I don’t want you to play this video, it’s that bad. It’s a song lauding rape.
Perhaps instead of listening to it, you’re better off reading the Manboobz thread about it.
Now talk about something else. Anything.
(Episode CCLIII: Losing my edge.)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Yeah… I’m not listening to that shit. I don’t think I can take any more shattering of my fragile faith in humanity.
I have maps in my head. It doesn’t take much to make them, generally any exposure to a trail network and I can find my way around. This means that I pretty nearly never ride alone, as evidenced by last night. Show up at the parking lot alone, no plans, find some people trying to decide where to ride on the map at the trailhead, offer to show a nice loop that we can squeeze in before the light disappears and we are away. It was a good evening.
Ugh.
On the other hand, that’s a porntastic ‘tache on the cover.
Just in case it hasn’t already been said (or at least said enough):
There is job growth in Texas because Perry is specializing in creating low-paying jobs:
Perry is bascially expanding the slave class, and claiming a miracle.
Reposting this here, in the new chapter of the TET. It was almost caught in the portcullis that closed the previous chapter. I did take out the description of Michele Bachmann, since her egregious spreading of misinformation about vaccines has earned her a thread of her very own. If you click on the link below, you will get Rachel Maddow’s take on the Bachmann idiocy, including a very nice takedown based on science.
The Rachel Maddow Show opened last night with a round up of some of the non-facts that Republicans used to support their candidacies in the recent debate.
Just a few examples:
Republicans all hate Ben Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve, with most of them saying Bernanke should be tried for treason. Perry wants to send him to Texas where a mob will “treat him pretty ugly.” Newt Gingrich wants to fire Bernanke tomorrow because he’s “been the most inflationary, dangerous, and power-centered Chairman of the Fed in the history of the Fed.” Maddow followed those statements with a graph showing exactly how inflationary each Fed Chairman had been since the 1970s. Guess what? During Bernanke’s service as Chairman, inflation has been so low that it barely shows on the graph. In fact, Bernanke is the least inflationary Chairman of the Fed, the least by far. The least without question.
They all say that the economic stimulus package did nothing to create jobs. In fact, the Republican candidates were in agreement in saying that the economic stimulus “did not create one job.” “He [Obama] has proven once and for all that government spending will not create one job.” According to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus package created between 1.0 and 2.9 million jobs. Yes, Rick Perry, it didn’t create one job. It created a whole Texas-sized lot of jobs.
As Maddow summarized, “Republicanland is not Normalsville. …. They all debate on the basis of what they all agree to be facts, facts that are not true…”
There’s an alternate set of false facts (otherwise known as “lies”) based on which the Republicans are all operating. They are repeating these lies over and over. Fox News doesn’t call them on it. These are not matters of interpretation, or facts in question. Real facts, non-faith-based facts, are non-partisan. Facts that are true according to non-partisan reports are not allowed to live in Republican Land.
Maddow makes the point that the debate shows us Republicanland is not grounded in facts. What this means is that, quite apart from selecting a presidential candidate, they will prevent us from governing in the meantime. For the next 14 months we will be trying to govern this country based on facts, and they will be preventing governance because they are working from a set of false premises.
The first thing to greet me when I got to work this morning was an unrealistic demand by a buyer over property taxes that haven’t even been calculated yet, let alone assessed and billed.
Sigh.
I think it’s time for a big cup of iced tea. I brew a fantastic super strong pot of some delicious loose leaf tea using my Zarafina tea maker (and yes, I have a fancy teapot on my actual desk at work, sometimes it’s the only way to get through a day), add just a little honey and pour the whole thing over a full cup of ice.
There’s a poll on the Lancaster Guardian site that can be Pharyngulated.
Should Mormons be allowed to carry out missionary work on board Lancaster district buses?
Yes
No
Excerpt from the news article:
Here’s a handy Venn diagram, showing how similar FLDS and LDS belief systems are:
http://korihorscousin.blogspot.com/2011/09/venn-diagram-flds-vs-lds-beliefs.html
Ugh Mormons. I once got mormonized at a laundromat. It was unfortunate because I had to wait like an hour for my laundry and all I wanted to do was read Snow Crash. (Which I think may have been the jumping off point for our conversation. I probably wasn’t very nice.)
I’m actually listening to the song. Remarkably, it makes classic James Bond look as radically feminist as Emma Goldman and as anti-racist as Stephen Biko.
I’m listening to Michael Shermer’s The Believing Brain. Completely lucid and factual (at least insofar as I’m recalling my neuropsychology larnin’) about the patternicity and agenticity neural stuff, and reasonably cogent about how these relate tob belief in gods, aliens, and conspiracy theories. Then he manages to go off multiple deep ends at once whining about how academia is mean to those poor conservative intellectuals, employing bizarre cartoon versions of both conservative and progressive pundits, and (most bizarrely) idolizing Dennis Prager. I want to grab Shermer and shake until the gravel falls out of his brain and he can think clearly again and stop cherrypicking his facts. It would also help if he could refrain from dividing the interestingly complex world into binary categories…
And I am now officially a fiber arts teacher, having started both sections of this month’s spinning classes. Everyone managed to leave the first class with about 20 yards of spun yarn and without having collapsed in frustrated tears. I’m busily compiling a list of what I want to do and/or get at Rhinebeck: another Bosworth spindle, a certificate for participating in the “knitting with chopsticks” competition, milk-protein yarn…
@Lynna, yeah that sounds about right. Although I do think there’s less fraud to take advantage of social programs or avoid paying property taxes and the like on the LDS side as opposed to the FLDS side.
That is both bizarre and awful.
Algernon – I’ve done Flylady for several years – it helped me finally finish my dissertation, among other things. System works great, people involved are a range, from sane to batshit crazy fundamentalists. When I’m more on than off, my life runs better, but that would be true of any actual system of getting stuff done.
I think you mean the highest proportion of workers without health insurance: 27%. The lowest prop. _with_ health insurance. Those conceptual double negatives (highest of something lowdown and bad) are tricky.
Why post a disgusting song? Just so we know how bad things are out there?
That was awesome.
It is also monumentally racist.
Wow. That anybody thought it would be a good idea. Wow.
The entire album seems designed to be shocking and therefore funny. Apparently:
Fucking hilarious.
Catching up, last thread seemed to end all about drinks.
WRT – can’t drink, so won’t comment on beer. But most sparkling grape juice tastes, to me, like champagne smells. Does champagne actually taste that way? Because, frankly, I find it pretty disgusting.
Coffee: I drink two kinds of coffee. If it’s 9 pm and I need to get to sleep but I’m not really tired, I’ll have a kona. That usually puts me out in about 20 minutes. If it’s the middle of the afternoon and I’m trying to really focus on something but can’t, I’ll do a double shot of espresso. Yes, ADHD is weird.
Sodas: I don’t know that I prefer diet sodas, and I can definitely taste the sweeteners (and differentiate between them, usually), but as someone who “must” get slow doses of caffeine all day to keep my coworkers from killing me (and coffee doesn’t work, see above), having no or low calorie sodas is a definite benefit. So, they’re tolerated.
Oh, and I’m not watching the video. That ‘stache is scary.
An annoying song all around, but probably meant to be a sort of joke. In bad taste, and it appears that the record was withdrawn soon after its release.
Probably one reason why a copy of the album is quite costly.
Glen Davidson
Ice tea is tea with ice, or tea that is like ice in that it’s, you know, cold.
What would “iced” even mean? Frozen? What does “ice” mean as a verb?
Eistee, not geeister Tee, whatever geeist would mean.
Anybody here like lightning?
I watched a thunder/lightning storm pass by and strike the mountain across the lake from my campground last week repeatedly and with extreme prejudice. I caught numerous strikes on video and have been fooling around with the images–I turned some strikes into GIF animations and broke one down frame-by-frame. Unfortunately it’s not hi-res and only 10 frames per second, but we work with the tools we have, right? It’s not like I planned the thing.
Pretending to be a scientist has always been one of my joys. Of course no one here will be fooled…
@ Lipwig [previous thread]
*hugs* (Sorry they’re late.)
……………………………………..
@ Lynna #8
By your command, my Liege.
If you have some time (over an iced tea) you can try hitting Shift+Ctrl+P prior to voting. This will clear your cache so that you can vote multiple times (hell, they are just pleading to be pharyngulated).
(Speaking of mormons, I have not seen their ilk in these parts for many months now. I was so looking forward to taking the piss with them.)
………………………………..
[general whinge]
I am stuck in a cheesy hotel just north of Xiamen. As is often the case, the hotel doubles as a “KTV” (karaoke television) den of iniquity. The music in the bottom of the building is so loud, the teacups in my room are rattling (I kid not). I have a headache and feel exhausted but know I simply can’t get to bed with the vibrations and noise. Their all night pervigilium to the gods of chaos is robbing me of my beauty sleep. :'(
Tell that to this guy.
It sounds like an 80’s TV show theme song. Except for the rape part. That’s not cool (I’ll just save it in my head together with the dukes of hazzard).
The odd thing is that Wyngarde can have been no stranger to prejudice since he was gay. It makes it even more bizarre that he could have made this record.
whoever wrote this is quite the linguist. is there some kind of symbolism I’m not getting here?
@ David Marjanović #20
Den Heiligen Geeist. Du Ateeist!
(The Holy Ghost. You Ateaist! Bah, it doesn’t quite translate…)
I genuinely giggled through half the song. I couldn’t get over the fact that the opening makes it sound like McGruff the Crime Dog is really, really stoked about rape.
It’s funny and fascinating in an artifact sort of way. Heck, I’d like to finagle a copy so it can join ranks with my Prussian Blue and other mind-bogglingly offensive/obscene mp3s.
When you’re fascinated by horrifying shit, the world becomes SUCH a treasure trove.
Ibis, #627 on last thread:
Doesn’t matter. They play theological Calvinball.
First Approximation, #649 on last thread: Ellis Washington forgot to mention the Illuminati.
Erulóra, #667 on last thread: I threw in one more time and gave up. As did my friend HappiestSadist, whose name is apparently likewise “offensive.” I’m not getting much out of the comments berating us except a lot of finger-wagging. Whatever… maybe that’s what floats his boat.
Regarding the video in this post, and especially Bernard’s comment thereon at #17: I’m one of those GenX’ers who side-eyes Baby Boomers when they romanticize the 1960s and ’70s. Yes, indeed, in many ways, life was better back then: more economically secure, above all, and with much less state and corporate paranoia. However, privilege and oppression had just barely gotten onto any sort of national agenda.
And they were as rife in the counterculture as they were elsewhere. Not a few Second Wave feminists have bitter words about how “sexual liberation” meant they were “free” to fuck any man who came along, whether they wanted him or not, because now they didn’t have “an excuse.” Rape jokes were considered acceptable. Warner Bros. and other cartoons I grew up on occasionally put characters in blackface or other racialized makeup/costume for lolz.
It was great that “the Sixties” happened, it sparked a lot of much-needed sea changes that are still happening today, but, speaking as someone old enough to remember most of the ’70s, that era wasn’t all peace, love, and understanding, especially if you weren’t a straight white guy.
Glen, #19: “It was a joke” doesn’t make it okay. Even if Wyngarde didn’t actually believe what he was singing, he was engaging in a proto-version of hipster racism and sexism.
Matt, #25: Suffering one kind of oppression does not necessarily make one more understanding of victims of other kinds. Cis white gay men, in the grand scheme of things, are pretty damned privileged, especially if they’re affluent. Some are quite misogynist, and they direct it mainly against other cis gay men whom they consider “insufficiently” masculine or against trans people. Dan Savage, for one, has said any number of offensive things when he’s talking about oppressed groups other than cis gay white men.
Let me qualify something in my previous comment:
Obviously, not all cisgendered gay men. Especially not those born into a homophobic family/subculture and/or who present as “unmanly.” I’m not trying to diminish the bigotry gay men that is still going pretty strong in the U.S. and elsewhere, just pointing out that it’s not as complicated as putting some people in the “oppressed” box and some in the “oppressor” box.
“The bigotry against gay men.” Argh.
You could be right there.
FLDS has an official, prophet-sanctioned, mandate to “bleed the beast.” So ripping off the state and federal government of the infidels is a positive good.
The LDS Church teaches, officially, that self-reliance and honesty are good practices. However, most Church leaders and church members show by example that scamming one’s fellow church members, ripping off the government, cheating the state out of highway repair funds, and making semi-fraudulent use of federal support programs are all good because God loves mormons. Therefore, whatever you can get is whatever god intends for you to have.
I personally know middle class parents with large homes, several vehicles, two jobs, elaborate vacation plans, and many children. These middle class parents are not rich, but are well off, and they are mormons who pay a 10 percent tithe to the church. In addition to tithing, they support mormon missionaries as well. They apply for and get assistance for school lunches, reduced fees for dental services, medicaid for children’s health services, assistance for eyeglasses, assistance to pay electric and gas bills, childcare support, and even occasional freebies from the Bishop’s Storehouse or from other food banks. They are living in the socialist society they rail against. And yes, they do cheat on their taxes.
The difference between FLDS and LDS is that LDS members put up a nicer-looking front for their scams. The requirement for a cleaner false-front probably does discourage some from bleeding the beast.
Last I heard of Peter Wyngarde was a couple of decades ago when he was arrested for importuning men in public toilets.
If there is something that always surprises me about how far we’ve come since the ’80s (which is the first decade I really experienced) it is that we had to make the journey at all. The commonplace bigotry of the past is incomprehensible to me now. I simply cannot understand why open prejudice was even acceptable or tolerated, let alone that it was admired as “plain speaking” and “strong moral values”.
I’m sure/I hope I will look back on the ’10s in exactly the same way in 30 years time (if the momentum of change is maintained).
The “teacher stepped on flag” comments are still going at the original site.
Ptarmigan turn white-for-winter from the bottom up.
Right now they look like they’re wearing bloomers.
haha
There is STILL commonplace bigotry excused by “strong moral values” aimed at new targets and justified by the victims deserving to be stigmatized for their “choices”.
Smokers, obese people, rape victims, “welfare” clients, the homeless, single women who use birth control, undocumented workers, abortion providers — I’m sure everybody here could add more
I thought this would be the video.
Thanks all for your reasuring words in the previous thread.
(sorry, I haven’t figured out the blockquote coding yet)
@Dhorvath #525 previous thread
Or is it that you fear the harm to those you will eventually leave behind?
Yeah, that. I have a 10yo son who has spoken to me in the past about what will happen to him when I die. He has not yet realised that he will be an adult then (hopefully) and will have different coping mechanisms . If I died tomorrow he would be in a very painful place for a long time (I am a single Mom and he is an only child)
This may seem trite…
Nothing you ever say is trite. Your words are comforting to me.
@Bill Dauphin#545 previous thread
Outside of my family, this place has been my most enduring personal relationship during the period since I started posting here.
That. Right there.
@chigau O #561 previous thread
I plan to rage against the dieing of the light.
Who was it Huxley who took acid on his deathbed?
On a lighter note: we had a classic Monty Python moment at his funeral – his coffin (unopened ) was at the ceremony, very tastefully draped in a burgundy velvet cloth and topped with a beautiful arrangement of summer flowers ( no lilys). And placed on a rolling shelf that would apparently (at the touch of a button) cause the coffin to roll gently through a small curtained aperture in the wall and into the furnace beyond (we had him cremated) . At the end of all the weeping, tears and words the button was pressed… but nothing happened. After about a minute of awkward silence – a hand attached to an arm weaved it’s way out of the aperture and grabbed hold of the coffin and began to haul it inch by agonising inch out of sight. My Dad had a wicked sense of humour and I know that he would forgive me my giggles.
Around campus someone keeps leaving the 100,000,000 dollar Ray Comfort Bills. I’ve been shredding them as I see them and returning them on the ground where they were left in hopes that the leavers would pick up eventually that only one person bothers to pick them up and finds them annoying. Thinking of responding with a similar 100,000,000 bill that reads “You’re a Douchebag and Deserve to Die. HAHA” because it’s basically the same message.
Reads thread topic
Wait. What.
So how ’bout them Red Sox? (Redskins, Vikings, Whatevers…)
Last Thread:
Easily. *sluuuuuurp* See. Very little effort involved.
I’d rather have my Diet Rite Pure Zero (with Splenda™) than regular Coke; the Coke tastes syrupy-sweet, to me. Ick.
