I am remiss in my duties. The last episode of the endless thread has expanded to excessive size while I was off frolicking in the antipodes. In my defense, I have been distracted by the remarkable habits of Australians: every time my hands were empty, they would put a beer in it. I once made the mistake of having both hands briefly unoccupied, and received two beers for my trouble.
The Pharyngufest with Chloe here in Melbourne has been captured on video, right here. Unfortunately, I don't remember my performance at all—infinite beers, remember.
More like this
... sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler – Robert Frost
It was a typical hot and humid summer's day, so I entered a nice dark bluestone pub, hoping the dark would offer some cool and beer. As it was about 11 in the morning, the bar was empty save for one fellow sitting at a table…
The official kick-off of the Melbourne Global Atheist convention is tonight, but we're starting without the the officials.
I met Bride of Shrek (who is not green) and Rorschach (who wasn't wearing the cool shifting pattern mask) for dinner last night. I can't say I was exactly lively company — I…
I’ll admit it: I’m a bit of a beer snob. I make no bones about it, I like my beer, but I also like it to be good beer, and, let’s face it, beer brewed by large industrial breweries seldom fits the bill. To me, most of the beer out being sold in the U.S., particularly beer made by Anheuser-Busch and…
At today's 2nd annual Distracted Driving Summit, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood laid out the U.S. statistics: "thousands of people are killed or injured every year in accidents caused by distracted drivers" and 500,000 more are injured. Distractions while driving can be new age, such as using…
Well, that is about as plausible as the storyline of the original.
:)
You've never looked finer, sir. The leotard is the look for you.
The infinite beers sound interesting (even though I am not a beer drinker). Have to wait till I get home from work to see the video; my employer blocks them and all I have is a large white space.
bam!
teh portcullis.
lookin' good there, Professor.
Beerdance!
most people are too well basted to dance after infinite beers.
You'd drink to excess too if you live in a country whose only claim to variety is the ways in which it's inhabitants can kill you.
Here is Quackalicious' reference to Cochrane studies:
Ha! This is a good time of the day to let me catch up instead of triggering the dreaded frontpage effect right away! :-)
Kauai used to have a duck that thought it was a kiwi and/or a platypus. Somehow I don't read enough blogs, so I missed that one when it was published in November <cringe>
Is it your employer, or is it your browser and/or Flash player? Safari 1.3.2 did that at irregular and unpredictable occasions; Opera 10.10 shows embedded YouTube videos but not vimeo ones; IE8 shows everything.
Hah! That's my mate and neighbour in the leotard. It's a small country. Oh, and I for one welcome our new beer drinking, vegemite swilling tentacled overlord. Hope ytou enjoy your stay in Oz, PZ.
just realized I inadvertently started a haiku and never finished. Lessee:
Bam! Teh portcullis.
Lookin' good there, Professor.
An Oz-dance subThread.
You drank infinite Carlton Draughts? Love the add, but no way you drank many of that stuff. Reminds me of my mispent youth. There was a lot of egregious comments about Vegemite earlier. Those comments really were earned by CUB. Anyway, if you decide you need a break, my offer to come out to Mernda and see the roos, galahs, and whatever is still open. I don't think you'll take it up however. With all those uni students biding for your time.
Ha, North Americans! PZ is blogging in our time zone now, and I can finally make comment number < 100 on a Pharyngula thread!
Unfortunately I have nothing to say. Except that Chloe's was a fine place to meet more atheists than I have knowingly seen in one place.
Thank you, Kg, for tracking down and addressing El Pato's pseudocitations. It was bothering me that 'we' are always asking for peer-reviewed literature as evidence, and then when somebody kind of mentions some, it got blown off. I was going to try to respond this weekend, but I am most grateful that you have made that unnecessary.
@ David M.: No, it's my employer. Our lovely IT guys used to watch Youtube too much so the senior management declared all sorts of things off limits and block them (can't see LOLcats imbeds either, for instance).
Although, I wouldn't be surprised if the flash player issue is involved also. We are still on IE6 at work...I use Firefox at home on both the PC and the Macs.
And don't forget the STEP study.
This comment entered solely to say, like #12, that I caught an incarnation while it was still young and tender.
"Aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall, aleph-null bottles of beer. Take one down, pass it around, aleph-null bottles of beer on the wall . . ."
windy, @ #246 of the previous iteration:
This appears to be incorrect. The major studies under discussion (Rosenberg and Bamshad) did in fact have to predetermine K. Deborah Bolnick, mentioned in the Duster video, has a chapter in Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age (2008) that describes what they did, how estimating the best-fit K works, and the problems with how the data were analyzed and presented. It, "Chapter 4: Individual Ancestry Reference and the Reification of Race as a Biological Phenomenon," is available in the Google Books preview (begins at page 70).
Topic shift - what do people think about this?
Anna Arrowsmith, porn director, selected as parliamentary candidate
Could she be worse than some many of our current politicians? I'll take a film director (who at least (even for porn films (not that I've seen that many (though I did recently watch one while perusing my autographed copy of Dante's Inferno (meant as humour (see towards the tail end of the last neverending source of amusement))))) should have a clue how to get from the setup to the climax) over the whore who just does whatever the john lobbyist says.
Anna Arrowsmith ?
Well if the Tories can have merchant bankers as candidates, why can't the Lib Dems have a porn film director ? Seems to me that directing porn films is a far more noble profession than merchant banking.
SC, thanks for mentioning that book and its availability via Google. That looks like a much more balanced, better-rounded, wider-ranging and far more nuanced treatment than the SSRC essays you usually link.
Wish I had time for careful reading of it.
Walton: I think that anyone should be able to stand for election. Additionally, it seems that she is very different from most MPs, as she is not a lawyer. I am all for anything that reduces the proportion of lawyers in the commons is a good thing.
Perhaps you would if you took some off from the contentless, condescending sniping. Just a thought.
Well Italy did it.
I would also add that if the Conservatives were to get all sniffy about moral character the Lib Dems need only mention two names. Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitkin. They could also mention Lord Ashcroft, as he seems to be another Tory with problems with honesty.
Always enjoy Carlton Draught ads.
Especially like this one
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYZs7VJaAlQ
:)
Porn star Mary Carey ran for California governor. So it has been done.
Bah crap
Firefox 3.6 update and the Text formatting toolbar isn't supported at the current build,
son
of
a
BDC, Go directly to the homepage of the toolbar, which is here. The version there works with 3.6.
Rev. BDC, it appears that the developer of TFT has an upgrade for 3.6, but it isn't linked to the Firefox addon collection. The addon can be downloaded from the developers site.
Yeah I checked that and that's the version I have installed, and Firefox is shitting all over it.
Going to try a re-install
Nope sorry I was wrong, that was not the version I had installed.
Thanks Matt.
No Problem BDC.
Oh I can only dream of the backlash this is going to cause but oh well.
Anyone interested in a gentlemanly wagerized Pharyngula NCAA bracket?
We could set up one on ESPN
First evening of the GAC saw the meeting of Kel, Wowbagger, Bride of Shrek and Rorschach with Pharyngulites like debinoz, Charlie Foxtrot, that Pope with the too long name, Peter McKellar, speedweasel and others at the Chloe bar.Then we had a rather light-hearted comedian type of start to the convention, especially with the contribution of Catherine Deveny, who was just hilarious.
And we even met a crazy person in the streets who handed out Comfort style madness cartoons from livingwaters, a Comfort subsidy of some sort....
Dr Myers attended, but he had been handed too many beverages by friendly Pharyngulites for his heart to really be in it I think...:-)
Photos to follow, we're working on it...:-)
I am going to do a first for me, and give you all a taste of the music I am currently listening to.
The Trumpton Riots
Or, better yet, stop grading stuff. Grades are a poor reflection of learning anyway, right?
*Looks at pile of exams next to desk*
Yeah. Ditch the grading, son. Take your shoes off, and let them piggies breathe. Spring break starts today (for me, at 10am CST)...headin' to the nursery to by myself some planties! Then I'm heading to the beer store to by myself some brewksies! S'gonna be awesome.
Reverend:
Since I started reading (and (occasionally) commenting) on Pharyngula, I have noticed the occasional comment (not that I can quote (or even misquote) one right now off the top of my pointy little head) referring to atheists and/or scientists as elitists who are out of touch with mainstream 'Merca. I get the same occasional comment on my piddly little blog. To suggest that such out of touch elitists would be interested in the NCAA tournament (yes, I am interested) blows the whole elitist and out of touch meme out of the water (which is needed for the zebra fish).
Yes. I, an out of touch elitist ivory-tower snob am interested in a Pharyngula bracket.
Pharyngula bracket. Sorry. I just had a vision of a squid hanging on a wall.
Alright, that's two. I'll see about setting one up and people can email me about log in details.
You'll have to sign up on ESPN of course.
Antiochus: And certain beers are very good for attracting and drowning garden slugs. Beer and gardening. Beer garden. Biergarten.
Sounds good.
It'll just be easier for PZed to put the photo up in his own time - it'll be worth any wait.
Says the man sitting next to me on the couch typing away on my laptop...:-) And PZ, feel free to post them, I dont mind, neither does the Bride...
Nite Nite
Hooray! At last! I can watch cricket wthout having to give Rupert Murdoch any money.
Dunno if you can watch ITV4's Indian Premier League coverage outside the UK.
YouTube's coverage is "experiencing some technical difficulties".
I suppose what I thought of her would depend on her position on whatever political issues I cared about given I was living there.
She sounds like an interesting woman.
(Why have (comments (here) (started to look (like they're) (written in (Lisp (Common or (otherwise)?))))))
Walton's coming along quickly! Just recently he thought toilet paper was an unsuitable topic. Now he wants to talk about porn?
What next? Will he be ditching that bow tie?
(I don't actually know if he wears one, but that's my mental image). :)
You would probably find yourself in agreement with much of the Lib Dem platform, as would most of the regulars here. Walton being a notable exception.
We will have him resigning from the Conservative Party soon.
Because people here are behind the times. CAN I HAZ LOLCODE?
Did he really? Walton? Any comments, sir?
Eh. I'd rather write in Ook!.
Benjamin: Just lampooning my (admittedly weird) writing style. My blog is called (((Billy))) The Atheist because of that (lack of) writing style.
Ol'Greg: Behind the times? I'm an public historian specializing in steam-era technology. If it happened after the 1950s, it is modern and up to date. I live behind the times.
The A-Team has been turned into a remake for this summer. An instant strike against it is that they have chosen Liam Neeson to be Hannibal.
LIAM FUCKING NEESON?
Really? Because that... is...awesome.
"Oi love it whaen a plan coms togeth--"
"CUT!"
RBDC #35
Count me in...
You lucky riders of the NYC subway system just got a new annoyance, an anti-choice ad campaign. Because Abortion Changes You!
I was oh so touched by this. My wife gets depressed around the anniversary of our daughter's abortion. Can you please clarify? Was it that your wife had a fetus aborted or that your daughter had an abortion?
RBDC #35
you can email me details...
celticevolution at gmail...
Benjamin, I had no idea that the Librarian was so talkative.
Ook.
RBDC #35:
I checked your vox site and cannot contact you via the site. Could you email the details to billytheatheist[at]gmail.com ?
A-Team? A-Team? If ever a crappy TV show cried out to never be made into a movie, that would be it. I was in middle and high school when it was on TV and even back then (when I was young and stupid) I thought is was poorly written, badly acted, cheaply done, and a remarkably dim premise (of course, that may be my elitism showing through).
Re: steam era technology
Steam-punk guitar!!
Don't ask me how that would work in reality, but I still love it.
Abortion Changes You!
WTF?
So does sex, a beer, living for five years,learning to drive,a tooth extraction,marriage, divorce,moving from your family, gaining a sibling,major illnes,unwanted pregnancy, wanted pregnancy,the birth of a child.
Maybe we should outlaw living.
Ol'Gregg:
My Dad always said that the key to happiness in life is finding what you like to do and then find someone stupid enough to pay you for doing it. A corollary is (of course) finding what you actually like before accumulating the detritus of maturity.
KOPD:
Soldered copper pipe would not work too well with the steam pressures used on our locomotives. Generally, we run at up 150psi saturated steam, or (on our road locomotives) 180 to 210psi superheated.
Additionally, judging from the gauge at the upper left (showing (it appears) 0psi), the last gig must have been at a place with absolutely no atmosphere.
I guess because that most people finally realize that the abortion/breast cancer link was contrived and so some moved on to something even more nebulous and less likely to be disproven by studies.
ol'Greg: Of course, when your a baby, Mom and Dad change you.
Ok sent you both emails from ESPN with the log in info. You'll have to create an espn account if you don't have one.
Yeah I only signed up for Vox to be able to log in here.
bigdumbchimp [at] gmail
@Benjamin Geiger:
this part of the world says hello back.
Ook.
Not a bad idea. I mean imagine a series of posters and ads that echo the message:
Graduation Changes You
Our son went from being a high school football star to a kid needing to find a summer job to help pay for next year's college tuition in less than a month.
Getting Married Changes You
We thought the dress and the flowers and the limos and the band would make our wedding one of the most special days of our lives. Er, it was, but now we can't afford to go to the movies.
Getting a Job Changes You
He used to love to sit on that couch all day and play GTA IV. Now I tear up whenever I look at those empty cushions Mondays through Fridays from 7:45 AM to 5:00 PM.
PDF of the paper about the "almost blind mole-duck" of comment 8.
And wasps.
Bah. I, sir, can't tell the difference between last week and last ice age !!
Now to catch up with the latest subthread.
Reading Pharyngula Changes You
He used to be so arrogantly sure of his libertarian viewpoints and unwavering in his faith. It breaks my heart to see him now accepting that gays have the same rights as everyone else. I die a little inside when I see him asking for evidence and citation instead of accepting biblical truth. I hardly recognize the once blissfully ignorant, morally bankrupt, self-indulgent little god-bother I once knew. I'm afraid that person is gone forever...
Aging Changes You
I get depressed now every time I see a desert menu.
Not having an abortion changes you. Duh. Eating lunch changes you. Everything you could possibly do could possibly change you. Educate yourself on how it could change you and make an informed fucking decision (if it's your decision to make).
Brought to you by Captain Obvious.
Probably all that sand! It is never nice to eat.
Alternate version of 71
He used to be so productive and yet still have free time for personal projects. It breaks my heart to see him wasting away as he follows the undying thread. I die a little inside when I see him constantly refreshing the page. I'm afraid the person I knew is gone forever...
ymmv
Actually, that wsa intended originally as a sincere thanks for the reference to what I really do think looks excellent. If it came out different (as, I acknowledge, it did), it's because of a lack of time put into considering content.
My opinions about the SSRC site aside, I wasn't sniping at you.
Jefferson Airplane ~ Crown of Creation
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
is Change.
God
is Change.
Earthseed: The Book Of The Living
Octavia Butler was such a great writer.
Going back to the thread of a couple of days ago (the one with the dancing penises (not something I write every day)): Brian Switek over at Laelaps has a post about even more bizarre Ediacaran fauna. Pop over, look at the life restoration of Herpetogaster collinsi and then think Freud.
Neat beast, but weird.
In the previous chapter of the endless thread, Quackalicious referred to me as "Lynn, OM", and he thanked me (OMG, I am mortified) for doing actual research in my comment 510.
I repeat here my comment 510, if only to clear my name, which is Lynna. (I have added some bolding for emphasis):
What I get from all this is that the Quack does not read the replies carefully, and he does not follow links that send him to refutations.
@Celtic_Evolution (71) and KOPD (75):
Hey! Those both fit me exactly! Reading Pharyngula does change you!
Quick work-related question: You know the glass retorts which, when placed on the palm of your hand, cause the liquid inside to boil and travel up a coiled stem? Anyone know what they are called?
@iambilly:
The glass retorts which, when placed on the palm of your hand, cause the liquid inside to boil and travel up a coiled stem.
@iambilly:
Thermometers.
No, these are demonstration units with coloured liquid -- I would guess alcohol in a semi-vacuum to lower the boiling point?
I've never heard even my dentist say anything quite that particularly kinky.
Just to avoid misunderstandings, I'm not the one with the vampire fetish. I just… provide some fuel for it, to mix metaphors.
:-D
Hmmmm. <strokes inexistent beard>
:-) :-) :-) :-) :-)
Now there's an understatement. Looks like the differences in sex determination between mammals and birds go way beyond the opposite systems of sex chromosomes, and some of the implications are very far-reaching.
Great case of fairly basic research potentially leading to lots of applications.
X-D
TSIB.
I feel like a command-line freak. =8-)
@iambilly:
Wouldn't be an alembic, would it?
Looks like there is a Knija Knitter wannabe.
Kevin: Thank you. A fellow worker is writing up an education proposal for a grant and was searching for a name. I think alembic is it.
[pause for Google]
Probably is the name.
It's futile to try and keep up with you keen, bacon fuelled endless threaders. I was gping to say, on the topic of leotarded males reinventing Flashdance has everyone seen Robert Webb's version? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Lz6k5Zg2wA
This was part of a series of celebrities doing dances for charity and Webb was disturbingly good in his wig and leotard. He had to have been good as I don't think anything less could have beaten out the moustached guy in the pink frock doing Dirty Dancing. Don't want to bugger up the comment with linkspam but it is in the menu to the right of the above link.
