This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is Thunderdome, the unmoderated open thread on Pharyngula. Say what you want, how you want.
Status: UNMODERATED; Previous thread
mandrellian:
The evil things done by Europeans in the past does not answer the question. These atrocities are recent. The question still remains why these societies were so far behind the Europeans at the time (in terms of our ideas of advancement). Your answer seems to be that it was just luck, circumstance. I accept that this is possible, and that the “feedback loop” notion I’m reading about from Guns, Germs, and Steel has amplified its effect. This seems plausible, and I’ll think seriously about it.
However, even if this explanation of societal advancement is true, there are still many questions, which all seem to require considerable backbreaking gymnastics in order to answer. Occam’s razor suggests to me that the answer is much simpler, if only we were allowed to accept it.
No chance that this was the result of a combination of things like close contact with other developing cultures? The constant exchange and refining of ideas regarding (among other things) agriculture, government and the development of writing, which enabled people across to continents to communicate? The actual ability to spend time and resources discovering things instead of merely tending crops or hunting/gathering?
There appears to be a great deal of history you’re ignoring, are ignorant of (significant difference) or just choosing not to consider before launching your – if not racist, then extremely-fucking-close-to-racist argument. Perhaps it’s just “cultural supremacy” and not racial superiority you’re touting. If so, it’s really not a great deal better.
Frankly, white people got lucky. Throughout Europe and the British Isles there was vibrant trade with the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Asia (don’t forget who invented decimals and gunpowder), long before the explorers and invaders set sail to Africa, Australia and the Americas to seek treasure to fund their wars and expansions. Why? Proximity. Proximity to each other and therefore proximity to (and opportunity to exchange) new ideas, techniques, philosophies, resources relating to every current field of human endeavour and to ones in their infancy. We (descendants of Europeans) are the benificiaries of thousands of years’ worth of trade and exchange with our very close neighbours (and wars, which place upon a culture many new and urgent needs); would that we had a little foresight when we set out to conquer the world centuries ago, that world might have turned out significantly better and conversations like this would not be necessary.
@ SC
No,no. The statement: “I do not.”, refers to your: “please stop linking qualities, virtues, essences, and so on to sex and gender.”
I personally do not go for this Yinyang thing either. Neither do I feel much regard for Mao. Nevertheless I find the issues (even if very wrong) to be pertinent.
The linking of qualities, virtues, essences, and so on to sex and gender we see far too often in the sexist blogosphere. It underpins their justification of their misogyny. Though the Chinese philosophy referred to is set against such “one hand clapping” of the menZ (being unbalanced), it too is underpinned by that same faulty logic.
I think that we are in agreement.
I look forward to this. I have intended to engage for some time now, but RL, in the form of workload and illness has kept me at too low an ebb to do this justice. If I do not take this up after Chinese new year, feel free to cajole me. :)
@ comradebob
Are you a whenwe?
theopontes:
(ot)
A friend of mine was a tour guide in East Africa during the 80’s. The local African name for Australian tourists was “Fakawi”
.
.
.
As in: “Where the fakawi?”
strange gods before me @ 480:
What the heck is your problem tonight? Did you actually read the quotation you printed? What part of “despise” do you not understand? And you think the nasty, insulting names she uses to describe the people she despises are “funny”. Oh yeah, real thigh slapping, side splitting humor there. Not. (psst, hee, hee, hee, wanna hear the funny names we call those people down the street! You know, the ones you despise? hee haw!)
I have no problem if someone doesn’t like the company of children. That isn’t the issue, in my mind. And although it’s none of your darn business, I happen to love babies and children. I also chose to be childless. And dog gone, come to think of it, my sister made the same decision, and she loves people even more than I do.
And even though you said “please” and tried to ask politely, I will ignore your plea.
I’ll ask you another question. What did you find sexist in my comments? You must have some very creative thought processes going on. (And there is a possibility I missed something)
In respect of the ThunderDome decorum I’ll refrain from uttering WTF?
The question of why some races aren’t as smart as others? That stupid, simplistic, adolescent question?
Perhaps these cultures that found themselves outgunned by white people didn’t need to “advance”. It’s not an end in itself. Perhaps they couldn’t advance, by our standards, due to limitations in geography and/or ecology. Perhaps their advancement was simply not as rapid as that of the Europeans. As I said above, interaction with different cultures is invaluable when it comes to advancement.
Climate is another consideration. Simply, many of the peoples subjugated by the European conquerors were in warm to tropical lands – less need for agriculture if there are food and animals abundant year-round.
Timing is also crucial. Europeans would have had a technological head start on Native Americans because the time needed for the Native Americans’ progenitors to travel across what’s now the Bering Strait and populate North and South America was significant; there would also have been no access to the now far-away Europeans and their burgeoning mega-culture. Ditto the long journey, sixty or even more thousand years ago, undertaken by the southern Asian progenitors of the Aborigines.
The ability to communicate, exchange ideas and information and to trade with other cultures has been shown to be a key factor in any culture’s development (as has fighting with them – consider the effect the Mongols had on Asia and Europe). When Europeans set out to conquer the world, the people they ended up conquering had been effectively “out of the loop”, not just technologically but socially (in terms of interaction with different cultures) for thousands of years. Many of the cultures were thriving and advancing in their own ways; others might for myriad reasons have experienced no need to “advance”.
A semi-nomadic Aborigine living in the Botany Bay area in 1787 (the year before white settlement) would have been pretty well catered for with meat, fish, fruits and vegetables available year-round and with no large predators threatening them. If you generally have all your needs met – even if life has its tough moments (which it undoubtedly did) – should you be faulted for not having the same ideas or technology as someone living ten thousand miles away who’s had the benefit of tens of thousands of years of economic and social interaction with countless other cultures?
If Occam’s razor suggests an answer that appeals pretty much only to racists or the ignorant (apologies for the redundancy), it’s not much use as a razor. Maybe it should take up a new career spreading margarine onto toast.
Basically, the answer to “why are some societies more advanced?” is not a simple one. In fact, Occam’s famous razor, if it has any sense, should in this case say “the simplest answer is that the answer is far too complex to be reduced to simplistic biology.” Complicated answers aren’t bad things anyway, in and of themselves. A lot of stupid things have been done in the service of simple answers and it’s encumbent upon anyone searching honestly for an answer that they don’t gravitate to an answer just because they take less time to read, or are easier to think about.
oldmrbear:
I hereby refrain from mentioning that if you imagine phrasing it thus constitutes refraining, you’re a fool.
I appreciate your restraint, John. It was a rather lame, if not foolish attempt at humor. Just trying to play off a previous poster’s concern about forum decorum.
oldmrbear, no worries. I figured.
The racist specimen wrote:
Therefore, the obvious explanation for the national disparity between North and South Korea is that they’re inhabited by different races.
@ John Morales
The reason North Korea is more successful is that they are purer than the South Koreans. Duh!
Vagina gremlins. Two words. Which one of those words is so incredibly nasty and insulting? I’m a woman and I’m childfree. Never wanted the critters, never had them. I also do not like sprogs. At all. I don’t like being around them. I find vagina gremlins to be amusing and not at all insulting. Are you one of those people who thinks those who are childfree run about terrorising children?
Vagina gremlins. I have a vagina. I find them to be a quite nice anatomical feature, and not at all offensive or insulting. Gremlin. “A gremlin is an imaginary creature commonly depicted as mischievous and mechanically oriented, with a specific interest in aircraft. Gremlins’ mischievous natures are similar to those of English folkloric imps, while their inclination to damage or dismantle machinery is more modern.” Nothing terribly nasty or insulting there, either.
Referring to me (as well as many others) as childless is offensive, by the way. It’s not a loss and I’m not the least bit sad about it. It was not a matter of being biologically unable to reproduce. More to the point that I find the idea of doing so repugnant and always have done.
Back to my so-called break now.
Hmm, my reply to Cyrano seems to have disappeared into oblivion. Being a newbie I’m not sure if I did something wrong, or whether there was a glitch in my software, network or whatever. Therefore I’ll conclude that it was due to a massive internet conspiracy to silence me. And the existence of said conspiracy is proof that I am absolutely correct in everything I say. (And obsessive enough to try again.)
(if this comment actually did show up, my apologies to everyone…)
Cyrano @ 441, did you actually read my little posting? If so, perhaps you could humor me a bit. I am utterly fascinated by the way people create associations, connections and generally get from point A to point B in their creative thinking process. How do you go from a trite little story where my teacher inadvertently teaches us yet another way of insulting people to labeling me a bold type face asshole? Of course, I may well be an asshole. I’m a little concerned though, do you really think I’ve earned the bold type? My old room mate was rather fond of the saying “there are more horses asses than there are horses.” Lard knows I have a disproportionate claim on the excess.
For the most part I think that our language is so widely used and evolving so rapidly that it is beyond the control of even the most marginalized amongst us. Seriously though, I think intent is everything. Some people disagree with me on this and that’s cool. I’m writing only for myself, well and Cyrano, I guess. In most cases intent can be discerned. Naturally there are gray areas where we must exercise caution. My little friend had absolutely no intent to insult or injure anyone when she declared herself mad. She didn’t know it was even possible. So I cut her some slack. I wish the story ended there, but both she and I later used “mad”, “crazy” and “nuts” in our conversations to elicit emotional responses. And the intent was obvious. A few years back a couple of my buddies started calling each other “niggers”. I was very uncomfortable with it. We had a long discussion about it and in the end it was decided that this old white boy was an honorary nigger (under very stringent and controlled contexts). After our discussions we understood each others intentions – to laugh in the face of pain.
To sum up, it costs me absolutely nothing to be considerate of other people. Since my adolescence, it has been been my goal to be considerate and not to insult or injure other people. In my many years of working with the mentally ill and challenged people I would never even consider using words like mad, crazy, nuts or others to insult or injure. In certain stringently controlled contexts, we just may call each other absolutely nuts. Can you guess what our intent might be?
On the other hand, I am an asshole. So tonight as this old reprobate from the beat generation, slowly rocks himself to sleep, listening to golden oldies on my ipod, listen real carefully and you just might here me mutter – “crazy man, crazy”
Oh and Cyrano, my right to be an asshole? It’s unalienable, sorry.
One more…
oldmrbear:
Your outrage over a woman despising children perpetrates the notion that all women are squishy soft, maternal, nurturing beings who will coo over and love the babies whether they want them or not. That line of thought is one pillar of misogyny. Owning a uterus is not magic and it doesn’t make us mysterious beings who automagically adore the process or results of procreation.
Throughout history, there have been many, many women who did not want or like children. For much of history, women had no choice in that matter. They were owned by their father, who had the right to hand over ownership to a man, to be her husband. Women were not even allowed the opportunity to live a celibate life in most cases. So, you see, with your outrage over vagina gremlins and the uncomfortable (for you) fact that some women do not like children perpetrates a long and deep tradition of sexism.
That would certainly apply to what we know of the Ngarrindjeri lifestyle in South Australia. Spend summer on the southern beaches, get lots of shellfish meals by standing around at the water’s edge wriggling your toes or rouse yourself to spear a few fish. Lots of beach picnics. When the season starts to change move steadily inland up the river. Lots of freshwater shellfish and laaaarge fish (ever seen a full sized Murray cod? they’re gigantic) as well as the end of summer harvest of nutritious roots and other vegetables along with plenty of small game. Build yourself a seasonal shelter and get on with life.
The parallels to the way many white South Australians have traditionally lived, summer holidays on the south coasts, stay inland-ish for the cooler seasons was quite striking when I first came across this. The big difference being that we work much longer and harder hours for our food and shelter. Indigenous Australians had the advantage of many hunt, gather, forage societies – they needed only four or less hours per day to satisfy their needs for sustenance. Hence all the time available for story-telling and basket weaving and carving and ritual and the like.
Am I missing something or is hillel carefully ignoring all those points at which marauding and colonising Europeans ran into peoples whose civilisation was significantly more advanced?
What did they do? The sensible ones just stole the novel technology but total destruction of records, knowledge, systems of government were all too common.
Howdy Caine, I enjoy your comments and am flattered that you would take the time to respond. In this case however I think you’re overreaching a bit.
Uncle Tom. Two words. Which one of the words is incredibly insulting. Well, I’m an uncle, it’s quite nice, and not at all offensive or insulting. Thomas is a friend of mine. But do you really think that when used together in a phrase like, despicable Uncle Tom, that it’s not insulting? It’s meant to be insulting, whether the person involved deserves it or not.
Caine, I’m a man. I don’t have a vagina. I do find them to be a quite nice anatomical feature and not at all offensive or insulting. Gremlins? Heck, I used to drive one. Despicable vagina gremlins? No, not so much. For me, it’s humorfree and offensive.
I chose not to have children. Are you one of those people who think that men without children run about terrorizing the local elementary school?
Your take on childless and childfree is a novel one for me. And rather interesting at that. I have always described myself as childless. To me less does not equate to loss. To be childless is to be without children. However, since it does offend you, I’ll not use it in your presence again. Interesting to me, though I do not find childfree to be offensive, it is a little weird. In my experience using free as a suffix denotes the absence of harmful things such as poisons, added hormones, heavy metals etc. I learn something new every day.
My heavy hide of privilege (not to mention my stubborn hard head) usually protect me from most insults. But I gotta admit that DVGs got under my hide like an abscess.
oldmrbear, what is your problem? I’m not being unkind to you; I’m not berating you. I’m telling you that you are wrong, and I’m asking you not to make any more sexist comments.
Yes, I understand it just fine. What I also understand is that disliking children does not constitute misanthropy, because kids are not the only kind of humans. (As far as I know, there is not a word for disliking children.) Anyway, kids grow out of being kids; presumably she likes them just fine after a time.
If there was an indication she was being unkind to children, then that would be a problem. But there is no such indication.
I do find “vagina gremlins” amusing. I said nothing about the degree yet. It’s not side splitting, but chucklesome.
You’re a very shallow thinker. Besides children, there is no other group of humans which everyone begins life as a member of, and which everyone eventually stops being a member of if they live long enough. Disliking children, therefore, is categorically different from disliking any other group.
I didn’t ask.
What Caine said at 511. And for the reasons she outlined, you should refrain from expressing your opinions about how any woman ought to feel about children. If a person is unkind to children, then that’s worth talking about.
+++++
I know we have young lurkers and commenters at Pharyngula. I would not like it if they were being gratuitously insulted. The comment in question came up as a response to Robert “comradebob” Mugabe here who was claiming that all young women desire children, and implying there’s something wrong with any woman who doesn’t. It was contextually appropriate to bring up a strong counterexample.
Of course the phrase is insulting, and of course “vagina gremlins” is insulting. Nobody said it wasn’t. And of course “Uncle Tom” has a history, while “vagina gremlin” does not. What a terrible comparison.
So what? It isn’t sufficient that you’re offended. What matters is whether the person you’re criticizing is actually mistreating children in some way. There is no indication of this.
Again, the comment in question came up as a response to Robert “comradebob” Mugabe here who was claiming that all young women desire children, and implying there’s something wrong with any woman who doesn’t. It was contextually appropriate to bring up a strong counterexample.
You took this out of context to complain about the phrase; at the same time you still haven’t even told Robert to fuck off. (You are still welcome to tell him to fuck off. Now would be a fine time.)
oldmrbear:
Well, that’s tough. You are the one who is wrong and it would be ever so nice if you bothered to examine why the notion of a woman despising children upsets you so very much. As I said, which you completely fucking ignored (and attempted a “what about the menz” with), it’s not a matter of a childfree woman running about being nasty to children. She has a right to her feelings, as do I and as do you.
What you do not have the right to do (at least not here), is to perpetrate the utter shit which is tied up in “a woman’s proper nature”. Everything you write is implying, heavily, that a woman who does not like children is unnatural. We’re rather tired of men thinking that sort of thing. It’s very 150-200 BCE. You might want to drag yourself into the current century, by realizing and examining your own biases and privilege. And no, I don’t care if you think being stubborn and hard-headed about your privilege is a point of pride with you. It shouldn’t be. You should be capable of re-thinking your attitudes and chucking the ones that are prejudiced and shoring up misogyny and systemic sexism.
sgbm:
Mispupaepy?
hehe
At first glance, makes me think of someone who despises puppies.
All I could find was pedophobia, but that’s a fear of children. However, searching “dislike of children” brings up a whole hell of a lot of people who strongly dislike children. Heh.
I wonder why East Asians are perceived as ‘more intelligent.’ Surely culture can have nothing to do with it. That wouldn’t be a simple enough explanation, would it?
Erk. I can not get my stupid head round making links work properly on this site.
I suppose, if it became significant enough culturally, that “pedophobia” could evolve to encompass more than simple fear, in the way “homophobia” has. Y’know, if “kids” were a static group of ‘others’ that people could discriminate against and marginalise in various ways, who wouldn’t inevitably grow out of membership of said group. What, you say they aren’t? Oh! Well then. :P
*carries on not liking the little hairless monkeys*
from la tricoteuse’s article
It would be interesting to see what types of internet traffic occurs during those coitus inducing breaks. I suspect K-pop equivalent of Barry White and Al Green will trend heavily during those hours. :)
*brainbleaches visions of gangnam style-inspired nookie?*
Way past my bedtime. Snooze time. But, I’ll be back!
Strange, I think your assertion is incorrect. Caine has very explicitly stated that she does not find DVG to be at all insulting.
I have no clue what comradbob has written. I don’t read his stuff and have no intention to. I’m sure if he said something stupid, there are people on board who do read him and they are quite capable of telling him where to shove it.
When I return, you can expect my argument to follow along the lines of
A To despise is to hate. Despise is not synonymous with dislike.
B. Children are human beings.
C. Misanthrope is a person who hates humanity.
D. A person who hates children, is by definition a misanthrope.
Then there is a good chance I’ll follow up with a comment on how I rather dislike misanthropes.
Also, it should come as no surprise that I don’t think I’m wrong
Nor do I think my comments are sexist.
Folks have been putting a whole bunch of words in my mouth, which I don’t think belong there. Perhaps I’ll try to sort out those that are mine for you.
Caine, it’s damned hard to be proud of something I haven’t earned. I don’t even try. When it comes to social privilege the most I can muster is to acknowledge it’s existence and try to understand how it may affect my thinking and the thinking of those around me. And maybe try a little hide bound humor deflect the pain when I fail.
Oldmrbear
Humanity including adults. D does not follow from the actual technical definition.
Your argument is flawed. A person who hates children but generally likes adults (in the absence of specific detestable qualities individual specimens may possess, such as being racists or sexists or dog-kickers or what-have-you) just fine cannot, by definition, be a misanthrope.
In addition, “I don’t think my comments are sexist” is not really enough without addressing the ways in which they were interpreted as sexist.
Do you have a hard time with the concept of women disliking children? How does it make you feel for a woman to express disgust about them? How would this be different from your perception of a man who expresses same?
You don’t have to tell us. Just explore your own thoughts on the subject and see what you come up with.
Yes, we know what it means, amazingly enough. A person who dislikes children is not a misanthrope. As has been noted, repeatedly, one grows out of being a child.
