Comments

  1. chigau (your display name can be anything you want) says

    Ha!
    I saw that puppy a few days ago.
    I thought I was hallucinating because when I refreshed, it was gone.

  2. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    ThunderDome: an angry pit of endless ranting, entirely unsympathetic to human life and …

    wait, is that a puppy? Ooooohh. Puppies!
    .
    .
    .
    Also, another definition:
    Reputation, Horde: characteristics attributed to Pharyngula commenters despite p(true characteristic of at least 51% of commenters) < 0.001

  3. cag says

    Please, please please folks, do not use the bible as toilet paper. I implore you to not use the bible as toilet paper. Don’t do it.

    The pages come covered in shit direct from the publisher.

  4. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Well, now, cag, that was useful and informative: I now have a clear picture of the structure of my frontal lobe that I would have lacked if you hadn’t pointed my eyes that way.

  5. chigau (your display name can be anything you want) says

    CD
    I want to see a picture of the internal structure of your skull.
    ’cause when I do that, all I see is Dark
    and sometimes I fall off my chair
    onto the pile of shattered Irony Meters

  6. says

    Does anyone have a universal translator for this comment by Vijen:

    Each of us is free to ignore our true nature – we enjoy pretending that we are localized, separate, and limited conscious beings – but the reality is always available. This game of misidentification can continue indefinitely, but if you can be open to the possibility that you aren’t who you think you are, then you will start to see the joke.

    The only way to know is subjective: objects lack epistemological access. And brains and minds are objects, so who is it that really knows?

  7. cm's changeable moniker (quaint, if not charming) says

    I want to see a picture of the internal structure of your skull.

    *twitch*

    When I had a CT scan of my head, the nurse said it was the only circumstance in which she could advocate drinking alcohol as a recovery measure (to get rid of excess iodine, used as a contrast marker).

    It was the weirdest procedure ever.

  8. Arawhon, a Strawberry Margarita says

    Tony! The Fucking Queer Shoop! at #10

    Its woo talk for minds being fragments of God. Its solipsism disguised as religious woo.

  9. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @chigau:

    If I ever manage to get one taken, I will send you a copy. Honestly.

    I probably won’t remember, but something like that I would comment on here, and as long as anybody remembers the promise, I’ll live up to it.

  10. PDX_Greg says

    My first ever step into thunderdome, and the place is %100 thunder-free. Not sure what I was expecting, or hoping for. Perhaps I should be glad?

  11. says

    PDX Greg:
    We’re just having a dry spell at the moment. I’m sure someday in the not too distant future, we’ll have a creoturd or libertarian scuzzbucket drop by. Then the thunder will shake the heavens.

    ****

    Editor of the Wall Street Journal says don’t raise the minimum wage bc workers learn from poverty:

    “I think what [Mayor Ed Murray] is going to find out is he’s pricing a bunch of people out of the labor market,” Gigot opined. “Particularly the young, the least skilled, teenagers, people who want to go in and gen in on that basic, bottom rung of the economic latter and move up.”

    “Look, I worked for the minimum wage,” he explained. “Two bucks an hour back in the 1970s. I had jobs that — what did I learn? I learned to show up on time, I learned certain skills, and I learned I didn’t want to make the rest of my life so I better get an education.”

    Yeah, bc young people are the only ones living on minimum wage jobs. Compassion deficient fuckwit.

  12. chigau (your display name can be anything you want) says

    PDX_Greg
    Just wait a bit
    .
    .
    .
    You are a big poopey-head!!!
    .
    .
    .
    See?

  13. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @PDX_Greg:

    You don’t, by chance, work at a small institution on the Willamette, a bit south of downtown, do you?

  14. says

    @ PDX_Greg

    My first ever step into thunderdome, and the place is %100 thunder-free.

    The eBil oBerlawd ™ has forced us to wait until visitors have made at least three comments¹ before we are allowed to attack in a berserker frenzy of blood and gore. ²

    ¹ The so-called “Three Comment Rule”. It is because of such repressive legislation that the Politburo of this thread has decided to form our own breakaway People’s Republic of Southern Pharyngula.
    ² Red food dye and Ketchup.

  15. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    I fucking love Tibetan Mastiffs. They’re like lion dogs. I wish to meet one one day :(

  16. thepianoman2020 says

    I’m like PDX_Greg. My first time in Thunderdome and I’m waiting for carnage……..

  17. mudpuddles says

    I have generally avoided the Thunderdome threads since I get fed up with pages of bile and bickering. Today I actually wanted to see who was getting chewed out over what, so I peek in and see a lot of talk about puppies. Unless this turns into a bloody battle over which breed of dog has the cutest puppies, I will be disappointed.

  18. Antiochus Epiphanes says

    thepianoman2020: Say something stupid and see what happens. What we have here is a powder keg awaiting a match. I can see why the puppies would mislead you about our explosive nature.
     
    theophontes: We* formed a breakaway sham republic (Democratic Republic of Brayton) about a year ago. We meet in the library Thursday afternoons and see what’s in the old wallet before routing coup plots in meatspace. And then we get tea at Starbucks. My point is that I got my hands full with this political pseudo-entity that I created. Otherwise, I’d be the first to fire up the propaganda machine.
     
    *The royal “we”

  19. boygenius says

    @ pianoman & Greg:

    Be patient. Chas or ‘schach are bound to comment here sooner or later. Infighting ensues, generally.

    (Has Morales been banhammered? If so, I would love a link to the proverbial straw.)

  20. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Has Morales been banhammered? If so, I would love a link to the proverbial straw.

    I think he just stopped posting.

  21. boygenius says

    I think he just stopped posting.

    Pity. An asshole, but at least an erudite and interesting one. I rather enjoyed his contributions here, for one reason or another.

  22. ledasmom says

    When I had a CT scan of my head, the nurse said it was the only circumstance in which she could advocate drinking alcohol as a recovery measure (to get rid of excess iodine, used as a contrast marker).

    It was the weirdest procedure ever.

    It’s not always with contrast, is it? Or am I misremembering the two I had (when your migraine aura includes one-sided numbness, they tend to want to look at your head)?
    I’ve also had a plain old x-ray of the head (for braces) and an MRI of the head (for – I’m not sure at this point), and the only one I got to see was the plain x-ray, which is rather a pity. And I am afraid that after one of the CTs I really did say to the doctor “So, you looked at my head and found nothing?” My only excuse is that I had at that point had a couple of doses of what I believe was IV morphine for what was a very, very bad headache.
    In other weird imaging facts, me, my mother and my son have all had cardiac echoes, for completely different reasons (well, as different as you can get and still stay in the heart).

  23. says

    Tony:

    Does anyone have a universal translator for this comment by Vijen:

    Each of us is free to ignore our true nature – we enjoy pretending that we are localized, separate, and limited conscious beings – but the reality is always available. This game of misidentification can continue indefinitely, but if you can be open to the possibility that you aren’t who you think you are, then you will start to see the joke.
    The only way to know is subjective: objects lack epistemological access. And brains and minds are objects, so who is it that really knows?

    As far as I can tell:
    “I’m not only going to ignore all evidence you present, I’m also going to act smug about it.”

  24. David Marjanović says

    Does anyone have a universal translator for this comment by Vijen:

    Each of us is free to ignore our true nature – we enjoy pretending that we are localized, separate, and limited conscious beings – but the reality is always available. This game of misidentification can continue indefinitely, but if you can be open to the possibility that you aren’t who you think you are, then you will start to see the joke.

    The only way to know is subjective: objects lack epistemological access. And brains and minds are objects, so who is it that really knows?

    Trufax: There is only one Mind in the whole universe (and beyond); our supposed minds are all parts of it, we are not individuals! This is utterly obvious because Like only comes from Like, things cannot know, so when ‘we’ know something, ‘our’ brains and ‘minds’ can’t be responsible for that, because they’re things, so they can’t know! Only Mind can know.

    It’s quite similar to presuppositionalism, actually.

    Extremely similar, actually.

  25. Gerard O says

    Pardon my negativity, but there seems to be a large brick wall in modern science and everything seems to be hitting it. Not only does the Turing Test story seem to be an outright hoax, but the BICEP2 experiment seems to have gone up in smoke (or interstellar dust, take your pick). Are seeing the very limitations of the scientific enterprise in our own lifetime?

  26. Xaivius (Formerly Robpowell, Acolyte of His Majesty Lord Niel DeGrasse Tyson I) says

    Gerard O@34

    More the limits of current semi-conductor technology. So much of our progress seems to come from issues that, frankly, require a ludicrous amount of processing power due to multi-variable issues, such as DNA SNP analysis, Weather modeling, and large scale statistical analysis. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the current state of computers was acting as a bottleneck on other forms of progress.

  27. David Marjanović says

    There’s no brick wall in my field, even though I sometimes (every few months) have to run calculations that take a week on an ordinary desktop.

  28. Antiochus Epiphanes says

    Are seeing the very limitations of the scientific enterprise in our own lifetime?

    I sometimes fail to find plants that I’m looking for. It’s like they don’t even want to be found, or something.
     
    So, more generally, a failure of nature to cooperate with my plans.

    There’s no brick wall in my field, even though I sometimes (every few months) have to run calculations that take a week on an ordinary desktop.

    Solidarity, comrade.

  29. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Yeah, i appreciated John Morales when he was posting, even if an occasional post was annoying.

    I’m sure no one is ever annoyed by even a single post of mine, though, not even Chas, so I’m definitely superior in that sense. :-P

  30. chigau (違う) says

    I, too, am unwilling to declare the End Of Science because of a recent flurry of really bad reporting.

  31. Xaivius (Formerly Robpowell, Acolyte of His Majesty Lord Niel DeGrasse Tyson I) says

    David Marjanović, Antiochus Epiphanes@36,37

    True, the more prominent thing I’ve noticed is that much science reporting/public perception seems to be on science growing in ‘Leaps and bounds,’ when the more accurate metaphor is the ‘slow and steady grind towards progress’ I see within my research agency (agricultural science) where the only big discoveries tend to be bad things, like discovering that Zebra Chip Disease (potato pathogen) has managed to migrate to the Pacific Northwest : /

  32. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Clearly the end of science is nigh.

    We build ever more complicated machines to tease out signals from ever more frustrating noise. Just modeling thermal noise effects and quantum effects on the folding of a single protein is vastly complex. We should be able to issue a couple of voice commands to the computer in our flying car, have the car model the protein folding and give us both normal folding and how folding can go wrong, then go through a library of chemicals that might bond with the protein, and where, then synthesize it and puff it into the air of the car’s cabin, bringing us instantly to a state of combined physical orgasm and emotional rapture.

    The car should do this in a few tenths of a second, while flying us to our favorite vacation destination at a leisurely cruising speed of mach 5, giving us just enough time to enjoy the immersive holographic thrideo the car is simultaneously projecting into the cabin.

    Seriously, I could imagine that 30 years ago, and I’m still just imagining it. Obviously science and technology are at an utter standstill.

  33. Gerard O says

    There have been so many disappointments in the realm of science that I’m convinced now that the truest means to gain knowledge may have to come from subjective philosophical insights rather than empirical data.

  34. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    I didn’t want to leave it in the other thread. I just couldn’t. I wanted my comment there to stand on its own, but I have to scream here. I have to scream against the violence. I can’t help but think of my good friend Mary who spent years of her life at Reynolds. I can’t help but rage.

    Fuck.

    Fuck I hate violence.

  35. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Fuck, what am i saying, I have another friend who spent years of her life there, too, and was probably there today. I totally forgot about the present thinking about the past. Now I don’t know if she’s among the shot. She would be the kind to put herself forward to save kids.

    Fuck. I’m not mentioning her name, cause I don’t want to start speculation (and because she wasn’t necessarily there today, and she might even have transferred schools in the last year: I love her but we don’t always keep in great touch). Families deserve good info, not spreading rumor. But holy crap.

    Did I mention I really hate violence?

  36. says

    Gerard O

    There have been so many disappointments in the realm of science that I’m convinced now that the truest means to gain knowledge may have to come from subjective philosophical insights rather than empirical data.

    And that works better, somehow?

    What a joke.

  37. says

    CD:

    I didn’t want to leave it in the other thread.

    I think it would be a good thing to rage against violence in that thread, seeing as a stalwart gun defender showed up at comment #5.

  38. David Marjanović says

    There have been so many disappointments in the realm of science that I’m convinced now that the truest means to gain knowledge may have to come from subjective philosophical insights rather than empirical data.

    What the what???

    Please explain.

    In particular, explain how anything subjective can lead to insights for other people. An insight you can’t communicate is, after all, worthless!

  39. says

    There have been so many disappointments in the realm of science that I’m convinced now that the truest means to gain knowledge may have to come from subjective philosophical insights rather than empirical data.

    What “disappointments” do you mean? Are you referring to the fact that science is hard?

    Why do you think a purely subjective method would give us any greater knowledge? Indeed, without any objective method to verify statements, how do you propose to have any knowledge at all about anything other than your personal states of mind?

    You’re making some rather big claims here. Time to back them up, I think.

  40. says

    Gerard O:

    Pardon my negativity, but there seems to be a large brick wall in modern science and everything seems to be hitting it. Not only does the Turing Test story seem to be an outright hoax

    Seems to me you should pay attention to science through channels which are not popular media. An actual understanding of various science disciplines would help, then you could read and understand science publications, rather than opining over one or two things which have garnered attention in popular media.

  41. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @inaji, 46:

    The website for Reynolds is down.

    I don’t know if the person who was one of my best friends (but from whom I drifted apart when she partnered with someone who needed a lot of physical care and assistance leaving us little time) was still working at Reynolds again this year.

    I don’t know if she’s been shot, or if she has been if the injury is trivial or critical. I take the likelihood as low, since there is only one reported victim on staff, my friend doesn’t teach PE (where the shooting was initially to have broken out), and school transfers aren’t uncommon and the last time she told me she was specifically working at the high school was a while ago.

    So the odds say that my friend is safe, at least physically. But I feel horrible thinking that it **isn’t** her, because surely whoever got hit has as many loved ones as my friend does, and how selfish of me is it to wish this on someone else? And I feel horrible thinking of that small chance that she was shot, knowing that we haven’t talked as much as we should have in the past few years.

    I’m not letting this shit into that thread to be told I’m too emotional and blah fucking blah. I’m not saying the personal isn’t political. I’m not saying that this isn’t exactly part of the reason why we need better anti-oppression work, better mental health, no fucking guns, all of it. I’m just not going to wander into that thread feeling this and be told I have to be reasonable, too, because, hey! Skepticism! Political Reality! 2nd Amendment! Crazy Blaming! And anyway, it wasn’t misogyny/racism/shit for which someone other than the shooter might need to be accountable!

    I’m not wandering in there and having them tell me I have to respect their political fee fees.

    Fuck them.

  42. thepianoman2020 says

    “Subjective philosophical insights” sounds suspiciously like code for “God.”

  43. says

    CD:

    I’m not wandering in there and having them tell me I have to respect their political fee fees.

    Fuck them.

    I understand. It’s a good day to be gone, I think, and I will be shortly. Have to head into the pain clinic today for spinal shots and other therapy.

  44. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Hope it’s helpful, Inaji. I’m always thinking about you.

  45. Kevin Kehres says

    Gerard O @42:

    Seriously? Can’t trust them scientismists? Gotta just use the old noodle? You mean like Aristotle did when he figured out there were four elements — earth, air, fire, and water? Or deduced (quite wrongly, I’m afraid) the number of teeth in a horse’s mouth — but never bothered to check to see just how far wrong he was?

    Sure. Let’s go back to that system. Worked OK for hundreds of years in the … what was the name … it’s on the tip of my tongue … oh yeah, the DARK AGES.

    Asshat.

  46. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    Gerard O.,
    OK, just who do you think the folks are who are discovering the issues with these results? Do you think they are philosophers wearing togas? Dude, that is how science works. You get a result, and then your best buddies in the field try to tear it apart. Methinks that the problem lies not in science but rather in your lack of understanding of how science works.

  47. opposablethumbs says

    Crip Dyke, thinking of you. Hope you are OK. I know it’s not about that, but I’m sorry it’s hurting you as well as those who are right there in it.

  48. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    Gerard O #42

    There have been so many disappointments in the realm of science that I’m convinced now that the truest means to gain knowledge may have to come from subjective philosophical insights rather than empirical data.
    [bolding mine]

    This point refutes itself, does it not?

  49. Thumper: Who Presents Boxes Which Are Not Opened says

    @Mudpuddles #25

    Unless this turns into a bloody battle over which breed of dog has the cutest puppies, I will be disappointed.

    Rottweilers, goddammit! They’re like tiny bears!

  50. opposablethumbs says

    German Shepherds. Because they are the best dog all the time ever forever under all circumstances always, and unbefuckinglievably cute.

    Also Gerard O is an incoherent idiot with less than no idea what science is, what it does or how it does what it does. And he’s a blithering halfwit with – on present showing – less than nothing to offer in terms of knowledge or analysis.

  51. says

    Gerard O:

    There have been so many disappointments in the realm of science that I’m convinced now that the truest means to gain knowledge may have to come from subjective philosophical insights rather than empirical data.

    And what system of checks and balances exists to verify that subjective philosophical insights (SPI) accurately reflect reality (and do so significantly better than empirical data which has served us quite well)?
    Can SPIs assist in finding a cure for cancer?
    Can SPIs help put man on Mars?
    Can SPIs help build roller coasters or monorails?
    How can SPIs give us more knowledge about how this elevator went out of control and crashed into a roof?

  52. says

    opposablethumbs

    German Shepherds. Because they are the best dog all the time ever forever under all circumstances always, and unbefuckinglievably cute.

    Whatever, just keep them the hell away from me.

  53. says

    I used to fear and hate dogs, after being mauled by a german shepherd at a sandpit being maybe 3 or 4 years old. I’ve grown over it, now I just strongly dislike them.

  54. Nick Gotts says

    There have been so many disappointments in the realm of science that I’m convinced now that the truest means to gain knowledge may have to come from subjective philosophical insights rather than empirical data.

    Ah. you mean disappointments like the discovery of the Higgs boson, a couple of thousand extra-solar planets, fossils documenting the evolution of tetrapods, birds and hominids, evidence of running water on Mars, hydrocarbon lakes and rain on Titan, new ways to produce stem cells, metamaterials with novel optical properties, and evidence of primordial inflation?

  55. says

    Holy Fuck:

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/06/10/white-iowa-teacher-tells-black-student-to-address-him-by-saying-yes-sir-master/?utm_source=crowdignite.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=crowdignite.com

    An Iowa mother said this week that the Des Moines school board may have gone easy on a white teacher who told her black son to call him “master.”

    Roosevelt High School student Jabre White, 17, recalled to The Des Moines Register the way his teacher, Shawn McCurtain, had told the class to head downstairs for a final exam in economics in mid-May.

    “Yes, sir,” Jabre White remembered telling the teacher.

    “You meant to say, ‘Yes, sir, master,’” McCurtain allegedly replied.

    He apparently apologized.
    And claimed he was joking.

    I just…wow.

  56. says

    Waiting at Pain Clinic. Gonna be here forever. The best fucking dogs ever are whichever ones need rescuing at any given time.

  57. opposablethumbs says

    Weed(less) Monkey I think that would put anybody off; I sympathise, and you (obviously) have every right not to be bothered by them. I love ’em rather a lot and enjoy being around them, but I respect the fact that not everybody shares my predilection (and that they are non-human animals, and don’t presume to impose myself on unknown ones without a body-language invitation).
    Ahem. I almost forgot where we are. BETTER THAN ROTTWEILERS ANY DAY, YEAH!

  58. says

    He apparently apologized.
    And claimed he was joking.

    If that’s the case, he should be able to explain what the joke was. What interpretation, other than the racist one, is there for that comment? I don’t immediately see one.

  59. opposablethumbs says

    #68, Yup. Ours is a rescue (she was found on the street and taken to a rescue centre, which is where we got her. The vet at the centre reckoned that some dog breeder might have chucked her out for being deaf (and therefore unsaleable). We were happy to have her, and started learning about training for deaf dogs – all that visual cues, silent training stuff – and got her a vibrating collar so we could “call” her even if she couldn’t see us :-) (and then about 6 months later she unexpectedly got her hearing back – might have been an ear infection or something, maybe, who knows).

    But I have to yell at Thumper about which puppies are cutest, because Thunderdome.

    Hope you don’t have to wait much longer, and that you get good pain treatment Inaji.

  60. Xaivius (Formerly Robpowell, Acolyte of His Majesty Lord Niel DeGrasse Tyson I) says

    X-Post from the Gundamentalism thread (Portland School Shooting)

    A woman of 29 berates people for ‘going soft’ with their kids

    of note from that article:

    Many years ago, there was a time where young boys could run around with their toy guns, killing the bad guys. You could take the toy guns away from the little boys, and they’d find something else around them – a stick, their fingers, etc – and pretend it was a gun. Today, those little boys – if caught doing that – are labeled as threats, and immediate action is taken to remove that threat from the group.
    -Stephanie Metz

    This article pretty much sums up the problems with the US. We can’t very well treat children with respect, now can we? Of COURSE they’re going to have to go through the same barbaric, idiotic hazing and human tribalism bullshit everyone else did. Why would we ever want to change it? After all, WE turned out just fine. Just because some pansy-ass yuppies got their knickers in a twist, we have to treat everyone like porcelain [/sardonicism]

    Seriously. So much pining for ‘The good old days’ from someone who never even SAW the 40’s and 50’s. This is such bullshit

  61. says

    Oh, look-the KKK is looking to bolster its membership (with returning military personnel) in anticipation of an impending race war.

    The Ku Klux Klan plans to begin military-style combat training under the direction of military troops returning home from overseas deployments, according to a Barcroft Media report.

    The notorious hate group has been attempting to recruit new members – children, in particular – in recent months, and the Loyal White Knights faction has begun preparations for a long-awaited race war.

    “We’re going to do something a little different for probably the next couple of years to try to get our men and women ready for the upcoming battle that we’re about to take upon us, and this is something that no Klan has ever done and we’re going to start it,” said one Klan leader during a rally in Parkersburg, West Virginia. “All our boys are finally coming back home from the military, which is good, and we’re getting a lot more military members to join.”

    Spreading hate. Racism. Masturbating over the idea of an impending race war.
    Sounds like business as usual for the KKK, rather than “doing something different”.

    ****
    Xaivius:
    I do find it ridiculous that children have gotten in trouble for using their fingers to mimic a gun.
    Other than that, I don’t agree with anything else she said.

  62. says

    Xaivius:
    from your link-

    The mentality of our society in 2013 is nauseating to me, friends.

    Many years ago, there was a time where young boys could run around with their toy guns, killing the bad guys. You could take the toy guns away from the little boys, and they’d find something else around them – a stick, their fingers, etc – and pretend it was a gun. Today, those little boys – if caught doing that – are labeled as threats, and immediate action is taken to remove that threat from the group.

    Yes, it’s silly to label children as threats when they mimic guns with their fingers. That said-GUNS ARE NOT FUCKING TOYS. They should not be treated as such, and I don’t think children should grow up thinking guns are “cool”.

    There was a time – not too long ago – when bullying was defined as slamming someone up against a locker and stealing their lunch money. There was a time when kids got called names and got picked on, and they brushed it off and worked through it (ask me how I know this). Now, if Sally calls Susie a bitch (please excuse my language if that offends you), Susie’s whole world crumbles around her, she contemplates suicide, and this society encourages her to feel like her world truly has ended, and she should feel entitled to a world-wide pity party. And Sally – phew! She should be jailed! She should be thrown in juvenile detention for acting like – gasp – a teenage girl acts.

    This is so simplistic it boggles my mind. She’s basically saying that bullying is not a real problem and that people who engage in bullying behavior shouldn’t be punished. She doesn’t appear to understand the psychology of bullying and how it impacts the victims and the perpetrators. She doesn’t seem to care either. Her lack of compassion is cringe worthy.

    The young generations of today (yes, I sound old. I realize I’m only 29 years old.) are being taught that they shouldn’t have to ever put up with anything doesn’t make their hearts feel like rainbow colored unicorns are running around pooping skittles onto piles of marshmallows.

    No. That’s not what they’re being taught. I wish I could say children are being taught to respect the bodily autonomy and rights of others, but I don’t know that that’s the case (not to the degree needed).
    I wonder if this fool is a right wing libertarian.