Dang, looks like I need to fumigate my work keyboard again. Kninja Knitter
Blockquote fail at the top of comment 86. Retry:
Just to avoid misunderstandings, I'm not the one with the vampire fetish. I just… provide some fuel for it, to mix metaphors.
It's not Ediacaran. Herpetogaster, which is a big surprise indeed (except for being a filter-feeder), is from the Burgess Shale (Middle Cambrian), and Kiisortsoqia, the Platonic idea of an arthropod, is from the Early Cambrian of northern Greenland.
Sorry for the Ediacaran -- I claim liberal arts education?
Human cells exhibit foraging behavior like amoebae and bacteria.
Reindeer stop the clock to cope with polar days and nights.
Malicious Software: Hiding Honeypot Traps from Botnet Drones.
Kiisortoqia. Without s. *grumble*
At least the retry worked. And the Kninja Knitter sounds interesting… if insane…
Somebody else here has a vampire fetish?
Yo, Lynn @80:
You said "Actually, the Quackmeister did provide references to studies earlier...because that would require..integrity. Most of the Quackmeisters references to studies...had not been refuted.
Then Quack provided more references...And he defended nurses. Suffice it to say that...he will provide references to yet more...studies."
You're obviously a fan. Might as well cop to it.
Matt Penfold (re Walton)
Like this one?
Brigham Young University Is Nation's Most Popular National University
That's the story from U.S. News & World Report. The blockquote below is the simplified version from KSL, a mormon-owned news outlet:
The story doesn't mention that LDS Church leaders have encouraged parents to tell their children that they will pay for them to attend BYU, but will not pay for them to attend any other University. None of the other pressures put on young people to attend are mentioned. Nor is the fact that BYU is subsidized by the church to make it cheaper for returned missionaries to attend; that children of General Authority members attend for free; that young women are sent there to find husbands... you get the picture. The cult school is homophobic, requires religion classes, and spies on students, even those that live off-campus.
How pleasant to meet such an ideal just after having dissected a crayfish!
@Lynna, OM:
Wait... a news story that leaves out details? No, really?
Janina: Octavia Butler was such a great writer.
Amen. I was about to say "depressing, but/and great" but the really depressing thing is that I think I've read everything she wrote. Or published, anyway.
At least Kage Baker has a few posthumous things in the queue. Fuck death, anyhow.
iambilly: Just off the top of my head, I'd go to Archie McPhee's and see if they have one and what they call it. Or maybe one of those Whoozits Science mailorder joints.
Brownian - I forgot to say thanks for describing your experiences in CBT a few threads back. I've always been fascinated by it (even if I've had trouble trying to figure out exactly what it is); moreover, I've never really had the chance to see it in action.
Doesn't sound surprising, but the link doesn't work.
Awesome…
Not only interesting in itself – a click away lies this report of ice at sea level at ~ 10° N or S (probably S, but I'm guessing) 716.5 Ma ago, a(n incredibly precise) date that is connected to the opening of the Pacific Ocean.
Wow. Just in time for the Thread. As if arranged! Does he read it…?
:-o
I wouldn't have expected the elitism to be that blatant.
Mr Fire/Brownian,
1) Is that CBT as in "Cock and Ball Torture" or CBT as in "Cognitive Behaviout Therapy"?
2) If it's the latter, can you point me to the thread/rough location, I'd like a read of that.
Cheers
Louis
P.S. If it's the former, my place 10:30pm Thursday. Bring lube and a vicar.
that second s is struck out, and I forgot the ital tags
Meh. Call me when they actually start to tackle the much easier Honeypot Detection Method of detecting Virtual Machines running completely exposed to exploits. Monitoring malicious activity in every node of a botnet (hundreds of thousands of computers) adds a lot of overhead, when there are easier ways of detecting and blacklisting honeypot IPs while in the process of probing for vulns (as opposed to adding an entire new layer of checks/safeguards). Some security guys assume blacklisting VMs won't work because servers are lucrative targets and generally run on VMs nowadays, but "servers are always on" is moot in the days of pervasive broadband connections.
in that comment way the hell up there, I mean
My pleasure MrFire. Even when I was actively in therapy I never shied away from talking about it, partially because I've never been overly concerned with what constitutes appropriate topics for discussion vs. TMI, and partially because through doing so I've encouraged a number of people to admit to me that they had been considering therapy and ask me how to get started. So I kind of see it as making lemonade with some of the lemons I was given in childhood.
Glenn Beck has stirred up the wrong nest of vipers.
As far as Beck leaving the mormon church -- not going to happen. He actually fits in very well, and far better than some mormons would like to admit. While some mormon commenters in the story tout the LDS Church's social justice emphasis, color me skeptical. Mormons claim that the LDS Church is all up into that social justice stuff -- never mind their stance on gay marriage, and please forget their past treatment of blacks and of Native Americans. And please ignore their present treatment of women. And please don't mention the miniscule percentage they spend on humanitarian aid (estimated at about 1.5% or less. See http://www.salamandersociety.com/foyer/budget/). And don't compare that humanitarian aid to their $3 billion mall project.
It will be fun, however, to watch even more advertisers pull their ad dollars from the Glenn Beck show. Glenn, please do continue to alienate the Christians. Thank you.
soon come
Why would "popular" measured by the % of students accepted to the school who choose to attend, be a good thing ?
Let's take an extreme example:
200 complete morons apply to the really crap school for quacks and their admirers, school that only teaches how to become a certified quack. 100 of them are accepted, and because they are complete morons and aren't accepted elsewhere, all choose to attend that school. So it scores 100% on the popularity contest, the school for quacks and their admirers is the most "popular" school in the country.
BUT.....BUT.....
WE GO ON MISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111
/mormon
Louis, here's the link to my comment.
As for Thursday, I don't think I'm ready for that yet. I'm still in the 'flicking myself through the denim in the office supply closet' stage, and I think I'm still a ways away from the sitting in a seatless chair for a rousing session with a carpet-beater à la Casino Royale.
@Brownian:
Oh now you've done it. I'm going to be cringing all day from that thought.
Sven, do you mind if I steal (I mean, borrow without obtaining prior permission, but with proper attribution) the first line of your haiku at 10, and drive a different second and third line in under it? (I hope not, but I'm going to do it anyway.) Ahem.
Bam! Teh portcullis.
Now, to the Undying Thread
Add Infinite Beers!
And, in a similar vein, I would like to respond to Benjamin Geiger @ 52:
Ook! Ook ook ook ook.
Ook ook ook ook ook-ook ook,
Ook ook ook ook ook.
Brownian, OM @69:
ROTFLMAO!!! *sniff* So beautiful, and so true!
Macrophages? They're patrolling the alveoli of your lungs, all of your loose connective tissue, and the nooks and crannies of your lymphatic system all the time under their own power. And if they're in a hurry, they squeeze into a blood vessel and flow as a monocyte.
David M., sorry the link to human cells foraging didn't work. I guess I'd better just cut and paste the link:
http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/News/Feeds/2010/03/products-cell-bi…
Rev BDC: yes, they go so on missions. The LDS Church used to field an army of about 60,000 missionaries per year. Now They send out about 50,000 -- and the poor missionaries pay for the experience themselves. They even pay for the Book of Mormon copies they give out. They pay to be housed in substandard hovels, where some of them die or get very ill. Some of the missionaries, under pressure from supervisors, cook their stats for converts. They baptize drunks, the homeless, the deluded, and then never see them again. The church leaders take advantage of 19-year-old young men and women who have been brainwashed into making some older supervisor look good enough to move up in the ranks. At one time, LDS missionaries offered English lessons in Japan as a sneaky way of getting Japanese converts. (I think they put a stop to that.) Missionaries are encouraged to give religion first and aid second. Of course, some missionaries will provide meaningful aid despite all the obstacles, but the church can't take credit for that.
American Science & Surplus calls iambilly's alembic gadget a "love meter" or "hand boiler."
Um.
Brownian #115,
Cheers for the link.
Does Thursday look better if I supply the vicar? I can have him shaved, gagged and liberally sanded.
For those of you who think this is a sexual thing, far, far from it. I just like to torture vicars.
And now I wait for that comment to be picked up at The Intersection Two Prudes, One Kwak, claimed to be adovcacy of vicar abuse by Pharynguloids, and my path to world domination (and profit) is assured. Mwah ha ha haaaaa!
Louis
http://www.scientificcomputing.com/news-IN-Stem-Cell-Fate-031010.aspx
But Lynna you just can't grasp all the good we do when we are on mission. There was this girl on the side of the road and she was very very sick with malaria and possibly other diseases and me and my mission partner came up and told her it was going to be ok. That God had a plan for her.
We sat and prayed with her.
When we left she was trying to smile there on the side of the road, laying on the ground and coughing.
See all the good we do?
obvious synonyms.
I don't even know whether that's going to work.
There seems to be a very large reservoir of crazies and the more crazy things Becks says, the more people talk about him, the more they say he's crazy, the more the crazies like him and his audience meter goes up.
And because there will always be companies that need to tap in the huge crazies market, whether to sell SUVs, granite counter tops, or many other things, there will be anouncers that will advertise on his show.
He'd have to say something that the crazies really don't like. Being against "social justice" is something the crazies really like.
KOPD:
I wouldn't go so far as to call it a fetish....
And my vampires don't sparkle, or stroll around casually in broad daylight.
Better than the original. Thanks.
Awww! What a sweet, haiku. Well done, cicely.
How is it that I've missed out completely on the abuse of vicars by Pharynguloids? Somebody send me some vicars. I need to catch up.
Gonna Make you Sweat
Damn. I lost the line breaks in quoting cicely's haiku. A sin against poetry has been committed.
Change changes you.
I must work out a limerick involving infinite beer.
I'm disappointed Louis. I've seen you come up with far more imaginative - and deranged -acronyms* than that.
I would challenge you to a POOP** contest, but we'd both get banned or at least killfiled. And speaking of Brownian, you know he can write some, ah, impressively salty stuff himself.
* OK, I suppose it's the opposite: the expansion of an acronym into new words. There a word for that?
** Pervertedest One On Pharyngula. Red Dwarf of course has the best acronym ever (about 2:50 in, but the whole scene is a classic).
Ron Sullivan @ 120:
Yeah. That'll look good on a grant request for an elementary school program.
Louis: I have a lay canon, if that'll help?
Who owns a haiku?
They are emitted and then
they belong to all
The article quoted @111 calls Glen Beck a rodeo clown. B'eh--Beck is no rodeo clown, real rodeo clowns put there lives and limbs on the line by being chased by, and sometimes caught by, real 2000lb bulls. No shadowy conspiracy there.
Beck is a crying coward.
He may not be a rodeo clown, but he's a clown
Ha! Was that SNL? Never seen it before.
Drinking in Australia changes you.
He used to be a militant new atheist, biologist, and assistant professor at the University of Minnesota Morris named P.Z. Myers, but now, after visiting an Australian pub, it's almost as if he's become a different person entirely.
He's traded in his crockoduck tie for a leotard and tights. He's dyed his hair and beard and curled his hair.
He's unexpectedly developed an awesome talent as a breakdancer. He's decided to become a beer brewer, although it's not yet clear if he's adding this new career path to his teaching, or dropping the latter for the former.
His 'Merican accent has been swapped for an Aussie one, although that happens to a lot of Americans after a night of two-handed drinking in an Aussie pub.
And, in the biggest shocker of all, P.Z. has changed his name to Kevin Cavandish.
cicely:
Do they look more like porcelain?
LOL. I was thinking of that very story, Rev. The dude had the nerve to post it on Pharyngula as proof that he did great good -- and he used it to berate me for not doing great good. Yes, the time the True Believing Mormons came a-posting was fun. /nostalgia overload
For those who may want to relive the glories of the past, and sample the mormon puffery of "bravestarr", here's the woman-dying-of-malaria comment.
Yeah that was right before SNL went in the shitter for a while.
Glenn "socialism-is-bad-believe-me-I-read-about-it-free-of-charge-at-the-public-library" Beck used drink a lot and was addicted to drugs. I think that severly damaged his brain. He now lives crying and BARKING LIKE A DOG on TV.
I think he's been getting worse. He'll soon be too paranoid and crazy even for Fox News viewers. And his kind doesn't go gently into the night. No, he'll starfart so spectacularly and totally people will be talking about it even years afterwards.
Very interesting finding about cancer.
Oho!
Change we need.
(…My sister didn't grasp the grammar of that one and thought it must be Yodaspeak.)
I think he's been getting worse.
He is and has been for 10 years.
I used to occasionally catch him on the radio back before he went big. He was still a right wing asshole but wasn't nearly outwardly as batshit fucking insane as he is now.
I think the probably of his head imploding in a pink misty pop over something as trivial as even the mention of government run [insert here] is rapidly accelerating to 1.
The only thing that will be left are his temple garments and a strange odor of brimstone and fried bologna.
Needed, change is.[/yoda]
BDC, I'm in on the Madness. I e'd you.
I can't wait for it :-)
The Smithsonian has a new Human Origins Initiative, which has a "Broader Social Impacts Committee" described thusly:
Only one of the members — Joe Watkins, University of Oklahoma — is listed without a formal religious affiliation.
Rev. BDC @ #142 - Seasons 3 and 4 of SNL are on sale at Target for only $16.95 for the next couple of weeks.
You'd only have to give up four or five pounds of bacon to afford one of these!
wait, was that a blockquote failure in #145 from Rev. BigDumbChimp?
NOOoooOOOOOOOOOOOooOOOoOOOOOOOOO
that never happens.
Mr Fire #133,
You can be disappointed all you like, pal, it's not my acronym! ;-)
The practise of enjoying painful manipulation of a gentleman's happy sausage and clockweights is genuiney referred to as CBT....erm...allegedly. I don't know from experience myself you understand.
The Committee mentioned in the clip (ahhhh the Dwarf) is one of the highlight in an excellent show.
------------
iambilly #134,
A lay canon? I suppoe it'll do in a pinch, although I'd prefer a deacon. Had a bishop and two verger's in here last week. Bloody marvellous.
Walton #19,
Re: Anna Arrowsmith. I have just spent some time viewing Mrs Arrowsmith's work. I am going to relax for a while then view some more. Frankly, she needs to up her game to get my vote.
;-)
Louis
(I heard about the Smithsonian HOI at the Panda's Thumb.)
Heh. I swear if I'm ever interviewed and asked what was the single best thing I learned by reading Pharyngula daily, I will immediately and without hesitation reply that it introduced the term "starfart" into my vernacular. And not just because it just sounds damn funny, but because never has a word been so aptly, yet so ironically redefined (from the poor commenter's chosen nym to the descriptive term that so wonderfully encompassed his/her own complete meltdown).
Pharyngula! It's Faaaaaaaantastic!
swwweeeet
I'll send an invite your way
@Rev. BDC:
I did too, I really enjoyed him back then because I was ignorant right wing conservative Christian. Sometime between Obama running for president and now, he snapped and went completely crazy.
I have subsequently stopped listening to him, and his books are now in the pile of other books I don't read anymore - devotionals, biblical word studies, and the bible itself.
After Dust: Word. Rodeo-clownin' ain't nuttin' ta fsck wit. Really. Anybody fearless enough to interact with animals in that fashion has a grand potential to be dangerous*. Beck is too much of a weeper for that metaphor to make sense even remotely. Rodeo clowns should be offended, in any case.
*I am in no way endorsing rodeos or untoward behavior to those of the bovine or equine ilk.
@Celtic_Evolution:
Which thread was the starfart in?
Anyone have a link to the original starfart meltdown?
I'm particularly haunted by the fact that Quack credits himself with "keeping" a terminally ill cancer patient alive for "six more months" after an oncologist told her to "go home and die."
First of all, only a terrible doctor would say that. Having dealt with and met several oncologists I really have never seen them be anything but honest and kind to their patients about the chances of their recovery. Sadly I have seen several friends become ill from cancer and some of them have died.
One in particular was at Stage IV of a fairly rare cancer (mycosis fungoides). She did opt for aggressive treatment, but she ultimately she did die from the cancer which had spread to her lymph system by the time she was diagnosed. Never once did any of her doctors (mind you there's more than one here) tell her to "go home and die."
Similarly the same group of doctors was involved in comforting another person I know who happened to have the same type of rare cancer (what are the odds) with the fact that hers was in an early stage and had a good chance of remission. Currently she is cancer free.
Now, despite the deaths from cancer I know of, not a single one just dropped dead from cancer. Time frames vary. One person lived a month or two, another lived nearly a year longer than expected although she was in horrible pain the whole time. Doctors may give a time frame that is expected, but giving a person a realistic expectation of the development of their disease is not the same as telling them to "go home and die."
Do not hit unless you want your ears to be punished.
You will want the arrow to miss the apple and hit lower.
Hallelujah?
Too crazy for Faux? Is that possible?