It’s like:
(A is totally unrelated so excerpting)
B. A pupa is a (insert holometabolous insect)
C. A mislepidopterist is a person who hates moths and butterflies.
D. Therefore a person who hates pupa are mislepidopterists.
E. I love butterflies and moths, yet I hate caterpillars.
Absolutely irrelevant. They are sexist, and the reasons why have now been explained multiple times. Just because it makes you uncomfortable to think you are saying sexist things doesn’t make them magically un-sexist.
We are all sexist. The trick is to be aware of that, educate ourselves and change our patterns of thought and consequent attitudes.
Okay. I missed that. It is an insult, of course. But there’s nothing necessarily wrong with insults per se. One of the other things Caine called attention to was your use of the term nasty. You deny, but I do suspect that it is the word vagina which caused you to select that particular word.
You lazy ass. You picked out a quote from a direct reply to bob. You can’t understand the relevance of that quote without understanding what it was a response to.
You’re being intellectually lazy, and as long as you keep this up, you cannot be taken seriously. You’re disrespecting everyone else in this thread by pretending that you don’t have to engage with what was said and why. Read the comments by bob which led up to the comment you’re complaining about.
It does not matter for my argument. Replace every instance of “dislike” with “hate” and everything I said will still stand.
Here is the form of your logic:
[X] are human beings.
A misanthrope is a person who hates humanity.
A person who hates [X] is by definition a misanthrope.
Now substitute for X:
Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler are human beings.
A misanthrope is a person who hates humanity.
A person who hates Hitler and Himmler is by definition a misanthrope.
That’s because you’re not challenging yourself to find out whether you’re wrong. I suggest that you try quoting in small bits like I’m doing here, and formulating your response while you’re looking at exactly what you’re responding to. It helps make errors more apparent. For example, watch for cases when it’s possible for what you’re responding to to be true, and also for your response to be true; this is an indication that you’re going off on a tangent, while not refuting the other person.
It doesn’t matter whether you think they are or not. You should stop because you are perpetuating sexism by expressing your opinions about how any woman ought to feel about children.
Don’t. It only makes you sound like a dismissive douche. Be serious now, because sexism is serious.
Again, I know we have young lurkers and commenters at Pharyngula. I would not like it if they were being gratuitously insulted. The comment in question came up as a response to Robert “comradebob” Mugabe here who was claiming that all young women desire children, and implying there’s something wrong with any woman who doesn’t. It was contextually appropriate to bring up a strong counterexample. You took this out of context to complain about the phrase; at the same time you still haven’t even told Robert to fuck off. (You are still welcome to tell him to fuck off. Now would be a fine time.) You picked out a quote from a direct reply to bob. You can’t understand the relevance of that quote without understanding what it was a response to.
You are protecting a sexist by refusing to judge whether he is a sexist while criticizing the people who criticized the sexist.
You are contributing to sexism by failing to pick up your part of the work.
Do the dishes and tell bob to fuck off.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misanthropy
«Misanthropy is the general hatred, mistrust or disdain of the human species». Emphasis mine. Hatred of the whole class of humans generally.
«Molière’s character Alceste in Le Misanthrope (1666) states:
“My hate is general, I detest all men»
«In Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates defines the misanthrope in relation to his fellow man: “Misanthropy develops when without art one puts complete trust in somebody thinking the man absolutely true and sound and reliable and then a little later discovers him to be bad and unreliable…and when it happens to someone often…he ends up…hating everyone.”»
You can save yourself the trouble; actual misanthropes aren’t welcome around here. You’re just wrong about who is a misanthrope.
Perhaps Mispaedry? As in the Greek “Miso” (as in Misogyny, Misandry etc.) meaning “hatred” and “Paedo” from the Greek “Pais” meaning child. I’m no language expert but that could work, right?
Wrong. You should stop making such assertions when it’s a simple matter to find out whether or not they are correct before you assert them. Don’t you own a thesaurus? Incapable of checking on of the numerous ones on the ‘net? Here are only two examples of your wrongness (emphasis mine):
These alone show you to be incorrect. They also demonstrate that the word despise can encompass a very wide range of feeling and you have no idea where on the scale the particular women you’re outraged by is on. Personally, I intensely dislike children. I imagine you would have had the same problem if “intensely dislikes” was used instead of “despise”, which again points to your sexism.
I find children repellant. I don’t think they are cute or charming or the slightest bit interesting. I fully understand that people who have children love them and like them and I’m not a nasty bitch to them when I find myself unavoidably around them. My tendency is to avoid them like the plague.
Now, I have a bit of shocking news for you – most parents don’t like a whole lot of children. They like their children. I have friends who are parents who cheerfully state their dislike of most children and that doesn’t make them nasty monsters, either. It also doesn’t mean they are running about being awful to children who don’t belong to them. Now, do some people love kids, all kids, any kids? Sure. However, that does not extrapolate to everyone else. More to the point, once again, it is not automagically in a woman’s “nature” to like or care about sproglets.
Hm. I wanted to post this link http://pastehtml.com/view/cqlbvjtvs.html in response to http://kasamaproject.org/revolutionary-strategy/4269-an-anarchist-replies-to-boots-riley but I can’t make the comments thingy work.
Bradley:
I think so, but there’s something not quite right about it. Where are all our language peoples?
Is misopedia the word you are looking for?
vmsmith:
It is, thank you!
Thank you vmsmith. Although it sounds like an exhaustive text on regional varieties of miso soup.
@hillel
You’re wrong.
Tell me, how many hours does the average high-school level student spend at studies?
…All of those suck?
Your premise is completely wrong.
See, the European nations kind of caused much of the issues in Africa…
Many, many sighs here. Many many sighs.
Re: HTML and not fucking it up: I use gedit* to compose comments; it does nice things like tell me when my tags are derped. Windows equivalent is Notepad++, I dunno about Macs.
*Learning emacs I swear!
nightshadequeen:
I find Firefox + Text formatting toolbar add on sufficient.
@ nightshadequeen
Perhaps if we pour libations to the Boltzmann Brontosaurus, someone will write an extension for gedit ….
I believe the point was that it already does all sorts of magical things. Type up some html and then View > Highlight Mode > Markup > HTML.
I wonder on what basis the claim is being made that (the same) Asian people 1. Have higher IQs and 2. Have lower nutrition and sanitation.
Point 2 in particular is…weird. And wrong.
Also, Edit > Preferences > View > Bracket Matching
Europeans
white
Africans
Asians
northeast Asians
African American
Australian
—
That is a partial list of “races” as identified by hillel.
Did I miss any?
Caine,
Two things:
True. Due to my Evil Feminism I own several uteri for the purposes of pro-lifer annoying abortions. I also produce second hand smoke from them. Multitasking!
Assumes facts not in evidence. Anywhere.
Or to put it another way: NEVAR! I WANT LEGO!!!!!
;-)
Louis
P.S. Sorry, I realise you are dealing with dumbitude, but I couldn’t resist. Scritches to Vasco.
@oldsillybear:
Apparently you lack a bit of imagination. A ‘vagina gremlin’ is a baby. My sister-in-law thinks babies look like ugly little gremlins, and they pop out of vaginas. So thus, ‘vagina gremlin.’ That your digging this to mean all humanity is such a stretch I’m surprised your brain hasn’t torn in twain. Then again, maybe it has. She is not a misanthrope. She gets along great with teenagers and adults. She just can’t stand the screaming, the constant energy, the potty accidents, the constant refrain of “but why?”, the tantrums, etc etc of young children. She’ll move seats at a restaurant if couples with a baby or toddler get seated nearby her.
Louis:
Who doesn’t? I still love lego, and I have no need of a sprog to justify my love of toys. ;D
Vasco shall receive scritchies and lovin’ when he wakes up.
Rowanvt:
Oh gods, so will I.
Leaving this here because it showed up on zephyr; totally threadrupt and OMG WHY DO I HAVE SO MUCH STUFF TO DO!
Caine:
Thirded. Ugh.
Heh. I’ll only move seats if a- the child does not stop crying within a couple minutes, b- the individual/s clearly cannot maintain control of their offspring, or c- the child decides to actively bother me, such as by kicking the back of a booth, or poke me.
For the most part, I do not care for children I’m not related to. How much I’m willing to tolerate in children is directly proportional to how much correction of their behaviour I’m allowed to do. I love/d being around most of my cousins because when they misbehave I get to tell them they’re being little shits and to stop doing whatever it was. And they mostly listen because I’m the fun rough-and-tumble cousin who wrestles with them and climbs trees and builds forts.
Children are humans with not (yet) fully developed bodies and with little experience in life, who behave accordingly (are curious, don’t know and try out social rules etc.). There are people that behave like children for different reasons regardless of their age, perhaps due to some impairment. Do you hate them too, Caine? To me, people who hate children will come across as rather misanthropic as well. Hate of children and hate of humans are of course two different things, but I take expressing the former as an indicator for the latter.
@#253 Strange gods before me
Let’s pick this apart.
.
.
you claim that I have no evidence and that I only leaped from ‘bad’ to ‘mentally ill’
even though I wrote that this is not the case, and my reasoning was like
extreme manifestation of internalized sexism -> extreme level of detachment from reality -> pathology
.
It’s not rocket science, you see…
.
The idea that extreme levels of detachment from reality are considered pathological is nothing controversial, afaik, neither is my labeling of her ideas as extreme and extremely detached from reality,
so if you wish to attack my conclusion, then, please, be specific. Provide some counterargument to this line of reasoning. Not just declaring it insufficient w/o any word about why it is supposed to be insufficient
.
.
This accusation is based on the unwarranted assumption that I am completely ignorant about the phenomenon of internalized prejudice ( internalized sexism in this case ). Well. I am not.
And while I did not read this particular book, I know enough from other sources, to know that most likely the book does not claim that even the extreme end of from reality divorced rationalizations of internalized sexism is completely within the norm of mental health. If it does, show me, I will be extremely surprised.
.
And in general, using a general reference to a book without a quoting a specific argument from it, as a sort of nuclear option summary refutation,
like “here a book YYY, you are therefore completely debunked, you ignoramus, no specific argument necessary”, is just rhetorical cheaps shot, not a valid argument at all.
.
.
Look. you twisted my words in a way that makes me look stupid
.
I objected, and and what you did ? twisted my words in the same direction again.
.
I objected, an you started calling me names for a change.
.
I objected, and now you came up with a completely distorted account of what happened in the previous discussion, and this one too
.
.
Let’s not forget, that I did not start the insulting. It’s just you, ‘unintentionally’ spinning my comment like it came out of blue and not as a consequence of the behavior of those people, you included, towards me.
.
How many times you may ‘unintentionally’ spin things against me till I am justified to call b/s on you doing it unintentionally ?
Owlglass
Why?
Well, then your take on it is often going to be wrong. Neither my best friend nor my sister-in-law hate humans. Good grief, Thanksgiving dinner at my friend’s house involved 26 non-related individuals including many from out of state. She is just such a warm, wonderful person that everyone gravitates toward her. But she does not like children at all and will go massively out of her way to avoid them.
Even animals can act this way. My dog will run away, cowering and drooling, from the bottle-baby kittens I bring home. Once they reach two months of age, however, she loves them and wants to play.
As to adults with impairment that cause them to still act like children, I am much more tolerant of them than any child. Just as I was much more tolerant of my hydrocephalic foster dog’s endless energy and inability to be trained than I am for Miss Jenny the min-pin/chi’s endless energy and inability to be trained. “Lucky” was stupid, outright completely medically stupid. But he was a doll and happy and friendly and knowing he couldn’t help it made me significantly more patient. Miss Jenny on the other hand is 7 months old, really quite intelligent, but prefers to spend her days acting like a ping-pong ball. I love her to bits, but I am so glad she’s going to a new place tomorrow. I can exercise the hell out of her for hours and she’s still bouncing off everything. She makes me tired whereas Lucky doing the same was cute.
Because Europeans did not do any such thing. What they did was IMPORT a civilization that had already been built up elsewhere, with all the necessary technologies and institutions fully matured, from across the sea.
And secondly, African nations DID. Mali, Songhai, Nubia, Great Zimbabwe, just for a few examples. Many of them were destroyed by marauding Europeans.
Caine,
Ummm… Are you new around here?
The only way that misopedia escapes being a form of misanthropy is if children are somehow regarded as subhuman.
I think that joey will now try to steer this into an anti-abortion spiel.
Good Morning All,
Strange, OK, let’s see, I’m an intellectually lazy, shallow thinking, dismissive sexist douche. Did I catch them all? Well, your entitled to your opinion. If that’s the way I presented myself or if that is how you interpreted my remarks, so be it. But don’t be surprised if I am disinclined to take you seriously.
If I am offended by the phrase, that is sufficient for my purposes. If Caine was offended when I described myself as childless, that is sufficient also.
As for point A in my stream of consciousness above. I think it is relevant, even critical to my argument. As is the concept of degree. In my thinking, there is a vast chasm between disliking and despising. Others here think the terms are nearly synonymous.
Oh, Strange, regarding ComradeBob, I’ll pick my battles and by golly you can pick your own!
And thanks to those who contributed to my quick and dirty attempt at logic. It’s always a challenge trying to root out fallacies and hidden assumptions. (Especially for us lazy, shallow thinkers) I have a hard time wrapping my head around excluding children from the category of humanity based on their level of biological development. (Would that be a category error, that sounds all sciency and logicy.)
Rowenvt, glad to hear your sister-in-law is not a misanthrope. Your word is good enough for me. But can you stretch that imagination a wee bit to include the possibility that I could, in good faith, be offended and alarmed? Not that you even need to care. To me, the remark stood out like a big, red, caution flag. I’m just as human as your in-law, when my patience wears thin, or when my poor bwain is torn in twain, I know I have muttered something about those evil little weasels. (that was before I added the weasel to my personal collection of totems)
So many comments, so little time.
Joey still attempts the impossible, which is making his hypothetical fuckwittery into reality? Poor Joey, divorced from reality. No reality, his hypotheticals *FLOOSH* sent to the waste control center, where they belong.
Janine:
I could, but instead I was thinking of steering the conversation into a discussion on ableism.
Anyone around here know anything about procmail?
Because
MAILDIR = /mit/[my username]/.mailspool
:0 fw
*
| gzip>>$MAILDIR/test.gz
is failing.
oldmrbear:
Why? Is there some reason we all have to love children?
Joey:
This is stupid. If I hate puppies, do I hate dogs? No. I hate puppies. If I hate German Shepherds, do I hate dogs? No, I hate German Shepherds. (For the record, I hate neither puppies nor German Shepherds.)
Misanthropy is the hatred/dislike/whatever word you want to go with of people in general. Not the hatred/etc of specific subgroups of people. We have other words for that. The hatred/marginalisation/etc of a specific subgroup of people based on race is called racism. It is not misanthropy because it’s DIFFERENT. It limits to a specific group. The hatred of children is the hatred of a specific group of people. Or of people at a specific stage in life. That is not synonymous with hatred of all people.
Words have meanings.
558, @Nightshadequeen: all humans are children, and were or are infants. Our development is a relatively slow continuum so that the difference between adult and child, even though informed by biology, is arbitrary and cultural. Many cultures used initiation rites where a person would count as a child one day, and become an adult the next day (legally the case as well). The notion of childhood (in Europe) didn’t really exist before the late middle ages. They were just younger people. Society cut them some slack as more inexperinced members, but generally, they were accountable as everyone else. Children (by our current idea) went onto crusades, and died in battles way into modernity. Our current ideas about childhood are strongly influenced by the Victorian Age. Hence, it will be very difficult to make a case of separating childhood from the rest of the human experience in either way. That’s why I think that hatred of children indicates misanthropy, and probably more. It’s not exact math, but a reasonably idea that Caine is misanthropic and potentially hates people who act like children, too, like developmentally disabled.
So sorry, joey. Your past shows that you are very concerned about abortion. The dislike of children, and claiming that they might be categorized as sub-human fits into your MO.
I am willing to admit to being mistaken.
Owlglass – There is currently a cultural perception of what a child is, as distinct from an adult, therefore your point is basically moot.
Owlglass,
But developmentally disabled people do not act like children, not as a matter of course. Sometimes they are forced by their “carers” – I use the word loosely – to pretend to be children because that is the only way the supposed carer can cope with someone who is a little harder to understand. Sometimes the disabled person will choose to act like a child because that is the only way they can get a particular need met. That’s not a tactic confined to one group – I’ve seen all sorts of adults do it.
The fact that you could even say something like that, that you imagine that every developmentally disabled person is exactly like every other one and that they are all children, suggests that you have no experience of interacting with anyone you would thoughtlessly toss into that same amorphous catergory. Or more bluntly, that you have no idea what you are talking about.
I await with interest the moment when Caine, who is the most scrupulous of us all in avoiding potentially demeaning or othering language, arrives on her giant rat to blow off your various appendages. Figuratively, of course!
la tricoteuse:
Alright now, that makes it much better then.
————
Owlglass:
Ding!
So, saying you have evidence now constitutes having evidence, even when you don’t show any evidence? Cool story, bro.
Non sequitur. Internalized sexism can be dealt with various ways. Of course it can be examined and fought against, like we do here. But acting from internalized sexism can instead facilitate collusion with patriarchy, such that the actor is rewarded at the expense of other women.
Cathrynn Brown is personally rewarded for introducing this bill. It has a known positive result for her: more donations to her reelection campaign. It is far more unlikely that she will ever be personally affected by the law itself. This is almost certainly a huge net positive for her. She is therefore acting rationally in her own personal interest.
Another non-sequitur. Not all extreme detachments from reality are pathological. If you had ever seriously studied abnormal psychology, you would not make blanket statements like this. You are relaying your creationist-like “common wisdom”. But you are only embarrassing yourself by not questioning your assumptions.
But again, you’re wrong in the first place about her being at all detached from reality, in regard to her internalized sexism. She has learned how to navigate the patriarchal world to her own benefit.
That blanket statement is objectively wrong; the consensus in psychological sciences is that you are wrong about this.
Of course it is controversial. She knows what she’s doing, and she knows it will result in campaign contributions from the anti-choice crowd. That’s reality.
I gave you the opportunity to study the matter at your leisure and find out whether there is any psychological science that would support your claims. Here it is again: http://scholar.google.com/ try it and save yourself some more embarrassment.
No, it is based on your demonstration that you are unaware of the notion of personal benefits from colluding with oppression.
You are shifting the burden of evidence now. Why would any book anywhere refute or support your idiosyncratic, made up on the spot, frankensteinmonster-brand crankery? No serious scholar has proposed your made-up bullshit, and so no one’s bothered to refute it. This is like asking why nobody had refuted machine elves before they were proposed.
You are making affirmative claims. You are the one claiming that introducing an anti-choice bill in the legislature constitutes mental illness. If you think this is scientifically uncontroversial, then you should be able to find plenty of evidence in the literature to support your claims. Go forth and make your case.
Your words as you intended them also makes you look stupid, and I did not twist your words. You can say that I misunderstood what you said. But this does not reasonably constitute twisting your words.
No, I did not.
I said “Go make your fucking case. I’m not going to indulge your crankish fantasies of competency in a field you haven’t studied” and “Have fun with the crank trolls, everyone.”
You are a crank. I’m pretty sure you’re also a troll, but it’s possible I’m wrong about that.
Calling you a crank definitely does not constitute bullying. It’s just a fact. Sorry you don’t like it, crank.
