouble with many of the questions. I wanted to answer (dis)agree but or as the question is given my answer is X/Y but if the question were phrased slightly differently then I’d answer P/Q.
The quiz asked a a set of leading questions to tempt you to proclaim yourself a libertarian. The most obvious criticism of this quiz is that it tries to graph the range of politics onto only 2 axes, as if they were the only two that mattered, rather than the two libertarians want the most change in. For example, if socialists or anarchists were to create their own test, they would use different sets of axes.
The other obvious criticism is typical of polls taken to show false levels of support: the questions are worded to elicit the desired response. This is called framing bias. The problem is the “but”s that are filtered out by the question format.
Many libertarians use this sort of thing as an outreach, i.e., evangelism, tool. By making it easy to get high scores on both axes, subjects can be told that they are already a libertarian and just didn’t know it. This is the same sort of suckering cold readers and other frauds use.
Tuborg is the working class choice, traditionally. I think. I’m a latecomer to beer. Alternative is Carlsberg.
Personally, I don’t much care for plain pilsner. It’s really boring. If you like something ordinary with a bit of taste, look for the ‘Classic’ brews. They’re also from the major brewers anyway.
But speciality beer has really come in vogue the last decade, so I really recommend looking for something like that. Carlsberg is in on the deal as well – of course – but there are plenty of small provincial breweries as well. If you want an excellent (if a bit pricey) night out, book a table at Nørrebros Bryghus – they have tasting menus designed around their own beers. Up to four courses.
Beer in restaurants are expensive, so you might want to just go into a supermarket and buy something. The best pilsner I’ve had, myself, is from Ærø called Grolle Pilsner – very very hoppy.
Sili, ty, this is vital information for the atheist traveller !
When you say “expensive”, what are we talking here, ballpark?
*five courses
Rise bryggeri
This might come in handy
http://www.goodbeer.dk/forside.php
Copenhagen might be a tad more expensive, but a random look at a local restaurant sez 50 kr for ½l plain draft lager. So let’s round that up to €7.
Also – I really need to stop relying on my memory:
6 courses 430 kr + 7 beers 298 kr/ 40 cl (198 kr/ 25 cl) = 728 kr = c €100.
Looks like they have a Spring offer of 25% discount if you leave before 19.30, but I can’t say if that’ll be there in June.
Just checked the repertoire, and apparently the opera is dead while we’re there. All that’s on is The Three Musketeers at the National Theatre. I hope some of the other theatres have something, but no opera or ballet, I fear.
And the Jazz Festival isn’t till July. My aunt and uncle usually attend that one, so I can try asking them is there’s anything Jazzy in June, if there’s any interest in that.
David Marjanović #379
Many years ago I read a story in Playboy* about an American in an Eastern European country in the 1970s. He was taking a train to a small town, missed his stop, and got off at the next station. He explains his situation to the station master who shakes his head and says “You’re a very silly man.” The American offers to pay the extra fare for going too far and will buy a ticket back to his original destination. But the station master explains: “You silly man, here in Slobovia the trains all run in the same direction, making big and little circles around the country. You can’t go back, only forward.” The station master pulls out his schedule book to figure out how to get the silly person to where he wants to go, continually muttering about “silly man.” Finally the American asks “Why do you keep calling me a ‘silly man’?” The station master replies “Because you’re here in Slobovia.”
*I normally only read Playboy to look at the pictures of naked women. Very rarely did I read any of the stories or articles.
*green smiley face*
I am very proud of myself. I’ve done eight hours of productive studying today, and mostly stayed away from the internet – and the one online argument I’ve had, on the Pope thread, was actually about international law, so it counts as extra studying. :-)
Kudos to Germany!
Though of course there are insecure wankers trying to sue because they’re offended by a frackin’ cartoon.
Started to read that linked blog article about evolution. Saw a sentence saying something about how a “partially evolved” species cannot be fit. Threw up in my mouth a bit and had to close my browser. Even when I was a YEC I didn’t have that kind of distorted view of evolution.
Kudos to Titanic-another funny one !