It’s interesting; back in the dawnatime, when I was a kid and later as a teen/young adult, my favorites were Mountain Dew and root beer; in fact, if a restaurant didn’t serve root beer, I wasn’t interested in eating there. Nowadays, both of those beverages seem too thick and syrupy, and don’t quench my thirst. Yes, I do drink diet colas for the taste of it; stop sneering and give me my Super-Choco-Fudgey Brownie with chocolate ice cream and chocolate sauce, supercilious and skinny wait-person.
–
I will not appall Josh another time by describing my morning “coffee” again.
:)
–
But not until after all the good art and stuff they’ve been squatting on has been evacuated!
Oh, yes; and their records. So we can find out what bodies they’ve buried, and where.
–
My favorite iced tea ever was what I used to make with Liptons as a base, with some Tea of Tut (which a friend brought me from a museum expo) added. The tea’s long gone, but I still have the tin.
–
:D
And your little green dragon is cyoot.
–
–
cicely,
I can appreciate that there is a difference, I even prefer the flavour of diet Sprite say to regular, but aspartame does wretched things to my stomach. So no diet pop for me any longer. Sigh.
I can’t drink that much coffee. It makes me jumpy, it aggravates my insomnia if I have it any later than mid-morning, and it sends me to the toilet too often.
However, I do like a big cup of Ethiopian Harrar or Yirgacheffe, the beans having been just ground for about 12 seconds, then steeped in a French press for three minutes. Add dairy product and Splenda.
Because of my sensitivity, this is a weekend-only treat.
I do drink caffeinated tea during the work week. I’m partial to Earl Gray; I really like the bergamot flavor. I’ll drink it with, again, Splenda. I also sweeten iced tea with Splenda, which I guess is sacrilege; it’s “supposed” to be drunk unsweetened. (Southern-style sweet tea, however, I just drink as it’s presented to me, which is with copious amounts of sugar.)
I stopped drinking soda, diet or otherwise, years ago. Once in a very very great while I will have it as a treat, generally some esoteric flavor like blood orange, but then I wonder why I bothered. I prefer my sugar to have starch and/or fat as a vehicle, rather than just water. Why waste the calories on soda when you can have tiramisu?
BTW, there’s a good article on Alternet about the effects coffee has on the body, in lay terms.
Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask, does OM mean Order of the Molly?
Or Old Man… ;)
I fully approve of burning flags. Have for quite some time. And no, it’s not just that this so mirrors the advice of so many fine writers, from e. e. cummings to Arundhati Roy….
It’s also that it has recently struck me that they’re such an incredible fuel. The heat of combustion in those things seems to me, even, to violate what should even be possible, from what we thought we understood of their chemistry, really…
Absolutely. Consider their generally rather meagre mass. Then consider the furious heat that burning them inevitably generates…
Really, we should all run our cars on flags.
Someone should ask the twits that if say a Genie came and said that he would destroy everything America stood for unless they burnt a flag, if they would light the match.
Cause you know…that’s sort of what is happening…sans Jinn
RichardD,
Who are you calling old?
Giliell, your work is lovely! Love the godzilla in particular.
@ Ing — well, it fits right in with “we honor life so much that we will refuse to interfere with the 9 week old ectopic fetus even knowing the result will be the death of the woman.”
The latest round in the Catholic sex scandal:
http://ph.news.yahoo.com/church-condemns-naming-aussie-sex-claim-priest-050251238.html
The latest quote showing the Church just does NOT get it:
‘Cause, you know, while it is possible the man might be a rapist, we can all be absolutely confident he wouldn’t tell LIES. (eyeroll)
Fuck, I’m not sending my kid to that school. Oh, wait…
Let’s just say a guy who’s been ‘iced’ ain’t gonna run off to testify for the feds anytime soon, capisce?
I have no idea what is going on here but it’s bizarrely hilarious. I especially like the guy talking all kinds of smack.
Nope. “Feelings” is still the worst song. Ever.
And to be fair, since it’s not just the Catholics:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/hampshire-man-ernest-willis-sentenced-prison-rape-tina/story?id=14460469
This is not the worst song ever.
@lipwig
This is familiar. I was lucky growing up to have functionally three parents since we lived with my maternal grandfather, a pianist. He died when I was 12 after a rather grueling battle with cancer.
At his funeral, we had planned to play a couple recorded pieces he’d played and it mostly went off without a hitch. But when it came to the last piece during the recessional portion, someone put the cassette tape in on the wrong side so instead of the more sober and pretty piece that my uncle had chosen, he was carried out to the chipper twinkling of “Alley Cat.”
Given his mirthful disposition and fondness for sometimes startling jokes, it couldn’t have been a more appropriate send off.
Nor this the greatest
Back at work from dentist. A sherd of bone worked up through the gum and . . . .
Sorry. Lemme try that again.
WARNING: IF YOU ARE SQUICKED OUT BY GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF DENTAL PROBLEMS, OR IF YOU HAVE RECENTLY EATEN, OR ARE DOING SO NOW, DO NOT READ THIS!!11!1eleventy!1
Back at work from dentist. A sherd of bone worked up through the gum and, when I closed my mouth, managed to wedge itself into the almost-gap between two of my lower molars. It pulled out of the upper gum but, despite my best efforts, remained firmly wedged between two of my bottom molars. My dentist told me it is the first time he has ever had a patient get his own bone wedged between teeth. Fine now, though.
Ms. Daisy Cutter:
Because if it’s made correctly, some of us can’t have tiramisu (stupid liquor used as a flavoring *grumble*).
Brother Ogvorbis #62, that’s … disturbing, was probably actually excruciatingly painful and yet the way you describe it is somehow, um, funny. Possibly because my brain refuses to dwell on the reality of it and is taking refuge in the OMG-it-did-what?-ness of your description. I’m sure you’re really not supposed to cannibalise yourself.
I suppose if you’re back at work and it’s “fine now” you must be OK….? I certainly hope so!
That’s why I drink diet soda. Then it doesn’t count towards one’s calorie intake. :-)
The song in the OP has nothing on this song:
Autophagia is a recognized condition. And can be quite frightening. Though it is, luckily, rare. And no, I do not do that (and even if I wanted to, I don’t bend that way).
The pain was minimal. Really. It felt like a sesame seed was wedged in between the teeth, but I could feel the point with my tongue. And yes, it was funny. Who, other than Ogvorbis, can get himself stuck between his teeth?
Here’s a song with less offensive lyrics: Eduard Khil – I Am So Happy To Finally Be Back Home.
O wait, here’s 10 hours worth of it.
I just looked up Peter Wyngarde in Wikipedia, and he’s gay. (He also survived four years as a prisoner of the Japanese during WWII.)
Clearly, this is not Ron Jeremy’s dentist.
“Al Gore” was really adorable on Colbert.
I find myself wishing he’d run again. Unfortunately he blew it on getting Perry’s endorsement again. But perhaps he can still land Rick Parry-with-an-A.
Wait, no, THIS is the worst song ever recorded.
Fuck. Sorry, everyone – I just posted the link, I don’t know why it embedded.
If you approve of E.E. Fuckin’ Cummings, why don’t you fucking capitalise his name?
Nerd of Redhead, prevthread:
Umm, I could print it out and maybe, uh, fax it to you?
One the ice/iced tea thing. It doesn’t matter what you call it if you’re drinking it in the States, because it will be simply disgusting!
A commonality to all Canadians is the fond memory of the first and last (intentional) time they ordered, and drank (poor things), iced tea in the States.
I recall vividly that I was at a diner in Detroit. I was a young kid and it was summer. I badly wanted an iced tea -something to quench my thirst and my sweet tooth. What was served to me looked like iced tea. I put my mouth on the straw, but what I sucked up wasn’t iced tea at all. Rather than my thirst being quenched, I instantly needed a drink of water. Rather than sweet, my taste buds were assaulted by bitter flavour. I had been served, unwittingly, (and much to the delight of my father) unsweetened and cold brewed tea. Bitter and dry and utterly disgusting. No amount of sugar would help, because it simply wouldn’t dissolve in the cold nastiness and a squeeze of lemon rendered it not just bitter, but sour to boot. It was an awful, awful experience.
I love iced tea. My Mum used to boil tea and steep it for several hours, with sugar and lemon. I could hardly ever wait for the tea to get chilled enough to serve.
Until that moment in that Detroit diner, I had never before experience culture shock nor had any idea that such close neighbours could have such significant differences. A part from iced tea, when I travel to the states, I never order a caesar* (because Clamato is invariably unavailable and a bloody marry is just disgusting), eat smarties (because they are not the candy-coated chocolates they should be), bother eating any chips (because the lack of ketchup and all-dressed make me highly suspicious of the other flavours), eat bagels (because it won’t be a Montreal bagel), or eat any kind of cereal (because, really!, corn pops -to name only one messed up kind of cereal- are crunchy spheres and not soft and oblong.
*Well, I ordered a caesar once at a Marriott in Tampa. They actually had Clamato in a fridge behind the bar. I had to order it as a bloody marry and be quite explicit about the Clamato, but I got what I wanted. The bartender could not understand why I was so happy, or why it was that I wanted a drink so early in the day.
Nono, print it out, put it on a wooden table, take a picture and fax that.
Then ask to fax it back, or you won’t have it anymore.
(From The Daily WTF, which can be (warning!) a time sink).
The LDS Church teaches, officially, that self-reliance and honesty are good practices. However, most Church leaders and church members show by example that scamming one’s fellow church members, ripping off the government, cheating the state out of highway repair funds, and making semi-fraudulent use of federal support programs are all good because God loves mormons. Therefore, whatever you can get is whatever god intends for you to have.
Mark Hofmann comes to mind, in a most deliciously ironic way.
I have to disagree. This is the worst song ever created.
@SQB, I misread the inestimable TDWTF as TheDailyMash, and now I have this in my head: Fluorescent cat totally about medical research, say scientists.
No, no, no. This is the worst song ever.
Oops. Link bork.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science-%26-technology/fluorescent-cat-totally-about-medical-research%2c–say-scientists-201109134295/
You know, given our state propensity for all manner of fraud and Ponzi schemes, this is very applicable. I have a cousin who bilked a number of my extended family members for money* over the last few years. And suddenly the aunts, uncles and cousins who were stupid enough to trust him are all confused how it happened and why it didn’t happen to me or my parents. Hm, let’s see, because we’re not gullible fucking idiots who used “he’s a nice churchgoing man, I’m sure this opportunity he’s found out about will pay off big” to be sound investment strategy.
*I’m pretty sure he was himself a trusting, ignorant victim to start with, actually, but it was long enough that 1. he’s just that stupid to think the money is still going to come 2. he deluded himself for a long time 3. he figured it out but was too ashamed to say anything later
I’ve heard from many English people who leave the country under the impression that Americans don’t know how to make tea, and now, Canadians and iced tea. Many many Americans enjoy good tea, hot and cold, in their own homes. It’s only in restaurants that it’s hard to get tea made well. I don’t know why, except that coffee and soda are so much more popular than tea that restaurant managers never learn how to make it properly.
I’ve never had acceptable hot tea in a restaurant in my country. It is occasionally possible to get acceptable iced tea, but it’s hard to predict where it’ll be, and just because you got good iced tea at a restaurant on Tuesday doesn’t mean that there will be anyone there on Wednesday who knows how to make it.
It’s served highly sweetened in many, many places in the southern and mid-western U.S. (I.e. hot brewed with sugar). Cold-brewed iced-tea I think is probably quite unusual (maybe it’s a Michigan thing?). Hot-brewed but unsweetened is very common, though (indeed, sweet =/= thirst quenching, at least for me. Bitter == quenching).
Hey look – pictures of a cute kitten :D
i will not kiss your fucking shift key.
I don’t know many Americans that are satisfied with the quality of tea available in restaurants. If you want decent tea, you have to make it yourself. You do learn to tolerate that swill, though.
QFT
I really don’t dare order iced tea anywhere because I’m afraid to get dissolved powder in water. I like my tea less sweet than you can usually get them, so I brew it hot and strong, add a little honey (so it’s not too bitter when chilled) and pour it over a full cup of ice.
@Kitty, *lots of squeeing* !
Holy shit that manboobz site is awesome. MRAs are some seriously weird dudes. Anyone read the post that references moustrap vagina theory? WTF.
Mike Weinstein just announced this letter had been issued by the top brass “clarifying” religious freedom in the Air Force.
“Leaders at all levels … must avoid the actual or apparent use of their position to promote their personal religious beliefs…”
http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org/docs/gen_schwartz_letter_religion_neutralilty.pdf
Now to see if they enforce it.
I’d be more convinced by your nonconformity if you’d typed arundhati roy.
See that “.”? Kiss it! Kiss it reeeeel good.
Interesting. I didn’t realise that “sordid” and “sorted” were perfect homonyms. Confused me there for bit, dr Maddow.
Come now. We both know you’re just being like this because you’re having your punctuation.
Katherine,
So cute.
I want a kitten. *tantrum*
What the fuck is wrong with people complaining about iced tea being bitter? I guess you don’t drink yer coffee black either then? Its an acquired taste.
Worst songs, eh?
This is one my better half utterly loathes:
Just call Me angel of the Morning
My iced tea, like my mother’s, is hot-brewed and lightly sweetened- a tablespoon of sugar for a pitcher of tea. We brew about 1/3 of the pitcher to make a nice dark tea, then fill it up with cold water and mix.
My late grandfather liked sun tea- put the teabags, water, and sliced lemon in a glass jar and leave it in the sun for most of the afternoon. That was STRONG but good. Sometimes he would add a little cinnamon- I know that sounds strange, but it was tasty. When we came home from Grandpa’s funeral and had lunch, we realized that many of us were drinking tea Grandpa had made from the fridge- the last of his strong, strange sun tea. An odd moment.
That really is terrible. I kinda suspect it was a 1970s attempt at transgressive humor. Reminds me a little of the tone of things like Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius stories.
skeptifem: Iced tea seems more bitter to me than hot tea (which I do like). And some iced teas are more bitter than others, depending on the tea itself and the brewing method. I find that cold brewing it makes even cheap tea bags (the usually unbearably bitter stuff) much smoother.
Link to Truth Out story on Air Force/religion:
http://www.truth-out.org/aftermath-jesus-loves-nukes-scandal/1316010154
Huh. New dolphin species discovered in Victoria
Derp derp derp.
I like this one: http://manboobz.com/2011/09/12/bla-bla-pussy-cartel-bla-bla-cock-blockade/
I used to buy into that crap myself, not too long ago even. I’ve learned better now, I’m still learning better, and it kinda freaks me out both how much of that resembles my own thinking from a few years back, and how pathetic, whiny, and sexually frustrated that hogshit looks to me now. Kind of embarassing.
Ooooh, women use sex and withholding of sex to control you because you’re a man and women get off on playing games, right? It couldn’t possibly be that women with hold sex from you because you’re a creepy slimy douchebag that makes their skin crawl in the wrong way, right?
I’ve just caught up with 4:21 pm EST, so I’m going to assume everyone is being amused, if not happy, tonight. [/snoopy dance]
The worst song in the western world is ‘Watching Scotty Grow’ followed quickly by ‘Yummy Yummy Yummy I’ve got love in my tummy’.
Why yes, I am that old, why do you ask?
@ Lone Coyote
What the fuck is this shit? Who is this guy? Can I hit him?
John Morales, I used to agree with your better half, the pop version was a very cheezy rendition. But if one listens to the lyrics, and the recordings by Nina Simone and Chrissie Hynde & The Pretenders, it’s a love song of a one night stand. I’ve grown to love it.
I don’t think those women would have recorded a song they didn’t believe in. I could be wrong, we’re talkin’ about art.
I’m already *this close* to just being hopeful a virus will wipe out this entire species, myself included, and leave it to animals that at least don’t make pretenses about what they are…
I think I’ll skip the song.
Why is that?
I love tea, but you really have to hunt down a place that serves good tea in the US. I mean, I knew *ONE* place in my entire city and it is gone now.
One… place…
Starstuff: Yes, hit him hard.
Nah, no one can beat these kids for worst songs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvK2U3FJ2ao&feature=related
Really.
Because people are so motherfucking sad, and they do such awful things… and when I hit my threshold for it I just feel an awful mixture of sorrow, rage, and powerlessness… and it’s crappy.
I’ll get over it.
That video is really really funny though.