Louis @ 151:
A verger? So that would make it a 'merger with a verger'? Or have I just gone down a road I will regret?
Just so. Quack is lying. What do you want to bet he kept his patient from getting the most comfortable palliative and hospice care, too, because that would just be "giving up and dying." So much better to suffer.
Ok Janine, that was painful.
To make up for it, we get the Deodato version.
Enjoy.
The starfart meltdown.
Damn you Janine! That piece just broke the entire Western harmonic tradition. I think foul scorn upon it.
**looks over Feynmaniac's twitching corpse, pistol still in hand**
Yer too slow, tenderfoot...
Whew, that was good.
I've got a few tears from holding back the guffaws.
Especially with BoS,OM's wow at the end.
changing the topic for a minute, if I may. I'm seriously thinking of dropping the Point of Inquiry podcast, and telling CFI that it's because I can't stand Chris Mooney and don't want to support him in any way. I consider him dishonest, and, as a Templeton Fellow, to run counter to what the CFI stands for.
I have nothing against (or for - not enough experience with them) his co-hosts, and what I did hear was interesting.
Has anyone else dropped PoI? did you tell CFI why?
Wow. I missed the original starfart. I'm not sure what to make of that. Wow.
The comments following the starfart are an important part of the experience.
crying here
Oh man that thread is funny.
Feynmaniac later formalized the usage:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/sometimes_i_think_we_break_t…
Starfart may have had an epic meltdown, but does he/she write lucidly about the Congo?*
Louis
*Determined to show horn that one in there.
Is that like Rhino Porn?
I regret having ever made that concession, which I did preemptively to fend off the inevitable BUT HE WRITES GOOD SOMETIMES SO HES NOT A BAD WRITER.
Actually, the way you've pimped it is pretty damn funny, Louis.
Thanks for the link, Celtic_Evolution and Feynmaniac
Also I wish to shoe horn it in.
Horse cocks!
Louis
I see no evidence of this.
I think you are underestimating the size of the reservoir of complete libertarian fuckwits there is out there.
Rupert Murdoch thinks he can make a lot of money exploiting the loonitarian market, and Beck's show writers seem to know how to do this.
You just need to read some of the comments on some of the sites like the drudge report and the various fox owned sites (eg foxnation) to see that Beck is just about at the right level of stupidity, incoherence, childishness, paranoia and ignorance of most of his audience.
Let's be fair to starfart. Here, starfart gives a rather thorough thrashing to the creationist poster, Kevin Wirth. Yes, that meltdown was spectacular. But I wish starfart would show up more often.
ROFL. Come on, Louis, show us a little horn [OSG giggles and twirls hair around finger].
Becca @ 169:
Yes, I dropped it for exactly that reason. I feel a bit petty about it, actually, because some of the interviewees are people I would like to hear from, but the price of having Mooney in my ear is just too fucking high. I nearly starfarted when Mooney--MOONEY, of all people--appeared on MSNBC to discuss the vaccine-autism (non)link with Snyderman, Scarborough et al a few weeks ago, and I felt petty then, too, because he actually said everything I would have hoped a representative of science might say. I wish i could be more magnanimous about it, but my shriveled, rancorous heart just can't take the strain.
There were warning tremors:
Actually, to give credit where credit is due, the first suggestion of the use of the word as a verb describing complete meltdown was by Bride of Shrek in the very same thread.
And she did it hilariously:
Exactly. If I was the creator of something that spectacular I would be here basking in the warm glowing warm glow of my masterpiece.
Nothing to be ashamed of if you have the occasional meltdown
In fact I'd say it is good for you.
And that one probably extended starfart's life by a few weeks.
@Janine:
Wow, that is a nice post.
After scrolling down, I know realize that Kevin Wirth was the tick tock asshole.
Sven, your #182 is FAIL! Must have content after colon; am curious!
Ahhh good catch.
Shoo! I'm not sharing. Find your own caninely well-endowed population! The paleontologists are miiiine!
shit, that one got away from me. Damn it, I can't find it now, but I'm certain I remember a little warm-up pre-starfart that was posted an hour or two before the Main Event.
Echoing RBDC's sentiments in #184... no doubt. "Starfart" is an homage to a glorious complete meltdown by an otherwise respectable and likable commenter.
In fact, I think I shall make my way to Urban Dictionary and suggest a new entry...
ah! Here it is:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/the_never-ending_bull_sessio…
Rev BDC #174,
No that's just one attempt at my takeover of your title as King of Typos. World domination is not enough.
---------
Josh OSG and Locutus of Gay #175,
I don't know Mr (Dr?) Laden and bear the man no ill will. I've enjoyed some of his output before, so I agree, his writing is not universally terrible. As if *I'm* in a position to criticise! LOL
The recent DRAMA and arseholery from Greg has been amusing as an outsider, but IMO it's shown him up as something of a muppet. Pity really. The "writes lucidly on the Congo" stuff just amused the hell out of me. It just sounded so incongruous amongst the rest of people's comments. It seemed to be damning with faint praise, and I laughed pretty hard at it. It needs wider attention imo.
I probably shouldn't pimp it, but if I can get my own (positive) contribution to Pharyngula Lore then my incredibly low standards of Internet Contribution will be met and I can die a happy commenter. Or not. ;-)
Louis
"formalized"
I would never think of denying BoS her due yuks!
Which you of course realize puts me in the perfect position to be critical of everyone's typos.
Sven #194
Ah. Point taken. ;^)
I love it when 'Recent Coomments' is all teh Thread!
is indeed a richly evocative phrase for some reason.
I think I'll start using it to soften the blow a bit, should I ever get involved in another argument, which I don't plan to.
"You are an idiot. A fool. You wouldn't know logic if it bit your lingual frenulum. Yo mama so stupid it took her 2 hours to watch 60 minutes*.
But you write lucidly on the Congo."
*yes I googled for that one
Ugh. My glamorous life has come to a screeching halt. I have to go the city dump. Can you imagine? Serves me right for being so cheap I won't hire a garbage removal service.
In my absence, I'll be accepting comments on what I should have for supper.
Thank you. SpokesGay out.
That lovely meltdown must have happened during one of my non-pharyngula-reading phases. I regret missing it!
I've felt like starfart when attempting to read this blog on my iPhone.
iPhone does not like scienceblogs. iPhone does not like many many comments. iPhone makes me sad some times and glad I bought it off a friend for 50 bucks instead of paying $$$ for one from ATT. Scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll... oops page refreshed... scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll....
Iphone would not let me get in that many characters before refreshing the blog though, thus deleting all my hard earned psychotic rage.
Lynna:
*blush*Thank you.
I'm no Cuttlefish,
But I can, at least, haiku
Like a mad woman.
Sven:
Very generous of you (no sarcasm).
Still, I prefer to at least give people a quick heads-up while I'm filing the serial numbers off of their intellectual property. :)
KOPD:
I suppose they do, only with a more matte finish, and without the floral motif painted on.
@Josh, OSG:
Supper, eh? How about chorizo and baby onion casserole? Tis what I'm having.
Thai salmon basil curry with coconut lime scented rice.
There you go, problem solved.
Aah, I see. My faith in you is restored!
Next you time you go to the therapy session that takes place next to the S&M dungeon...make sure you choose the correct door!
Yep I've 100% stopped torturing myself trying to read and especially comment from my iPhone.
It's unbearable.
That's the one feature I'd love to get from teh sciborg
A mobile version of the blogs.
*laughs hysterically at the thought of the sciborg undergnomes being able to deliver.
I do not know about iPhone but on my crackberry, I installed Bolt. Sometimes, it can be a bit temperamental, but it get the web page. Not the mobile phone version where I have to keep moving onto the next page.
off topic:
Hey, PZ, Gov. Pawlenty is up no good.
http://tinyurl.com/christiansoldiers
http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2010/03/don_betzold_acc.php
Josh OhSoGood #181,
I will have you know I am not that kind of boy on a first date. Even then I'm not a slay, it's tits first then fanny.*
(Sound of ominous obvious galloping knob joke)
I am afraid I cannot show you a little horn....I can show you a great BIIIIIG horn.**
Louis
* I suppose given the Americanness of much of the audience, that can be taken either way. Rather like this girl I once knew from Nuneaton...Annnnyway....
** Actual horn size may vary. Contents may have settled in transit.
Oh fuck.
Prepare for the anti-predator asshole brigade to come out in full force now. Expect Sarah Palin to be there leading the protest reading the keynote off the back of her hand.
Mmmm... sounds tasty...
I'm going to be whipping up polenta-encrusted chicken with balsamic caper sauce and wild rice...
Mr Fire #204,
But my therapist was strapped to a vaulting horse and told me to come on in.
I need a new therapist. Or perhaps I don't.
Louis
@Rev BDC:
Awesome... now I'm going to be upset. I was at the Museum of Natural History here in DC, and there's a room with lots of different stuffed mammals (holy freakin' crap the meeces were cute - look up 'Harvest Mouse' on Google Images. That sucker is so tiny and so cute.)
Anyway, back off my tangent, there was a grey wolf on display, and it made me go all teary-eyed knowing that in the future, that's the only way my grandchildren will be able to see them, instead of being able to see the majesty of the creatures in the wild or a zoo.
Iphone = Safari = total suckage.
No flash support, and the only 3rd party browsers you can get are pieces of crap like Edge and others which all must be based on WebKit to work on the iPhone, and aren't really "browsers" but just more like "skins" for Safari.
Oh and Josh OSG,
Dinner: Jello shots of various flavours followed by body shots off the desirable person of your chosing. Cocktail of drugs du jour followed by dancing and comedy homeward journey involving a traffic cone, a kebab, a bus shelter and the Emergency dept (don't worry, just a sprain).
Ok so that's what I'm having*. You?
Louis
*Actual night out may vary. We may substitute shitty nappies, cooking dinner, washing up then early bed so two hours writing a paper for Org Let can be done before the ankle biter wakes, without warning.
Josh, Official SpokesGay In my absence, I'll be accepting comments on what I should have for supper.
Well, I'm having Tuscan grilled ham, radicchio and fresh peas in cream sauce served over spaghetti rigati. I will accompany it with some leftover homemade Italian batter bread and a field greens salad.
(((Wife))) and I have a deal: I cook, she cleans up. And it has worked for nigh onto 20 years (well, 20 years come May something-or-other (at least, I think it's 20 years (1989 to 2010 -- shit, it's 21 years (which means (((Boy))) turns 20 (I lost a year somewhere)))). Over 20 years. Or something.
Let's see. Lack of planovers. Neighborhood tea. I see the Redhead wanting to go to the local family restaurant for dinner of salmon or the fish fry.
Free dinosaur app from the AMNH! Seems to show detailed photos, the kind of thing scientists need... I don't have an iPhone, but perhaps I need one. Occasionally. :-)
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
LOL! 2:41: two people ask independently for a link to the original starfart. 2:46: two other people independently provide the direct link to the comment.
:-)
And then comes...
LOL! Pharyngula is a mood-altering substance ^_^
But... as far as I can tell, nobody even so much as implied taking any paleontologists away from you. :-)
Uh... is that privatized in the USA? Like health insurance?
o_O
Cress soup. I hadn't had any in a long time (an entire week, or almost), so I'm finishing my second plate now. :-) And this after having had a slightly different kind of cress soup for dinner!
...well... what edibles have you got at home?
:-o
That sounds so good I might even get over the coconut part.
Louis, are you, by any chance, Hunter S. Thompson risen from the dead? Or reincarnated?
Dude, are you...
Did...
Did you just...?
I think that costs more than a camera.
Sorry, my answer was a little unclear. K is predetermined for a single run of the program, but the method itself involves multiple runs. No study I've read has only reported results at one K. I was more answering Antiochus generally than talking about any specific study.
It's true that there is some arbitrary choice involved in the range of K, but the method doesn't necessarily "bin" individuals into one single group because they can have membership in multiple clusters.
No, see, that's what doctors do, every Doc "I wish I'd specialised in plastic surgery so I could be staring at silicone implants all day instead of treating these--ugh!--people" Hollywood-esque one of 'em. In contrast naturopaths, to the qi-harnessing last one of 'em, got into medicine because they were born of a holy union of Jesus and a rainbow and dream of nothing but treating the whole person and only accept money because one can't buy empty homeopathy bottles with Kumbaya choruses.
/quack
You know these assholes can only get away with saying such shit in a vacuum. People like me who--ahem!--work in chronic disease surveillance specialising in cancer and work closely with more dedicated, caring, and compassionate oncologists than asshats like quackalicious can count without taking off their shoes aren't fooled. I've met palliative and end-of-life teams in hospitals. Suggesting they say "go home and die" is complete dishonesty. It really just suggests that either they have no idea what real medicine is (likely), or they're total fucking liars with an economic stake in painting real medicine in the harshest, most unkind light possible (slightly likelier).
David Marjanović: on the Friday Cephalopod thread I drew your attention to an article, and I'd be interested in your opinion.
X-D
Impressive. But both polenta and wild rice?
Polenta is best fried in salted butter and eaten with pörkölt <drool> or fried bacon (with all its grease). Delicious (if you used enough butter), and you won't be hungry for the rest of the day. :-)
why are you all talking about dinner already? I haven't had breakfast yet...
Those young heathens are off to the first talk at the GAC, 0830am.Spawn is 3 today, so I'm going to be handing over prezzies before I go back and join the fracas later, which is good since it gives me time to somehow recover from last night's uhm, goings-on.
It is a thing to behold, people sitting in pubs reading TGD at midnight, gazillions of godless folks laughing, enjoying, excited about this event, even real crazy xtian people in the streets handing out Comfort screeds!!
Expect much celebration today, and even more tone concern expressed from the other side !!
@David:
My problem with reading Pharyngula on the iPhone is that the longer threads simply crash Safari. Lots. Waiting for a 500+ post thread to reload is annoying as fuck (though it seems like the ads cause the longest holdup). Wait times aside, I have a few tricks that make reading Pharyngula easier.
First, I use the "find in page" bookmarklet* to avoid scrolling through what I've already read. This requires remembering something unique to search for near where you left off, though, since the feature only takes you to the first instance of what you're searching. Usually the post number (with the number sign) works. There's also a bookmarklet for going to the bottom of a page, but I don't have that one, so I can't comment on how well it works.
Second, if I want to refresh the page without finding where I was, I press and hold the date and time link of the post I'm on and choose "Open in New Page."
.....................
*You have to bookmark the bookmarklets in Safari or IE on your main computer and then sync them with your phone. However, this will replace all the current bookmarks on your phone, so you might want to sync the other way first. And if you don't want to overwrite your computer's bookmarks, then make a copy of your bookmarks file and use the copy to replace the bookmarks after you get the bookmarklets onto your phone. It's a hassle, but being able to search a page is well worth it.
I don't know what's for dinner. I had leftover chicken tikka masala for lunch with some particularly flavorful basmati.
I still have a couple hours of work left. No use thinking of dinner.
Oh... for some reason I'm feeling an oppressive sadness.
.ugh.
David Marjanović (#223)
In English, polenta sometimes refers to the raw corn meal and not the porridge. I'm guessing that's the case here.
Maybe I misunderstand, but that's the way it is here in my location in the Midwest. There are several providers to choose from, but all are commercial. Can't say I'm happy about the price, but the landfill is an hour's drive from here so I pay it.
I just replied. In short, I have yet to read the paper...
:-) I never have breakfast except for a mug of milk, because I simply don't get up early enough – I read my e-mails, take a look at the Internet, and go to the cafeteria. On weekends, I almost always skip breakfast, too (usually I don't even have bread in the house... though I'll probably buy some tomorrow!), and start cooking sometime in the afternoon... or early evening even... depends, actually, less on my hunger than on when I finally manage to peel myself off the computer. :-]
:-9
well, I do usually have breakfast, and then lunch around 8pm, and dinner sometime after midnight :-p
I do tend to keep eating as long as I'm awake, if I'm not already seriously filled.
Since I'm trying to be more creative (and cheap) about my meals, I took David's advice to see what I had on hand. So, supper will be split pea soup (with BACON) and garlic/parmesan polenta cakes. All ingredients on hand, and I can eat it for days.
If I did that, I'd weigh half a ton. I have distinct meals specifically because otherwise I'd eat waaaay too much
You guys are killing me with these succulent menu choices. I've yet to find time to consume anything but tea (with milk, at least) today, and it's just gone 2PM. After a vigorous 3000m swim a couple of hours ago, I'm beginning to feel a bit light-headed.
The makeup of the planned evening meal at Chez Phillips is too humiliating to mention, but in my defense it's the end of the week, the cupboards are bare, and my son is playing in a basketball tournament at 6PM. I'll just have to lie back and think of Tuscan grilled ham :)
Josh,
might I suggest a beverage to go with that?
It looks as if the paranoia over at the InterDungeon has reached a climax with Kwok's latest remark :
*headdesk*
????????
So, he's not equating this with Stu's comment, oh dear me, no--he's merely using it as an irrelevant example to advance his argument that something needs to be done to PZ/Pharyngula?
What a tool.
Kwok seems to have been getting slimy insinuation lessons from Laden.