  63. says

    Xaivius:
    (from your link)

    The mentality of our society in 2013 is nauseating to me, friends.

    Many years ago, there was a time where young boys could run around with their toy guns, killing the bad guys. You could take the toy guns away from the little boys, and they’d find something else around them – a stick, their fingers, etc – and pretend it was a gun. Today, those little boys – if caught doing that – are labeled as threats, and immediate action is taken to remove that threat from the group.

    Yes, it’s silly to label children as threats when they mimic guns with their fingers. That said-GUNS ARE NOT FUCKING TOYS. They should not be treated as such, and I don’t think children should grow up thinking guns are “cool”.

    There was a time – not too long ago – when bullying was defined as slamming someone up against a locker and stealing their lunch money. There was a time when kids got called names and got picked on, and they brushed it off and worked through it (ask me how I know this). Now, if Sally calls Susie a bitch (please excuse my language if that offends you), Susie’s whole world crumbles around her, she contemplates suicide, and this society encourages her to feel like her world truly has ended, and she should feel entitled to a world-wide pity party. And Sally – phew! She should be jailed! She should be thrown in juvenile detention for acting like – gasp – a teenage girl acts.

    This is so simplistic it boggles my mind. She’s basically saying that bullying is not a real problem and that people who engage in bullying behavior shouldn’t be punished. She doesn’t appear to understand the psychology of bullying and how it impacts the victims and the perpetrators. She doesn’t seem to care either. Her lack of compassion is cringe worthy.

    The young generations of today (yes, I sound old. I realize I’m only 29 years old.) are being taught that they shouldn’t have to ever put up with anything doesn’t make their hearts feel like rainbow colored unicorns are running around pooping skittles onto piles of marshmallows.

    No. That’s not what they’re being taught. I wish I could say children are being taught to respect the bodily autonomy and rights of others, but I don’t know that that’s the case (not to the degree needed).
    I wonder if this fool is a right wing libertarian.

  64. says

    From the link @72:

    The mentality of our society in 2013 is nauseating to me, friends.

    Many years ago, there was a time where young boys could run around with their toy guns, killing the bad guys. You could take the toy guns away from the little boys, and they’d find something else around them – a stick, their fingers, etc – and pretend it was a gun. Today, those little boys – if caught doing that – are labeled as threats, and immediate action is taken to remove that threat from the group.

    Yes, it’s silly to label children as threats when they mimic guns with their fingers. That said-GUNS ARE NOT FUCKING TOYS. They should not be treated as such, and I don’t think children should grow up thinking guns are “cool”.

    There was a time – not too long ago – when bullying was defined as slamming someone up against a locker and stealing their lunch money. There was a time when kids got called names and got picked on, and they brushed it off and worked through it (ask me how I know this). Now, if Sally calls Susie a bitch (please excuse my language if that offends you), Susie’s whole world crumbles around her, she contemplates suicide, and this society encourages her to feel like her world truly has ended, and she should feel entitled to a world-wide pity party. And Sally – phew! She should be jailed! She should be thrown in juvenile detention for acting like – gasp – a teenage girl acts.

    This is so simplistic it boggles my mind. She’s basically saying that bullying is not a real problem and that people who engage in bullying behavior shouldn’t be punished. She doesn’t appear to understand the psychology of bullying and how it impacts the victims and the perpetrators. She doesn’t seem to care either. Her lack of compassion is cringe worthy.

    The young generations of today (yes, I sound old. I realize I’m only 29 years old.) are being taught that they shouldn’t have to ever put up with anything doesn’t make their hearts feel like rainbow colored unicorns are running around pooping skittles onto piles of marshmallows.

    No. That’s not what they’re being taught. I wish I could say children are being taught to respect the bodily autonomy and rights of others, but I don’t know that that’s the case (not to the degree needed).
    I wonder if this fool is a right wing libertarian.

  65. says

    Inaji
    I’m sorry. That sucks.

    CD
    That sucks too.

    Thunderdome sucks. Why did I come here?

    Oh yeah…
    It has come to my attention that I don’t give a flying fuck what any of the “responsible” gun-fondlers excuses are for these shootings. Terrorist? Mentally ill? Whatever. But what’s the common denominator? Fucking guns. Doesn’t it just make sense to start by eliminating that?

  66. ChasCPeterson says

    What interpretation, other than the racist one, is there for that comment?

    Frankenstein/Igor

  67. Dhorvath, OM says

    I have had better days. Crystalizing experience: I am now quite sure that reputation and plausible deniability are more important to the owner of the business I work for as well as the owner of the chain he franchises from, than satisfying their customers. I had suspicions after the last major complaint from a customer and how it was handled, but I am now quite clear that store reputation means more than individual experience. I may be done. They actually told me not to contact the customer in question to apologize and offer to help while they draw up a response detailing how we have just followed instructions from the customer. Maybe I am not suited to working at all, clearly being my own boss went poorly, and now that I think about it I have railed against every place I have worked.
    Anyways, I come home to find an envelope addressed to me in hand writing. It’s close to my birthday so I think no further, (well I did read the return address but didn’t really think about the number and street,) and open it. It’s from my Uncle. Who died last month. A last bequest to his ‘expert bicycle mechanic nephew’. A very substantial portion of my passion for cycling came from this man. I cry.
    Hugs for anyone reading. I have them to share.

  68. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    My friend is fine. Turns out she isn’t working there now. The teacher was only grazed, so there were no serious injuries, only one killing and one graze and one suicide.

    I don’t know exactly what I feel, but it’s better than what I felt 6 hours ago.

  69. chigau (違う) says

    and since this is the Thunderdome,
    I’d like to add *the absolute opposite of hugs* for The Postal System.

  70. opposablethumbs says

    Dhorvath, I’d like to offer you some of those hug-things too. Or whatever might be acceptable (sorry, that’s very un-Dome-like of me).

  71. Xaivius (Formerly Robpowell, Acolyte of His Majesty Lord Niel DeGrasse Tyson I) says

    chigau (違う) @ 82

    I like the idea of anti-hugs. The sort given by large constrictors. Or Yetis.

  72. Rev. BigDumbChimp says

    Has anyone ever taken the time to complete the mind-dumbing (not a typo) task of reading Mike Adams’ bio?

    http://www.healthranger.com/Health-Ranger-Biography.html

    Seriously. No offence to 12 year-olds but I’m pretty sure that may be who wrote this.

    Mike Adams is widely recognized as having a strong technical aptitude that has allowed his websites to achieve very high degrees of success on the internet. He is also widely known to be a highly influential writer and presenter.

    Adams has no criminal record and has never been arrested. He avoids alcohol, smoking, coffee and all recreational drugs. He has never used recreational drugs in his entire life.

    Adams is not known to appear on the social scene and usually spends time in nature rather than socializing. He is occasionally spotted in public at the Whole Foods Market in Austin, Texas.

    Adams is well trained in hand-to-hand combat, firearms and self defense. He has authored numerous courses on self defense and personal protection.

    Mike Adams has a four-year bachelor of science degree from a prominent university in the Midwest. He has minors in mathematics and economics.

    Adams began to attend college before graduating from high school. His early college coursework included microbiology and genetics. Adams has a strong academic background in the sciences.

    Adams composed music for several university theatrical productions and was offered a job by a large university as the head of sound design for the theater department. (He turned it down.)

    In his teens, Adams acquired electronic music equipment (sound modules, tone generators, keyboards) and began to compose multi-track music pieces as a hobby. His composition and music abilities were put to good use in his activism videos against GMOs, vaccines and other topics.

    Adams was the youngest person he knew who owned a personal computer. In the fifth grade, he frequently wrote computer code on paper during class. In the seventh grade, Adams was accused by one of his teachers of “practicing witchcraft” for bringing a computer to school and demonstrating how a floppy disk worked. (This was long before the internet and before most people had even seen a computer.)

    it goes on.

    I expected him to say something like

    Mike Adams is the first person he knows who personally jumped over the US Capitol while carrying a Gadsden flag and distributing cleansing drinks to spectators

  73. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @chigau, theophontes & Xaivius, AHMLNDGTI:

    ahem. … aHem. (owlbears) A-Hem… coughcough.

    I’m sorry, did I say something? Just had a d20 caught in my throat.

  74. Xaivius (Formerly Robpowell, Acolyte of His Majesty Lord Niel DeGrasse Tyson I) says

    Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden@87

    I have a friend in troutdale that I was worried about as well, but she was apparently over in beaverton at the time.

    ahem. … aHem. (owlbears) A-Hem… coughcough.

    yep. That’s now official. My next campaign is going to be so wonderful when I tell them to roll initiative against invading anti-hugs.

    Semi-Related note: Finally got to one of my dreams. Ordered an Emissary from Geek-Chic. so neat!

  75. carlie says

    Has anyone ever taken the time to complete the mind-dumbing (not a typo) task of reading Mike Adams’ bio?

    That blunt, repetitive sentence structure makes me want to stab my eyes out, before even getting to the ridiculousness of the content.

    This is why it’s important for everyone to study liberal arts, even tech majors. Especially tech majors.

  76. carlie says

    And this:

    Mike Adams has a four-year bachelor of science degree from a prominent university in the Midwest. He has minors in mathematics and economics.

    The rest of the bio gives detail almost to the level of what he had for lunch, but he has a “bachelor of science degree”, and only gives his minors. What is he hiding about his major? Was it in the mythical studies of underwater basket weaving? What a weird thing to so obviously dissemble about.

  77. chigau (違う) says

    The Internets is Wonderful Thing.
    I have a little app that tells me when the Space Station is passing within my sight.
    I finally figured out how the app works, just in time to look up and say, “Oh! There it is!”
    Sometimes, I am overjoyed to live in interesting times.
    Now, I’ll go catch up.

  78. chigau (違う) says

    theophontes
    It called GoISSWatch.
    I don’t know if it’s available for anything other than AppleThingys.

  79. says

    Adams has no criminal record and has never been arrested. He avoids alcohol, smoking, coffee and all recreational drugs. He has never used recreational drugs in his entire life.

    yeah, bc all of those are “very bad things” and Mike Adams is a “very good person”
    ::rolls eyes::

  80. ledasmom says

    My favorite, in a sense, part of the Health Ranger bio:
    “Over the years, he has developed numerous algorithms for finding hidden signals in large bodies of text. Adams possess the technology to monitor trends and make predictions about bank runs, epidemic disease, race wars and other issues reflected in human communications on the ‘net. To date, he has not deployed such a technology and has not announced any plans to do so.”
    So, an asshole, then.
    He avoids coffee? But then why are there so many articles about coffee enemas on Natural News?

  81. says

    I have an interesting project that I’m finally trying to work on, but every project could do with some criticism and I thought that the Thunderdome might be a good place to see if I can get some constructive abuse.

    I have been very fascinated by areas of cognitive enhancement in people with different mental characteristics like myself (tourette’s). I have always thought that programs that try to help people with different conditions like tourette’s syndrome, autism, and schizophrenia should not only help them with problem areas, but also help them to take advantage of unique strengths. This is my first attempt at an overview on strengths associated with tourette’s syndrome, with a historical example and I was wondering if I could get some criticism? I’ll take compliments too if I did a decent job.
    http://www.tourettesyndrome.ca/showthread.php?7399-Taking-possession-of-your-TS-related-cognitive-strengths

  82. says

    892 guns found by TSA in passengers’ carry-on bags:

    LOTS more of our fellow travelers are packing for the airport, so to speak. So far this year (as of the end of last week), the Transportation Security Administration has found 892 guns in passengers’ carry-on bags at security checkpoints. That’s a 19 percent increase from the comparable period of last year, when the total was 750 guns.

    The 2013 gun-tote tally was a record, at 1,813 firearms found, incidentally. As this year’s gun haul keeps rolling along, a one-day record was set just last Wednesday, when screeners found 18 guns, which beat the previous one-day record of 13 guns on May 20, 2013. About 80 percent of all guns found are loaded.

    While the percentage of passengers packing guns is actually tiny, given that the T.S.A. screens about 1.8 million passengers daily, the numbers and the growth rate are striking. In 2005, when the agency first started keeping detailed count, 660 guns were found.

    There are probably legitimate reasons to take a gun with you on a flight, but I don’t understand why anyone needs one in their carry-on bag. And “I forgot” just doesn’t cover it for me. If you’re not taking your killing machine seriously enough to know why it’s in your bag, perhaps you shouldn’t have it.

    Of course Joe [Sharkey; guy who wrote the article] doesn’t want to discuss the politics surrounding guns bc they’re soooo complex:

    Now, I am neither foolhardy nor trigger-happy enough to plunge here into the laws, emotions and recriminations associated with carrying firearms in America. I live in Arizona, in what used to be the Wild West, and even here the issues are mind-bogglingly complex. After all, one cause of the infamous Shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, a mere 60 miles from my home, was a heated dispute over Tombstone’s strict gun-control law in 1881.

    I was going to comment that the bit about Tombstone was a non-sequitor, but then I remembered that a guy drew his gun on a father who was teaching his daughter to ride a bike and a brother shot his sibling (and then himself) over an argument. People using (or threatening to use) guns in heated disputes still occurs today.
    I do wonder what’s so difficult to talk about though? Gun violence is a problem in the US. People are dying in the tens of thousands, year after year and no legislation has advanced to reduce those numbers. That includes people who use guns to commit suicide:

    In the national debate over gun violence—a debate stoked by mass murders such as last December’s tragedy in a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school—a glaring fact gets obscured: Far more people kill themselves with a firearm each year than are murdered with one. In 2010 in the U.S., 19,392 people committed suicide with guns, compared with 11,078 who were killed by others. According to Matthew Miller, associate director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center (HICRC) at Harvard School of Public Health, “If every life is important, and if you’re trying to save people from dying by gunfire, then you can’t ignore nearly two-thirds of the people who are dying.”

    Suicide is the 10th-leading cause of death in the U.S.; in 2010, 38,364 people killed themselves. In more than half of these cases, they used firearms. Indeed, more people in this country kill themselves with guns than with all other intentional means combined, including hanging, poisoning or overdose, jumping, or cutting.
    http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine-features/guns-and-suicide-the-hidden-toll/

    I find it odd that Mr. Starkey didn’t want to discuss the laws, emotions, and recriminations surrounding guns in the US…he just wanted to talk about guns without all that.

  83. says

    Trigger Warning: Suicide

    “One of the things that got me interested in launching the Means Matter campaign was that I had been reading through thousands of thumbnail sketches of suicide deaths, to see if a reporting system we were testing was catching the feel for the case,” says Barber. “I started noticing that, jeez, this death happened the same day that the kid was arguing with his parents, or that the young man had just broken up with his girlfriend, or that the middle-aged guy had gotten word that the divorce papers had come through. That reactivity surprised me, because I’d always pictured suicide as being a painful, deliberative process, something that was getting worse and worse, escalating until finally you’ve got it all planned out and you do it. It hadn’t occurred to me that it could be a cop arguing with his wife, and in the midst of the argument, pulling out his gun and killing himself.”

    This impulsivity was underscored in a 2001 study in Houston of people ages 13 to 34 who had survived a near-lethal suicide attempt. Asked how much time had passed between when they decided to take their lives and when they actually made the attempt, a startling 24 percent said less than 5 minutes; 48 percent said less than 20 minutes; 70 percent said less than one hour; and 86 percent said less than eight hours.

    http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine-features/guns-and-suicide-the-hidden-toll/

    I thought it might be best to bring this to the ‘Dome. I had no idea the short amount of time that elapsed between decision and effort. That’s scary. And yet another reason to enact stricter gun laws (like mandatory waiting periods and psychological screening).

  84. chigau (違う) says

    Tony!
    The formatting of your linked article is too hard on the iPad.
    I’ll read it tomorrow on a real computer.
    but I have a gut feeling (we know what that’s worth) that the apparent impulsive nature of these suicides fails to take into account that the people had thoughts of suicide for a long time before the final act.

  85. chigau (違う) says

    On another note
    the party next door, rather than featuring really shitty pop music on the stereo
    is featuring a guitarist who knows three chords and a sing-along
    I am torn.

  86. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @chigau, #107:

    Ouch. I suck and I can play F#maj7 without thinking twice. I haven’t specifically added up the chords I can play, but certainly all the majors, all the minors, all the major 7ths and all the minor 7ths as bar chords, then a, c, d, e, open, with their minors and 7ths and minor 7ths. G open. G7th open. That’s just off the top of my head. It’s actually easy to play a lot of 9ths as well.

    Seriously, playing melodies can be tough, but a, c, d, & e are all a piece of cake. G can be a stretch when first learning it, but it doesn’t take long to get used to it. If you can’t play interesting music after 6 or 8 months, you’re not trying.

  87. says

    @ chigau

    It called GoISSWatch.

    That seems to be an i_phony app only. The google indicates there is an android version, but for some reason I can’t find anything in the app store.

    @ Tony!

    You might want to read Mano’s thoughts on modes of thinking: Cerebral and visceral reactions , which also refers in turn to his previous post here: Why do we jump to conclusions? The Trayvon Martin case . That last refers to Daniel Kahneman’s book “Fast and Slow Thinking”, which we have discussed on the Thunderdome (It is well worth reading).

    Our impulsive, “System 1” thinking has the potential to overide our rational, “System 2” thinking. In turn, system 2 can prime system 1, so that a long period of cogitating (2) on suicide could suddenly flair out impulsively (1).

  88. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @theophontes:

    Or a Lassiter.

    Either one.

  89. chigau (違う) says

    CD #108
    I’m not really all that torn.
    I will happily listen to someone noodling on a guitar with a drunken sing-along over autotune-elevator-music
    any day
    any time

  90. chigau (違う) says

    I am having a flashback to living in Res in my first year of University.
    My room was one off the stairwell.
    The stairwell had great acoustics.
    The guy with the guitar “played” Mr. Bojangles.
    Just Mr. Bojangles.
    Mr. Bojangles
    Mr. Bojangles

  91. chigau (違う) says

    And then, I moved into the upper floor of a seedy, studenty house.
    The people just under my bedroom played Stairway to Heaven seventyjillion times at 2AM.
    Not the album, not the side, just Stairway to Heaven
    over and
    over and
    over

  92. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    a seedy, studenty house

    I resent the implication I was in any way associated with such an act. I would only play, “I hate myself for loving you,” seventyjillion times in a row. In my house, Stairway to Heaven went over like a lead balloon.

  93. says

    I passed my robotics course last night. I still have a few tests to go, so I am going to be able to raise my marks yet. What is interesting about all this on Thunderdome, is that robotics uses some very simple descriptions in order to discuss the underlying principles we work with to achieve autonomous aerial navigation.

    The bit that got a bit of a chuckle from me, was the section on describing the robots-eye-view of the world. Sure, we could fly the devices mainly by remote control (for example using radio control transmitters,wifi ,infra-red, bluetooth etc.) The problem is, that this would need a human pilot to do the processing. Our objective has been to run the robots on autonomous missions. In order to do this it cannot use a human god-controller to relate it to its real world circumstance. This task must be taken over by a range of sensors. We utilise visual means by way of cameras, but there are a whole host of sensors: GPS, echo-location, gyroscopes, magnometers, pressure sensors, etc etc.

    At the end of the day though, we can never get the robot to form more than a very limited view of its surrounds. Furthermore, the sensors are subject to error. We use statistical methods to derive an on-board Belief System that, we hope, relates appropriately to the World System, that is to say: Reality. (See picture I made here.)

    The robot tries to gain a functioning Belief System from calculating significances from data inputs from the sensors. It also ties to calculate from the effects of its actions. These are then subject to statistical calculations by the onboard computer(s) to try and predict the most appropriate course of action (generally not more than adjusting commands to the servos and the motor’s electronic speed controllers). What with the effects of noise, a changing external (real) world, actions of other agents, this can be quite difficult.

    In principle, we could fly entirely on a function of our actions (that is without external sensing) and a map. The problem with this, is that the statistical model becomes highly unstable very quickly. This is inevitable. To reach our objectives, we really do need a constant reference back to the real world, to maintain a sufficiently stable stochastic process to act meaningfully in the world.

    My mind quickly leaps to an analogy of map|bible and action|xtian-lifestyle: there are very fundamental, non-trivial reasons why these can never work without constant reference (observation, but in the broadest sense: science) to the real world.

    ….
    [invocation] SGBM is ahead of the curve in such statistical methods. [/invocation]

  94. says

    Rev BDC/#86:

    Impressive. It’s a bit like someone wrote an entire page of considerably less-funny-than-usual and somewhat less-hyperbolic-than-usual Chuck Norris facts. About himself.

    The chief export of Mike Adams is… this page.

    Mike Adams passed kindergarten. Then grade one. Then grade two. Also he fingerpainted some stuff. With his fingers.

    Mike Adams clips coupons.

    (/Behind Mike Adams’ chin is… his mandible.)

  95. chigau (違う) says

    CD #115
    I really like Stairway to Heaven
    but 5 – 6 – 7 repeats at 2AM??!
    frothing madness

  96. dianne says

    Parachuting in with a nonsequitor: I’ve been looking up census information on household income and insurance rates in the SEER counties and all I can say is…Damn, can we have class warfare now? Seriously. Kentucky and Louisiana are both poor as snot and yet both reliably vote Republican. Why? What makes people think that voting for the 1% (really the 0.00001%) is a good thing while they’re all starving? Literally, in some cases. There must be some serious gerrymandering and propaganda going on around there. Because otherwise I just don’t understand the logic at all.

  97. dianne says

    Thanks, theophontes. I’ll try, but it looks like exactly the sort of book that I find very hard to get through because it’s so depressing. Probably all the more reason for me to read it and stop being in denial.

  98. says

    The Rational Wiki summary contains:

    Altemeyer describes the three most important aspects as follows:

    Authoritarian submission — a high degree of submissiveness to the authorities who are perceived to be established and legitimate in the society in which one lives.

    Authoritarian aggression — a general aggressiveness directed against deviants, outgroups, and other people that are perceived to be targets according to established authorities.

    Conventionalism — a high degree of adherence to the traditions and social norms that are perceived to be endorsed by society and its established authorities, and a belief that others in one’s society should also be required to adhere to these norms[2]

    Altemeyer divides RWAs into leaders and followers. Leaders tend to be aggressive and individualistic, while followers tend towards a somewhat fatalistic but principled acceptance as their status as cogs in a machine, generally condemning those not seen to be in conformance with the leaders’ wishes. Independence and dissent are discouraged both by leader diktat and social pressure, and outgroups are frequently demonized as a further incentive to obedience to the social order. Further research (including experiments involving a nation sim, the Global Change Game) showed RWAs to be more possessive and more likely to attempt to solve problems by starting turf wars with perceived competitors (in the case of one GCG experiment, causing an all-out nuclear war on the first runthrough and creating a global resource crisis leading to mass famine when given a mulligan)

    There has been quite a bit of work since, but the above suggested book is a good starting point to build upon.

  99. says

    @ dianne

    it looks like exactly the sort of book that I find very hard to get through because it’s so depressing. Probably all the more reason for me to read it and stop being in denial

    The depressing part is that the authoritarian sensibilty is very much dyed-in-the-wool. It is very hard to change. The anti-depressant part of the book is that it highlights how people behave who do not suffer from RWA mindsets. Difficult situations become highly resolvable, and consensus can be reached, by simply removing (there is no alternative) the aggressive RWA’s from positions of power.

    Look out for the terms:

    RWA = Right Wing Authoritarian (“Right Wing” refers to “being right”, it is not political)
    SDO = Social Domination Orientation

  100. dianne says

    Interesting, especially given that I doubt you’d find many people in the US who think of themselves as authoritarians. Especially not as followers. A number of the more difficult movements are actually appealing to antiauthoritarian sentiment, i.e. the open carry gun nuts are all about freedom and being able to defend themselves, the anti-vaxxers are defending themselves against the Pharma conspiracy, etc. Yet all us rugged individualists (TM) are nonetheless authoritarians and mostly followers at that.

  101. ledasmom says

    Brony @ 100:
    One tangential question (I did find the piece interesting but must read it again when more awake. Woke at five two mornings ago, four-thirty yesterday, four today. Presumable in two weeks I need not bother going to bed at all). I don’t see the attribution for the quotes about Samuel Johnson – is it in there and I missed it? I think I’ve read them before – possibly in “The Professor and the Madman”, but I can’t remember if they were original to that work or quoted in it, and I may have loaned the book out; at any rate I’m not sure where it is.

