Pharyngula

Posted by: Zeno | January 31, 2010 11:43 AM

I never participate in endless threads.

Oops.

Posted by: Kausik Datta | January 31, 2010 11:47 AM

The Rev BDC at the previous subthread:

If Pharyngula turns into a den of grammar nazis, I'm going to have call in the entire fleet and storm Normandy.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 31, 2010 11:48 AM

Whee, that was some flying.

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 31, 2010 11:49 AM

once the nation emerged from the crucible of that war, "the United States are became "the United States is."

This is not quite true – both forms existed before and after – but, IIRC, there does seem to have been a shift in frequencies.

Source: LanguageLog. Me: too lazy to look it up there, or rather, I have stuff to do...

ridiculously named law

It was discovered four times independently. This is all documented. :-)

And no, deliberate mistakes merely confirm the rule which compels you to add a mistake even if you failed to do so at first. B-)

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | January 31, 2010 11:50 AM

Walton (previous thread),

I've wondered about this before. Should one use singular or plural verbs in relation to collective nouns? For example, is it correct to say "the staff were all on strike" (which is what I, and most people, would instinctively say), or should one say "the staff was all on strike"?

From what I gather Americans tend to use singular for collective nouns (e.g, "the government is") and while you Brits use plural more often it varies greatly depending on the noun (e.g, "the government are" is frequently seen, though less often than the singular, but 'committee' is almost always singular).

Reference:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=877

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 31, 2010 11:53 AM

Ireland -- there's some sort of green stuff covering most of the rocks. That shouldn't be allowed.

Posted by: PenguinFactory | January 31, 2010 11:54 AM

All I can think of when I watch that video is the Father Ted opening.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 31, 2010 12:18 PM

Ireland -- there's some sort of green stuff covering most of the rocks.

It's mold.

Posted by: Kausik Datta | January 31, 2010 12:21 PM

Carlie:

I think the description you gave is better than mine, but explaining the same thing? When you put staff into an "of the" phrase it becomes a descriptor, not the actual subject? I've lost the correct words for these things.

If OTOH one uses 'All' in a collective sense, All can be singular as you doubtlessly know. For example, 'All is well with the world meatspace!' (That is a new word I learnt recently!!)

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 31, 2010 12:27 PM

was just having a conversation with a friend about their experiences with institutional UHO. :D

Hmmm. I understand just enough to figure out it must be utterly hilarious, but just not enough to get where exactly the jokes are supposed to lie! Apparently it's made in the chemical factory of Pardubice from the light fraction of petroleum and ammonia...

Chuckolate!

Still laughing about how "edit" is called "vandalize" on Uncyclopedia X-D

Jadehawk, get yourself this. Especially the two maps. Japan is going to join the EU in 10 years? :-þ

Posted by: Alan B | January 31, 2010 12:30 PM

Longman's guide to English Usage - Collectives
(slightly paraphrased to save typing)

In American English, a singular collective noun normally takes a singular verb. In British English, however, a singular collective may be treated as either singular or plural, depending on the point of view of the writer: when the group is considered as a whole, the singular is preferred; when it is viewed as consisting of individuals, the plural is preferred.

Consequently in British English, both these alternatives are correct:

The jury has not yet reached a verdict
The jury have not yet reached a verdict

Verbs and Pronouns should be consistent with the collective:

The jury is considering its verdict
The jury are considering their verdict.

In each pair, the first statement considers the jury as a whole; in the second the jury is considered to be made up of individuals.

Posted by: Alan B | January 31, 2010 12:40 PM

#16 'Tis Himself, OM

Drat. Beat me to it!!

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 31, 2010 12:51 PM

Ireland -- there's some sort of green stuff covering most of the rocks.

It's mold.

PZ can clean the mold out of his beard when he returns to dry land.

Those were horses being driven by the plane into the water. The sheep scattered every which way, but the horses played follow-the-leader.

I would like to see a herd of horses drive a pack of photographers and a gaggle of videographers into the water.

Posted by: Kausik Datta | January 31, 2010 12:57 PM

I have a few questions for SC. She said:

I don't have the energy for another one of these discussions right now, but sexism is built into the language

Posted by: iasasai | January 31, 2010 1:11 PM

I can't help but thinking of these threads in the imagery of an Ouroboros, occasionally puking it's guts out... Oh look! More room!

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 31, 2010 1:15 PM

And another endless thread is reaching its end!

Point of order: There is but one endless Thread.
It does not end.

Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band on American Bandstand

How do you make that smiley thing that looks completely astonished? Wow! I mean, it's not Bat Chain Puller or even Trout Mask Replica, but...wow.
My world is slightly expanded today; thanks, Janine.

Now, please don't tell me your wife "eats gluten-free" because she's convinced she's "sensitive" to gluten? If she's got celiac disease, then OK.

[starfart]
A, It's none of your fucking business. Snidely judging peoples' spouses on the internet in the complete absence of information is bad form.
And where do you get off telling people what is and isn't "OK"?
Further (B), the fact is that nobody can fully digest gluten--even you, SpokesGay. Research is ongoing, but it's perfectly plausible that this could cause a variety of intestinal discomforts that, although not autoimmune in nature like celiac disease, would nevertheless be real.
Bill D. was polite later but your snotty, smugnacious comment pissed me off. Sorry.
And your #989 didn't help much. 'Organic Moms' are doing their best to do the best they can for their children. Are all of your food purchases "fact-based," snarkwad?
Personally, I see a big difference between feeding your children the healthiest food you know how to and can afford and pure woo like, say, homeopathy. People can actually be harmed by belief in the efficacy of homeopathy. Eating less wheat? Not so much.
And you? the self-dubbed "Official SpokesGay"? say that "Right wingers are totally hung up about sex. Left wingers are totally hung up about food, and the moral/fake-health-consequences-there-of. I hate them equally."? Really? That's an equivalence you wish to draw?
Not to mention that food-choice really does have an array of ethical (if not moral) and, yes, real health consequences that you're blithely lumping in with your hated trendiness.
I think you're the one with the issues here, frankly.
[/starfart]

he actually was an editor for Science (IIRC) at the time.

ban this blogwhore?

When he's not blogwhoring, he's trolling as a means of blogwhoring. "Insipid" doesn't come close to the Sortaprof's outbut.
Thumbs up on the banhammer. He sucks.

I had a Yellow Submarine/Peter Max lunchbox

I thought I had hit cancel in time.

It cannot be done. Submit is final and absolute instantaneously.

How about some Steely Dan?

Always welcome! Those guys have two great talents: writing relatively simple and hookily catchy pop tunes with relatively sophisticated jazz harmony, and hiring bad-ass pros to back them up.

"In formal as in common speech...once the nation emerged from the crucible of that war, 'the United States' are became 'the United States is'."

portcullis

Yikes

Yikes is right. Preliminary stats are in on the previous sT and the CR (commenting rate) was an absurdly whopping 356 comments/d. It was also the briefest sT yet, juuuuust under 3 d (by 12 min).
Soon we will break the internet! Onward!!

You're making it hard to keep up.

no shit, brother

Here's my favorite Irish song

I would like to see a herd of horses drive a pack of photographers and a gaggle of videographers into the water.

Yes! Oh, yes!! I'd laff!

ok, posting and moving on to meatspace stuff

something like 21520

Posted by: A. Noyd | January 31, 2010 1:19 PM

iasasai (#30)

I can't help but thinking of these threads in the imagery of an Ouroboros, occasionally puking it's guts out... Oh look! More room!

Puking its guts out of its guts? Out of its guts out of its guts out of its guts out of its.... AAH!

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | January 31, 2010 1:24 PM

from the previous thread:

A couple of fundies from Germany sought political asylum in the US for the right of homeschooling their children- and they got it.

from this thread:

Jadehawk, get yourself this. Especially the two maps. Japan is going to join the EU in 10 years? :-þ

Also, the thing over Japan says they're trying to figure out what's gonna be popular in Europe in 10 years :-p

------

*Idiotic because while Germany is still home, they're exporting them to where I currently am, thus not helping my situation at all.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | January 31, 2010 1:33 PM

A. Noyd:

Taught a particular dialect, not taught "their language." They acquired their language naturally like all children and then learned to speak an unnatural one to satisfy prescriptivist beliefs about linguistic propriety.

I absolutely agree with the points you and Pygmy Loris have been making about class/status and dialect, but I also agree, somewhat obliquely, with Alan B's point about teaching grammar through a second language.

That it, if you desire students to have some knowledge of the structure of their language, and to be able to use a consistent metalanguage to talk about it, it's useful to have them study a language that they did not "acquire naturally like all children."

My experience as both a student and a schoolteacher has been that students — and I mean even bright, engaged students here, not just the lazy and disinterested ones of naysayers' caricatures — never quite understand the need to learn how to do something they feel they already know how to do, and that they have been doing without conscious effort for literally as long as they can remember.