Algernon – “I’m already *this close* to just being hopeful a virus will wipe out this entire species”
Pfft, we are the virus on the planet. Give it some time, we’ll do the job on ourselves.
In the mean time, make some popcorn and watch the show, OK?
Still catching up but here’s a dentist story for Brother Og.
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/03/i-cant-feel-my-face.html
I’m watching “The Sting”
I’d forgotten how good everything about this movie is.
Ah, I see. I know what you mean.
My nominee for the worst song is Having My Baby – Paul Anka. I will not attempt a link. *gags*
Katherine Lorraine
re: kitty pix
the first one looks positively satanic
(in an adorable kitteh kinda way)
I’ll be happy to send you one. His name is Sherman. He is senile, neurotic, bulemic, semi-hairless, and selectively incontinent. And he has a broken nose and snores. Turst me. You want this kitten. Honest.
===========
I think this song is pretty damn bad. One of the guys in my office has threatened to kill anyone in the office who plays or sings it.
I second the worst vote for Having My Baby.
Followed closely by Three Times a Lady by The Commodores.
I’m tempted. Really. Selective incontinence sounded especially enticing. But I think I’m going to pass.
Brother O:
Imagine when Sherman grows up to be a cat.
I understand. Right now, he is in the basement. Yodeling. Which, with the echoes, sounds like a horror movie soundtrack.
Which is odd, as we think that he has gone deaf.
He started as a kitten. Then he became a cat. He has now regressed to kitten. Except he is evil. Truly evil.
And he hates me.
We’re talking bad songs and no one’s mentioned 4 Non Blondes yet?
Just before she was moved indoors permanently, the neighbor’s cat was mostly deaf and mostly blind.
The poor magpies had to land and walk right up close in order to torment her.
Beatrice, you might want to take advantage of this fantastic offer before someone else line-jumps and scoops up the prize. Selective incontinence, bundled with bulemia? Where else will you find a deal that that? The rest is just gravy!
(Um, can’t take advantage of this Special Offer myself; we are at our rated capacity for in-house felines, and the incumbents have made it more than crystal clear what they think of further subdivision of the territory. Really. Honest. I’d never lie about a thing like that. Hark! I think I hear my name being called….)
–
With matted hairballs.
@ Algernon
People occasionally and spontaneously get together to do something terrific without pausing to even think about it, and that’s what keeps a lot of us going:
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8301847/bystanders-lift-burning-car-save-young-biker
Brother O,
:)
Something to look forward to; may you make it there yourself.
Rey, ack!
(I rather like What’s Up!)
I actually went through the entire, um, song. In addition to the subject matter, the thing is also a totally, horrid, LOUSY attempt at art in a technical sense. This is the sort of disco that made disco the infamous laughing stock it is today. I agree with PZ, the readers are better off applying a sander directly to the eardrum.
Ogvorbis, I’ve been wanting to ask this: why are you still caring for Sherman? Is he a particularly wonderful cat? Does he have secret superpowers? What, exactly, is the attraction?
And lest anyone accuse me of being an evil cat hater, I have 2, the older is somewhere between 16 and 19 and spent much of last week peeing in Mr. Patriarch’s shoes. He hasn’t repeated that since I washed all of the shoes (good thing Mr. Patriarch wears mostly sneakers), but should it recur, we’ll seriously consider euthanizing him. We’ll all feel sad, absolutely, but he’s had a very good life, lots and lots of love, and there are limits. Peeing in shoes is one of them.
Because, when he isn’t pissing on the throw rug, or puking strange stuff, he is a sweet cat. One skritch behind teh ear and he starts purring.
I would feel terrible if I deprived another cat lover from such a prize of a kitten. No, no, I already declined the generous offer. It is only fair to stand back now and let others have a chance in getting that sweet bundle of joy.
On a more serious note. No kittens for me until I move out on my own. My mother doesn’t feel comfortable around animals. Yes, that includes kittens. As long as it can unexpectedly jump on her, an animal makes her uncomfortable.
Well, I’m heading off to bed. Barring another weird dental autophagia episode, I have an actual full day of work tomorrow.
So, if I have no idea what kind of beer I might like except that the smell alone of Mr Kristin’s beers (Guinness and Smith’s Nut Brown) make me want to gag, and I do like hard apple ciders and crisp sparkling wines, what might be a good type of beer for me to try?
(I feel like we just had this conversation in a recent thread; if I’m right, my apologies).
Aw, now I feel bad for mocking Sherman.
(Any cat I ever have will be able to manipulate me sooo easily.)
There is something very wrong with this sentence (grammatically), but I’m too tired to notice what it is.
I can only stare at it dumbly.
Ogvorbis, I’m sorry if I sounded heartlessly mean about Sherman. I do feel really conflicted even considering euthanizing Updown, our shoe-peeing cat, who is also a delightful purrer when not yowling or peeing in Mr. Patriarch’s shoes or leaping in fright when someone moves in a way he didn’t expect, or…
Theophontes
Phoenicia gathers her powers about her by night, growing more sinister and sour every day. Today she rose two fabulous baguette loaves of whole-wheat/white, and she wants more action.
Send me an email with your mailing address; I think she’s strong enough and stable enough. The fermentation happens really quickly and she doubles in the jar within four hours. The longer you let her ferment at room temperature (discarding half the volume and re-feeding twice a day) the more stable and flavorful she’ll get, but she’s ready to go.
cicely:
I agree! Actually, I now limit my soda drinking almost exclusively to diet sodas from a small family-owned local company (craft-brewed soda!), and my favorite is their Diet Grapefruit (think Fresca)… but I entirely agree about sugared sodas tasting syrupy (and as near as I can tell, this is equally true with either HFCS or “real” sugar).
As for iced tea, my wife is an huge fan, and for her the key is always specifically ordering unsweetened brewed tea; if the restaurant can’t accommodate that, she orders soda instead. It’s not that she doesn’t like her tea sweet, BTW: She just likes to add her own sugar.
****
Bad songs: Some mighty good (if that’s the right word) nominations, but I’m quite sure this is the… er, winner?
kristinc,
I suggest anything labelled as ‘dry’ (or, given market-speak, ‘super-dry’) or those labelled as ‘low carbohydrate’ (ditto).
Basically, the low sugar content of such beers is analogous to that of “hard apple ciders and crisp sparkling wines” — but in the end beer is beer. You may just not like beer (my better half doesn’t, but is quite appreciative of brut sparkling wines and dry ciders).
FWIW.
Beatrice, re: “Any cat I ever have will be able to manipulate me sooo easily.”
What’s wrong is the time tense.
I suspect you meant ‘Any cat I shall ever have will be able to manipulate me sooo easily.”
FWTW.
[addendum]
You can put it in the subjective, i.e. ‘might’ rather ‘shall’.
Bill, Nerd (or some other expert) may wish to correct me, but as I understand it, the higher the temperature, the higher the solubility of sugar in an aqueous solvent.
Bill, also, I find “Honey” to be rather enjoyable schmaltz. :)
(Not bad at all)
Thanks, John Morales.
Um, I know that I’m monopolising TET right now (against Greta’s
rulesguidelines, but not PZ’s — so far), but I feel like mentioning how (even in my teenage years) I sneered at Von Daniken’s equivocation between carbohydrates and hydrocarbons (cf #145).(So I have done so)
John:
Bill, Nerd (or some other expert) may wish to correct me, but as I understand it, the higher the temperature, the higher the solubility of sugar in an aqueous solvent.
I’m far from an expert in terms of physical chemistry, but in actual practice it seems easy enough to get as much sugar as any sane person would want to dissolve even in quite cold tea.
Bill, also, I find “Honey” to be rather enjoyable schmaltz. :)
De gustibus…, eh? I always found it horrifyingly cloying, even when it was a brand-new radio hit and I was only a couple years older than its target demo… but after some growin’ up and consciousness raisin’, I also can’t bring myself to ignore the singer’s paternalistic attitude to “Honey.” YMMV.
Derp! I usually don’t suffer quite that badly from blckotqoue FAIL! Y’all are smart, though; you’ll figure it out.
(So THIS is FTB. I think I’ll try to leave a comment, just to see if I can.)
Honey? Bobby Goldsboro? Way before my time. I tried to pay attention to the song, but his hair proved to be a strangely fascinating distraction…
Happy 27th birthday to His Royal Highness Prince Henry Charles Albert David of Wales!
Speaking of bad songs… pffft. Hmmm.
1. I’m with Algernon on the OP song. Skipping it.
2. I don’t think you guys know “bad” from “BAD”.
Who Are Parents?
Heh.
Here’s a bowl if you need to spit up after gagging on it, Walton.
One of the comments is absolutely sublime and perfect:
Issues.
Tried to change the email connected to my nym. FTB sent an email to the new address which told me to click on a link to confirm the change. I got the following message:
Sadface.
Oh, hey; it’s John Byrne’s inspiration for Jason Wyngarde aka Mastermind. :)
Now that I’ve proven myself a comics geek, I’ll go read the other comments.
Bill, no worries on the blockquotes… :)
Point being, hot tea can be made sweeter than cold tea.
—
[anecdote]
When I was a tadpole, we’d (I lived with my (poorish) grandparents in Spain in the 1960s) make a whole pot of tea with but one teabag. No milk added (I had to come to Oz to acquire such an abomination).
My idea of “sweet enough” was to keep spooning sugar in until the solute was (literally) saturated. Then a a bunch more for good measure.
(Best bit was spooning the sugary sludge at the bottom!)
Kseniya:
Yay, you’re here!
Hard to imagine he was a teeny-bopper idol in the likes of 16 and Tiger Beat magazines, eh? Ah, but those mags were no doubt before your time as well. </OldGuy>
John:
Point taken; I just can’t imagine wanting tea any sweeter than cold tea can be made.
*violent retching*
Feh, you’re no geek. Else you would’ve mentioned Mr. Six.
Rey, I quote Bill: “De gustibus…, eh?”
;)
Hmmm… briefly the Recent Comments list looked like Dog intended it to… but then it automagically changed back to the newer too-short, tabbed format. Could it be that the Top Men™ are Working on a Fix® even as we
speaktype?@chigau
I must have almost blocked that Commodores thing. Fortunately, being reminded brought it aaaaaalllll back. *headdesk* :)
There is something I consider even worse, but I can’t remember the title, only that it was from the early-mid 60s, sung by a woman, with one line being “I don’t eeeeeven know hoooooow to hoooold your hand”. She… screeched. It was nails on a blackboard.
Bill, look down on the right sidebar for “Recent Comments”.
(The most recent 15 are there, no tabs)
Invisible Dragon @166–I think it’s called ‘Ready To Learn’. I hear it on the radio now and again, but it never gets introduced, so I’m not sure of the title.
And to anybody who hasn’t read Dave Barry’s Book Of Bad Songs–find a copy!!! It’s hilarious!
(sigh)
Invisible Dragon, want bad? Bad bad?
I present: William Shatner’s “Rocketman”
.
(Beat that!)
guest:
Whatever makes you think Clinton is a champion of (ALL-CAPS) rape?
guest, you seem to be making shit up. Work on that…?
:yawns: Cupcake, you aren’t even close to chew toy level. Shoo.
Guest:
Nah, you’re just scum who tries to latch onto us.
—
So, scumbag, care to attempt to justify your vacuous malice?
Stop lying, guest, you tiresome little shit. We can all visit Almost Diamonds, and we can all confirm that you’re lying about it. Begone, pathetic insect.
If lil appetizer “guest” here is too scant, y’all can visit Butterflies and Wheels for more hearty troll fare. A self-identified “feminist MRA” is there lying about all kinds of shit. Got my spiked polka-dot waders and my gas mask.
Classical Cipher, heh.
Looks like that Tom Martin has been well and truly addressed.
(He may be an idiot, but that’s head-and-shoulders above this “guest” specimen :) )
[OT]
CC, sigh. I couldn’t resist a response over at B&W.
:)
He really has, John Morales, but he’s so much more chewy and substantial than that disappointingly meager “guest” that I figured I’d direct people toward him. :)
Ohhh, we got the recent comments back to a decent length!
Good morning, btw
Caine
Thanx
AJ Milne
I fully suport your right to do that, yet I despise the burning of flags and books.
As a symbol it is powerful and it usually means “I’d like to burn the thing and people it stands for instead”. And I don’t think it’s possible to get away from that saying “oh but I intend it to mean that I oppose the politics of the current rulers”. As much as I enjoy Arundhati Roy’s writings, I disagree with her on this.
Brother Ogvorbis
OK, that is funny. Are you done now with those evil teeth and it was one final act of resistance?
I’m actually under the impression that many English people think that nobody else knows how to make tea ;)
Many Germans probably think the same about beer.
Katherine
If I knew what your kitten was thinking in the first picture I’d probably be afraid by now ;)
TLC
The argument presented by the original author is wonderfully ridiculous (and smells of “I can’t get no pussy so you must get no pussy”).
So, men want heterosexual intercourse because they value female sexuality (fascinating idea). And if the just stopped doing it and instead fucked themselves, making themselves the gatekeeper he deems women to be, everything would be reversed and women would be left powerless.
I correct myself. The actual argument is: “I can’t get no pussy so you can’t have no dick”
guest
Yes, and as in all families, there are horribly awefull members nobody can stand and everybody wishes to stay away from family conventions.
From my readings on fat-positivity…
This is insane. Anyone with a cursory knowledge of how the human body works knows that there is no way you can make dietary recommendations that specific for one person, let alone a huge subset of humanity.
That “Czechoslovak” accent wasn’t even a parody. I am totally utterly offended by that, owning both British and Czech-English accents.
And also the “rape noises” at the start are really disgusting.
Sherman can do the Wilhelm?
—
CC
(If this is still an issue) You’re probably still logged in under the previous e-mail address, which it no longer recognizes as valid. Try logging out or deleting saved passwords or something.
—
Blockqutoe sounds like a birth defect (in addition to not being recognized as a tag).
Well, the Census Bureau’s poverty report is out and the findings are very depressing:
But hey, it can’t be all that bad. A lot of those poors own a microwave!
Since I have been out of the loop (not that I was ever in it), what brought about the switch of Pharyn-julep to FtB? Better bandwidth? More readers? Free pie? I suppose they couldn’t do any worse than the old site did with the incongruent ads showing up.
Funny enough, there’s at least a correlation between drinking full-fat milk and a lower BMI in children
And yes, those recommendations are insane. And they will not create adults who have the skills to control their body weight and their food habits.
McCthulhu, SciBlogs was acquired by NatGeo, and made some rules as to “appropriate” content. Probably some other things, too.
Plus at last count, PZ had 80% of his previous readership here as well as 50% there, which means he’s earning an extra 30% worth of pennies in ad impressions.
Kind of.
Just to respond to you, crowepps, because my earlier post seems glib.
I certainly didn’t mean to imply that bigotry had magically vanished, but wanted to comment on my own inability to access the cultural mindset that I inhabited as a child. The level and types of very open bigotry I saw as a child and young adult certainly have diminished. The very obvious racism, sexism, and homophobia flaunted and vaunted on television during the ’80s is a good example which would never be tolerated now.
I am baffled now by the fact that such things were so normal and seemed so natural, also that they seemed to be so important and permanent. The world didn’t end and no natural order was toppled by such things becoming unacceptable. I am now surprised in retrospect by how much stupid, ignorant, naked fear and hatred was permitted and encouraged. The culture around me and me within it have changed to the point that I simply cannot understand why those changes took so long, why the old attitudes were convincing to me, if not because I believed and espoused them, but because I thought they were normal and nearly immutable.
Even as I better understand the mechanisms underlying privilege, for instance, I find myself less and less able to understand why such a situation is tolerated by well-meaning and good people. I don’t understand why bright and kind people allow themselves to be so ignorant to the plight of others. I don’t understand how it is that intelligent, social beings can selectively suspend empathy.
I know that bigotry still exists, culturally, societally, and systematically. That is why I closed with the wish that I could see similar, or greater, strides over the next thirty years to further tackle bigotry.
Holy moly! You mean PZ does IMPRESSIONS TOO??? That guy is just freakin’ amazing!!!!!!1!!1!1!ONE!!1EXCLAMATIONMARK
(I’m hoping that if free pie was part of the deal that he shares with fawning sycophants)
I have as most of you know a problem with going to the US, but if we’re going to have one big fucking awesome lovefest at this Reason Rally, I might reconsider…What are people’s plans here ?