  102. says

    @ dianne

    Interesting, especially given that I doubt you’d find many people in the US who think of themselves as authoritarians. Especially not as followers.

    Authoritarians won’t read such books, and likely would not describe themselves as such. They are deaf to the actual message.

    Their leaders sell them The Merkin Flag ™ , Freedom ™ and The American Way ™ – even as they may claim not to be “followers”. Authoritarianism is a mental state, not massed rallies.

  103. says

    theophontes/#128, re ‘authoritarians won’t read such books’…

    Vaguely amusing, if I guess predictable: I took one of those online authoritarianism test thingies just now. It’s one of those which in addition to giving you your result, shows where you fit on the general curve of all who’ve taken the test.

    … and from the the curve you see, you’d get the idea there really aren’t that many authoritarians in the world. But then, of course, I figure people who’d score higher probably don’t go looking for these things much.

    (/You scored 0… With all the rest of us who actually know where this test is. Congratulations!)

  104. says

    @ Crip Dyke

    I missed this in the previous Thunderdome thread – https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2014/05/22/thunderdome-50/comment-page-2/#comment-806504

    Can I thank you from the bottom of my heart for having that link? I stopped following news from that area and lost touch with a lot of people, so I was unaware of the case. But it’s nice to know that piece of shit finally got a little of what was coming to him. At least a few of the folks he abused got some measure of justice. I wish all of them could. If he got a year for each person he abused, he’d have been in the slammer for a couple centuries.

  105. says

    @ theophontes (恶六六六缓步动物) 100

    Our impulsive, “System 1″ thinking has the potential to overide our rational, “System 2″ thinking. In turn, system 2 can prime system 1, so that a long period of cogitating (2) on suicide could suddenly flair out impulsively (1).

    Owch. This is not a way of looking at dual process theory that I had considered. I’ve thinking about how things like fallacies and biases might relate. My understanding of how the systems would work here is different though.
    From what I gather system one is more about automatic reactions from familiar routines, regardless of how rational or logical those routines are. It’s more like straight-up “stimulus response” dependent on the context. So it’s not that it overrides system 2, it’s that system 1 is where we spend 95% of our time and is as efficient as we put in the effort to improve its quality.
    System 2 is when we bother to look more closely at something and consider letting that thing alter our system 1 responses. When we concentrate, ruminate, or introspect we are mentally casting a “wider net” (using more mental resources) and considering inhibiting a normal system 1 response, or creating a new system one response as a permanent change of behavior globally or in specific contexts (a repeated system 2 process can become a new system 1 process). But system 2 is also only as good as what we know and our ability to use what we know.
    Excessive use of system 1 can also become a habit that allows individuals to avoid examining their own decisions, but this might be what you were specifically talking about so my apologies if I misread your comment’s intent.
    Here is a pair of papers I like to link where I can (they complement those books). They have to do with cognitive debiasing in medicine and they provide a really good overview of dual process theory, and set up a hypothetical framework for removing bias on a larger scale. Anyone familiar with cognitive bias and the logical fallacies they create should be able to relate this information more broadly.
    http://www.improvediagnosis.org/blogpost/950784/170746/Cognitive-Debiasing

    System 2 is bias and error-prone like system 1 (but less so), and your general point stands in that a person ruminating on suicide might be selectively collecting and emphasizing information that would support altering system 1 in a way that would make impulsive suicide a possibility.
    Another related issue. Statistical differences between Republicans with and without fox news. Imagine the state of both systems in fox news viewers.
    http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118066/brookings-survey-fox-news-home-most-conservative-republicans

    I need to read The Authoritarians.

    @ theophontes (恶六六六缓步动物) 116
    This comment made me think of this paper.
    “Learning autonomy in two or three steps: linking open-ended development, authority, and agency to motivation.”
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24155734

    The point to make here is not that early Chinese philosophy is an alternative to Western approaches to artificial cognitive systems research, but that our cultural biases limit our understanding. Accounting for these biases and learning from cultures without these particular (and probably other) biases can help to inform the formulation of fundamental research roadmaps such as for artificial cognitive systems. We propose that putting the strengths of the right hemisphere (as summarized in Table Table1)1) center-stage is an essential step to take artificial cognitive systems research out of the closed domain solutions afforded by left hemispheric approaches (and caricatures) of cognitive systems.
    If the artificial cognitive systems community indeed tries to rid itself from its limiting biases and adopts approaches that puts the strengths of the right hemisphere and the open-ended development loop central, we have a suggestion for a suitable environment for artificial cognitive system development. This environment offers at the same time (1) many different agents and processes to relate with and care for, (2) many problems to solve and protocols to follow, and (3) an endless and unstoppable variety of novelty and change. This environment might have been an essential progenitor of our cultures because it approximates an ideal balance of reward signals to drive open-ended learning. So a robot that acts responsibly in this environment should be able to acquire the competences and moral development required to function responsibly in the rest of our societies. For that reason we suggest that robot labs should collaborate with … low-tech self-sustaining farms where human, animals, vegetables, fruits, and grains flourish in one of the finest examples of what co-creation can offer.

  106. says

    @ dianne 123
    Don’t focus on the nature of the world that is in that way, after all this is the way that it was, you just did not know it. Think of books like this as an opportunity to shape and alter your own system 1 and 2 processes so that you have these concepts as cognitive tools that you can use strategically in all sorts of contexts.
    Knowing how authoritarianism and mental processes function (we all use them to an extent, it just needs to be rational and logical) gives you an advantage in zeroing in on areas where people who are irrationally authoritarian are being irrational and illogical (same thing for other sorts of thinking processes used in irrational and illogical ways). With experience that eventually leads to rhetorical effectiveness, and then you get to have more fun.

    @ ledasmom 127
    This was a first attempt, but I should have cited that more clearly and gone farther than simply quoting wikipedia even in a forum post. A big bad habit I still need to rid myself of.
    The quotes outlining the observations that Johnson finished the dictionary orders of magnitude faster than teams of contemporary academics and that the scope of the words he covered was far more complete than contemporary dictionaries was from Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr Johnson’s Dictionary by Henry Hitchings. I found a mostly complete copy in google that can be perused.
    http://books.google.com/books/about/Defining_the_World.html?id=0RyQEwv4VgwC
    The quotes observing that one of Johnson’s innovations was to illustrate meanings and usage via literary citations is uncited (unless it’s that #8 from Hitchings, I need to read it again and one of the things holding me back on this is that I lost my copy. No excuses there, I need to buy another.), so I need to do some work there.
    The quote about the level of meticulousness is also from Hitchings.
    The examples of humor and prejudice are right from a scan of the original edition available online.
    http://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/

    Thanks for the observations!

  107. says

    Ed blogged about a ruling by a NJ judge in favor of ‘Reversion Therapy’ victims

    I found more information about the type of “therapy” given to the gay coupleshere:

    The lawsuit describes how the plaintiffs – four young men and two of their parents – were lured into JONAH’s services through deceptive practices.

    Customers of JONAH’s services typically paid a minimum of $100 for weekly individual counseling sessions and another $60 for group therapy sessions. The lawsuit describes sessions that involved clients undressing in front of a mirror and even a group session where young men were instructed to remove their clothing and stand naked in a circle with the counselor, Downing, who was also undressed. Another session involved a subject attempting to wrestle away two oranges – used to represent testicles – from another individual.

    Downing and other JONAH counselors also used techniques that left clients alienated from their families. These techniques encouraged clients to blame their parents for being gay, going so far as to have clients participate in violent role play exercises where they beat effigies of their mothers.

    JONAH, formerly known as Jews Offering New Alternatives for Homosexuality, was founded by Goldberg, a former Wall Street executive and attorney who was previously convicted of three counts of mail fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud the federal government. He was ultimately disbarred from being an attorney.

    (bolding mine)
    I knew that conversion therapy had been condemned by medical organizations across the country and that there’s no scientific evidence that homosexuality can be “cured”, but I never knew the techniques used in such “therapies”. I’m even more appalled to learn some of these techniques, most especially the misogynistic technique above.

  108. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Y’know, I’ve never known …unless you count Quakers, and I’m not sure of Quakers’ theological underpinnings… a single christian community as unrepentantly feminist as the least feminist of the 3 most left wing Jewish congregations in Portland. They are awesome. And there are tons of Jews that light candles Friday night, smell the orange peel on Saturday night, and make absolutely no bones about saying that they are atheists and feminists.

    And yet, shit like JONAH and the Lubavitchers (AKA Chabadim) and too fucking many others are every bit as bad as the worst of the SBCers in their regressive, anti-woman actions. I’d say that they are worse, but that’s probably familiarity with Lubavitchers and unfamiliarity the SBCers and whoever else might be the most gender-regressive of the christians (some of the pentacostals, maybe?).

    Argh. I know I shouldn’t be any more outraged at JONAH than any other reparative therapy group, but I’ve seen what openness and what thirst for justice Jewish philosophy can inspire. It just crushes me to hear about boys being told to beat effigies of their mothers with sticks.

  109. Lofty says

    Friday the 13th and a full moon. Well at least it was that here, yesterday. Lucky thing that Americans can play at friggatriskaidekaphobia for a few hours more…

  110. says

    http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/time-warner-ceo-defends-cnn-711814

    Time Warner shareholder laments the lack of female representation at DC:

    After noting that most of Time Warner’s board members are “white males,” the shareholder said it was “embarrassing” how Warner Bros., in particular DC, portrays women in the stories it tells. He added he’s also not impressed with the way Disney’s Marvel Entertainment ignores women.

    “I would challenge you that there are simply not enough in-creative-control women at Warner Bros. that can develop these characters in ways that appeal to the audience.”
    Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara spoke in general terms about the opportunity to exploit DC’s superheroes in TV, film and video games, and then DC Entertainment president Diane Nelson addressed the shareholder’s complaint.

    “At DC Entertainment we talk frequently about how we heighten the presence of female storytellers and creators with our comic books, digital and physical. How do we bring the female characters to light more?” she said.
    More female characters are coming in both TV and film — “built with the potential to be spun off,” she said. “It’s something we’re very conscious of. We have more work to do. But I think if we talk again in a couple of years, you’ll be pleased with the results.”

    I’ll believe it when I see it. I don’t deny that she believes this to be the case, but institutionalized sexism exists everywhere and there is fierce and powerful opposition to changes in the status quo.

    Another shareholder decided to express his ignorance and stupidity:

    Her remarks earned applause, as did a question from another shareholder who charged CNN with liberal bias and gave several examples, including CNN president Jeff Zucker insinuating that Benghazi isn’t newsworthy and saying that he’d like to see more coverage of global warming even though CNN’s audience might not.

    “If a terrorist attack that kills four Americans, followed by a coordinated cover-up by the White House, does not constitute ‘news,’ then CNN should remove the middle ‘N’ from its name,” said the shareholder. “CNN is going to try to force its viewers to eat their peas on climate change while continuing to ignore the Benghazi scandal.”

    He accused CNN’s Chicagoland producers of coordinating with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to ensure a positive portrayal and chastised Zucker for promoting David Chalian to political director even though he once said Republicans are “happy to have a party with black people drowning.”
    “If 40 percent of Americans identify as conservative, 40 percent is independent and 20 percent is liberal, why cater to the 20 percent and ignore the 80?” the shareholder asked after a burst of applause from roughly half the audience.
    “We are trying to — and you’re judging it a failure — we are trying to be independent and objective in our news reporting,” Bewkes said. “We aren’t making our news judgments and our news selection…based on serving a given part of the political spectrum, religious spectrum or anything else.”

    He wants more coverage of Benghazi and he thinks CNN shows liberal bias. I wonder what channel he watches regularly…

  111. chigau (違う) says

    Sometimes the ads on FtB are fun.
    I’m seeing one from a Rabbi pleading for an end to chicken-sacrificing,
    right beside an ad for a Passion Play in Drumheller, Alberta.

  112. Rob Grigjanis says

    chigau @142: When I think of Jethro Tull albums you could associate with Drumheller, Aqualung and Thick as a Brick come before A Passion Play.

  113. chigau (違う) says

    Rob Grigjanis #143
    You’re gonna need to explain to me the Aqualung connection to Drumheller.
    ’cause they really don’t have much water there.
    the Brick thing I can grok.

  114. chigau (違う) says

    Rob Grigjanis #146
    Ah.
    I didn’t recognise him without the mesh-back and pick-up truck.

  115. says

    I just had a short discussion with a friend on Facebook. He said that he enjoys and agrees with most of what I comment on, but disagreed with my “anti-gun” comments. Just the fact that he said anti-gun was enough to tell me he’s not reading my comments carefully. I’ve talked about gun deaths and spoken about the need for increased gun control. There is one comment I made a while back that indicated I’d be fine with a ban on guns, but that I know that’s not likely so I support gun control laws. In any case, in pointing out how wrong he was, he made the comment that gun violence in the US only seems awful bc of the media.
    ::Headdesk::
    We quit chatting, and I composed a lengthy note (with tons of links) that covered my thoughts on gun control. Hopefully he’ll read it. We’ll see.
    But one thing I find curious is that he made a distinction between gun violence and gun related gang violence. Which is odd. When I’m talking about gun violence, I’m talking about *all* gun violence, which includes gun casualties from gang violence. It also includes domestic violence involving firearms. And non-lethal firearm injuries. Plus shooting sprees and school massacres.
    I wonder if my friend (along with other people in the US) thinks that gun violence= only school shootings and other mass killings. I should send him these two links:

    http://gawker.com/waffle-house-cook-shoots-customer-to-death-1590617504

    http://www.ajc.com/news/news/griffin-officer-shot-and-killed-at-waffle-house/ngBL9/

  116. maddog1129 says

    Hi guys, sorry to interrupt. My google-fu is haywire. I was reading the other day a response to George Will’s horrific column that campus rape makes rape victims “privileged” and confers a “coveted status” on them. The response’s title was something like, “Let me tell you about all the privilege that being a rape victim has given me” and described the rape itself in pretty graphic terms — although the woman had consented to intercourse, the penetration was so violent it ruptured the cervical wall, caused abdominal sepsis, and lots of future medical problems. I did not have time to finish reading the column, and now I can’t find it again. Can someone point me to a link? Appreciate it.

  117. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @Tony!

    I have a tea cup with a sculpted ceramic frog hanging on the edge…which is cute enough, I guess…but on the bottom is a little glazed image of a dragonfly with impossibly huge, “Zoinks!” eyeballs. I love that thing.

  118. says

    I went out to get shots of a nesting Mourning Dove and I saw a Cedar Waxwing! I am excited all out of proportion here.

  119. chigau (違う) says

    I remember Cedar Waxwings in Southern Alberta.
    Sometime none. Sometime eleventyzillion.
    Never just one.
    But I do suck at bird identifying.

  120. Esteleth, [an error occurred while processing this directive] says

    Crip Dyke @135:

    unless you count Quakers, and I’m not sure of Quakers’ theological underpinnings

    Would you like me to actually answer that? Because I can go on at Marajanović-like length on that topic.

  121. chigau (違う) says

    Esteleth #155
    I am interested.
    Most of what I know about Quakers comes from Wkipedia.
    and a few ex-Quakers who tend to “Oh, look, squirrel!” when the subject is raised.

  122. says

    Chigau:

    Sometime eleventyzillion.
    Never just one.

    I’m envious. They’re usually in deep cover, so you can’t spot them. I’ll go stake out the crabapple trees at the school, see if I can spot any.

  123. Esteleth, [an error occurred while processing this directive] says

    Well, I have somewhere to be in a bit, but here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:

    In 1650 a dude named George Fox had a vision in which he took Galatians 3:28 its logical conclusion. To wit:
    (1) Men and women are equal theologically
    (2) People of different races are equal theologically
    (3) People of different socioeconomic classes are equal theologically
    (etc, boiling down to “no matter how you slice it, all people are equal in the eyes of god”)

    Which was pretty radical for that day.

    Fox was a bit, ah, charismatic (which is to say he had the habit of standing on street corners haranguing passersby) and a bit of a dreamer. So he decided to go whole-hog theocrat and say that what is ordained by god should be the law (legally and socially). So he – in the seventeenth century – started ranting about how sexism was bad, racism was bad, and how you should treat everyone as if they were your absolute equal. There’s a story that he got arrested (see: “habit of standing on street corners haranguing passersby”) and decided that the thing to do was address the judge at his trial by his given name (this apparently went over poorly).

    At its core, Quakerism remains thus: all people are equal in the eyes of the divine (“divine” is variously defined, and there are Quakers who are atheists), and the laws of society should reflect that. This is coupled with the – somewhat famous – pacifistic absolutism.

    There have been gross wrinkles, such as the Quaker defense of slavery (which started with “well, see, PoC aren’t people, so therefore the “all people are equal” thing doesn’t apply” and went downhill from there), as well as some oddities like “it isn’t violent to lay siege because you aren’t actually doing anything to them.”

    Quakers also have a tendency towards inflexibility and moving slowly. The absolute demand for consensus at all costs (peace must be attained at home before it can be attained anywhere else) is the dream-come-true for conservatives – refuse to compromise, and nothing can happen!

    That’s the short version. There is theology, but it gets floppy fast.

  124. says

    http://www.salon.com/2014/06/14/why_i_left_libertarianism_an_ethical_critique_of_a_limited_ideology/

    I recognize that a consistently applied libertarian ethic would make the world a much better place than it currently is.

    He didn’t leave libertarianism as much as he thought.
    If he thinks ending government assistance programs and replacing them with charity would make the world better, he’s a fucking fool.
    If he thinks eliminating regulations on corporations would make the world a better place, he’s an even bigger fool.

  125. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    Yes, but what I am really interested in, Esteleth, is whether or not Quakers consider themselves Christians…

    For instance, does the AFSC have a stance on jesus’ divinity? That sort of thing.

    Also: Quaker marriages in the 17th century were not recognized by the English crown. Quakers, being a new religion, got most of their adherents by conversion. When one converted to quakerism away from Anglicanism or Catholicism, the rest of your family tended to get upset. Also, many conversions happened when someone non-quaker fell in love with a Quaker.

    So, the Quakers were branded anti-God (they were the wrong religion after all) anti-family (why else would you do that to your family, you heretic?) and sexually debased (look at all those people who joined Quakerism just because they found someone they wanted to fuck!). Moreover, their egalitarian movement was more popular among the dispossessed. Thus classism led the crown to stereotype them as dirty and disease ridden. And, as lower-class folk who enjoyed (and had no strictures against) good, hearty, lower-class beers, they were sometimes branded drug (as in alcohol) abusers.

    Yes, that’s right, Quaker marriages were denied because those evil people were anti-God, anti-family, sexually debased, disease-ridden drug users.

    I don’t remember a whole lot of the theology, but when in the 90s I was researching radical marriage, I learned a bit about the relationship between 17th century Quakers and the state.

    Quite revealing, really.

  126. says

    Look! A bigot tries not to seem bigoted. He fails:

    “I don’t think about—things I don’t think about.” So said William Jennings Bryan, the lawyer arguing against evolution, at the infamous Scopes “monkey trial.” The question was about Cain’s wife; the answer was about willful ignorance.

    The same philosophy was on display this week in Congress, when Mat Staver of the U.S. Liberty Counsel—which, like its better-known cousin the Alliance Defending Freedom, works in courts and legislatures to carve out religious exemptions to anti-discrimination laws—struggled to distinguish between a wedding photographer turning away gay customers and one turning away black or Jewish ones.

    “I think that’s fundamentally different,” Staver said, when asked by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who is Jewish. Why? Because “she’s not saying ‘I don’t want to go to a wedding where there are people who are gay or lesbian.’ She’s saying she doesn’t want to photograph a celebration of same-sex unions.”

    Ah, so as long as gay people marry people of the opposite sex, they’re perfectly welcome. Just not when they get gay-married.

    Congressman Nadler didn’t buy it. He changed his hypothetical. “Well, what about a celebration of black unions? Suppose I don’t think black people should get married—that’s my religion. Is it an imposition on my religious freedom for the government to say I can’t discriminate?” In other words: not just black people getting married, but people getting black-married.

    “I think it’s fundamentally different, and I don’t think that’s the issue in that case,” Staver said without explaining why.

    Nadler, knowing he had him, said, “So suppose a photographer had a religious belief that she shouldn’t photograph a Jewish wedding?”

    “I think it would be something she wouldn’t object to.”

    But what if she did, Nadler pressed.

    “She would have an issue there—a violation potential in that case.”

    Bingo. What LGBT activists have been saying for years—that discrimination is discrimination—has finally been admitted. Protecting Jews from anti-Semitism is a “violation potential” of the anti-Semite’s religious freedom. The Liberty Counsel said Uncle.

    The Nadler-Staver battle (Nadler 1, Staver 0) was eerily similar to a hilarious but little-reported exchange in Houston last month between City Councilwoman Ellen Cohen and the aptly-named Paster Betty Riggle of Grace Community Church.

    Like Nadler, Cohen—who is also Jewish—substituted “Jewish” for “gay” and watched Riggle wriggle. The judge asked: “If somebody owns a store …. and I come in as a woman, or a senior, or a person of the Jewish faith … they have a right to refuse me business, is that what you’re saying?”

    “I don’t have any problem with that. That’s not the issue,” Riggle replied. As Cohen continued, Riggle said, “They have the right … to be able to refuse service that goes against their religious belief.”

    “That’s what I’m saying,” Cohen said. “So … they have a right to refuse me service.”

    “Yes,” Riggle said quietly.

    “So you’re saying ‘Yes,’ they do have the right to refuse me service as someone of the Jewish faith.” And here’s the best line, unedited:

    “No. No, I’m not saying—Yes, I am saying that, but that is not the issue that we’re talking about.”

    http://news.yahoo.com/religious-freedom-not-serve-jews-131600509–politics.html

  127. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Look! A bigot tries not to seem bigoted. He fails:

    *snicker*
    *tee hee*
    *bwahahahahahahahaha*

  128. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    The Pullet Patrol judges give the folks in Tony’s #164 a 9.5/10 for bigoted tap dancing in the face of terminal hypocrisy, and losing.

    I’ll throw some grog soaked their way once they get off their backs, stop thrashing their wings, and stop cackling up a storm. About a half hour from the looks of it.

  129. says

    Because “she’s not saying ‘I don’t want to go to a wedding where there are people who are gay or lesbian.’ She’s saying she doesn’t want to photograph a celebration of same-sex unions.”

    Those are the same thing. Lolwut?

  130. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    No, Brony.

    She’s saying that she’ll be in the same chapel with gay people. They can be in the wedding party, they can officiate, they can play the organ. And she’s fine with going to a wedding in a room or venue where gay/lesbian people also exist.

    What she’s not fine with is a gay man marrying a gay man, or a lesbian marrying a lesbian. According to Staver, she would also be fine with a gay man marrying a lesbian. Because she’s open minded. But it’s one thing to be in the same room with them, it’s another to **celebrate queerness**! [everyone pop a monocle now, please] She won’t go to a celebration of queerness. She will go to a celebration where queers happen to be present.

  131. Tethys says

    CD

    Yes, but what I am really interested in, Esteleth, is whether or not Quakers consider themselves Christians…

    I can answer that. Yes, they consider themselves the true christians, just like every other sect. The main difference is that they don’t think that everyone else is going to hell for not believing correctly.

    For instance, does the AFSC have a stance on jesus’ divinity? That sort of thing.

    Hmm, this is a little harder to explain. Most of the Friends congregations that I grew up in are of the liberal persuasion, and they are generally very anti-authoritarian to the point that they reject clergy.
    Quakers don’t spend much time worrying about divinity, they believe that all of us are gods children. They do hold Jesus up as the example of how to be a good christian. There is a big emphasis on spiritual growth, personal responsibility, charity, good works, and the golden rule. It’s also why they do not baptize infants. You have to choose god and the church as an adult. (no, I was never baptized)

  132. says

    “I think it’s fundamentally different, and I don’t think that’s the issue in that case,” Staver said without explaining why.

    “No. No, I’m not saying—Yes, I am saying that, but that is not the issue that we’re talking about.”