What is distorted in my account? Here is the account, again:
“Your scenario in 202 does not indicate what time it is in the scenario. There is a plausible reading by which you’re saying Pharyngula has already turned into an authoritarian cesspool, and it happened slowly. And I did not persistently twist your words; I read them, responded as seemed appropriate, and then when you objected to any particular reading, I did not insist upon it further. First in 212 you said I was wrong to read you saying it’s an echo chamber. Okay, so I didn’t contest that. Then in 220 you made clear that what time you think it is in your original scenario. Okay, so I didn’t contest that either. When given your clarifications, I have not mischaracterized anything that you clarified. This can hardly be called persistently twisting your words, unless you’ll use that phrase to refer to something I did unintentionally. But it was unintentional, and so whatever else you want to call it, it’s clearly not bullying.”
Explain what is a distortion in there. It is intended to be accurate, and it appears to be accurate. So explain what’s wrong with it, and quote me.
If you can justify your claim that it’s not unintentional, you should try to do so. You should explain your reasoning. I have explained what happened, and it is the truth. If I wanted to be more unkind to you, then I would be more unkind to you. Instead I have explained why your initial comment has a plausible reading by which you’re saying Pharyngula has already turned into an authoritarian cesspool, and it happened slowly. You should try to step back from your own words and read them in a new light: Your scenario in 202 does not indicate what time it is in the scenario. It is therefore possible to read carefully and still interpret as I did. In any case there is also the possibility of a misreading. I did not misread, I only misinterpreted, and it’s clear why I did. But I was tired, and if you had written more clearly, I might have nevertheless misread.
When given your clarifications, I have not mischaracterized anything that you clarified. You should try to be more charitable in return. You’re not justified in berating me endlessly for mistakes that I have not even contested were mistakes. If you keep this up then you will in fact be bullying.
Yes you did. You insulted lots of commenters here. Here’s your comment:
joey:
It makes it not misanthropy. Keep those goalposts right where they are, buddy.
That is faulty logic. There is no evidence whatsoever that disliking children leads to disliking developmentally disabled people.
@571, la tricoteuse, the cultural perception of them is that they aren’t fully developed humans and thus are treated differently. People who hate children don’t do it because of some arbitrary criterion (like age or size) , but because they find not fully developed humans annoying. Try your rhetorics, but that’s how it comes across. I’m curious if Caine hates developmentally challenged people, too.
I realize that my posting history here is extremely short. Just so you guys can deal with me, as I am, and not be forced to guess or use stereotypes, profiles, projections, or sample means I’ll provide a little more info. Some of which will be merely factual statements others will be my opinions. Be forewarned that my opinions listed here are those which I have held for several decades and it is highly unlikely that any of you will convince me to change my mind. Don’t give a damn, no problem, stop reading now.
white male
hetero
middle class
college educated
politically liberal but partyfree
old
atheist
never married
without children by choice
born, raised and live in the USA, left coast
I am pro-abortion, and believe that a woman should be allowed to abort at any time, including full term. It’s her body and her choice.
If a woman wants children, fine, it’s her choice and no one else’s. If a woman decides not to have children, it’s fine by me, though I have absolutely no say in the matter. Again it’s a woman’s individual choice. Society be damned.
If a man decides not to reproduce, well it’s your choice mate.
I have long been enamored with the concept of zero population growth. Social rewards for being childfree sounds intriguing.
Don’t like babies, no problems. Don’t like children, your choice. Dont’ like adolescents, I feel your pain. Don’t like young adults, I understand, I tend to favor folks over forty myself. Don’t like old farts? OK, I confess, people who don’t like old farts make my ass twitch. In short who or what you like or dislike is your problem, not mine.
My sonar pings, radars flash, sirens wail and caution flags fly when I hear words like hate and despise applied to people.
I think vaginas are most excellent.
I don’t hate my penis.
This list could go on forever, but that should give you a bit more to work with.
Silly Old Bear
Owlglass:
I wonder what makes you qualified to tell other people why they don’t like children.
No-one knows anything about procmail, including those who wrote procmail.
Do you have a line for
PATH=path_to_gzip?Or alternatively, try the full path to gzip.
Also: You can put in
VERBOSE=onand see more error messages.Uh, dumb question, but: do you have write access to
$MAILDIR/test.gz?Joey, demented hypotheticalist:
This is reality Joey. You know, the real world you keep trying to ignore while proposing your imaginary deity soaked bad thinking. The horde will let you know when you have a real point. Don’t hold your breath.
oldmrbear,
I think so, but you misunderstood a couple. You are intellectually lazy and shallow thinking, and I’ve explained why.
For instance, here is the form of your logic:
[X] are human beings.
A misanthrope is a person who hates humanity.
A person who hates [X] is by definition a misanthrope.
Now substitute for X:
Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler are human beings.
A misanthrope is a person who hates humanity.
A person who hates Hitler and Himmler is by definition a misanthrope.
Do you understand why that’s shitty logic?
But I didn’t say you’re a dismissive douche — I said don’t try to use humor in this particular discussion, because it’ll make you sound like one. “Don’t. It only makes you sound like a dismissive douche. Be serious now, because sexism is serious.” That’s good advice. It’s intended to help you not sound like a dismissive douche. You should be grateful.
And I haven’t said you are “a sexist.” I said your comments are sexist. You are saying sexist things. You should stop doing that.
Nobody else cares about your purposes, though. It isn’t sufficient to make an argument that other people should not say the thing that you’re upset about.
She wasn’t just offended. She explained.
You evidently did not understand. Let me repeat for emphasis.
Replace every instance of “dislike” with “hate” and everything I said will still stand.
Replace every instance of “dislike” with “hate” and everything I said will still stand.
Replace every instance of “dislike” with “hate” and everything I said will still stand.
Replace every instance of “dislike” with “hate” and everything I said will still stand.
Replace every instance of “dislike” with “hate” and everything I said will still stand.
You complained that I was referring to dislike when in your opinion I should have been referring to hate. Fine, fine. I told you to substitute hate for dislike in my earlier statements. Just act like I said hate instead, and then address my arguments.
It’s not just a matter of picking your battles; it’s also the fact that if you don’t read what he said, you can’t understand why rowanvt said what she said, and thus you can’t understand what you’re commenting about. You are choosing to be ignorant.
The comment in question came up as a response to Robert “comradebob” Mugabe here who was claiming that all young women desire children, and implying there’s something wrong with any woman who doesn’t. It was contextually appropriate to bring up a strong counterexample. You took this out of context to complain about the phrase; at the same time you still haven’t even told Robert to fuck off. (You are still welcome to tell him to fuck off. Now would be a fine time.) You picked out a quote from a direct reply to bob. You can’t understand the relevance of that quote without understanding what it was a response to.
You are protecting a sexist by refusing to judge whether he is a sexist while criticizing the people who criticized the sexist.
You are contributing to sexism by failing to pick up your part of the work.
Do the dishes and tell bob to fuck off.
Nobody is excluding children from the category of humanity. What we are saying is that they are not the whole class of humanity, and misanthropy is hatred of the whole class of humanity, so hating children is not misanthropy. As now explained, it is misopedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misanthropy
«Misanthropy is the general hatred, mistrust or disdain of the human species». Emphasis mine. Hatred of the whole class of humans generally.
«Molière’s character Alceste in Le Misanthrope (1666) states:
“My hate is general, I detest all men»
«In Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates defines the misanthrope in relation to his fellow man: “Misanthropy develops when without art one puts complete trust in somebody thinking the man absolutely true and sound and reliable and then a little later discovers him to be bad and unreliable…and when it happens to someone often…he ends up…hating everyone.”»
So the fuck what? What matters is whether the person you’re criticizing is actually mistreating children in some way. There is no indication of this.
You should refrain from expressing your opinions about how any woman ought to feel about children. If a person is unkind to children, then that’s worth talking about.
Owlmirror
Yeah, it was that. I forgot to give daemon.scripts write access :D
Nerd
Fewer mental health insults, please.
I fully expect that frankensteinmonster is going to claim again that he did not insult anyone here, and totally ignore the actual quotes:
“you come across as the worst sort of up tight Orange County right-wing racist republican assholes at times.”
“this sort people – mindless raging tribalists”.
Owlglass:
Your knowledge of the lives of the majority of children in the Victorian Era is–as presented here–so shallow as to be a perversion. Your second sentence in the quote is word salad. What it therefore makes you think is worthless. As for being “not exact math,” it’s not even coherent sociology–either on the side of the current conception of childhood or the side of non-traditional adult attitudes. To append “reasonable” or “potential” to any conclusion you draw from it is laughable.
Maureen Brian:
I have to give a big LOL to this.
I have four small children. In just one post she described each of them as “vagina gremlins”, “critters”, and “sprogs”. Which I guess is perfectly okay for some people here. Whatever. But I personally would hesitate to label one using such disparaging terms as someone who is “the most scrupulous in avoiding potentially demeaning or othering language”.
————-
Nerd:
You should just label me as “childish”. It’s a win/win insult, since evidently not only is it just as insulting but you can remain perfectly PC doing so.
585, athyco
You probably mix up working conditions of victorian age children (working hard, in mines, poverty etc.) with romantic notions of childhood that were developed during that time.
So…because YOU have children, you’re offended by people who don’t like kids. (Incidentally, only one of those terms was coined by someone who dislikes children. The other two are regularly used affectionately.)
joey is a conservative Christian, by the way, so y’all know who you’re siding with.
+++++
If anyone was wondering “is Owlglass usually a transparent bullshitter?” Yes.
Most of the breeders I know habitually refer to their own spawn by terms at least that rude. And presumably they like them.
I am not going to try to put words/feelings/opinions in anyone’s else’s mouths, but if I may, I will try to explain “hates children” in my own perspective that may apply to others here. I do not relate well to young children and I find their behavior generally annoying. I don’t blame them, it isn’t their fault, they’re just little kids with limited experience and attention spans. When I’m out for an evening at a restaurant or wherever and there are disruptive children, again I find them very annoying and unpleasant, but I place the responsibility and blame, as it were, on the parents for bringing their children to a venue at which they are not yet prepared or able to cope with and behave appropriately. The parents are putting their pleasure/needs ahead of everyone else’s (including their children’s) at that venue and I consider that to be extremely rude and unacceptable.
I actually find the term “vagina gremlins” to be amusing, just as I did my late husband’s term “rug rats” and even see some affection there, though that’s possibly just my own projection. I really don’t see anyone actually hating kids – they/we just don’t find their company to be an experience that we find particularly engaging or pleasurable.
512, mildlymagnificent
As a white South Australian living in the Adelaide Hills for most of my childhood & teens, I can confirm that’s exactly how we did it. An SA Yorke Peninsula/west coast holiday (or even a Silver Sands shack weekend) isn’t something you come back from lightly or forget easily and it’s easy to extrapolate that kind of existence onto an entire lifetime in your imagination. As for Murray cod, yes – magnificent fish indeed. Now, if we could just eradicate the bloody European carp (another legacy of our superior European founders, who didn’t appear to know a fucking Eden when standing in the middle of it and decided to stock it with their own creatures).
I’m disappointed in hilell for not returning after I went to bed last night. But hey, maybe our visitor is off reading Jared Diamond, or … something. Hopefully they’re off reading something.
Christian troll joey,
No, insults about kids are not blank-check okay to use at any time.
You are also ignoring the context of why this came up.
I know we have young lurkers and commenters at Pharyngula. It’s not okay for them to be gratuitously insulted. The comment in question came up as a response to Robert “comradebob” Mugabe here who was claiming that all young women desire children, and implying there’s something wrong with any woman who doesn’t. It was contextually appropriate to bring up a strong counterexample.
Was someone siding with him? I can’t find anyone doing so.
Holy crap – “vagina gremlins” :D
I’m totally stealing that. My wife’ll love it – particularly as she’s currently studying medicine with a view to practising GP/obstetrics.
joey is siding with Owlglass and oldmrbear.
Caine and I warned oldmrbear specifically about how his comments reinforce sexism.
I want him to consider what joey’s support implies.
Oh right. More who was being sided with BY rather than who was siding WITH Joey. /hairsplitting.
oldmrbear doesn’t seem to care about his comments reinforcing sexism, though, judging by his reaction to being told that they did. Perhaps he thinks only consciously hating/actively seeking to discriminate against women counts as sexism, and doesn’t recognize that it can be, and very very often is, unconscious. Wouldn’t be the first, or the last to be so obtuse.
Owlglass,
Would you be willing to change your nym to Eulenspiegel or something like that? I’m sure you’re put off by how I’m also being unkind to you, but this really is a separate matter, and I’m not saying this to be unkind. Your nym just requires a lot of unnecessary processing, since we already have an Owlmirror here. I won’t bug you about it if you don’t want to, but I thought I might ask once.
Owlglass:
Who’s doing the mixing up? You mentioned “Victorian Age,” not their “notions.” If our current concept of childhood is “strongly influenced” by a romantic notion that was out of step with reality, your conclusions that “hatred of children indicates misanthropy, and probably more” is therefore based on a romantic notion out of step with reality. Shallow, as I said.
la tricoteuse @ 568:
“Why? Is there some reason we all have to love children?”
Of course not. You are quite free to love, hate or ignore anyone you please. It’s your choice and your problem.
599, athyco
The point has been that there is no magical point in time when someone stops being a child. That moment when someone is declared an adult, even though informed by biology, is rather arbitrary and shaped by culture. Your private entanglement in the machinations of the Victorian Age aren’t interesting. If you don’t like that example, then discard it.
well, that’s a pretty meaningless statement. after all, most people who dislike children don’t dislike them until they turn 18, and then suddenly are all ok with them.
And then there’s of course the conflation of dislike and strong desire not to have any because you feel no affinity for them and no desire whatsoever to spend 20 years of your life having to deal with them 24/7
Owlglass:
We live in a culture. Therefore our perception of what constitutes a child is shaped by that culture. Following on from that, if someone dislikes children, he or she dislikes what his/her cultural experience tells him/her qualifies as a child. So what’s your point with all this “childhood is a cultural construct” stuff? It’s only a point if we somehow form our perceptions of things we like and dislike completely independent of cultural constructs.
.
.
.
oldmrbear:
Why do you perceive my dislike of children as a problem?
Strange @ 596:
Oh my goodness. OK I considered it. Now please inform me what Joey’s support implies. Please understand that I couldn’t care less about Joey’s comments or support. He is not my friend or ally. His “support” has no bearing what so ever on my comments or opinions. Please don’t try to saddle me with Joey’s baggage. I have absolutely no control over it.
Which has nothing to do with your argument. Only if they never stopped acting as children would you have a point. Usually the change from children to adult behavior happens during adolescence. Most folks who dislike children dislike pre-adolescents.
It means your arguments are helpful to a sexist conservative Christian. That is because your arguments perpetuate sexism.
For all the other reasons already mentioned, you should refrain from expressing your opinions about how any woman ought to feel about children. If a person is unkind to children, then that’s worth talking about.
Well, they are in the sense of not being an actual problem, but oldmrbear’s bloated rhetoric gets in the way of ever making a point supported with some kind of reasoning. Whatever they are, they’re yours, definitely not his.
I meant to say that includes loving and ignoring. All of those are non-problems.
Oh! You mean the arbitrary culture shaping childhood AND motherhood so that a woman who doesn’t want children can’t be honest about her dislike or distaste for dealing with them without having someone thinking that such an attitude is “misanthropy, and probably more.” (What the hell is the “probably more” after the hatred of humanity as a whole?)
Probably hates puppies and kittens too. I’m 89% certain of that, with an 11% margin of error.
Beat me to it Razor. Your answer is good enough.
That is, I’m somewhere between 78% and 100% certain of it…. probably.
I have no idea how likely it actually is, given “hatred” of children, that someone will also “hate” puppies or kittens, or (less likely) both puppies and kittens.
oldmrbear @577:
Follow consciousness razor’s lead with the percentages and quantify that “highly unlikely.” I thing strange gods before me deserves to know if all that work is for the rest of us and lurkers.
Beat you to what?
I recommend you shut up, if you have nothing useful to contribute.
oops
2nd sentence, 2nd word: think
Owlglass, did you see my comment 598?
So far, all your argument implies is that dislike of children will occur differently, perhaps ending at different typical ages, in different cultures. But in each particular culture, it would still be dislike of children, and it still would end eventually.
Wrong.
You are talking about the sorites paradox, with a heap of days.
It may not be obvious exactly when the pile of days becomes a heap. But it does eventually become a heap — and children do eventually become not-children.
To say that hatred of children constitutes misanthropy logically implies that all humans, no matter what their current ages, currently are children. That is the only way hatred of children can constitute misanthropy; the set of current children must be identical to the set of all humans.
But it is not true that all humans are currently children. Evidence: most, probably all, of the participants in this discussion are not currently children.
To say that hatred of children constitutes misanthropy is equivalent to saying that a grain of sand is a heap of sand.
You are perpetuating sexism by trying to instruct women what feelings they should have about children. You should refrain from expressing your opinions about how any woman ought to feel about children. If a person is unkind to children, then that’s worth talking about.
translation: those damn kids and their rock ‘n roll music need to get off my lawn
Haha. Fucking language.
It may not be obvious exactly when the accumulated days become a heap.
There, that works.
*recordscratchsound*
Oh! Yes, and much, much worse in private.
*ponders*
*ponders some more*
I’ll get back to you in about 14 years. ;-)
So you’re telling me there’s a chance.
To be fair, I think all of the opinions listed in 577 can be fine.
It’s just that this one — “My sonar pings, radars flash, sirens wail and caution flags fly when I hear words like hate and despise applied to people” — still being relied upon for argument even in the face of fine arguments for why in this case what’s been said is not a big deal.
So oldmrbear was alerted. That, in and of itself, is fine. But if he wanted to talk about it, he should have found other ways to talk about it rather than calling the woman in question a misanthrope. He might have asked a question instead. And now that his logic has failed repeatedly to justify his practice of continuing to fucking drone on and on about how he was alerted, he should fucking drop it, because all he’s doing now is perpetuating sexism while stroking his own ego.
it’s not the opinions I’m commenting on, it’s the attitude of “I’ve had these opinions since forever, so I’m keeping them”. It looks like “we’ve always done it that way” to me ;-)
I think “pile of days becomes a heap” worked pretty well. It reminds you what the metaphor is. It’s obvious enough that days don’t come in piles.
I suppose they don’t really “come” at all, since that’s a hidden metaphor.
Or like “I’m old, so give me special privileges to be unreasonable” … but maybe that’s the same thing.
la tricoteuse:
Does a person have to be a minority to be offended by racism? Does a person have to be handicapped to be offended by ableism?
But no, I’m not offended by Caine’s misopedia. Doesn’t mean that others may not be.
————-
strange gods:
You’re correct.
An insult being “contextually appropriate” doesn’t justify its okay-ness.
The ad hominem fallacy is very strong in you.
A) Your arguments that it is not okay to “despise” children for the sake of them being children are in line with a conservative Christian.
B) Conservative Christians are awful people.
-> Ergo, your arguments must be complete bunk.
It would only perpetuate sexism if you think only women can be misopedist (which would be sexist in of itself). I personally think that women as well as men can be misopedist, which is equally not okay.