Bill #152, sugar (sucrose) has a fairly high solubility at room temperature, but the rate of dissolution is slow due to the large crystal size. Slow enough, that if you want sweet tea, add the sugar to the warm/hot tea before cooling. Otherwise, you would need continuous agitation, say from a magnetic stirrer, to approach the saturation point.
Holy shit, Shatner doing Rocket Man is awesome!
lipwig @40 (et. al.)
My deepest condolences for your loss. Thank you for the Pythonesque denouement. If I can’t be a fossil, I’d take inadvertently cracking up my friends and family at my own funeral any day .
I just found out my dad most likely has lung cancer (never a smoker). He survived a heart attack ten years ago, and had a couple inches of his colon removed a few years back. He bounced back from those pretty well, so I have hopes, but it seems that the best bet will be partial lung removal.
I’m not sure how to deal with most of this. Main thing is, my parents are the only reason I don’t completely despise christians. They are the ‘show your faith through good works, pray in private’ type of people. Lutherans in Mormon country, they have a tight-knit (although most are quilters) community. They help those in need, don’t make a big deal of it, don’t preach at the people they help. I’m not sure how to be supportive without accidentally sticking my foot in my mouth or being a hypocrite. My dad is a retired scientist and teacher, and encouraged me to ask questions, but I never asked him if he actually believed in the Sunday shit. The only thing I remember him saying was that ‘science says how, god says who’. Whether he actually believes that or not, I’m not sure. I don’t want to bring it up now.
Sorry for the ramble. I have a lot of thinking to do.
drewl, don’t be sorry. You’re among friends.
(You have a bunch to deal with, and you have my sympathy)
Shows you can’t just generalise; even religious people can be worthy of respect. Good for them.
PS re:
I suggest you just be honest; I’m sure they already know you love them for who they are and you respect them because of their character. Be there for them and support them for who they are, not for what they believe.
(Religion doesn’t come into it)
drewl
If it is of any help, my aunt was diagnosed with lung cancer 2 years ago and she is still out and about, although it ruined part of the rest of her body.
I agree with John Morales. Just be honest, just be there for them. They probably wouldn’t appreciate you mentioning god since they know you wouldn’t mean it.
But they know you love them.
SQB:
Duh. Anything Shatner does is automatically awesome. Even when he does something badly, it’s awesomely bad.
My love life is like a Rush song…
Crossposted for common amusement:
Did you know that slignot is so evil to dismiss points made by gorillas, orang utans, chimps and bonobos (and some humans):
By tushcloots:
I’m sure the casus is wrong, too.
“Guest” is gone. He’s using a fake email account to make his aspersions against Richard Dawkins so I can’t quite ban him, so expect him to reappear…and get deleted again.
Yet another argument for turning on the registration requirement…
Thank, PZ, for cleaning the place up! =^_^=
Meatspace stuff has been getting in the way of online stuff so I’m afraid I’m not attempting to catch up with TET.
Anyone having a hard time
Great Big Granny-Hug and I hope you get through it OK.
Katherine Lorraine,
Love the kitty pics! =^_^=
I’m confused as to how my left hand got into the second photo, though… ~:-|
Giliell,
After reading that, I’ve been trying to ‘go out of my way to make a judgmental posture and ad hominid’ but all I got was a bad back and an annoyed ape.
Caine,
I’m sooo glad there’s no cancer! =^_^=
Sorry if I’ve missed anything/anyone important. Please fail to direct me to the spanking couch as punishment.
This week I had a follow-up with my breast surgeon. She told me that the veeeeery slow growing (but painful) lump in my left breast, that is easily palpable but consistently fails to show up on X-ray or ultrasound, is probably harmless glandular tissue or something else benign; but she wants me to get a fine needle biopsy done next week anyway.
Ah, can’t leave out Leonard Nimoy’s Ballad of Bilbo Baggins.
kristinc, #101:
There is a device that cold-brews your coffee overnight, resulting in a much less bitter cuppa.
Bill Dauphin, #144: “Honey” is redeemed solely by the Austin Lounge Lizards parody.
John Morales, #169: I am impervious to the badness of Shat singing “Rocketman,” because that song will always remind me of Passive-Aggressive Notes.
First Approximation, #185: In the discussion thread on the NYT, comment #5 is spewing right-wing talking points and “statistics” about how we’ve spent more money on the poor than we ever did on corporations. I wish I had the energy today to wade in…
Drewl, #194: I am sorry to hear about your father.
Also, no discussion of worst songs ever would be complete without a nod to Li’l Markie.
@Tigger:
Your left hand looks like my left hand? o.o
(Why yes, I do have slender pianist’s fingers, and yes, they are far more dainty than those of my boyfriend / father / any man whose hand I held my hand up against for curiosity’s sake.)
No, I have one more extraction of a half-tooth. Many years ago, I had a root canal done. I couldn’t afford to do the post and crown, so eventually the tooth outside the gum line disappeared. So in two weeks, that one gets yanked. Then I will go in for the fillings, many of which are for cavities which are under the old fillings.
Hey, is there some law of nature which says that every non-TET thread at Pharyngula has to contain at least one comment about the appropriateness or otherwise of the ads? Because that’s getting pretty old.
@Moggie:
You know, you’re right!
The ads here are really inappropriate.
(:D)
Tho’ you didn’t strictly say it was, let’s be very clear: a flag is not a book.
You can argue with a book, as a book often is an argument–or several–good or bad.
A flag, as a highly abstract symbol, is an incredibly flexible tool for demagoguery. It has no meaning of its own, explicitly represents no principle, no intention, beyond membership in and loyalty to a cause or tribe.
So as the demagogue knows, if he wishes to induce others to commit horrors on his behalf–or merely to be systematically miserable and marginalizing and inhuman to those it is implied fly a different one–it is wonderfully helpful to give them a flag to salute while they do so. The flag will have no comment, either way, and so they may stare at it and swear ‘I am a patriot’ while they gas, while they bludgeon, while they blast the designated enemy to bits of blood and bone. And every moral monster who made his career on division and the savvy selection of scapegoats knows if he wraps himself in it before he demands every merely just social program be scrapped in order to further favour his funding oligarchy–he knows he will be applauded wildly, wearing that flag. Likewise, every authoritarian slimeball who ever told you ‘this regressive monstrosity of a law that doth cut the legs out from under minority X is a matter of national security/how we enforce our traditional values’ has at least a dozen flags in his closet, ready to wear.
Burning a book carries overtones of the suppression of ideas. I’m generally uncomfortable with such acts, for this specific reason, I might add*.
And generally, therefore, burning a flag is quite another matter from burning most books. True, it may well mean ‘I wish to burn those who fly it’, as you recall above…**
However, it may also mean ‘I wish to burn this rag you manipulative sleazeballs attempted to wrap so tightly around my neck, the better to strangle my mind’.
In the latter context, I must salute you for burning it, again. Indeed, in my view, you cannot possibly burn enough of these rags. Disgusting things, such flags. Me, I wouldn’t wipe my ass with ’em.
(*With certain exceptions. A book they have sworn you must uphold as holy, and printed in massive runs of tens of millions, a book someone in authority has demanded you must place on the top shelf of your home and make a formal show of revering, much as you salute a flag, this book, I think, I will make an exception for, and I will not complain if you have the courage to burn it. As such a book is well enroute to becoming a flag anyway.)
(**And note that, in this case, there is generally another flag in the picture, flown by those engaged in said burning.)
Katherine,
Why, yes, your left hand is uncannily like mine. I inherited my pianist’s fingers from my paternal grandmother (a pianist who, sadly, I never met as TB took her several years before I was born) and passed them on to my eldest son who is a concert pianist. =^_^=
Brother Ogvorbis
I’m sorry to hear. I have an incredible amount of 3 appointments at the dentist’s next week, one of them with my daughter, which is totally unfair, because she’s such a good girl about brushing her teeth. Seems like she inherited the full “Fritz Schlosser” paket from my grandpa.
Moggie
I find it rather amusing that the fundies are paying so that we can have Pharyngula
@Tigger:
Sadly, the only things that I can do with my fingers is type really quickly and play Guitar Hero / Rock Band. I never learned how to play the piano.
They are (possibly/likely) buying their way into heaven.
“Honest, god, I done proselytized the shit out of them thar atheeists. I even paid to put adverts on that there piece of pure Evolutionist Ebil! But, god, you done hardened their hearts too much. They wouldn’t witness to the greater glory of you, so they are down in hell. But god? You got me to pal ’round with for all eternity, right?”
God pauses and looks at the little man before him. And he thinks to himself, ‘Holy shit, have I fucked this up. No way do I want to spend eternity with this intolerant little piece of chickenshit.’ But, knowing that intollerance, bigotry, and fear are the only tools available to keep the faithful in line, god just sighs and says, “Yup. You’n’me. For eternity.”
Me? I’m paying a fair price for 20 years of neglect.
:falls about laughing::
Thank you for that, Gilliel, it’s brilliant.
“Priests for Life” leader suspended for embezzlement.
What a night. I helped a friend of mine move some stuff, and in return he gave me a free tattoo. And it was his first time tattooing anyone but himself! What a deal, eh? ;) ;)
Seriously though, the tat turned out pretty good. He was painfully amateurish, but in the right way- he took forever and went over lines a bunch of times, as opposed to messing up the lines. Now to recuperate with some pot and TET browsing.
Boy, that old “P.Z. Myers’s sycophants” routine never gets old, does it? That one just keeps on popping up, I’ve noticed.
Well, I, for one, am not a sycophant*! I am, like all the other irregulars here, just one of PZed’s many sock-puppets.
* The first time I ever came across that word, in fourth or fifth grade (I think), my first thought was of an insane elephant**. And I still, some 35 years later, have that image.
** Which, come to think of it, describes modern conservatism in so very many ways. They suck up to authoritarians and are batshit crazy. And their symbol is an elephant.
Ok, so this is in no way academic. (fair warning)
But one of the old X-Men’s villains was a guy named Jason Wyngard, went by the name of Mastermind, and looked EXACTLY like this rape singing fellow.
ad hominids and insane elephants! good thread today :)
Same question here.
When I came into work this morning one of my 5 terabyte external drives was 1/2 way across the shelf and attempting to throw itself over the edge and into the abyss.
I corralled it with the others and it has since crept an inch towards the edge again. I think it is attempting death with dignity while it still has some control over its drive motor functions.
You know I’m surprised that the fact that the Pope has been accused of Crimes Against Humanity Joe My God
Well, what did you expect? You put a terabyte of photos of Sarah Palin on there, along with the Bachmann pictures. Suicide seemed a logical option with that in the drive’s memory.
I like metal, but this song is one of the worst I’ve ever heard. The music’s not to bad, but the lyrics — yuck! Sarah Silverman’s part at the end of that video is funny, though (“death to all butt metal”).
Aw dammit, I saw one “guest” post last night and now I have to miss the rest.
Also, no one is allowed to talk about new tattoos unless they are willing to divulge some details about them.
After being on the run from law enforcement for about twenty years, one woman’s Moment of Mormon Madness has resulted in being fined $134,000 for providing “travel money” to her siblings so that they could murder defectors from her polygamist sect. A fine? What about the jail time?
Blood atonement and murder by shotgun was incorporated into the plot of an episode of HBO’s “Big Love” series. At the time, some viewers accused the writers of going too far, of being unrealistic.
LeBaron was part of a polygamist colony that was an offshoot of the mormon church.
Her brother, William Heber LeBaron is in federal prison. He tells his story, which is fascinating, here: http://www.mazeministry.com/mormonism/testimonies/heberlebarontestimony.htm
Excerpts:
William LeBaron discovered the truth about mormonism, only to fall prey to a more mainstream version of Christianity. Still, it’s an improvement over shotgunning rival polygamists.
@ Josh
I am going to squee offline this time so that I don’t bring down teh thread again.
Really cool. I have sent all the details you need for starting a new Oriental Cult of Phoenicia to your email.
Trust I am not teaching my grandmother to suck eggs with this link: http://www.breadtopia.com/drying-sourdough-starter-for-long-term-storage/
I am lighting up the Lynna signal. There is a mormon mommy blogger by the name of Jenny Hatch in the Bachmann anti-vaxxer thread.
drewl, sorry to hear about your father’s medical difficulties. We’re awfully good listeners/readers; don’t hesitate to shop for shoulders here.
–
I read that as “Utah polygamist Evil LeBaron”.
–
I dunno. The convertible LeBaron was, for the time, a pretty cool car.
Ogvorbis – As a kid, I pictured a green elephant. And to this day, when someone is being a suck-up, I see them as a green elephant.
I need to work less. I can’t keep up on TET at all lately.
So you saw it in terms of a ‘sick-o-elepant’? Weird. Especially considering your ‘nym. I remember it as ‘psycho-elephant’.
There are other words which, in my youth, conjured up weird images. Floodplain, for instance, put me in mind of a really wet airplane. Jumbo jet had me looking for the elephant ears. I’m sure there were others, but I’ll have to think on it to remember them.
Marie the Bookwyrm:
That sounds right – um, or correct. It’ll never be “right”. My local library happens to have the DB book; I have requested it. I will have popcorn and nightmares. :)
John Morales:
*waves white flag* I give! *crawls under bed with comfort chocolate*
Bad Cipher. No more Menz™, even if the one stinking up Butterflies and Wheels is super-juicy and fractally wrong. I have to do housing and financial aid today. I do not have time for a bad attack of SIWOTI, and I do not have energy to dedicate to ludicrous assholes who like upholding the status quo.
@Tigger, I shudder in sympathy. (Needles and I aren’t friends in the best of circumstances, but…) I’ve so far managed to avoid having anything biopsied despite having, as my doctor described them, “lumpy, bumpy breasts.” I’m pretty sure this is the reason my mom had a few biopsies as a teenager as well.
Janine, I posted in the Bachmann/vaccine thread, but I fear Jenny Hatch is a lost brain, one of those we cannot fix. She’s pretty far gone, and she’s deploying all of her don’t-think-critically skills, skills which are pumped to the max by mormonism.
I advised her to lurk at Pharyngula until she learns how to think. Not holding out any hope.
Feeling sorry for her children.
He he, pope isn’t exactly going to be welcomed with open arms in his home country.
Link to the article Pope visits Germany – but protestors are waiting
Yay for the mayor not mincing his words. He is also gay and living with a partner, and we don’t have to wonder much what pope thinks about that.
Ratzy is also scheduled to hold a speech before the Bundestag. Some MP’s are not happy about it, link
Wow, kudos to the mayor!
I have what seems to be a mild/early case of carpal tunnel syndrome. I’ve just had a few unsatisfactory sessions with an occupational therapist. Not everything she suggested made things worse, but a lot did, and little if any of it helped. At the last session it felt as though she was trying to pressure me into reducing stress in my life, and not listening as I explained that I’d already done a bunch of that. Right. So, what I have now is one possibly useful stretch, and an ergonomic keyboard I need to return (it’s on the list of things that made matters worse, and being an object rather than activity, is returnable).
I’m looking for suggestions on how to choose a good OT. I picked this one off my insurance company’s website because (a) her office is near where I work, and (b) she specializes in hand and arm problems. Clearly, this was not good enough.
Alternatively, any recommendations in Manhattan, the northwest Bronx, or maybe downtown Brooklyn, Astoria, or Long Island City would be useful.
Vicki, I have carpal tunnel, and the best thing I ever did for it was to get a pair of wrist braces. I wore them pretty much 24/7 for about a year, then was able to drop back to just sleeping in them.
–
when I was 10, I misread pubic hair as public hair (in Gerald Durrel’s My Family and Other Animals) and, needless to say, the hilarity that ensued when I chose to discuss this outside my head, was mmmm.. hilarious.
I missed cat barf gravy and all the truly horrible songs. I guess sometimes being elsewhere is a blessing.
___
Err, scratch that. Good times were missed, that much is clear.
___
Drewl,
Cancer is a tough slog for everyone involved. Take care of yourself.
___
Tigger,
Oh, I hope that is just protocol and the doctor has your diagnosis correct. Let us know.
___
As near as I can figure, Steel Panther is a parody band.
As a youngster, I devoured maps. But I could never figure out just where Orientare was. As in, “We three kings of Orientare, Bearing . . . ”
Of course, Wife can top that one. She wondered why the shepherds were washing their socks by night.