    I’m reminded of Proposition Infinity, especially the NOM ad parody:

    Linda: [on TV] More fair and balanced coverage after a word from our sponsor, No on Infinity.

    [A Parody of the National Organization for Marriage’s ad begins. Storm clouds roll in.]

    Actor 1: A storm is gathering.

    Actor 2: A storm of robosexual marriage that will rain down on us like fire.

    Actor 1: It’s probably a firestorm.

    Actress: If robosexual marriage becomes legal, imagine the horrible things that will happen to our children, then imagine we said those things, since we couldn’t think of any. As a mother, those things worry me.

    Man: [Voice over] Vote No on Infinity.

  133. says

    @Crip Dyke
    I mean legally these would would have to look like the same thing to a government that did not make decisions based on religious reasons, or reasons of personal taste on the order of political preference. I mean how can businesses have rights like people, right?

  134. Crip Dyke, Right Reverend Feminist FuckToy of Death & Her Handmaiden says

    @Brony:

    Oh, yeah, I think legally there’s no reasonable way to distinguish the two cases. Legally, Staver is full of crap. He’s trying to make a distinction that is resistant to the interpretation that this is discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, but fits neatly into a framework of invoking one’s freedom of religion. But he fails. And he’s full of crap.

    I just interpreted what you said as confusion about his fundamental assertion. But maybe you knew exactly what he was asserting and were still, bwuh? In that case, I apologize. I was only trying to help you read BullshitLegalRationalizationese.

  135. Owlmirror says

    Quakers?

    I don’t know any personally, but I do remember the time we got a Quaker on Pharyngula. Very Friendly, but as with all theists, a bit frustrating when trying to dig into fundamental meanings and concepts.

    Starting here, or if you prefer reading the Old School threads (which also have the non-ASCII characters displayed correctly, the internet archive of the original

  136. Esteleth, [an error occurred while processing this directive] says

    Crip Dyke:

    Yes, but what I am really interested in, Esteleth, is whether or not Quakers consider themselves Christians…

    Some do. Some very vehemently do not. About the most you could get all Quakers on board with is that the early Quakers were all Christians.

    For instance, does the AFSC have a stance on jesus’ divinity? That sort of thing.

    I doubt it. AFSC strives very hard to be pan-Quaker, which means that they aren’t going to make doctrinal stands.

  137. maddog1129 says

    answering my own #150, I found the reference. The article was ” Here Are All the ‘Privileges’ I’ve Experienced as a Survivor of Sexual Assault” by Lynn Beisner at RH RealityCheck.

  138. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    Has SGBM left for real this time, or is he just taking a very long break?

    I think there was some trouble shortly after his return from the last hiatus, but I don’t remember him being banned (or what trouble was about or how it ended).

  139. Pteryxx says

    wow, Beisner’s Survivor Privilege article is fearsome writing. Thanks, maddog and LykeX.

    For more than a decade, I have been working or studying on college campuses. And I can say that, as George Will asserts, sexual assault victims who report being victimized get all sorts of privileges. They get special tutors who sit with them during tests. Their papers are practically written for them, and they barely have to show up to class.

    Wait, sorry, those are athletes I’m thinking of.

    It’s disgusting to contemplate, but I wonder how many of those who would (and did) dismiss her experience and her injuries would’ve thought any differently if the same damage had been inflicted by a knife or a bullet. I’m thinking nothing would have changed, because obviously a woman that goes within range of a penis deserves whatever she gets. *spits out forever*

  140. says

    Oh fuck this shit:

    A new law waiting to be signed into law by Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal would require that pregnant and brain dead women be kept on life support, regardless of the stated wishes of her family. If the pro-life crowd is trying to disprove accusations that they only care about women to the extent that they are incubators for fetuses, they’re not doing a great job.

    According to MSNBC’s Clare Kim, the HR 1274, which easily sailed through Louisiana’s conservative state legislature last week, would require that pregnant women who become mentally incapacitated remain attached to life support, even if her husband or family members would like her to be unplugged and allowed to die. The only exceptions to this rule are if a woman explicitly wrote in her legal will that she doesn’t wish to be artificially kept alive if pregnant and incapacitated, or if she’s less than 20 weeks pregnant. Conservative governor and IRL Kenneth the Page Bobby Jindal is likely to sign the bill into law; yesterday, he decided that a Baptist church was an appropriate setting in which to sign a law that will close many of the state’s abortion clinics.

    http://jezebel.com/awful-law-would-force-brain-dead-pregnant-women-to-incu-1590466766

  141. says

    @Crip Dyke

    I just interpreted what you said as confusion about his fundamental assertion. But maybe you knew exactly what he was asserting and were still, bwuh? In that case, I apologize. I was only trying to help you read BullshitLegalRationalizationese.

    No problem. I actually interpreted what you said in 168 as sarcastic humor directed at the lawyer restating the obvious. These lines can get a little too fine at time :P

  142. says

    I never knew fashion blogging was so lucrative:

    The WWD article by Rachel Strugatz and David Yi — available by subscription only — claims that top style bloggers can now earn more than $1 million a year. Reminder: these are not engineers, or designers, or surgeons, or singers, or actors. They are STYLE BLOGGERS.
    […]
    RewardStyle confirmed its top earners can make more than $80,000 a month solely on affiliate commissions
    […]
    Salt Lake City-based Rachel Parcell of Pink Peonies is one of the top earners. While the 23-year-old blogger declined to comment on her annual income, based on RewardStyle’s data, she could make at least $960,000 from affiliate programs alone this year. Other income is on top of that, such as partnerships with brands like TRESemmé or J. Crew.

    Wow. $80K in a month…

    ****

    http://jezebel.com/colleges-silence-and-fire-faculty-who-speak-out-about-r-1586169489

    In institutions of higher learning nationwide, college administrations are systematically silencing faculty for speaking out about the campus rape crisis. Faculty members from four colleges and universities spoke exclusively to Jezebel about the professional retaliation they’ve faced due to their support of survivors of sexual assault; according to their accounts, they and their colleagues have been systematically stonewalled, rebuffed, intimidated, slandered and denied tenure for their advocacy.

    Oftentimes, the so-called “political” or “trouble-making” behavior they engage in is simply doing what Title IX laws require them to in order to keep their students safe. Every professor I spoke to described a remarkably similar pattern of behavior on the administration’s part: when faculty object to the desultory, ineffective sexual assault and rape policies offered up by universities, they’re ignored; when they persist in their criticism, they’re labeled “hysterical” or “troublemakers” who are acting out of a “personal agenda,” and they’re put under increasing pressure to keep quiet. In some cases that pressure is insidious. In others, it’s bafflingly blatant: for instance, I spoke to two women who were denied tenure after helping students report sexual harassment (which, again, is their legal responsibility under Title IX).

    {…}

    Kimberly Theidon, a soon-to-be-former professor at Harvard, claims that she was abruptly denied tenure because of she advocated for sexual assault and harassment survivors, some of whom were openly critical of the administration.

    According to a complaint she filed against the school in March 2014, she was given no indication that she’d be denied tenure until it occurred. In fact, there were several signs of good faith from the university — in 2008, she was promoted to associate professor and then “assigned an endowed designation of John J. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences, which a confidential document shared with HuffPost stated was a position for the ‘most distinguished tenure-track [Harvard] faculty.'” Most tellingly, Theidon states that she was invited in the spring of 2013 to “sit and lay out [her] new tenured faculty offices.”

    Two months later, she was denied tenure.

    {…}

    In the past few years, Occidental College has come under a lot of fire for its sexual assault policy — in April of 2013, a group of students, faculty and alumni filed a federal lawsuit against the college for permitting “a hostile environment for sexual assault victims and their advocates” to persist on campus. In May, after hiring attorneys Gina Smith and Leslie Gomez from law firm Pepper Hamilton to conduct an independent review of the school’s sexual assault policies, the administration made a big show of taking action to address the issue. However, student and faculty activists took umbrage with the proposed changes, criticizing them as wholly ineffective and merely cosmetic — more focused with repairing the school’s damaged reputation than with actually helping students and keeping them safe.

    In March of 2014, reports surfaced showing that the faculty members who were openly critical of the administration were subject to blatant retaliation, including office break-ins, laptop seizures, phone taps and the monitoring of work emails. It also seems that administration are trying to minimize the extent of the sexual assault problem: in a recording of a recent faculty meeting obtained by Jezebel, Occidental President Jonathan Veitch publicly denied the university had an abysmal record at handling sexual violence cases — which, considering the fact that the administration paid an undisclosed settlement sum to 10 current and former students in 2013, is a pretty laughable claim.

    There’s quite a bit more at the link.

  143. says

    Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
    The Winter garment of Repentance fling:
    The Bird of Time has but a little way
    To fly – and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

    The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, Edward FitzGerald.
     
    I'm tired of rain.

  144. David Marjanović says

    unclefrogy in the Dark Enlightenment thread:

    I think that not taking into account the actual history of humanity is at the very root of their errors that and delusions of grandeur that are matched only by their resentment all lead to a story that hangs together but fails to match the observed reality it is supposed to be making a statements about.

    I had to read this sentence twice, slowly, to understand it.

    Here’s a way to make it readable really fast – without moving any words around, and without touching its (useless) integrity as a single sentence:

    “I think that not taking into account the actual history of humanity is at the very root of their errors that, and delusions of grandeur that are matched only by their resentment; all lead to a story that hangs together, but fails to match the observed reality it is supposed to be making a statement[…] about.”

    The dash is Cmd+- on the Mac, and Alt+0150 (on the numeric key block) elsewhere.

    Note how the voice goes up at every comma, how it goes down at the semicolon, and how every dash is a pause followed by emphasis. You can hear punctuation; the few cases where this gets unreliable are the cases where the rules differ between languages.

  145. says

    A comics creator led a 6 week workshop for elementary school students aimed at developing their writing abilities:
    (excerpt)

    It’s not unusual for a comics creator to visit a classroom, but the program that Eben Burgoon led for the Sacramento, California, nonprofit 916 Ink was much more than that: a six-week workshop in which elementary school students learned to write comics, then pitched their stories to professional artists who worked with them on the finished product. The workshop included a variety of exercises and techniques, including the “Marvel Method” — Burgoon gave the students pages of finished art and had them fill in the word balloons — and making up the backstory for a random LEGO Minifig.

    916 Ink promotes literacy by encouraging young people to write their own stories and poems, and it has published more than 25 books of student work. Its comics program is new and was spurred by demand from both parents and students; the finished work, released this week, will be available in local comics shops, through the 916 Ink website, and eventually through other channels.

    […]

    I have seen lots of articles about comics classes in schools, but a six-week workshop seems like a big commitment. What do you see as the benefit of a longer-format project like this?

    It was a blur for me and the kids. We were having a blast, and I think really the take-away was that they are probably going to all be life-long comic fans and start reading and creating more. Having more time, and I honestly wish I’d had more time, means those kernels of knowledge can make deeper, lasting roots and keep these kids inspired for a long time. As far as I know, this program is unique and the only one that comes from a writing-first perspective where the kids create something, pass the work to professionals, and at the end, have a comic book that visually is just as good as anything on the market right now and has all the charm that you’d expect of a book written by third-, fourth- and fifth-graders. It’s truly a remarkable and amazing book — and I can’t wait to do another one in Fall.

    http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2014/06/eben-burgoon-on-helping-kids-make-comics-at-916-ink/

  146. says

    David:

    ^ So much awesomeness!!!

    I think so, too. It’s amazing, getting to see how everything works, before they mature. So very different from adults. That little dove almost looks built out of straw.

  147. David Marjanović says

    That little dove almost looks built out of straw.

    That’s what feather sheaths look like. They’re going to fall off, letting the feathers unfurl.

    The photography is awesome, too, not just what the photos show. :-)

  148. says

    Huh, it seems that whole writing about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus business didn’t work out so well for Anne Rice. She has a new Lestat novel coming out.

  149. says

    David:

    That’s what feather sheaths look like. They’re going to fall off, letting the feathers unfurl.

    Oooh, I didn’t know that. I’m lucky I got to see it.

    The photography is awesome, too, not just what the photos show. :-)

    Aaw, thank you.

  150. says

    http://www.newsarama.com/21349-nycc-se-2014-reimagining-the-female-hero-panel-live.html

    For many years in superhero and action adventure comics female characters were often limited to the roles of girlfriend, mom, or femme fatale. But the number of central female protagonists in action-adventure and superhero comics is now growing. In the pages of these comics, women take on heroic roles that for years were confined to male characters. Join some of the best creators in contemporary comics including Gail Simone, Amy Reeder, Ben Saunders, Emanuela Lupacchino, Jenny Frison, Marguerite Bennett, and more to discuss the rise of the female hero!

    The panel moderator Ben Saunders is a professor at University of Oregon who was “hired to teach Poetry, got tenure, and have been teaching comics ever since.” He introduced the panelists, Gail Simone, Marguerite Bennett, Emanuela Lupacchino (Ema), and Jenny Frison, (Reeder was a little late due to another panel).

    I found this portion interesting. I can’t imagine how a group of male artists would discuss drawing Red Sonja (or maybe I can…)

    Simone took over talking about the book she writes, Red Sonja, and how all the artists on covers are by female artists. “We had this long conversation at a convention that was all about how to draw the boobs in this bikini. And they talked about it a way that men never would, talking about the weight of the underboob and how they’d actually move if she was flipping in the air. It was the greatest conversation. And none of those artists, by the way, wanted to draw her in anything but the chainmail bikini!”

  151. chigau (違う) says

    When the SO is in the “right” mood and someone calls to conduct a telephone survey…
    oh the humanity

  152. Ichthyic says

    what? I would imagine that situation to be resolved with…

    *click*

    as you turn off the phone…

  153. Ichthyic says

    It’s an optical illusion!

    well, yes, there is the illusion the eyes are bigger, but there is also a real physical measure there, which is the relative eye/face size ratio.

    yes, they eyes are not actually bigger, but that ratio has a regular effect on response, regardless.

  154. chigau (違う) says

    Ichthyic
    Quite right.
    That is the method I use.
    The SO is a different matter.

  155. says

    I got an ad on FB from this company called Trunk Club. It’s a company with a personal stylist that handpicks clothing for men and ships it to you. I commented on FB that even if I had the money I wouldn’t use the service. A friend left me this comment: “Wow. You can be judgey sometimes”. I found it funny bc people judge all the time, and not just in negative ways. What restaurant do I want to eat at? What movie should we see? What toy do you want? Which song do you like? What’s your opinion of Rick Santorum?
    Judging something is nothing more than evaluating it and coming to a conclusion. People do it all the time, yet for some people, judging something is seen as bad. I find that odd and wonder if it has something to do with christianity (the bit about not judging others).

    In any event, I pointed out to my friend that he didn’t know why I made the comment (I also told him that I judge all the time and I’m not ashamed of it). It’s bc I like shopping and prefer to do it for myself, rather than letting others do it for me. My comment about not using the service had nothing to do with thinking the company sucked or it was a shitty idea. In fact, it probably is a good idea for someone looking for that sort of thing.

  156. opposablethumbs says

    “judgey” apparently means “daring to have an opinion that is not identical to mine, on a topic to which I feel the slightest personal connection”

  157. says

    opposablethumbs:
    It’s rather ironic, bc he was making a judgement of me.
    He and I used to kinda sorta date (he lives hundreds of miles from me, so it wasn’t anything serious, but there was a connection beyond just the sex; it didn’t work out, but we’re still friends), so we know each other to a decent degree. Of course when we dated, I wasn’t a feminist, nor was I open about being an atheist, and I didn’t care about politics or social justice, so I’ve changed a bit since we last hung out.
    Part of me would like to talk to him more about this bc I’d like to see if he recognizes that
    people judge all the time (other people, places, things, etc) and see if he can explain what’s wrong with judging. But then, I’ve beaten a dead horse into the ground before, and this isn’t that big a deal to me, but it’s one of the mild curiosities.

  158. says

    Hmm, so competitive mothering is a thing. In an unofficial way:

    Everyone knows it happens.
    Some people talk about it, some people shove it under the rug. Some people pretend it doesn’t happen, and some people are the reason it DOES happen. But no matter which group you fall into, EVERYONE knows it happens. What is it? It’s a little thing called Competitive Mothering. It’s a fact. Mom’s are competitive. Not just the crazy moms. All moms. Or at least, all the ones I’ve ever met. Maybe it’s a woman thing. Maybe it’s a parenting thing. Who knows what sparks it. All I know is, every mom has her own way of dealing with it and her own way of continuing the pattern.
    And the thing is? I don’t think we mean to be. I don’t think anyone sets out to make anyone else feel bad about their child or their parenting. The problem is that most parents… most GOOD parents, want what’s best for their child. They want their kid to be a good reader. They want him to be athletic. They want her to be smart. They want them to be handsome or beautiful and oh so talented. It’s human nature. No one becomes a (good) parent and thinks “Well, I hope my kid is the creepy kid in the corner with the smelly feet who eats his own boogers.”
    The problem is that we don’t really process what we’re doing. Mostly because most of us don’t know what we’re doing for the most part. I mean, I admit, I ask questions of other moms. I want to know when Suzie said “mama” and when Charles learned to walk. And I want to know these things, not because I want Suzie or Charles’ mom to feel bad if J learned it first, but because I want to know if J is okay. And I think that’s what we all secretly want.
    Sure, it feels a little good when someone tells you your kid is smart. Or cute. Or whatever the adjective is. Of course it feels good! That’s your kid! You made that (and/or adopted and therefore made because hello? Nurture?). And I’ll admit to being a little share-y when it comes to J’s accomplishments sometimes. This past weekend I realized that I sometimes treat my poor child like a trained seal. You know the drill… “J… where’s your nose? Where’s your head? Say this, say that. Now, spin around in a circle and toss the ball with your nose!” It was embarrassing when I realized what I was doing. I was completely embarrassed by myself. But you know what? It didn’t stop me from the horror of doing it again later that day.

    http://law-momma.com/index.php/2010/11/16/competitive-mothering-101/

    Any competitive moms here?

  159. opposablethumbs says

    people judge all the time

    Exactly. The thing is to be aware that we are doing it (be aware of our own biases etc.), and to recognise that we sometimes need to actively make an effort to set our own biases aside.

    Re parenting, I’d readily hazard a guess that most of us who are parents sometimes (or often) worry about our kids and may want to check how their progress compares with whatever is typical for their age – but I also think there is a hell of a lot of unhealthy pressure (unhealthy for all involved) to push kids. And push them not to do well and fulfill themselves but to do better than the person beside them. Bad news all round. I also think the pressure to do this is probably greater for women, because of the cultural expectations that women should live both for “through” their children (instead of having a life of their own). Not to mention the pressures to give up any career aspirations you might have had, etc. etc.

    Insidious, and definitely something to be avoided as much as possible – and something that mainly leads to problems for all concerned.

  160. Derek Vandivere says

    @188 / Inaji:

    Baby Mourning Dove. Babies everywhere.

    Here in Amsterdam, the canals are full of baby waterfowl (mostly coots, ducks, and grebes). Last week, we were watching a crow steal eggs from a nest and carefully eat just the yolks while standing on the roof of our neighbor’s houseboat. Last night, we watched a heron dive bomb the same nest and fly off with a baby grebe. Sure is hard not to anthropomorphize the mother’s honking as grief.

  161. says

    myeck waters #212

    It’s a guest opinion piece in Forbes by a Heartland Institute hack claiming that a peer-reviewed study found the majority of scientists actually DON’T think human’s are driving climate change.

    It seems the study was conducted on members of APEGA, The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta. I’m not sure exactly what this covers or whether these people are in any way climate specialists. Is it supposed to be specifically engineers with expertise in climate and geoscience?

    I ask because 75% of the respondents were classified as “engineers”. A quick look at APEGA’s site seems to imply that this means any kind of engineer. If that’s the case, it’s a survey of people in a completely unrelated field. I’m not sure what that’s supposed to prove. You might as well ask biologists what they think about string theory.

    I looks to me like a blatantly cherry-picked example, chosen to bolster a pre-existing conclusion. Bullshit indeed.

  162. says

    AJ Milne

    there really aren’t that many authoritarians in the world.

    Enough to do a lot of damage.

    Brony

    So it’s not that it overrides system 2, it’s that system 1 is where we spend 95% of our time and is as efficient as we put in the effort to improve its quality.

    It does overide system 2. That was an important point of the book. Something as simple as whether a judge has had lunch or not, could add years onto a jail sentence. That is not trivial, and is but one of many examples cited in the book. System 1 can horrifically overide system 2. Only through careful study can we realise just how bad it can get.

    System 2 is when we bother to look more closely at something and consider letting that thing alter our system 1 responses.

    You may be overthinking this. Too many people simply don’t (system 2) think at all.

    using more mental resources

    This comment gets to the heart of the problem. We really are (intellectually) underpowered for maintaining the pretence of being “human”. Smoke and mirrors create the impression that we are system 2 beings, whereas this is not the case. We are system 1, with rare flashes of higher intellect. (This counts for all of us. It is rather sobering to realise the import of all of this.)

    [Your Linkies]

    I might need some time to read your links.

    [Robotics]

    The robots I am speaking of are not AI, they are somewhere between bee and turnip (with more emphasis on the turnip). There is certainly no question of moral competency. They are little more than flying data collectors. (The term used upthread:”thick as a brick”) The moral issues raised, fall entirely upon their owners/controllers.

  163. ledasmom says

    Inaji @ 156:
    I saw a cedar waxwing last week, eating what might have been cherries from a tree in a tiny yard right next to a major road. The last time I saw one was years ago, a bunch of them flitting (really flitting!) from tree to tree in the park. It’s been a good bird year for me; also saw two Baltimore orioles (not the nest, though) and a couple of male towhees having a disagreement.

  164. says

    Derek:

    Here in Amsterdam, the canals are full of baby waterfowl (mostly coots, ducks, and grebes). Last week, we were watching a crow steal eggs from a nest and carefully eat just the yolks while standing on the roof of our neighbor’s houseboat. Last night, we watched a heron dive bomb the same nest and fly off with a baby grebe. Sure is hard not to anthropomorphize the mother’s honking as grief.

    Oh my. I expect they do grieve, most birds are very good parents, and a lot of them mate for life. It’s a hard life.

    ledasmom:

    Oh, exciting! I haven’t seen another waxwing (natch), but I’m going to plant a crabapple tree this year. Baltimore orioles have been visiting fairly often, but only the males – I haven’t seen a single female this year. Spotted Towhees are here (supposedly), but I have never seen one. They are more to the west and south of where I am, I think. All of the birds have been more fight prone than usual this year, especially the doves (collared and mourning) and the black-capped chickadees. It’s like bird fight club out there.

  165. pHred says

    LykeX @214

    It seems the study was conducted on members of APEGA, The Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta.

    Oh dog, that is hysterical. Alberta – home of the Athabasca tar sands ! Not only are they not climate scientists in any way, shape or form – the majority of them have a vested interest in denying global warming and dismissing even the vaguest possibility that their full scale processing of tar sands could somehow be bad.

  166. says

    @ theophontes (恶六六六缓步动物) 215

    It does overide system 2. That was an important point of the book. Something as simple as whether a judge has had lunch or not, could add years onto a jail sentence. That is not trivial, and is but one of many examples cited in the book. System 1 can horrifically overide system 2. Only through careful study can we realise just how bad it can get.

    I think that we are emphasizing different aspects of the system for different reasons and it’s not really a disagreement. I agree that system 1 does override system 2, especially when things get more intense for various reasons (sort of an autonomic grading of responses. I guess that I think that it’s better to characterize the relationship as one where system 1 is “default mode”, and system 2 is engaged when we choose or are able to spend time considering the information that informs system 1 responses.

    Too many people simply don’t (system 2) think at all.

    I can agree that we are likely to be individually different when it comes to how well we use both processes. But even the most authoritarian people are still more willing to use system two in their group. It’s the balance between the systems in different behavioral contexts where things get interesting. In a highly charged political disagreement on the internet thinking in terms of undermining system 1 responses while encouraging system 2 is a useful frame. Sure it’s going to be hard, but I think it’s the difference between being armed with scalpels versus guns metaphorically speaking.

    We are system 1, with rare flashes of higher intellect. (This counts for all of us. It is rather sobering to realise the import of all of this.) .