Alright, work time is over. I have to go back home to my sty of critters and vagina gremlins (I concede that “sprog” may not have a disparaging connotation anymore).
616, strange gods before me ॐ
I never said that hatred of children constitute misanthropy. I established that childhood is a fuzzy set, defined differently at different times, where our ideas where shaped by this and that. Of course it always means “young humans” in some fashion. But when people hate “young humans” and it is very difficult to draw a line, then I wonder what exactly makes the hatred cease. I am curious what Caine, who expressed a hatred of children, has to say about this, and what exactly makes her hatred of young humans go away, so that she doesn’t like to be seen as a misanthrope.
It is not only okay, it is excellent. The allowable, acceptable admission that one does not enjoy the company of children strengthens our communities and our culture by giving adults the ready choice to be parents or not to be parents. Too many people have children due to cultural and family pressure resulting in children being pawns in some status game. Not everyone is suited to parenthood. Not everyone wants that job. Everyone suffers when parenthood is taken on as an obligation rather than a true desire.
How exactly is disliking children like racism?
So… are you offended by racism? Does this remind you at all about how disliking children is like racism?
That’s just an accurate description.
.
Is there any way it’s possible that you could be wrong in this situation? If it’s true that you’re an awful person because of your moral claims, this argument that your moral claims are awful is not a fallacy. It’s just a statement about you that you don’t happen to like, because you believe (naturally) that you’re correct about them.
Athyco @ 613:
No, I don’t think Razor would be a good lead to follow. Any numbers I would use would come straight from my ass. I think my qualitative descriptor is precise enough. Try a simple thought experiment here. Examine one of my opinions in my comment above.
“If a woman wants children, fine, it’s her choice and no one else’s. If a woman decides not to have children, it’s fine by me, though I have absolutely no say in the matter. Again it’s a woman’s individual choice. Society be damned.”
OK, now how likely (do you think) is it that someone here will convince me to change my opinion on this matter. High, medium or low are just fine. Assigning a number will most probably only create a false appearance of precision.
Ok guys, I’m told that the following (slightly edited) note is inappropriate for the Lounge, and that Thunderdome is the place.
Question: Has science shown that women and men are different (other than the obvious physical differences in reproductive organs, average physical strength, average height, etc.)? In the December 12 blog entry on Michael Shermer, PZ quotes Harriet Hall’s statement: “I think it is unreasonable to expect that equal numbers of men and women will be attracted to every sphere of human endeavor. Science has shown that real differences exist.” Do you agree? In the same blog entry, PZ says, “Science has not shown that women have significantly different cognitive abilities.”
I would agree, but it seems to me that research is leaning towards “real differences” actually existing, and not just in cognitive abilities. I recall a Scientific American article on gender research back in 2005:
http://www.bio.uci.edu/public/press/2005/hisherbrain.pdf
“..over the past decade investigators have documented an astonishng array of structural, chemical and functional variations in the brains of males and females…[The view that differences in the brains only referred to mating behaviors, sex behaviors and the hypothalamus] has been knocked aside by a surge of findings that highlight the influence of sex on many areas of cognition and behavior, including memory, emotion, vision, hearing, the processing of faces and the brain’s response to stress hormones….So the existence of widespread anatomical disparities between men and women suggests that sex does influence the way the brain works…at least some sex differences in cognitive function do not result from cultural influences or the hormonal changes associated with puberty—they are there from birth.” The article cites a study in which even male monkeys who were unlikely to be swayed by human cultural influences, preferred “male” toys and the female monkeys tended to prefer “female” toys. Another study showed gender differences in human babies after one day of life. Another suggests that “females may better equipped to tolerate chronic stress than males are.”
So if this article gives a fair account of research into gender differences, Harriet’s statement is well founded. I definitely don’t see that science has shown that there are no innate differences between male and female preferences, or ways of responding to the world. Perhaps commenters here might be able to cite research that sheds light on this subject and give their insightful opinions on the above article?
Thanks,
Sophia
No, but this is demonstrably different.
Besides children, there is no other group of humans which everyone is a member of for a time, and which everyone eventually stops being a member of if they live long enough. Disliking children, therefore, is categorically different from disliking any other group.
This matters because it means, among other things, that children are not othered. Everyone can identify with children, because everyone has been a child, can remember what it was like to be a child, and can call upon those memories to conceptualize themself as the child they were. One of the big problems with racism and ableism is that these prejudices other the targets; the prejudiced person acquires a mental distance from the target, a distance that is impossible to have with children.
It might. It depends on what’s meant by “contextually appropriate”. You will see I was contrasting it with “gratuitous”. Something can be acceptable when done for particular reasons, while not being acceptable when done gratuitously.
One of the reasons I like you so much, joey, is that you are so quick to use big words without understanding them. It is hilarious to watch.
I did not say that because you are a sexist conservative Christian, your arguments are therefore wrong. That would be the ad hominem fallacy.
I said that because you are a sexist conservative Christian, people should think carefully about whether they want to be on your side — because, as Janine indicated at 563, you are a natalist bigot, and your arguments are tuned (would be fine tuned, if you were cleverer) to promote your natalist bigotry.
Nope. As Caine explained in 511, it is a special problem when women are shamed for disliking or not wanting to have children. It is less of a problem if the same attitudes are directed at men; because men’s reproductive choices are not as socially controlled as women’s, and men are already not the primary targets of institutional sexism.
I mean, it is not okay to shame men for not liking or wanting to have children. But it’s not the same huge social problem of sexism the way it is when women are instructed how to feel about children.
It is always okay for anyone to dislike children. What matters is actually mistreating children in some way. There is no indication of mistreatment here. You are perpetuating sexism by trying to instruct women what feelings they should have about children. You should refrain from expressing your opinions about how any woman ought to feel about children. If a person is unkind to children, then that’s worth talking about.
Fucking vervets don’t have fucking toy preferences. They don’t even know what a fucking cooking pan is, much less fucking prefer it because it’s a cooking pan.
And a fucking cooking pan isn’t a “female” fucking object. I have lots of fucking cooking pans. I like to cook, yet here I am, a dude with cooking pans, who is not a vervet and knows what they actually are. And no, I do not have a truck. Or a ball. I don’t think have a single fucking ball.
And on a more institutional or political level, no one here (to my knowledge) would claim children shouldn’t have basic human rights. That’s trickier than it sounds because it doesn’t include the right to vote and so on, but the point is that it isn’t treating them unfairly.
Owlglass, did you see my comment 598?
But it can’t indicate misanthropy either, for the same reason: because in each particular culture, it would still be dislike of children, and it still would end eventually.
That’s not what makes a fuzzy set, by the way. That’s a lot of different sets, referred to by the same word. But it’s possible to talk about any one of these sets and not the others, simply by being explicit.
But it isn’t difficult to draw a line. It’s difficult to draw the precise line that separates heap from not heap. It is very easy to draw a different line, later, such that a given culture at a given time in history would agree among themselves that people on that line are not children anymore. And here is your problem. It remains the case that these people, who are agreed in their culture not to be children anymore, are humans but not targeted by dislike of children, and therefore dislike of children is not an indication of misanthropy.
It doesn’t matter! You are perpetuating sexism by trying to instruct women what feelings they should have about children. You should refrain from expressing your opinions about how any woman ought to feel about children. If a person is unkind to children, then that’s worth talking about.
I am 100% in favor of lowering the voting age to 16, I’m pretty sure 15 is good too, and I figure 14 is likely to be a good idea. What we should be concerned with is whether they exhibit independent thought on the matter, so what we should be looking at is when kids’ voting preferences approach being as likely to differ from their parents’ as an 18 year old’s are likely to differ. I’d absolutely support lowering it to 16 immediately and then studying more to get an idea of how much further it reasonably ought to be lowered. (Also, this will probably change over time; if we treat 16 year olds as political citizens, then it should influence 15 year olds to begin planning to be political, for instance.)
OK guys, try this one. Apparently I was too opaque. The silly old bear has been pondering, studying and arguing about these issues for many years. Fine tuning, expanding or whatever as the case may be. And after years of dealing with racists, sexists, homophobes, violent preditors, agists, ableists, other ists I can’t think of at the moment my opinions have reached a position where it’s highly unlikely that anyone is going to change my mind. If you don’t like it, tough.
Although there is some appeal to the interpretation that I’m all about stopping pesky kids from smoking my grass and stealing my rock and roll.
philosophia,
Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference
by Cordelia Fine
hardcover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0393068382
paperback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0393340244
oldmrbear:
Consciousness razor was making a joke. I played on that joke in reference to strange god before me’s responses to you and your lack of substantive response to them.
I have no comment about your self-referential list. Why should I? It has nothing to do with your calling a woman a misanthrope, no matter that you later write “Society be damned.”
An article in a non-peer reviewed popular science magazine, versus a peer reviewed sociological/psychological journal? *Walks off muttering about folks not being able to understand real evidence*
It was ten years ago today when dubya lied to the public of the United States.
I will never miss him and I will never forgive the harm he has done.
Sophia,
Perhaps you might want to tell us what you want this research to show since you clearly have some purpose in mind and “insightful” opinions to share.
+1 (in progress)
Jadehawk:
More: those damn kids and their rock ‘n roll music need to get off my lawn and I’m a man so I know what I’m talking about!
It’s interesting to note that it’s the women who are being berated and treated as children, going straight back to that screech of “unnatural!”, as if we were the last humans being discovered in The Body Snatchers. It’s annoying as all hells.
I seriously dislike the assumption on the part of some people that everyone else here is very young. It’s a stupid assumption to make.
athyco:
OK, my bad. I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to Razor, I just caught sight of the number bs and dismissed it. Any play from you would sail right over my head. And my references fall flat.
You and I have a different take on Strange, and you are correct that I have little desire to continue responding, substantively or not.
So your main concern is not with my core beliefs. I can live with that. Your focus is on my calling a woman a misanthrope. Noted. I tried up thread to explain myself. Several people didn’t like my arguments. Some think I am spreading an insidious support for sexist thought. Perhaps I am, but I honestly could not follow the tortured logic presented to me by Caine and Strange. My bad? I’m sure Caine is quite capable of straightening me out She may have had quite enough of me by now.
I’ve been digging myself pretty deep here, maybe it’s time to find another potential hole.
634, strange gods before me ॐ
I am not instructing anyone, and it doesn’t matter what other attribute a children hating person has. I don’t know much about other users anyway, and don’t care enough. It would be ad hominem anyway. Your maneuver just doesn’t work.
No, no, no.
We pesky kids stole your grass and smoked your rock and roll.
Pip pip!
The wrong “I was insulted” or the real “I was dismissed because of X I said earlier on an unrelated topic”. You can be dismissed for your “thoughts” on a given topic.
Guess who got paid fifteen dollars per word spoken?
Cute comeback CM. No, wait a minute, smoking my rock and roll? Nah, them pikers are standing on the shoulders of giants. Or something…
I feel really, really sorry for whoever had to crunch those numbers. *shudder*
In memoriam.
Rakim.
Interesting that “Sophia”, who as PZ has noted in the Lounge is actually a bloke, should have chosen to adopt a common woman’s name as his sig in order to come here and jaq about gender essentialism.
I can feel your shudder from here. However, given the constant improvement in speech recognition software, I’m guessing a lot of the work could be accomplished without burning many ears. And if the software garbled a few words, I’m sure it wouldn’t change the meaning by much. Perhaps there were some Palinites to volunteer for proof listening.
Let us be fair, opposablethumbs. It is possible that the person is a woman. Just because the address is in a man’s name does not mean that person at the terminal is a man.
One thing that strikes me as a bit odd in conversing about children. No-one’s talked about the fact that many people have preferred and disliked periods of childhood. Even wondrously womanly women who have always wanted children and then proceed to produce them have personal likes and dislikes of this kind. Talk to teachers and you find many who are completely horrified by the prospect of dealing with some age groups when they honestly enjoy others – kindie kids, teenagers, 7 year olds, 10 year olds – all have their bouquets and brickbats. (Though I think the dislike/fear of being stuck with an all year 9 teaching roster is near universal, as near as dammit is to swearing.)
Plenty of people who just lurve babies and think every helpless babe in arms is as cute as a button absolutely detest 11 year old boys, or teenage girls, or all toddlers. Plenty of other people avoid messy, demanding babies and toddlers like the plague but eagerly devote every weekend to coaching junior sports or teaching budding musicians or playing/working with their own primary or older children. And there are many people who either don’t mind or really like children – as long as they don’t have to live with them. Along with others who want nothing to do with them at all.
Nicely stated mildlymagnificent. Some of this was at least implied in this thread. But not fleshed out. Given the diversity of preferences and behaviors in our species I think that measures of central tendency are not all that useful. The treasure is in the variation, not the mean.
I adore children of all ages. Babies, toddlers, elementary school, middle school, high school… kids are fun.
Know what else I don’t have a problem with? People who don’t like children. Seriously, it’s not a big deal. I’ll get mad if someone mouths off at a child acting with a child’s normal behavior, but not liking being around kids? What business is it of mine if they don’t like being around kids? How is this some big affront to humanity? There are enough of us who do like being around them that the future of the species isn’t in any danger.
mildlymagnificient:
If I “translate” year 9 correctly, they’d range from 12-14 over the course of the school year? If so, I love ’em. LOVE ’em! Besides teaching them for 30 years, for 18 of those years, until the insurance and liability became too much of a factor, I’d arrange an overnight trip for 100-120 of them to Six Flags over Georgia for the first weekend of Spring Break.
A long while back, I’d been getting pantsfeelings over a fellow who one day said, “I don’t know how you can stand teaching English to 13-year-olds in Mississippi. Isn’t that like a lifetime in a third world country?” Instant pantsfeelings kill.
observe as I deftly avoid all talk of ‘vervets’
VEEERVEEETSSS
athyco,
(120) 12 to 14 y/o kids at an amusement park, that is mind boggling responsibility. How many assistants would you have? One in 10?
Per this comment on Greta’s blog, I’m asking coelsblog to link to the comments they made in places that are defending Shermer (as previously requested by someone else here).
I look forward to their response.
Well done, Chas.
JesseW:
Oh, ick.
I wouldn’t hold your breath, Jesse.
I can begin to relate to and communicate with children once they start to understand sarcasm.
Maureen:
:D In this case, it’s not worth saddling up the rat. I had enough of “owlglass” shit in the Matt Dillahunty thread, which SG linked to, supra. A willful idiot, that one. As for developmentally delayed adults, I treat them as adults because that is what they are – it would be demeaning and humiliating for someone to treat them, condescendingly, as a child. Someone who would do so is contemptible. As it stands, I don’t much care for adults acting the condescending idiot with children. If you’re going to be around them, then I think you should at least be willing to take them on individual merit and treat them accordingly, rather than make the base assumption that most of them are worthy of being dismissed and not being paid attention to, based on their age.
Again, I do not like children. At all. I avoid them whenever possible. However, when I have [unavoidably] been around them, I actually listen and pay attention to them, which tends to make them try to attach themselves to me like a fucking barnacle – all that shows me is that most adults who are around them don’t do much in the listening/paying attention department. Those would be the people who claim to like sprogs.
*happy vervet dance*
Caine:
Here’s a hypothesis: After a while of interacting, parents note that said barnacle sprogs behave well for you. (That would be a good thing if they’d examine what you do rather than falling into the usual, “See…you’d make a great mother!)
Busy day, but before I forget I wanted to thank theophontes for #500. I had misinterpreted that comment – we agree!
This has also been my experience, as someone who strongly dislikes children and being around them. When a kid starts in with the “but why?,” for instance, they’ll immediately get as complete an answer as I can give to ‘why’ a particular thing is the case, phrased exactly the same way I would for an adult. IME, this usually gets them to shut up, which is all I was after in the first place (A large part of the reason I don’t like being around kids is that loud and high pitched noises tend to give me a headache; and almost all the noises kids make fall into at least one of those categories, so what I most want from any in my vicinity is for them to shut the hell up.) Mind, my actual reflex in those cases is to roar at them to shut the hell up, but that’s a) not nice or appropriate, and b) not terribly helpful anyway, so I suppress it.
Nuh. Here year 9 translates as turning 14 during the year, many almost 15. I’ve never had much trouble dealing with them in small doses, but the prospect of facing 30 of the ravening beasts for an hour or so followed by another similar group for the same time is beyond me. I suspect it’s some still childish behaviours combining with the emerging mob instinct.
Don’t know, but it’s very tiring and the “clever” quips get so tedious while also being irritating for maintaining class control, many people find these classes quite unsatisfying to deal with. I think it’s the ‘unsatisfying’ part that’s the killer. (Having had many such students relate their ‘amusing’ exchanges with their class teachers arouses deep sympathy in me for those with the patience to deal with them all day every day.) My husband seems not to mind so long as he also has younger and older classes as well.
Athyco:
Oh…:shudder: I can’t even express the depth of how much I despise the “you’d be a good/great/whatever mom” business. I know I would not be, I know the reasons I would not be and just because I treat those sprogs I do encounter like actual people does not mean I have any doubts about wanting them or even like them enough to entertain the notion.
Sorry about the delayed replies to past thunderdome discussion – been busy for a few days. Still plenty more replies to other questions asked of me that I’ll make over next few hours / days :
@ 0ld thunderdome thread’s 588. John Morales :
Err, I am?
No, I’m not claiming that Islamic Jihadists are literally not human although they certainly behave in inhumane and unacceptably harmful ways towards their fellow humans due to their religio-ideological-cultural brainwashing.
@old thunderdome thread’s 602. theophontes (坏蛋) :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2013/01/20/thunderdome-15/comment-page-2/#comment-545137
Because the majority of the commenters here are Westerners and this is a Western based blog by a Western blogger largely but not solely focused on the United States and its close Western allies. It is my general default assumption here and on many other blogs excluding those specifically focused on or by non-Westerners such as Avicenna’s blog which, btw, I enjoy reading.
Yes, I think being Western is generally something to aspire to but that is NOT the same as saying non-Westerners are second class citizens at all! I think all humans are (or at least should be) held equal with inalienable human rights. I don’t want anyone treated as second or lower class citizens.
@ Old thread’s identical 617 & 618 : strange gods before me ॐ :
That Dymaxion- Fuller thing is one weird looking map. Thanks I guess.
No thanks for the continued inaccurate already debunked abuse though. Name calling is NOT rational argument let alone justified in my case.
@ old td 598. Beatrice : Notice how I’ve deliberately stated that “White” & “Western” are two very separate words? Ridiculous comparison is ridiculous.
True but irrelevant here. You need evidence to accuse someone of racism or anything else in any case not just persistent name calling by bullies. Calling someone X does NOT make them ‘X’ if they’re not. I’m not.
Dalillama:
I do not put up with shit from sprogs, I don’t care who they belong to, either. Like you, the particular noises really get to me, I can’t tolerate them. When we first moved to Almont, the sprogs in town were all agog, thanks to us moving our koi here, the indoor pond, and above all, our monster dogs at the time. (Very large, both black and apparently, irresistible to the sproglets.) During the moving process, I had herds of sprogs showing up, wanting to be introduced to the dogs. I’d explain how they needed to behave, because Cante Mato, much like me, didn’t like sprogs at all. If there was any misbehaving or not listening, I made it clear, *immediately* that it wouldn’t be tolerated and if they were incapable of behaving, they could leave and not return. It may just be my experience, but it’s always seemed to me that they listened to me because I listened to them.