The latest Doctor Who episode was a bit of a ripoff of this. Perhaps the writers had something to say to Christians – viz that their New Testament and subsequent history of evilness was all built on a horrible mistake …
I sense an argument coming on :):
http://scienceblogs.com/tfk/2010/04/nsf_governing_board_spikes_evo.php
***
In other news, just tried again to open the Goya recaito jar. Several techniques employed. No dice. It is THE JAR FROM HELL. I will not surrender.
Walton, my cousin got a lot of studying done by sleeping four hours and studying four hours.
I completely forgot to mention the ads on the page that gave the results of the quiz: they were for a dating site, asking who matches me. :-D
Ooh. Scary. :-)
Jadehawk, is this why you have dropped your extra title? :o)
lol
But wearing the teeshirt in these hyar parts could go….badly. And I am old, and lame, and lame, and can’t run away very fast, and don’t have a gun (for self protection!).
Left: 5.03, Libertarian: 3.84
Big surprise there.
Kind of an ambiguous test though.
SC OM, maybe apply heat to the lid of the jar, and cold to the jar of the jar, simultaneously? Then twist the lid using a rubber sheet?
Piltdown Man sighted on “Pope…BUSTED!” thread.
That’s the internal sleep/wake rhythm for some people, overlain by external timegivers like daylight.
The other extreme is a 50-hour day, of which up to 16 h are spent sleeping without interruption. I wonder if I’m one of those people.
The boy just cannot stay away, even when it’s obvious he’s not welcome.
Philistine! Anyone who sleeps less than 24h a day (toilet & bacon & MUSHROOMS! breaks excepted) is a wimp.
I seem to be one of those people who is not on a 24h/day cycle. Whilst the length of my “day” has changed over the years and beers, it seems to be in the 26–30h range… unless I can achieve my ideal of sleeping 24h/day (toilet & bacon & MUSHROOMS! breaks excepted).
Jesse over at TFK:
Ugh. I think I’m arguing with Intersection drones.
I feel so out of it – I just haven’t had time for the internet lately. :(
Saturday night Nina Simone.
SC,
I tried to post a response to that particular bleat and got a “permission denied” response. Is there some protocol I’m ignorant of?
Stupidity?
I should know better, being overtired after night shift and all, but I just posted something there, went through without a glitch.
Ok… I decided to answer all those questions in more depth. I’m going to go paste it into my blog now (in my name).
I pointed out that Rees uses a God of the Gaps to put his god into the time before 1×10-47 seconds after the Big Bang but that otherwise Rees agrees with mainstream astrophysicists about the Big Bang. I compared Rees to Rick Warren, who says he knows and understands evolution but given a choice between evolution and the Bible goes with the Bible. Rees isn’t scientifically illiterate, Warren has made a conscious decision to be scientifically illiterate.
I always thought Rees was an atheist.
I don’t know and, at this point, having tried to post my damn comment and got a “permission denied” response again, I don’t care.
Oh looky looky, “permission denied” !
*blink*
Bedtime.
Waaaaaay back at #68 Sven replied to the statement, “Alice Cooper is frigging awesome,” by succinctly noting that, “oh, he is not.”
Thank you, Sven. I’ve been waiting hundreds of years to hear that. He is not awesome. Just another screamer. Thanks again.
Odd, I had no problem posting at TFK just now.
I like Sven’s taste in music. I really do.
*Looks at lists to cross Ol’Greg’s name off. Decides to cross Sven off instead. Realizes it is too late for that action. Hangs head in shame instead…*
For everyone who gets bugged when they hear ‘literally’ being misused:
http://xkcd.com/725/
Also, there’s this post questioning whether it’s really being misused:
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/1499/
(via Language Log)
oh, my.
You-all just signed on to a big dose of SVEN’S TASTE IN MUSIC (slightly drunk).
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
Gentlemen :),
Evidently you can’t post there while you’re signed in here. You have to sign out here and then close out and reopen or refresh the page there.
Please do pharyngulate. That blog annoys me.
Feynmaniac, gotta love xkcd.
My recent favourite: http://xkcd.com/722/
Sweet Cheezits. Mega Piranha. I guess Tiffany got jealous of Debbie Gibson’s Giant Octopus.
I just discovered that my wife is making me a lab coat: All black with a special lapel pocket constriction for holding pens.
And what’s better: Wu Tang Clan Patch!