I was a bright and literate student, destined for an advanced degree in English, but nothing I was taught about grammar in elementary or middle school ever really stuck with me. It wasn't until I started studying German in high school, and actually needed to think about structure in order to construct competent utterances, that grammar started to sink in. And once I started learning German grammar, English grammar started to make sense as well: It's not that the two grammars were the same; it's that this was the first time I was really aware of the very concept of language having a logical structure, as opposed to be purely "natural" and organic. I imagine it's similarly different for most students to really "get" grammar if all they know is their mother tongue.

So I tend to agree that second-language teaching is a key tool for teaching grammar... but I don't agree there's any special magic to the second language being Latin (except maybe that with a so-called "dead" language you don't get distracted by, you know, actually trying to produce useful language), and I don't agree with the prescriptivist notion that the reason to teach grammar is to enforce a high-status dialect as a prerequisite for a decent life.

I just think understanding the structure of one's language... and the very idea that language has structure... gives one better command of one's linguistic toolbox. You know, that "expressing themselves" stuff somebody sneered at upthread (or maybe in the last subThread; I couldn't locate the quote).

Posted by: Aratina Cage | January 31, 2010 1:36 PM

Go ahead. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm in Ireland and you're not, so I don't care. -Great Tentacled Overlord

You should see my favorite birthday cake... I could live off it... as I could off peppermint ice cream with chocolate chips -David Marjanović

In cylindrical coordinates, 4-dimensional space coordinates are given as
(radial, azimuthal, vertical, bacon) -Miki Z

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 31, 2010 1:45 PM

Come on, people. This thread's been open for two freakin' hours and there's less than fifty comments on it. If we dawdle the Professional Poopyhead will make his escape from Ireland without having to close this thread and open a new one.

Let's Go!

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 31, 2010 1:59 PM

We did laundry yesterday. Now I'm putting my stuff away, but still have to match all the socks (typical nerd, I have a pile each of dark brown and navy blue, and match the lengths before putting them in the drawer). Of course, sometimes there is the odd number of socks...

Posted by: Gregory Greenwood | January 31, 2010 2:07 PM

aratina cage of the OM;

We've come this far. We must go on. We have to go on.

I take my hat off to you in respect for the awesomeness of that quote. Poor Kane, we loved you so but you were perferated on the mess hall table (ohh, kinky) by a weirdly phallic immature xenomorph to the utter consternation of the rest of the cast (who apparently had not been warned about exactly what was going to happen).

My other favourite quote from that movie has to be;

Lambert: You admire it, don't you?

Ash: I admire its purity; survival. Unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality.

Posted by: A. Noyd | January 31, 2010 2:13 PM

Bill Dauphin (#38)

So I tend to agree that second-language teaching is a key tool for teaching grammar... but I don't agree there's any special magic to the second language being Latin...

I very much agree with that. (And it's useful having a second language for it's own sake, as well as to build interest in the structure of languages!) The thing about Latin is that there's often not enough acknowledgment that Latin's grammar doesn't graft on to English at all. Given the massive differences, it would be even better to introduce features of grammar from all sorts of languages. I remember learning about prefixes and suffixes in grade school, but didn't know about infixes till college, even though we use them occasionally in English and they're common in other languages.

Posted by: Gregory Greenwood | January 31, 2010 2:15 PM

perferated? *sigh* That should be 'perforated'.

Sorry.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 31, 2010 2:17 PM

Latin is a dead language,
As dead as dead can be.
It killed the Roman Empire
And now it's killing me.

-Anon.
[taught to me by my grandmother, a veteran teacher of English and Latin and a descendant of a long line of teachers of English and Latin tracing back to the first professional Latin teacher in North America, John Cary of Plymouth Colony]

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 31, 2010 2:20 PM

BTW, some knowledge of Latin--vocabulary more than grammar--is of immense help in learning the modern biological sciences.
Sure would have helped me, anyway.

Posted by: Dania | January 31, 2010 2:22 PM

The alt-text for this subThread:

This is the Irish thread. Everyone must type with a brogue. Or at least wear green while commenting.

By coincidence, I happen to be wearing green today. But I refuse to type with a brogue.

And it's "the Irish subThread", not "the Irish thred".

(And yes, the comma and the period are in the right place. :P)

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | January 31, 2010 2:27 PM

but still have to match all the socks

Posted by: Dania | January 31, 2010 2:28 PM

not "the Irish thred"

Indeed, it isn't. Not even "the Irish thread".

Posted by: Knockgoats | January 31, 2010 2:32 PM

They acquired their language naturally like all children and then learned to speak an unnatural one to satisfy prescriptivist beliefs about linguistic propriety. - A. Noyd

Or in order to be more widely understood. When natives of Aberdeen, where I now live, converse in Doric (the local dialect), I can rarely understand what they're saying (and not just because I'm a Sassenach - nor can most Scots). Fortunately, they switch to standard (though accented) English when addressing incomers - apparently automatically.

Posted by: boygenius | January 31, 2010 2:34 PM

'Tis,

Metheny is playing the guitar. The vocalist is Petra Haden.

And what's wrong with a little fusion, especially when it's as well done as this?

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 31, 2010 2:42 PM

some knowledge of Latin--vocabulary more than grammar--is of immense help in learning the modern biological sciences

Except one would need a bit of Greek, too.

And yes, the comma and the period are in the right place. :P

<clenched-tentacle salute>

this is why I buy my socks in bulk.

Good idea. I have never bought socks myself. :-)

Posted by: Kausik Datta | January 31, 2010 2:45 PM

You're obviously more jazz oriented than me.* *I refuse to write "than I".

Than is both a subordinating conjunction, as in She is wiser than I am, and a preposition, as in She is wiser than me.... Since the following verb am is often dropped or “understood,” we regularly hear than I and than me. Some commentators believe that the conjunction is currently more frequent than the preposition, but both are unquestionably Standard.

¹ Thanks to a Grammar Girl post that I had saved long back.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | January 31, 2010 2:46 PM

Good idea. I have never bought socks myself. :-)

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | January 31, 2010 2:52 PM

and I top up.

and what does "too worn to wear out of the house" mean? a sock with holes so large they cannot be fixed is a dead sock.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | January 31, 2010 2:55 PM

So... why are we talking about socks, exactly?

Posted by: Kausik Datta | January 31, 2010 2:56 PM

Good idea. I have never bought socks myself. :-)

please tell me your mother isn't still buying socks for you...

*Runs away. Fast.

Posted by: iambilly | January 31, 2010 2:59 PM

this is why I buy my socks in bulk. they're all the same shape and color, so I don't have to pay attention to such details when putting them away.

I actually do not have a single pair of socks which I have purchased. I work for the government (NPS) and just order a half-dozen of whatever the hiking socks in the catalogue are. For the past five years, no two years have been the same. Luckily, I wear them out in about three years, so I generally only have 15 pairs of brown socks of three different designs/patterns/shades/shapes/sizes etc.

And I generally just let (((Wife))) sort them.

Signed:

the former (((Billy))) The Atheist (before all this sign-in stuff started (and I miss my old name (so I guess I will continue to sign the bottom (((Billy))) The Atheist))).

And thank you American tax payers for keeping me in socks. Socks is good.

Now all I have to do is convince the uniform company to start selling scotch (Pinch is preferred) and thick-sliced bacon.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | January 31, 2010 3:02 PM

Jadehawk:

Good idea. I have never bought socks myself. :-)

please tell me your mother isn't still buying socks for you...

Funny how the mind works: I simply assumed he was saying he never wears socks!

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 31, 2010 3:05 PM

When I see the Endless Thread on the front page, it confuses me. We're supposed to be in the back room, or kicking back in the back bar spouting Latin. It's odd to be in the spotlight, blinking. PZ needs to post enough new stuff to push us off the front page, to close the door on all that sunlight.

Here's an update on the Baptists from Idaho who were arrested while trying to take orphans from Haiti to the Dominican Republic. After the orphans were rescued from the Baptists, they were turned over to a secular aid agency that is now doing what the Baptists should have done, searching for the childrens' relatives.

There are a couple of things that really bother me about the Baptists transporting the orphans. Why were the kids still dehydrated when they arrived at the border? Didn't the good church folk brink any water for them? Did they lie to the kids about where they were taking them? Note the comment from an older child who thought a vacation/camp was the destination.

...The children, some of them sick and dehydrated, were taken to an orphanage run by Austrian-based SOS Children's Villages, which was trying to find their parents or close relatives, said a spokesman there, George Willeit.
     "One child, an 8- or 9-year-old, said she thought she was going to some sort of summer or vacation camp in the Dominican Republic," Willeit said.
     The Baptist group planned to scoop up 100 kids and take them by bus to a 45-room hotel at Cabarete, a beach resort in the Dominican Republic, that they were converting into an orphanage

Some members of the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho, wept on Sunday as Pastor Clint Henry reported the team had been detained and asked for prayer

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 31, 2010 3:10 PM

This is not irrelephant

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 31, 2010 3:13 PM

I like knitting socks.

The Redhead got a book over the Holidays by a knitter who tends to start in unexpected places. Like the heel, instead of the toe or top.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | January 31, 2010 3:14 PM

When I see the Endless Thread on the front page, it confuses me.

I know. At the moment, two of the "Five Most Active" threads ScienceBorg-wide are subThreads.