@lipwig, I’m reminded of a story of a friend of the family who during college was so tongue tied and nervous during a public presentation that inadvertent hilarity followed.
She was speaking about the Heimlich Maneuver, but through some sort of bizarre mangling twice replaced this with “hymen remover.”
Good evening
I’m having pancakes right now but I need them. My mum put on another “episode”.
Wonderful example of passive-agressive behaviour?
“I don’t care about the money, I never cared that your grandparents gave each of you (my sister and I) a new car and we got only a used one and didn’t even ever mention it”.
Even my father is fed up with her.
Fuck you, mum
Popal visit
I Freiburg considerable parts of the town-council have joined a protest against Ratzi being allowed to sign the golden book of the city.
But you’ve got to love those bigots’ actual behaviour when confronted with homosexuals in power (same goes for all the homophobic muslim rulers that will welcome our minister od foreign affairs)
Didn’t even ever, eh? Obliviousness is oblivious.
I am so sad to hear about the guilt trips your mother keeps pulling out, she is not healthy, please don’t take it to reflect on yourself.
@Giliell
I know where your at – I often have FUCK YOU MUM moments and then feal all creepy and guilty. Truth is, when I look it at it objectivly, she should have tried harder to be loving person. My reactions to her now are based solely on how she treated us as kids. What goes around, comes around.
Sorry Mum.. I do love you nonetheless.
I hear Jon Voight owned one.
Slignot:
I had my nose biopsied last year, specifically a funny growth on the end of it. Whee!
It was benign, and merely resulted in (another) scar on my nose and a $900 bill that I had to put on a credit card. Oh, and a new scar on my knee from the bike crash I had on the way there. The dermatologist was kind enough to debride that for free.
Funny thing about me and needles: I don’t mind being stuck myself; hell, I tend to watch the whole process pretty closely. Watching other people get stuck, even on TV, makes me turn away. When watching House I run at the mere mention of the words “lumbar puncture.”
I know I could ask the Pfft! of All Knowledge and get a coherent answer, but I’m more curious as to how the Threadizens would describe him. Who is Jon Voight?
Is’nt he Angelina Jolie’s dad or no wait… I think it’s Liv Tyler’s dad.. no no no it’s… somebodies dad…
Jon Voight,
Midnight Cowboy, Mission Impossible, Angelina Jolie’s father, so forth. Long career, often good, often forgettable.
Wait. Wasn’t he in Deliverance?
Cicely–
I’m sleeping with a wrist brace (the tingling/numbness is only in the left hand, so I’m just bracing that one), but when that plus anti-inflammatories didn’t fix the problem quickly the doctor suggested OT. It may just be that she’s impatient for a solution (which I sympathize with, but “avoid surgery” is significantly higher on my priority list than getting things fixed fast).
Gilliel–
Pancakes need no excuse: they’re tasty and nourishing (flour, eggs, milk, and a bit of maple syrup on top, what’s not to like?). I’m sorry you’re feeling the need for comfort food, though.
Yeah, that guy.
feralboy12:
That’s your head. Most people have one.
Threadians, who is your ultimate scary guy…? Mine is that scarred-faced guy in that movie, you know the one, the one where he entices a young…(fuck – what was her name) you know the one where he… shit can’t remember what he does, but it’s something horrible…
*nomnomnom*
*last of the pancakes vanishes*
Thank you. No, she’s not succeeding in guilt-tripping anymore (mostly I stopped falling for that years ago. It’s not like that hadn’t been part of her character for a long time, it has only become much worse recently), but she makes me angry and she drains my energy
lipwig
Oh, I do love her, and I know she’s sick. But I don’t feel guilty anymore (mostly). I’ve done what I could, there’s no help I can give her, so I have to wait until she makes a move. But if she messes up my grandma, I might not be able to forgive her. I fear that this might be the end of our family. I fear that if this goes on, she will see her eldest daughter for the last time at our gran’s funeral.
My ultimate scary guy? Like Fred Phelps scary?
Or, if movies are supposed to limit my scope, I really like Zorg.
“First Planet Orbiting Two Stars Discovered by the NASA Kepler Spacecraft” http://scienceblogs.com/SETI/2011/09/first_planet_orbiting_two_star.php
Actually, a gravity microlensing event a decade ago found a similar system, but this is the first time Kepler has found such a system.
@feralboy12, I’ve had my share of mole/wart/whatever biopsies (yay for pale skin and family skin cancer) but they’ve all been fine. Weirdly, I was better with the razor blade and cauterizing equipment when they cut off the pea-sized ball vein outgrowth thingy than when they numbed the area first.
Needles have always caused some panic, but poor medical handling when I was young escalated everything up to full on phobias, whether it’s me, someone nearby, on screen, being near the blood drive, etc.
One of the three nightmares I ‘enjoy’ involves the scariest guy I have ever encountered (film, book, meatspace, dreamspace). I am at the WTC site, after the attack. It is a pile of rubble with grey smoke and dust billowing out of it. I can smell the burned metal, burned plastic, and decomposition. The smoke and dust gets thicker and the workers on the pile begin moving faster and getting smaller. Then the workers start fighting. Not one side against another, but just knots of hand-to-hand combat, getting faster and more frenetic. Then I see a large man, obscenely large, a hundred feet high, materializing out of the smoke. He is non-descript — his face is a combination of every person I have ever known or seen, he is everyman. And he has a grin on his face that terrifies me. As he drifts towards me, the fighting on the pile ends and all the workers look at the giant. The fighting stops in a wave moving concentrically from him. And then, as he gets closer to me, his grin turns to a smile and I wake up, soaked in sweat, terrified, panting, and I know I will not sleep again that night. I know that’s not what you were aiming at, but that is the most terrifying guy I have ever imagined.
Mr.’s evil twin. A nightmare I’ve been having. He looks like my husband but is really evil and violent. So it’s this “the safest situation you can possibly imagine turning into the worst scenario you can possibly imagine”.
For fictional characters?
Hard to tell. They are mostly plain evil, so evil you can practically smell it.
Brother Ogvorbis wrote:
In addition to the things various threadizens have mentioned about Jon Voight, he was once featured in an episode of (the ’90s US TV show) ‘Seinfeld’ in which a car salesman convinced a character to buy a used LeBaron, because Jon Voight once owned it.
[/obscure reference]
Lipwig, I forgot to tell you – I’m sorry for your recent loss. *hugs*
My scariest character… it’s is like a seven-way tie. Heavily from Joss Whedon series.
I’ve used a French press to do that. If I’m stuck with cheap coffee, I still do it, as it’s the only way to render it drinkable. But the coffee I usually keep on hand (sublimely fresh from the tiny indie roastery down the street) is so smooth that cold brewing it makes it … too smooth. Weird but true.
Wow, I just watched a video about a woman who makes absolutely realistic looking animal heads out of construction foam and felt. And I mean realistic like in OMG call the WWF those murderers!
I’m always amazed by what people are capable off in the positive sense
It would appear that Denmark now has its first female PM ever.
Not my favourite person in the whole world, but neither was the other guy.
The far Left had a remarkable boost. This is not a nice thing to say, but the last time they did so they also had a very nice-looking young lady as their spokesperson. When they had the dumpy, moustachioed, middleaged guy who was obviously a Communist relic from the 70es speaking for them, they lost representation …
My sister-in-law just had her second baby – I have a second nephew. His name is Jonah – to go with the nautical Biblical theme, yes they’re fundies, yes I still love them all the same.
Dr Who – Blink is on BBCA right now. It is one of the horror episodes and the premise is scary, but it is as impossible not to blink as it is not to breathe. Sure, you can suppress it for awhile, but you’re going to do it.
One of the things I like about the newer episodes is the higher production values.
+++++++++++++++++++
Waffler, I got your reference, I chuckled quietly to meself.
+++++++++++++++++++
Bro Ogvorbis, that nightmare is truly horrifying, I’m so happy/lucky I haven’t had a nightmare for 25+ years.
I have unpleasant dreams, had one this morning, but nothing rising to the level of a nightmare that makes you turn on the lights and continue to be so scared even though you know it was just a bad dream.
Conga rats Katherine Lorraine!
++++++++++++++
Sili, is that kinda like the US electing the first person of color as the president?
Katherine
Congratulations!
Hey, my kids are called Ruth and Lydia, nothing against good old biblical names.
Well, not actually called, those are their middle names.
And those are also the names of their great-grandma and great-great-grandma.
*yawn* Bed is calling
Congratulations, Katherine!
Fucking college libertarians, how do they work?
Excuse me thread but…. Fuck, fuck, FUCK!
Just been trying to find some help and support from The Addiction Recovery Guide http://www.addictionrecoveryguide.org/ and all I get is “hand it over to God”, “trust your higher power”…. bollocks! *scream*… sorry for the vent but what’s a secular addict to do?
That’s a good questions and I’ve heard it before. I’ve never found a good answer to it. The only answer I’ve seen is to just deal with the religious bullshit in most recovery programs.
Regarding the secular addictions programs: I’ve asked some about that, and they usually tell me “Well, the higher power can be anything, including ‘nature’ or ‘the earth’.” OK I guess, but it doesn’t exactly satisfy.
I also comment on Raw Story. My ‘Likes’ rating from others to my comment ratio has gone down. I think it’s because I’m getting sick of anti-vaxxers & liberturds (specifically Ron Paul advocates) that I’m no longer willing to be polite.
Horrors.
@ starstuff91 #277
yeah I’ve been dealing with the bullshit 12 steps on and off for 25 years. Sure going along, putting yourself in a safe place is important, and at times helps. But I want to meet people who are addicts like me (to help and support each other), but the addicts i meet at AA meetings and elsewhere are usually not like me. They are fucking god botherers… handing their lives and wills over to their higher powers… I can’t stand it.
I’ve been to a few meetings recently and at every one someone has recounted a story about how they prayed and then something good happened and they recite the mantra (AA has a lot of those) “I don’t belive in coincidences”. Well how can I begin to connect with anyone who doesn’t believe in coincidences? I can’t.
@ grumps
Maybe you can stick with the program you’re in now but also join an atheist or secular group. You could even start a secular group for addicts in your area. It wouldn’t have to be anything really organized, but rather just something where you could get together with people like you and just talk about it (and maybe talk about how annoying the other recovery programs are).
@ The Lone Coyote # 278
Well exactly… the higher power (they say) can even be the “power of the fellowship (they love that word)”. But when you actually get in there and hear what they say it ain’t so. They recite St Francis’ prayer, the Serenity prayer, etc, and just because they say “using the word god as you understand it” doesn’t make it OK.
Grumps, I feel for you. I know what 12 Step programs say about a higher power, as TLC attests, but it sure feels different when you are in there and they make you hold hands and recite the Lord’s Prayer.
It makes me go into the “fuck you, I got myself into this mess, I’ll take responsibility to get myself out” mode. I can use help, but not from ‘giving myself to a higher power’.
There are a lot of people that that approach does not help. There are alternatives, just usually not in small communities.
It’s funny about AA, first they expect you to worship a higher authority, and then one of the 12 steps is to apologize for what you have done.
I take responsibility for both.
++++++++++++
starstuff91 says:
15 September 2011 at 5:15 pm
“Fucking college libertarians, how do they work?”
They don’t.
This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.
@starstuff91
Yes. I’ve been meaning to get more involved with my local humanist group for a while primarily to try to organise a local secular recovery group but being a recurrently lapsing recovering alcoholic I haven’t actually done it yet (surprise, surprise)
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/38/dragontat.jpg/
New tat, for anyone who wants to see. It was hard as HELL to photograph with my webcam.
BTW for “recurrently lapsing recovering alcoholic” read “alcoholic” :-/
I found a part time job that’s perfect and I really want it. The only problem is that it’s 10 miles outside of town and I don’t have a car. This really sucks.
That made me laugh. I’m just annoyed with college libertarians and the Cult of Ron Paul. There were a bunch of new “Ron Paul 2012” chalkings on the sidewalks on campus today. So I spend 30 minutes of my free time on campus researching crazy Ron Paul positions. I want to wright some of them next to the Ron Paul supporters’ chalkings.
BTW (again (god I love parentheses)) Anyone see the final episode of Torchwood: Miracle Day? Whatcha think?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b014k3fq/Torchwood_Miracle_Day_Episode_10/
Okay, enough overly personal posting for today. Maybe even for tomorrow; it was a stressful day in general. I’m headed to the liquor store.
Starstuff,
It’s a short hike by bike. You can often get them at garage sales for ten or twenty dollars.
I’m pretty sure that’s a terrible idea. I’d have to be there at dawn and I’d be leaving at dusk. I’d really like to avoid a 10+ mile bike ride or walk by my self in the dark.
Starstuff,
I don’t know what city you live in, but I have ridden to get to and from work over greater and lesser distances during rain, sun, dark, and what have you in a variety of urban, sub-urban and rural settings over the past twenty years. It’s not a terrible idea, and it can be done for cheap. If you don’t like riding, no problem, I can understand that.
It was so-so but, in the interest of not giving too much away for those who haven’t seen it, I’ll just say that I couldn’t help but recall this quote from tvtropes article Strawman Has A Point:
“You can’t have heroes and villains when the wrong side is making the best sense.”
— Roger Ebert reviewing I Am Sam
@ Dhorvath
Crime rates in my city are pretty high, but even if they weren’t as high I still wouldn’t walk/ride by myself at dark.
Starstuff.
I sympathise. I don’t have a car at the moment either. Luckily I am served by excellent public transport which gets me to work in 40 mins door to door (20 mins walk, 10 mins on the tube then 10 mins walk). I also like to cycle.. and that gets me to work in about 20 minutes (it’s 4 miles). 10 miles by bike is at most 50 minutes.
Do you live in a scary place? Why is a 10 mile bike ride so worrying? Here it’s lovely.
You know, sometimes missing one comment in TET makes others… uh… Well, let’s just say context is important.
Having missed Lone Coyote’s comment about the new tat (which looks pretty damned cool, btw), I thought Rey was hungover and looking for an explanation for what he saw in the shower this morning.
Starstuff,
I see. Sorry, I get to be pretty oblivious about things like that.
I missed that too starstuff, sorry.
Like I said, crime rates here are pretty high. Especially muggings and sexual assault. But unless I lived in a utopia, as a rather small female, I wouldn’t feel comfortable walking around at dark by myself. I get emails every month from my university about students getting mugged or sexually assaulted, and that’s just on campus.
@ Dhorvath and grumps
It’s ok.
That’s such a different world from mine starstuff. Sorry I made assumptions based on my little view of the world. Shame you can’t take that job.
To bed now for me.. goodnight.
@ grumps
It’s ok. We all do that from time to time. I’m going to try to figure out how I can take the job.
Goodnight.
@The Sailor: I was just watching Doctor Who – Blink on BBCA, too. Shows how slow-reading I am these days; but I’m glad someone else was watching it.
@ gramps etc, re “higher power”… I dunno from Anon groups, but in counseling they may suggest talking to one’s younger self, or the person you wish to be; or an imaginary friend or presence evoked for the purpose. I think it’s a technique to evoke feelings of support, like a mantra serves to focus concentration, instead of an actual belief. (Or like imagining a safe place evokes feelings of safety.) Hope that’s of some use…
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/09/03/falling-man-of-911-cries-out-for-truth-and-justice/
Truther quoting Carl Sagan… http://tinypic.com/r/v3de8k/7
… damn.
I’ve been in airplane bathrooms more spacious than that stall.
I’ve been in broom closets more spacious than that stall.
It must have been designed for a 100-pound person. And how many 100-pound engineers do you know?
Lock the bathroom door, then knock down all the stall walls. Now you have one very large bathroom all to yourself.
Four.
…and their name is Stan.
@ chigau
I like to imagine that you just called all the engineers you know and asked them how much they weigh.
Hi there pharynguloids! I have a small question relating to a claim somebody made while having a chat with me. Here goes:
Would taking a psychology class (and I’m pretty sure that’s what he meant, just a class) actually get one acquainted with…neurology?
Yes, neurology. Anybody know by what measure that could be true?
Seems silly, I know.
Love the jungle boogie in the background and the baaaad “chinese” accents.
I wonder if it was recorded in the Congo? Naw–couldn’t have been–he left out one type of rape. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/17/the-rape-of-men
To a very limited extent. I took AP Psychology in high school (5 on the exam, thank you very much), and we learned the very basics about how neurons work and about the parts of the brain.
starstuff91
Just the ones who are smaller than me.