Up from the 36 Chamberrrrrssssss!!!!
Oh man, and it’s on RIGHT NOW. “I think you’d better look at this. This specimen has at least half a dozen new organs, and it’s a hermaphrodite – it can BREED ON ITS OWN.” (says Tiffany)
Antiochus, your wife rocks.
Exhibit C:
Exhibit D:
Exhibit E:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xaqr3_bob-dylan-a-hard-rain-1964_music
Exhibit F:
Exhibit G:
Exhibit H:
Exhibit I:
Exhibit J:
What, Bob Dylan? My first true stereo experience was Dylan’s Lay Lady Lay on stereo headphones back in college…the one time I got drunk that year…
Link to Lay Lady Lay. Hic.
whatever;
Careful Sven or I’ll do the same.
Here’s a well-remembered goodie brought to mind because of a comment PZ made:
Earworm from the late 60’s.
http://popup.lala.com/popup/432627095098572727
You’re right. I guess I was thinking in terms of social left/right and not economic left/right. Just one more dimension to add to the test I suppose. I can’t wait to find out where I lie on the (six dimensional) ‘Political Calabi-Yau manifold‘*!
(Which reminds me of this:
http://xkcd.com/721/ )
* Maybe I should trademark that.
Since Sven is inflicting Greatful Dead B-sides on us, here’s something similar from one of my favorite rockers, Meat Loaf:
The Bad Translator gives the lie to the translation horror story of a certain Biblical quotation being translated into Russian & back and transforming into “The vodka is strong but the meat is rotten”:
The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
BELARUSIAN [sic]: ” Дух бадзёры, але плоць слабая “.
Back to ENGLISH : The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.
Ha!
The Spring tour of 1977 is generally acknowledged as among, if not the, Dead’s best, period. 4/27/77 was in Passaic, NJ, just before the all-time-classic early May shows in New Haven, Boston, Cornell, and Buffalo.
o, for a time machine
although if I had a functioning time machine, I’d be in the Mesozoic in a heartbeat. And if I had to use it for a Dead tour, I’d pick summer 1973. Or Europe ’72. Or…
So hard to choose.
More Pre-Sven music. Iron Butterfly. Time for bed.
The Dead were okay. They weren’t Sammy Johns or Dobie Gray but they weren’t bad.
Ok let’s do this:
A:
B:
C:
D:
And for those who like a melody…
I hear my pillow calling me. G’night all.
E:
F:
Night ‘Tis
*say goodnight nerd*
Nite all…
G:
H:
Goodnight Nerd! Goodnight Tis.
I:
J:
You know I made the whole list but posting it is boring and I bet you guys are really hating all these links so I’ll just quit :P
Nah, I just ignore them as noise. I have no clue to what they refer to, and I’m not in the habit of clicking on unknown links.
How hard is it to use <a href=”URL”>descriptive information</a> rather than a naked, lazy URL alone?
Too hard for many here, apparently.
beer
Yeah, John. I like Dylan but I hate the Dead. Not about to click through Sven’s music mix to find it.
This is Wu Tang Clan, C.R.E.A.M. from Enter the Wu Tang (36 Chambers), 1993.
Produced in the Shaolin Slums.
Oh I apologize. Here’s a list to make up:
A:
Didier Herbert- I woke up one morning in May
B:
Grizzly Bear- Ready Able
C:
Joni Mitchell- Blue (live)
D:
Nurse with wound (awesome video)
E:
Buddy Moss- TB is killing me
F:
Mason Jennings- Darkness between the Fireflies
G:
Einsturzende Neubauten – Halber Mensch
H:
Patti Smith – Horses & Hey Joe
I:
Supersilent – 7.4
J:
Michael Gira – You’re Not Real, Girl (TV Promo)
And because now I already posted more junk
K: David Bowie – Life On Mars?
L:Portishead – The Rip
AE likes Grizzly Bear.
Ol’Greg, brilliant! Seriously, thanks.
(PS Life On Mars? — one of my favourite all-time songs (and vids!)
Reliving it now).
Yeah, but at least it gave a realistic expectation of when there will be a black Queen of the UK: in 1300 years.