Will success spoil the Thread?
*shivers*

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | January 31, 2010 3:18 PM

Funny how the mind works: I simply assumed he was saying he never wears socks!

My mother gets me socks for Christmas every year.

I don't think I will ever understand this reflex of supplying your grown children with clothing*, and socks in particular.

------

*not that I'm complaining, since my mother reacts the same to seeing me wear old shoes, pants and jackets. it's just weirding me out.

Posted by: Patricia, OM | January 31, 2010 3:21 PM

My knitting skills have improved some since the trophy socks were done. I was given an Elizabeth Zimmermann book over the holidays & it's got some fun stuff.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | January 31, 2010 3:28 PM

Jadehawk:

that would be an extra special type of nerd that sorts his socks, but never wears them.

D'Oh!! Shows you how good I am at keeping the slurry of conversation here straight, doesn't it?

But then again, do we not think David is "an extra special type of nerd"? ;^)

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | January 31, 2010 3:30 PM

Oh, my first Lauren Cooper in French class video was frizzed.

Posted by: The Bobs | January 31, 2010 3:32 PM

For those who asked about why Ireland wasn't a maritime nation, it is my understanding (sorry I can't find a reference)that the English largely deforested Ireland in support of their maritime ambitions.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | January 31, 2010 3:39 PM

Of course, most socks last for years now that I've stopped growing, maybe decades.

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 31, 2010 3:42 PM

Any theories on why the Irish didn't become a seafaring nation?

Only a speculation: they were too busy fighting with each other?

that would be an extra special type of nerd that sorts his socks, but never wears them.

I haven't been in the military, so I lack the compulsion to put everything into order :-)

When does a dialect become, in fact, a separate language?

Hah! That depends entirely on the definition! When asked like this, linguists tend to give up immediately and cite Max Weinreich, who wrote (in Yiddish): "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy."

I'm just ignorant enough about both linguistics and evolutionary biology to wonder if there isn't a useful analogy to speciation: At what point in the divergence of two variants of one thing can we say there are now actually two things?

Bingo.

There are, as of February 2009, no less than 147 definitions of "species" out there, and all of them produce different results. For instance, depending on the definition, there are between 101 and 249 endemic bird species in Mexico.

I submit that all these definitions have nothing in common except the word "species". Indeed, there have been calls to abolish this term altogether.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | January 31, 2010 3:43 PM

actually, I now recall that my mom did buy me a pair of socks. the fuzzy, feet-warming kind. that's because when I was visiting last time, I refused to wear crocs, and she refused to watch me run around the apartment barefoot. :-p

Posted by: iambilly | January 31, 2010 3:44 PM

Of course, most socks last for years now that I've stopped growing, maybe decades.

That's some seriously high quality socks. My (admittedly supplied by a government low-bid winner) socks last two, maybe three years.

And Bill Dauphin @ 98:

Misremembered is a really good word. (((Wife))) and I both remember our past. She remembers what actually happened and I misremember what happened (even when later proven correct, I am still the one who misremembers). Whether vacations, when I went to which forest fire, who died when, who was born when, what we had for dinner last week, doesn't matter. (((Wife))) remembers, I misremember.

(((Billy))) The Atheist

PS: (((Wife))): do not read the above paragraph.

Posted by: SC OM | January 31, 2010 3:51 PM

[I've had some strange connection issues and don't want to risk the previous incarnation right now, but will go back in see if anyone has said anything to me there soon.]

Speaking of gluten, Orac posted this recently

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/01/pumping_autistic_children_full_of_an_ind.php

He quotes this:

An industrial chemical developed to help separate heavy metals from polluted soil and mining drainage is being sold as a dietary supplement by a luminary in the world of alternative autism treatments. Called OSR#1, the supplement is described on its Web site as an antioxidant not meant to treat any disease. But the site lists pharmacies and doctors who sell it to parents of children with autism, and the compound has been promoted to parents on popular autism Web sites.

"I sprinkle the powder into Bella's morning juice and onto Mia and Gianna's gluten free waffle breakfast sandwich," wrote Kim Stagliano, managing editor of Age of Autism and mother of three girls on the autism spectrum, in an enthusiastic post last spring. "We've seen some nice 'Wows!' from OSR."

So the kid's waffle breakfast sandwich (whatever the hell that is) is covered in an untested industrial chemical, but happily it's free of gluten. Swell.

I am curious about your opinion on this (I hope you are well rested by now).

It was more a case of not having the energy for this specific subject. :) It really isn't a focus of my attention in any other contexts.

(a) Would you support 'Chairperson' as a universal mode of address, say, even when you know whether the Chair is a woman or man?

If you know the gender, though, I prefer "chairwoman/-man." If you don't know, "chairperson" or "chair" are cool. (That's how it's done with congresspeople now, AFAIK.)

(b) Same thing about Headmaster. In my corner of the world, I have always had Headmasters and Headmistresses (and commanding equal respect, if I may add). Is it important to change it into a gender neutral Headperson or Head Teacher?

I don't think it's absolutely necessary, since a female form exists. If you didn't know, you could always ask "Who's the Headmistress or Headmaster?" Head Teacher sounds strangely narrow to my ears, though I'm fine with Headperson or Head of School.

(c) Do you support the alternate spelling of 'woman', viz. 'womyn', that some people have tried to promote?

I don't use it, or "hu," either. But I don't care if other people use them, and I don't find the reasoning behind them silly. I guess I like to see language change in ways that are a bit more fun. (BTW, has anyone seen Code 46 with Tim Robbins? People speak this kind of blended language, which isn't playful but is interesting.) For example, I've mentioned before that many Spanish speakers now substitute -@s for plural endings in place of -os in writing. I like that, but of course it doesn't solve the problem in speech. I'd love to see something new start to catch on (maybe borrowed from another language...?), but till then I think alternating and s/he, his/her, and so on are workable approaches.

(Please don't take my questions in any other sense;

Moi ? ;)

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 31, 2010 3:54 PM

Well, I watched the elephant masturbation link provided by Sven @83. Thank you, Sven, that was very educational. I note that the masturbator had to put his whole body into it. Talk about vigorous. Protective devices, like goggles and full-body plastic apron were also interesting. Can't gauge much of a reaction from the elephant's face, can you?

Posted by: Patricia, OM | January 31, 2010 4:00 PM

mb - That's an interesting sock pattern, but what do they actually feel like when you walk on them? That ribby type stuff doesn't please my feet much.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | January 31, 2010 4:01 PM

Is it because here in Paris I (can) only wash at 40 °C?

Posted by: Patricia, OM | January 31, 2010 4:12 PM

Humm, regarding the elephant video, the doctors at the vet hospital where I work must be really lazy - they have a machine jokingly called an electrojack that does the job.

Posted by: Alan B | January 31, 2010 4:18 PM

#25 A Noyd

I don't intend to carry on this conversation because both sides have made their points and I sense an "edge" developing.

But I feel I should answer some of your questions.
(This reply has taken some time to write and dinner and family activities have taken precedence.)

What you look for in an applicant depends on the nature of the job. What skill/experience set is necessary? How far am I willing to go to train the person if they lack some of the skills? For example:

Is a first degree necessary for the job? (If it isn't then you can't reject someone just because they are not a graduate.)
Is post graduate experience necessary?
Does this person have to have on-the-job experience?
Is the person in a wheelchair? Does it matter? (If it is an office job we already have facilities that would allow otherwise suitable staff to carry out their role. If the person had to regularly climb in and out of confined areas on plant a reasonable person - even an unreasonable one - would see that the wheelchair was a hindrance.)
Are they able to read English? (If not, how are they going to be able to follow detailed written procedures required for their safety. And IIRC our Regulator required it.)
Is red/green colour blindness important (it is in the control rooms of a nuclear power station!)
Is writing or presenting good clear English important? If it is then I can justify the choice of someone where this is a skill they possess already. If it is not then to refuse someone for this reason is discrimination in the negative sense.

With the safety of the public, the staff and the environment at the forefront at a nuclear power station we would not want to turn the best candidate away just because the do not have a skill that is not required for the post.

Where I worked I was responsible for producing the short list for interview for posts in my Section, but with advice from Personnel Department to supply consistency and to be sure we met Employment Law. If challenged (and I sometimes was) I would have to justify why I chose one but not another.

At the interview there was myself as line manager, another line manager from another Section and a fairly senior member of Personnel Department. We agreed what skill/experience set we needed before the interviews started and we agreed the weighting we would give to each requirement.

After each individual was interviewed we would independently mark against each requirement and on the rare occasions when we were in major disagreement we would try to rationalise our differences because this suggested one or more panel members were not clear about the actual requirements of the post.

At the end we would independently make our assessment of how we ranked the candidates and would have to justify our tentative conclusions. All our "workings" were collected and filed by Personnel so that we could justify our decisions if necessary.

I believe our system was transparent and as far as is reasonably possible for human beings in our culture I believe it was free from discrimination in the negative meaning of that word.