    I agree, but I also find it pretty nice that we have an intellectual equivalent to bodybuilding. So it’s not all bad news. It’s more like finding “best principles” of mental fitness.

    The robots I am speaking of are not AI, they are somewhere between bee and turnip (with more emphasis on the turnip). There is certainly no question of moral competency. They are little more than flying data collectors. (The term used upthread:”thick as a brick”) The moral issues raised, fall entirely upon their owners/controllers..

    I thought the subject was interesting but was mostly out of my depth. I thought it was a tangent as well but could have been more clear about it just being an interesting item related to artificial constructs and learning.

  167. says

    David M:
    You made a comment about using punctuation here, as well as upthread @186. I agree that punctuation would make reading comments easier. I also think addressing people by nym’s and/or comment number does much the same thing (in that it enables people to follow a conversation much easier).

  168. ck says

    I just feel compelled to share this link: Why Would Someone On Food Stamps Have An iPhone?

    It’s a bunch of posts of people relating the stories about how assholes have hurt them by insisting that they were not allowed to have anything nice if they are poor, including one story about how an asshole neighbour screamed at a young man and his autistic brother (who had just spent a considerable amount of time and effort trying to get his big brother a nice gift) because the young man was poor but had a Nintendo DS, and the terrible emotional damage done by that incident.

  169. says

    @ Brony

    If you enjoy “Fast and Slow Thinking”, you might also want to look out for Pascal Boyer’s “Religion Explained“.

    intellectual equivalent to bodybuilding

    Another way to get around our mental limitations, is by the application of the scientific method. By approaching problems as a communal endeavor, we can go a long way to clearing out biases, inappropriate inferences and the like. How is this panning out? Well, in spite of having a rigorous means to clear away these mental artifacts, their tenaciousness is driven home to us daily.

    I thought the subject was interesting but was mostly out of my depth.

    As far as robotics goes, I don’t happen to know any that don’t lean heavy on the maths. There is no particular reason that the general principles can’t be explained without going into “too much” maths, so there might be some out there. I’ll have to look around a bit.

  170. says

    Short and up to date Boyer: Religious Beliefs As Reflective Elaborations on Intuitions: A Modified Dual-Process Model

    @ Brony

    Your linked article was fairly heavy going. Not least in that they create a dichotomy with Authoritarians on the one extreme and Libertarians on the other. One could almost take away the message that Libertarianism (as we understand the term) is a good thing. ie: The presentation could almost be taken as apologetics for Libertarianism. Perhaps they could have been clearer as to what they mean by the term.

    Right at the end they seem to come out with a different interpretation of Libertarianism. That is: not the very selfish, simplifying version we contend with daily. Rather, a type that praises autonomy within the acknowledgment of a broader community and environment. I almost wish they had rather invented their own term, as it might obviate confusion.

    The (according to Horney pathological) “moving against” mode controls diversity and reduces complexity through actively suppressing the inherent dynamics of the world. Note that this is the defining characteristic of our psychology or robotics labs. [from linky]

    I would be fascinated as to how such a robot would be expected to function. Perhaps they are being overly anthropomorphic? The problem in robotics boils down to cost. Flying computers don’t come cheap, nor do the sensors. They might be capable of opening up to the complexity of the world, but I am afraid that such devices might just be too heavy to take off.

    I can imagine a philosophical rice steamer, I just cannot imagine why (other than novelty) anyone would want such a thing.

  171. dianne says

    If anyone’s looking for a chew toy, there’s a racist on the Dark Enlightenment thread babbling about how intelligence is genetic and race based…and has posted references that supposedly support his/her position. I love it when they do that because it provides so many opportunities to demonstrate how very wrong they are…

  172. says

    @pHred #218
    Good catch. That connection didn’t even occur to me. Of course, these are exactly the people likely to be hired by the fossil fuel industry.

  173. says

    @ theophontes (恶六六六缓步动物) 222
    I’ll check out “Religion Explained”. I’m really enjoying that paper PZ shared with us on the evolution of costly displays.

    Another way to get around our mental limitations, is by the application of the scientific method. By approaching problems as a communal endeavor, we can go a long way to clearing out biases, inappropriate inferences and the like. How is this panning out? Well, in spite of having a rigorous means to clear away these mental artifacts, their tenaciousness is driven home to us daily.

    Agreed, but not just on a group level (though the confirmation part needs that). I often tell people that the scientific method can be applied and eventually internalized by anyone as a regular way of thinking about the world. See thing you are curious about, read/learn what is known about the thing, make an attempt to explain the thing, collect data (information) to look for things that must be true if the explanation is true. Finally see if anyone has noticed the same things and think the explanation makes sense.
    You can apply this to weather-proofing your house (if heat gain/loss is occurring it may be detectable with an infrared camcorder), why your newspaper is disappearing (experiment to see if neighbor is stealing it), many things. The benefit is that when someone gets good enough at testing their own explanations, testing the explanations of other people fairly gets easier. You get practice at not BS’ing yourself so you can more easily detect BS in others and deceptive practices (the effects of cognitive heuristics, biases, and their fallacy manifestations) become recognizable forms.
    The tenaciousness is because they work on a more visceral social level. Much of human culture is more primitive behavior in symbolically more complicated presentation. Dominance displays get attention (debates, politically aggressive bluster…), exaggerating the symbols (representing more complex arguments) of others into hyperbolic forms for one’s group and fence-sitters can persuade those with less education (often not their fault if their childhood culture did not value education), turning descriptive words into in-group words of dismissal that shut down thought (feminism! socialism! libertarianism! Just being honest about some folks on that last one).
    Rationality, logic, and the scientific method need to achieve ritual status in order to be more valued because right now people just see the effectiveness of standard political behavior. The best of us use these tools and combine them with knowledge of language, culture, and rhetoric in their own political dominance displays which work best when we pick a favorite area, master it and then pick our battles while learning new areas we care about. Hitchens was effective for good reasons. Any political community with a legitimate axe to grind needs skilled cultural brutes that can metaphorically swing a club around.
    Teaching the value of an idea, or belief, or philosophical tool involves not just the benefits inherent in the idea itself, but the success of the community in competition with others where there are competitors.

    @ theophontes (恶六六六缓步动物)

    I’ll check out that paper on religion and dual process model paper as well.
    Not least in that they create a dichotomy with Authoritarians on the one extreme and Libertarians on the other. One could almost take away the message that Libertarianism (as we understand the term) is a good thing. ie: The presentation could almost be taken as apologetics for Libertarianism. Perhaps they could have been clearer as to what they mean by the term.

    I get the impression that they are not using a standard definition of Libertarian and a perusal of the literature might show more of this non-standard usage. Something like “Individualist” might better map to what they are doing. Otherwise I agree that what we currently call Libertarianism has very little acknowledgement of the surrounding community and environment except in terms of resources for personal gain.

    I would be fascinated as to how such a robot would be expected to function. Perhaps they are being overly anthropomorphic?

    The programming would be broad enough to contain more than just human cognitive capability, the requisite behaviors are pretty common in the animal kingdom. There would have to be a “social sense” among such robots with some sort of division between “individual goals” and “social goals”. Individuals or small groups of individuals would have to be able to modify individuals whose chosen actions and goals were “less fit” or contradictory to the group overall. (I start thinking about the implications for us and what is selected for in humans here. It’s fascinating when the really abused stuff is still morally neutral in selective terms.)

  174. JAL: Snark, Sarcasm & Bitterness says

    Ignoranus

    Not going to lie, I didn’t catch the difference the first several times and was really confused. Damn auto-correcting brain, lol.

    And is it just me or does pronouncing it sound like “In your anus”?

  175. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    chigau,
    Cool.
    Any rum left to share?

  176. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    Thank you.
    almost better than morning coffee

  177. Ogvorbis: Still failing at being human. says

    rum + coffee = breakfast of champions

    Nah.

    Red, White & Blue beer poured over Rice Crispies.

    That’s the breakfast of champions.

  178. Ogvorbis: Still failing at being human. says

    chigau:

    I think around here they call that Chex.

    I do use shredded wheat biscuits when I am baking bread. Sometimes.

  179. chigau (違う) says

    Oggie
    You put shredded wheat into the bread dough?
    What is the result?
    I like to try different textures in my bread.

  180. Ogvorbis: Still failing at being human. says

    chigau:

    Yes, I put shredded wheat biscuits in my bread dough. I soak them in milk or water (whichever the liquid used in the dough happens to be) and toss it in with the yeast, flour, sugar and liquid — adds a nice grainy texture to white bread. And for multigrain bread, tends to get away from all the little balls of stuff.

  181. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    Some random thoughts…

    I’m starting to find all these movements a bit off-putting.

    Atheist movement, skeptical movement, A+ movement… and when talking about all these movements they usually kind of blend into the movement (The Movement if random capitalization is your thing).
    When we talk about atheism and I use we when talking about something related to my atheism it can happen that I accidentally proclaim myself part of a movement. And I still don’t understand what or how these movements work .Are we all parts of it just by being Pharyngulates?

    I don’t know. I realize that people have to unite to accomplish big things, and also that I am threading dangerously into dictionary atheism territory, it’s just that all these movements are a bit confusing. Especially the skeptical one.
    Could that be an American thing? Like with all the leadership bullshit, which movements are quite convenient for. After all… all those leaders need someone to lead.

  182. cm's changeable moniker (quaint, if not charming) says

    Obligatory. :-)

    At a meal these silly asses
    Have a row of empty glasses;
    A different wine for every course they eat.
    Me, I mix whatever’s handy
    In a stiff all-purpose shandy
    Which goes very well with fish, or Shredded Wheat™.

    The Wine Somg

    dangerously into dictionary atheism territory

    Give in to the dark side!

    It’s OK: you can still be progressive, just not necessarily because you’re an atheist (or a Pharyngulite).

  183. says

    Tony:

    Thanks for the new word. Got to use it in the Feminist Frequency thread.

    Credit goes to Kevin Hearne, who introduced it in his latest book [Shattered] via the character of Manannan Mac Lir.

    JAL:

    And is it just me or does pronouncing it sound like “In your anus”?

    You’re leaving the ‘g’ out. Same as ignoramus, just changed that one little letter. :D

  184. chigau (違う) says

    In case anyone is not paying attention
    everything and everybody is stupid,
    .
    .
    .
    especially my particular pad/router/provider combination.

  185. says

    Request for advice:
    I’m thinking of reading some Ursula Le Guin, but I’m unsure of where to start. I haven’t read any of her stuff before. I don’t mind jumping into a longer work, I just need to know I’m not missing some important background.

    I know there are people around here who have read her stuff, so please leave me a recommendation.

  186. Derek Vandivere says

    @251 / LykeX: Well, I’m pretty sure the first one I read was A Wizard of EarthSea, but that would have been in the mid-80s. Oh, apparently it’s a hexology now – it was only a trilogy back when I read it.

  187. Don Quijote says

    Many people are crying into their beer here today. Spain hit by a double whammy. Out of the world cup and a new bloody king.

    (At least this one won’t be shooting any elephants)

  188. says

    @ Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought 246

    Atheist movement, skeptical movement, A+ movement… and when talking about all these movements they usually kind of blend into the movement (The Movement if random capitalization is your thing).
    When we talk about atheism and I use we when talking about something related to my atheism it can happen that I accidentally proclaim myself part of a movement. And I still don’t understand what or how these movements work .Are we all parts of it just by being Pharyngulates?

    I think of movements as a big complicated venn diagrams. They are on many levels groups of political convenience and strategic organizing like political parties, but inside of them you have people sorting into different factions as they want movements to do different things as they relate the the overall mission. Disagreements about which things are more important for the movement at large are probably never ending, and some people inside of the efforts to shape the groups behavior will be more or less aggressive and disruptive.
    WE refers to that set of things the whole group shares, and we all want it to also refer to the things we are trying to get the group to do as well (many of us also use WE to mean the group shared things and the things we want, but that starts to get into politically shady behavior unless we are honest about it being rhetorical efforts to persuade).
    As for Pharyngulates, some are part of the movement, some are not but often act consistently with the movement and can be considered allies. But mostly it’s fans of PZ’s writing and activism and “movement” happens to come along often because PZ talks about related issues a lot.

    I don’t know. I realize that people have to unite to accomplish big things, and also that I am threading dangerously into dictionary atheism territory, it’s just that all these movements are a bit confusing. Especially the skeptical one.
    Could that be an American thing? Like with all the leadership bullshit, which movements are quite convenient for. After all… all those leaders need someone to lead.

    I think it’s a human thing and that you see it in political movements all over history. People will interact with others like them and that is part of what forms a movement. People will also interact based on shared goals, and conflict over conflicting goals causing movements to evolve over time. Depending on the trajectory of evolution this can cause a lot of negative feelings like feelings of betrayal.
    People are also differently responsive to authority which is a totally natural instinct. An authority is a reflection of the group that respects it in many ways so we tend to (rationally or irrationally depending on mental shortcuts and reality) associate the authority with the group. Some fall into a set of behavior that we call authoritarianism and put way too much value on respect and obedience to authorities, or are willing to put up with more bad behavior on the part of authorities. But authorities are also convenient ways to spread a group’s message and organize group behavior.

    I think it’s general human behavior in all it’s inefficient, chaotic, but still useful and necessary glory.

  189. says

    Reading on wikipedia led me to believe that The Left Hand of Darkness was in the middle of a series of books. Is that wrong? Is it an okay place to just jump in with no knowledge of the world it takes place in?

  190. David Marjanović says

    Huh, it seems that whole writing about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus business didn’t work out so well for Anne Rice. She has a new Lestat novel coming out.

    :-D

    I also think addressing people by nym’s and/or comment number does much the same thing (in that it enables people to follow a conversation much easier).

    I’m sorry that I still haven’t gone back and read the replies I got several Thunderdomes ago when we discussed that on the occasion of that creationist from debate.org. I still want to do that, but I won’t have time this or next week at minimum.

    Thus, all I can say now is that I don’t understand how mentioning names or numbers helps to follow a conversation. Few if any people remember the numbers, so they don’t make it easier to recognize the topic*; I don’t remember well who said what**, so names don’t help me or anyone like me much; and I’m really, honestly not addressing individual people so much as everyone who can read what I write. I reply to what I quote, not to who happens to have written it this time – sometimes, putting a name on such a quote would even be unfair in that it would single someone out for what lots of people say/do/believe.

    I promised to quote more context. Have I been living up to that? (Obviously, I’m not a good judge of that myself!)

    * A few people – I don’t remember who – have occasionally mentioned just numbers in their comments, with no names or quotes. I find that very annoying, because it means that if the reply doesn’t make the topic obvious, I must scroll up if I want to have any idea what it’s about.
    ** Remembering people I’ve met in meatspace is one thing.*** Remembering people I only know as written names – on a blog or in scientific papers – largely fails, at least if I haven’t interacted with them a lot. For example, I’m really bad at keeping track of where my colleagues work, or where particular fossils are kept when I haven’t been to that collection and seen them there myself.
    *** Though even there, most people seem to be quite a bit better at recognizing faces than I am. I clearly don’t have prosopagnosia, but still.

    Could that [expectation to see a “movement” everywhere] be an American thing?

    To some extent, yes – together with the phenomenon of “I identify as a”, which I don’t quite understand either.

    “Leadership” may be the opposite: maybe it used to be much more widespread and has fallen out of fashion in and around Germany.

  191. says

    Ok so there is no longer any doubt Suarez still is on top of his game, Uruguay still is one of the greats, and England still… just quite isn’t. Nice try, though.

  192. CJO says

    When Alice Munro won the Nobel, it occurred to me: that was Ursula’s! Now, I love me some Alice Munro, don’t get me wrong, she’s had an amazing career, and she’s as insightful and quietly powerful as any short story writer you’d care to name.

    But in terms of influence on the culture at large, ambition, breadth of work, and social justice awareness/advocacy, Ursula is easily her superior. Science Fiction in general has had such an enormous impact on the culture, the “genre ghetto” that some of its best practitioners have been forced to labor in is now widely regarded as the product of unjust literary snobbishness, it just seems inevitable, that someday an author best known for fantastic or speculative work is going to get one. And I say it should be Ursula, like tomorrow (she’s 81, I believe, about the same age as Munro).

    Ursula K. LeGuin for the Nobel! pass it around.

    (My $.02 on the question: you don’t need any prior knowledge to enjoy The Left Hand of Darkness, in fact, that or Earthsea is probably the place to start, or a collection of short fiction.)

  193. Rob Grigjanis says

    LykeX @251: Seconding or thirding or whatever, chigau’s recommendations. The Left Hand of Darkness is a fucking masterpiece. And I don’t use naughty words much.

  194. Rob Grigjanis says

    Weed(less) Monkey @259: Yep. Uruguay earned that win, and good for Suárez. Oddly enough, if Italy win their last two, and England beat Costa Rica, England can still go through. Almost hoping for a draw in Italy v CR tomorrow, so that my stress levels can go down and I can just enjoy the football. Almost.

  195. says

    :) I don’t really have a natural favourite team in these games, but I’m interested in teams from Northern Europe: Netherlands, England, Germany.

    And seeing any of the big stars do what they do best is luxurious.

    Of course that could be Messi leading Argentina to the top, and that would be fantastic.

  196. Ogvorbis: Still failing at being human. says

    LykeX @251:

    Umptee-umphthing The Left Hand of Darkness. I would also add, The Word for World is Forest.

  197. says

    Looks like one of those ‘midwest gone bugfuck’ storms is headed into my patch, with a vengeance. I expect the power will be out soon enough, so I suppose I’ll have an early night.

  198. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Just looked at the Doppler, and the first wave of grumble storms should hit in about an hour and it looks vicious. The second wave looks a lot tamer.

  199. cm's changeable moniker (quaint, if not charming) says

    Six Liverpool players on the pitch and the one I didn’t want to score did. Twice.

    *sigh*

    #comeonitaly (#weneedyou)

  200. Rob Grigjanis says

    Six Liverpool players on the pitch and the one I didn’t want to score did.

    Well, Gerrard got an assist on the winning goal. Urgh.

  201. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    We’ll if worse comes to worst, I can shove the Redhead in the coat closet, surrounded by thick real plaster walls, without any window.

  202. says

    Almost hoping for a draw in Italy v CR tomorrow, so that my stress levels can go down and I can just enjoy the football. Almost.

    Seeing how bad and good they were in their first matches I wouldn’t call that impossible, just very implausible.

  203. says

    Almost hoping for a draw in Italy v CR tomorrow, so that my stress levels can go down and I can just enjoy the football. Almost.

    Congrats on your reduced stress. But holy crap, two games in and Costa Rica already is a giant killer.

  204. David Marjanović says

    Trying to get to my e-mails; being informed of Costa Rica 1 : 0 Italy.

  205. Rob Grigjanis says

    Costa Rica already is a giant killer

    And they played like giants. Shut the Italians down very effectively. Watching them proceed will be fun. Almost as much fun as watching a Germany-Netherlands match (please, please!).

  206. says

    :) I don’t really have a natural favourite team in these games, but I’m interested in teams from Northern Europe: Netherlands, England, Germany.

    I’m quite interested in getting the last one on that list to be kicked out of the tournament soon, but I won’t hold my breath.
    Football championships make me cranky because for weeks the whole world expects me to care. Mr. is currently sitting in the armchair and I think he must be talking to himself…

  207. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    For all my grumbling about football, I’m watching Switzerland vs France with mum.
    I can enjoy watching fotball, I’m usually just too annoyed by all the fans and noise and nationalism.

    And I wouldn’t mindCroats getting kicked out soon
    Then I could watch the rest of the games in peace.

  208. says

    In Finland football fans are pretty much invisible and rare (probably because the national team has never accomplished anything). Ice hockey fans, on the other hand… they have a World Cup every year.

  209. Nick Gotts says

    My favorites
    The Left Hand of Darkness
    The Dispossessed – chigau

    I’d add The Lathe of Heaven.

  210. says

    Rats below, I’m so glad I don’t shop at Target. I’m not in Texas, but I don’t want anything to do with an establishment that thinks this is okay.

  211. ledasmom says

    LykeX @ 257:

    eading on wikipedia led me to believe that The Left Hand of Darkness was in the middle of a series of books. Is that wrong? Is it an okay place to just jump in with no knowledge of the world it takes place in?

    Left Hand of Darkness is one of LeGuin’s Hainish novels, but those are not so much a series as a setting, a concept, a background, a frame. That is, they all take place in the same universe with certain technology (the technology does change, but to me LeGuin’s novels all have the feeling of history, though if they are in our universe they must be in the far future of it. That is to say, the events feel as if they’re being looked back on from a distance, and with an exception or two there isn’t much sense of the individual stories being in linear order), but they make use of enough of that universe that often you can’t really see one story from another. So enjoy them in any order you like. I happen to love Left Hand of Darkness absolutely passionately; it is one of those books that I read and say to myself, I do not know how this author came to write this; I do not know how this bit and this bit and this bit, especially this bit, came into her head, or how she put them down just so, but I am grateful for it.
    For shorter LeGuin, “The Matter of Seggri” or “A Woman’s Liberation”, though the latter is tough reading, and the one I can’t come up with the name for just now – there was a mother who in order to understand and study a culture raised her two children in it, and the story is told in first person by her daughter. I know it’s in one of the books here, but I can’t remember which one.

  212. David Marjanović says

    This is incomprehensible.

    When money is lacking, as it usually is at a zoo, you go public, call for donations and shame the politicians! You don’t close part of the zoo forever – I’m talking about the National Zoo of the US of A, BTW – with just six days’ notice.

    What, if anything, are the responsible people thinking? I don’t get it.

    Petition.

  213. Rob Grigjanis says

    ledasmom @285:

    the one I can’t come up with the name for just now

    “Solitude”, in The Birthday of the World and Other Stories

  214. ledasmom says

    Rob Grigjanis:
    Thank you. That was going to trouble me for a bit otherwise. The subtle world- building in that story just blows me away.

  215. Ogvorbis: Still failing at being human. says

    Well, fuck. I tried to comment on the Kids for Cash posting at Ed Brayton’s blog, but, apparently, I am an imposter and am not allowed to comment there. Weird.

  216. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Just registered at another site to be able to buy wheelchair parts. Still looking for “hub cap” for the big wheel to replace one that fell off (I don’t care, but the Redhead does, guess who wins). Usually they reappear in the “trunk” (its a hatchback). Haven’t seen this one since Memorial day. I think this one fell off at the Thai restaurant on our way back from the Gem and Mineral show that weekend.

  217. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Found the hubcaps! Ordered half a dozen so I can lose more….

  218. Jacob Schmidt says

    I’ve been threatened with a banning over on JTs blog. Apparently its demonisation to accuse someone of being dishonest.

    I am amused.

  219. Jacob Schmidt says

  220. Ogvorbis: Still failing at being human. says

    Weird tonight.

    Sorry.

    (does that make it feel more normaller?)

  221. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Going to be a long night for the Nerd. I got to bed early, then the Redhead called for a pain pill after half an hour. Just getting back to sleep and she called up to make an adjustment to her wheelchair. Starting to get sleepy and she’s complaining at the edge of my hearing about more sore points. Get up and take care of that, making a few adjustments, including changing her seat pad, and now she’s sound asleep. I’m wide awake.

  222. chigau (違う) says

    Nerd #301
    If you have a digital clock
    treat the characters you see as a number
    e.g.
    11:25 = 1125
    try to find the prime factors, in your head, within one minute.
    This will either give you something to do or bore you into a coma.

  223. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    Wondering if ThunderingFool will make a long YouTube video in support of Luis Suarez.

  224. chigau (違う) says

    microosoft and goooogle and probably all the rest are a bunch of festering fuckwits

  225. samihawkins says

    Apologies if this has been discussed before, but I just heard about this and found it incredibly disturbing:

    http://www.burntorangereport.com/diary/15344/racebaiting-open-carry-advocates-to-march-through-5th-ward-in-houston

    A bunch of heavily armed overwhelmingly white right-wingers were planning to march through a black neighborhood the day after a holiday celebrating the end of slavery. Luckily they called it off, apparently someone in the group has a moment of self-awareness and realized how bad this would look to those outside the FOX News crowd, but the fact that they even seriously considered going through with this Know-Your-Place March is fucking terrifying. I have nothing but loathing for the right, but even I never thought they’d actually sink to marching their heavily armed thugs through minority neighborhoods just to send a threat. I was wrong. I feel sick wondering what’s gonna happen when one of these marches actually happens. A dark and cynical part of me genuinely thinks it’ll end in a massacre when the marchers decide they’re ‘threatened’ by the locals and choose to ‘stand their ground’. If the right-wingers were able to convince most of this country that a black teenager attacked a white man twice his size without any provocation or motive they’ll have no problem convincing the public that an entire black neighborhood also suddenly got the insatiable urge to murder a white person and had to be shot in ‘self-defense’.