One group of them went and actually captured a frog for me – for the indoor pond. *shakes head* We quietly got the frog back to its pond later in the evening.
@ old td 641. vaiyt :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2013/01/20/thunderdome-15/comment-page-2/#comment-545812
No. For one thing I have absolutely no power to revoke any nations “Western” status even if I want to which I don’t diplomatic relations with the Palestinians are fine by me. Many (even all?) Western nations do indeed have diplomatic ties with the Palestinians and I see this as a good thing. If a diplomatic solution can be found then I’m all for it.
Since, I guess, all the scholars, historians , diplomats and others in the field decided that was the commonly accepted definition probably. Sheesh, do you think I invented this whole notion of ‘Western’ or something? We’re talking history and politics here so if you think the history of such political ties isn’t relevant, well, (shrug) what is? How would you define the West if not by shared history?
(Clearly it isn’t literal geography!)
Actually, no I don’t although some here seem to be under that mistaken impression.
I’ve never said Muslims were zombies and I’m pretty sure I’ve pointed out that the Israelis are Middle Eastern too. Anglosphere means, so I understand English speaking and mostly historically English linked (eg. Canada, Australia, USA, England) NOT Anglo-Saxon. Many Aussies and Kiwis and Canadians and so on are totally non-anglo-saxon descended from immigrants who moved to those nations so anglo-saxonness” (is that a word?) just ain’t a criteria there.
I will admit I’ve sometimes overgeneralised in discussions on international relations – that’s a very easy thing to do but that was NOT done maliciously or with any racist sentiment behind it.
PS. Thankyou for the info on the ’ Streets of Rage/ Bare Knuckle’ game.
StevOR, why the fuck are you still here? FUCK OFF.
fleegman @ 561:
That you would even ask points to you being a newbie. No, I am not, by a longshot. I have been here for *years* and I’m an OM. I used nasty bitch for a purpose, to make a strong and unequivocal point in a discussion about pointed sexism in regard to whether or not women are allowed to dislike sprogs. I was not using it to insult anyone, either.
athyco
Oh yes, very often. I don’t, though, as my ability to remain patient and not just start bellowing at them is strongly time limited.
SteveOr
I normally can’t be bothered to respond to you, but seriously, what the fuck? Wikipedia:
Emphasis mine, dipshit. Where’s the ‘commonly accepted definition’ that the Western world is limited to the Anglosphere or those with close ties to it? What specific ‘scholars, historians , [or] diplomats’ use your idiotic definition? Go ahead, cite sources. Or, better yet, shut the fuck up. Incidentally, a much better definition for the Western world would be along the lines of “Heavily Christian influenced cultures that revere Hellenic Greece as the wellspring of philosophy and Republican Rome as the ultimate source of all civilization.’ It’s not as self-congratulatory as your definition, but it corresponds a lot more closely to what most people mean by the term IME.
Caine, poisoned chalice, can we swear on Pharyngula?
Thanks in advance, Bob
@ old td 596. Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2013/01/20/thunderdome-15/comment-page-2/#comment-545093
Wow. You sure are focusing only on the negatives of the USA and, I think, overlooking all the good aspects of it and the wider Western world.
I won’t say the USA or West is perfect by any measures and in many ways it still has a very long way to go but I think it is getting there albeit much slower and with more setbacks than we’d like.
Yes, I agree that there are still major issues as far as the sometimes & in some geographic areas terrible treatment of trans* people go but aren’t they better treated and more legally equal in the USA than most elsewhere? Europe excepted maybe? Isn’t the United States currently making progress on the this score thanks to progressive groups and media that are working to improve the situation in this and many, many other areas such as equal marriage rights which is now being adopted in more and more states?
Electoral issues with gerrymandering and other such dubious tricks? Yeah, it is an issue in some places and I’m not denying there’s a problem. However, compared to, say, Zimbabwe or China? Westerners such as you and me generally do get to vote without fear or persecution and that know our votes basically count at least a bit. We are priviledged in that respect. People in most other nations esp. Third World dictatorships, Second world (ex?)Communist one party states and Muslim theocracies certainly don’t get the level of choice about their political representation we do.
Constitutionally with the Church-State divide, yes okay, many US politicians still use some religious rhetoric in their speeches but they do respect the constitution even if they don’t always understand it and the US Court system does uphold the Church state divide even if through our eternal vigilance and all that. Again, try the compare and contrast with the USA versus say Iran or Saudi Arabia or the 3rd world dictatorships where constitutions are always being abolished and rewritten as each dictator takes his (& it almost invariably is a ‘his’) turn.
Capitalism we agree on; and I’ll add that it has its flaws – but it does beat the Communist alternative after all as the Cold War proved.
Well, no matter when it comes to the definition of Western sure. I’m not denying the USA and West generally haven’t behaved badly at times internationally and that we done some things we shouldn’t be proud of and should try to make amends for where possible.
So, okay, in summary my defining Western points there all relative and necessarily general and idealised. It’s the broad principle here and sure there area few specific problems and backwards steps and some specific cases where the West fails to match its ideals in reality.
But what better alternative is there? What nation or system or culture offers people the most opportunities, the best quality of lives, the fairest and best chances of access to law and political representation?
Where would you rather live? In the the USA, the wider Western (ised) world or .. well, name a place?
@678. Dalillama, Schmott Guy :
Well for starters that isn’t strictly my definition.
Already have – the historian Arnold J. Toynbee for one.
Caine — I don’t have high expectations, but I thought it worth at least giving them more rope, since they did make the offer.
oldmrbear,
You flatter yourself. People didn’t simply “not like” your arguments. It was shown how your arguments are objectively flawed, since misanthropy is general hatred of the whole class of humanity, and children do not constitute the whole class of humanity. You know, you could admit that you were wrong about the meaning of the word.
The logic is sound, and if you don’t get it then you might try asking sincere questions while acknowledging your privilege. Try quoting the premises you already agree with and explicitly noting that you agree with them; this will help make it so you don’t appear to be just reactively disagreeing for the sake of protecting privilege.
There is nothing inherently wrong with despising children per se, for among other reasons it does not constitute othering. There is something wrong with mistreating children. The latter is a legitimate subject of critique; the former, because it harms no one, is not.
One feature of patriarchy is that women’s attitudes about children are disproportionately subject to social control, relative to men’s. Women are thereby targeted for more shame and guilt, and this is a disproportionate harm to them, constituting sexism. This is in fact what began the whole discussion; Robert “comradebob” Mugabe here was claiming that all young women desire children, and implying there’s something wrong with any woman who doesn’t. The social control of women’s choices was manifesting right here in this thread — you ignored and continue to ignore this. (If you think sexism is bad, then you should critique sexism when you see it.)
When you criticize a woman’s attitudes about children, rather than actual mistreatment of children, you are contributing further to that disproportionate social control of women. You are therefore contributing to sexism.
+++++
Owlglass,
This claim is hard to take seriously, unless you are going to respond that you think it’s perfectly okay to hate all of humanity and hate developmentally disabled people.
But if we pretend you aren’t implicitly instructing anyone, then it remains true that you are perpetuating sexism by trying to critiquing the feelings some women have about children. You are contributing further to the disproportionate social shaming and guilting of women for their views about reproduction. You should refrain from expressing your opinions about how any woman ought to feel about children. If a person is unkind to children, then that’s worth talking about.
It does, because sexism is that which harms women disproportionately to men.
As Caine explained in 511, it is a special problem when women are shamed for disliking or not wanting to have children. It is less of a problem if the same attitudes are directed at men; because men’s reproductive choices are not as socially controlled as women’s, and men are already not the primary targets of institutional sexism.
I mean, it is not okay to shame men for not liking or wanting to have children. But it’s not the same huge social problem of sexism the way it is when women are instructed how to feel about children.
The fact that you don’t care whether you’re harming women disproportionately doesn’t have any bearing upon the fact that you are harming women disproportionately whether you care or not. You are thus contributing to sexism whether you care or not. You should care more, because doing so will make it easier for you to not contribute to sexism.
Amusingly, joey the Christian troll has a better understanding of ad hominem than you do. At least he understands that it is the target of an ad hominem attack whose attributes are not supposed to matter, and the form is supposed to be “this arguer has attribute A, therefore this arguer’s arguments are wrong.” Look:
joey doesn’t recognize when an ad hominem fallacy is or is not occurring, but at least he has a general idea of what it is.
You think the attributes of someone else mentioned in the discussion shouldn’t matter, and mentioning them constitutes the ad hominem fallacy? You’re ignorant, and you’re wrong.
If an argument says that person P is being harmed by sexism, then P’s gender can matter. In our current patriarchal culture, it is harder to harm men via sexism. The argument that P is being harmed by sexism, then, is less likely to be true if P is a man, and more likely to be true if P is a woman. We have to evaluate precisely what is being said, because some statements will harm women via sexism but not men, or not men to the same degree. Since sexism is that which harms women disproportionately to men, it is necessary to consider P’s gender in order to understand whether something sexist has happened, or perhaps something undesireable but not sexist.
Owlglass, did you see my comment 598?
StevoR,
1) Do you acknowledge that you were a racist when you said
2) Do you acknowledge that those were racist statements you made?
StevoR; It’s easier simply to admit your racism, errrrr, Heresy and get on with it. So far they cannot burn people.
And Peace Be with You;
Bob
@676. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls : No.
I’ve already told you : I won’t be bullied off here just because you disagree with me.
Why should I?
Just because you and a few others dislike me because of your own reading comprehension FAILS?
Why should I listen to you?
What the fuck makes you think you have some right to tell other commenters here whether they can or can’t comment on PZ Myers and Chris Clarke’s blog?
This is NOT your blog, Nerd. You are just another commenter albeit a particular nasty, bullying one and you don’t get to say where I comment or what blogs I go on. Or what blogs anyone else gets to comment on either. The only person, the sole, one and only person who you, Nerd of Redhead, can tell which blogs to go on is yourself, no one else.
Don’t like me – or any other commenter – commenting here? Tough.
@684. strange gods before me ॐ :
I was actually working on my reply for that already, SGBM. I’ve already dealt with that and was trying to find my older reply which was given when someone asked me about those earlier on another thunderdome. I was trying to find that earlier comment but so far I’ve written :
@586. strange gods before me ॐ :
That was years ago on another blog.
Addessed later here :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/12/05/thunderdome-11/comment-page-1/#comment-508726
“The first time someone calls you a horse you punch him on the nose, the second time someone calls you a horse you call him a jerk but the third time someone calls you a horse, well then perhaps it’s time to go shopping for a saddle.”
@ SGBM
I was thinking more along the lines of having functionality that can be built into gedit. See attached picture: Linky
& # 635
You and Nelson Mandela. (His proposal did not go through though.)
@ SC
*hugz*
(I am sure we can find something to disagree on. Frisson is good, is teh Thunderdome after all.)
@ StevoR
>.<
I do not.
D’oh! Take II :
@586. strange gods before me ॐ :
That was years ago on another blog.
Addessed later here :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/12/05/thunderdome-11/comment-page-1/#comment-508726
& https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/12/05/thunderdome-11/comment-page-1/#comment-508806
&
FIND OTHER QUOTE!!
Which is what I’m doing now. Anyone else recall the one I mean?
Thing is, it was years ago, on a different blog and is NOT what I think now so can we drop it please?
Everyone has surely said things they’ve later regretted and I’ve long since clarified and apologised for those particular comments.
StevoR;
Here is a suggestion, admit to a micro-aggression, and then beg forgiveness through personal growth. Perhaps you could take a course in Women’s Studies.
Ankh Wedja Seneb;
Bob
StevoR,
Leon Sheleff writes:
Y’all are still hashing it out with Steveor? Really? Really?
This looks for all the world like a goddamn usenet fetish with a particular creationist troll. That you find inexplicably fascinating.
theophontes,
http://maketecheasier.com/transform-gedit-into-a-web-developer-ide/2010/12/29
says “Install gedit-Gmate” which has a “Tag list” plugin to “insert commonly used tags”. I haven’t tried it, but that sounds like what you want.
What is the alternative? He keeps promoting racism endlessly. PZ hasn’t banned him. The alternative is to ignore him, which lets him promote racism unchallenged here. That’s not a good thing. Nobody wants him here. Everyone wants PZ to ban him and get this over with. Until that happens, what else is there?
Consider observing this, at your Peril…
“What is the alternative? He keeps promoting Heresy endlessly. PZ hasn’t banned him. The alternative is to ignore him, which lets him promote Heresy unchallenged here. That’s not a good thing. Nobody wants him here. Everyone wants PZ to ban him and get this over with. Until that happens, what else is there?”
Perhaps you could obtain a cross or a wooden stake.
StevoR,
You have not dealt with the particular questions I am asking now. I am asking them for a reason. For each quote in this list, I am asking two questions: 1) do you acknowledge that you were a racist when you said it, and 2) do you acknowledge that it was a racist comment?
Do you acknowledge that you were a racist when you said that? Do you acknowledge that it was a racist comment?
Do you acknowledge that you were a racist when you said that? Do you acknowledge that it was a racist comment?
Do you acknowledge that you were a racist when you said that? Do you acknowledge that it was a racist comment?
Do you acknowledge that you were a racist when you said that? Do you acknowledge that it was a racist comment?
Do you acknowledge that you were a racist when you said that? Do you acknowledge that it was a racist comment?
See, StevoR is right – not everyone hates him. In fact I think Bobby has a little crush.
Bob, are you *honestly* attempting to conflate heresy with *racism*?
Oh, look. The shitbag accuses us of desiring to burn others.
Can you say, projection?
Shitbag improved:
In other words, I want to say, but two big soft racism in the world. In addition, you can write to the man.
Admit to your sins SteveoR. Repent, I say. Heresy is not tolerated here. You are worse than Kevin Bacon in Footloose! I am not the one who has equated racism with Heresy.
As-Salaamu ‘Alaykoum;
Bob
So comradebob considers racism okay. Oooo… do non-whites also have anti-technology cooties like women do?
Poor low verbal IQ shitbag, feeling so sad that he could not convince others to watch his favorite reality show.
It’s a movie.
Shitbag improved:
Steveor Kevin Bacon, racism is bad for Wikipedia, such as Frygijczycy for the owners of the protest, but said.
@ SGBM
Thanks for linky.
I installed it, but find it is way too powerful. Useful for writing HTML code, but too much compared to the Text Formatting Toolbar. It also misses out on Pharyngulisms like [blockquote].
Shitbag cannot even keep his story straight. It was not a movie you were talking about, the one where you would demonstrate that people with darker skin could not speak the way you deem acceptable.
And by not denying, bob has now tacitly admitted that they’re racist AND sexist. I wonder what other bits of assholery are up your sleeve. :D
The shitbag did not need to admit it. He revels in it.
Burned for heresy?
StevoR hasn’t even been banned. Or even had his commenting restricted. Or, to my knowledge, even had so much as a warning from PZ.
In fact, the only comment from PZ I recall regarding StevoR was a warning to someone ELSE who was threatening his pseudonymity.
The only thing StevoR has ever, ever gotten here has been harsh words.
comradebob, caught lying yet again. (Standard troll pattern).
Do not. But may I have permission to swear?
Janine, I must have managed to miss the racism parts (the joy of trying to catch up after a full day at work) but it’s still impressive to see someone basically go “I’m racist, and misogynistic and an all around arse. Aren’t I wonderful?”
Only if you hit your thumb with a hammer first.
Here is the post that got the shitbag restricted to the Thunderdome, rowanvt.
I have feelings for your Janine, and believe that we could be good friends, but right now I have to go to bed. Perhaps we can converse tomorrow.
Yours in Christ; Bob
I see StevoR still refuses to admit that he has a problem, continues to refuse to accept personal responsibility for the words he freely chose and continues to choose to use, and continues to try to blame anyone and anything other than himself.
Pathetic.
….. Having now read that comment, my countenance most closely resembles this:
http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/184961
Also, one of the first times the shitbag plopped in, he spun a story about why the Haitian earthquake was so devastating. The Haitians are descended from Africans. Africans did not evolve with seasons so Africans did not have to plan for changes in their environment. Therefore, Africans do not plan well for future events and that includes building unstable buildings.
The shitbag is one fucking charming fella’.
Aaaaand Bob has now also become exceedingly creepy.
The shitbag is also one deeply creepy fool.
So…. He doesn’t understand the concept of the wet season and the dry season? And isn’t Egypt and its pyramids part of Africa?
The other day, the creepy shitbag asked to exchange photos with me.
And that Africa has a diverse ecosystem. Nah. Facts won’t do for the shitbag.
That’s just….. squik.
Shitbag improved:
We’re good friends, we can talk about tomorrow, maybe you need to go to sleep, mood, Janine
Damn, this time it increased the creep factor.
Are you running his stuff through google translate? I did that once with a simple sentence (english-japanese-english-etc) about 50 times and the sentence ended up paragraph long and consisted mostly of ‘and then’.
Bad Translator
Oh…. Oh this is just about the best thing I have ever been linked to. *cackles with delight*
I linked to this before. But it cannot be played enough.
Watch as a song gets put through Google Translate!
Cold, apricot, relaxing satisfaction.
Really, SteveOR? Toynbee defined the Western world as having
?
Which book, and on what page? As far as I am aware Toynbee’s definition is more similar to everyone else’s in being basically “The successor states of the (Western) Roman Empire’. That is to say, Western Europe and colonial societies spawned from Western Europe. They tend to share characteristics like Christianity, a reverence for Classical Greek philosophers, and Indo-European languages of the Germanic and Latinate families. That said, if it hadn’t been for the Ottoman Turks, the territories of the Eastern Empire would probably look a lot more culturally. similar to the West than in fact they do.
assholebob
What the fuck are you even still doing here, anyway? Unlike SteveoR (who for whatever reason PZ continues to tolerate) you’ve already been kicked off the main blog. Clearly no one wants you spewing your incoherent bigotry around here, why don’t you fuck off to Stormfront or someplace?
The poor little low verbal IQ shitbag is just a bit confused by words. He seems to think that my insults are flirtatious play. And he thinks that being a creep is the way a straight man wins over a lesbian.
Bad Translator is the greatest thing in the history of things. Thanks, Janine. You brightened my shitty month.
StevoR
Apparently, the “scholars, historians, diplomats and others” of most of Latin America and the rest of Europe weren’t invited to the party. Or maybe they just bent down and admitted the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon stock like the good insignificants they are.
Singapore sounds a hell of a lot more attractive to me than Tennessee, for instance.
ॐ:
Not everyone; I’m not fussed either way — but then, I’m pretty tolerant and this ain’t my blog.
—
StevoR here:
Then you must be claiming they’re metaphorically not human; you’ve claimed that , and you often (and still) claim you don’t tolerate Islamic Jihadists.
(The only other way these claims can be reconciled is if you are no different from them, but then that would conflict with other claims you’ve made)
In before “But Singapore is a Western nation.”
@comradebob:
Oh, I can play this game!
“What is the alternative? He keeps promoting murder endlessly. PZ hasn’t banned him. The alternative is to ignore him, which lets him promote murder unchallenged here. That’s not a good thing. Nobody wants him here. Everyone wants PZ to ban him and get this over with. Until that happens, what else is there?”