Kwok's actual latest (note that it did go into moderation and was let out, so one of the Wonder Twins either approved of it or didn't disagree enough to say so, as my later post was originally posted where his was not yet there):
Oh I wish I could do that. Nothing seems to keep me from eating. I have a feeling I could eat my shoes while walking if I got hungry enough :(
Some exercise would be good too. I've been so freaking weak now I almost dread working out again. It's going to be frustrating.
Holy crap. First we lost Jon Swift, and now we're losing Internet Monk. I don't know if anyone here read him, but as far as Christians go, he was one of the good ones. I read a lot of his stuff while in the process of deconverting, because he was of the same denomination as me but further along the sanity continuum than those I had grown up with.
Josh, OSG:
Mmmph, I'm barely awake and still having tea. *Wanders off, has a look at the foodstuffs* Umm, Chile Verde tonight:
Gearjammers Chile Verde
2 pounds pork (loin preferred)
3/4 pound chopped mild green chiles, roasted and cleaned
1/2 pound cubed hot green New Mexico chiles, roasted and cleaned
1/4 green bell pepper, finely chopped
6 medium green onions (white part only), finely chopped
5 medium tomatillos, chopped
7 large serrano peppers, finely chopped with no seeds
2 ounces finely chopped garlic
12 ounces any green chile sauce
14 ounces chicken broth
3 teaspoons salt
Brown meat and drain any fat, 1 pound at a time. Add all other ingredients
except 1/4 pound hot chiles and 1 teaspoon salt. Simmer on medium for 1 1/2
hours.
Add the rest of the green chiles, chopped hot peppers and the rest of the
salt (if needed). Cook on low simmer 1/2 hour. Serve with white beans and
flour tortillas.
Oh, by the way, note that Kwok isn't even describing the offending post accurately. There is an argument to be made against Stu's post, if one has no problem with playing fast-and-loose with the context. They're not even doing that, preferring to boldly lie where no man (or woman) bothers checking the source before clutching pearls. This is the sort of intellectual dishonesty and empty posturing they have been cultivating ever since they moved to Discover.
If you want to snort and giggle in disbelief, read this
except
if you know any schoolchildren in Texas.
The map of school board districts should be safe, however.
I wonder if that's actually true. You see, after I've been eating solid massive chocolate for an hour or two, I'm simply out of hunger, and supper has to be postponed...
Here, during the week, when I arrive in the "lab" (more like "office"), I eat the dessert I brought from the cafeteria, then I eat the stuff I brought from home (depending on what phase I'm having that can be a choco "corn"flakes plagiate, pains au chocolat, a Twix plagiate, just chocolate, or potato chips), then I notice I've stopped eating because I'm no longer hungry, then I get hungry again and continue munching... At home I only drink milk and, at most, eat soup. Unless I didn't have enough to eat in the cafeteria and/or afterwards; then I cook something.
Having three square meals a day and nothing between them isn't an option for me. I can't eat a lot at once, and I get hungry again fairly quickly.
:-S
Rip yourself off the computer and eat. Something. Anything but the furniture.
Interesting he didn't say "about" PZ Myers and Pharyngula. You would think if he perceived us as a threat, even in a fit of typical insanity, he would have said about.
"To" does imply something different. I guess he things we should be punished or made an example of, whether or not any real danger is posed. I wonder what he'd like to do "to" us? Somehow I think his imagination runs far beyond the limited jurisdiction of SEED Media.
It starts with censorship, oh but where does it end?
Kw*k's latest latest:
Lol. I wonder if he's holding seances with Eminent Teacher and Bestselling Memoirist Frank McCourt, whom he had the pleasure of taking instruction from at The Country's Leading High School.
To be fair to Kwok, I did bait him about Miller. Mostly in trying to sort out negentropy's question about why Kwok mentioned the Elton John threat arrest if he did not mean to compare the situations. My hypothesis was that Ken Miller stopped answering his emails, and he picked up correspondence with Glenn Beck to fill in the void. I am sad that he only dropped the name of one Famous Friend in his response -- it seems atypical.
*shakes head slowly from side to side, and not for the first time, in abject wonder at J*hn Kw*k*
Kwak:
The 'net is a theatre now? Hmph. Perhaps someone should point Kwak in the direction of http://www.love-shy.com/phpBB3/ - there are few people there who gleefully advocate rape and other abuse.
Kw*k scares me. Like really. He's creepy as fuck. I can just imagine him writing one of his *friends* about a lunch date that never manifests. Yet he keeps writing. Never getting it. Never even considering....
Oh, Caine, that's a fine chili verde recipe! Will file that away for another time. In reciprocation, here's my tortilla recipe. Having discovered that no self-respecting real Mexican restaurant would serve store-bought, I can't go back to commercial flour tortillas. One bite of the real thing, and store-bought tastes horrible.
SpokesGay's Tortillas
3 cups flour
2 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. baking powder
4-5 tbsp. fat (lard works best for flavor and texture, but shortening is good too. Do not use liquid vegetable oil)
1 and a scant 1/4 cup warm water
*note* - These are flour tortillas, which are easier to work with than corn. But I oftenuse about 25 percent corn meal because I like the flavor of corn, with the pliability of flour. You can subst. 1/4 of the flour for corn meal, if you want.
Combine dry ingredients. Then cut in shortening until mixture is in coarse crumbs. Add warm water, stir, then knead about 10 times to combine. Let sit for 15 minutes for flour to soak up water, and dough to firm up. Meanwhile, heat a skillet (preferably cast iron) on high.
Divide dough into about 12 balls, golf-ball size or smaller. Flour the living hell out of your counter and your rolling pin - you're going to need it to keep tortillas from sticking. Take a ball and flatten it with your palm on the floured surface. Roll it out a few inches, flip over, and give it a quarter turn, so when you roll it next, it stretches in a sort-of-circular way. Repeat until about 1/4" thick or thinner. Don't worry about it being perfectly round. . .that's almost impossible.
Put your tortilla in the hot pan, and wait about 45 seconds until you see air pockets bubble up high. As long as the underside has some nice brown spots, flip over for another 30 secs until done. You can tell by looking at it. Remove to a plate, and cover. Repeat with remaining tortillas.
If they seem to burn too quickly, wipe the pan out with a paper towel soaked in oil. This brushes out the burnt flour, and regreases the pan. Be sparing with the oil though, or they'll be greasy.
They do freeze well, but it's better to make the dough, make the balls, then freeze them in a ziploc.
Josh... I'm totally going to try making those tonight.
Me too, Ol'Greg. As someone else said recently, I think he is truly mentally disordered (not speaking metaphorically). That sort of makes me feel bad when I tease him, but he's not so crazy that I feel like I'm way out of line. Don't know.
Oooh, thank you, Josh! Recipe snagged and into my file. If there's one thing I do miss about SoCal, it's all the excellent Mexican food.
mmm.. tortillas - may have to try this one. I've never made my own tortillas.
So, I just played my bagpipes for a Catholic funeral. Didn't burst into flames on the doorstep, & the pastor even wants me back ("but do you play anything quieter?" "umm.. no"). Spread the atheist love!
But I think Antiochus was responding to the video, which talks about the Rosenberg study specifically. Problems, again, discussed in the chapter I mentioned above.
This is theater of the absurd. I have to say this comment (sockpuppet? don't know) made me furious:
Who the hell are you? And who do you think you are offering anything on behalf of anyone but yourself?
*glares, calmly, at Louis*
I wouldn't feel too bad. Just before that he did this
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/02/building_bridges_to_the_leade…
Orac's reaction to which prompted this
http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2010/02/important_news_someone_says_st.php
@Ol'Greg
Is it intentional that your name leads to a directory listing instead of a web page? If not, changing it to "*/music.html" would properly display the music subpage of your website instead of a directory listing of your music files.
Testing the HTML toolbar:
testing
testing
one1
two2
three3
Not sure I am doing this right
Hey...it works. Cool. Thanks!
They're easy, but consider your first few roll-outs practice. The key is really, really liberally flouring the surface, and the rolling pin. Don't be afraid of the flour - otherwise the dough will stick and tear.
Their irregular shape is part of the charm, too. Let me know how you do. They're really amazingly good for something so simple. I brought them to a potluck last weekend, and no one in the entire room had ever had homemade tortillas. They were raving like they'd discovered food for the first time.
Kw*k still wants PZ to send him a camera.
Speaking of ERV, hasn't Kw*k long been banned from there, for stalking Abbie? I may be wrong. Seems like being banned from (at least) two of the leading Scienceblogs - including the one you're complaining about - would somewhat diminish your credibility here.
Yes.
Haha... yeah it's intentional. My website is so old and ugly. I made it one night and had every intention of building a good one. I did start one with some nice CSS interface but I never got it to where I liked it. Then I stopped making art for a while after I left grad school.
Now I sort of want to make a better website but part of me wonders what the point would be.... *trails off into depression*.... *emerges*... anyway.
I was showing some one some new songs I had written that we were going to work on... and I dumped them there. So then I just linked to the directory ever since.
I have plans. I really do. To make a new recording of the songs that were going to be on the cd that seems to be falling apart due to people who kind of suck. I'm terrible at editing and recording. I also don't really have anyone around to play anything besides what I play. Not that I would bother because like I said, I'm piss poor at editing. And yet I am trying even as I type to get a good recording so I can make a video for it... and then post it on vimeo or youtube (poor youtube where I dumped a handful of vids of me practicing) and and and...
bleh.
But yeah. I know it goes to the directory. Sorry if that was waaaaay more response than you asked for.
You know what, people? It's only midnight, but I'll go to bed. I'm tired enough (Pharyngula kept me up too long the whole week), and this way I'll wake up hungry and can start to cook soon. :-)
There once was a young man quite dear,
He was atheist, rationalist, and queer.
He drank and he posted,
'Til he brain was right toasted,
In pursuit of the Infinite Beer.
OK well so comment #268 on this subThread would be Comment #33333 overall for teh Thread.
Except that recently, by accident, looking for something else, and to my dismay, believe me, I discovered a mmmmm a discrepancy between the count I had for a particular subThread and the number that appeared on PZ's portcullis post. A difference of one comment. But so then of course I wondered, and checked a few, and damn it, found another.
I do not know the causes of these discrepancies; I suspect moderation and global spam-away measures as possibilities as well as me being stoned or whatever.
But the point is that I can not at present vouch for the accuracy of the Count as cross-validated with the current contents of archived subThreads.
I guess I'm going to have to change everything.
Done. I was running an experiment and couldn't leave the lab--didn't realize how empty I was until the endorphins wore off :O. I've since ransacked my officemates desk and turned up Pita chips and a heatable packet of Palak Paneer. Topped it off with a purloined Venchi chocolate. Brain functions returning to normal.
I hear you--it's hard to get motivated when you've been out of it for a while. Try to go with the 'something is better than nothing' mantra--even if the 'something' is a 15 minute walk around the neighborhood, or 10 pushups before bed, or whatever. For me, it's all about delineating clear goals. I can't just jump in and start swimming until I get to 3000 meters--it's broken up into a set of smaller chunks of drills, sprints, warm ups & downs,etc. I get bored to tears with anything chunk larger than 400 without a break, but it's also psychologically very satisfying for me to reach a big goal by breaking it up into smaller pieces.
Re: Kw*k et al...man, every time I think they can't possibly sink any lower, they do. I'm still to angry to comment over there, but my hat's off to all of you with the chops to stay the course.
No need to apologize for unsolicited information. I offered an unsolicited question, and fair is fair :-). If music is something you enjoy doing (it seems like it is?), I do hope you can come to a solution that works for you!
We've all(?) familiar with denialism, albeit mostly scientific denialism: Of AGW, evolution, et al. Today in the IHT (International Herald Tribune, “The global edition of the NYTimes”) I read about financial denialism; that is, denying that you've been had by a conman: This is the NYTimes version of the piece, which in the IHT had a better title, Victims in Denial See Conspiracies:
Still hungry, but not enough that I could eat anything right now. Eating will have to wait for tomorrow.
Not only for that – it seems he kept expecting her to ban anyone who disagreed with him.
Oh and yeah... if you want to see the old thing in all it's ugly tabled half finished and awesomely out of touch glory just delete the /music but... uh... it's not worth it.
You could try just googling my name for more sporting fun. I was torn between linking to that site in the hopes I might be inspired towards a manic night of website building.
Ooooor to my blog. Which I don't keep up very well. But I put a funny picture of a note found in our company toilets there.
Well played, sir. Well played indeed.
*applause*
Is it possible to be more incoherent and paranoid than Kwok ?
First he says he's not equating PZ with the guy issuing death threats to Elton John. But after being asked why he mentionned it, he says that if the police could arrest such a guy, than SEED should inflict the harshest penalty possible on PZ and his blog.
Kwok is definitely mad.
:-)
Let's see how many I can do.
...Didn't quite finish the fifth. And there's that uncomfortable tingling in my lips from the increased blood pressure.
All my power in the legs. Plus, my arms are so long I'm at a mechanical disadvantage :-þ
Sven,
We trusted you to keep an accurate count of posts and now you've let us down. I predict Josh OSG will be crying himself to sleep tonight. Ol'Greg won't be working on her website due to worry about when post 33333 actually appeared. And I'll have to be rude to at least one l-wordian before I can regain my composure.
Aren't you ashamed of yourself? I know Louis is ashamed of you.
I'll cry if I can only do 10. Two months ago I was doing 100 (breaks in between though)
@Stoney Curtis #269:
You're fired, pothead.
5 is a good start though David M. Before I was doing 100 I had not been able to do 1.
Maybe a couple years ago? I weighed 120 but I had nooo strength/tone. Then I got into dance and yoga... and then I started wanting to be able to do handstands....
Huh, for some reason my last post doesn't even show up as awaiting moderation on The Intersection. Not calling foul yet since it's glitched like that before, but funny that it happens the one time I don't copy-paste it to another window before submitting. It went something like...
It's also obvious that PZ isn't even trying to keep up with the comment threads at the moment. He's just hit and run posting to the front page between events at the atheist convention in Australia.
More specifically, it was in reference to Kwok's "I'm not comparing these two situations, but don't they look a whole lot alike?". That stuff is Beck's bread and butter.
You can't have mine! (Mostly because I ate it.) A starter of pâté de canard, and then a risotto aux Saint-Jacques, with a gaspacho d'ananas dessert. All washed down with a fine wine.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/03/12/2010-03-12_federal_…
A pair judge has decided that god has nothing to do with religion and there is a poll that needs help. From the article they dont seem to understand that the words 'under god' were not in the original pledge, nor is the pledge around for the founding fathers. I was in school when they added god to the pledge of allegiance and it still doesn't sound right to me after all these years. I havn't said it in years.
Let's go sort them out !
Britomart
With reference to my fix in 282 of negentropyeater's Intersection Post, a funny thought occurred to me. The commenters there get up in arms regularly because dirty words come out on a blog where 99.99999% of posts are never positively approved by the moderator, while posting on a cesspool with plenty of objectionable content where basically any content longer than 4 lines is actively approved for posting by the moderators. It's just...baffling.
update
...a possibly imprecise update, but still.
My present feeling is that there are only the 2 errors already identified, that they neatly cancel each other out, and so all is copacetic.
But I'll check.
uh, ma
well, it's how it works for me. I seem to only have two modes (hungry and stuffed), so if I didn't schedule my meals, I'd eat ridiculous amounts of food, which I can't afford, both financially and weight-wise. I've been known to eat a whole loaf of (German) bread (or several bags of chips, or 5kg of nectarines) in a day.
So, I have to make sure I only eat 3 distinct meals a day. it means I'm almost always a bit hungry, but it beats feeling nauseatingly stuffed and gaining any more weight.
Religious Snail Mucus
For those of us left back in the northern hemisphere, a little didg:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFGvNxBqYFI&feature=related
Holy crap, this is sad.
I guess the benefit of ousting McLeroy can only stretch so far.
Paul #285
Would they accept this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QWMF07nFso
Jen, I've been reading about that mess. It's beyond sad. From your link:
And on it goes. Geez, why don't they just declare "no school for kids! no mandatory education!" These kids brains will end up shriveled rather than enriched.
Snail mucus, eh?
Better to have "the crappuccino delicacy".
I just found out PZ is coming to Syracuse next month! Less than a month from now, in fact. I am... I can't.... there is a very happy dance going on inside my brain right now, let me tell you.
Yes, I followed that Saaaahgaaaaah--in fact CM's recent accommodationist-toned article coming right before his MSNBC appearance only added to my outrage. It galled me to no end that of all the people who have spoken out tirelessly agains the antivax lunacy--people who could have capably filled that seat--bridge-building milquetoast Mooney got the call. *fume*
I should be thankful that he didn't go all 'outspoken scientists are driving worried parents to the other side' on the air, I suppose.
And now, I must away, to the gritty, chaotic third grade basketball tournament. Go Flesh Eaters!
John:
Er, no, no thanks.
I got slightly bored and remembered Kirshenbaum is friendly with Isis (or so I recall, correct me if I'm wrong). I note a distinct lack of pearl-clutching when it comes to Isis's comment section:
OMG! Rape apologetics!