Thanks starstuff..”to a very limited extent” is kinda what I imagined.
I hate looking for housing. Beyond the fact that housing costs money and the fact that I have to meet a bunch of strangers, there’s the fact that even if I find a place that’s okay for me, I’m not at all guaranteed to get it, and I have no idea how long it will take to find out if I’m approved.
I’ve been trying to figure this out all day. I have other important stuff to do, but I’m completely mentally drained, and it hasn’t even gotten to the hard part yet.
Fuck.
Congratulations!
You’re allowed. :)
–
grumps, maybe there’s a local Secular Humanists group or a Unitarian church near you? If so, perhaps there are others you could contact through them who are in the same boat, and can form your own support group?
–
The Infinite Ouroboros? Do you plan to color it, or leave it as is?
–
:offers hugs to CC: nothing’s ever simple and willpower deficits suck.
ot: and now Blade Runner is on. Doctor Who it ain’t, but still.
well,…?
‘Neurology’, strictly speaking, is a medical</i? specialty; disorders of the nervous system at the tissue and cellular levels, mostly.
If what is meant is 'neurophysiology' (i.e. the study of mechanisms of how neurons, neural tissues, and nervous systems work), then, possibly: many introductory psychology courses include units on 'biopsychology', used as a synonym for 'neurophysiology'.
damn it; borked the tag.
Hope it’s not metasticistic…
(test?)
Cool, I have finally figured out the whole registration thing. Plus I have learned to spin cotton and had a productive day of administrative stuff. But really, I just wanted to say that I haz a gravatar.
Except, phooey, that is not supposed to be it. Will work on it tomorrow.
What happened to that thing where I clicked a gravatar and something happened?
I don’t know. I noticed that it was gone earlier today for me too.
What causes painful skin? Some times my skin just hurts badly, as if a large chunk of it has been sunburned.
I used to think this correlated to infection, because frequently I’d be hurting a lot and then shortly after I’d be sick with strep or something like that.
But right now, the skin all along my thigh hurts badly when touched at all (even by my folded or crossed leg) and it’s annoying. I don’t want to go to a doctor with something so stupid and vague. They’ll think I’m a junkie or neurotic or something. Well, I am neurotic but not so neurotic to bother about sore skin.
All I know is that it isn’t shingles (I’ve had shingles before and it’s not that painful to me… I though a bee had stung me or something then I was like HOLY SHIT I HAVE HERPES because the shingles erupted on my thigh rather than my torso which I never knew was a possibility).
Anyway, my skin hurts so much that I can feel it despite having drunk quite a bit.
Hmmm… I read somewhere that pain can actually happen *after* a bout of shingles I guess maybe from nerve damage? Maybe that’s it (for my leg, wouldn’t account for the times my scalp or some other part has randomly felt like it’s been half-boiled).
Meh… screw it.
How the hell is a person supposed to know if the pain they feel is justified or not :/
Didn’t really like the whole thing, it felt too drawn out. Would have preferred a season of five to ten 1-2 ep stories.
Dunno how that fits, the whole thing was about the import role death plays in life. Or did you mean Oswald?
*tap tap* hello? I just posted a reply and it totally disappeared. Maybe because it has chemical names in it?
Trying again with some breakup tags – a topical anaesthetic spray may help Algernon. There’s a non-prescription one in Australia. It is named “Ego SOOV”, “Burn Spray” and contains lignocaine. Ask a pharmacist for a US equivalent.
Hi Alethea!
How is the smoke at the moment? Number 4 Son phoned me from the bus to say it looked as if it were drifting southwards. He sounded quite impressed by the vision of huge, billowing blackness.
Hi Tigger. It seems that the spam-eater doesn’t like the bike parts of my post. Drugs are OK but a Honda CB1100 test ride isn’t?
No issues with smoke for me. We did have exciting kaboom noises in the middle of the night, and the misspelled emergency services text.
Cicely: I kinda like it just as a line drawing. If I do color it though, I’m thinking of ‘various shades of copper’ as a color theme- think Smyrgol from “Flight of Dragons”, if anyone remembers that one. And yes, infinite ouroboros: I know it’s pretty obvious and not at all an obscure reference, but I’m pleased as hell that someone instantly recognized it anyways!
CC: my only experience with roommates is with that former friend of mine I always talk about, and needless to say it wasn’t really a good one. What kind of housing are you looking for?
Trying again – and adding some spam-eater-cheater empty italic tags because the spam-eater hates me. This is a review, with a nice picture, of the bike I test rode this morning. It features a very cute retro design, and it’s a nice smooth ride. But I’m not 100% sold. The petrol tank is a bit small, and you get a fair amount of wind-buffetting at a decorous highway 100kph.
You’ll have to c&p the link.
http://smh.drive.com.au/bike-reviews/honda-cb1100-review-20100609-xw2w.html
Hopefully a studio apartment, alone. (The smaller the apartment, the better I’ll be able to take care of it, is my theory. But I need a kitchen. Non-negotiable.) I don’t do so well with… well, people, but especially roommates. Even aside from the social anxiety, I’m told I’m very difficult to live with.
Good morning
grumps
I’m sorry to hear that there’s still no progress in search for a secular group.
I don’t know, but would a regular therapist be an alternative?
TLC
Like the tatoo. I love dragons
Algernon
Good luck with the skin. I hope it gets better quickly.
*gnarf*
I wished my cycle would stop varying somewhere between 24 and 32 days. It’s driving me nuts. Never ever had this. Not as a young girl, not after I stopped taking the pill, not after the miscarriage, not after kid # 1. Kid #2 must have broken something.
I should use Twitter more often (I’m there under the old nym), maybe I’d find more interesting tweets like this one from Russell Blackford last night :
(how does one link to tweets ?)
Alethea,
Lovely bike. =^_^=
WRT wind, I have always been a fan of screens; since my first bike in 1976 to my last bike (photo taken four years ago) I have preferred to attach one whenever possible.
Of course, if I were still able to ride I would go for a Honda 1800 GoldWing. Easiest bike to ride that I ever sat on. I took one for an hour’s test ride through the mountains in Scotland and never wanted to return it. Sadly, finances didn’t permit…
Rorschach, click on the time below the tweet.
“Egregious” really. For fuck’s sake. Yeah, so everloving feminist you are.
Man, screw Blackford. I can’t believe he’s still going on like that.
Oh, lordy. Thank goodnes atheists are so supportive of feminism. Imagine how many more times they might demand a woman shut up for daring to suggest they aren’t the feminists they say they are.
And how about that joke that Bill Maher and Michael Moore thought was so clever – “I voted for a black guy but I got a white guy.” The implications are so racist – perceptions of hypermasculinized black violence were more important than the content of Obama’s words. Even now people insist that he simply can’t fight as people are demanding – he can’t be seen to get angry, it would be to scary because, you know, brown skin. And whatever.
It’s not okay. Progressive white guys, feel free to stop with the racist and sexist bullshit. Like, any day now. That would be fucking awesome, because then we wouldn’t all be standing here, wondering, do you really have my back or not? You say you’re feminist, but when I say, “Guys, don’t do this,” you freak the fuck out. That woman is egregious! Make her be quiet. She’s a faux feminist. Because she is so egregious. And he is a Big Feminist. Amazing. Just Amazing.
Nice tat, TLC (also got the reference, fwiw :) )
thanks OpposableThumbs and Giliell. I’ve always enjoyed older depictions of dragons, as opposed to the more elaborate modern style. Something charming about the older woodcuts and illustrations.
Hmm, how interesting. It appears some guy is telling women how to be real feminists?
I’m all for equality, but I tend to think women are just a tiny bit more qualified to comment on issues of feminism. A ‘progressive white guy’ like me would maybe be smart to just shut up and listen, but that’s just my uneducated opinion.
Adding to the list of blog posts I’m supposed to write someday when the world stops taking away all my writing energies: A heavily sarcastic open letter to Oppressed Menz™ explaining how, if they insist upon indulging their rampant persecution complexes and soiling their nappies, they can do that without being quite as obnoxiously stupid, using an extended discussion of how PHMT.
Congratulations!
Wouldn’t that make her a whale?
CC
Yep, I find Tommy over at B&W one of the most obnoxious brain-dead people I’ve ever encountered.
Really, I have never seen patriarchy denial at this level comparable with evolution denial or AGW denial. The other MRAssholes usually at least admit that something like patriarchy existed in history and that there are places in the world where women do have it bad, it’s only in the west that women have become all uppity.
*sigh*
My sis came for a coffee and officially confirmed that the day gran dies our family will cease to exist. Well, I should be glad, I had to turn 32 to come from a broken home….
bright notes:
I have an afternoon/evening “off” and have the girly girl luxury problem of being unsure what to wear.
Pirate Queen or Mother Nature?
@ David M et al
God-of-the-gaps is now really getting squeezed. He is running out of evolutionary gaps to hide away in. (Link: Dinofuzz’ Found in Canadian Amber.)
Why do the goddists even go down the anti-evolutionary road? They are in for such a drubbing.
Rorschach,
Via the twitter site.
@Giliell
Pirate Queen or Mother Nature
They are both goergous – did you make them yourself?
Ah, thanks John, I was at the time on my phone and using tweetdeck…
Giliell: Pirate queen. Definitely pirate queen.
Oh look, maybe I get to hang out with her : Romanian Youtube sensation set for Melbourne conference
Gen Y and youth-focused, huh. I’m surprised they sold me a ticket at all !
@ Algernon — American spray-on pain relief is Solarcaine spray for sunburns. I use Aspercreme for muscle pain and it works well (generic: Sports Pain Relief Rub/Arthritis Pain Relief Rub).
You could also try an anti-itch cream like Benadryl
Yay, it’s Friday(Wednesday)!
Algernon, if it is the same thigh and the same area, it might be post-herpetic neuralgia. Shingles can erupt in any dermatome of the body, anywhere from head to toe. It’s the Varicella zoster virus persisting in nerve ganglia that causes this, and shingles can re-erupt after a period of dormancy, as well as leave a chronic dysaesthesia or pain syndrome behind.
Theophantes@345: I’ve read the comments in both the feathers in amber story and the Australopithecus Sediba stories in places as diverse as Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper and YahooNews. Doesn’t matter where you go, the goddists ask the same old stupid questions, won’t bother to look at links, quote bible verses, etc. We’re acutely aware they’re being drubbed, but the most ardently and stridently clueless are so stuck in the arrogance of ignorance that they haven’t even the slightest inkling they’ve been drubbed.
“Why are there still monkeys?” Oh yeah, wow, you got me, Mr./Ms. Goddist with your AHA! GOTCHA! moment. It doesn’t matter what I say now, you’re too busy basking in the glow of your special smug satisfaction to bother looking at the reply that explained everything in great detail and used links with several journal citations.
This crap will be around a long, long time, at least until anti-intellectualism, anti-science, news-for-hire (FAUX ‘News’), big money megachurches, Texas schoolbooks, blogs as news, Discover Institute, Kirk Cameron, and a million other things conveniently die in a fire, all at the same time. It’s why I have become so bitter and cynical. These things are growing, not diminishing. I’m starting to feel like Hitchens, may as well just keep drinking until religious assholes destroy life on the planet because of some superstitious bullshit prophesy that wouldn’t have happened except they did everything in their power to divert events until they matched.
fwiw, Blackford actually explains himself a couple of tweets later, to Miranda Hale, saying that Watson promulgates an ideology in which men are demonized and women are infantilized.
I think clear-thinking people can agree that such a one-size-fits-all blanket ideology would indeed be rather egregious.
I think most would also disagree that that’s a reasonable extrapolation from anything Rebecca Watson might ever have said; certainly not from the original Elevator vid or its immediate aftermath.
No, Blackford is extrapolating himself into the Twilight Zone here, and I suppose the same is true for all of Watson’s absurdly ociferous critics.
They just don’t get it, on account of they don’t want it.
Good morning everyone. My battle against Snip has gotten even more annoying, as he is now content to try to wake me up at 1.30. 2.00 AM. 3.30. 4.30. 5.00 AM.
Annoying beast, I just wanted to sleep. I can’t shut him out of my bedroom since I’m in a studio, but I’m so completely exhausted.
Katherine, seems like a mighty struggle you’re engaged in.
(Who will prevail?)
PZ, I’d like to request that you increase the size of the recent posts section to include more than just 5 posts.
I know it’s a nitpick but I liked being able to see the last 10 or so posts and not having to go back pages to find a post I wanted to come back to.
thanks
So, I’m off to a good afternoon/night out with the girl-friends and associated family
See you
That seems likely. It is the same leg. How annoying.
Rev BDC, your request has already been pre-emptively addressed.
cf. #167.
That’ll be 250.-USD ! :D
I would love to offer a cure or relief, but once this is established, it’s very difficult to treat, and certainly creams won’t do the trick. Some people use Carbamazepine or Amitryptiline, as pain modifiers, I’m not convinced of their efficacy, based on my own experience. Worth a try if you’re desperate.
I want to apologize for my #263 (I think (this computer doesn’t show all three digits)). That was out of line and I really shouldn’t dump that shit on you. Again, sorry.
Come along to the Think Inc. conference this Sunday, Melbournians !
So this Canadian decides to get away from it all. He gets on a plane and 24 hours later he’s in Alice Springs, Australia. He’s sitting in a pub having a drink when an Aussie comes up to him and says: “Where are you from, stranger?”
The Canadian answers: “Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.”
The Aussie goes back to his table and one of his mates asks: “So where is the stranger from?”
“I dunno, he doesn’t speak English.”
I’ll get my coat.
Super-quick drive-by without reading:
On I-71 between Mansfield and Bellville Ohio, I saw an adopt a highway sign that was adopted by the “Mid-Ohio Atheists”. Go Ohio atheists!
@Katherine Lorraine: that sort of thing is why we make a policy of always adopting TWO kittens. So much less work than a single kitten. They can wake each other up, and you just have a mild sleep disturbance as you vaguely note kittens galumphing up and down the hallway, again, then go back to sleep.
Tigger, the bike I rode today had a low screen, but not really enough. Tomorrow I’m trying something completely different.
Hi thread, and Happy Weekend for all of you who go for that sort of nonsense!
Good news: I have started to learn how to delegate work, so I will be enjoying a relatively work-free weekend (apart from this one translation job, but that’s not really work, is it? I mean, if it was, one would expect to get paid properly, you know…)
More good news: the mushrooms are taking over the place! I have so much of them stewed that we just ordered a new, much bigger freezer to fit them all in; I have dozens of bags of dried boletes; I have rows and rows of jars of salted and pickled mushrooms on the shelves, and I haven’t finished yet – there are chantarelles still hiding somewhere in the neighborhood, and I’m gonna get them this weekend!
AND the sun is shining.
I hope y’all are fine, too.
I woke up this morning knowing I have chores and tasks to do, and lots and lots of work that needs doing. Yet I’ve just wasted the first hour-and-a-half of the day arguing with a libertarian on my blog, without having yet dressed, made coffee, or accomplished anything else even slightly productive. What is wrong with my brain?
Brother Ogvorbis, no apologies needed. Remember, on TET, nothing is ever off-topic and things are rarely out of line.
From your description, it sounds like a mixture of 9/11 and Dr. Manhattan (bringing TET back to its original topic!). I think I’ve seen PTSS mentioned before, is this related? (Only, of course, if you like to share — I can imagine you’d rather not).
Idiot gets to go unchallenged on radio. “Converts must die: imam to Swedish radio” http://www.thelocal.se/36166/20110915/
Walton,
sounds like my life. =^_^=
Although I did actually, eventually, get all the things done that I needed to do today; I just crammed it all into the last couple of hours before going to the theatre to watch ‘The Mousetrap’.
Always wanted to see it, ever since I was a little girl and read about it being the longest ever continuous run of a play. Loved it.
No, I’m not going to tell anyone whodunnit. =^_^=
@SQB:
No! Don’t do that! If you bring he thread back to its original state then everything will revert!
I’m going to go back to being a closeted, middlish-Pantheist with an unchecked gender identity program. Alan Clarke will show up to spout nonsense about Noah’s Ark being a real life event, and we’ll go through a few solid months of people arguing about incosequential crap!!
re: returning to the original state
If I wake up and find this has all been a dream….