*smiles in Walton’s general direction*
Without regard to topic, CNN has the amusing article:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/04/10/italy.turin.shroud/index.html?hpt=T2
The first sentence of the article reads, “The shroud of Turin, which some Christians believe is Jesus Christ’s burial cloth, went on public display Saturday for the first time since it was restored in 2002.”
Restored?
To what?
Why would it need to be restored?
If it was really magic, couldn’t any restoration be coded within the warp and weave of thee tapestry thus negating the need of intervention by mere humans and allowing the weaver to show off?
And why the eight year hiatus after the restoration? Is that like letting dough to rise or grout to slake?
Just asking.
Walton?
Have you guys seen this ???
Dawkins, Hitchens team up to have Pope arrested
@471:
Yes, I ran across something earlier today. Not sure where but the idea is certainly out there.
This and other recent developments or revelations, as some may like to say, are intriguing and suggestive of a sea change in the near future with respect to the respect that the Catholic sect gets.
There’s a rhyme in there, somewhere. Anyhow, I’m paying closer attention to the RCC than I ever have and am hoping for a drawn out drama in real life during my life.
*starts popping the corn*
CW,
I actually seem to remember that *gasp* Pilty posted something about this on the “busted” thread earlier, but his posts obviously got purged by PZ. I just read it on the RD website, it got posted only a short while ago.
And I disagree with those that say the RCC is too big to fall or somesuch, believers want and need the church as a moral authority, and fucking kids and protecting kidfuckers is not going to sit well with the devout, even in christian hotspots like South America or Africa.
David, my mother, in the 1940s, used to tell the men she worked with that to protect their own jobs, they should support equal wages for women doing the same work. Same principle, just not international.
Feynmaniac #352. Yeah, I know I came out libertarian because I don’t care what kind of hot sweaty secks goes on between consenting adults and because I don’t want governments legislating (bible-based) morality.
It’s interesting that the L word (libertarian) has become a bit of a bogey word for me and now triggers knee-jerk revulsion inside my own little head. (Yes, I know that the human brain technically doesn’t have knees; no need to write in).
I’m sure it’s the same with most Americans and the socialism word. At least, though, I’m aware of the phenomenon and have some understanding of what the L and S words mean in various contexts.
In other hot, sweaty, athletic, hard-bodied, man-on-man sex news, Australian Rules footballers are launching an anti-homophobia campaign.
There are as yet no openly gay players in the AFL. Interesting/sad that a similar campaign by English soccer authorities didn’t happen this year because the players wouldn’t get behind it.
Rorschach, since we were kids we have heard the cliche, “the bigger they are, the harder they fall.” In this case what may fall is large on a scale that makes most nations pale in comparison.
My feeling is that the RCC is already falling, has been for some time. Allowing for inertia and the lag in widespread knowledge of its fall, I see the church is aware of the danger and increasingly loathe to admit it.
I’ve remarked before how this denial of reality to protect the institution is reflected lately in the behavior of political parties and the full gamut of groups that claim that reality owes them some special consideration.
If the church does fall it will certainly not take place at any one moment. It will take decades. The greatest strength of the church, and the last to finally hit the dirt, are the faithful who know nothing but “Jesus Saves.” Because they have no bureaucracy they will be the least affected by the great tumble, being the last to know, you know. It is that great, tangled labyrinth of dogma and dispensation that is the heart of the church that is on the edge of jeopardy. It almost seems as if something so cobbled together and rife with favoritism and special consideration must fall of its own weight. Like the Soviet Union crumpled slowly before our eyes.
I eagerly anticipate the fall of the church. I am at a loss when it comes to what to do with all those suddenly lost souls who will find themselves adrift on stormy seas on a rudderless boat and the captain is overboard.
While the spectacle promises to be delightful, the clean up is going to be a bitch. And it will probably get to where it smells like a bone yard.
Lecture time !!!
Sean Carroll–Making of the Fittest
Possible insta-cures in the near future, courtesy of the scientific method:
* Vaccine against advanced melanoma
* drug to stop rheumatoid arthritis in its tracks
* finally, exercising more and eating less reduces cholesterol, risk of heart attack, bone loss.. but you knew that.
Can the Catholic Church ever really come apart?