One example of where a challenge was made was a student originally from North Africa who was black (sorry if that is no longer P.C. but he was). I had already discussed this with Personnel, explained why he was not in the top half dozen and should we shortlist him? Personnel agreed with my assessment but thought it would be sensible since he was the only non-British candidate to have him along for interview to see what he had to offer. He was a dead loss. Not suitable for the job, indeed, not capable of doing the job and bottom of the list on all counts. When he had the rejection letter he accused us of prejudice both on colour and that he was a French-speaker! Because we had identified the requirements of the job and could demonstrate how he did not meet them, his appeal was rejected.

Up to the time I retired the Company had never lost an unfair dismissal or discrimination complaint.

HOWEVER, I am sure that some other employers are not as scrupulous and some WILL judge on language and accent for reasons that are nothing to do with the requirements of the post. If our young people do not realise that I think we are letting them down.

The situation has only got worse with the recession.

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 31, 2010 4:32 PM

waffle breakfast sandwich

WTF. Is this an unholy crossing of a waffle and a sandwich?

Or a sandwich for a waffle breakfast (whatever that is), a waffle-breakfast sandwich?

Or a breakfast sandwich with a waffle in it even?

<headspin>

no American laundry machine I've ever encountered ever bothered to tell me the exact temperatures of "cold", "warm", and "hot"

<headdesk>

Posted by: Linnea | January 31, 2010 4:38 PM

'Tis Himself @19:

Purist nitpickery compels me to point out that the song you link was written by a couple of Murikans.

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 31, 2010 4:49 PM

when idiots are responsible for education

<sigh>

I suppose it'll take another generation or two till some sort of sanity will prevail.

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | January 31, 2010 4:51 PM

Thanks for the sock pattern, mb! I've been itching for something to try.

Elephant cake from Cakewrecks. (not a wreck)

no American laundry machine I've ever encountered ever bothered to tell me the exact temperatures of "cold", "warm", and "hot"

That's because it's dependent on the initial temperature of the water going into the machine, set by the water heater. Having a temp control and heater on the machine itself would make it cost more, which means it wouldn't sell well.

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 31, 2010 4:55 PM

I was taught to knit in the 4^th year of school, even with 5 needles (though not something as complex as gloves). Haven't tried ever since, but I'd probably quickly remember if pressed.

it's either this

What an appalling waste of perfectly good bacon!

or this

Disgusting. :-)

Thanks anyway.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 31, 2010 5:01 PM

AlanB, RogerS posted again on the old Ken Ham thread. I invited him to come over here, explaining how this was just a continuation of his previous threads, and left a link. Hopefully he will show up.

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | January 31, 2010 5:04 PM

though not something as complex as gloves

I did see somewhere recently a way to do gloves by making the fingers out of i-cord - seemed like a nice cheat to me.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 31, 2010 5:07 PM

Purist nitpickery compels me to point out that the song you link was written by a couple of Murikans.

Even more compulsive nitpickery compels me to point out the song was written by one man named Peter Jones.

Posted by: Patricia, OM | January 31, 2010 5:08 PM

Alan B - Gloves! Oh my. I can make socks on 4 or 5 needles, but I'm not up to all those fingers yet.

mb - I've noticed that lots of people get scared by socks. I decided if little children could do it as drudge work for hours every day during Victorian times, I should be able to figure it out as an adult.

Posted by: Alan B | January 31, 2010 5:10 PM

#129 Nerd of Redhead, OM

Yes, I noticed that and gave him a cordial invitation. Suggested there was some unfinished business with him explaining Flood Geology.

My #218, your #220

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | January 31, 2010 5:10 PM

If your washer is like mine, "cold" pours in whatever water comes from the cold tap. "Warm" pours in a mix of hot and cold, in my case not quite warm enough for a comfortable bath. "Hot" is water straight from the hot water heater.

Posted by: Patricia, OM | January 31, 2010 5:14 PM

Carlie - I pick up some of my best tips from gay mens knitting blogs.

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | January 31, 2010 5:17 PM

Well, I watched the elephant masturbation link provided by Sven @83.

This is one of those rare occasions that I'm glad I don't have access to YouTube at work...

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | January 31, 2010 5:25 PM

Yes, I believe it's the same hot as the hot water tap (unless you have exposed pipes and it cools down before it gets there). When I had my first child one of the big safety tips that's pushed is checking the hot water heater temp and lowering it until the water out of the tap doesn't go past 120 degrees F. Standard setting is around 140, and I think some of them can go as high as 160.

It means the temperatures will correspond to those you find when you turn on your own taps in the apartment, unless of course the washer is elsewhere and hooked up to a separate tank. Who knew laundry could be so engrossing?

Definitely sticking a thermometer in the laundry machine next time.

Posted by: ianmhor | January 31, 2010 5:35 PM

KG #61. You were lucky. When I got to Aberdeen in the 70's my landlady was not at all willing to drop many of the Doric words from her conversation and while I was Scottish and she might just have expected me to understand my flatmate was English. When we first heard her refer to us as loons and talking about loons and quines we hadn't a clue!

Young men and young women for those who wish to know.

Posted by: Kagato | January 31, 2010 5:54 PM

I think Zach's figured out who his audience is.

Today's SMBC

Posted by: Blind Squirrel FCD | January 31, 2010 6:03 PM

Laundry day for me also! An excuse to drive into town, where I saw my first human face in 5 days.

I can well believe the English denuded Ireland for trees for her navy. When the first colonist hit the new world, there was an official who went about branding certain tall trees as the property of the queen for masts for ships. There was so much trade across the Atlantic that the streams of England were picked clean of stones for ballast, and it was necessary to open quarries to obtain the same.Savanna Georgia was built from ballast stone; that's were I saw my first pudding stone.

BS

Posted by: Patricia, OM | January 31, 2010 6:15 PM

Alan B - Sounds like you are lucky to be here at all! My most fiddly stuff is knitting Estonian lace. Nine stitches into one called a nupp , rhymes with soup.

Posted by: Kyorosuke | January 31, 2010 6:18 PM

So, there was this sort of interesting article in the NY Times Magazine today:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/magazine/31ecopsych-t.html

About "ecopsychology"; I was wondering what people thought of it, because it seems kind of woo-ish, but I don't know enough about the subject to really make that determination. Thoughts?

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 31, 2010 6:26 PM

Linnea #154

Wikipedia says it was written by Steven and Peter Jones, both. Hmmm.

The cover notes for Robbie O'Connell's CD Recollections, Vol. 1 just lists Peter Jones.

You pays your money and you takes your choice.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | January 31, 2010 6:30 PM

'Tis:

Every few years Robbie O'Connell performs at the Mystic Seaport Sea Music Festival.

Maybe we should plan to meet there this year? I'm no expert on sea music, but it sounds like the sort of thing I'd love.

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 31, 2010 6:35 PM

others that blend into each other, but are mutually incomprehensible (don't "interbreed") at the far ends of the distribution

Dialect continua are common. Dutch, German, and Luxembourgish (to name the three standards that have been developed from it) form one: the dialect of one village is always understood in the neighboring villages, but it adds up. When the lowland Swiss or the Flemings speak, I understand about half (and in the latter case I have to cheat by drawing on knowledge from English and French). I can have a conversation with a Tyrolean where each speaks their own dialect, but beyond that, it would get difficult...

I guess some plants can speciate in two generations, too?

In one even, by polyploidization. Can't think of a linguistic analogy to that one. :-þ

nupp , rhymes with soup

Except that Estonian distinguishes short and long consonants (here's a long one, written double) and short, middle, and long vowels (the latter two are both written double, and I don't know how they tell them apart).

So... nuup would more or less rhyme with soup, but nupp doesn't.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | January 31, 2010 6:38 PM

Bill,

I'll be there with wife and daughter. I'd be happy to meet you and enjoy some music together.

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 31, 2010 6:48 PM

I see that dialects like mine are dying

In Newfoundland???

The grammatical constructs- many of them are technically incorrect

They would be incorrect in Standard English. But it's not Standard English in the first place. :-| Grammar differs between dialects, that's normal.

some words simply don't exist in modern Standard English.

Fixed it for you.

It makes me sound uneducated

Even if you speak it in, like, a bar???

I'm the only person I know who gets service in English as a matter of course in Paris.

Even this is normal these days – as soon as they find you stuttering, all below the age of 40 immediately switch to English, and English pronounced in the French sound system is really hard to understand sometimes. Fortunately I'm enough of a nerd about my own pronunciation, and have amassed a sufficiently large vocabulary, that I hardly get that anymore.

Posted by: David Marjanović | January 31, 2010 6:59 PM

and the eye only having to cope with focusing just that colour.

Pretty much. The lens of the vertebrate eye, so praised by the cretinists, does not correct for chromatic aberration (the fact that refraction separates the wavelengths).

Posted by: Patricia, OM | January 31, 2010 7:04 PM

David - The spelling nupp, and translation came from Knitted Lace of Estonia by Nancy Bush. Trust me, the word gets even more badly butchered at the Local Yarn Shop.

Posted by: Blind Squirrel FCD | January 31, 2010 7:15 PM

Dave M, if that explanation were accurate, a red led would suffice. Recall that the highest resolution microscopes use ultraviolet light.