Johann Hari finally admits journalistic misconduct and smearing opponents via Wiki vandalism. He has apologised, returned George Orwell prize, undertaken unpaid leave until 2012, and is to pay to attend a journalism course.
A reasonable display of contrition, I think.
Brother Og, I don’t think there was anything wrong with that post. *hugs*
“Honey, you won’t believe the dream I just had.” [/Newhart]
Bro Ogvorbis, I saw nothing particularly unusual or anything warranting an apology in that post.
Random note, but I assume it’s somewhat abnormal to never really have nightmares. I attribute it to the fact that I can control my dreams while I’m dreaming (so-called lucid dreaming; I know that it’s a dream and can change it) and so, any time a dream starts going bad, I simply change it so that it’s not.
… I wonder if this has any psychological effect on me when I’m awake. I mean, I’m not as “vulnerable” when I sleep; does that lead to me being more relaxed/low-key during normal hours? Never really thought about it.
Gilliel, I like ’em both, but the Pirate Queen outfit slightly edges the competition.
–
Yes. A bored kitteh will invent ways to amuse itself; a second kitteh provides a “butt” other than mommy/daddy.
–
Bro Og, you posted nothing to apologise for. This is Teh Thread: The Next Best Thing To Therapy That You’d Have To Pay For.
*hugs/booze/chocolate/bacon*
–
@ChasCPeterson
“…‘Neurology’, strictly speaking, is a medical</i? specialty; disorders of the nervous system at the tissue and cellular levels, mostly.
If what is meant is 'neurophysiology' (i.e. the study of mechanisms of how neurons, neural tissues, and nervous systems work), then, possibly: many introductory psychology courses include units on 'biopsychology', used as a synonym for 'neurophysiology'…"
Yes, I think that ,while this isn't how he expressed himself, it's likely what he meant…thanks.
@Kitty, you were worried about the smell in making cider and I thought I’d shift that here. There is a short period of very active fermentation that it’s more gassy, but I’ve never found the smell terribly bothersome. We keep out fermentation just around the corner from the kitchen behind a screen (along with the racks of empty bottles). It’s not been an issue.
Screen protectors are almost impossible to put on properly. I just spent an hour trying to put one on my phone. I destroyed two in the process. Good thing they’re really cheap.
@Slignot:
The other problem is the fact that DC water is… kinda gross. My water is hyper-chlorinated (it feels like I’m coming out of a pool when I come out of the shower) so I wouldn’t feel safe making alcohol out of it.
@Starstuff91:
Use a removable label (or cheap tape that won’t leave residue) stuck to the front of the screen protector to pick it up. If you have two, one at either opposite corner will allow you to align it without touching the sticky side. You can then use a ruler or something with a stiff edge to push out the bubbles as you press it on.
(We use tablets here for the project I work on, so I’ve had a lot of practice with the damned things. I still botch one out of 4 give or take.)
My only comment on the video: EWWW. Really, PZ, how about some nice videos of cute little
kittenscuttlefish or idiots or more idiots or nice peaceful oceans? :)∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
In other news:
DC/BALTIMORE PHARYNGULA FANS:
Renaissance Festival this Saturday!
The Faire address is: 1821 Crownsville Road, Annapolis, MD 21401.
If you plan to carpool, please let me know and indicate where you are coming from.
Details:
We’re meeting at noon at the main gates.
Tickets are $19 for adults; $8 for children 7-15; free for children under 7
Parking is hectic, and the road to the faire will be a wait to get in.
Most vendors accept credit cards, some take only cash.
A Giant card or CVS card will get you a discount on tickets–some grocery stores also have coupons.
Costume rentals are available for those interested. :)
I had hyper-chlorinated water for a while (in New Haven in the 1980s): we got in the habit of pouring tap water into bottles, uncovered, and just letting the chlorine gas out for a while. Of course, hyper- is relative: my comparison is New York City water, which is filtered but not at all chlorinated. I’ve also dealt with tapwater that has so many chemicals in it that it’s completely unpalatable. My mother lives in London, and her water is barely acceptable for toothbrushing. I can only drink it in the form of strong black tea with milk and sugar. I like strong tea anyhow, but at home I also drink a lot of plain water.
I apologize because I used an unrelated comment to dump some personal shit. I know that many of you have far more complications than I, so I felt an apology was warranted as dumping my PTSD on you is, from my point of view, unfair. I appreciate the support, but I still apologize.
@Katherine, I’m not sure I understand about the water. At most we add a cup or two of water into over five gallons of juice (it’s to activate the yeast with sugar in water at a specific temp).
I suppose you’d also use water to when you’re sterilizing the fermentation container (we use an oxidizing cleaner that is non-toxic).
Reminder part II:
If you haven’t already filled out the form, please do so!
RHINEBECK: Rhinebeck 2011 Roomate Signup
If you are attending Rhinebeck (or if you MAY be attending Rhinebeck), please fill out this form to arrange hotel rooms.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
And with that, I’m off to dive back into the insanity of my fall training session and having to put one of my staff on probation. Again. :(
*hugs*, chocolate, tea, and all that good stuff. :)
This is in my head. I thought I’d share.
Enjoy.
—
@slignot:
I think I was more referencing beer than cider at that. Could probably make cider just fine.
Minnie – The mushrooms sound wonderful! I am inspired to make a mushroom dish for dinner.
Walton – some days I make myself a rule that “No internet until X”. I have to or I’d never get anything done.
Hi Psych-Oh o/
—
Just back with the first chantarelle haul – not that much, but enough to make us a kick-ass omelet in the morning, mixed with some delicious wood hedgehog (no, not that kind of hedgehog! It’s a mushroom, hydnum repandum!)
Also, another truckload of boletes to fry & freeze, and milk-caps to pickle. Psilocybes were spotted, too, but we left them for the needy =)
Shifty decided to come mushrooming with us today. I wonder if it would be hard to teach a kitteh to spot chantarelles… he was very enthusiastic about the whole thing and seemed to pick up on the excitement every time me found some.
Meh… I couldn’t really care less about the whole Hari controversy. The right-wing commentariat has blown it all into a far bigger issue than it should have been. (In all fairness, if a right-wing journalist had done the same thing, the left-wing commentariat would probably have reacted exactly the same way: so I’m not being partisan here.)
Let’s face it: in the modern world, “journalistic ethics” are more-or-less a dead letter, and there are far worse things going on in the world of journalism than anything Hari’s done. In Britain, the most widely-read papers – that is, the tabloids – devote most of their pages to spreading lies and bile, promoting sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and anti-immigrant prejudice, and trumpeting the cancer-scare-story of the week. If anyone really expected journalism to be an ethical enterprise, they’d be focusing their criticism on the systematic lie-machine that is the tabloid press, not on one broadsheet journalist having sporked a few interview-quotes from other people. The kinds of deliberate and malicious falsehoods spouted every day by the Mail and the Express are a great deal more harmful to society than any amount of plagiarism is.
I refuse to judge Hari harshly because of this. He’s done a great deal of good journalism in his time – including drawing attention to serious issues like the maltreatment of asylum-seekers in Britain, an area that the rest of the mainstream media tends to ignore. To go after him for this, while ignoring the huge moral deficit of the British popular press in general, is akin to cracking down on unpaid parking tickets while ignoring a nationwide crime wave.
@Kitty, now that makes complete sense. I don’t like the taste of beer especially and spouse reacts badly to all the types he’s tried, so we gave up on beer. I’ve though about maybe brewing a beer for my parents as a present, but since I’ve never done homebrewing for beer before, I’d be worried I’d fuck it up.
Now, I have to run wonderful work errands (title company emergencies are going to be the death of me). :( We’re painting the house this weekend, too. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be really tired and sore come Monday.
Edmonton radio station The Bear has “win a wife” contest. No this isn’t some cutesy auction for charity with a playful name. They’re serious. Their plan is to send the winner to Russia with some spending money and an arranged hook up with a
mail order brides“smoking hot foreign girl” (actually he can choose one from 3-5 possibilities.http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1050819–alberta-radio-station-s-win-a-wife-contest-angers-mla
Petition here:
http://www.change.org/petitions/general-manager-the-bear-1003fm-edmonton-close-the-win-a-wife-contest-and-publicly-acknowledge-its-inappropriateness
Got the Caol Ila.
25% off, but does it ever actually sell at the official retail price?
Let’s do the fork in the garbage disposal!
####
A kvetch: There’s no reason for iTunes to have an unclosable, unminimizable, always-on-top window when it’s checking its library, especially when it takes so damn long to check after a hard shutdown.
####
Why a hard shutdown? Because my battery was like, “30%? HAHA, fuck that! I’m at 0%, bitch! I’m not even gonna let you sleep!”
####
Ten page paper in 3 hours?
Challenge accepted.
(Granted, seven of those pages were full of images. Hooray for Digital Image Processing class.)
(The paper had no page requirement or limit. It just happened to come out to 10 pages.)
Ack. Flights are DKK 1000 more than the last time I checked. Damn you, procrastination.
If that’s alright with you.
I haven’t read the comments, but the post is really good. Like PZ-should-elevate-it-to-a-guest-post good.
Holy fuck.
Oh Alberta, how can you be so fucking awesome and so fucking repugnant all at the same time?
Huh. The aging David Copperfield reminds me of Bert … It’s the eyebrows, I think.
‘Tis @#365:
You messed up the Canadian’s line.
so I fify
Giliell,
Pirate queens are good for global warming so I think it’s a win either way.
___
Katherine,
Muse has been noted. Thanks.
___
Win a wife? Lose and get a husband more like.
Katherine Lorraine, get a small spray bottle, fill it with water, keep it handy. When Snip wakes you, squirt him. Multiple times if necessary. He’ll get the idea you don’t care for being woken up.
Remember the republicans cheering for the death of the uninsured man during their presidential debate?
Here’s his sister’s response:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/13/1016557/-That-was-my-brothers-death-you-were-cheering,-you-a$$holes
It made me cry.
Edit to my post @ 407: Here’s A sister’s response.
Not quite.
‘Eh’ isn’t used willy-nilly, eh? It’s used when you want to confirm the listener’s attention, eh, or to make a statement into a question, like “Poutine is great food when you’re curling, eh?”
So a real Canadian wouldn’t use ‘eh’ at the end of a simple response to a question, even if he was from Regina, eh?
Oh, Brownian,
Silly. It was just a mistake with the punctuation. What he said was, “Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, eh?” As in, do you know what that place is like and if you do you should be able to guess why I am not there right now and lets share a beer so I can regale you with tales of flatness, cold and mosquitoes.
This Ontarian moves out East, but he does feel like he fits in, so he goes to his doctor. “Doctor, can you help me? I want to become a real Newfie.”
The doctor thinks for a bit, and replies “Well, there’s this one thing we could try, but it’s very risky.”
“Anything, doc, I just wanna fit in.”
“I can try to remove a third of your brain, that should do the trick.”
The man agrees and undergoes the surgery, but a terrible accident happens and the knife slips. When he comes around from the anaesthesia the surgeon confronts him very worriedly.
“I’m sorry, sir, but we have a problem. I accidentally took out two thirds of your brain, rather than just one.”
«Ou’est-ce que vous avez dit, m’sieur?»
Planned all the flights and accommodations! Now I just need to find a map of LA so I can pick one of the many, many cheap hostels, and to wait for the € to rise again so I can actually book anything.
Speaking of “anything”, what, if anything, can have made the software here so incapable of dealing with long threads?!?
I know a Texan who always answers “Texas” to that question regardless of where outside Texas he is.
Q, not O. And spaces between the guillemets and the quote.
“Poutine is great food when you’re curling, eh?”
No.
Poutine requires two hands to eat.
This cannot be done while curling.
Food while curling is thus limited to beer and rum.
That’s not food while doing anything.
@407 That made me real sad too. A tragic death cheered by a bunch of soulless big-money repugnicans. I can’t even imagine how I’d react to that kind of thing, except ‘Not Well’.
Uh-oh! Incoming!
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2011-09-15/atheist-sexism-women/50416454/1
Chigaimasu!
@ Alethea
That was interesting. It’s kind of weird to see the skeptic community reported on by a major news source in a positive light. It’s almost as if we’re real people.
The list of prominent atheist women at the end of that article was refreshing. I was pleasantly surprised, overall, by the tone.
David,
I have no problem whatsoever.
Have you considered the issues you experience may lie client-side?
You mean the party Wikipedia calls the “Red-Green Alliance” I assume; but at the same time the “Socialist Peoples’ Party”, which also appears to be green-left in orientation, lost almost as many seats. What’s the difference between these parties? From Wikipedia it looked as if the Red-Green Alliance started as a merger of various Leninist groups, but few of their members or voters now have that history.
I just saw the new trailer for the remake/prequel to John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’.
(warning: Nerd rage to follow)
It’s exactly like I expected. Fucking stupid cinematic CG up the wazoo, and younger prettier cast, fucking everything that made Carpenter’s movie stand out is gone. And people still insist on defending it… “Just watch it, don’t judge it until you watch it…”
Fuck that noise. The trailer is already showing us Gimicky CG, the concept is already ruined. The sheer squicky horror of all that foam rubber and practical effects, replaced by the same CGI we’ve already seen in Resident Evil. The practical effects in The Thing were fucking FLAWLESS, especially the kennel scene. There is no way CG can possibly get that photoreal for me. Everything about it felt REAL to me, from the normal looking, unattractive character actors to the scenery to the effects.
I know this is to be expected. I know I can just ignore this crap and stick with my beloved 80s film, like I do every other time this happens, but The Thing is sacred to the nerdiest core of my heart. No other horror movie has ever scared me or given me nightmares like The Thing did. It radically warped my concept of horror. It’s my favorite horror movie ever.
Oh Hollywood, why are you destroying everything I love?
(end nerd rant)
@Lone Coyote
Can you link to the trailer? I’ve seen the original and it’s a great movie. I’m always skeptical of remakes of great movies.
Nothing will compare to a chest opening up and eating the cpr hands.
And a link:
The Thing 2011
Oh, that really is awful. Why would she not want them to take a DNA sample? And why would they let their specimen melt?!
The same Republicans who were claiming that “Obamacare” was evil because there would be “death panels” denying people care*?
* A complete lie, btw.
@First Approximation: Yes. Exactly those people. The righteous, moral, upstanding, by-and-large God-fearing folk of the Tea Party.
Hypocrites.
–
Yeah. It’d be pretty funny if they didn’t has so much power and weren’t fucking insane.
Ibis3, signed the petition against the radio station treating women like chattel. I’m embarrassed and disgusted, originally being from Alberta myself. I hope the local papers are heaping scorn upon them as well.
KG@421: I had a laugh out loud moment with the ‘Red-Green Alliance’. If they’re anything like the Red Green on the comedy channel, they’ll try to fix everything with duct tape. They need to adopt the motto, ‘If she can’t find you handsome, she can at least find you handy.’
On a cold wintry night in Moscow, Idaho, I went to the video store right as that scene came on the TV screens. It was not a good night for me.
Today is a day of much junk food for me. I’ve had cereal, pizza rolls, tatter tots, and freezy pops. I’m enjoying it while by body can still take that kind of abuse.
Rey Fox
I’ve been to Moscow, Idaho.
I understand why it was not a good night.
Y’know, I was actually feeling good today.
Then I read this (posted by trinioler on the FB ET) and now I want to aerate my skull. Basically, “why bother trying if I’m going to be painted with a broad brush like that no matter what I do?”
That applies to all of us. All of us face that. And, well, frankly… I talked a person out of suicide only to have them destroy my life so I don’t know so much whether we can ever help another human being so much as maybe be there at just the right time when one or another of us uses one or another of us…
but it’s worth trying because the only other alternative is blowing your head off and leaving a fucking mess for some poor human to clean up and the people you/we/I/any of us know to cry over it.
I think what’s much worse it that sometime in the mid-90s, Hollywood seems to have completely lost its ability to come up with anything new.
Algernon,
Sigh. “No good deed goes unpunished”.
Look, you don’t need to justify your kindnesses on some utilitarian basis. You don’t even need to justify them!
(There’s a lot more merit in doing the right thing because it’s right than in doing it because it’s creditable)
I don’t know if you are being sarcastic or not. But I actually don’t feel that way.
It was hard, and it hurt.
However, I don’t regret it.
I’m glad that person is alive although I am also glad that they are not a part of my life right now.
Does that make sense?