“What is the alternative? He keeps promoting sex toys endlessly. PZ hasn’t banned him. The alternative is to ignore him, which lets him promote sex toys unchallenged here. That’s not a good thing. Nobody wants him here. Everyone wants PZ to ban him and get this over with. Until that happens, what else is there?”
It’s fun! Doesn’t make any kind of point, though.
PS I linked to it elsewhere, but I wonder if StevoR cares to acknowledge The Phoenix Program was a product of his revered “Western” society at war.
(They were “defending” “Western” civilisation!)
@ 586. strange gods before me ॐ & from my # 590 :
Found it finally! :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/12/15/thunderdome-12/comment-page-1/#comment-516692
Does that make me a racist or bigot? No just a fallible human being.
Also your cherry picking there of ancient statements made years ago on a another blog which I have long since dis-owned and rejected as opposed to the many more numerous and recent statements contradicting them is noted.
I think everyone has said things they’re ashamed of or cringe on hearing later at times right?’
@590. Ogvorbis :
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/12/24/thunderdome-13/comment-page-2/#comment-532987
Can’t recall if I’ve already answered this one or not but :
Only in the most extreme and unlikely circumstances. It is my preference that we don’t.
Er, look I’m NOT saying we should bomb the peaceful ones, okay. The peaceful ones are fine by me.
I’m not saying that. But if its them or us, we do have a responsibility to protect ourselves and future generations. We stop them from harming us violently when we have to using, whatever means we have to – the more peaceful ways where we can if they’ll work being preferable. The alternative to this is .. what? Letting them kill us and destroy our way of life as the violent jihadists seek to do or inflict major innocent casualties in constantly trying?
That would be better how exactly?
@ 734. John Morales :
Um, there’s a bit of a difference between people who are merely different and people who are actively trying to kill you and those like you!
@ 737. John Morales : Do’t think I’ve heard of that one. Will check it out – thanks.
Arrggh! Bold fail in #739. Sure y’all can guess where. Sorry.
@ 737. John Morales :
Yes, I’ll acknowledge that as a horrible, sad episode in the long history of Human inhumanity to other humans. Its not something I approve of and wish it hadn’t happened. The West is far from perfect but it has already come along way although, yes, still has a long way to go as well. Sometimes it doesn’t live up to its own highest ideals and that was one of those occasions.
@735. evilisgood :
Well, for starters, Singapore is actually a city!
Y’know definitions of what’s Western or not vary heaps and people use different ones and disagree. (Shrug.)
*eyeroll*
And some of them are racist.
But let’s just agree to disagree. [insert passive-aggressive smiley]
StevoR:
Sometimes? Sometimes!?
(Either you are particularly naive or you are lying to yourself, just like a Christian)
@ ^ 740 last line – pressed submit instead of preview there. Sorry. Will deal with that one later, getting stuffed here tonight. Just one or two last things before I stop for the night :
*** (Cut’n’paste)
@ old td 505 Tony ∞The Queer Shoop∞ on 21st December 2012 at 10:56 am :
No and I never said they were. Classic example of strawpersonning me and attributing to me views that I do NOT actually hold. Can people please stop trying to read more into what I’ve written than is actually there, ‘k?
***
@736. vaiyt : (above)
Classic example again. NO. Just no. I do NOT and never have promoted murder.
Military self defence against terrorism yes – but that’s a totally different thing.
&&&&&
Later on from that linked thread’s old thunderdome (Or was it another? Lost the place again, dammnit!) #387. Ogvorbis:
Well that’s all I’m asking for.
From now on, please, judge my by my latest comment not from people’s personal dislikes and grudges based on past misunderstandings and, yes, okay sometimes my own failures to communicate or understand properly.
Judge the comment NOT the commenter.
StevoR:
Well, that’s a particularly stupid comment.
(What, you imagine we should imagine comments write themselves?)
StevoR
If preemptive strikes based upon speech (or worst case disinformation) rather than imminent action is justified as a ‘way of life’ then there is nothing worth preserving. I have a hard time taking authority at its word.
+: justified as protecting a ‘way of life’
Nobody thought you were a racist until you started writing racist comments.
Then wrote racist defenses of the racist comments.
Then continued to write racist comments.
It was always about the comments.
Would it kill you to perhaps ask yourself if your insistence on ascribing values you consider good to “Westernness” and, as an extension, considering non-Western people/nations who you believe exhibit similar value systems as “honorary Westerners” might be a case of you showing a bias you ought to examine?
“Western” essentially means European nations/cultures and the cultures that arose in places they colonised, as a result of their colonisation. You can’t make “Western” a value judgement without making a value judgement about non-Western cultures. That kind of sweeping judgement based entirely on what really comes down to “European-descended” or not (which is essentially “white or not”) cannot really escape being at least unconsciously racist, or at the very very best in a perfect world, culturally insensitive.
I’d wager that most people in Eastern First World nations would not welcome this “honorary Westernness” but would actually find it mighty patronising at best.
Sorry. Above quoted text should have been attributed to StevoR.
It’s The White Man’s Burden.
(Some satire is taken seriously by some)
Maybe we could use a boilerplate disclaimer every time he starts to comment.
“The opinions of SteveoR are racist and completely opposed by the vast majority of the commenters in this thread. He has been argued with extensively, and he tends to take over any thread in which he interacts with other people. Please do not take his comments as representative of anything but his own faulty ideas, and if you choose to engage with him, be aware that it is likely futile as well as a time sink.”
carlie:
I’m displacing. :D I’ve got loads of stupid photo editing to do and the knowledge that I’m going to be chained to the damn clone stamp for the next several hours is making me look for anything I can possibly do to postpone it. Because I apparently have not learned my lesson. :D So I’m playing left 4 dead and indulging my siwoti syndrome until I finish my coffee. Which I am drinking very slowly.
StevoR,
Sure. And we can talk about what those statements indicated about us at the time. You have not dealt with the particular questions I am asking now. I am asking them for a reason. For each quote in this list, I am asking two questions: 1) do you acknowledge that you were a racist when you said it, and 2) do you acknowledge that it was a racist comment?
Do you acknowledge that you were a racist when you said that? Do you acknowledge that it was a racist comment?
Do you acknowledge that you were a racist when you said that? Do you acknowledge that it was a racist comment?
Do you acknowledge that you were a racist when you said that? Do you acknowledge that it was a racist comment?
Do you acknowledge that you were a racist when you said that? Do you acknowledge that it was a racist comment?
Do you acknowledge that you were a racist when you said that? Do you acknowledge that it was a racist comment?
StevoR as quoted by SGBM:
Maybe it’s because I only half (at best) identify as American, but I kind of think that not viewing people from different countries as other or inherently inferior or less important, and being more world-focused than country-focused (which I think is, not exclusively, but often partly the result of having ties to more than one country/culture. Certainly in my case, it’s helped.) would be a positive quality in a powerful world leader. It would certainly suggest greater capacity for empathy and cooperation. Less “us vs them” bullshit. But hey, what do I know? I’m a dirty immigrant in the country I live in now, and hold citizenship from two others. I don’t “get” patriotism/nationalism, and don’t see it as a virtue.
The left, going back at least to Orwell, promotes a distinction between patriotism and nationalism. This is a good article: http://www.mahablog.com/2006/02/19/patriotism-v-nationalism/
One quote from it, by Sydney J. Harris:
Of course the right continually tries to insist that patriotism is nationalism, and the left’s patriotism is therefore not patriotism at all.
But I think we should not give up the word to them. People very easily tend toward feelings of pride in their nation, and if we do not teach a healthy way to be proud while working to correct one’s own shortcomings and respecting foreigners’ own patriotisms, then they will tend to develop a less thoughtful, more reactionary pride instead.
GreaseMonkey reactivated. Up went the intellectual discussion, down went the bigotry.
That said, if someone has no patriotism or nationalism either, it’s whatever. It’s not important that everybody should.
SGBM, that’s a fair point. I suppose I don’t object strongly to benign forms of patriotism per se. I just can’t quite process why it’s a thing that people feel. This is probably because I don’t feel very much in the way of strong ties to any particular country (asking me where I’m from is a baaaad idea for people who want a short answer, and it usually results in their trying to “help” me by telling me what my answer SHOULD be, since apparently I have to be from a maximum of one specific place or they can’t deal), and I find myself thinking “If x is not exclusive to y country, why should citizens of y country feel proud to be Y-ians because of x, especially since it’s merely an accident of birth that y people were born in y country instead of some other country where x may or may not be a thing?”
I realize it’s a normal thing for people to feel, and that it doesn’t have to manifest negatively. I just don’t GET it myself.
The alternative is to deal with the terrorists, instead of pretending over 1 billion people in a hundred different countries are “at war” with you. The alternative is to show by example, and by the spread of ideas, that your way of life works, instead of trying to browbeat the “barbarians” into submission. The alternative is not treating your Muslim immigrants like crap so they actually feel your Western values are worth giving a damn about.
I think it’s related to both processing fluency and the nation-as-family metaphor.
683, strange gods before me ॐ
Instead of consulting your pineal gland, you should try using the frontal lobe more often. You love to make this about sexism do you? And indeed it is: yours! But let’s walk through this. Ad Hominem arguments try to target a personal characteristic, that somehow renders an argument less true. But even a fool can be right, right? In your example, you do the inverse, also known as Argument from Authority, where this time a personal characteristic somehow makes an argument more true. This is also a fallacy in most cases. The point is: I find hatred of children highly problematic. What makes this somehow acceptable? Unlike you, the sexist, I don’t care at all if the person is a woman, wears sneakers, likes tomato soup or was born on Eris. If some personal characteristic mattered, it would be most likely one of the two fallacies as described above and if it was a gender, it could be considered sexist. Eventually, it is up to people whether they want to have children or not, but not wanting to have children is not the same as hating them.
Why should your concerns be our concerns? Your EGO getting in the way of your listening.
owlglass:
Do you find it problematic for any reason which doesn’t involve confusing hatred of children with hatred of the entire human species? Do you find it problematic for a reason which doesn’t erroneously extend hatred of children with hatred of developmentally disabled adults? What reasons are those?
me @ 763:
FTFM
I for one would prefer carlie’s automatic-boilerplate-response idea over the repeated reposting of long, racist comments from the past (not to mention the apoplectic yelling of ‘fuck off and go away’).
Talking about patriotism makes me think of
Hulk Hogan
Real American
The Anti-Bush Video Game
+++++
Owlglass, did you see my comment 598?
No, the ad hominem fallacy targets a personal characteristic of the person who is argued to be therefore wrong. It goes like this:
“Person A makes claim X.
Person B makes an attack on person A.
Therefore A’s claim is false.”
Here, if an ad hominem fallacy was happening, then you would be person A, and I would be person B. But I am not saying that you are wrong because of something about you. Therefore I am not doing an ad hominem.
Also wrong. The argument to authority relies on a personal characteristic of someone cited who is making the claim in question. It goes like this:
“Person A is (claimed to be) an authority on subject S.
Person A makes claim C about subject S.
Therefore, C is true.”
Here, it’s not even apparent who would be person A. It’s not me, since I’m not being cited as an authority. It’s not you, since you’re the opponent. It seems like you think that because rowanvt’s sister-in-law is the person whose characteristic (her gender) is being mentioned, then she is person A. But she is not being cited as an authority on any subject. Therefore there is no argument to authority happening here. (By the way, you might want to click on that link, because there are many cases in which it is not a fallacy to mention someone’s authority. Briefly, it is never a formal fallacy to say “therefore C is likely to be true.”)
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/You%27re_the_sexist
As you would have it, it would be an ad hominem fallacy to inquire whether Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal. Is Socrates mortal?
Is Socrates a man?
Ad hominem!!!
+++++
There is nothing inherently wrong with despising children per se, for among other reasons it does not constitute othering. There is something wrong with mistreating children. The latter is a legitimate subject of critique; the former, because it harms no one, is not.
One feature of patriarchy is that women’s attitudes about children are disproportionately subject to social control, relative to men’s. Women are thereby targeted for more shame and guilt, and this is a disproportionate harm to them, constituting sexism. This is in fact what began the whole discussion; Robert “comradebob” Mugabe here was claiming that all young women desire children, and implying there’s something wrong with any woman who doesn’t. The social control of women’s choices was manifesting right here in this thread — you ignored and continue to ignore this. (If you think sexism is bad, then you should critique sexism when you see it.)
When you criticize a woman’s attitudes about children, rather than actual mistreatment of children, you are contributing further to that disproportionate social control of women. You are therefore contributing to sexism.
As Caine explained in 511, it is a special problem when women are shamed for disliking or not wanting to have children. It is less of a problem if the same attitudes are directed at men; because men’s reproductive choices are not as socially controlled as women’s, and men are already not the primary targets of institutional sexism.
I mean, it is not okay to shame men for not liking or wanting to have children. But it’s not the same huge social problem of sexism the way it is when women are instructed how to feel about children.
If an argument says that person P is being harmed by sexism, then P’s gender can matter. In our current patriarchal culture, it is harder to harm men via sexism. The argument that P is being harmed by sexism, then, is less likely to be true if P is a man, and more likely to be true if P is a woman. We have to evaluate precisely what is being said, because some statements will harm women via sexism but not men, or not men to the same degree. Since sexism is that which harms women disproportionately to men, it is necessary to consider P’s gender in order to understand whether something sexist has happened, or perhaps something undesireable but not sexist.
Owlglass, did you see my comment 598?
It serves a couple of purposes. There is a reason to bring up the racist comments at least once in every subthread, because newer readers need to see just how racist he is.
There is another reason; when I actually get an answer to my two questions, the answer will be incorporated into a new argument that I have prepared and am sitting on. Then it will not be necessary to repeat the racist comments more often than once per subthread.
Nah, that’s necessary. He should be made to feel more unwelcome here.
SGBM:
Sorry. I didn’t mean to ignore/fail to answer this. I’m still, ahem, processing it and the other subjects being discussed were easier to answer. I think you’re right about processing fluency (as I understand it so far)* and the nation-as-family metaphor.
*Which may not be very well, mind you. (Not braining so good today. I think I’m turning into a mushy pixel of some kind, with all this bloody clone stamping.) The part I found interesting was the “prejudice against migrants” bit suggesting that people view those who move from group A to group B more negatively regardless of whether they’re in group A or B or neither (as I understood it, but again, mushy pixel brain). But this doesn’t appear to explain the phenomenon of people viewing those from their own countries who emigrate as superior in various ways to those from other countries who immigrate to their own.
Anecdote ahead!
I’ve had countless conversations with Italians (often of a vaguely neo-fascist anti-immigration stance) who flat out insist that immigrants are all terrible awful people who come from terrible awful countries, etc, and are all lazy and all taking all the jobs (somehow). When I point out that loads of Americans thought the same of the Italians who immigrated to the US in waves and waves in the late-19th/early 20th century, I get “but those were good, hard-working people! They were ITALIANS.”
So it would appear that the in-group/out-group prejudice is stronger than that aspect of processing fluency? Unless I’ve really misunderstood it because pixelmush. Or more permanent brainfail. Not ruling that out.
la tricoteuse,
I’m right there with you in not grokking either patriotism or nationalism.
SGBM’s links about this noted, I’ll read them at home.
You mean, by replying to some other poster who addressed me directly, I am “not listening”? In a written medium. And that’s because of my “EGO”? Tell me more about it. :)
If Caine want’s to write down why she hates children, I am probably reading it, and that should also answer la tricoteuse questions.
Your concerns must be addressed. Why? Why are your concerns more important that Caine’s honest statement? Which several other people backed up. No need for concerns, unless you are attempting to stretch it into something it isn’t, like detesting adults with developmental problems.
This is me pointing and laughing at you. Yah. We make it about sexism because it’s SO MUCH FUN. Confronting sexism is NEVER unpleasant or stressful. Clearly your neurons are pristine and pure, 100% innocent of that nasty subconscious bias that affects us mere mortals.
Asshole.
How would Caine’s reasons for disliking children answer my questions to you from #763 quoted below?
These are questions about why YOU find hatred/dislike/whatever of children “problematic.” They’re about you, not about Caine.
la tricoteuse,
You’re right; Rubin, Paolini and Crisp aren’t trying to account for the difference in attitudes about “our migrants” versus “their migrants”. I think that study was just to show whether processing fluency is involved at all.
It’s plausible that processing fluency is still involved when differentiating among different subgroups of the ingroup, so we might find Italians in Italy have
<–less prejudice toward —— more prejudice toward–>
Italians in Italy —— Italians in America —— non-Italians in Italy
Since Italians are so accustomed to other Italians, we might assume a processing fluency effect that makes Italians anywhere easier to process than non-Italian migrants.
Owlglass,
Children are often loud, rambunctious, and socially inappropriate (since they are only partly socialized).
Is it any wonder that some people don’t like them?
You may find childish behavior to be charming (I generally do), but many people do not, and they shouldn’t be expected to.
I’m not sure why you’re having such difficulty comprehending Caine’s position–if you’ve ever had dinner at a restaurant next to a table of screaming kids, you should at least be able to understand, if not agree with, her dislike of children.
It’s too bad John Morales wasn’t awake to get the first crack in at Owlglass’s imaginings of what constitute ad hominem and argument to authority. John would have loved that.
Owlglass,
You’re not paying attention, are you. Caine has already told us more than you deserve to know:
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2013/01/26/thunderdome-16/comment-page-2/#comment-548635
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2013/01/26/thunderdome-16/comment-page-2/#comment-548660
SGBM: That makes perfect sense, and explains a lot, yes. Thanks for cutting through the mushy pixel brain.
I’d add a further distinction to “non-Italians in Italy” though, with “Western European (and associated populations like American/Australian) non-Italians in Italy” and “Eastern European and non-European non-Italians in Italy” in that order from left to right, as attitudes towards the two different groups of non-Italians differ greatly.
If I were being really nitpicky I might also add two further groups to the left of those (between ‘Italians in America’ and ‘Western European…in Italy’), from left to right: “Western European (same etc as other similar category) people in their own countries” and “Non-Western European people in their own countries” to cover the “I don’t hate foreigners, I just want them to stay where they are” attitude, which does, I think, fit in with the ‘distrust of migrants in general’ thing.
I am happy to have made you laugh, that’s the purpose of a fool after all. I also feel honored when a self-described fascist calls me an asshole. And why do you think that confronting sexism is “NEVER unpleasant”? Very strange, Sally. The reason you pull sexism out of the hat, is purely for bullying purposes. I endorse feminism myself, I just seem to disagree on the brand (I actually don’t know, other than bullying, my contenders never produced anything of substance). I am just serviceable. You can have a reasonable discussion, or we can generate more Lulz, whatever you please.
‘…you know, that’s what’s so damn annoying, isn’t it? The way they can be so incapable of any rational thought and so bloody shrewd at the same time.’
— Samuel Vimes talking to the upper class about dwarfs, Men at Arms
A fool who does not understand sarcasm. (Hint, SallyStrange is not a self described fascist. She is making fun of the shit she has been called.)
Owlglass, you are completely out of your league.
Also, you are not being bullied.
Owlmirror:
Yup! /useless assenting reply.