Just look at the history of it. There have been Borgia popes, two popes at a time, priests hiding in holes under floors, small groups meeting in huddled secret, and every other damned thing.
We might be at a point in history, though, where it may happen. Most of the little people–congregants, victims, believers, marks, whatever you call them–are now getting most of their information about the world from someone who is not their priest. It used to be that all they knew about the pope came from within the church, but now they get their news from the news media. So this scandal may hit the church harder than anything ever could before.
But there are still going to be people who believe, and who do not listen to anything but the church. Well, we will just have to wait for them to get old and die.
This may be the begiining of the end, after all.
You have illuminated an important point, Menyambal. I observe that the knee jerk reaction of the church to media pointing to fact is a symptom of deep denial. The church is actually satisfied, and apparently feels justified, to claim that reportage of fact is an attack with a fiendishly conceived goal of ungodly proportion.
I wish I could get away with such silly shit in my life and my line of work. ‘Course, it would leave me without income . . .
Wait! Maybe that’s their worry. You think?
Yeah. Ask Americans what ‘socialism’ means and many won’t even able to come up with a coherent answer. Seriously, the way it’s used by the media and politicians is like something out of Orwell. They may as well just call use ‘ungood’ instead.
Funny, even with this massive campaign against the term 36% of Americans view ‘socialism’ positively.
Huh. Maybe that was Sarah Palin’s purpose in the universe–to wear out that reporting-is-attack shit before the pope could use it.
Or maybe Palin is proving the idea by becoming a correspondent on Fox?
I’ve listened to that lecture* several times now, really enjoy listening to it.
*not that version, the ASU version
As a parting shot I’d like to recite a little poem that I learned long ago. It may or may not be apropos.
I once went on a flicker
And my gut was full of liqueur.
I don’t mind telling you
That I was fried.
As I lay there in the gutter
Not a damned word could I utter.
A pig walked up
And lay down by my side.
Then a woman walking by
Cast me a scornful eye.
These are the words
She had to say to me:
“You can tell a man who boozes
By the company he chooses.”
And that god damned pig got up and walked away.
My friends, I bring you glad tidings. I have proof, absolute proof I tell you, of the existence of a benignant tentacled being who rules all. We are on the trip of a lifetime, one chapter of which is a 24-day cruise from the far east to the Mediterranean. We settled into our cabin and I checked out the onboard entertainment system. In addition to the usual cheesy pay-per-view movies, previews of the onboard art sales etc they have a documentary channel, with 36, yes thirty-six, episodes of NOVA available on demand. So while we sipped our surprise, free bottle of bubbly we watched this.
If there’s not a tentacled overlord such an occurrence would be unimaginable. There’s far less proof available for that zombie dude who brings the colored eggs, now that I think of it.
Could one ask for more? Yes, in fact I could: in-cabin bacon, and an internet connection that didn’t cost $0.56 per minute for dial-up speed service would be nice, but I’ll rest easy tonight in the knowledge that the tentacled one is watching over me.
In the immortal words of the bard: “Hit don’t git much better’n this.”
PZ, a spammer with UID ‘njnkeng’ is cluttering recent threads.
Opus, that reminds me of the time I watched a documentary on Krakatoa. I found it quite interesting, and not just because it was the only program in English on that hotel TV. It was so distant and exotic and all. I was rather tired, and it took a while make the connection that the Jakarta that it was near was the Jakarta that I was in. Then they showed it on a map, and I realized that I had possibly flown over it earlier that day.
I hadn’t seen a volcano out the airliner window, despite my habit of looking out all I can, and I wouldn’t have known it was Krakatoa if I had, but I could have.
Enjoy your trip.
Indonesia has more volcanoes than any other country. The fount of all knowledge, wikipedia, has a list of 150 volcanoes in Indonesia.
Ouch …
Today’s Chicago Tribune Magazine had an article on atheists.
I awoke at 3:00am thinking about the whole left/right authoritarian/libertarian divides. And I realized that I am a social libertarian but am strongly in favour of government intervention and regulation of economic affairs — especially anything to do with banking and investments, employee safety, and protecting the right of workers to unionize.
Now if someone could come up with a phrase that describes this, I’ll be all set.
Oh.
Liberal.