  226. says

    samihawkins

    Know-Your-Place March

    Holy crap, more Orange Marches.

    ……………….
    Quoth PZ:

    We godless lack that certainty, and we know the world is a complex place that requires compromise and is not ruled by a moral force — virtue is subject to negotiation, and is found in working together with others to find mutually satisfactory solutions. Good is not absolute, it is an emergent property that arises from successful networks of individuals. It is also something that is measured by evidence: we look at the good that people do, not the promises that they make and never keep, or the lies that dovetail nicely into dogma. Competence is a virtue. Intent is meaningless without action.

    We also know that goodness is not a state of being, but a process that requires constant effort and continuous assessment against its effects in the real world.

    Our Resident eBil Oberlawd & Poopyhead

  227. says

    Computers now used for time lapse embryo imaging to improve chances of IVF: Link here.

    At 78% viability, this means that new IVF techniques are more efficient at preventing miscarriages (ie: YHWH murdering unborn babies) than regular up-n-down sex (AFAIR: 70-75% viability). I can only imagine that pro-lifers will, in future, stick to their inveterate religious principles and only ever reproduce by this method.

  228. says

    @Inaji (or anyone else who reads the Iron Druid books)
    I’ve had a thought about the real answer to Granuaile’s persistent queries about why Atticus only responds to magical threats to Gaia, and doesn’t seem to care about environmental devastation etc. I suspect that the bottom line answer is that those problems just aren’t real to him on a gut level. He’s spent ~2000 years knowing about the various sorcerers, monsters, rogue gods etc. that fuck with the mystic energies of the Earth for their own power, and he knows about dealing with that. Meanwhile, for the majority of that 2000 years, the effects of human habitation were, relatively speaking, minor, temporary, an pretty much self-correcting in the long run. By contrast, the idea of environmental catastrophe in that context is really not more than 60-70 years old; no one was really thinking or talking in those terms until Rachel Carson. So Atticus’ basic mindset doesn’t really include the conceptual space to properly appreciate what’s going on. Granuaile, by contrast, is the opposite; for her, environmentalism and the concepts that underlie it are the bedrock of her reality and have been all her ~30 years of life, while the magic is a recent overlay, perceived as just another tool for dealing with the real issues. That said, she’s handling the idea of Ragnarok being a real threat better than Atticus is handling the idea of global warming being one.

  229. says

    Dalillama:

    That said, she’s handling the idea of Ragnarok being a real threat better than Atticus is handling the idea of global warming being one.

    Agreed. I wasn’t very happy with the latest entry, I didn’t care for the split narration, nor the dropping in of every previous minor character. I wasn’t happy with the Granuaile aspect either, as the story seemed contrived and unnecessary, and Granuaile is increasingly depicted as an ‘over emotional female’, which grates. It’s possible to be a good warrior, one with empathy and an eye to the larger picture without falling into the over emotional female trope.

    I’m curious to see where Hearne is going to go with the series, and whether or not he will address actual concerns as well as all the magical stuff.

  230. Esteleth, [an error occurred while processing this directive] says

    Even though I can’t say I was surprised about which direction the ruling went, I am disgusted (at the vote pattern) and incredibly saddened.

    Seriously, the USSC needs to pull its collective heads out of its collective asses.

  231. Gorogh, Lounging Peacromancer says

    Not wanting to introduce to much cuddliness into the Thunderdome, thanks for the bird pictures, Inaji. Animals are about the only thing I ever ponder getting a camera for (my smartphone cam sucks), but haven’t gotten around to yet. Anyway, looking forward to more!

  232. says

    Thanks, Gorogh! I know some phonecams are bloody amazing, you can’t tell photos weren’t taken with serious gear. I’m running an old Nikon D80 (with a 70-300mm) lens for the bird shots. I’ve recently been making noise about getting a Canon, because as much as I love love love my Nikon, they do not excel in low light.

    Animals are a good reason to get a camera. The past couple of days, I’ve been able to see and photograph (badly) a male Downy woodpecker feeding his son. Those moments, they are beyond special.

  233. chigau (違う) says

    I’m gonna be pretty much out until Monday night.
    Keep well, Everyone!
    xpost

  234. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    [rant]
    Augh, communication *snicker* with the Redhead can be problematic. The latest problem goes back to her present wheelchair becoming to narrow. Guess she likes my cooking, or three meals a day instead of one increased her girth. Offer to buy her a new wider wheelchair. Measure the seat area, 18 wide by 16 deep, a standard size. Next size up 20 wide by 16 deep. The Redhead remembers 16 wide. Lots of noise and complaint about the width of the chair, and how it can’t work, and somewhere in that noise is one sentence saying “buy it”. I couldn’t hear the signal for the noise….
    [/rant]

  235. yazikus says

    Hey T’Domers, I was over at WeHuntedtheMammoth where they have a thread following the AVfM Men’s Rights conference going on right now. Commenter Damselindetech left this comment:

    Would it help JB if we left some examples of helpful tweets?

    “If you or someone you know are feeling down or possibly suicidal, there is help available: #800273TALK #suicide #menshealth ##icmi14″

    “If a man or boy in your life discloses they’ve been sexually assaulted, believe them. #icmi14 #malesurvivors #wecareaboutmen”

    “Men, your mental and physical health are important. Make annual visits to your GP, and get help when you’re hurting #icmi14 #wecareaboutmen”

    You know what? I’m just gonna hop on Twitter and add these myself. Let’s see if we can get something productive and positive going.

    And I thought it was a pretty cool idea, to flood their otherwise hateful hashtag with actual pro-men tweets from feminists, and thought some round these parts might want to jump in.

  236. Lofty says

    Carbon dioxide is like crack to those thunderstorm gods, you know. Makes them prematurely incinerate all over the place.

  237. Endorkened says

    I am absolutely disgusted by you. All of you. And yet I’m not surprised anymore, either.

    The moment I saw him say that, I knew you people would be doing this. My god, you’re myopic… no, that’s not the right word. You know damn well what he’s saying, but you don’t let that stop you–not when bullshitting and indignation are so much more satisfying than actually examining your beliefs and methods and growing up a little.

    He stated what works he, personally, would add to a hypothetical time capsule. Somebody took issue with the fact that the three creators he mentioned were white. He asked who they’d pick–who they thought was a better poet than Shakespeare.

    Heina, who I guess follows him despite being very eager to believe he’s racist, popped up and decided to try and reframe this as if he had claimed that white people are best at everything. She is not this stupid. She did that on purpose, and you all know it. She willfully, deliberately tried to make him out to be a white supremacist for liking Shakespeare, and all of you are smart enough to see that.

    Goodnight.

  238. says

    I am really sorry to have hurt your feelings, endorkened
    I’m sure everybody here feels equally ashamed. I have no idea how we can ever make amends and live up to your expectations, but I made you a sandwich.
    Bless your heart

  239. says

    Heina, who I guess follows him despite being very eager to believe he’s racist, popped up and decided to try and reframe this as if he had claimed that white people are best at everything.

    Are you possibly referring to the tweet where she asked him to explain what he meant?

    She willfully, deliberately tried to make him out to be a white supremacist for liking Shakespeare, and all of you are smart enough to see that

    Indeed, I think we’re all smart enough to spot see when you’re lying. You’re not being very subtle about it.

    While we’re on this subject, can we get a sockpuppet check on endorkened? This is just a little too convenient.

  240. says

    She willfully, deliberately tried to make him out to be a white supremacist for liking Shakespeare, and all of you are smart enough to see that

    Which is, btw, bullshit.
    The fact that the only people he could think of worth preserving for any potential sentient lifeform to discover were white guys, held in high esteem by the western world, and that he could not think of anyone greater points to his own massive blind spots and his stout refusal to even entertain the possibility that he has those.
    There’s some interesting research on that matter: The less biased people believe themselves to be, the more biased their actual decisions are, because they never stop to think about whether they might be influenced by prejudices, but constantly rationalize their own decisions as “fair, unbiased and rational”. I think that Dawkins is a perfect example of this.

  241. says

    She willfully, deliberately tried to make him out to be a white supremacist for liking Shakespeare, and all of you are smart enough to see that

    No she didn’t. It was an attempt to nudge Dawkins into a slightly wider awareness. Y’know, that people of colour (people including women) have made very important contributions to the world. It’s interesting that Dawkins wants to laud Einstein, but doesn’t give one thought to someone like Omar Khayyam and algebra (al-jebr), given that Einstein (or any other scientist) wouldn’t have gotten very fucking far without such contributions.

    It doesn’t take much effort to think outside of the old white guy box – you’d think that would be all manner of easy for someone like Dawkins, eh? But no, he keeps his mind in an itty bitty box, bounded and reinforced by assholes.

  242. Gerard O says

    Apparently Richard Dawkins is a consumer of big tit porn; he has openly stated his dislike for fake bosoms, which is rare for those other than natural boob lovers.

  243. Esteleth, [an error occurred while processing this directive] says

    I honestly don’t get the fuss about Shakespeare. Was he influential? Absolutely. Did he have a flair for words? Yes.

    Is he the be-all-end-all of English language literature? Meh.

    Poetry is an art form, and like all art it is subjective. Meaning that what moves person A can leave person B utterly cold.

    I’ve always been a fan of Emily Dickenson. Which I suppose says something about me. But this poem always got me in the gut:

    Because I could not stop for Death –
    He kindly stopped for me –
    The Carriage held but just Ourselves –
    And Immortality.

    We slowly drove – He knew no haste
    And I had put away
    My labor and my leisure too,
    For His Civility –

    We passed the School, where Children strove
    At Recess – in the Ring –
    We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –
    We passed the Setting Sun –

    Or rather – He passed us –
    The Dews drew quivering and chill –
    For only Gossamer, my Gown –
    My Tippet – only Tulle –

    We paused before a House that seemed
    A Swelling of the Ground –
    The Roof was scarcely visible –
    The Cornice – in the Ground –

    Since then – ‘tis Centuries – and yet
    Feels shorter than the Day
    I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
    Were toward Eternity –

  244. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    As it was pointed out by others on Twitter, Richard Dawkins did not need to even have to stumble like he did. While there is a definite bias towards western classical composers, the Golden Record on Voyager 2 contains music from around the world.

    But I guess it is easier to believe that SJWs are surround him on all sides, looking to trip him up with the truth is, Dawkins does it to himself.

  245. says

    Giliell:

    I love Shakespeare.

    So do I. Many volumes of Shakespeare are on my bookshelves. That shouldn’t blind a person to the wealth of poets, past and present, who brought very different views to bear on common subjects. In the realm of ‘yep, more white guys’, I would have chosen Walt Whitman or T.S. Eliot over Shakespeare. Or William Butler Yeats.

  246. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    I would be tempted to make sure that some of Octavia Butler’s Earth Seed line were on that hypothetical spaceship.

    All that you touch
    You Change.

    All that you Change
    Changes you.

    The only lasting truth
    is Change.

    God
    is Change.

  247. says

    I do love how Endorkened talks about “all of you”, when Janine linked to two tweets and I made one comment about Dawkins. Who knew the two of us constituted “all of you”. Or that our views about Dawkins are indicative of how everyone else feels about the dude. Sheesh.

  248. says

    Tony, well you know most of the Horde doesn’t place Dawkins on a pedestal, and has no problem pointing his biases out, here in The Church of Echoes.

  249. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    Fuuny thing, I would still recommend Richard Dawkins’ books that relate to his field of expertise. Anything else he has to say? Let’s just say I prefer Sagan or Gould when it comes to social issues.

  250. says

    Janine @ 348, that would be a good choice. I’d like to know Angelou’s Still I Rise was out there, somewhere…

    You may write me down in history
    With your bitter, twisted lies,
    You may trod me in the very dirt
    But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

    Does my sassiness upset you?
    Why are you beset with gloom?
    ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
    Pumping in my living room.

    Just like moons and like suns,
    With the certainty of tides,
    Just like hopes springing high,
    Still I’ll rise.

    Did you want to see me broken?
    Bowed head and lowered eyes?
    Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
    Weakened by my soulful cries?

    Does my haughtiness offend you?
    Don’t you take it awful hard
    ‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
    Diggin’ in my own backyard.

    You may shoot me with your words,
    You may cut me with your eyes,
    You may kill me with your hatefulness,
    But still, like air, I’ll rise.

    Does my sexiness upset you?
    Does it come as a surprise
    That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
    At the meeting of my thighs?

    Out of the huts of history’s shame
    I rise
    Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
    I rise
    I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
    Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

    Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
    I rise
    Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
    I rise
    Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
    I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
    I rise
    I rise
    I rise.

  251. says

    And Dreams, by Langston Hughes.

    Hold fast to dreams
    For if dreams die
    Life is a broken-winged bird
    That cannot fly.
    Hold fast to dreams
    For when dreams go
    Life is a barren field
    Frozen with snow.

  252. opposablethumbs says

    Perhaps the sad little sockpuppet/troll Gerard O would like to contribute some poetry, since their malodorous bait has found no takers?

  253. says

    And Yeats’s The Indian Upon God

    I passed along the water’s edge below the humid trees,
    My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes
    round my knees,
    My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the
    moor-fowl pace
    All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them
    cease to chase
    Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak:
    Who holds the world between His bill and made
    us strong or weak
    Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky.

    The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams
    from His eye.

    I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk:
    Who made the world and ruleth it, He hangeth on a stalk,
    For I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide
    Is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide.

    A little way within the gloom a roebuck raised his eyes
    Brimful of starlight, and he said: The Stamper of the
    Skies,
    He is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could
    He
    Conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing
    like me?

    I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say:
    Who made the grass and made the worms and
    made my feathers gay,
    He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all
    the night
    His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

  254. says

    opposablethumbs @ 355, nah, I wouldn’t be interested in such a contribution. And I don’t give a shit about what porn he may or may not watch.

  255. opposablethumbs says

    Because I could not stop for Death –
    He kindly stopped for me –

    Esteleth, that one … I love that one. Tears me apart, but I love it.

  256. says

    Ahhh, but if we’re talking Yeats, it must be

    The Cloths of Heaven

    Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths,
    Enwrought with golden and silver light,
    The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
    Of night and light and the half-light;
    I would spread the cloths under your feet:
    But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
    I have spread my dreams under your feet;
    Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.


    Probably my most favourite piece of poetry

    The whole concert is a work of beauty, but the first piece is a record of Neruda himself.

    And finally:

    One Art
    By Elizabeth Bishop
    The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
    so many things seem filled with the intent
    to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

    Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
    of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
    The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

    Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
    places, and names, and where it was you meant
    to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

    I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
    next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
    The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

    I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
    some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
    I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

    —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
    I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
    the art of losing’s not too hard to master
    though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

    This is still a sad collection, spanning only the western world, and I’m very sure that there’s lots of great stuff I simply don’t know about, but at least I’m aware of that…

  257. says

    Giliell:

    The Cloths of Heaven

    Oh, yes.

    And so much of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

    Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
    The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
    The Bird of Time has but a little way
    To fly – and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

    The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
    Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
    Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
    Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

    And that inverted Bowl we call The Sky,
    Whereunder crawling coopt we live and die,
    Lift not thy hands to It for help – for It
    Rolls impotently on as Thou or I.

  258. says

    And Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694), it would be near criminal to leave him out of poetry sent out to the universe.

    A cicada shell;
    it sang itself
    utterly away.

    Spring:
    A hill without a name
    Veiled in morning mist.

    The beginning of autumn:
    Sea and emerald paddy
    Both the same green.

    The winds of autumn
    Blow: yet still green
    The chestnut husks.

    A flash of lightning:
    Into the gloom
    Goes the heron’s cry.

  259. Pteryxx says

    The Cloths of Heaven

    Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths,
    Enwrought with golden and silver light,
    The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
    Of night and light and the half-light;
    I would spread the cloths under your feet:
    But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
    I have spread my dreams under your feet;
    Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

    Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin – The Cloths of Heaven (1991)(youtube link)

  260. chigau (違う) says

    Poetry recitations in the Thunderdome‽
    I’ll go out and come in again.

  261. Pteryxx says

    Actually came by to leave this – via Mousavi at Margin of Error, the clearest summary explanation I’ve yet seen of why Iraq is a mess, by way of reminding Western folks not to assume everything’s about what *our* policies did or did not do.

    Mousavi:

    Infidel753 argues that American media and commentators think every topic is about them, and analyze every event as if it has happened because of an American policy. This is something that is true about both sides; both liberals and conservatives are guilty of this. In the current crisis in Iraq, the liberals say “This happened because we invaded Iraq”, and conservatives say “This happened because we pulled out of Iraq”, and while certainly American policy plays a major role and affects us deeply it’s infuriating to see Americans and the rest of westerners constantly trying to reduce our situation into talking points about their own domestic policies.

    Infidel753 from a previous blog entry here:

    The Middle East includes some of the world’s oldest nations, such as Iran and Egypt, but Iraq is not a nation and never has been one. Except for the centuries-old eastern border with Iran, its borders are an arbitrary construct of Anglo-French imperialism after World War I, enclosing three groups of people who don’t like each other and have no feeling of common identity.

    […]

    Saddam Hussein was a Sunni Arab, and his regime brutally repressed the Shiites and Kurds. His genocidal al-Anfâl campaign of 1986-1989, to thin out the Kurdish population, destroyed about 4,500 Kurdish villages, displaced a million people, and killed about 180,000. This helps explain why the Kurds, having gained de facto independence, are determined not to be drawn back under the authority of the Iraqi state.

    President Bush foolishly though that overthrowing Saddam would usher in democratic nationhood in a place where neither democracy nor nationhood have ever existed. In fact, all it did was to reverse the power relationship between Sunni and Shiite. Democracy means Shiite dominance, since Shiites are the majority. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government, much to US frustration, has operated as a Shiite regime, excluding and denigrating Sunnis — not surprising since, to the Shiites, the Sunnis are not fellow countrymen but former oppressors.

  262. says

    And

    De profundis clamavi

    J’implore ta pitié, Toi, l’unique que j’aime,
    Du fond du gouffre obscur où mon coeur est tombé.
    C’est un univers morne à l’horizon plombé,
    Où nagent dans la nuit l’horreur et le blasphème;

    Un soleil sans chaleur plane au-dessus six mois,
    Et les six autres mois la nuit couvre la terre;
    C’est un pays plus nu que la terre polaire
    — Ni bêtes, ni ruisseaux, ni verdure, ni bois!

    Or il n’est pas d’horreur au monde qui surpasse
    La froide cruauté de ce soleil de glace
    Et cette immense nuit semblable au vieux Chaos;

    Je jalouse le sort des plus vils animaux
    Qui peuvent se plonger dans un sommeil stupide,
    Tant l’écheveau du temps lentement se dévide!

    — Charles Baudelaire

  263. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/26/1309755/-Pivotal-ruling-by-Canada-s-Supreme-Court-gives-Fist-Nations-title-to-traditional-lands-for-1st-time

    This morning Canada’s Supreme Court handed down a long awaited decision giving Canada’s First Peoples title to lands that they have traditionally used over centuries, beyond their First Nation Reserves. Almost as importantly the Supreme Court ruled that First Nation tribes will get to decide what kinds of development projects are appropriate on their traditional lands.

    This momentous ruling has direct implications for some of Canada’s biggest planned dirty energy projects, like the proposed Northern Gateway Tar Sands pipeline project to ship Bitumen across British Columbia to the Pacific Ocean near Prince Rupert, and the proposed expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline to ship Alberta Bitumen to Vancouver transforming Vancouver into a major oil port for Bitumen. This ruling would also affect some fracking proposed for native lands in Eastern Canada.

    It doesn’t make up for the centuries long oppression of First Nations people, but this was a good decision.

  264. Pteryxx says

    what
    what

    Facebook’s Unethical Research Project (at Skepchick)

    Facebook has apparently conducted a “massive” psychological experiment and published the results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). The study sought to manipulate the emotional responses of 689,000 Facebook users by controlling the types of content that appeared on their feeds in order to see whether or not emotional traits can be “transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness.”

    When a person signs up for a Facebook account, they check a box that says they have read and agree with Facebook’s Data Use Policy. Buried within these pages of text is a little nugget explaining that one of the reasons they will use data collected from users is “for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement.”

    According to PNAS’s policies, they require authors to obtain informed consent from study participants. The study author, an employee of Facebook, claims that the Data Use Policy constitutes informed consent, and it seems PNAS accepted that argument. It is a highly disturbing move because, as far as I can tell, the Data Use Policy does not come anywhere close to the kind of informed consent researchers are usually required to obtain when conducting research using human participants.

  265. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Pteryxx #368, what you mention is the reason I never completed my facebook registration. Just too much “i have to be public” when a real modicum of privacy is necessary to prevent firing in an “at will” state. Maybe after I finally and officially retire…..

  266. says

    The study sought to manipulate the emotional responses of 689,000 Facebook users by controlling the types of content that appeared on their feeds in order to see whether or not emotional traits can be “transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness.”

    Forget the end of that sentence. Just this part:

    controlling the types of content that appeared on their feeds

    Whenever they do any amount of this, it pisses me off. I hate not having control of what shows up in my feed. They always do this silly “top stories” option as the default, and I always have to switch it. So annoying. The worst is when the option to control the feed yourself disappears. Ugh.

    Something seems odd to me though about this. I mean, services change features in annoying ways all the time. But when they do the same thing for research purposes, that crosses a line (well, depending on who you ask, apparently). Hmmm. Well, maybe the actual information gathering of the fallout is the difference between the two.

  267. says

    * eh, another difference is that they are actually trying to be effectively manipulative in the research situation. They want results.

  268. says

    Well, I always say that I don’t have a Facebook account because we can’t agree on Terms of Service. Guess I was right. What pisses me off is that college stuff is now done via FB because everybody thinks that everybody else has a FB account…

  269. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    Ugh, Facebook.
    It didn’t appeal at the beginning when all I got were invitations to play stupid quizzes or silly gifts. Got out then, before the thing got popular.
    … now it looks even worse.

    And yeah, it’s terribly annoying that everyone assumes that you have an account. Luckily, we had a fairly popular forum at the college, so even if some people exchanged information on facebook, everything (I think) ended up there as well.

  270. opposablethumbs says

    I don’t have faisbuc, mainly because I don’t know how to prevent it from connecting things I don’t want connected (e.g. like many of us I have more than one online presence that I want to keep non-overlapping, thank you very much dear bookofface people). My ignorance about how to control things like this also stops me from making the best use of google features.

    I would be very grateful for any info or pointers in this regard, or any suggestions of the best place to look for how-to guides (preferably suitable for someone only by the skin of their teeth right on the margins of the very bottom edge of competence with anything IT-related).

    Is it possible to have more than one faisbuc account using different names, and prevent them from linking up? (while having only one computer, I mean)

  271. says

    From the epic Afrikaans poem by NP van Wyk Louw:

    Die vroue het hom die eerste gewaar
    in die loom namiddag toe die arbeid klaar
    was – aan die stampblok, in die jong-groen landerye –
    en hulle gedrie, geviere, in dun rye
    met kruik en geel, wind-ligte kalbas
    op heup en skouer deur die stekerige gras
    rustig gestap het na die koel seekoegate
    om daar te drentel tot die bruin en laat
    skemering en die eerste sterre, met klam sand
    en sagte modder om die enkels, in die hand,
    om veel te lag en ure te praat,
    of skugterig soms een-een uit te waad
    deur die taai waterblomme, naak en blink …
    Raka, die aap-mens, hy wat nie kan dink,
    wat swart en donlker is, van been en spier
    ‘n lenige boog, en enkeld dier.

    Oorkant die water het hy uitgestap
    uit die gebreekte riete, en soos ‘n kind wat om die grap
    van ‘n bont kalbassie tandeloos en stil lag,
    wit gegryns en, neergehurk, gewag.

    .
    .
    .