Why? If someone dislikes/hates children and actively tries to avoid them, but:
1) When unavoidably around them, doesn’t mistreat them or make them feel disliked/hated;
2) Will help/assist a child in need if there is no one else around to do it;
3) Strongly and openly condemns the mistreatment of children.
Is this person’s dislike/hatred of children problematic?
It is a surely possible that some other person hacked Sally’s account and called her fascist, but if not, she is a self-described fascist. I am not in our league, so will you be so kind and explain this to me in fool-proof terms? I certainly understand sarcasm, and have been “called out” using on it on page 1 (no, I am not complaining about it). But since the fascists of my country killed millions of people in most hideous ways, I don’t find that particularily funny. It is distasteful to say the least. I also read Caine’s comments and understood them, I just felt I spare you the embarrassment to pick them apart. She hates people who behave in a way commonly found with children. That makes it a lot better!
|
@782, Nightjar “Is this person’s dislike/hatred of children problematic?”
Yes, of course. People say that often enough, and are then terrified when someone acts out his hatred, thinking that hatred of children is somehow socially acceptable. It is not. In the same line is the use of “fascism”, people wear that with pride, sarcastic or not, and idiots take it from there.
|
Do what you must, I am forced to go off for a while and see if you can come up with a better game in the next round of Fool vs Cavalry, the best of all contact sports. You sure come across as a pathetic bunch of bigots, if I may give my personal impression.
Owlglass:
This is confusing. Are you saying that hating children is problematic because it enables other people who hate children to engage in problematic behaviour?
Owlglass, I see you haven’t answered my questions. I’ll wait.
You’re not very imaginative, are you. The reason we are telling you that your actions are sexist is to help you understand why you should stop doing them — this relies on the assumption that you do not want to cause harm by reinforcing patriarchy. Since your actions are sexist, it is worthwhile to inform you of this, so that you can understand why to stop.
Actually no, she dislikes children because they behave in that way. It does not follow that she dislikes other people who behave in those ways. I refer you again to Maureen Brian’s 572.
Except no, we’re at the same time making clear that it is not acceptable to act in such a way as to harm children.
This is actually a more reasonable approach, saying “you can have your feelings but you should not act on them in ways that harm people” — more reasonable than trying to dictate what feelings people should have and what feelings people should feel bad about themselves for having.
Our approach involves less shaming of others than yours does, so our approach is preferred.
Okay. At least we know what the ad hominem fallacy is. :)
Hey Owlglass,
I’ll ask again, haven’t you ever been in a restaurant trying to eat next to a table full of kids who are yelling and playing? Or been on an airplane with a screaming kid? Do you really not understand why some people find kids annoying?
Your bizarre assertion that disliking kids is somehow akin to racism demonstrates that you are either seriously lacking in empathy, or you are a troll.
I suspect the latter, but if you aren’t just trolling, answer my question: have you never been in a situation where you found children to be irritating?
Owlglass keeps digging himself deeper and deeper. Making the argument that SallyStrange is a fascist. All so that he can try to make legitimate his claim that SallyStrange is bullying him.
It is a bullshit artist who uses these kind of excuses.
You are aware that we, as a fucking group, have been called feminazis and femistasi? SallyStrange, being a very outspoken feminist, have been called this. She is wearing the title as a joke. And you, Owlmirror, who already have a problem with feminism, are very willing to take this snark and play it seriously.
Also, you have not been bullied.
La tricoteuse, I am waiting for Owlglass to prove that SallyStrange is a fascist.
Is there a comfy place we can wait? Because my knees are starting to hurt. Also some wine would be good. I think we might be waiting a while.
I’m just going to note that the majority of people who end up harming children are the same people who have children and/or claim to like/love children. I have no interest in harming children, I can’t be arsed to be around them long enough to do so, even if I did want to cause harm, which I do not.
I simply do. not. like. sprogs. That’s it. I don’t much like flaming doucheweasels who find that so damn shocking on the basis that I’m a woman, eleventy one gasp, it’s in my nature to love the sproglets either. Every one of you is a sexist asshole and it would be nice if you’d figure that out.
I was doing this too, writing Owlmirror. I caught myself every time before posting, but it’s pretty annoying.
I think Owlglass ought to be forced by PZ to change his nym or be banned.
Owlglass:
Does it also trouble you that my dog dislikes baby-anythings? Does is trouble you that there are dogs out there that get along great with adult dogs, but will avoid/snap at without injuring puppies that try to play with them? Does is trouble you that there are dogs that do great with adult humans, but dislike human children and will avoid/snap at them?
Or are you basing this on the most extreme possible interpretation of hatred? Are you unaware that hatred can mean something as unextreme as an intense dislike?
For example, I hate pasta. I do. I think it’s flavorless and gross and won’t eat it if there’s something else available.
I am not about to go on a murderous rampage around town destroying all the pasta. I simply avoid it when possible and put up with it when not.
I also hate working with any psittacine larger than a conure. They scare the bejeebus out of me and I try to avoid dealing with them if I can. The fact that you can stress them out to the point they simply keel over makes me hate working with them even more.
I am not about to go on a murderous rampage around town killing all the parrots. I avoid being the one to restrain them when I can, and deal with the adrenaline surge when I can’t.
My sister-in-law hates babies and young children. She finds them annoying, especially the noises they make and how undisciplined the vast majority are.
She is not about to go on a murderous rampage around town killing everyone under the age of 11. She actively avoids kids whenever she possibly can, and grits her teeth and puts up with it when she can’t.
Surely Owlglass can’t be serious about SallyStrange being a fascist? No one is that unaware of sarcasm, are they?
Owlglass, you fucking idiot, I’m not a fascist. I’m a FEMI-FASCIST.
There’s a big difference. Regular fascists imprison and murder their political enemies while facilitating collusion between the state and corporations. Femi-fascists do even worse things, like telling people like you to stop supporting sexism.
Owlglass,
People say what often enough? That someone’s dislike of X does not mean that person wants harm done to X? That someone may dislike X and still believe and defend that X should be treated well and with respect?
It’s obviously true. For example, I hate being around pigs. I don’t like pigs. I am afraid of them and I have always avoided them. I also don’t want to mistreat them and I make a point of not eating them. Because the fact that I dislike pigs has nothing to do with the way I think pigs should be treated.
But it’s not that kind of hatred that is being expressed. It’s not “I hate children so much I wish them ill”, it’s “I hate children so much I avoid being around them, but I want people who like being around them to treat them well”. How is the latter problematic?
It should be socially acceptable that some women dislike children and so decide not to have any. There is nothing wrong with that, that’s what we’re saying.
Also, I’m an elite genius, so unless you are one too, you better not argue with me.
Shit, I did call Owlglass “Owlmirror”.
I apologize to Owlmirror. I have too much respect for him to dare compare him to Owlglass.
Can I bend Owlglass’s mind and say that as a transgender woman I get devastated that I cannot (at least likely within my lifetime) have children of my own? As a male-bodied individual, I shouldn’t care about having kids!
Katherine, you do know that you are bullying Owlglass?
Kat Lorraine:
Ah, that means you’re a natural woman, unlike all us nasty, fascist wimmin who aren’t fond of the sproggen.
You’re right, it’s a city-state. City-states confuse me. Anyway, my bad. I just figured you’d think of Singapore as “Western” since they’re big on technology.
The Republic of Singapore is a Member State of the United Nations.
How StevoR defines it is not relevant.
I sense some disrespect of StevoR’s opinion. How are we all going to get along if we don’t respect each other’s opinions?
I am disappointed by this “community”.
Beatrice
I am very disappointed by your disappointment.
I am sensing a rift.
Yeah, that bit sort of distracted from the larger point anyway. But, can we talk about this for a minute:
because it is boring a hole right in my brain. SteveoR, I don’t want to believe that you are as racist as this makes you seem, so I’m going to tell you something about USAian culture and hope that it helps you see where you went wrong here (aside from the obvious). Sure, you probably think you know it all, because we do try to impose our culture anywhere and everywhere we see fit. But your statement above shows that you may not be aware of what I’m about to explain.
The hyphen is one way of acknowledging a person’s cultural history. It has nothing to do with loyalty to one’s country or patriotism. In the USA, we have about a bazillion different cultures coming together. It’s pretty neat, and I am surprised that an Australian doesn’t grok that. You have indigenous peoples, and if I’m recalling correctly, a pretty big Asian and Pacific Islander immigrant population as well. Maybe they don’t tend to use the hyphen, but I guarantee you that they have ways of acknowledging the cultures of their families’ origins. I guarantee you that your own family has interesting stories about how they came to Australia. That’s all the hyphen is, a shorthand way of acknowledging cultural and family history.
President Obama’s “understanding of America” is just fine. As evidenced by your above statement, it’s your understanding of America that is flawed.
One more thing. Yes, some people in the USA are bothered by the fact that we have a “hyphenated-American” for a president. Those folks, to a person, are racists.
Oh, and one more thing. Affirmative action? We voted President Obama into office in a legitimate election. Twice. Were many of us excited that he was our first non-white President? Yes, of course. It’s a big deal in a nation that used to buy and sell black people like chattel. However, I resent the implication that this was the only reason we elected him. Seriously, you would have chosen John “Songbird” McCain? Because I wouldn’t have done, regardless of his race or gender. That guy is a warpigging douchenozzle. We’d already be in the weeds with Iran if McCain had his way. Because yet another war is exactly what this country needs to get the economy back on track. Fo’ sho’.
Okay, I think I’m done.
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/28/israel_admits_ethiopian_jewish_immigrants_were_given_birth_control_shots/
Well, isn’t that just lovely?
Further on Israel’s racism problem:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/in-meeting-with-jewish-ethiopian-community-netanyahu-vows-to-tackle-racism-1.418720
Thanks for the replies to my query on gender differences #630. Conciousness razor #632
points out that the fucking vervets don’t know what a fucking cooking pan is. This is something I hadn’t noticed, that one of the “feminine” toys is described as a red pan. I’d have to agree, I don’t see anything intrinsically (or even stereotypically) feminine about a red pan. I’m glad that CR is secure enough in his masculinity to use cooking pans!
Special thanks to the strange gods #637 for pointing out one of the most scholarly and carefully researched rebuttals to the popular conception that science has shown that male and female brains are intrinsically different: Cordelia Fine’s book. This looks like a great resource. Nerd of Redhead #639 points out that I should give more credibility to peer reviewed sociological/psychological journals than Scientific American, but gives no references to said journals. I suppose Nerd of Redhead would agree that I should also be skeptical of Fine’s book, which is not peer reviewed. I did find a credible (at least to me) critique of Fine’s book, as well as a sense of the state of the research here:
http://www.uvm.edu/~tribeta/Articles/Sex%20stereotypes%20Halpern.pdf
Diane Halpern has won numerous awards for her teaching and research. Her review points out that Fine’s book dispels many misconceptions about gender research but does have its flaws: “Despite the large amount of junk science on the topic that is reported in the popular media and in some academic outlets, there are also consistent findings of sex differences that hold up across studies, across species, and across cultures. Most of these are ignored by Fine.Her response to Fine’s book (and another book by Rebecca Jordan-Young, Brain Storm), is summed up in the last paragraph:
“Cleverly written with engaging prose, Delusions of Gender and Brain Storm contain enough citations and end notes to signal that they are also serious academic books. Fine and Jordan-Young ferret out exaggerated, unreplicated claims and other silliness regarding research on sex differences. The books are strongest in exposing research conclusions that are closer to fiction than science. They are weakest in failing to also point out differences that are supported by a body of carefully conducted and well replicated research. The question is not whether female and male brains are similar or different, because they are both. The questions we need to answer are: How can we understand the ways in which we are similar and different? And how can we use that knowledge to help everyone achieve their fullest potential?”
Well, perhaps we can all agree on the last two sentences. Getting back to Harriet Hall, I think that’s all she meant by the quote; I don’t see her remarks as being sexist. (Defining a sexist remark as one that demeans or limits females based on unfounded stereotype or misogyny. Also included, but less important, would be remarks demeaning men.) Incidentally, I’m told that she is planning to say about all this on the science-based medicine blog. More to come!
Philo
That’s because you aren’t thinking clearly. She did not say anything like that.
What she said was that women would innately, genetically or develomentally, be less interested in atheist and skeptical communities, because women’s brains are innately, genetically or develomentally, different in some way that makes them less interested in atheist and skeptical communities.
She said this despite there being exactly zero evidence that women’s brains are innately, genetically or develomentally, different in some way that makes them less interested in atheist and skeptical communities.
She jumped from there are differences to there must be innate genetical or develomental differences which are still entirely unevidenced that will explain this currently observed phenomenon which is known to have cultural confounders at this time.
That’s not skepticism. And neither is what you’re doing here.
I missed this last night. StevoR:
Avicenna is British.
You might want to think about that …
StevoR says,
StevoR is lying again. He has promoted murder:
Proofreading:
Example of carpet bombing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotterdam_Blitz
ॐ, you know damn well StevoR has apologised for posting when drunk and tired.
(in vino veritas)
Yeah, he does seem to be drunk in that quote. If he said “I do NOT and never have promoted murder when sober” then I might let that assertion pass.
I’ve never been completely drunk, but even when quite buzzed I never suddenly advocated for things I didn’t support when sober.
once again, that’s not a point of contention. Nobody–not even the authors of the original article–thinks that monkeys know what a cooking pan is.In fact, that they don’t know this is sort of the whole point of the study. If you think that “cooking pans!” is a criticism of the study, then you do not understand it. SC and C.F. Fine, and now Razor, do not understand it. *shrug*
Except that, Chas, they associate ‘cooking pans’ with the feminine. Why would a female vervet prefer a cooking pan…. when they don’t cook?
Dang Chas still doesn’t understand what the vervet evidence really says???? Which is: (many line breaks later) *silence of the crickets*
@rowanvt Have you ever tried buckwheat pasta? If you find yourself in a situation where pasta is the only option it might be worth a shot as it has a. more flavor and b. a nice texture than wheat or, dog forbid, rice pasta.*
*Warning! Subjective assessment of grains may have some influence on this post.
I would like to point out that the discussion about “promoting murder” started on my #736, which is not actually about StevoR.
FFS, Chas. Why do you not get this? WHY? Why did they choose these objects? Why did they label this a “feminine” “toy,” thinking they might find sex differences in vervets’ interest in it? Why did they think a finding of sex differences in interest in a cooking pan among vervets would provide insight into sex differences in human evolutionary psychology?
Please don’t shrug. Stop and think about this. Consider how many people see how ludicrous this is, and for how long we’ve been trying to explain this to you. Me, Nick, Jadehawk, Fine, what’s-his-name who used to be at Mixing Memory, cr, even windy. Even this philosophia person gets it. Why don’t you understand? Really – try to think through the study in terms of the questions I asked above: why they chose these objects, why they called them “toys,” why they thought they might find sex differences in interest in these objects (specifically a cooking pan) among vervets, and why they thought this would tell them something about human (and other primate) sex differences. Don’t respond immediately – just take some time and think about it for a bit.
rowanvt, I think Chas accepts the hypothesis that if both humans and vervets prefer certain categories of toys based on their sex, then those objects are properly stereotyped as either feminine or masculine according to which sex is more likely to prefer them.
Or, they don’t prefer them because they know these objects have gender associations, rather these objects can be said to have gender associations due to which sex prefers them.
(Which is why he writes “In fact, that they don’t know this is sort of the whole point of the study.”)
fuck you, Nerd
rowanvt: I will not be discussing the notorious vervet study. I have my reasons. However, since you are relatively new here and missed the vervet wars of ought-nine (or whenever it was), I will answer your question: the toys were classified as masculine or feminine based on data, not subjective opinion; specifically, the significantly different preferences of human infants in similar trials.
I hate to say I don’t remember who tweeted it, because odds are it’s someone who comments here (plz step forward for your attribution), but I really liked it; it said (paraphrase): Men and women are very different, but humans and vervets are the same.
don’t worry, I won’t.
(You had your chance to converse with me about this and we both know how you chose to handle it.)
carlie: Alcoholic Vervet Monkeys!
Yeah, I was wondering why StevoR didn’t also vehemently deny ever promoting sex toys.
Okay, I’ve had a search through the thread and either I’m blind or it’s elsewhere… What study are ya’ll referring to?
Love the evidence you showed….
Here’s your problem Chas, if there is no cultural reference on the part of the vervets to male/female, why are the human authors putting one in? Think about that before you mention it again…
Wow, that vervet study is weird. A pan? Because female monkeys are drawn to flat objects that they could cook with?
The other objects they used aren’t much better…a toy truck, a ball and a doll, for those not clicking the link.
So a ball is a masculine toy now. I guess all the women who play tennis, soccer, basketball, netball, cricket, softball, volleyball, etc etc etc must be using nice fluffy pillows, or something.
I wonder how many sets of toys they gave those monkeys before they started playing with the ‘right’ ones…
stevenbrown: Why Do Boys and Girls Prefer Different Toys?
(Google is not for everyone!)
LOL. I have vervet fighter pilots and paratroopers in my head now. :-)
BBC Worldwide — Alcoholic Vervet Monkeys
(Intent is to amuse. Scientific accuracy may have been sacrificed. Apologies are proferred.)
Curse you John Morales!
*shakes fist*
Sorry John, I don’t know why but Google didn’t even enter my mind. Usually it’s the first thing I try. Apologies again.
I chose to not be a party to your embarrassing yourself on my blog, hoping and fully expecting that you would soon understand.* I’m absolutely flummoxed that you still don’t understand how ludicrous this is, and I’ve run out of ways to explain to you what should be utterly obvious. I really want you to stop writing about it and step back and think. It isn’t that complicated. This would be fully recognized as absurd nonscience that has no place being published and discussed by reasonable people if it weren’t so useful to sexists.
They gave cooking pots to vervets.
Looking for sex differences.
*And that’s false: I and several others tried to converse with you about this at length here.
Gasp, right up there with birds eating fermenting berries and flying while *hic*.
Nerd, birds?
Pah!
(Or, I get your point :) )
Wait, what now?
Paging the Rt Hon Winston Churchill to the white courtesy phone …
Hmmm Wonder what the elephants will give for excess well aged grog. The Pullet Patrol has reached their limit, and I need a secondary disposal method….
When I get really drunk, I become a raging Pollyanna.
It really is rather disturbing.
Janine, huh. The drunker I get, the more philosophical I become.
I now have a shiny new laptop. Not terribly impressed with Win8, but I never am terribly impressed with windows.
Congratulations on the new laptop!
I’ll send out some PP™ diplomats to negotiate…
Caine:
Is anyone ever terribly impressed with Windows? Conga Rats on the new laptop. ♥
I know it’s a team sport on your side, but I can’t possibly address anyone without multiplying my airtime, which I won’t do. I don’t know how the post comes out, the links always look funky in the preview. Here is my first attempt …
***
Argument One: Fascism.