OMG, more rape apologetics! They're contributing to the rape culture!
OMG! They're advocating rape in return for breaking the law! The horror!
Fuck the Intersection. The only reason we're even talking about this at all is they (both the hosts and the vast majority of the commenters) have a bug up their ass about Pharyngula and are searching for excuses to raise shit.
I just got accused of sexism over there. For reals, y'all.
Oh, and they're still calling it "rape imagery". Troll troll troll.
I honestly don't know which is worse--no school at all, or a state-mandated education composed of a whitewashed, overtly biased, heavily revised version of reality. No mandatory education would at least keep the hope alive that some independently motivated kids would seek to fill their empty pages with something genuine. The TBOE standards are starting to sound downright Orwellian. Brrrrrr.
That fucking Calliou is a bald little French asshole. He can go fuck his little bald French ass.
Nice one (or three) Paul. If you haven't already posted these over at the pile-up, you totally should.
And damn, don't even get me started on Isis.
stuv:
Oh now, what did you expect? I mean, look at the language you use. It's obvious violence and other anti-pearlite actions! You, you, you criminal! *clutches pearls in distress*
Paul - one of those quotes was from Comrade PhysioProf, who gets a pass because, well.. because. That's just how he is. Interesting that Sheril hasn't ever complained about him that I know of, though. As for Isis in general, um, I'll be in the corner with Jen specifically not talking about it.
Caillou?!
*checks*
Oh, CPP. :)
***
Apropos of nothing, I liked this recent comment by Owlmirror:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/03/sins_of_omission.php#comment…
Carlie:
I'll join you both.
I'm watching John Barrowman on BBCAmerica "The making of me: John Barrowman". He just took his trousers off.
What was broken?
David M., re push-ups,
I used to be able to do 60-65 push-ups in two minutes. I've lost some upper-body strength lately, but can still manage 30 in one go, and 50 in under two minutes.
Isis swears and insults with swears* as much as anyone I've ever heard (with the exception of CPP, who is, exceptional). But of course she's Catholic, so I guess that gets her a pass.
*directed at me, btw (when she thought I was male): "In that case, you have one of three options. You can 1) leave the conversation, 2) whine like a little bitch..."
I should add that when I was 17, I was very, very thin and weak and had no upper-body strength. I weight-trained regularly for a couple of years, and gained a few kilos of lean muscle. I'm never going to be Arnold Schwarzenegger, but being a little fitter and stronger did make a massive difference to my self-esteem and quality of life. (So you can only imagine what my self-esteem was like in secondary school...)
Capitalism is a specific technical term in economics. If I'm discussing capitalism I can't think of another word or short phrase to use in its place.
(So you can only imagine what my self-esteem was like in secondary school...)
Please do not feel insulted by the fact that I will not imagine that.
Yes, but do you think the Texas State Board of Education know that? They probably think "negative externalities" are when you paint the outside of your house an ugly colour, and a "liquidity trap" is one of those barrels for catching rainwater that runs off the roof. :-)
Gotta love when a woman tells an other person to whine like a little bitch. Shows that she buys into the idea that women, in general, are weak and ineffective.
Moniker changed back to seriousness. Though I might go all-out for a more extravagant pseudonym in future. "Walton" is so 2000s. Maybe I should be "Augustus Biscuit-Barrel IV, Prince of the Stars."
Just turned to it myself, Caine. I'm a bit on edge wondering how they're addressing this whole "what makes people gay" thing, but it was quite yummy watching him speak with a brogue with his family.
Janine:
Aarrgghh, she gets on my nerves, always has.
So far it's really leaning towards "gay guys are effeminate and gay women are butch", which is disappointing.
Carlie:
I loved the brogue. As soon as they brought on the guy who was gay for 17 years, then "chooses" to be straight, I said to myself, "I'm going to hear christian in 3, 2, 1..." Sure enough. Bleargh.
Augustus Biscuit-Barrel IV, Prince of the Stars!
Walton, sir, you have more facets than most brilliant cut diamonds.
Carlie, yes that was disappointing. I imagine there's more to it, at least I hope there's more to it. I wasn't gender-normative as a kid; I'm bi though. Haven't seen that one addressed.
Lynna waaaaay back at #218,
I'm going to take that as a compliment! LOL
Sadly no, I'm just an ex-rugby playing drunkard with delusions of adequacy and a hedonistic streak a mile wide! ;-)
----------------
SC waaaaaaaaaay-ish back at #259,
You can glare all you like, Madam. I will remain unfazed mainly through a combination of alcoholic haze and sheer bloodymindedness! ;-)
I'm not saying that every element of the episode is amusing, not all of them are, but the general ability of Greg's own-foot-marksmanship is astonishing. Astonishing to the point of making me laugh. My perspective is, of course, different from yours. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Louis
So far it's really leaning towards "gay guys are effeminate and gay women are butch", which is disappointing.
Reminds me of the femme lesbians who feel invisible because in straight society, people assume they are also straight and in some parts of the community, they are not quite equal.
And now I feel like I am airing dirty laundry.
Walton @316,
sorry, you'll have to think of another moniker, that's the name of my five month old kitten you've just quoted.
(Well, not really: his breeding name is "Josie Chocolate Chip Biscuit", and because of his considerable proportions he is already being referred to as "Tarquin... Bus-stop F'tang P'tang Olé Biscuit Barrel")
Why don't you go with something unambitious such as, Walton, Emperor of the Northern Hemisphere, and I'll take the South? Deal.
Pope Maledict DCLXVI
Argh - he's using navigation as a clue as to John's gayness? Again, it's taking gay and equating it to characteristics of the other gender. Argh. The directors need to be set upon by a bunch of bears and lipstick lesbians.
"What do you want me to do? LEAVE? Then they'll keep being wrong!"
/xkcd
There was a Daniel Smith that I argued with a bit here on Pharyngula, a couple of years ago. I wonder if this is the same person? I kinda doubt it, if for no other reason than the previous Daniel Smith seemed to be more aware of science, and less interested in using medieval theology in his arguments.
I suppose I could ask...
Hey Walton, after all this talk about mental health, I hope you don't mind if I make an observation about you.
As a less-frequent commenter over the last year, I've got a rather time-compressed impression of many of the regulars, and it seems to me that you've really become much more comfortable 'in your own skin' as of late, as the saying goes. You seem happier and more at ease. I hope this translates into your offline life as well.
(I say this because of a conversation we had quite some time ago when you expressed that you were feeling quite down, and if it's the case that you're feeling better I'm happy for you.)
*It just occurred to me that I might have just used terms that are not considered good ones - sorry if I did. I thought those were ok, but now that it's there in print I'm not sure.
Janine:
That's one more marker in pointing out that orientation and gender identity just aren't as black and white as some people make it out to be.
Intercessory prayer for the alleviation of ill health, Roberts L, Ahmed I, Hall S, Davison A,
good find. just saved the full pdf of that for my collection.
Yeah... I knew I'd subconsciously stolen the "Biscuit-Barrel" part from somewhere.
By coincidence, I think someone else posted this Python sketch (maybe on Dispatches rather than here) in response to the Texas SBOE Republican primaries. Don McLeroy certainly qualifies as an "Extremely Silly" candidate.
Thomas Ratliff (Sensible Party): 56,207 votes.
Don Tarquin Fim-Nim-Bim-Lim-Nim-Fim-Busstop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuit-Barrel McLeroy (Silly Party): 55,368 votes.
Women's Day Falls during National Penis Week
An in depth look at how and why International Women's Day fell during National Penis Week in the United States in 2010.
A dialog so complex, it could have never evolved, it had to have been created by Scooter, Massa, Ashburn, Roy Zimmerman, and Germaine Greer.
http://acksisofevil.org/audio/inner261.mp3
from http://acksisofevil.org/innerside.html
Predicting the general election already, eh Walton?
;-)
Louis
But Walton, what about the voting for the Extremely Silly candidate in the block of concrete?
(Note to lurkers from the Intersection: Pharyngula readers do not actually support embedding very silly politicians in slabs of concrete.)
As yet my understanding of the paramterization of K iin STRUCTURE s imperfect...however:
Theoretically K can be parameterized like any other variable that is being estimated. However, this leads to computational problems, so that the MCMC takes a long time to converge. I am much more familiar with phylogenetics, and I think the paramterization of K is similar to the Bayesian parameterization of Γ: although you could set a prior on any number of rate classes, it is compuationally much simpler to choose a number of rate classes a priori and allow the MCMC to estimate a posterior distribution for each class. For K, I think it is standard to select a single number of populations for each run. What I am confused about is the comparison of resulting posteriors from different K assumptions. This is where I may be wrong. Normally, the likelihood function will always increase with the number of parameters that are added to an analysis...a likelihood ration (in an ML formate) can be used to determine if added parameters increase the likelihood function sufficiently to justify the model. Models are chosen that simultaneously maximize the likelihood while minimizing the number of parameters involved. So the question is this: if K is increased does it necessarily result in an increase in the likelihood function in MCMC? Or given enough data, are all things more or less equal? In the former case, is there a way to mitigate overparameterization while still maintaining fit?
More papers.
likelihood ratio. Dammit, dammit, dammit.
Walton @316,
It is also the name of my son's Leopard gourami. The snail, however, is named Gary.
Meow.
My apple snail's name was Sam I Am.
Josh, OSG, your tortilla recipe comes at a most fortuitous time, since my husband and I were actively looking for instructions on tortilla-making.
Walton, for continuity's sake, may I suggest, "Augustus Biscuit-Barrel IV, Prince of Extra Special Dumplings, Superhero"?
And now, "Breaking News: Some Bullshit Happening Somewhere": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U4Ha9HQvMo&feature=player_embedded%23
Any threads with some currently posting trolls needing to be squashed?
I just spent 2 hours on the phone with my mother trying to help her with "computer problems" and I really need to blow off some steam.
Quickly.
Rev BDC, Pilty showed up in the vegemite thread.
Texas...I don't know what to say...
It happens that I'm just finishing the book I mentioned several days ago - Scandal and Civility: Journalism and the Birth of American Democracy. Part of the section on Paine and his Age of Reason:
Sound familiar? 1790fucking5.
Part of the last section on Jefferson:
It is...
I've just caught up on reading the 300 posts that were already in the thread when I got to it, and have noticed no one has yet pointed that not only was PZ being plied with beer whenever he had a hand free, but people were filling his pockets with stubbies, so his jacket had to be balanced with equal numbers of bottles on each side. (I was reminded slightly of Otto Frisch's well-known testament to John von Neumann's drinking prowess, but PZ was rather more optimistic.)
ye false Pope Maledicte
Oh, and there's a Quaker posting in http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/03/uh-ohwe_arent_being_nice_and…, but not really trolling.
It's okay Caine, he's being Friendly. (Anecdotally, most Quakers I've met are very far from being the usual objectionable religionists.)
phi1ip, actually I'm finding him to be somewhat of a disingenuous snot. Quakers might be among the least obnoxious xtians, but they still shove their religion out front and center.
Thanks for responding to
""((Walton script))"" ./~ W#alton [{character }]
I created Walton..lton few a years bac../-...as a character... can't believe yall fe
./~ W#alton --end ll for this
so long, but now /~ W#alton '~\
\cntrls script conversations:::;: has with meat driven kybd over-ride admin.. have fun is PERL, ??';!`~ this cracks me
phi1ip: I thought a stubby was, well, er, um.
Never mind.
As for unobjectionable religionists, I'd go with Unitarian. Though UU's are about as sheeplike as a herd of cats. My mom and dad are/were church elders at a UU congregation in ME. Both are atheists. It works.
I hear. I was only saying that he appears to be capable of rational conversation aside from his various irrational religious beliefs, which is what I normally find to be typical of the Friends; unlike the fundie wingnuts, with whom the irrationality would extend to any subject you cared to mention.
However he's been gradually tying himself in knots with his not very well-thought-out posts, so I won't hold out for his long-time survival on the thread. :)
Meh, maybe my cynicism has seriously increased, but I find them all (religious types) overly soaked in woo of some sort; they all make me feel weary.
Quakerboy is now flinging out all the same old, boring, pointless christian 'arguments' - it always comes down to that in the end.
A stubby... what were you thinking of? ;-þ
Oh, yeah
Caine: My parents are into whatever the Woo-of-the-Day is. They fit in. I do admire a church that has The Origin of the Species, The Book of Hopi, Mao's Little Red Book, Marx's Das Kapital, and assorted other philosophy and natural history books -- yeah, plus the Bible.
phi1ip: I was thinking of a cigar. Yeah, that's it. A cigar.
Rev. BDC: Great news. Of course, now the anti-vaxxers will claim that was a political ruling and not based on 'science.'
My (((Son))) has Asbergers (no longer called that), a form of autism. The autism-vaccine linkers have pissed me off for years.
iambilly:
Part of me is inclined to go with "whatever floats their boat" however, that fights the part of me which is aware that all belief, even the belief-in-belief supports and anchors all the other more virulent forms of religious belief.
Meh, maybe my cynicism has seriously increased, but I find them all (religious types) overly soaked in woo of some sort; they all make me feel weary.
ditto, if anything, my tolerance for woo of all types has noticeably decreased over the last 5 years.
hope it's not just a case of "get off my lawn" syndrome.
Walton #314
<snortle> Well done, Sir.
I just came across this weirdness
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/04/AR20100…
Maybe there should be a Pharyngula flyer sent out too.
I think it's a variant - This has got to be the 876,493 time I've heard the same, stupid argument. Aargghh.
Sadly no, I'm just an ex-rugby playing drunkard with delusions of adequacy and a hedonistic streak a mile wide! ;-)
and chemistry... don't forget the chemistry!
Caine: Their whole life has consisted of drifting further to the left and further away from organized religion and further away from belief. They're not all that great on separating the sensational TV news story about the effectiveness of snail mucous in treating ingrown toe nails from the fine print in the actual study which is still in a very preliminary stage and is funded by the snail mucous lobby.
All: I just realized that we are now approaching 400 comments on a thread in which our tentacled overlord is in Australia. Drinking beer. And no one has brought up the University of Woomera's Philosophy Department!
Okay, so I'm slow. But sometimes I'm not real quick.
And here I thought you were going to mention the time she told you to shut your pie hole, with the "floor is covered with semen" demotivational poster.
iambilly, well, that's good I suppose, and they can always be nudged towards more critical thinking. :)
No one has brought up Four Ecks either, and its vegemite, drop bear and beer contents. ;p
That line was from that post (which still makes me laugh). (I'm also still giggling about the Caillou thing.)
Josh, OSG: you so need a cast-iron tortilla press. Lovely round tortillas, almost uniform thickness, no skill needed (i.e. perfect for me). Here, take mine:
*lobs it over from Massachusetts*
Hmmm. I'd probably file that under 'unnecessary kitchen stuff'. *Don't whack me with it! Half the time, when making something that generally calls for tortillas, I make frybread instead. I haven't had a taco in a tortilla for ages. Much better to pile all the fixin's on frybread.
SC:
I remember when she was informed you weren't a male and she didn't so much as blink, let alone think. Just kept on attacking. That was something else. It was last time I bothered to read her blog too.
Caillou is actually very very sweet and I think PhysioProf is a big fat poopyhead for saying what he did.
Ooooh. I was lurking through that!
She seemed completely incapable of recognizing the argument being made, and made a complete assumption about SC's gender on the attack.
Santana in a Blackhawks jersey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgH_oVplF5Q&feature=related
Ol'Greg, yeah, she's a piece of work. She has always struck me as someone who is only happy within the confines of stereotypes. I find that disturbing on several levels.
And it's a threat of sexual violence against a child! And it's hideously hateful toward the French! That he's animated does not make it OK. CPP owes everyone who's ever read blog comments an apology. He screwed up. He should just admit it.
***
Everything about her response was so odd and funny.
Cubanos positzos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGSI8CuH1nQ
real Cubans:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ8K-9ztWLc
nother
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSXd30rVJAg&NR=1
Flesh Eaters Victorious!
Unmentionable supper consumed!
The siren song of Teh Thread beckons....
Walton: I echo Brownian's comment at #328--I've lurked (or been unable to comment due to the registration glitchorama) for much of the past year, but I've read enough to agree that your personal growth has been apparent--and impressive. Keep up the good work, and remember that 20 is still really, really damn young. It's easy to feel like you've reached your full intellectual potential--moreso than ever after the period of self-reflection and expansion you've just completed--but you're not even close to being done yet. At least, it would be a shame if you were.
SC: Yeah, Jefferson--that fucking secular progressive. No self respecting Texan (and, by extension, any of the millions of schoolchildren issued textbooks printed in Texas) needs to muddy the History of Our Pristine Nation by bringing him into the story. And if you find that offputting, I think you just need to reflect on your offensive white male privilege...uh...missy. :P
Caine, iambilly, Ichthyic, re: the Woo. I live in Eugene, Oregon. The woo flows strong and thick here. The vaccine compliance rates are low enough to have attracted the attention of the CDC, people freak the fuck out if anyone even suggests fluoridating the water supply, and one must go to unbelievable lengths to find a family doctor or a veterinarian (!!) who doesn't practice 'holistic' medicine. Last fall the principal of my kids' school sent home some absurd flyer about avoiding/treating H1N1 via megadoses of vitamins and the use of Neti pots. My tolerance is worn down to a nub with these people.