    This is part of a long poem about The Other and the acceptance of The New (for better or worse) into Culture. It has an aspect of threat throughout, asif some natural and unsettling force, so seductive and sensual, will permeate traditional ways of doing, and corrupt them. In one way I am tempted to translate into English(this would be a real challenge), but in another, I know I will break it in doing so. The sounds of the words are important. The poem is felt , more than it is understood. (Try reading aloud…)

    By not knowing the “fine,fine net of language [lit: “the word”], by which shiny fat fish are hauled from many waters”, Raka’s lack of appreciation of traditional culture, destroys it.

    [Raka is Dawkin’s worst nightmare.]

  272. says

    Beatrice:

    It didn’t appeal at the beginning when all I got were invitations to play stupid quizzes or silly gifts. Got out then, before the thing got popular.

    Same here. I haven’t had a regret over it, either. I have enough to maintain on the ‘net without it.

    Theophontes, thanks for that poem!

  273. Gerard O says

    I think the sad and ignorant commenter ‘opposablethumbs’ needs to lighten up a bit. I still have a soft spot for ol’ Dicky, and I completely agree with him on fake bosoms. May enormous natural boobs rule for eternity.

  274. Gerard O says

    and a message for some others, that I am:

    Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
    To strive, to seek, to find, AND NOT TO YIELD

  275. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    Gerard O:

    I think the sad and ignorant commenter ‘opposablethumbs’ needs to lighten up a bit.

    And I think you ought to just shut up and never comment again. I guess neither of us is getting what we want.

  276. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    opposablethumbs:

    Is it possible to have more than one faisbuc account using different names, and prevent them from linking up? (while having only one computer, I mean)

    I have a few friends on FB that have separate accounts, usually a public one and a private one (the latter is used specifically to be anonymous), so yeah, it’s quite possible. I’m fairly sure that no separate computer is needed. If you repost this in the Lounge, you may find some people with advice.

  277. says

    Gerard:

    I still have a soft spot for ol’ Dicky

    Well, ol’ Dicky spouts off all over the net. One place he isn’t is here, so why don’t you toddle off to follow ol’ Dicky around? You might be able to chat about breasts with him.

    You certainly aren’t wanted here, we have our quota of ignoranuses.

  278. opposablethumbs says

    Hi Tony! – thanks, and yes I should probably post that in the Lounge, ta!
    .
    Gerard, why don’t you toddle off and take your malodorous wafflings with you – there’s a good little trollikin.

  279. Ogvorbis: Still failing at being human. says

    Fuck.

    I just read the post on Thunderf00t. That part about the men’s rights conference and the joking about his son being raped. That’s just — shit. Not sure where I am going with this but it ain’t a good place.

    Memo to self: when feeling down, do not read a post about Thunderf00t. Almost guaranteed to be triggering.

  280. says

    Ogvorbis:

    I just read the post on Thunderf00t. That part about the men’s rights conference and the joking about his son being raped. That’s just — shit. Not sure where I am going with this but it ain’t a good place.

    I had an unpleasant, visceral reaction to that, too. To say I was appalled is a serious understatement. There you had a parent who was very concerned, fearful, and upset over what might happen to his son, and they fucking laughed. I don’t even have words.

    Be well, Ogvorbis, and stay outta that thread. (It’s quiet now, but it will heat up.)

  281. says

    It did strike me, when reading, that most of those men seem to think that a proper man (in prison) would be the rapist, not the one who is raped, and any man who was raped deserved it, ’cause they weren’t a proper manly man.

    Which makes me feel very queasy and awful. Seriously awful.

  282. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    Inaji:

    It did strike me, when reading, that most of those men seem to think that a proper man (in prison) would be the rapist, not the one who is raped, and any man who was raped deserved it, ’cause they weren’t a proper manly man.

    I share your queasy feelings. Being gay, I’d probably be seen by them as not a proper manly man. Fuck that noise. And fuck the notion that there’s anything like a proper way to be a man.

  283. opposablethumbs says

    Hope you’re OK, Ogvorbis. And yes, if

    most of those men seem to think that a proper man (in prison) would be the rapist, not the one who is raped, and any man who was raped deserved it, ’cause they weren’t a proper manly man

    then I sure as hell hope I don’t know a single “manly man” and never will. I hope.

  284. Ogvorbis: Still failing at being human. says

    Yeah, I think I’m going to curl up in a bottle of Kraken rum tonight. Sorry.

  285. Ogvorbis: Still failing at being human. says

    Pteryxx

    When I’m in better shape, OI’ll take a closer look.

    You know you’re a survivor when, almost 40 years later, the sight of a cub scout uniform still sets off a panic attack. Didn’t happen todya, but it sure did yesterday.

  286. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/john-lopez-scrap-iron-sculpting?context=featured

    Bronze sculptor John Lopez builds large and powerful beasts completely out of metal. From buffalo to cowboys on horseback, Lopez welds layer by layer of iron together to form life-sized creations filled with interesting details and texture.

    His welded art style of sculpture was born through experimentation and a lack of necessary supplies. When the artist found himself out of materials to build a fence around the family cemetery, the artist made-do, using any scrap iron he could find on his uncle’s ranch. The results—a completed gate and a small angel—were well received and thus a new career path was born.

  287. says

    I was just out prepping the feeding stations for the evening, and got to watch a male Downy woodpecker feeding his baby, while I was standing about 18 inches away.

  288. Pteryxx says

    Ogvorbis, I hear ya. I had a panic attack yesterday because someone mentioned my abuser’s name. For much of that tumblr I was going ‘that’s me… that’s me… yep, that’s me’ Which is basically the point, that we’re not so alone.

    Good rums and soups or whatever else soothes ya, Oggie.

  289. says

    Dalillama:

    Hear, hear.

    Assholes are setting off the ones that sound like a massive fucking explosion, mere yards away from my studio window. Really helps the PTSD.

    Also, the assholes who decided to start setting them off today? They chose a day with 40 to 60mph winds. Jesus Christ with a firecracker up his ass, I. Fucking. Loathe. Fireworks. And. The. Assholes. Who. Set. Them. Off.

  290. Derek Vandivere says

    #401 / Inaji: A good (safe) Fourth of July fireworks display is actually one of the few things I miss about living in the States. They tolerate pretty massive personal fireworks for New Year’s Eve here in the Netherlands, and people (mostly, young Dutch men) are complete idiots with them. The brother of my first Dutch girlfriend is blind in one eye; the first year she was here, my wife got knocked off her bike by a rocket.

    This is not a good place to be for New Year’s if you’ve got explosion-related PTSD…

  291. Gerard O says

    Please. I’m just glad I popped the orchestral version of Isolde’s Liebestod into ClearFi just to balance out the stupid. Hoechste Lust!

  292. says

    Derek:

    #401 / Inaji: A good (safe) Fourth of July fireworks display is actually one of the few things I miss about living in the States.

    I can tolerate a professionally run display, as they aren’t usually close to my windows. That’s not the case, unfortunately. The people here in town won’t even go out to the baseball field to set shit off.

  293. Derek Vandivere says

    I have to admit that I have fond memories of growing up in Southern Maryland, riding in the back of Donnie’s truck, and chucking firecrackers out the back (there wasn’t a lot of traffic back then…)….

  294. Derek Vandivere says

    Well, there have been fewer injuries the last few years than in previous years, but Dutch papers have been attributing that to the bad economy – people just can’t afford the super expensive big bangers. The cab driver down the street usually spends what I would guess is three or four hundred euros on his explosives, and I’m amazed that some of the bigger ones are legal.

    Oh, and OF COURSE everyone lighting off the fireworks is completely drunk.

  295. says

    Derek:

    Oh, and OF COURSE everyone lighting off the fireworks is completely drunk.

    Oh, we have that, too. Every year, a drunk fireworks reveler manages to set someplace on fire.

  296. says

    [fireworks]

    There are some amazing kites flying in the park near my hotel here in Beijing. They are all lit up by LED’s (?) with long streamers also all lit up. It all looks like an ongoing, silent, fireworks display.

    @ David Marjanovic’

    Yup, I travelled so far East, so I could wish you happy birthday before the rest of the horde. Pop the champagne in the freezer and start counting down the next 20 minutes ….

  297. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    re: fireworks-
    Until 2011 I worked at a bar/restaurant that was actually 2 separate (yet linked; confusing, I know) restaurants, with 3 bars. One of the bars was outside, along the water. I live in Pensacola, FL, so that view overlooked the Gulf of Mexico. Every year for the 4th of July, the city would put on a fireworks display on a barge locate less than a mile from the bar. People would arrive early to get good seating. The city would close off a stretch of Bayfront Parkway (the road along the water) so that people could line up to watch the fireworks.

    We were always busy for the 4th, as people love any reason to drink. I always marvelled at how excited people got when watching fireworks. Personally, I don’t get it. I’ve seen fireworks. I saw them as a kid. I saw them as a teen. I’ve seen them as an adult. There’s nothing special about them. I don’t begrudge anyone watching them, but I don’t get the appeal of watching them when you see them every year, sometimes twice (4th & New Years Eve).

    One good thing–when the show started, the bar slowed down. Almost no one orders drinks bc they’re watching the preeeeeetty lights. That was always a good thing, bc the lead up to that was always busy. Not being a fan of fireworks, I could wander off and use the restroom, grab a bite to eat, or even just sit down in air conditioning for about 15 minutes. Then once the show was over, it was always time to clean up bc people left in droves.

  298. says

    Tony:

    Almost no one orders drinks bc they’re watching the preeeeeetty lights.

    That reminds me of Christmas with the Dead, by Joe R. Lansdale, where the sole survivor of a zombie outbreak discovers that stringing up xmas lights and plugging them in pacifies the zombies. They like looking at the pretty lights.

  299. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    Inaji:

    That reminds me of Christmas with the Dead, by Joe R. Lansdale, where the sole survivor of a zombie outbreak discovers that stringing up xmas lights and plugging them in pacifies the zombies. They like looking at the pretty lights.

    I wonder if that’s the result of some residual trace of humanity within them.

    And that reminds me of George Romero’s movie ‘Dawn of the Dead’ which dealt in large part with his views on American consumerism:

    The most striking sequence among these scenes of frenzied consumer abandon is the “supermarket sweep,” during which the men snatch whatever food and drink they desire. In one shot, Stephen picks up a loaf only to be trumped by Peter, who produces an even bigger one. Both men laugh, implicitly recognizing an analogy of anatomical comparison. To regard this moment as a crude phallic interlude, however, is to overlook its mythical significance: comparing their “loaves” Peter and Stephen exploit the scatological licence traditionally granted to carnival revellers. Indeed, the film’s scenes of carnival license are among its principle attractions, and they appear to have a particular resonance for the film’s audience. To draw a very long parallel, these scenes constitute a reworking of the medieval legend of the Land of Cockayne, an allegory of human sloth and greed in an Edenic land of plenty. The Land of Cockayne legend was a popular utopian fantasy of a prelapsarian world in which every luxury is at hand and in which work is not required.3.

    Romero’s satirical depiction of instant and celebratory gratification is consistent both with classical European images of luxury and with modernist denunciations of the restlessly acquisitive postmodern zeitgeist, such as Christopher Lasch’s melancholic Culture of Narcissism (1979). Of the film’s characters, however, only Fran (Gaylen Ross) voices the film’s moral insight. Accusing the men of being hypnotized by the mall, she tells Stephen: “It’s so bright and neatly wrapped you don’t see that it’s a prison too.” Fran is expressing, albeit rather preachily, Romero’s own perspective: far from endorsing consumerism, she highlights the tendency of human beings to become cultural dupes. In this sense, the “fool’s paradise” of the mall is a pretext for a classical humanist condemnation of visceral indulgence.

    http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journal/articles/fall_2002/harper.htm

    BTW, I’ve been meaning to ask-what is your gravatar? I can’t quite make it out. Almost looks like a string of popsicles.

  300. morgan ?! epitheting a metaphor says

    The Black Dog eats at my table regularly. I try not to feed him, but he usually finds something to gnaw on.

    Despair.

    Any semblance of human decency in our benighted politics is long dead.

    Predatory capitalism rules all.

    Religion is about power and the imposition of control, nothing more.

    The planet is dying.

    There isn’t enough time left for us to evolve enough common sense to survive.

    Thousands of suicides were directly attributable to the recession. (I’ll dig up the stats later.)

    Caring about our self destruction isn’t enough.

    I can’t fix any of it and I don’t want to be around to witness much more of our slow death.

    Despair.

  301. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    morgan:

    Thousands of suicides were directly attributable to the recession. (I’ll dig up the stats later.)

    I did not know this, so I looked it up.
    Damn:

    The lost jobs, sinking home values and stock market free-fall of the Great Recession led to a significant rise in suicides, according to a new study.

    At least 10,000 more Americans and Europeans took their own lives from 2007 to 2010 than during the good economic times of the previous few years, the study found.
    http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/11/great-recession-linked-suicides-usa-canada-eu/10225161/

  302. says

    Tony:

    BTW, I’ve been meaning to ask-what is your gravatar? I can’t quite make it out. Almost looks like a string of popsicles.

    It’s a tiny bit of this piece: https://www.flickr.com/photos/67993470@N03/11260907673/in/photostream

    Giliell:

    Now, Inaji, have enough people kindly told you how to do your job our should we go and find some more? The nerve some people have…

    One’s enough, thank you. Mr. Oh I paint miniatures hasn’t bothered to enlighten anyone as to whether or not that’s how he makes a living.

  303. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    Morgan,

    As the probability of a good outcome vanishes, what is left is distilled hope. Don’t lose that.

    Recently, my wife came across a video of a bunch of pleasure boaters who came across a juvenile humpback whale trapped in a drag net. After having struggled for hours to get free, it was exhausted and near drowning. The boaters spent 4 hours hauling up the net and cutting it away from the poor whale until finally it was free. The whale then proceeded to put on an amazing aerial display, jumping, breaching, slapping its tail with the joy of being free and alive. This video illustrates perfectly the dichotomy of our nature as humans. No other species is capable of such thoughtless destruction–as illustrated by the drift net. At the same time, no other species would have taken four hours of slaving away at considerable risk to save a member of another species from the drift net. At our worst, we are the worst blight on a beautiful planet. At our best, we will sacrifice everything to give another creature a second chance. It is up to each of us which of these natures we embrace and which we encourage in others. The only church I belong to is the Church of the Second Chance. (read “Dinner at the Homesick restaurant,” by Anne Tyler.)

  304. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    a_ray:
    Thanks for mentioning that video. Waking up to read the disheartening double punch of SCOTUS twin rulings put me in a mood similar to morgan’s, so your words, and this video were much appreciated. And many thanks to your wife for bringing the video to your attention.
    Here it is.

  305. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    I’m watching the video right now. The compassion of the boaters is amazing. They’re aware of the inherent danger in trying to assist this beautiful creature yet they do so anyways. At one point the whale actually drags the boaters along the Sea of Cortez, like they were sightseeing. Wow. Good tears now.

  306. says

    Inaji, I’m moving this over here because I don’t want to sidetrack the HL thread any farther – was the Irvine art store Sterling Art? They went out of business a few years back, and I still miss them. Art Supply Warehouse in Westminster is still going strong, though.

    Also, the Elder Daughter and I are really enjoying your bird photos – whoever finds the newest one first tells the other, and we both oooh and aww over your birds.

  307. says

    Anne D:

    Inaji, I’m moving this over here because I don’t want to sidetrack the HL thread any farther – was the Irvine art store Sterling Art?

    Yep. Loved that place.

    There are new bird photos up – a grackle stuffing banana bread, and a baby Downy woodpecker. Thanks!

  308. morgan ?! epitheting a metaphor says

    a_ray

    Thanks. I’ve seen the whale video, many times. I always cry. I agree with everything you said, intellectually. But how do I keep pulling the blade out of my gut that the world insists on ramming back in. There are more of them than there are of us. Some of us were born to care deeply… some of us have no familiarity with that emotion. And the latter are winning. And I am so tired of fighting.

    I will read “Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.” I enjoy Anne Tyler’s work.

  309. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    Wish there was a way to distill and bottle empathy. Put *that* in drugstores.

  310. morgan ?! epitheting a metaphor says

    Distilled hope.

    I’m going to struggle to manufacture some, and hold on to it if I can. I haven’t quit yet.

  311. morgan ?! epitheting a metaphor says

    Tony!

    Wish there was a way to distill and bottle empathy. Put *that* in drugstores.

    There is, actually. The human hormone oxytocin is the “fall in love” magic elixer. It is what makes parents love their children.

    I saw a TED video some time back that spoke of this and if I recall correctly the person actually had an aerosol of the stuff.

    The next best way to stimulate the production of oxytocin in another human is to give them a hug. Proven in the lab.

  312. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    Those of us who care deeply are destined to suffer. However, as long as we persist, we do not suffer alone. And then there’s always the pig joke:

    A salesman is driving down the road when he sees from the road what looks like a pig with 2 wooden legs in a farm yard. Doubling back, sure enough–a pig with two wooden legs. He has to hear the story, so he walks up to the door and knocks. A farmer–straight out of American Gothic–opens the door.

    “Excuse me,” says the salesman. “I was driving down the road and couldn’t help but notice you have a pig with 2 wooden legs. I have to know the story behind that.”

    The farmer swells with pride, his slightly slumped shoulders pulling back and his chest inflating. “Well, now, Mister. That there pig is no ordinary pig,” says the farmer. “One night me and the missus had both gone to bed and a fire broke out in the house. And that pig, he jumped the fence, he runned up to the house, he turned on the garden hose with his snout, and he had the fire out by the time me and the missus responded to the noise.”

    “Oh, my God,” says the salesman. “What an amazing animal.”

    “And that’s not all,” interrupts the farmer. “Another time, a fire broke out in the barn. Well, this time, the garden hose wouldn’t reach. But that there pig, he runned up and down and made so much noise that we made it out in time to save all the animals!”

    “Wow, what an amazing animal!” says the salesman.

    “And that’s not all,” interjects the farmer. “Another time, a bunch of the kids was swimmin’ down by that swimmin’ hole, and one of ’em swum out too far and started to drown. And that pig, he jumped the fence. He runned down to the swimmin’ hole and he swum out and he saved that kid. And another time…”

    “Wait,” asks the salesman. “How’d he get the two wooden legs?”

    The farmer looks incredulously at what he now can see is a big-city rube. “Well, now, Mister. A pig like that you just don’t eat all at once.”

    I once got a friend of mine to pass oatmeal through her nose telling her that joke. You need to laugh. Laughter is the way we humans say that we aren’t beaten yet.

  313. says

    A_Ray:

    And then there’s always the pig joke

    I remember Blake Clark telling that joke on the Tonight Show (when it was Johnny Carson’s).

  314. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    Oatmeal through her nose.
    I keep repeating that in my head because it’s so wacky. I can understand though, bc that joke was funny as all get out (hmmm, where’d that phrase come from).

  315. says

    I once got a friend of mine to pass oatmeal through her nose telling her that joke. You need to laugh. Laughter is the way we humans say that we aren’t beaten yet.

    Once, at a Con, I told a friend of mine, one I’d only meet at this Con, a funny annecdote. With us was my BFF J whom I see once a week. Halfway through the story my good friend J, while drinking her mead, remembered that I’d told her this before and she remembered the funny part.
    I do not recommend taking a shower with mead, especially with sweet mead.
    The Con friend never heard the end of the story….

  316. David Marjanović says

    Carbon dioxide is like crack to those thunderstorm gods, you know. Makes them prematurely incinerate all over the place.

    brb
    *baking you Internet out of lavender cookies*

    I honestly don’t get the fuss about Shakespeare. Was he influential? Absolutely. Did he have a flair for words? Yes.

    Is he the be-all-end-all of English language literature? Meh.

    At least in German we have two Officially Greatest Poets & Playwrights Ever (Goethe and Schiller), so the absurdity of picking just four Officially Greatest Artists Ever is a bit more apparent…

    So do I. Many volumes of Shakespeare are on my bookshelves. That shouldn’t blind a person to the wealth of poets, past and present, who brought very different views to bear on common subjects. In the realm of ‘yep, more white guys’, I would have chosen Walt Whitman or T.S. Eliot over Shakespeare. Or William Butler Yeats.

    Funny that you mention Yeats. In Unweaving the Rainbow, a book I continue to recommend, Dawkins wrote he’s somewhat ashamed to admit who his favorite poet is: “the confused Irish mystic William Butler Yeats”.

    I don’t think Shakespeare is mentioned in that book at all; several other poets are (Keats and Shelley come to mind – it’s been a few years since I last read it), and at least two poems are quoted in full.

    Yup, I travelled so far East, so I could wish you happy birthday before the rest of the horde. Pop the champagne in the freezer and start counting down the next 20 minutes ….

    ^_^

    I don’t do champagne, though; I like neither alcohol nor carbon dioxide (every bubble a sting of a needle!) nor even grape juice. :-)

  317. Tony! The Queer Shoop says

    Cross-posting from the Lounge (which in turn was crossposted from FB, thanks to the ever wonderful SallyStrange):

    Oh this is wonderful. More happy tears.
    Sixth grader Laura Arrington conducted an incredibly important science project:

    Lauren Arrington just wanted to top the other kids’ science fair projects.

    But she ended up making a breakthrough that surprised even seasoned, Ph.D.-holding scientists.

    Her research showing that venomous, highly invasive lionfish can survive in nearly fresh water was ultimately replicated and expanded upon by ecologists, who cited her in their published, peer-reviewed study on the topic.
    Not bad for a 12-year-old.

    Craig Layman, an ecology professor at North Carolina State University, called Lauren’s work “one of the most influential sixth-grade science projects ever conducted.” He said it demonstrated something scientists should have done years before.

    “Her project was the impetus for us to follow up on the finding and do a more in-depth study,” said Layman, who with graduate students from Florida International University had been researching lionfish in the Loxahatchee River. “We were the first paper that published the salinity of the lionfish, and it was all because of what she had done with her science project.”

    The daughter of two scientists who love the water, Lauren has grown up fishing, snorkeling and loving science. As a little girl, she went to the classes her dad used to teach at the University of Alabama, piping in with questions that impressed him with their insight.

    She got the idea for her project after constantly seeing the red and white, garishly decorated lionfish in Palm Beach County waters. She found out from her dad, an ecologist, that they were taking over Florida’s reefs and gobbling up native fish.

    “I wanted to do something about them,” said Lauren, who is now 13 and lives in Jupiter. “So I was kind of throwing ideas at my dad.”

    She thought about testing whether a dead lionfish can still hurt people with its venom. That meant finding someone willing to be spined by one, though, and dad wasn’t exactly eager to sign up. So Lauren kept brainstorming and ultimately settled on figuring out the lowest salinity level they could stand.

    You go girl!

  318. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    When my wife and I decided to tie the knot, we decided to tell each other our favorite jokes. Mine was the pig joke. My wife’s was:

    Three ropes walk into a bar. Two sit down, and one goes up to the bartender and says, “Hi, I’d like a beer for myself and one each for my two friends.”

    The bartender’s eyes narrow, and he says, “Ain’t you a rope?”

    “Well…yes,” the rope says warily.

    The bartender says with a menacing voice, “We don’t serve your kind here.”

    “But we have money, and…” the rope says until he is interrupted.

    “I said we don’t serve your kind here,” the bartender says emphatically.

    The rope looks dejected and heads back to the table. “Hey, guys, I think we need to find a friendlier bar.”

    The second rope want’s to try, but the result is the same: “I told your rope friend we don’t serve your kind here.”

    And as they are getting ready to leave, finally the third rope gets an idea. She twists herself inside out and musses up her hair, then walks up to the bar and says, “Hi, I’d like a beer for myself and one for my two friends.”

    “Ain’t you a rope?” the bartender says in a growl.

    She replies, “Why, no. I’m a frayed not.”

    Thank you, folks. I’m here all week. Don’t forget to tip your waitress.

  319. chigau (違う) says

    It is fucking raining on my Ipad.
    Maybe I should go inside.
    although the little rainbows are kinda cute

  320. chigau (違う) says

    If it would stop raining for … oh … twelve hours
    it might become possible to actually walk on the garden

  321. says

    Does anyone think that this might be useful for real activism? I have been thinking along similar lines myself. My ideas might not be the best, but this seems like it has a lot of potential.
    http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2014/06/you-wanna-keep-harassing-women-at.html

    Carefully planned protesting with groups that plan for the worst but model the best could be really effective. The “gently counseling” argument would go both ways, protestors stay back and counselors try to talk to people at the door or by their cars. Tables can be brought up with literature. Everyone has a camera ready just in case. We could record the information of the people attending the church with violent protestors and wonder about the sorts of people that would associate with them.