BS

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | January 31, 2010 7:29 PM

I haven't as yet investigated the reasons for it, I suspect that it may have something to do with the near monochromatic colour of the LED and the eye only having to cope with focusing just that colour.

Posted by: Octopoggle | January 31, 2010 7:43 PM

@96 - This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes attributed to Einstein: In reply to congratulations on a birthday, he is supposed to have said, "Yes, I have reached the age where, when somebody tells me to put on socks, I don't have to." (Google is failing to find confirmation of the quote, but it certainly confirms a lifelong aversion to socks.)

@117 - I appreciate your description of hiring procedures designed to be transparent and non-biased. Research shows that this kind of mindfulness is exactly what is effective in overcoming subconscious bias. Most of us in our culture acquire and carry with us at least some of this bias, despite its not being consistent with our explicit values. In my line of work, we need to write really good, clear reports, but we also need good research underlying them, and the research (applied social research on a variety of populations, especially those not in the mainstream) is greatly improved when our team includes people who have life experience outside the mainstream. I've found it's not too hard to edit a draft report for the writing bits, but not worth trying if the thinking is not clear. As a mainstream member, my editing skills can make up for someone else's lack of same; but no skill I can acquire can supply the value of a different kind of life experience. Many of the older team leaders in our group will disqualify an applicant if the writing sample is not up to par. Our team is more diverse, and does better research, because when we have an applicate with a different background we look at the underlying thought quality and not just the editable surface parts.

/end rant about implicit bias and unequal opportunities

Posted by: Chmee,Speaker to Animals | January 31, 2010 7:43 PM

Thanks Blind Squirrel,
I tried it, yep it made a difference :)
As I said, I haven't really investigated why the Blue LED seems to work so well and I look forward to being educated.
I brought it up because possibly someone might find it a useful technique for reading without glasses. Of course it would tend to cause pictures to look a little odd.

I spent some time a few years ago writing a program to help visually impaired people to read.
This was for people who are technically blind but with some sight remaining and for those who have the opposite of tunnel vision (can't remember the name of the condition, sorry).
I stumbled across an article somewhere that discussed how presenting text a word at a time on a monitor could aid comprehension and make reading physically easier for some people.
I also remembered that dyslexics can sometimes read more easily with a particular combination of differing text colour and background colour.

My program attempts to combine the two ideas.
Basically the top half of the screen is dedicated to presenting one word at a time to the viewer, the remainder of the screen is used for controls.
The current version of the software uses ordinary .txt files (Gutenberg library files for example) and allows the user to select background and foreground colours, font, font size, reading speed and a file selection dialog. It also remembers the last word read when the program is closed.

You may think that reading one word at a time without moving your eyes is a little weird, but I easily read half of Stephen Hawkings "A Brief History of Time" sans pictures, at well over 1000wpm.
Truth to tell, it is pretty trippy and comes close to a "stream of consciousness" type of experience.
I noticed improved comprehension myself and the few people who have tried it commented that their ordinary reading speed was substantially improved afterwards.

If anyone is interested in trying it out, let me know and I will poke in on my website as a download.

Posted by: Chmee,Speaker to Animals | January 31, 2010 7:53 PM

Redrabbitslife,
That may well be it.
The afflicted have only peripheral vision.
My attempted solution is to have the text move around the centre of the display area in as big a circle as possible (font size is the constraint here) to excite the peripheral vision.
I haven't coded it yet, but intend to in the future.
I don't know if it will work, but I am sure that I can find a volunteer somewhere to try it.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | January 31, 2010 8:06 PM

Blind Squirrel, Not sure I agree on the explanation you gave for the blue LED making it easier for Chmee to read. Yes, it is true that blue light gives finer resolution, but unless he's reading microfiche, the image is not diffraction limited. It may be that the blue cones are more responsive, or it may be that the lens is allowing passage of more blue light. Hard to tell without more info.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 31, 2010 8:23 PM

Setting priorities: The mormon church is spending more money to build a mall and related condos, etc. in Salt Lake City than it has spent in total charitable aid in the last 30 years.

"City Creek Reserve is spending more than $1 million a day on construction, and the project ultimately will cost around $3 billion, said Chris Redgrave, a KSL executive who also chairs the Salt Lake Chamber's Can-Do Coalition, which is looking for ways to jump-start the downtown economy."

On top of the $3-plus-billion 'Jesus Mall'-and-condos project (City Creek) in SLC and the multi-million-dollar (est. $100+ million) 'Jesus Polynesian Hotel' in Oahu (being built this year), LD$, Inc. recently spent a reported sum of $25 million (pocket change for the Mormon Church, really) to acquire 13 acres of prime real estate in downtown SLC (ref. http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_14142357).
     The LDS Church on Saturday [January 30, 2010] confirmed it has purchased the KJZZ studio building west of the Salt Lake City International Airport, a deal that represents its third noteworthy real estate acquisition in recent weeks.

That any church decides to shift focus from charitable/humanitarian service to money making, is as legal as any business deciding to shift focus on to more ethical or social issues. But defending the church on grounds that their actions are currently legal, is about as lame as defending OJ now on grounds that he was "legally" acquitted...
     It seems to me that an argument can be made that the church is operating under cover of tax exempt laws which favour it over other business institutions in the project of money making. In addition, its members are not privileged to see any financial statements, as are those participating in other companies as shareholders or interested parties. I don't see how that is fair. Whether you have the words "Jesus Christ" in your organization's name or not, if you're in business, I don't see why you shouldn't have to play by the rules of business. -- Tal Bachman

Posted by: Blind Squirrel FCD | January 31, 2010 8:40 PM

Chmee,Speaker to Animals: Check this though: the refractive index for blue light is enough different from red and green that when they are in focus, the blue is slightly out of focus (chromatic aberration).
The focus of the eye is dominated by the red and green frequencies when they are present. When only blue light is present, the eye focuses them just fine and the above effect vanishes.
This Wiki article goes into some detail about the use of shorter wavelengths to produce finer detail.

BS

Posted by: Lynna, OM | January 31, 2010 8:46 PM

Christopher Hitchens wrote A Fault Is Not a Sin in response to the earthquake in Haiti. He comes up with some interesting tidbits, including the fact that "It was widely asserted in earlier times that earthquakes were caused by sodomy, yet San Francisco still stands, and when it suffered thousands of deaths in the catastrophic 1906 earthquake, it was rather more heterosexual than is is now."

On Nov. 1, 1755—the feast of All Saint's Day—a terrifying combination of earthquake and tsunami shattered the Portuguese capital city of Lisbon. Numerous major churches were destroyed and many devout worshippers along with them. This cataclysmic event was a spur to two great enterprises: the European Enlightenment and the development of seismology. Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were only some of those who reasoned that no thinkable deity could have desired or ordained the obliteration of Catholic Lisbon, while other thinkers—Immanuel Kant among them—began to inquire into the possible natural causes of such events.

Posted by: Epikt | January 31, 2010 9:02 PM

Sven DiMilo:

Damn I love this track.
Hope you like it too *wink*.

Oh yeah. And lovely reharmonizations. Metheny's?

More Petra, with Bill Frissell:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_4_QV_RV_o&feature=related

Posted by: Epikt | January 31, 2010 9:20 PM

Sven DiMilo:

The two of them started playing together on Metheny's fucking awesome 1981 record 80/81, which was mostly heavily Ornette-influenced acoustic jazz but had a strummer or two as well.

Metheny and Haden (the elder) also collaborated on Song X, which featured Ornette himself.

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | January 31, 2010 10:05 PM

I don't think I will ever understand this reflex of supplying your grown children with clothing*, and socks in particular.

It's weirder when it's not even your own parents! Mr. ODS's grandmama buys me a new sweater every time she goes to a department store/Target/outlet-type store. His parents also tend to give me socks on special occasions*. I chalk this up to: 1) I'm pretty frigging difficult to buy gifts for, and 2) I work outside year-long and they don't want me to be too uncomfortable or cold.

* Nice socks, not like a 12 pack of athletic socks or anything.

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | January 31, 2010 10:55 PM

Can God make a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift it ?

No. God doesn't exist, so he can't make anything.

Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa) | January 31, 2010 11:39 PM

You had best eat your eggs in the morning
then savor the flavor of some weißwurst
then you can have some milk.

Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa) | February 1, 2010 12:23 AM

Oh, man, I love weißwurst, but it's been a long long time since I've had any. I had a pale imitation in Copenhagen a few years ago, but it just made me regret having settled.

Weißwurst spoils too quickly. Darn Bavarians.

Posted by: Miki Z | February 1, 2010 1:16 AM

You get more religious visitors than I get unexpected visitors at all. I think my list over the past year is something like:
- Door-to-door stove hood filter salesman (x3)
- Door-to-door dry cleaning solicitation (x1)
- Wrong door (x1)

The mailbox gets stuffed with various things:
- fliers for delivery sushi, pizza, dry cleaning, prostitutes
- notices of neighborhood construction
- ads for real estate for sale or rent
- tissues
- magnets

Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa) | February 1, 2010 2:10 AM

I haven't got door-to-door jesus salesmen in a while. The last I got were two Korean men who wanted us to know Jesus, but only in Korean apparently (they left as soon as I said that I don't speak Korean, but they spoke English.) But lately, my mailbox has been filled with pseudoscientific crap ranging from crystal energy to pyschics.