! I think I might have been tempted to wander around in a biohazard suit during flu season.
Sven,
http://acksisofevil.org/audio/KingCrimson/Improv__Asbury_Park.mp3
scooter, nice! Fripp my brain why don'tcha
Can you put a year on that?
(I thought the Walton-bot bit was funny btw)
Quakerboy, in http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/03/uh-ohwe_arent_being_nice_and… now says:
*facepalm*
Yeah, Quaker boy isn't all there. Time for bed.
fuck the year, here's some more..
http://acksisofevil.org/audio/KingCrimson/Easy_Money.mp3
then
http://acksisofevil.org/audio/KingCrimson/Lament.mp3
@jenbphillips
Here in Vermont, too. That's one of the few downsides (for me) of living in a predominantly liberal area - my fellow libs have a statistically significant tendency to gravitate towards bullshit altie-med anti-science stuff. There are all manner of nonsense "holistic medical practices" around here, and entire "studios" devoted to "energy work." My hairdresser the other day was going on and on about a "new girl who's coming to the salon next week to practice reiki." There I sat, under threat of scissors, having to listen to her tell me about how she could "feel the energy pushing down my head" while this fool waved her hands around without touching her once.
I'll take the more and add the fucking year:
7/28/1974
Bruford, then; I thought so. Incredible sound.
Re Janine's comment @58:
Please, everyone with a suitable location or other excuse (might visit New York, have children, etc.), write to the New York subway commission and the city of New York and tell them that you are deeply offended and upset by anti-choice ads on YOUR transit system.
http://acksisofevil.org/audio/KingCrimson/Exiles.mp3
http://acksisofevil.org/audio/KingCrimson/Fracture.mp3
http://acksisofevil.org/audio/KingCrimson/21st_Century_Schizoid_Man.mp3
http://acksisofevil.org/audio/KingCrimson/Larks'_Tongues_In_Aspic_Pt_II…
ha!
bring it
ZZzziiipp Beeepp Booiink! Oh, and Pop. (As if appearing suddenly.)
I finally got Movable Type to work (it only took paying attention for five minutes) and it's like a warp of some kind. Instead of passively reading I can suddenly comment again.
But then I am a very lazy man.
I'm a very lazy man
That's what I am
All this blog astounds me
And I think I understand
That what's spoken
Is a token
Of how to see
When all the stars are falling down
Into the sea and on the ground
And angry voices carry on the wind
Contrary points I've come to see
Indicative of you and me
A path that leads to where
We've come to be
I'm a very lazy man
That's what I am
All the web surrounds me
And I think I've come to see
That we're going
To keep growing
Wait and see
*apologies to the Moody Blues. The real song is Melancholy Man from the album To Our Children's Children's Children*
Apropos to nothing except the main thrust of this blog's inestimable worth and inertia, I've just been watching Turner Classic Movies. The Monster That Challenged The World just concluded with the demise of the radioactive mollusk that looked just like a caterpillar. Now playing is Them in which the radioactive ants meet a similar fate. Reminds me of all the monsters that we create or accept. B grade with bad acting and embarrassing dialog with a dose of misinterpreted science and a couple good shots of sexy legs, just to keep one interested don'tcha know.
Hello again. Nice to be here. Please, carry on.
monado:
We'd love to have a transit system, but we would have to trademark "Jesus" to pay for it, and he's already Transit syste guy, who knocked upped the daughte emperatuire almighty whatever they're buyingit for these dayzwes.
I'm just sayin
Scooter, you rock. Frippertronics was once a main spar in my wings.
Prince Rupert Laments and Moon Child still cast fragments of melody and dissonance at my brain.
What was the name of that effort that Fripp led for budding pickers? The League of Clever Guitarists or something. Wall of sound, man.
Crudely Wrott:
I've always said the year of my birth was the year of some of the worst movies ever made, and that one is a fine example of a bad, bad, '57 flick. I watched it anyway. ;)
Ahem, it's Them! I first saw this movie when I was around 5 or 6; I loved it then and still do.
Crafty.
Crafty guitarists. hoo.
What was the name of that effort that Fripp led for budding pickers? The league of how do ya spell google?
They rocked/sucked I been sayin it the whole time.\
True Story
Yup! That's it.
I have a brother who is pretty crafty with a guitar. Mandolin too.
Geeze. All the great music that we know and don't get to hear anymore unless we play it for ourselves. That is, those who don't know of it (them younguns) might never get to know it exists.
Fortunately for me, maybe for you for all I know, your parents played their music on the home Hi Fi when I was coming up. To this day I'm gone when I here Henri Mancini, 101 Strings, Nat King Cole, Burl Ives, Paul Robeson, Kingston Trio . . .
. . . shit. I'm old.
Except in the company of the young at heart. Sinatra sang something about that, didn't he?
grumble
Strike the y in your in the first line of para four my last.
our parents.
Caine: I make frybread
Will you marry us?
There are damned few culinary deficiencies about Berkeley, but we can get frybread only once a year, at that powwow in October.
jenbphillips: I live in Eugene, Oregon. The woo flows strong and thick here.
Oneupspersonship from me: See above.
CW: . . . shit. I'm old.
See above above.
You kids get off my LAN!
@#98: Kage Baker died!?!?!? Hell.
Uterine cancer. Let's hope that with HPV vaccine, our daughters can avoid it.
Ron:
Sure. :D There are so many recipes for frybread, and everyone is convinced theirs is the best. I tried soooo many; what mattered in the end was practice. It's not whether you use water or milk, it's the cooking process. My first results were beyond culinary horror. I have several recipes I work from, but this one is my favourite:
Mary's Good Eating Frybread
3 Cups Unbleached White Flour
2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
3 Tablespoons Favorite Oil
1 Tablespoon Salt
4 Tablespoons Honey
2 Cups Hot (Not Warm) Water
1 Tablespoon Yeast (+ or -)
Extra Needed Flour little at a time... 2 to 4 cups
Cooking Lard or Oil... Lard is best...
Mix honey, oil, and salt. Stir in the HOT water. Mix very well. Sprinkle yeast on the mixture. Cover with a cloth and let stand around 10 minutes or until yeast bubbles up. Add flour and baking powder. Stir together well. Add more flour until the mixture is firm and sticks to your hands. Use 2 to 4 cups flour for this process.
Put this dough into greased bowl. Cover and allow to rise until it doubles. This should take around 1 hour. Divide in half. Then break each half into around 8 pieces. Make each piece into a ball and permit to rise until ready to fry. Heat lard or oil to frying temperature.
Flatten ball of dough with hands, stretching and pulling until it is flat and thin. Flatten the dough to around 6 to 8 inches in diameter. Place in hot lard, cook until golden brown, around 1 1/2 minutes (+ or -). Allow grease to drain on paper towel and serve hot with honey, powdered sugar, or as base for meat and fixings.
Important... Start the mixture 2 to 2 1/2 hours before serving. Remember... When cooking fry bread, be sure to put a hole in the middle, to allow the grease to come up and fry the center. This helps prevent a doughy center. Also, cast iron is best for cooking.
Then, wojapi to pour on the top of fresh frybread:
Wojapi
4 cups water
2 cups sugar
4 lbs blueberries (can use strawberries, any berries or peaches too)
Half a package of cornstarch or arrowroot to thicken
Mash the fruit (with peaches it is good to cook them a little first). Reserve some of the water to mix up the cornstarch or arrowroot in.
Put mashed fruit, sugar and water into pan and bring slowly to boil. Remove from heat and stir in cornstarch mixture. Watch for lumps!
Place back on low heat and stir well until thickened to the consistency of pudding.
Note: Can eat this over frybread, ice cream, or over biscuits... any way ya want! Its good!
And, because Frybread is just so very...
Our Frybread
who art in the skillet
Hallowed be thy name
Thy mealtime come
Thee will be done
in the middle as thou art on the edges.
Give us this day
our daily frybread
and indulge us our gluttony
as we indulge those who are hungry before us
For thine is the butter
and the honey
and the cinnamon forever and ever!
Caine, what a fab frybread recipe, thank you!
Oh, and:
Girl, I know that's right!
*facepalm*
It occurs to me someone ought to start archiving all the great recipes we swap on Pharyngula, and put them together in a cookbook. I shall endeavor to start the project.
Josh, almost all of my cookware is cast; much of it I inherited from my great-grandmothers and grandparents. I also have some (not nearly enough) Le Creuset. I love my Doufeu.
Caine, I have some cast iron that I've bought myself; never been lucky enough to inherit it from the family.
I'm having a hell of a time getting my favorite skillet to keep a proper seasoning. That thing needs to get a charred, smooth, black, non-stick coating on it, but I can't get there. Any suggestions to kick-start it?
Ronsullivan, I can remember two of my teachers using the 'hand boiler' as classroom examples of heat conduction and Boyle's Law. Once in jr.high and once in my sophomore science class taught by Mrs. Miliken at a small New Hampshire school.
Mrs. Miliken actually arranged for one of the Apollo command modules to be donated to my old alma mater. My brother took me by the school in the mid eighties on some lame pretext. (I graduated in 1969 with 96 classmates.) As we pulled into the school grounds I saw it gracing a corner of the parking lot; I gaped, stuttered and pointed. My brother just said, "Mrs. Miliken pulled some strings we didn't know she had." I said, "Thanks, Mrs. M."
It may not be there anymore, I don't know. But I do remember a rush of pride in and admiration for someone who taught me earnestly and evoked an sense of earnest inquiry with me that is still present, front and center.
Did I mention she sanctioned a class experiment involving teeth immersed in Coca Cola? No. You should have been there.
Shit, I'm still old. Not that I'm worried or complaining. The fact just is. Thanks for leading my memory there, a breath of youthful (and useful) air.
Webcomic win.
Is it old cast iron? If it is, you'd have to go through a cleaning process first. A great place to find beautiful, seriously seasoned cast iron is in thrift stores.
There's good seasoning advice at: http://www.jfolse.com/fr_seasoniron.htm but keep in mind that seasoning is a process, that beautiful black patina takes time to achieve. The more you cook with it, the better it will get.
PZ, just remember that you can hold one mug or bottle of beer for a long time without anyone getting miffed that you're not drinking with them. It's a way to save your liver form well-meaning hosts who refill every empty glass and shove a drink into any empty hand.
My S.O.* once observed a famous Nobel laureate author gently waving around the same 3/4-full beer stein for most of an evening.
*POSSLQ
Anybody still keep a sourdough starter batch going?
My father had one that lasted almost thirty years. When I was a sprout he made pancakes for breakfast. The old man would lay the batter on a griddle with eggs and bacon (!) and produce a plateful of caloric delight that would, according to his deep culinary wisdom, "stick to your ribs."
Flour, water, yeast. Crock pot. Glass jug. Some of the old timers carried starter in greased leather pouches. I've heard of batches that have been extant for decades. I only managed six years on my last poor attempt. But the saddle pads stuck to my ribs just like old Pap said they would. At least until lunch time.
Plus they were a great vehicle for maple syrup, butter, eggs and bacon(!). Whenever I get settled I believe I'll start a new batch. Seeing as my children have children there is the chance that my batch might be around for a long time. Imagine that. Poor ol' Pap would grin and so would I.
Wow,all these wonderful recipes and marvelous cooks. I had a can of Campbell's Bean w/ Bacon soup. Too lazy to cook so just spooned the condensed mass onto crackers and ate it that way. Wish I had had a nice glass of Sparkling Muscatel - Idaho's Finest Wine - to go with it. (Would you care to sniff the cap, sir?)
Ah well, being kwok stalked so have to go commune with the ghost of Frank McCourt for advice on avoiding him. (kwok, Frank wants to know why you never returned the used underwear you stole? He thought you were willing to trade it for the camera.)
Walton, Brownian is right, you are much changed, more confident.
Crudely Wrott, I am most impressed with Mrs. Miliken and not just about the Apollo thing. I had a few teachers like that in high school, in particular my bio teacher Sister Helen Louise. Yeah, a nun. Sometimes the good stuff just shines through, ya know?
I'm two years older than you, nyah. And had ca. 435 more classmates.
We have a mishmosh of kitchen stuff, from the All-Clad set I got new at a serious discount to the favorite big cast-aluminum skillet that Joe got at a garage sale in his grad-school days nearly 40 years ago. It has neither lid nor handle and it's not quite flat on the bottom anymore but it's got that old-pot magic. It doesn't look seasoned on the inside but it acts that way.
Caine, I am grabbing that frybread recipe and am also infernally grateful. In return: I got into a chat awhile back with a kid who was running a Navajo taco joint outside Fresno, after tacos and dessert frybread. (Everyone: Navajo tacos are made with plate-size frybread, and not folded; more like Mexican tostadas.) I mentioned a Hungarian thing, arrgh I can't find the name, basically little frybreads on which you rub a garlic clove. (David, help??)
She said she was PO'd at her Hungarian grandfather who had failed to tell her about this, and was going home at closing time to have a serious talk. Now I wish I'd been at that wedding; imagine a Navajo-Hungarian potluck!
We own a set of really old cast-iron cookware too. It's somewhere in the storage unit where we stuffed all of Joe's mother's stuff after she died—in fact, that we had hauled from Little Rock where it had been in a similar unit since we'd moved her out here.
Also there is our rockingchair collection. We can barely fit ourselves and our books into this flat but somehow I can't bear to part with a rockingchair collection.
Ron, they are just called Indian Tacos here in Indian country. :) I haven't bothered with a taco in a tortilla since landing in ND.
[kill snark]
That is really something. Something that lasts. Something given to a youngster and lasts a long, long time. Aren't you glad? I know I am. The best part is the example that we are free to follow.
As for saddle pads, near as I can recall you take
One large serving spoon of starter for about every two saddle pads you intend to cook.
For each spoonful you add an egg, two pinches of baking soda and one of salt and just enough sugar to ensure even and tempting browning.
Mix well in a bowl. Let it rest a moment while you heat and grease the griddle.
Cook as all saddle pads are cooked, you must have done it before.
Return to the starter however much flour you think you took out and just enough water to mix the old and the new together.
Cover and repeat the next morning.
Thanks for the kind acknowlegment of Mrs. Miliken. I return gratitude to Sister Helen Louise. We have been well served by them, eh? It is good that we remember.
[reanimate snark]
For the diet zombies and those who count calories in anticipation of a low number, don't try this. Stick to sourdough bread. With Vegemite. I hear it has a healthy tang. A bite of which the old boy sang. He often was a sorry oaf but man, that dude could cook a loaf.
I found my class bewildering enough in its small size. That has, apparently, not made me respectful of larger classes. So I'm a small town guy. I'll still bet that my bread is the fastest rising around.
Next up on TCM, Dr. Sardonicus! As it is four fifteen in the morning, I think I'll go to sleep watching it.
Perchance to dream . . . and thus awake anew.
G'night.
Arrgh, I've stayed up all night reading comments. For the cast iron if it's new you have to clean it, that is scrub it but not with soap. When it's just clean, non-greasy iron, wipe it all over with vegetable oil and bake it gently in a warm oven, maybe 275 or 300 F. for half an hour to an hour. I'm relying on memory here, so check the details by looking for "how to season cast iron."
With old pieces you want to remove baked-on pieces of grease and maybe scrub them down to the metal and re-season.
After a pan has been seasoned, you should be able to wash it briefly with detergent without removing the seasoning. If you get bare iron patches, do it again.
So, I was reading Charlie's Diary, which currently has a very interesting post regarding his latest published work, "The Trade of Queens", and this snippet caught my eye (and brought Walton to mind):
Arguments for constitutional monarchy.
Walton, to start with:
What is this value of which is spoken — is it 'Public Relations', where they represent the State?
Thoughts spring to mind: Is it something only Royals can do, or can other prominent people? What is the relative ROI?
Walton, two questions:
Back when you described yourself as a "libtertarian monarchist" (or whatever it was) how did you internally justify that clear contradiction?
Why is the issue of the British monarchy so important to you? IIRC (apologies if I'm mistaken) you're not a big fan of 'nationalism'.
The Rabid Rat might have a bit of a problem, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/13/pope-abuse-case-munich-vati…
If you mix the cornstarch with water first then there's no lumps. That doesn't mean dump the cornstarch into a little water and give a couple of half-hearted strokes with a fork. Pour the cornstarch slowly into as much cold liquid by volume as cornstarch and mix it with a wire whisk. If you make the mixture early and it sits for more than a couple of minutes the cornstarch will settle out. Mix it again before use.
If you use flour as a thickener then you have to be stirring as you slowly add the flour to the liquid. Lumpy gravy means the cook didn't take the time to mix the thickener slowly.