    Also some make the argument that debates are useful because you can plant intellectual seeds even though few actually change their minds at the debate. Despite the people reacting intensely to such a thing there will be some who are curious about why people would protest in such a way.

  322. says

    cm (from the mental illness thread):

    Who is the person doing the responding? Is it the person labeling?

    Yes; it’s the poopyhead: right there in the title of the post (italics mine, but given ER context, I think it’s implicit):

    So that’s mental illness

    … and the first sentence of the OP:

    Read this account of a man slipping away into madness.

    If that’s not labelling someone as mentally ill, I fear I may have to consider my English skills kaput and henceforth post only in Esperanto.

    This is not to say that any person described on (or commenting on) the Internet is, isn’t, may, or may not be in any particular mental, emotional, or other psychological state. Neither is it defending, supporting, or even agreeing with random commenters on Pharyngula.

    It’s just reading for comprehension. *grump*

    I already said I misinterpreted him [pharyngsd]. Yes, my reading comprehension needs work.

    Pharyngsd believes that unqualified people can diagnose mental illness in others (as seen here, here, and here).
    So when I read this:

    Well, “labelling” someone “mentally ill” is not a good response. But recognizing a possible mental illness and therefore follwing up with screening tests for a proper diagnosis is certainly a good response. Especially if the person is exhibiting symptoms severe enough to be debilitating or life threatening.

    I was confused about who was “recognizing a possible mental illness…”. Was he saying that Person A can recognize mental illness in Person R, or was he saying that Person R can recognize mental illness in themselves? My confusion stems from the previous sentence, because that seems to imply that pharyngsd feels that others should not label someone mentally ill. Which contradicts his opinions as expressed in my links above.
    Yes, I didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt. I let bias color that. I’m sorry for that. I am *still* confused though.

  323. cm's changeable moniker (quaint, if not charming) says

    Tony!, the thing is that if you’re going to complain about people (random non-qualified people) diagnosing mental illness on the Internet, then, well, PZ’s ‘This is real mental illness’ is doing exactly that. That’s it, basically. Except that I’m being snarkfully argumentative. ;-)

    pharynsd has been willfully stupid across a bunch of threads. But, what pharyngsd said in that particular thread was basically true, and since it was being illogically attacked, and I hate illogic, I retain my right to be all Vulcan about it. :-)

    *peace*

  324. cm's changeable moniker (quaint, if not charming) says

    Ehh, there’s a ‘g’ that needs a home in the 2nd paragraph of #453.

    Here it is. Somebody write a Greasemonkey script!

  325. says

    cm:

    Tony!, the thing is that if you’re going to complain about people (random non-qualified people) diagnosing mental illness on the Internet, then, well, PZ’s ‘This is real mental illness’ is doing exactly that.

    You’re right.

    That doesn’t negate my confusion though.

  326. chigau (違う) says

    SO is carving a spoon.
    Using a tool which is actually known as a ‘spoon gouge’.
    I will let y’all know the results, if we don’t need to take a trip to Emergency.
    There is also a hatchet involved.

  327. morgan ?! epitheting a metaphor says

    Stupid question time………………

    Why are they called Hairy woodpeckers?

  328. Ogvorbis: Still failing at being human. says

    Why are they called Hairy woodpeckers?

    So you don’t mix them up with Freddy woodpeckers.

  329. says

    Morgan, no idea. The smallest known woodpeckers, which look like the Hairys, are called Downy woodpeckers.

  330. says

    In principle I’m not actually uncomfortable with non-experts trying to point out “mental illness” in principle. It just that the act of doing so has a lot of elements that make it difficult to do well and anyone trying to do what is normally done by experts should also be able to endure a challenge that an expert would face.

    The first thing is that anyone trying to do so should be able to back up their fact claims with very specific references to brain science literature. They should be able to pick out specific observations and compare them with defined conditions, and related conditions that produce similar observations through damage or other pathology. They should also be able to know when any specific diagnostic category is known to be a placeholder for a cluster of similar things or other area of disagreement or controversy in a subject area.

    The second thing is that anyone trying to point out “mental illness” should know that the quotes indicate that the term is filled with a whole lot of conditions that arise from a lot of causes, and they should be able to talk about those differences fairly.
    Some of these conditions are not really worth the social stigma attached to the words “mental illness”, stigma that arises from a conflation of many characteristics from many conditions that most people mentally lump together when they consider the term. Depression, psychopathy and other things should not be easily connected without cause.
    Some of these causes remove personal agency from the actions taken by the person with the condition, which is probably why many wanted to believe that Elliot Rodger was mentally ill. Some examples of removal of personal agency are obvious and involve damage, genetic problems like gene deletions, and other obvious large changes to brain function.
    But others (and this one is very speculative because while it’s a possibility the science is full of unknown unknowns) may involve people responding to natural emotional states that can end up in very distorted thinking that may be unchangeable. How do we deal with people that followed their emotions or social group to a toxic and unchangeable state without realizing this would happen?
    There are also mentally ill people who have conditions that alter thought, even in large ways like damage and severe mutations or experience, but don’t take away agency and choice and instead shape how that choice and agency manifests in intuitive and intellectual realms.
    Finally you have the people who are mentally ill, got there through their own emotional choices and can come back from that state through other choices.

    Anyone who wants to seriously talk mental illness should be able to do all of that or at least be willing to learn to do so through experience.

  331. chigau (違う) says

    We washed the windows on the ground floor.
    uuumm
    I guess it’s been a while, ’cause Holy Shit! is it ever bright in here!

  332. says

    Inaji:
    Good question, re: Daz

    ****

    A comment I left at Think Progress about the Missouri Governor vetoing a 72 hour waiting period on abortions:

    http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/07/02/3456058/missouri-veto-abortion-waiting-period/?fb_comment_id=fbc_675018552574086_675058382570103_675058382570103

    While I’m glad he vetoed the waiting period, the Governor can do better. Much better. Start by championing women’s rights. Actually, start by listening to women. I did that, and found that many women do not wrestle with the decision to get an abortion. Many of them are very happy to have one. Like so many people, he ought to base his opinions on facts and verifiable information, rather than his gut.

    This was a response I got:

    I sincerely doubt whether any of these “many” women you’ve spoken to are happy about getting an abortion. They may be relieved, yes, and even grateful that this medical procedure is still safe and legal, but happy? If you are a proponent of a woman’s right to choose, please don’t say this. And if you are anti-abortion, then please make sure you always wear a condom, or better yet, get a vasectomy. To characterize women as being happy about terminating an unwanted pregnancy is insensitive and just plain wrong.

    The fuck. So I’m wrong for stating a truth? Women have told me they were happy to get an abortion. I’m not lying when I say this.
    I also see the commenter assumes I’m heterosexual.

  333. chigau (違う) says

    Ináji
    re: Daz
    I have no clue.
    I’ll put a note in Monitor Space.

  334. anteprepro says

    I sincerely doubt whether any of these “many” women you’ve spoken to are happy about getting an abortion. They may be relieved, yes, and even grateful that this medical procedure is still safe and legal, but happy?

    Relieved of a burden, stress, prospects of financial woes, health woes, intense physical pain? Grateful that you were allowed access to a medical procedure that allowed you to exercise control over your own body and choose your own fate? Satisfied with the quiet resolution of what would otherwise be a dramatic, life-changing event? Content with the decision you have made and with being able to return to life as normal?

    Sounds like happiness to me. Oh, but this about abortion, so it can’t be happiness. Because everything about abortion must be somber serious because BABEEEZ OMG!!! No one will quibble about people getting any other operation truly not being “happy” but virtually everyone will if that operation is abortion. Fuck.

  335. opposablethumbs says

    Relieved of a burden, stress, prospects of financial woes, health woes, intense physical pain? Grateful that you were allowed access to a medical procedure that allowed you to exercise control over your own body and choose your own fate? Satisfied with the quiet resolution of what would otherwise be a dramatic, life-changing event? Content with the decision you have made and with being able to return to life as normal?

    Sounds like happiness to me

    YES!!!! Too bloody right. I totally felt this kind of happy – both times!

  336. says

    The woman who doesn’t believe me when I told her that I know women who were happy to have abortions didn’t even acknowledge the link I posted to Imnotsorry.net.
    Perhaps she’ll change her mind once she reads the comments by two women who said they were happy to have an abortion.
    I pointed out to her it’s a double standard to expect me to listen to her, but not to the women I know.

    (Incidentally, this community is where I first learned that there are women who were happy to have an abortion. It was foremost in my thoughts when commenting over there)

  337. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    I pointed out to her it’s a double standard to expect me to listen to her, but not to the women I know.

    That’s a common thing with RW types. The MRA/PUA contingent is big on telling women what they should feel, not shutting the fuck up and listening to women. Shutting the fuck up and listening isn’t hard, but you must leave your preconceptions at the door. That is the hard part.

  338. says

    Janine:
    Thanks for that link. I’m seeing some tweets from some real assholes. Like the one that says “if you were born with a penis, got it cut off and got breasts you are still not a woman & don’t insult me with that #yesallwomen”. Not sure how to link to that.

  339. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    In her bio, she says she has a vagina but she is not a cunt about it. Yeah, I blocked her silly TERFy ass.

  340. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    In her bio, she says she has a vagina but she is not a c*nt about it. Yeah, I blocked her silly TERFy ass.

  341. Goodbye Enemy Janine says

    Tony, linking to a Twitter comment is easy. Hit the minute/hour counter on the right side of the top line. The will make a page that will contain the statement plus all the comments that came before and came after that point.

  342. says

    I don’t think I’ve read much of anything by Dan Savage. But this column at the Guardian highlights some insensitivity and a lack of awareness:

    There are fewer public faces out there that openly identify with the bisexual community. Why?

    This is really complicated, and anything you boil this down to is going to get me murdered.

    Gay people come out as teenagers because we have to. If we want to have sex or date, we don’t have the option to put it off. But when you’re 15, bi is actually easier to say, because when you come out as gay, you’re walking back a lot of lies. I came out to my friends and family as bi in high school, because I was dating a guy and I had to tell them something. Bi allows you to have the boyfriend without having gone completely over to the dark side.

    A lot of people who are bisexual don’t have to say anything quite yet in high school – they can date opposite sex appropriate partners and put off that moment of reckoning, even if they’re also dating some same-sex partners. A lot of bi people don’t come out until they’re in their 20s and 30s, and by then the lies of omission have gone on for much longer. And that makes coming out as bi hard.

    There’s some argument in bi-land, though, that the monosexuals – gay and straight people – have to be more accepting of bi people before they can feel safe enough to come out. Well, if that was the way it worked, no gay people would be out. People were coming out as gay when it was really unsafe. Yes, now it’s safe for people like Jason Collins, the basketball star, to come out. But hairdressers and ballet dancers made the world safe for him to come out in.

    There’s a Pew Research poll that shows that more than 70% of gay men and lesbians are out to “most of the important people in their lives,” but only 28% of bi people are. That’s the problem. As Harvey Milk told gay people, the way to shatter those stereotypes is to be out and confront them. Coming out is what drives change. And a lot of bi people know that. But there’s something about the bisexual experience that makes coming out easier to avoid, and more difficult to do.

    So you think the bi community would be just as culturally prominent as the gay community if more people were openly defining bisexuality in clear terms?

    Exactly. And, you know … I came out as bi before I was gay, and since most gay people are all the way out, for a lot of people, the only bi people they’ve ever known in their lives are gay people who were lying about being bi. And so they moved through their life thinking that all bi people are lying. And closeted bi people are negatively impacted by that misconception.

    And I completely own this. Like, “Wow, this is a really fucked up state of affairs that gay people have created for bi people.” We create this misconception. That must be so infuriating for bisexual people that so many people believe it’s a lie and a phase, not because of anything they themselves did. But … come out, then, as bi! The solution is to swamp that impression with fully out, fully bi, bi people. With 70% and more of all bi people closeted, you can’t change that misconception.

    There’s also research that shows that there are three times as many bisexual people as gays and lesbians combined. So if all bi people would grow up and come the fuck out, you could throw all the gay people out of the movement! Exile us all.

    (bolding mine)
    Society has become more accepting and tolerant, but it’s far from perfect. Not to mention, in this very article, he appears aware of the difficulties in coming out as bisexual. It’s a little demeaning to suggest that all bisexual people are immature (that’s how I’m interpreting “grow up”). It’s also not easy to come out. There’s still a lot of pushback. Yes, for the closeted young person, seeing a high profile person who is lesbian, bisexual, or gay can be inspirational. But coming out still has its difficulties, be it in the workforce, with friends, or with family and it isn’t right to expect anyone to do that. If someone chooses to be a public role model and source of inspiration for others, that’s their call, but its not anyone’s inherent responsibility especially given that there’s often a cost associated with being out. It’s a fine line to walk, and I get what he’s trying to say, but he fumbled saying it.

  343. chigau (違う) says

    Ináji and all
    Daz is fine.
    Internet provider issues should be solved by the middle of the month.

  344. Derek Vandivere says

    Tony,

    Yeah, Savage usually errs on the side of vulgarity, which can definitely ruffle feathers (e.g., he got in ‘trouble’ for using a slur for ‘transsexual’ in the context of why he doesn’t use that word anymore). I’ve been reading and listening to him for a bunch of years now, and he’s almost universally sensitive when he’s answering individual questions – and he has apparently inspired a lot of bi people in hetero relationships to come out as bi.

    But his basic calculus is exactly right, I think.

  345. Derek Vandivere says

    So I don’t think it’s a lack of awareness, it’s just recognizing that coming out is also difficult for bi folks but that’s the only way forward.

    Wow, some of those tweets were pretty vile.

  346. says

    Tony, Savage has a very bad record when it comes to bisexuals.

    But there’s something about the bisexual experience that makes coming out easier to avoid, and more difficult to do.

    No shit, Sherlock. Assholes like yourself don’t help when you spend years speculating on how bisexuality isn’t a real thing, at least when it comes to men.

    Josh (spokesgay) and I had a *long* talk about bi peoples on TET, way back when. A lot of the problem is that bi people aren’t accepted by gay and lesbian people, unless they are in a same sex relationship, then it’s “eh, you’re just gay, you don’t want to admit it” shit. If you’re in a mixed sex relationship, “you’re really hetro, you just don’t want to admit it” shit. Hetro people have a special dislike of bi people, ’cause you could be looking at either partner! omgwtfbbq’.

  347. says

    Chigau:

    Daz is fine.
    Internet provider issues should be solved by the middle of the month.

    *phew*. Thanks, Chigau!

  348. says

    Ogvorbis @481:

    I really detest Oppression Olympics.

    Is this related to anything around here (or FtB at large)?

    ****

    Derek:

    Yeah, Savage usually errs on the side of vulgarity, which can definitely ruffle feathers (e.g., he got in ‘trouble’ for using a slur for ‘transsexual’ in the context of why he doesn’t use that word anymore).

    I have no problem with vulgarity. Bigoted slurs are different story. Those, I don’t like.

    So I don’t think it’s a lack of awareness, it’s just recognizing that coming out is also difficult for bi folks but that’s the only way forward.

    A way of going forward.
    An important way of moving forward.
    Not sure that it’s the only way forward.
    Brain doesn’t want to function that well today, so I don’t have any alternatives, but I’m reluctant to believe there’s only one way to achieve the desired goals in this situation.

    ****

    Inaji:

    No shit, Sherlock. Assholes like yourself don’t help when you spend years speculating on how bisexuality isn’t a real thing, at least when it comes to men.

    I wonder where that comes from too. At one point (in the years prior to my joining the community here) I felt the same way about bisexual men and women. I thought it was either a phase they were going through or they were lying or worse, “they wanted to have their cake and eat it too”. I thought “if you a man who sucks dick, ever, you’re gay” or “if you’re a woman who eats pussy, you’re a lesbian”. There was no room in my narrow understanding of sexuality for an understanding of sexuality as existing along a spectrum. Nor did I even think that my view of peoples’ sexuality wasn’t informed by listening to them, but rather, from projecting my opinions onto others.

    Suffice to say, in time, I came to realize how wrong I was and wish I could kick myself in the ass for thinking like that.

  349. says

    Tony Thompson if you are gay then why are you commentting . you are scared of the pussy

    I’ve continued to comment on the Think Progress article I linked to @466. The above is a response I just got from a commenter.
    I got a good chuckle out of how deeply wrong he is (and of course I *had* to respond).

  350. Ogvorbis: Still failing at being human. says

    Tony!:

    Is this related to anything around here (or FtB at large)?

    Over at Ed Brayton’s Blog — Poll Shows Support for Equality.

  351. says

    http://www.today.com/money/ceo-indra-nooyi-thinks-working-women-cant-have-it-all-1D79883460

    Indra Nooyi: “We plan our lives meticulously so we can be decent parents. But if you ask our daughters, I’m not sure they will say that I’ve been a good mom.”
    Matt Lauer: “I’ve always felt that this is not a gender issue; this is a human issue of work and life balance. It’s a parenting issue for men and women, moms and fathers, a question I ask myself every single day, but clearly it still touches a nerve. If a male CEO were to come out and say, ‘I am very upset that I missed my son’s prom and I think my kids are going to hold me accountable for one job and that is a father,’ yes, we’d ask that male CEO that question.”
    Martha Stewart: “I think Indra is very, very right about you can’t have it all. You can try, and I think you really need to have that back-up team at home. If you prepare your children and tell them exactly what you’re doing, they will respect you and they will help you get on with your career. After my daughter was grown up, she admitted that, ‘Mom you did not have to come home every single night.’ She said, ‘You didn’t have to be. You only had to be there when I needed you.'”
    Kathie Lee Gifford: “I think women can have it all. I don’t think you can have it all at the same time, but you can definitely learn to balance things.”
    Dylan Dreyer: “We don’t ask men that question, (and) it’s always taboo when we ask women that question, but if you ask the kids, I’m sure they would feel the same way like, ‘Yeah my dad wasn’t there, or my mom wasn’t there.'”
    Peter Alexander: “I think in each family it has to be a negotiation. In our home, my wife and both work, and there has to be a shared responsibility.”
    Tamron Hall: “If we’re afraid to have the conversation because we’re going to guilt each other, how can we ever have a valid, reasonable exchange of information?”

    When they’re talking about mom or dad not being home enough, it almost seems like they’re hearkening back to some bygone era of family perfection, where kids got the ideal amount of time with their parents. When was this?

  352. says

    Savage is full of shit. He has on his podcast either cited bullshit studies claiming that male bisexuality doesn’t exist, implies it’s a phase among women, and the like. Multiple times.

    He doesn’t have a moral high ground to bitch at Bis for not coming out when he contributes to being a shit head to them.

  353. says

    but the gist of it was that Dan Savage is full of shit. He has repeatedly erased or denied the existence of bi people on his show then gets on a high horse.

  354. Derek Vandivere says

    Tony / Inaji: Can you explain how coming out as bi is more difficult than coming out as gay? Is it in the sense that many gay folks still don’t believe bi people exist? Or that it gives parents the hope that you might slide back into straight after a little adventure?

    Ing: No big loss, then. Let’s see: his letter of the day yesterday was talking to bi people about the perceived relative difficulty of finding bi women or men for threesomes, and an appropriate term to find them. Maybe he was a jerk years and years ago, but it’s ridiculous to say he’s erased or denied the very existence of gay people in recent years. If I’m wrong, show me some real examples.

  355. says

    Derek:

    Can you explain how coming out as bi is more difficult than coming out as gay? Is it in the sense that many gay folks still don’t believe bi people exist? Or that it gives parents the hope that you might slide back into straight after a little adventure?

    I’m gay, so that’s the only coming out experience I can fully relate to and I’m not comfortable speaking about other peoples’ experiences when I know so little of them. For my part, when I was in high school, and began realizing I had an attraction to men, I didn’t admit it to anyone, and I had girlfriends. When I began to accept my attraction to guys, I considered myself bisexual, bc I thought that was “safer” than being gay. But I didn’t know anyone who was openly bisexual. Hell, I didn’t know anyone who was openly gay until I was 19. I had no one to look up to. No role models, no examples to model behavior after. I didn’t know what it was like to live as a gay man, let alone a bisexual man, so all my opinions were formed in response to the prejudices around me. I absorbed those so deeply that even after I came out of the closet @20, I still retained prejudices about gay or bisexual men for years (and I won’t even start on my assumptions about lesbian or bisexual women).
    I think your guess may be close though, bc I do know that some gay people, even today, deny the existence of bisexual people. It’s the whole binary thinking again. Either you’re gay or you’re heterosexual. There’s no in between.

    Also, given the unique circumstances everyone has, I’m not certain it’s more or less difficult to come out as gay or bisexual. I think they can both be difficult.

  356. says

    Having heard every one of the fallacies in Dan Savage’s post numerous times in my adult years as an openly bisexual person, I’d like to say he’s pretty close to 100% full of shit on this topic. For example – and it couldn’t have been much closer to home – even my own brother assumed I was lying when I claimed to be bisexual while in a long-term same-sex relationship; and numerous folk in the gay community I associated with were happy to assert ‘all bisexual people are liars’ or ‘bisexuals are incapable of being trusted’ etc. etc. etc. Sometimes people would even flaunt this sort of crap in company in full knowledge that I was bisexual, expecting me to take the bait by arguing with them. So my opinion of Savage’s viewpoint quoted above is, he’s worse than worthless.

    Oh, and speaking of worse than worthless, what is going on with the bizarre performance art in the Poemsplaining/Mansplaining thread? Is Otis Idli a sock puppet for some known troll such as Steersman, or someone equally obtuse, verbose, and irredeemably boring?

  357. Steven Brown: Man of Mediocrity says

    So the leader of our left wing political party said ‘I’m sorry I’m a man’ to a womens refuge group he was talking to.

    Naturally the media and the other politicians focused on the policy he was announcing around domestic violence and didn’t fixate on one line from his speech.

    Oh… Wait.. No.. I got that wrong…. http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10232457/David-Cunliffe-I-m-sorry-for-being-a-man

    So angry with the media now. I heard two or three journalists and political commentators talk about how the issue was important and how they wish they could focus on that. I sat there and yelled at the radio “SO DO THAT. RIGHT NOW! TALK ABOUT THE ISSUE.” I don’t think they heard me though.

    Anyway, just needed somewhere to vent.

  358. says

    Inaji

    Josh (spokesgay) and I had a *long* talk about bi peoples on TET, way back when. A lot of the problem is that bi people aren’t accepted by gay and lesbian people, unless they are in a same sex relationship, then it’s “eh, you’re just gay, you don’t want to admit it” shit. If you’re in a mixed sex relationship, “you’re really hetro, you just don’t want to admit it” shit. Hetro people have a special dislike of bi people, ’cause you could be looking at either partner! omgwtfbbq’.

    Yeah, I’ve been wondering about that. Bi people seem to challenge everybody’s dearly and most sincerely held beliefs about sexual orientation.
    I know Mr. and I got a few stinky eyes in our time when we went out with our gay friends to gay bars and arrived first. Quite often we were not served until our gay friends showed up.
    Now, I get the problem of straight people appropriating queer spaces because it’s hip, but I always thought they were making a whole lot of assumptions about us. Ok, they were mostly right in our case, but when I showed up alone they assumed something different.
    In short, they were not any better than all the people in college who always thought I was in a heterosexual realtionship with my gay BFF

  359. says

    Xanthe:

    Oh, and speaking of worse than worthless, what is going on with the bizarre performance art in the Poemsplaining/Mansplaining thread? Is Otis Idli a sock puppet for some known troll such as Steersman, or someone equally obtuse, verbose, and irredeemably boring?

    Oh god that’s a trainwreck.
    I don’t get the guy.
    I listed a definition of mansplaining and gave examples as well as a link to plenty more. Yet he redefines the meaning of the word and says the examples don’t say what I claim.
    WTF?! I don’t even know how to argue with that. He deserves the mockery. Doubly so b/c once he began whining about being mocked. Triply so bc he felt the need to demonstrate his credentials.