Posted by: John Morales | February 1, 2010 2:55 AM

Ellie: Objectiveministries.

Posted by: windy | February 1, 2010 3:25 AM

At the moment, two of the "Five Most Active" threads ScienceBorg-wide are subThreads.

Will success spoil the Thread?

Ha! We're clearly dealing with a punctuated equilibrium, which defies your simplistic projections of progress!

The weakness of the prevailing capitalist-gradualist theories of thread evolution will be revealed in an upcoming paper! Or actually, it's just a title, so far. Or half of a title:

The Portcullises of St Paul (the Poopyhead) and the Paradigm of Perennial Procrastination

Posted by: Alan B | February 1, 2010 4:07 AM

Lynna

You might be interested in the photos here:

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Lavaman-Volcano-Photographer-Patrick-Koster-Shows-Off-Latest-Pictures-Of-Erupting-Volcanoes/Media-Gallery/200907215337864?lpos=World_News_Third_Picture_Gallery_Teaser_Region____6&lid=GALLERY_15337864_Lavaman%3A_Volcano_Photographer_Patrick_Koster_Shows_Off_Latest_Pictures_Of_Erupting_Volcanoes

Sorry about the dreadfully long link!

(Just don't let your brother see them - he might get ideas ...)

Posted by: shatfat | February 1, 2010 4:32 AM

Via ThinkProgress:

CBS greenlights a controversial anti-abortion ad (featuring Tim Tebow! whatever) from virulently anti-gay PAC Focus on the Family, but refused to air a commercial ad for Mancrunch.com, a gay dating hookup service.

The ad is funny and, imo, inoffensive, unlike Tim Tebow (a known MALE) whining about his alleged rights to other people's wombs.

Oh yes, a right-wing hate group can get primo air time no problem, but the UCC, which ran an ad about how inclusive they are (including welcoming gays) was also rejected for the Superbowl only a couple years ago.

FotF is bankrolled by Coors, IIRC. DO NOT BUY COORS.

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | February 1, 2010 6:35 AM

Is there any reason anyone would buy Coors in the first place?

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 1, 2010 9:40 AM

iambilly (@214):

Coors is like making love in a canoe.

David Sedaris reference, or does that joke predate him?

Come to think of it, your "tone of voice" here occasionally reminds me of Sedaris' representation of his brother (who's the one he quotes as making the canoe joke); you wouldn't by any chance be said brother?

BTW, punctuated inebrium FTW!!

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | February 1, 2010 9:57 AM

iambilly, you must be somewhere near my neck of the woods if you're drinking Saranac. In fact, once a year I take my college food/society class on a tour of the Saranac brewery itself. I would tell you to be jealous, except that every time we get to the end of the tour and I have to use my free drink coupon on a ginger beer instead of something good because I'm driving a university vehicle. That's always a letdown.

Posted by: David Marjanović | February 1, 2010 10:15 AM

Objective Ministries is a parody site, but it comes very close to proving Poe's Law on some pages.

weißwurst […] a pale imitation

ROTFL!

The Portcullises of St Paul (the Poopyhead) and the Paradigm of Perennial Procrastination

What I just said.

Posted by: David Marjanović | February 1, 2010 10:18 AM

It wasn't about flavor, it was about knowing about this (then) relatively obscure regional brand, and about the thrill of having something scarce and only quasi-legal.

TSIB.

Posted by: ianmhor | February 1, 2010 10:30 AM

Rorschach #216: Karen Armstrong "A History of God"
covers a lot of ground. Wouldn't say its a wonderful read but I found it well researched (as far as my limited needs and expertise goes).

Posted by: iambilly | February 1, 2010 10:41 AM

Bill Dauphin@215: I first ran across the joke watching a video of Monty Python in LA. As to someone's brother, I'll have to google David Sedaris.

(Long Pause)

Sorry, no relation.

Come to think of it, I don't even have a brother. Never have. Sorry.

Carlie: If your neck of the woods is Northeast PA, you have my sympathy.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 1, 2010 10:43 AM

shatfat (@211):

CBS greenlights a controversial anti-abortion ad (featuring Tim Tebow! whatever) from virulently anti-gay PAC Focus on the Family, but refused to air a commercial ad for Mancrunch.com, a gay dating hookup service.

No inconsistency here: Both decisions ultimately reflect the worldview that says sex is bad and freighted with consequences, and the only good reason to ever have it is to have teh babeeez. Since gay men hooking up is never going to result in a story as "heroic" as Mama Tebow's, there's obviously no reason to advertise it, right?

BTW, I'm a sports fan, and have enjoyed watching Tebow play football. Obnoxious godbothering aside, he seems like a decent human being, and it probably is true that the world would have been diminished if he'd been aborted... but then again, the world has also probably been diminished by the loss of the three children my wife and I lost to miscarriage, too. The fact that shit happens, and sometimes the world suffers, is no justification for placing the imaginary "rights" of a ball of cells over the unquestioned human rights of an adult woman.

I said I have been a fan of Tebows; I won't continue to be one, as long as he pursues (under the disingenous pro-life label) this anti-living agenda.

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | February 1, 2010 10:46 AM

iambilly - No, upstate NY.

Hi, strange gods! I've been missing your comments. If I've just been overlooking them, sorry I'm dense.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | February 1, 2010 10:50 AM

Oh hi Carlie! I'm afraid I've been ridiculously busy. I have been peeking in though, and once in fact said to myself, "good thing Carlie's handling this one."

Posted by: Lynna, OM | February 1, 2010 11:00 AM

Regarding the Tim Tebow ad, the fundies are out in force, painting all of us as people who wish Tim Tebow had never been born.

It's not surprising that the progressives don’t want Tim to tell his wonderful story. They want his story hidden from the public. It disturbs progressives. It threatens them. It may persuade a woman to keep her baby.
     Of course, this is not so surprising considering their past. Progressives have a history in genocidal movements and have a history of hiding this fact.
Founding Bloggers reported:
     When the Progressive movement in this country gained steam in the early twentieth century, they spawned the genocidal Eugenic movement which directly led to the Holocaust. That’s not an exaggeration either. American Progressives worked DIRECTLY with the Nazis in their quest for race purity.
     Progressives own the Holocaust, a fact they conveniently ignore today. Funny how they make a big stink about everyone else owning up to their history, but when it comes to them, they are exempt from their own rules.
     And, of course, abortion was seen as one way for progressives to get rid of the undesirables.
     Progressives don’t want you to know Tim Tebow’s story and they don’t want you to know their history. That’s part of their game.
     These heartless progressives owe Tim Tebow and his mother an apology.

The Womens Media Center countered with a letter to CBS, but it looks like CBS plans to go ahead with the ad.

"It (the ad) uses one family's story to dictate morality to the American public, and encourages young women to disregard medical advice, putting their lives at risk," said the letter sent to CBS by the Women's Media Center.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | February 1, 2010 11:08 AM

To participate in the beer discussion, I present Polygamy Porter. You can even buy a sign on ebay That bears the Polygamy Porter logo and the slogan, "Why have just one" -- It's made by Wasatch Beers.

Ex-mormon, Richard Packham has a pale ale page on his website:
http://packham.n4m.org/pale-ale.htm "Oh God, beer is good for my mouth!" This is in reference to part of the mormon temple endowment ceremony:

Until the 1990 changes in the ceremony, this secret sign was made by raising the hands above the head and lowering them while saying "Pay Lay Ale," and repeating this three times. The words were supposed to mean, in the sacred language used by Adam in the Garden of Eden, "O God, hear the words of my mouth!" Since 1990 the original words have been replaced in the ceremony by the vernacular translation, probably because of the possible confusion which is illustrated here. [see image on website]

Posted by: Lynna, OM | February 1, 2010 11:18 AM

Sven, here's How to Poop, with subtitles:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIXXkj-KCDc&NR=1

Posted by: ianmhor | February 1, 2010 11:32 AM

Paul W #236:
That's one of hers I won't be reading.

She does have her own view about religion that comes with her books that can be read around but would be annoying if that's all she had to give.

I am no religious scholar but did think she covered the ground which for me at the time was the history of Islam in relation to Judaism and Christianity.

Can't go and check for more detail as it's already gone off to the charity shop so it wasn't a book I thought worthy of keeping for future reference. I have kept Hinnells' "Handbook of Living Religions" a useful reference which might suffice though it covers a lot more.

Posted by: Paul W., OM | February 1, 2010 11:41 AM

ianmhor,

To understand what's wrong with Karen Armstrong's theology, you might want to read the discussion of what it means for something to be supernatural and/or falsifiable in the recent "Comity and Reconciliation" thread:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/01/comity_and_reconciliation.php#comment-2225963

One of the reasons I wrote that stuff was because of reading Armstrong's (woefully misnamed) The Case for God.

Without saying so, Armstrong is trying to take the supernaturalism out of religion, and claim that the religion has never really been about the supernatural, and that religion done right is entirely consistent with scientific knowledge.