However if using flour it's best to make a roux. For the beginner use equal amounts (by volume) of flour and fat. Butter is the most commonly used form of fat. Other fats can be used but have a different flavor. Melt the butter over medium heat; slowly add the flour slowly to the butter, whisking constantly. Within 2 to 3 minutes the roux will have a consistency of a cake frosting. A white roux is done when the flour loses its "raw" smell and begins to develop a toasty aroma. Darker roux are cooked, stirring constantly, until the desired color. Burned roux has an extremely unpleasant flavor so keep stirring to avoid burning. If you're not adding liquid immediately remove the pan from the heat and transfer the roux to another container to cool.
There is no contradiction. Firstly, don't make a category error here. Libertarianism is a political opinion about the scope of the state; it seeks to prescribe how much the state can interfere with individuals' autonomy. It doesn't say anything either way about how state officials should be selected, or about how the organs of the state should be constituted. The latter is simply a separate issue. Libertarianism is obviously compatible with democracy - and most libertarians are also democrats (though not all - look up Hans-Herman Hoppe, for instance) - but the one doesn't automatically imply the other. Don't get me wrong; being a "libertarian absolute monarchist" would be very silly, to the point of delusion. But it wouldn't necessarily be logically self-contradictory. Libertarianism, like socialism, is an opinion about the desirable size of the state, not about the desirable type or organisation of the state. The latter is a separate issue.
Secondly, in any case, many of the countries which we refer to as "constitutional monarchies" are not monarchies stricto sensu, in anything more than a symbolic sense. Rather, they are parliamentary democracies with a nominal head of state. There is little difference in practice between the functioning of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy, like Sweden, Denmark or the Netherlands, and the functioning of a parliamentary republic with a completely ceremonial President, like Germany, Ireland or Finland. The former simply choose to call their nominal head of state "King" or "Queen" instead of "President", and to select him or her by inheritance rather than another process. So if you understand that "monarchy" in this context really means "republic with a ceremonial hereditary head of state", you can see how it does not contradict libertarian principles in any substantive way.
I don't include all constitutional monarchies in this category: there are some, such as Jordan and Tonga, where the King is not an absolute ruler but nevertheless does wield substantial political power. But even these are not "monarchies" stricto sensu, in the sense of the "rule of one", since the King's power is limited by the constitution and by custom. Conversely, there are countries which are called "republics" but could be more accurately described as de facto monarchies, such as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
I dislike nationalism, in the sense that I hate the attitude that a person's rights, duties and life chances should be defined exclusively by the accident of his or her nationality of birth. In an ideal world, people would be free to move freely around the world and to change their nationality at will. People should not be viewed simply as the passive subjects of nation-states; ideally, they should be viewed more as customers, with the nation-state existing solely to serve the people who live for the time being within its boundaries. This is why I support open immigration, and why I oppose the discriminatory and barbaric treatment of refugees and asylum-seekers here in the UK. I also dislike economic nationalism; I don't see why I should care more about the livelihood of a British business or a British worker than that of a Chinese business or worker, and as such, I unequivocally support unrestricted global free trade and oppose protectionism. Anyone who wants to trade with anyone else, wherever they were born and wherever they are in the world, should be free to do so.
But the monarchy is simply nothing to do with these issues. Abolishing the monarchy would make absolutely zero difference to the amount of nationalist and xenophobic sentiment in Britain, to the strength of our immigration restrictions, to protectionism, or anything else. So I don't see your point. (Please don't trot out the old canard about "citizens versus subjects". We have been "British citizens" in law since 1981. In law, you are a Canadian citizen, not a Canadian "subject". There is no reason why a constitutional monarchy cannot be compatible with ideals of citizenship.)
This is incorrect, at least for now.
If I pointed out at the Intersection that I use the phrase:
"Well fuck me with a barge pole"
...regularly, but have no intention of actually doing that, would it be a useful point to make?
Very droll, MrFire, very droll.
Re: Frybread discussion.
I was at a forest fire in Warm Springs, Oregon. One day, a little kitchen trailer shows up outside the fire camp. Great smells eminate from said trailer. I wander out (I was stationed at the front gate anyway, so . . . . Frybread with either wild berries or Navajo Taco style. I chose the taco. The cook asked, "Hot, mild or anglo?"
I lived for five years in northern Arizona. I have exerienced 'hot.' Not a good mix when all we had were portapotties. I wimped out and ordered 'anglo.' On a scale of one (Taco Bell hot) to ten (red hot curry), the anglo was about a three which was exactly what I wanted.
There used to be a restaurant called the Red Feather in Tusayan just outside of Grand Canyon. They had fantastic Navajo Tacos. Gone now. Sad. Well, on that note, off to work.
Oh lord - now JJ Ramsay is trying to mansplain the concept of rape culture to stu over at the Twins' digs. I can't take it over there any more.
Watching The Intersection is like watching those TV programs that feature spectacular crashes caught on film. You know it is not really very edifying, and you feel a bit grubby watching it, but it irresistible.
Frybread and Indian (or as I know them, Navajo) Tacos: Yum!
I can't recall having either for decades now, since my family moved from the vicinity of a Navajo reservation to the vicinity of the Mexican boarder, but the discussion has brought up memories of both from when I was a small child. Now I'm wondering if I can make some without setting the lair, my beard, or something else embarrassing and expensive on fire…
I can't believe that nobody's posted The Chaser's parody of the ad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wl3ViQln-J0
blf #422
' The pope has also faced criticism for a letter he sent from the Vatican in 2001 advising all bishops that all cases of abuse were subject to pontifical secret and must be forwarded to his office. Germany's justice minister cited the document as evidence of a Vatican "wall of silence" around abuse cases. '
Sounds like
'Perverting the Course of Justice'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverting_the_course_of_justice
Walton,
It just seems to be me that the Queen is the very symbol of the state. You literally have take an oath of allegiance to her to be a citizen. Sure it's just symbolic, but you'd think a person who uses the term 'statist' as an insult wouldn't be thrilled about the idea of an (even symbolic) head of state.
Not that it really matters since you don't consider yourself a libertarian anymore. I was just curious.
I agree people shouldn't be passive, but I don't think viewing them as customers is the right way to go about it. Customers don't really have much direct say on how a businesses works. Sure businesses care about whether their customers are satisfied, but even dictators can't completely ignore the mood the population.
Well, let me try to use an example. In the US a lot of Fox News shows have the US flag featured to ridiculous levels. While they do this they spout on about anti-immigration policies (aka, fuck the Mexicans) and American exceptionalism. Now not everyone in the US views the flag like that and the people at Fox would be doing the same without it. However, don't you think even symbols could help foster nationalism?
Well, I'm also an American citizen so maybe that's what driving my anti-monarchism, :P.
Oh man. I've only read till comment 284 yet. :-o
I'll post the current poll results anyway, before they get out of date:
Also, I'm having breakfast instead of lunch now. :-) I bought bread... and that with butter and honey is a delight.
While I am at it, this news item (in German) says that the next issue of Science Signaling will have a paper on a mutation that both makes it impossible to feel anticipatory joy at the thought of good food and increases the risk of diabetes – basically, appetite is insulin.
Now to catch up and cut the next slice of bread off...
Oh, what a surprise!
Don Kwokixote de la Stuyvesant joined on the Pharyngula-bashing at The Intersection.
Don Kwokixote de la Stuyvesant
LMFAO
Now that name is sticking
Walton
(my italics)
Really? For a start, it would also mean getting rid of the whole "nobility". All those worthless, parasitic Dukes, Earls, Lords etc.
And it would mean no state payments (the Civil List) for all the members of the head of state's family members, and various relatives. How do you justify those payments?
PS - side topic, on what you probably think is an "unacceptable" subject :) -
Do you know that if the Queen visits, and is likely to need to evacuate her bowels, the hosts have to build a special, sand-filled, toilet? (So that no one can hear the "plop"!) Maybe things have changed, but this was certainly the case in the 70's, when I was told this by the manager of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He was quite annoyed, because after all the effort and inconvenience (lol) to the RSC, she didn't even use it.
I also have a good story, told to me by someone who claimed to have witnessed it, and who I trusted, about an orgy on the Isle of Wight, in which "Prince" Philip was MC, wearing only an animal skin. But I'll save that for another time :) I'm sure if that had been done by a President, the forelock-tugging British press would have mentioned it. Instead all we ever get are vague hints about his philandering.
Sorry to hit and run, but I must go, got to go and see my football team lose.
When exasperated with my own ineptitude or feeling unfairly put upon, I'm prone to saying "Aaagh! FUCK ME WITH A FORK!"
Evidently, by Intersection standards, I am one sick, self-hating, sexually violent Pharyngulista.
This has nothing at all to do with irony or hyperbole or a penchant for alliteration---oh god no, not alliteration!---as I'd always thought. It's all about the pointy bits of flatware and their potential for mutilating my nether regions. I'm evidently obsessed with that.
I probably won't be posting here for at least a while; I must seek intensive psychiatric help immediately.
In preparation to celebrate Sr. Patrick's Day*, I watched The Wind that Shakes the Barley last night. Sad film.
*IMO, St. Patrick was the worst thing that ever happened to Ireland.
Feynmaniac,
Only to become a naturalized citizen, having been born with a different nationality; similar loyalty oaths, to the nation or the constitution or something else, are required in the naturalization process in a lot of countries. It's not something I'm particularly keen on, but it isn't by any means a unique feature of monarchy.
And yes, the Queen is the "symbol of the state". But those libertarians who are not anarchocapitalists are willing to acknowledge that a state of some sort should exist. If the existence of a state is desirable - which you and I would presumably agree that it is - then there's no inherent harm in it having symbols. Most countries have a flag, a coat of arms, an anthem and so on, and there's nothing intrinsically wrong about this. "Statism" becomes an issue when the state steps beyond the scope of the powers which it should exercise; you and I would probably disagree as to how much the state should intervene in the economy, but we would agree that the existence of the state per se is not inherently wrong - and if we agree that, then I don't see what the harm is in having some sort of symbol.
Yes, symbols can become focal points for nationalism - but I don't think the elimination of those symbols would do anything to reduce nationalism. Sadly, the tribal instinct - dividing the world along arbitrary lines into "us" and "them" - is very deeply ingrained in humanity. It manifests itself in many fields of human activity, from the trivial (sports fandom, college rivalries and so on) to the grave (ethnic or religious sectarian violence, ultra-nationalism). It will not go away; it will always simply find a different outlet.
Ring Tailed Lemurian,
What do you mean by "getting rid" of the nobility? Since 1997, most hereditary peers no longer have the right to sit in the House of Lords (and the few remaining are likely to be removed in the next few years). They have no other substantial legal privileges today, and play no role in the workings of the state. They're able to call themselves by an archaic title (though many choose not to bother, especially in their professional lives), but that's it. Some (though certainly not all) aristocratic families are wealthy, and some own estates (though an increasing number have sold their family estates, as it's too expensive to maintain), but I don't see how this makes them any more "parasitic" than any other property-owner.
(Don't confuse the hereditary peers with life peers, who are appointed for life to sit in the House of Lords, and are usually either retired politicians or notable public figures. They're comparable to Canadian Senators, or the equivalent in other countries which have an appointed upper house. Life peerages are not inherited.)
So I just don't know what you mean by "getting rid" of the nobility. If you're simply referring to removing the remaining hereditary peers from the House of Lords, then I can reassure you that this is likely to happen in the next few years anyway.
I explained this on the previous thread. Firstly, some, but not all, members of the Royal Family receive payments from the Civil List. Such payments are only received by those who actually perform public duties. The more distant Royals, like Prince Michael of Kent, do not receive any Civil List money and must support themselves privately.
In any case, as I explained, although Civil List payments come from the public treasury, the Queen also pays the revenues from the Crown Estate and the Duchy of Lancaster (the lands and holdings associated with the Crown) into the treasury, which offsets the cost. So the Queen and Royal Family actually cause very little, if any, net cost to the taxpayers (and that's not even factoring in the boost to the economy from tourism).
I'm not even going to respond to this vile calumny. Ladies don't do such things, and especially not the Queen. :-)
Paul,
Despite the qu*ckings of the Kw*k, I would say things actually appear to be quieting down over at the Intersucktion train wreck thread, so above all we don't need any new and ambiguous cutlery-laden phrases that could be manipulated by the warped minds over there. They've already shown how they can twist that particular piece of cutlery to go far beyond the sickest interpretation of the initial phrase, so they really don't need to apply themselves to the blunter culinary instruments.
(Unless, of course, we want to see 250+ posts on spoon metaphors, and what violence is inherent in misuse of the ladle. Call the waaambulance!)
ye Pope Maledicte DCLXVI
Hmm. I still intermittently call myself a libertarian, but it all depends what you mean by "libertarian". I'm certainly much less doctrinaire than I used to be.
Maybe you guys will find this interesting. It's Dawkins on an Australian panel show with Australian Senator Stephen Fielding, a creationist who doesn't want to say if he's young earth or old earth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtVZ23GfmDo
Noticed and covered in the previous version of this rather long thread, but thanks for reminding us of the stupidity of the Family First F*ckwit from Victoria. (But not quite stupid enough to admit to being a creationist on national television; instead he flapped around hopelessly in search of a better cliché)
D'oh, insert "young earth" in the parentheses...
:-o
Except for the nectarines, I want to be able to do that.
Well, if I ate nothing but that kg loaf the whole day, that could be feasible... except I put so much butter on it...
As if I had written it, only better.
I see that's another thread I need to catch up with one day.
:-D
whine like a little bitch. Shows that she buys into the idea that women, in general, are weak and ineffective.
I guess that was deliberate – she wanted to shatter what she thought was SC's patriarchal self-image and shame "him" into... something. A "you are what you despise the most" strategy.
But yeah, she's weird, and not just because of the shoe fetish. (My feet, and my eyes, hurt when I just look at... urgh.)
You know, I really didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition...
WTF. I mean, I knew it's a religious war, but... but...
Not really suprising in hindsight, but I had no idea whatsoever...
I think I might have been tempted to get violent on that principal. And then on everyone whose fault it is that he got that job.
:-D :-D :-D
This is... touching.
So true... so true...
:-D
When I type "Frybread" in Wikipedia, it says "see also: lángos". But a lángos is the size of a very big plate the way I know it from Viennese fast food. It does contain plenty of garlic, though.
...sounds... interesting... :-9
Try "shareholders".
X-D
ROTFL! I'm so not going to check that out firsthand. X-D
fuck no! the absolutely last thing I'd want to see is this sort of adversarial relationship between state and citizenry. :-/
ah, yes. If we absolutely must use unfortunate capitalist metaphors for the relationship of state and citizenry, then "shareholders" is better. ideally, the whole thing would be run like a giant co-op ;-)
...
*crickets*
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
Tssssss. So many impressive fossils on the Isle of Wight (a href="http://www.isleofwight.com/dinosaurfarmmuseum/">been there), and all those gentlemen can think of is an orgy... <headshake>
Anyway. I finished breakfast (at 4 pm or so) and need to visit the lab to see if a phylogenetic analysis is finished or got stuck because it ran out of RAM. See you later.
Here's a delightful story: Mormon politician, a Republican and Family Values guy, is battling negative publicity over time spent in a hot tub with a 15-year-old girl.
What's interesting about this whole affair is the response from fellow mormon politicians, who saying that such immoral behavior is rare in Utah. Bwahhahah.
One of the real-world (as opposed to mormon fantasy world) comments about the mormon reaction to Representative Kevin Garn's hob knobbing with 15-year-old girls:
Video of the confession, with applauding cohorts.
Still hungry, but not hungry enough to make the effort of preparing the next slice. :-) I'll save the hunger for dinner/supper.
Or university and students. The right-right coalition government of Austria tried to sell that as an improvement in 2002. They have been suspected of wanting to limit the number of thinking people in the country, and while that's a somewhat extraordinary claim, I can't really find any evidence against it. Anyway, Austria has got rid of half of that government now, and one or two extremes of the university reform have been stopped... :-|
:-)
Actually... SC, could you explain anarchism in a screen or two, or link to such an explanation? To me, anarchism seems somewhat absurd, but I don't actually know much about it.
In case that's not clear, I was referring to the end of the video, which shows the beginning of the next sketch, which iiiiis...
...unexpected. :-)
Whoops, I gave the wrong link for the video of the confession by Kevin Garn. Here's the correct link:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/politician-admits-hot-tub-incident…
He was, after all, English.
Me too some times.
*ducks*
I think a lot of that has to do with growing up in Texas though.
It's ok. I don't call myself a libertarian anymore. In reality I'm more like a socially liberal centrist. It's just that, well, here that somehow means screaming liberal.
That "any more" was meant to be followed with a "very often" actually. I thought it but didn't type it.
Forgive me. I just did 45 minutes of dance practice which sounds pathetic but I'm proud of myself right now because I actually feel ok.
Off to a shower.
I know the feeling. I ran 3.5km this morning and felt much better.
Now I just have to learn all about the torts of negligence and private nuisance (which are just as fascinating as they sound) in preparation for a class on Monday. :-(
The wife of Kevin Garn, Tanya, played a big role in convincing Cheryl (the girl Garn finagled into the hot tub) to keep the affair secret. Here are some excerpts from one of Tanya's emails, written in 2003:
Leaves one with no doubt as to how mormons operate, how they play the Heavenly Father card, and how they are the center of the universe.