Bite me, Morales. It’s not too hard, it’s a decision. Don’t click on the you-tube links, what do I care. It has been the convention for a long time here on the Thread (and Pharyngula generally) to post music as naked you-tube URLs.
Personally, I like it that way. Each link is like a little present that I unwrap by clicking, and somethimes I choose to listen and sometimes–Meat Loaf, e.g.–I abort immediately. You know what? That’s not that hard either.
Janine has her own system, in which she often uses a lyric from the song as the link. That’s not any more helpful unless you already know the song well enough to recognize the lyric. But it works too. DEEP RIFTS
If you’re too much a fucking stodge to click on unidentified links *sniff* then DON’T. You know who loses out? You; a pretty impressive diversity of musics gets posted here and you might learn something. I do, and I find I’m actually more likely to click on a naked URL posted by somebody I respect than I am something identified that I’ve never heard of. Perhaps I’m weird.
I intend to keep posting them. Not out of laziness or lack of courtesy, by preference. Feel free to continue not clinking them. *shrug*
look, there’s one now:
Now this comment, otoh, is truly pointless noise. Do you really imagine that teh CO finds out about broadcast spammers by reading comment #487 of the Thread???
PPM with Pete Seeger :
Where have all the flowers gone
PPM with Kingston Trio :
Where have all the flowers gone
Mary Travers :
Leaving on a jet plane
Rorshach:
Thank you for some real music.
(I’m at work, so I cannot watch videos, but thank you for bringing in actual good music.)
Are you familiar with “Oh, Had I a Golden Thread” by Seeger? One of my alltime favourites. (No, can’t post a link to it (see previous parenthetical)).
(And I actually got to meet Pete Seeger many, many, many years ago (not at my high school, though (nobody famous went to Boonsboro HS)))
But for Morales and any other stodgy sorts who are too whatever to bother with unidentified video links, here was last night’s program:
starting @#430
A: Grateful Dead, Crazy FIngers, live 6/14/76
B: Miles Davis Quintet, ESP
C: Joni Mitchell, Edith and the Kingpin
D: Pat Metheny Group, Last Train Home
E: Bob Dylan (1964), Hard Rain
F: Art Ensemble of Chicago, Nice Guys
G: Bob Marley & the Wailers: Waiting in Vain
H: John Coltrane Quintet (w/ E. Dolphy), Impressions
I: Sandy Denny: Who Knows Where the Time Goes (acoustic version)
J: Phish, Billy Breathes
@#442: Herbie Hancock, Maiden Voyage
Grateful Dead, Scarlet Begonias, live 4/27/77
@#445: Grateful Dead, Fire on the Mountain, live 4/27/77
@$446: Miles Davis Quintet, Dear Old Stockholm
give me a fucking break
take that
Sven: Just the old fogey in me speaking out. I’ll check it out when I get home.
As far as music goes, I subscribe to the Duke Ellington/Daughter school:
Duke Ellington: If it sounds good, it is good.
Daughter: Music is like candy. It’s great if you throw away the (w)rappers.
On my mp3 player, I have everything from Dylan to Donovan, the Dead to the Stones, the Kingston Trio to Paul Simon, Gregorian Chants to Billy Idol, Marsalis to Ian & Sylvia, the Village People to Arlo Guthrie.
I was aiming for semi-sarcastic, semi-appreciative. I fail. Again.
Oh music wars continue. I actually like the surprise too. But I’ll label. I highly encourage people to let themselves be surprised though. It could be wonderful, you never know!
This morning I got up and went to an implosion so I’m trying to upload the little vid of it now, and eating some pancakes. Did you know you can make pancakes with sourdough yeast? I didn’t but now I do. It makes freaking great pancakes!
Anyway… it’s harder for me to find music I truly dislike.
M: China Doll GD (live)
Sven I dedicate this to you. I grew up listening to them, they’re one of my dads favorite bands.
N: Love- Andmoreagain
I cover this one some times
Um….slightly dumb question: can I easily insert a personal picture here, a kind of picture puzzle which might interest you?
I guess not. So if not, would I have to put it on, say, flickr, and insert a hyperlink? Or what’s a better, easy site to use?
I don’t want to upset His True Majestic Lordship, god of the internet, by doing something silly.
Thanx.