Technically you are correct. And I’m going to tell you up front that I have had too much to drink tonight to be coherent.
At the same time though, I think there is a hopelessness that people feel (or at least I have) because they feel like they are going to be hurt/punished/judged no matter what.
I’m pretty sure this kind of thinking comes from years of being punished regardless of whatever one actually does, but it doesn’t help that society at large seems to endorse this kind of thing.
We go by identifiable characteristics, no?
Kind of like profiling.
Well, perhaps in this specific case it isn’t technically correct but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the people resonating with it may be doing so for valid reasons :/
So my kids are still not going back to school Monday. Apparently the teachers’ union has an injunction against them to go back to work, but only on the condition that the school board is negotiating in good faith — and the school board doesn’t feel like showing up for any negotiation sessions. So yyyyyeah.
My rational, progressive, humanist side is all for the teachers here. But I have to admit the side of me that is a harried mom stuck in my house with both these kids kind of wishes the teachers would buckle under to 178-student classroom sizes, alligator pools in the hall, dunk tanks on Tuesdays and Thursdays, any damn thing, because I can’t take this much longer.
Algernon, no sarcasm intended, rather an expression of solidarity.
(And I’m pleased you don’t regret it)
Lastly, my reasoning is thus (This is mostly for John):
Why should I try to be decent?
Well, because I care to be decent.
But why should I try to be decent when people will judge me unfairly and punish me anyway?
Well, because I care to have self-respect.
What if that self-respect falters and you feel like it’s not worth it?
Then I have a dilemma to face. I will either continue to do what I have told myself is right despite the fact that I am perhaps in enough pain to begin to lose the shape of what I might call decent or I will not. And if I will not I may loathe myself. And if I loathe myself I may decide to remove the loathesome thing.
What if you kill yourself?
I will have become truly loathesome. My worst thoughts of myself will be realized. I lose. People will be hurt. They will suffer and I will never get the chance to tell them I’m sorry or even to give them the distance that might keep them from being hurt.
What if you don’t?
No guarantees, no promises.
So why is it worth trying?
Because, life is stupidly binary and there’s no point in being some one you can’t respect so long as you’re “being” anything at all.
Interesting. This never went through my mind; quite the opposite in fact: the only way I saw to win, the only way I could not destroy the people I cared about, was to kill myself. Because I felt like I was the only thing holding up a mountain, and it’d be better to be dead and still holding it up (at least in perception) than living and and let go. I honestly felt like it’d be easier on them to die than to reveal the truth. To be frank, I still think it might have been, but what’s done is done.
Back to Ben’s question, though:
My answer: Because if you don’t try, you’re saying they’re right: that every bad thing you think is wrong is actually true. Every lie we let pass, every falsehood we don’t challenge, every stereotype we don’t contradict makes it harder to challenge the next. It allows a shell of lies to build up, and that hurts people – people you’ll never meet, people who may not even be born yet.
When you’re walking down the street and you see a piece of trash lying next to the trash can, are you going to be the guy who keeps walking, or the guy who picks it up and throws it away? Yes, it may mean you spend most of your time dealing with trash and feeling dirty – but someone is going to have to do it. If we want the benefits of a clean world, we have to do the work – even if we never get a chance to realize those benefits for ourselves.
“Because if you don’t try, you’re saying they’re right: that every bad thing you think is wrong is actually true.”
Nobody listens to what I say either way, so does it matter?
“Every lie we let pass, every falsehood we don’t challenge, every stereotype we don’t contradict makes it harder to challenge the next.”
That’s all well and good, except that when I challenge the falsehoods, people (including people on TET) take that as an admission that the falsehood is actually true. “If they’re not talking about you, why do you care?”
I can’t speak for you, but you have to remember that the perspective that you have is that of some one who is still there. For me, I’ve always seem myself as more of an aberration, not so much a lie… but the two seem similar. I don’t understand why these people would love me. And perhaps some one who holds up a mountain only thinks that people will love them so long as a mountain is there.
Algernon, it strikes me that you seem very harsh on yourself.
—
Since this very comment puts the lie to your premise (by counter-example), its sequent is vacuous.
Algernon:
Well, I never saw it as love, just “not abandonment” – but I was also approaching it with the emotional IQ of a 6-year-old (give or take). I was mostly just noticing the differences between us from an intellectual perspective.
I just see myself as a human animal, and like any animal, do whatever the fuck I want to do. Now, you’d think that’d mean I’d be a horrible, horrible person, but it turns out being nice and doing kind things for people is exactly ‘whatever the fuck I want to do’.
I did go through a phase where I really wanted to be a bitter evil asshole who hated everyone, but truth be told I had to really work at it.
Could it be that as a social animal, the vast majority of humans have an instinct to be basically good and decent?
*pauses, takes a look at the current political climate, the news and media, and the state of religion these days…..*
Um…..
That’s exactly what someone else said when I brought it up in another online venue. Why all the hate towards that little college town in a lovely area of the country?
Actually I think this is probably true. It’s just that what actual actions we take, what things we think are the valid signifiers, or what society we see ourselves as belonging to are variable.
Not hate Rey Fox.
Just that “little college town” pretty much says it all.
Pullman, Washington, on the other hand…
Pullman?! Oh COME ON.
Note to self: Irony cannot be conveyed in text only.
Rey Fox
Since you know Moscow, you also know Pullman.
When I was there the only difference between them was the legal drinking age.
That’s right. You gotta follow up a sentence like that with multiple winky faces.
At least Moscow has trees.
Squirrel!
I think squirrels is a pretty cool guy. eh (seh?) walks around bipedal and doesnt afraid of anything.
Apple crisp is almost done! Who wants some?
(Fall does have its upsides after all…)
Well, today was not a good day. I tried to go to my first apartment visit/interview/thing, all dressed up and practiced and self-talked into feeling ready with my meticulously filled out rental application and notebook full of anxious questions in hand, only to stand there and wait… and wait… and wait… with my grandparents for an hour and finally leave because the apartment manager never showed up. He called twenty minutes after we left to tell me we “just missed each other” and reschedule. Thanks, dude. Really glad we left Sacramento so early in the morning to make this appointment in LA on time. And it was great to put so much psychological effort into a plan only to have it fall through utterly for no apparent reason. Then none of the other people I was hoping to meet with answered their phones. Fucking hell I hate housing.
—
Algernon, here you pretty much sum up the same sequence of thoughts that got me effectively back on my feet at the beginning of last year.
*headdesk headdesk headdesk headdesk unconsciousness*
Didn’t finish that reply to Algernon. There was supposed to be a hug in it. And the hope that things will feel less crappy more often.
:-( I sympathize. I hate those kinds of situations: going to interviews is stressful enough as it is, and if the other person doesn’t turn up, I always feel stressed and neurotic in case I went to the wrong place, got the wrong day, etc.
(I’m incredibly glad that I’ve had college accommodation throughout my time as a student, and have never had to seek private rented housing.)
TLC:
Eh, you might adore the 80s remake, and that’s fine. I didn’t care for it over much. I prefer the original: The Thing from Another World (1951). ;D
John Morales, Giliell, Daisy Cutter, Cicely, Dvorath:
Thank you all for the kind words and support.
Apparently, the cancer is localized in one lung and the rest of his bloodwork is looking good, so they’re hoping to get it all through surgery. I haven’t gotten the full rundown yet, but it’s sounding like one of the better possible scenarios. He keeps on bouncing back, but it has been a rough ten years for him.
When he had his bout with colon cancer a few years back, I had no problem telling him I was praying for him, even though I was past agnosticism and well on my way to all out atheism. It’s the ‘language’ they speak, and I meant that I was thinking hard about all the good memories and all the things I learned from him.
I can’t do that anymore, so I’m trying to keep everything about how I fell about him, and try to deflect the woo when it comes up (more with my mom).
In better news, my sister is going to have her 2nd kid. Woohoo! Seven times an uncle, never a father. Must be doing right (heh). *Congrats, Katherine! I just saw your post after I typed that.*
Thanks again. Off to check potential flights to North Mormon Land. *Rey Fox @492… that is really damn close to where I am headed. I know that area well. When were you there?*
ugh… @432.
CC: Ah yes, people who don’t keep their appointments. Truly a joy in life. Particularly on the phone. The #1 Most Told Lie Ever: “I’ll call you.”
I thought the Palouse was north of the Morridor. Well, anyway, ’98-’02, drewl.
@ Rey… right on. I got out of there in the ’80s, but the Palouse is still infested w/ LDS. Still, it was a nice oasis between the crazy up in the panhandle, and the loons down south.
I like ‘Morridor’, I’ll probably be using that soon. Here’s a sniny internet for you (against future royalties).
Thanks, but “Morridor” is definitely not of my invention.
Caine: Well I keep meaning to check out “The Thing from Another World”. But the 2011 remake isn’t NEAR clever enough to base anything on that gem. It’ll be like John Carpenter’s masterpiece had awkward drunken sex with an Xbox or PS3 game and regretted it the next morning.
The Socialist People’s party was formed from old Communists who were disillusioned by the ’56 invasion of Hungary. The Red-Green alliance was formed by the left-over hardcore Communists after the fall of the Iron Curtain – the far left had until then been exceedingly fractured, ensuring none of them would ever get elected on their own.
The R-G are the furthest Left. Their leadership is still the old guard, but they’ve been canny enough to get young, attractive faces to be the outward face of the party. The newspapers report today that – not surprisingly – people voted for Johanne Schmidt, not the party. They did the same thing a decade ago when they had their first success. The bright young woman was then the very aristocratic sounding Pernille Rosencrantz-Theil – who’s now a Social Democrat.
Now, just to make matters more amusing. The R-Gs have an internal rule that noöne can sit for more than seven years. That niftily frees up the seats for the dumpy, old guard after the bright young things have made sure the party get in.
The Sailor
It’s certainly being billed that way. (C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER!)
The leaders of the Centre-Right party (“The Radical Left” for historical reasons) and the far left “Unity List” (KG’s Red-Green Alliance) are women, too. And I did see a headline saying something about more young women having been elected. Here we go: 21 women under 35, 10 under 30. Interestingly both Greenland MPs fall into the category.
I don’t know how many women were elected in total, but I’ll be it’s still significantly less than half the 179 total.
OH! And of course the leader of the Rightwing opposition is a woman. She’s even the party founder.
Thanks. I realised I’d copied a typo after I logged off. The spaces are news to me, though. And this after I felt so proud when I remembered to turn the guillemets the wrong was around …
Wait. I is confuzzled. Guillemots. These things? And how, exactly, do you turn them the wrong way around? What is, for that matter, the wrong way with a bird?
Oh, and Happy Thursday.
We have a small group visiting my site. They arrived in three large black vans. Two older couples. About 20 much younger couples. The men are all dressed in blue jeans and plaid, button-down shirts. The women are all wearing prairie-muffin dresses, hair in braids, hidden by a white cap with strings hanging down. Not sure which sect of Christianity. Nice people.
One of the older men has a clipboard. On it is a list of the young men and the young women. On the second page (I happened to notice this as he was working on it) was, again, a list of the young men. And the young women were penciled in next to the names of the young men. And he was moving the name of one young woman from one man to another and (again, I was right behind them doing something else, I was not intentionally intruding) mentioned to the other older man that this young woman needs a stronger, more forceful husband in order to remain true, and the first one she was assigned to (yes, that is the word he used) is to weak for a strong-minded woman.
I was not raised in a conservative Christian milieu; I was raised culturally Christian as a Unitarian (though I have never regularly attended church). I know that, among some of the more quiet and conservative sects, ‘dating trips’, with a number of chaperoned couples, is not that unusual. Is my reading of the incident this morning correct? Are the older men actually decided which kids (the young women are 17 or 18, the young men 20 to 24) should be married? Are these hard and fast decisions? or can romance actually play a role?
Brother Ogvorbis, it sounds like Mennonites to me, but the bonnets on women throw me off a bit. Given your area, (not the Morridor;-), I’m thinking it’s probably more of a suggestion than a command. It’s still creepy.
+++++++++++++++++++
Good news/bad news: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/09/17/rabbit-dies-saving-owners-from-house-fire-in-alaska/
Let me get this straight. I settle in for a good night’s sleep (shortened at the front end unfortunately), and I come back here to read…seven comments? Fucking A, are we having a douchebag invasion elsewhere?
Hey, remember Tom Martin, the MRA asshole suing the LSE gender studies department? Turns out he’s a dishonest, misogynistic piece of shit! Surprised?
Rey, I know, right!?
The Sailor:
Yeah, I figured it was one of the many Mennonite sects (there are at least a half-dozen, each with slightly different traditions). They come here on these trips a couple of times a year. This was just the fist time I saw what was on the clipboard, and the first time I have heard the chaperones discussing who should marry whom.
Rey:
If you want to put on some hip waders, the MRA-Team is over here. I already overrode all common sense and dove in, and I just know that I will regret it.
Obvorbis, I used to give airplane rides to Mennonites. The kids (generally young female/male couples with no chaperon (except me, tee hee)), and I was always amazed that for their first airplane ride they usually immediately grokked the overview with their ground orientation. And wanted to see their farms.
As a beginning pilot I had problems with that orientation. As an experienced pilot giving rides to first timers (and maybe last timers) I was amazed at how they visualized the connection between the two. (of course it was a self-selected group.)
I’m already regretting possibly triggering another sniveling bucket of words from Rinus. Those shrieking harpies subjected Dawkins to a letter-writing campaign! *shockhorror*
Rejoice all ye Threadizens. There’s more good news from the morridor. Some BYU students are fighting against the Moments of Mormon Madness in their own lives.
http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/news/the-group-utah-countys-covet-secular-community/
From the comments below the article about BYU students who no longer believe in mormonism:
This commenter has a reading comprehension problem. The female member of The Group noted that she attends BYU because of pressure from her parents, and because she is financially dependent on them.
Another clueless Utahan comments on the article about BYU students who no longer believe in mormonism:
This seems right up PZ’s alley: nutter Luddites in Mexico are sending parcel bombs to scientists and CS researchers, in an attempt to avoid a future of Gray Goo: http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110822/full/476373a.html
As usual, Chino Blanco cuts right to the chase in the controversy over BYU students who not longer believe in mormonism:
I think the problem is more than her brain is upside down. I think it’s actually too much to ask of most news commenters that they actually read below the headline.
Cavalcade of Lunacy:
They’re assembling off-campus in secret. Another point for us against the tone trolls: Even secret atheists are hated.
Natch.
Like that Young guy?
Run, the ’80s are attacking! Also, I wasn’t aware that “Jeans” was a trademark.
The…wait…um…is that his word for people from the University of Utah? Dammit, you’re throwing off my rhythm with your unanticipated idiocy!
Yes, the media and legislature in that part of the country are just full of forceful atheists.
That story about the Luddites sending bombs to scientists in Mexico was horrifying. (Comment #484)
I just saw an amusing piece on how to stop your child becoming an “Athiest”.
http://www.evilmilk.com/pictures/Stop_From_Being_An_Athiest.htm
I can’t figure out linking on this blog yet, so pardon the pasting. (Oh, in preview, it looks like just pasting it works as a link.)
@ Menyambal
I’ve seen that one before. It’s great.
Wait, and ye shall receive.
39,5% of the Danish parliament is female. Not as bad as I feared, but still 10% short.
The name of the responder makes it doubly amusing.
@ Sili
That’s way better than the US.
In the House: 362 men and 76 women. In the Senate: 17 women and 83 men.
Oh, yeah, don’t forget this one: President: 0 women and 44 men.
And there aren’t many Muslimas in Saudi Politics, I’m sure.
Doing better than the US is not exactly hard.
But speaking of old white guys, Jimmy Carter is very nice and remarkably sharp.
Sili@468,
Thanks.
What makes you say that? Not that I disagree. I’ve always liked him.
Nice. But I’d like to see him do Kunst der Fuge.
–o–
De rien, KG. I’m hardly an authority on Danish politics, though.
I’m developing a … notion about the word “rather”.
Not when used to state a preference or choice:
“I’d rather eat cake than pie.”
but rather when used like “somewhat”.
“rather disappointed in this blog”
“rather disappointed in the language”
“my life is rather different”.
Is it a good indicator of a pretentious poop?
Speaking as a pretentious nincompoop who’s rather fond of using “rahter”, I rather agree with your assessment.
Doctor Who no-spoiler-comment: Not bad.