Republicans turned off by size of Obama's package
shorter Mormon: please don't sue us! And if you do sue us, you're clearly not as godly as we are!
*barf*
Eggggsactly, Jadehawk! They like to think they're being subtle, but the religious manipulation is blatant.
Kevin Garn seeks forgiveness, and freedom from having to pay any more money to his victim.
Have you considered the additional damage that might be wrought with some sort of a sideways motion?
Consult Ramsey for details.
No shit, AE. If only they had a few snakes around, they might not be so obsessed with famines and Protestants and shit.
And as the loving father of a soon-to-turn-14 daughter, I can state confidently that no 30-yo Sunday-school teacher is getting close enough to even make eye contact, if I can help it.
hmm... I don't know if that's an entirely fair comparison. Polanski actually did rape the girl (as in: she said no, but he did it anyway); in this case though, lacking more information, it seems more like an affair with a minor, which has its own issues and is of course also illegal... but I don't think that's quite the same thing, is it?
Assuming we know the relevant facts in either case (a false assumption, for me at least), no, they're not quite the same thing, to me.
To the Law, they are the same, by statute.
To the Mormon God it probably makes no never mind. But that's neither here nor there.
I agree with Jadehawk that the comparison to Polanski is apples to oranges. Not right. However, if you read Cheryl's take on the affair, and not just Kevin Garn's account, you can see that he manipulated her. The fact that she was 15, confused as to what was going on, thought she was in love, and that the upstanding mormon stopped and bought liquor before he proceeded to the hot tub ... well, it's not a single bad moment in this mormon dude's life. It was a plan, and he carried it out over several months. Garn was the girl's boss at work as well.
Since I'm not the victim in this story, I can be most offended by the religious arm-twisting, which just gives me the willies. The religious bullying brings with it a strong stink of True Evil.
And the Molly Mormon Wife, Tanya, is a caricature of other TBM mormon women I know all too well. Fucking sad. And to some degree, one has to feel sorry for a woman that brainwashed.
OK, I'm not going to say much about the whole monarchy thing, because it's simply ridiculous. But since this isn't the first time I've heard Walton say something of the sort, and because it relates to the royalty business, I feel a need to respond. This sort of remark (even with the smily) - and manner of thinking in general - bothers me immensely. Listen, women are human beings. We are, like men, animals, with all that goes along with this. To deny us this is to deny us our animality, which is fundamental to our humanity. It isn't respectful. It's disrespectful and confining.
There's something very similar with royalty. Even as an anarchist (perhaps more so as an anarchist?), I can sympathize with hereditary royals. People tend to focus on the privileges and wealth that go with the condition, but the other side is that people who are held to be living embodiments of something simply due to the circumstances of their birth are confined to certain roles, unable to develop and express their full humanity. Even in situations in which they can opt out (though never really fully), there is very strong pressure not to. Just as it is unjust to tell poor people that they should know their place, it is wrong to insist to these people that this is who they are, and to put them in public positions toward which many are hostile, merely because of the family they were born into. It's wrong to do to them.
More about monarchy later. I think Walton resembles Noah Webster - also featured in the book I just finished - in this conservative belief that societies need, or do best with, some sort of formal "moral center." Can lead to some very bad things.
Also, I'll get back to David shortly with some references.
Tis #457
SIWOTI
Either Scots or Welsh NOT English (maybe)
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11554a.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/saints/patrick_1.s…
oh, I know legally it's the same thing, and I agree that he should suffer the same consequence as others for breaking the law; I'm just expressing ambivalent feelings towards statutory rape laws and their execution in general (especially when you consider that boyfriends have been thrown in jail for having sex with their marginally younger girlfriends, while this creep will go free).
I find the authority issue more troubling than the age issue: he was her boss, her former Sunday School teacher, and a "respected" member of her religion... and he abused that authority towards her. Would have been still just as wrong if she had been 18.
Ohhhh...that sounded so good I had to stop reading and go get a slice for myself. Inferior American bread, of course, but the results are passable.
Oh, he heard from me all right. His defense was that a) he had received the info from another principal in the area and had assumed it was 'vetted'; b) we were experiencing H1N1 vaccine rationing at the time and c) he though the advice on the flyer sounded "practical". As I was in the minority of parents who could identify the info as pseudoscience (here is a copy if anyone is interested), and so many parents were hedging on getting the H1N1 vaccine anyway, there wasn't much more to do but continue what I had been doing all Fall--talk to other parents and answer their questions about vaccine safety and H1N1 risks. I must have been waylaid in the school parking lot 20 times by various parents who know I am a biologist and wanted some feedback on all of the (mis) information that was floating around. The majority of these parents stopped me later to let me know they'd stood in line to get the vaccine, so hopefully I was able to mitigate whatever damage the flyer might have done in some way.
Sadly, though, I didn't convert a single one of them to atheism, and I'm ashamed to recall how many opportunities to deliver our spittle-flecked manifesto in shrill tones I've squandered whenever a layperson asked me about science. I'll try to stay on message next time, gang. Sorry!
Woohooo! It's going to be a good day :)
*hearty cackle*
No Sunday school teachers of any age or gender are getting anywhere near either of my kids without supervision. Even if you take the (not inconsiderable) sex abuse concerns out of the equation, there are numerous other ways in which they could inflict damage.
I think I've just explained it in enough detail, but just for emphasis: a human being is not a flag.
SC, I apologise. I was joking; it was in no way meant to be a serious comment, nor does it reflect my actual opinion. And I do see your point. I will refrain from making such remarks in future.
I see your point. But I don't think this is solely a feature of monarchy or formal hereditary rule. The same kind of social expectations, and unjustified hostility, often attach to those who are scions of celebrity families, for example, or children of world leaders, or otherwise in the public eye because of the circumstances of their birth. Their personal lives are scrutinised constantly by the gutter media simply because of who they are, and they are victimised and attacked if they don't live up to (often arbitrary and hypocritical) "standards" of behaviour. So I agree with you that this is unfair - and I certainly wouldn't exchange my background for that kind of life in the public eye, even one which carried great material privilege - but I don't think it's a feature of hereditary monarchy in itself.
No, I don't hold that view at all; I don't know where you're getting this idea. I don't see the British monarchy as anything to do with "morality" or a "moral centre". It's just a traditional institution that does no harm and (in some ways) quite a lot of good, and that there's no obvious reason to abolish.
well holy fuck, a reverse blockquote fail. i've no idea how that happened :-/
let's try again:
Oh fuck! And i still haven't gotten through your last reference-dump! You're trying to kill me!!!! *fake whinge*
In the Kevin-Garn-manipulates-Cheryl story, there's another twist. Mormon-owned news sources knew about the incident and didn't report it at the time:
Moreover, Cheryl reports that she told other priesthood leaders, including a Bishop, about the affair and that none of them referred her to counseling, called law enforcement, or even inquired as to whether or not she was okay.
The news blackout sounds very familiar to me. Last fall I attended a conference for writers and one of the invited speakers was from the journalism department at BYU. He noted that they use "case studies" to teach ethics in their journalism classes. The example he gave was revealing. He wanted students to discuss the value of not reporting a police raid on a house of ill repute when several good men were rounded up and arrested right before the Christmas holiday. Should one ruin these men's reputations over a single incident? Or should some restraint be exercised?
Addendum: SC, did you receive my email the other day?
that's not even remotely comparable. The "expectations" put upon a Paris Hilton do not even remotely resemble the expectations put upon a Prince William.
Personally, I think Walton just has a sort of aesthetic turn. He seems to like the aesthetic of having a monarchy.
Ok, so here's the Queen in all her animality and humanity.
-kuckucksblume
possibly true... but I find the display and maintenance of restrictive native cultural traits for the sole purpose of selling "authenticity" to tourists distasteful, and unfair to those forced to play these roles for the gaping crowds.
There is a difference, it should be noted. First, a quantitative difference. Second, actions can be taken to minimize this in those circumstances. In the case of royalty, the confining expectations (and roots of hostility) are intrinsic to the institution.
In the case of monarchs, the roles are built into the (note: hereditary) institution itself.
It is a fundamental feature of hereditary monarchy in itself, though. That we can find elements of it in other contexts doesn't diminish this fact. So if you agree that it's unfair even in these lesser examples and wouldn't yourself want to be in that position, by what right do you support putting others in it?
We'll see...
I've just presented one, and you agreed with it.
Lynna, what a disgusting story. I've just caught up on all the sources you linked to and bleeeeahhhhchhchcchchch. Being victimized that way to begin with is appalling enough, but to have the entire community fail to provide support or protection (except, apparently for the perpetrator) in the aftermath is scarcely comprehensible. And she's the one excommunicated for an extramarital affair? *snort*.
When I take a minute to really ponder how many millions of people on this planet are living their lives within a religious system that tells them this kind of thing is OK, it rocks me to my core.
The mormons plan to make Salt Lake City more mormon. But I think they might be tempting the earthquake god with some of their recent plans.
I've been tracking the LDS Church's acquisition of land in the Salt Lake Area, and their massive building projects. They're certainly spending a lot of money in the area, I'll give them that.
LDS Church & SLC Development
Sandy, Utah, for those that may not recognize it, is often featured in HBO's "Big Love" program, and it's featured not just as a conservative mormon town, but as the home of barely hidden polygamist families. And, yes, there are still polygamist families living in little clumps all over Utah. Mainstream mormons give lip service to violently anti-polygamist dogma, but in practice they mostly ignore the polygamists. They do want to build suburbs that will be almost 100% mormon. Stepford Wives, anyone.
Great! Knockgoats actually looked at the Cochrane analysis of Therapeutic Touch and said it works. That was my point. It should be obvious that any touch therapy would be somewhat effective at pain relief, contrary to what a number of readers have been implying.
Negentropyeater writes: “200 complete morons apply to the really crap school for quacks and their admirers, school that only teaches how to become a certified quack. 100 of them are accepted, and because they are complete morons and aren't accepted elsewhere, all choose to attend that school.”
Wait a second! If everyone at BYU is a quack, does that mean that everyone that doesn’t agree with this website is a quack? If I’m going to be a quack, does that mean I now have to be a Mormon? I think we need a Myers ruling on the meaning of quack. Right now the internet is full of “Christopher Maloney is a quack” and if that means I’ll have to start defending the Mormon doctrine I need to know, because I haven’t been brushing up on my “golden tablets that I found in my backyard and now are mysteriously missing” theology.
Ol’ Greg: Ok, the patient was told “you have less than a week to live. Get your affairs in order.” The meaning is the same. This particular patient had ascites and her liver was failing. I told her to assertively demand draining for that ascites and that was the primary life lengthening measure. But the oncologist had not suggested the drainage as an option, while I did. I also encouraged the patient to not give up and to get a second opinion from Dana Farber. The Dana Farber consult gave her the courage to keep fighting the illness for months.
Josh, “white boy” is your official epithet. You are a sick, sick person. To even imagine that I would seek to deny any care possible to someone that ill. I regularly convince patients to continue even the most experimental conventional cancer treatments when they give any possibility of relief.
Brownian, OM: Great, a cancer surveillance specialist! Show me the studies that prove I kill patients. Not some newspaper story about some M.D. moonlighting in alt. med., but an actual medline study that shows licensed Naturopathic doctors are killing people. You have the credentials, and you have made some very nasty claims about me, so prove it.
By the way, “In contrast naturopaths, to the qi-harnessing last one of 'em, got into medicine because they were born of a holy union of Jesus and a rainbow” is a lovely image, but unfortunately fictitious. I will try to walk on water, just for you, if you prove a single thing you’re spewing.
For the rest of you, prove what you are saying. Don’t pretend that you’ve proven something somewhere “in the thread.” You haven’t, and you “rely on each other” for facts. It’s time to return to science and data rather than spewing derogatory comments that have no basis in fact. The only argument I have received was from Sastra, who told me I was using alt. med. Journal articles when I was citing Cochrane. If she doesn’t know the difference and none of the rest of you do either, then you aren’t qualified to make any judgments on medicine. Unqualified people making medical judgments- hmmm…are you all quacks?
I believe that would be illegal in Spain. (Not positive about the current state of the law or adherence to it, though.)
Yes - will write back soon.
By the way, Josh, OSG, what's your email again?
liar
Yes, SC, I guess you have a point about that.
I suppose we could have a monarchy elected for life, as they did in the Kingdom of Poland-Lithuania, for instance. They have a similar arrangement today in Samoa with the O le Ao o le Malo.
jenbphillips #472
'No Sunday school teachers of any age or gender are getting anywhere near either of my kids without supervision.'
When our son was about 6 (the lanky 42 year old git is sleeping on the sofa downstairs as I type), completely unprompted, asked if he could go to Sunday school. Miss M and I were a little concerned but considered that he should make up his own mind. Off he went the next Sunday and on his return said he would like to go again. The day arrived and off he went only to return about 20 minutes later. 'I don't believe any of that rubbish.' was his response. I don't think he noticed the sighs of relief from his parents.
We would not be so relaxed about it now, in fact I'm sure we would adopt your position.
By way of explanation of #489: this would enable us to keep the trappings of monarchy, and the role of a non-political head of state, without imposing the burden of inherited roles on people who don't choose them.
Hey Quackster, fake fraud and all around con man. Almost everything you put forward was debunked in 2009. Nothing like getting the proper number of patients, good double blind testing and other scientific rigor to make your "it works" become "its Placebo". That makes you worthless. So, lets see your more recent and more rigorous papers from as good journals.
You still need to find more honest work. Repo man comes to mind.
Ah, key point of difference here: we are not hanging out a shingle with the term "Dr." preceding our names and taking money from people for our unqualified medical judgments.
The analysis got stuck because a warning message about the almost full hdd popped up and stayed in the foreground. Windows is better at multitasking than Mac OS.
And the whole article is full of such metaphors X-D
Day saved!
Sickening.
Especially sickening example: The Lion King.
Ah, that one. Along with a lot of other people, I got a version of it from a professional linguist. It's much less bad than I could have imagined – some of the points do help, others might, leaving basically only the Vitamin C woo –, but, I mean, it's a chain e-mail.
LOL! So true…
The tu quoque argument is a logical fallacy. You still need to show you're not participating in fraud.
Carlie to Kw*k over at Hammond:
oh, man, I really laughed hard at that
Jeffrey D:
*clenched-tentacle salute*
Why for life, and not for, say, 6 years (up to twice) like the president of Austria…?
Quackalicious #486 wrote:
Sorry, I haven't been following this thread, but noticed this and wanted to respond. My recollection is that my point re. the alt med journals was made after you had given a long list of support for TT -- which included the Cochrane report, but was not limited to it. There was at least one alt med source.
And, I don't think you ever addressed one of the other points I made, which was that strong, remarkable claims in science will need a large preponderance of evidence. Therapeutic Touch (which does not involve actual touching, so please stop implicitly lumping it in with massage or stroking) has not met anywhere near that level of evidence.
Here is a question I'd like to ask then, on this very point. If TT practitioners are really, truly using a unique form or energy, then why aren't the physicists interested in it? It's not enough to say that medicine is "not their area." Energy is their area, because reality is their area. If something in the design of a computer game was able to violate the Laws of Conservation, say, people in physics would not say that well, it's just a computer game, so we're not interested.
It all counts. It all hangs together, in science. Physics is a competitive, innovative, cutting edge area of intense study and interest. And yet, the very people who ought to be MOST interested in a "new" form of energy, are not.
How do you account for this? Especially when you say that this form of "healing energy" has been around for a long time?
Five-year terms, according to Wikipedia.
For the love of reason, why? Trappings, indeed. Societies can have emblems, songs, birds, flowers, what you you to represent them symbolically. They can have documents - by no means sacred or unchanging - that spell out their principles, organization, and basic rights. What on earth does any society need with the trappings of monarchy?
SteveV @490--good on him! and you, for letting him go. I did agree to let my 9 year old attend Sunday school/church with a friend a few months ago, after discussing the particulars of the denomination (very liberal and hellfire free) with the friend's mother. The report I got after the fact was that it was sort of boring and that he had amused himself by drawing cartoons of Charles Darwin all over the paperwork he was given. Turns out he had incorrectly deduced that all Christians rejected Evolution. Apparently, the Darwin vs. Jesus fish battles played out on various car bumpers around town and a book on Darwin he'd read recently that discussed the impact of his theory on the creationist beliefs of the day had informed this erroneous conclusion. So, the church visit provided an opportunity for discussion of these things, which is always valuable, I suppose.
I am trying to be really careful about letting them make up their own minds about faith, but I'm working hard to give them the intellectual tools to critically evaluate various truth claims they'll encounter now and in the future.
Because life tenure contributes to complete independence from politics.
For the same reason, I wouldn't support direct popular election of the head of state. If we were going to go down this road, I would suggest that, on the death of a monarch, a new monarch should be elected by the House of Lords from among its members. Only crossbenchers (those peers who are not members of political parties) would be eligible to stand. This would ensure that the election was uninfluenced, as far as possible, by partisan politics, and would more-or-less completely replicate the existing status quo while eliminating the hereditary principle.