She could not be more wrong, but given that we don't generally have a shared vocabulary for discussing such things, it's hard for most people to see why.

The basic reason is that science has a lot to say about the human mind, and what mystical states really are, and how religion actually works.

On the scientific view, the human mind is simply not the kind of thing that could do what Armstrong claims it can. It can't meditate/introspect and find Deep Truths about the Ultimate because it's basically a computational phenomenon with extremely limited and fallible introspective abilities.

Expecting human minds to apprehend such Deep Truths without using evidence and reason---to divine them by intuitive introspection or some utterly extraordinary kind of perception---is like expecting an AI program running on a digital computer to introspect down many levels, past the language it was written in, past the actual machine language of the computer, to the nature of transistors and far beyond---past physics to some deep Underlying Reality.

If the scientific view of the mind is right, this is utterly ridiculous.

And it gets worse. What Armstrong claims that people find, if they do religion right, is that there's a deep connection between mind and matter, and that in Hindu terms, the Atman (mind stuff) is the same thing as Brahman (universe stuff), and that that's the reality of God.

That is exactly supernaturalism in the sense that Sastra and I discuss in the Comity and Reconciliation thread, and it is horseshit, scientifically speaking.

That's the reason it's important to get clear on what "supernaturalism" really is---so that we can see that people like Armstrong are wrong, for the same deep reason other religious people are wrong.

Their ontological presuppositions include very basic category mistakes about minds and matter, of the same general kind as the fundamentalists they loathe and condescend to.

It's also why scientific theories of religion like Pascal Boyer's (in Religion Explained) are important. They make it clear that when people like Armstrong make religion "done right" out to be a particular sort of thing, with a grand tradition of ancient wisdom, they are simply factually mistaken---that is not what makes religion actually work, and never has been. It is a marginal phenomenon, and an aberration, as well as being scientifically just as wrong as other religion.

Posted by: ianmhor | February 1, 2010 12:03 PM

Paul W #241: Thanks for that pointer I will look it over in due course. I will admit that my interest is more historical that theological and I have let most of Karen Armstrong's musings on what religion is go over my head. I remember lots of mythos and logos references raising a passing query as something I had not been exposed to before but I did not dig deeper as it was not what I was reading the book for. Having read a few reviews of "The Case for God" I realized it was unlikely to be any use to me. You have now confirmed that. Many thanks.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space, OM, A little FUCKING ray of sunshine | February 1, 2010 12:04 PM

Blind Squirrel@182 OK, I know I'm late to the party--but, shorter wavelength only gives a sharper resolution if the image is diffraction limited. That is not the case here. The reason why they use extreme UV for semiconductors is because the feature sizes are so small--and hence diffraction limited.

I think it's more along the lines of the greater sensitivity of the blue cones--as we all know from those damned blue headlights!

Posted by: Ring Tailed Lemurian | February 1, 2010 12:28 PM

Miki Z #201

Magnets? You get unsolicited magnets in the mail? Not fair, I want magnets. All I get are bills and a lot of mail for the hundred-and-twenty-foot-high-Baptist-church-down-the-road-that-looks-just-like-a-church-and-absolutely-nothing-like-my-house-and-has-an-address-nobody-could-possibly-confuse-with-mine.

Do I take any of this misdirected mail to the church?
Only if there is no money enclosed. :)

Posted by: Owlmirror | February 1, 2010 12:56 PM

Say, anyone know the Yiddish term for "douchebag"? ;)

Google translate has Yiddish, but I would be careful...

It says (דאָוטשע זאַק), which is a transliteration of "doutshe zak" (the latter word being "sack", of course)(I think the transliteration is simply wrong, since it's a French "che"=>"sh", so the "t"/"ט" and "e/"ע" should be removed).

Translating "douche" from French ("shower") gives (שפּריץ זאַק); "shprits zak".

====

Magnets? You get unsolicited magnets in the mail?

I've gotten magnetic adverts with my phone books. They are terrible weaksauce magnets, and are not worth the effort of putting them on the fridge.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/KtrH9g4llpHui8s2.0ezzjBOheU0WpQaoHA-#ab4e8 | February 1, 2010 1:47 PM

Don't worry about a precise translation, SC. Though online dictionaries are a bit prissy here, for most purposes schmuck will do fine.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | February 1, 2010 1:54 PM

I hope it's better than Armstrong's The Case for God, which I read and found interesting but ultimately came away thinking it was largely bullshit revisionism.

Posted by: Aratina Cage | February 1, 2010 1:58 PM

Sven #230, that pretty much sums up Lion IRC's entire time　spent here on Pharyngula.

「うんち　うんち　うーんぱっぱ！」

I'm not sure we were as successful toilet training him as they were with the tiger in the video, but you can't say we didn't try.

Posted by: SteveM | February 1, 2010 2:15 PM

Blind Squirrel@182 OK, I know I'm late to the party--but, shorter wavelength only gives a sharper resolution if the image is diffraction limited. That is not the case here. The reason why they use extreme UV for semiconductors is because the feature sizes are so small--and hence diffraction limited.

I think it's more along the lines of the greater sensitivity of the blue cones--as we all know from those damned blue headlights!

It was suggested earlier that the problem with "older" vision could be chromatic aberration, that is, not being able to simultaneously focus red, blue and green. This seems like a pretty good hypothesis and I think a good way to test would be to use monochromatic green LED's. You would get the advantage of a more sensitive detector than red, with more sensors in the fovea than with blue. Would seem to be the optimal combination.

As for the blue headlights; if we really do have more blue cones in our peripheral vision, maybe that's what makes blue headlights so annoying. That even though you look away, you don't really reduce their perceived brightness as when looking away from the older "yellow"(ish) headlights.

Posted by: blf | February 1, 2010 2:38 PM

Herr Rat, Paedophile-Major, is at it again, this time in it's role as Gayphobic-General and Bullshiter-Serjeant, Pope condemns gay equality laws ahead of first UK visit:

Benedict XVI says legislation safeguarding rights of same-sex couples violates 'natural law'

…

The pope urged the bishops to make their voices heard and to defend the faith, saying Christian teaching did not undermine or restrict the freedom of others.

His remarks drew swift criticism from the National Secular Society, which said it would stage protests during the visit.

Terry Sanderson, the society's president, said: "The taxpayer is going to be faced with a bill for £20m for the visit – in which he has indicated he will attack equal rights and promote discrimination."

Posted by: Blind Squirrel FCD | February 1, 2010 2:56 PM

a_ray_in_dilbert_space: I'm looking at the formation of the image on the retina. Blue light can be focused sharper than red, regardless of what the original image is of. The image on the retina is very tiny, analogous to the limitations of photolithography. Think of the low resolution of infrared telescopes compared to optical scopes. I don't feel like I am explaining this very well. Anyone else?

BS

Posted by: Lynna, OM | February 1, 2010 3:10 PM

Here's an update on the Prop 8 trial, more of a summary really, since we're still waiting for a verdict. These are just a few excerpts from a much longer article by Joanna Brooks:

Documents compiled by Mormon supporters of same-sex marriage—including campaign time lines and donor profiles—show that LDS Church ecclesiastical structures, resources, and relationships were fully mobilized to generate the majority of volunteers and donations for the Yes on 8 campaign, even as Church members were coached to handle their Mormonism carefully in campaign contributions and activities.
     There was nothing plausibly deniable about the Church’s relationship to the Proposition 8 campaign when, in Sunday meetings on June 29, 2008, a letter from Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President Thomas Monson was read over the pulpit of every Mormon congregation in California urging Church members to “do all you can” to support the ballot measure.
     Early donations from Mormons were solicited in July, when letters read in Sunday meetings of men’s and women’s church auxiliaries conveyed a $10 million fundraising goal for July and August and instructed Church members to donate exclusively to protectmarriage.com. Donors were asked to identify their home congregation on donation forms, according to campaign observers, so that Mormon congregations could track their progress towards meeting fundraising targets set for each congregation based on their ability to pay as assessed from records of church offerings.
     The Church-coordinated fundraising drive intensified in late August, when select LDS Church members identified as potential large donors were invited to participate in conference calls with members of the Quorum of the Seventy, a high-ranking Church leadership body. (Mormon Yes on 8 campaign observers believe that tithing records were used to identify call participants.) On the conference calls, high-ranking church leaders encouraged potential large donors to individually contribute $25,000 to protectmarriage.com.
     That’s when Nadine Hansen, a Mormon veteran of the campaign for the Equal Rights Amendment, initiated an effort to document the extent of Mormon funding for the Yes on 8 campaign. ... she prepared to undertake the same donor-identification project for Proposition 8 at the Web site mormonsfor8.com.
     In early September, a surge of $25,000 donations began to appear in campaign finance records compiled by the California Secretary of State. Hansen and a crew of Mormon supporters of same-sex marriage began to comb large donor records to identify Mormon Church members....successfully identified more than 50% of the large donors as members of the LDS Church.
     “And we know that we did not identify all of the Mormon donors,” Hansen relates. “You can see that in some places virtually all the money that came in came from Mormons. It’s a safe bet to say that Mormons contributed over half the money. It might be as high as 75%.”
     Mobilizing highly centralized and hierarchical ecclesiastical structures, Mormons also contributed as much as 80-90% of the volunteer labor for the campaign.
     Implementation of a statewide grassroots volunteer structure began in late July, with volunteers coordinated through geographically-organized Mormon ecclesiastical units called “wards” and “stakes.” Church members received “callings,” or ecclesiastical assignments understood by orthodox church members to be divinely inspired, from their local church leaders to serve as regional (or “stake”-level) directors and zip code (or “ward”-level) supervisors for grassroots campaigning. One LDS zipcode supervisor reported that the Mormon Church was “the only member of the Protect Marriage coalition” to participate in the Yes on 8 ground campaign.