Let’s summarize. SallyStrange gave herself the epithet of a “Femi-Fascist” and called me an “asshole”, where I retortedthat I take this as an honor, when it’s coming from a self-described fascist. It could have been left at that, but Janine struggling to find something, decided* to make it a bigger issue. She hand-waved the self-description away and instead complained that it was just a joke, while having this rather extravagant idea, that I was digging myself “deeper and deeper” for not finding fascism particularly funny. Now, different groups have been denigrated with labels and have successfully adopted and changed the meaning so it meant what they wanted them to mean. Fascism, however, is and was a political movement that killed millions in most hideous ways. People who subscribe to certain contemptible views still call themselves that way, and mean it seriously. No-one in their right mind can ever want to “borrow” the term or “own” it for something positive. As I can see that coming, the “grammar nazi” is a somewhat established term, and I even there I would have the same issue when it’s meant as a nickname. Preemptive Nerd deflector: “who cares what you think about fascism or nicknames”, or “why do you think it’s all about you” or something the like: see the the Star * above.
Guess what I’ve been doing tonight!
Yes, I’ve had my hands in the depths of the dishwasher sump.
Modern life is rubbish.
SC:
Thank you! It’s a Toshiba Satellite named Aphra. :)
Hekuni Cat:
I suppose someone somewhere must be, it’s just never me. :D Thank you!
observe as I deftly avoid all talk of ‘vervets’.
Chas, your most recent talk of ‘vervets’ is in comment #848.
(Your avoidance is weak)
weak, perhaps.
but deft.
gah.
aught-nine, of course, not “ought-nine”.
(That’s far more embarrassing than anything I’ve ever said about the notorious ludicrous you-know-what-kind-of-freakin monkey study. Far more.)
jeez; turns out ‘aught’ as zero is a can o’ worms. Who knew?
Your #823 was in response to criticism of your interpretation of the vervet experiment. While you technically didn’t mention it, your state “fuck off” was in response to my criticism of your interpretation of the experiment. Believe what you will, but so will the lurkers and other regulars….
*deftly sidesteps Nerd of Redhead*
The real question is: does the female vervet hit her drunk mate over the head with the cooking pot when he comes home liquored up?
carlie:
It works better with a frying pan, but the study forgot to test that particular “toy.”
Owlglass:
Dude.
Are you chaneling Ezra Pound?
@Owlglass.
I participate on otherkin forums. I don’t believe it to be anything other than psychological now, but I used to believe that souls could reincarnate across species.
However, even then, I was fairly logical and would argue with anyone who claimed physical shapeshifting from human to animal could happen, or than a human was growing wings, or that wolves had english names like moonshadow. Because of that, I developed a ‘hate club’. They called me a bitch multiple times. For a while that was part of my signature. Taking what OTHERS labelled me as and using it to passively mock them.
Apparently that idea is too complicated for you though.
They should have used a pink truck.
and a totally pimped cooking pot.
Carlie; The better answer is to seek the advice of an establishment skeptic. Violence solves nothing.
@ Caine
Conga Rat Elation on the laptop.
If you don’t like windows (who can blame you?) try looking into this: Ubuntu on Toshiba Models. I ditched microsoft many years ago and never looked back. We’ve got two businesses and all our personal computing running on eight linux machines.
/fanboi
@ comradebob
Are you a whenwe?
Theophontes:
Ah, thank you. Mister uses Fedora. I’m stuck with a ton of windows oriented software that I simply can’t afford to replace and hardware like my wacom tablet and such, that it’s generally easier to stick with ‘doze.
I apologize for bringing TeeVee into the discussion, but Colin Powell is being a religious extremist on the O’Reilly show. Colin is stating that education can make non-Seasonally evolved groups achieve educational test-score parity with Seasonally evolved groups.
This is slanderous against our teachers. American white students outscore all other white students with the exception of those living in Finland. American-educated Mesito students far exceed Mexican-educated Mesito students when it comes to test scores.
American-educated Chinese students outscore Chinese-educated Chinese students with the exception of one little tiny Chinese city. As observant persons, we can readily see that American teachers are second to none. Real teachers know of which I speak.
Colin Powell equates Human Bio-Diversity Awareness with Heresy of the State Religion. His is a sickness.
Oh! Oh! I know this one!
bobradecom: Fuck off.
OK
I am ready to send an alert.
@ Janine
Reminds me of this: GIF
troll who uses “comradebob” as the nym: your trolling is feeble.
(But you do increase the blog’s hits, so you’re not entirely useless)
Chigau, go right ahead. It’s bad enough having one house racist who won’t go away.
@theophontes: Gah! I looked at that and something made a knocking sound that synched close enough with the image to freak me out.
Hey, Chigau! You want Mister to snag one of the cool toys for you?
Very witty Steve. Unfortunately for you, the inherent sexual value of being a human female is not on your side; therefore the cognizant expectations of the average Pharyngula readers are higher for you than chigau.
Perhaps an option for a person like yourself would be to grow boobs.
alert sent.
I don’t know if it’s really that serious but I’m on a short fuse.
That’s okay bob, I make up for their expectations by having very low ones for myself.
Not as low as the ones I have for you though and yet, despite the vast chasm of stupidity you have dug yourself, I continue to be disappointed.
Owlglass says this without noting that he’d been talking about Janine, Hallucinating Liar and her explanation that someone can take an insult directed against them and use it in a moniker. Use it to point out the initial insult, to mock its hyperbole, to prove its ineffectiveness and to dissuade its use by others who wish to demean her because of its absurdity.
In any right triangle, the sum of the squares of the two sides is equal to the square of the hypotenuse.
Truth is very hard to accept.
Thanks, Caine.
But the notion of sending cool toys across the border actually gives me pause.
Who can tell what They™ could make of it?
Athyco, let us not forget that I am not an actual person, I’m a chalice containing poison. You betcha.
I call foul. Your business card clearly identifies you as a flagon with a dragon.
@ comradebob
You seem to be ignoring my question bob: Are you a whenwe?
@ Caine
It feels a bit like biting the bullet, I confess. I made the change out of utter frustration and just bulldozed through any problems I encountered (this was back in the day). I do a lot of graphics and use a wacom (intios). But each to their own.
@ Stevenbrown
{evil} Mwahahaha
My brain jumped the corral fence. I shall headdesk repeatedly until I no longer associate “poisoned chalice” with “Sarah Palin.” YOU are the real chalice containing poison; she shall be…a cracked mug of e coli. :)
Troll dissection analysis:
That city would be Shanghai, population 20 million, seventh largest city on earth.
Hypotheses to test:
1. Troll does not comprehend the english language words “little”, “tiny”, or “city”.
2. Troll cannot count past 6.
3. Troll is an alien from Coruscant.
Awaiting grant funds for further observations.
@ chigau
Comradebob has, after all, made hirself guilty of the one crime on our statute books:
theophontes
I would, except that I hate the Unity interface even more than I hate Vista’s interface. Xubuntu for the win.
Caine
I hear you on the first part, although I find that there’s Linux drivers for damn near any hardware (I say damn near because we’ve got the only printer that this company makes which hasn’t got Linux drivers. I am annoyed by this.). Fortunately, I hadn’t built up a collection of Win software before I changed over, although I do find that for many types of specialty programs I have to run them through WINE.
Dipshitbob
Citation fucking needed, fuckweasel. I mean, I realize that you’re just making shit up and have no conception of what evidence actually means, and that you’re going to ignore this demand for evidence backing your wordspew, like you have all the rest, but I haven’t really had a go at you yet. So, on what do you base your claim that American students do better than everyone else?
Shitbag at #868 improved:
Unfortunately, says Colin Powell TeeVe O’Reilly programming.The concept of learning, development and seasonality.
The next step is the Calcair mentair kovych and white students, he said. The United States, Mexico and the u.s. Department of education research students. Mesit Mesit login.
The United States, China, the United States of America, China, Alabama students everywhere. One is the Chinese students to learn and teachers of reading in the United States, a leader in Korea, therefore, Sir, in fact.
Colin Powell, however, Frig, the Convention on biological diversity, the patient.
Well, he WAS unceremoniously turfed from office in a landslide within months of the war being over.
(“You see, old chap, we’re grateful for what you did in the war and all, what with the winning it and saving civilization and blah blah blah, but the war’s over and we don’t need you anymore. *boot*)
comradebob:
3:4:5 / 5:12:13 / 8:15:17 / 7:24:25 / 9:40:41 / 12:35:37
Andrew Clarke likes his doms.
I am really starting to like Janine. In my opinion, if her and me were to meet each other at a barbeque, we would become friends. Lesbianism is an excuse to for ladies to withdraw from engagement. All women have the same drives. This is B-I-O-L-O-G-Y.
;)
[This is creepy. C-R-E-E-P-Y. Stop it now. –pzm]
I wish the large intestine of the shitbag would come to it’s senses and throttle the shitbag.
Just sayin’
Chigau:
Oh, who knows? I regularly send all kinds of swarf to a friend in Montreal, and they don’t seem to care about that.
Comradebog:
Nah, she doesn’t eat rancid long pig, so you two wouldn’t interact at a barbie.
myeck waters:
I can go with that. No problem.
Athyco:
Sorry about that. It’s a Norf Dakota/Minnesota thing.
@ Dalillama
Theaphontes makes me switch hers back to the old school too.
If you haven’t yet, check out Virtual Box. It is awsome, and will run right in your desktop like any regular program. (I use this for autocad on XP.)
@ Amphiox
Amphiox @ 886:
I think the troll is a Quaatar:
The Margarets by Sherri S. Tepper
Caine:
No worry. I think the headdesk wooziness caused my response to bob. It was frightening, but I believe it’s over.
Comradebob is doing sexual harassment. See, kids? This is how you do sexual harassment and attempt to maintain plausible deniability. I say “attempt” because it is rather transparent; however there are many stupid people in the world whose pattern detectors are not so finely tuned. For them, this dance on the edge of appropriate behavior will suffice. Unless Comradebob actively starts writing graphically sexual things, like, “I want to lick your perineum,” those simple-minded idiots will deny that there’s any sort of power play going on here. No, they will insist, Comradebob is not trying to demean Janine by reminding her of her role as sex object as determined by the dominant culture. He is just making an innocent remark. Perhaps he is mistaken about the whole biology thing, but that doesn’t mean he’s ill intentioned.
Yes it does. Comradebob has been around here and places like it to know better. He’s doing it on purpose. That’s what makes it creepy.
Sexual harassment definitely should be beyond the pale here. Is there really any question as to whether Comradebob needs to be banned?
As for Owlglass, you’re just really slow. Sorry but your failure to understand is not my problem. You’re not the target audience, I guess, so you probably better toddle along.
Not so great for running PC games on the Mac, btw.
Just as an aside, I was looking at laptops in Bangkok the other day, and all but the Sony ones come “DOS”, meaning without a pre-installed OS. I think that’s a great idea.(You can buy an OS install disk from them for not much money, W8 was like 30 bucks or so)
Caine
It’s pretty random what they will and won’t stop; last time L tried shipping something to a customer in Canada, Customs held it for 2 months (In high summer), and by the time they finally sent it on the glue had all melted and the whole thing was ruined.
theophontes
I’ll take a look at it.
Racist Douchecanoe
You’ve done an amazing thing: You’ve actually managed to be more obnoxiously creepy than you were when you started. You’re kind of like what I’d expect to see if ELIZA had been programmed by Charles Manson.
@ SC
Apparently you write in the same style as H. P. Lovecraft.
@ Kitty
Apparently you write in the same style as David Foster Wallace.
@ StevoR
Apparently you write in the same style as Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley.
.
Anyone else interested in who the write like?
Link here.
@theophontes
…. and I write like dan brown…… I feel so insulted v.v
Off topic, curious to see if PZ responds to Novella.
theophontes, I don’t even need to clickety-click to know you’ve linked to a hoary old site which was discussed here long, long ago.
(The site itself writes like Cory Doctorow)
Dalillama, the cool toy in question is the focal lens of a laser.
Janine’s latest translation made me laugh so hard I cried.
If you like that sort of thing. Or you can just use Gnome instead of Unity. There’s even a Gnome 2 lookalike: http://packages.ubuntu.com/quantal/gnome-session-fallback
+++++
PDF of the book mentioned in 596:
http://tinyurl.com/acqc726 or https://cdn.anonfiles.com/1359507136434.pdf
Can someone suggest how I find out what kind of bugs are in my bedroom? Matte brown, winged, about 2 cm long. Smells like a stink bug when thwapped (one flew into my hair), but its body, while more angular than rounded, is not shield-shaped. Legs are…weird. The back ones have an elongated triangle shape. The second buzzed my lamp right after I thwapped the first.
No pictures match in Wiki under stink bug, pinacate beetle, or boxelder bug.
@ rorschach
You have to allocate a portion of your RAM to the VM while it is running. This could be what is interfering with your gaming experience. (When running CAD on a VM, I give the VM 4 GB RAM of the 8 RAM available. One cannot notice any performance issues at all. Also, RAM is very cheap.)
Yeah, we seem to be coming out from under that iniquitous windows-tax too. I got $300 back when buying my new laptop without.
athyco, call your local natural history museum; someone there will have expertise.
@ John Morales
:'(
(That SGBM, SC and myself all write like Lovecraft, is perhaps another give-away.)
Theophontes
I suspect that that site may be junk; I put in three samples of my writing, and got James Joyce, Daniel DeFoe, and David Foster Wallace, respectively. (I can’t say how accurate the comparisons are; I’ve never read any Joyce, I haven’t read DeFoe in years, and I’ve never even heard of Wallace.)
Theophontes, I remember that site. It did the rounds a while back. I put in three different posts and got Anne Rice, Mario Puzo and Charles Dickens.
*waves across the Vietnamese-Chinese border at theophontes*
I read that Wine or its pay-derivate are better suited than VB to play games on the Mac, but when I tried with Skyrim it would only load until it came up with some “Steam” screen and asked me to register somewhere, at which point I lost interest.
Athyco, check at http://www.whatsthatbug.com/ – if you can’t find it there…
Caine
Well, I suppose that that won’t be damaged by sitting in a warehouse for a while, and if you’ve not had troubles with other stuff you probably won’t with this. I was just reminded of why L doesn’t generally ship to Canada anymore.
SGBM
I’m aware of the GNOME 2 skin, but even with that GNOME 3 is horribly bloated, and my computers are working near the edge of their capacity as it is; they’re far from new, and I can’t afford to upgrade any of my hardware.
Everything I tried resulted in Arthur Clarke, including a grocery list.
chigau, funniest thing is that if you paste a random bit from some author on its database, the chances are overwhelming that it will determine that author writes like a different one. ;)
(Just tried it with Cory D, apparently he writes like Arthur C.)
You can just run GNOME2 natively, can’t you? Have you tried Xfce or LXDE? They use very few resources and are still fairly comfortable. There is also enlightenment or openbox/fluxbox around, but I find them way too difficult to configure and lacking in ease of use.
Meh.
If you can start applications and move data around, then the OS suffices.
That’s my guy, called a leaf-footed bug or squash bug. The Amateur Entomologists’ Society has a neat key to adult bugs online.
Dalillama, understood.
rorschach, Xubuntu is Xfce.
Wow, according to “I Write Like” my smackdown of Gundam SEED DESTINY means I write like Douglas Adams. I’m touched.
I am currently amused (a little creeped out, but mostly amused) by Bob. First, that he is apparently under the impression that there are places entirely without any sort of seasonal variation (surprise, bob! Wet and Dry count as seasons!) and second… this lovely bit of dipshittedness:
Gee Bob, what does your “B-I-O-L-O-G-Y” have to say about one of my male snakes attempting to eat the ovulating female snake he was originally paired with? What does your “B-I-O-L-O-G-Y” have to say about same-sex pair bonds in animals? And if women all have the same drives, do men all have the same drives? Are gay men an illusion? Do I get to tell this to my old manager? Tell him that no, he’s not in love with his husband, he just wants to withdraw from engagement?
And all women have the same drives? Haven’t we disproved that with those women here who do not want to be popping out vagina gremlins (another phrase my sister-in-law uses is crotch goblin), while there are those that do want and/or have had children and some of us who are uncertain if we are going to have kids or not?
Oh, you must have forgotten because our lady cooties messed up your computer. Sorry about that.
Caine hates children?
Wow, I never noted!
I mean, she doesn’t like them, but to my knowledge she did the responsible thing to neither have them nor become a teacher. Sounds good to me.
Just something of substance: Please, childfree people who sometimes interact with children, don’t think that the fact that they behave pretty well around you means that you found the right way to treat them while their parents totally fail and should look at you. You have something the kids want, i.e. your attention and maybe affection and they totally know that you can walk away from them. They know exactly that their parents love them anyway so they can totally behave like a total ass.
Actually, kids who have very little reason to love their parents are often way more attached to them than well-adjustd kids with a loving home because they need to fight for their parents’ love.
And I’m still amazed that our brains apparently evolved a preference for cooking pots before we invented cooking. I think that might count as evidence for god.
Damn, what a miserable day. It was my first day back at work after a protracted illness. Definitely worse for the wear (but great to be out of bed.) No worries though, I’ve endured worse. Seems that I’ve started quite a hole here. Well it ain’t gonna dig itself, so where’s my shovel…
First, Carlie @751:
The world works in noodly ways. I was quickly scrolling through the comments when the block quote in your comment caught my eye. For me it was one of those kick-in-the-keister moments (aka, well duh!) I was a bad boy. I should never have labeled rowenvt’s sister-in-law as I did. Although this was implicit in my comments to rowenvt, I want to make it explicit now. To rowenvt’s sister-in-law, where ever you may be, I am sorry. There was no excuse for what I said, triggered or not. You are a good person.
After ruminating on the block quote, I noticed Carlie’s own words. Seems like there may be a nasty back story to the quote. So in an effort to forestall the chain-yankers:
I don’t know the context of the quote, and I don’t give a damn. I don’t know who said what. My use of the quote does not constitute approval of anyone’s thoughts or opinions. I’m too lazy, intellectually and physically to look it up. I’m using the phrase completely out of the previous context, creating a new context all my own.
Dinner time. BBL
oldmrbear,
That’s because you have contempt for other commenters here, and you don’t care how your actions contribute to sexism.
It constitutes indifference to sexism. Since you are failing to stand up against sexism when it is pointed out to you, while others pick up your slack, you are helping make the world more sexist.
That’s because you have contempt for other commenters here, and you don’t care how your actions contribute to sexism.
The comment by Robert “comradebob” Mugabe is right here. You can know that because the comment by rowanvt, which you attacked her for, mentioned the comment number.
That is not how conversation works. You can’t make other people forget that you were haranguing women for standing up to a sexist commenter.
You are protecting a sexist by refusing to judge whether he is a sexist while criticizing the people who criticized the sexist.
You are contributing to sexism by failing to pick up your part of the work.
Do the dishes and tell bob to fuck off.
@Theophontes:
I put in three ‘chapters’ of my book:
Margaret Atwood, James Fenimoore Cooper, and Margaret Atwood.
I got mostly Lovecraft, with a couple of Doctorows.
@ Kitty
It appears this site has been featured on the Pharyngula threads before and that we might needs take it with a pinch of salt. Sad this, I kinda liked the blurb about it. It would be fascinating if someone got such an analysis algorithm to work properly.
Be that as it may, do you recognise yourself in the authors you mentioned?
Kat Lorraine, I’d much rather have Atwood than Rice.
Apparently, my Pharyngula posts are in the style of Dan Brown.
This is preposterous. I don’t use overwrought metaphors or credentials in place of names!
NEW THREAD.