Posted by: Paul W., OM | February 1, 2010 3:32 PM

I'm still in the Henry Gee battle over at Greg Laden's, which is making me increasingly angry...though it has recently taken a turn for the amusing. Say, anyone know the Yiddish term for "douchebag"?

It's not a literal translation, but I'd say he's a bit of a meshuga putz, with some serious chutzpah.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Yiddish_origin

I wish I knew how to say "paranoid."

---

FWIW, I posted the following in that thread at Greg's blog. It's stuck in moderation a the moment, but I'm posting it here for reference.

(Partly so that the Pharyngulan hordes don't descend on Greg with too much redundant wrath and incinerate the intertubes.)

---

Greg, Stephanie,

I'm sorry, but Greg Godwinned this thread in the title, and again, in comment 36---after SC's crucial comment 31.

Stephanie further Godwinned the thread by trying to defend Gee against the charge of paranoia.

There is no way in hell this thread is going to stop being about Henry Gee, and all the issues that Henry's behavior brings up. It is far too late for that. If you want a thread that's not about him, I suggest that you start a new thread that doesn't mention him.

Sorry, but Henry Gee is quite clearly a bit paranoid about the Jewishness thing. He really, really is. It's perfectly understandable why he might be paranoid about it, given the history, being in Britain etc., but that doesn't make him not paranoid when he comes over to ScienceBlogs and pisses on PZ's rug, clearly implying that some people there---including me, I'd guess---are really genocidal antisemitic zealots, or at least condoners and enablers of such things, who should stop being such reprehensible New Atheists because their criticisms of his particular religion (among all religions) will lead to persecution of his people.

There are norms of civility at Pharyngula. Greg is dead wrong to imply that "anything goes" there, such that Henry can't have done anything wrong by stooping to our utterly uncivilized level:

In the cited case, Gee is blasting away at pharynguloids. That is normal for that blog. [...] So, really, unless I'm missing the point ... Henry Gee pissing all over other commenters and the blogger at Pharyngula is normal and expected and is not exceptional or relevant to this argument.

Greg could not have more thoroughly missed the most fundamental point about the subject than that.

The whole issue of online civility is what counts as civility, and which standards of civility are and defensible tenable where, vs. having no standards of civility at all.

Greg basically used Pharyngula as an example of the latter---it's just a troop of poo-flinging screechy monkeys anyway, so who the hell are they to complain about Henry calling them Jew-hating baby-killing Nazis, or at best hypocrites for not having the courage of their convictions, such that they wouldn't bother to vandalize Jewish graves and actuallly burn synagogues?

Holy crap. You think Pharnyngula's standards are simply low, and that they're that low?

Let's take what SC quoted in comment 31 paragraph by paragraph, since a lot of people seem to have missed the significance that struck many pharynguloids like myself as over-the-top to say the least:

I am not asking to be liked, I am not asking that people join in ... I am asking to be accorded the choice that is the privilege of all civilized societies to be allowed to practice their beliefs without molestation or being vilified for what they do, irrespective of how rational they think it.

Here Henry is either arguing with a straw man---the idea that New Atheists are uncivilized because they vilify people for their religious views, rather than acceptably disagreeing with their religious views---or is begging the question of when it is acceptable to criticize someone's beliefs bluntly, as opposed to being a demagogue who singles people out for persecution.

If that's not clear, read on:

But of course, some of you probably think I am an untermensch, as did the people who killed my grandparents and my two aunts -- one a toddler, I have recently discovered, the other a babe in arms, and then recycled them as soap and lampshades, and presumably deserving of no better fate.

Wow. Henry is clearly saying that some of us at Pharyngula agree with the Nazis that Jewish babies deserved what they got when the Nazis killed them and turned their bodily tissues into household items.

Seriously. He said that. No, he didn't say that everybody at Pharyngula was that bad, but I think it's clear that he was implying that Pharyngula's moral standards are so low in that regard that such people would not be clearly unwelcome outliers in that community.

...Now, back to this 'respect' thing. I am sometimes told by atheists that they 'respect' me but not my religious beliefs, and expect me to be happy with that curious point of view. My response is usually to say that if they disrespect my religion, then, surely, that disrespect must take some concrete form* - defacing stones in cemeteries, perhaps? Or torching synagogues? If not, then this disrespect is simply empty posturing. The atheist usually then gets rather cross, which suggests I have touched a nerve.

Wow again. He's saying that we New Atheists who explicitly disrespect all religion, including his, have every reason to desecrate Jewish graves and torch synagogues, and no good reason not to. And if we disagree vehemently, he must be right---he's touched a nerve.

Fucking right he touched a nerve. He's hammering on pretty much every anti-New Atheist canard, making us out to be the kinds of amoral and immoral villains who perpetrated the Holocaust, or at best cowardly enablers with no moral standards.

Then there's this:

I predict that in five or ten years time, thanks to Dawkins and others, then scientists who profess any kind of religious belief will find it hard to get tenure, and then jobs, and then papers published, and finally their employers, responding to pressure, will be forced to fire them or retire them early. It will start with the Jews, of course, because these things usually do, as they have done many times in the past.

Isn't that at least a bit paranoid? Isn't it at least a bit simplistic, in a broad-brush way that is at least a wee bit paranoid with regard to some of the people he's tarring with his broad brush?

Shouldn't he at least note that even if the situation is as bad as he paints it some places, perhaps the UK, the mostly American audience at Pharyngula might not be aware of the evil he claims they're contributing to, and the immediacy of the threat of persecution?

Shouldn't he assume that we have some decency, and explain the threat clearly, and appeal to our better natures, rather than vilifying us every way he knows how, especially in the very worst possible way?

Holy crap. Most of us regulars at Pharyngula are liberals and staunch civil libertarians, for whom the Nazis are about as morally repugnant as it is possible for something to be. Many of us are Jews and/or people who work with Jews daily and fail to notice our own alleged antisemitism, or insensitivity to the issue.

As somebody who's served on promotion and tenure committees in the U.S., discussiong and voting with Jews and gentiles regarding the cases of Jews and gentiles, I'm simply shocked. I really never noticed how antisemitic we are, given the disproportionate number of Jews we have in academia, and how nobody seems to mind. (Or if they do, they keep their damned mouths shut about it, apparently because they wrongly think that we'd be shocked and offended by antisemitism.)

Come on, the guy's fucking paranoid, however understandable that might be, and it makes him a simplistic hypocrite who thinks that free speech about religion---at least his religion---is just not worth the cost in enabling substantive persecution, even on a very short timescale.

He is clearly implying that there ought to be norms, if not laws, that prohibit the free discussion of whether Judaism is a dopey religion like we New Atheists think that all religions are.

And note that Henry pulls out all the stops, in that thread and elsewhere, with the usual litany of fallacies and slanders.

He's exactly the kind of demagogue that he's accusing Dawkins and the New Atheists of being.

By his own logic, the New Atheists should be shut up some means means---somehow deprived of their free speech, at least, because what they say will predictably be used to justify more persecution of the Jews and others, and apparently serves no valid purpose.

At best, they should be vilified and marginalized by right-thinking people, but if Henry is not to be the kind of "hypocrite" he accuses us of being for not burning his synagogue down, it seems that the threat he says we pose would justify much harsher measures.

Greg, I'd say you blew it in a big way, from the start, and repeatedly since, by not recognizing that even Pharyngulans deserve a little better treatment than such clear comparisons to Nazi psychopaths and their sociopathic enablers.

This is very sad. One thing I'd like to point out is that Henry himself is (at least now) an atheist.

As a Jewish atheist, his viewpoint could be very interesting in straightening many of us alleged persecution-enabling demagogues out about Judaism.

As I understand it, most of us Pharyngulans are not racist and having nothing against Jews on racist or ethnic grounds. It's trite and ludicrous, but some of our best friends are Jews, really---my best friend, for example.

Some of us have even gone regularly to synagogue, at times, and socialized primarily with Jews. (Me for example.)

Some of us think we're able to appreciate Jewish people and culture while still being New Atheists.

Perhaps we are just wrong, and need to have our consciousness raised.

What we don't need is to be painted as Nazis and sociopaths, and told that people who paint us that way are not paranoid.

Posted by: Ring Tailed Lemurian | February 1, 2010 3:51 PM

ambulocetacean #208

Good luck in a place where men outnumber women something like three to one

3:1! That's a vast improvement over the ratio when I lived there in 73/4. It was over 25:1 then (and almost all the women were married), which probably explains why, when out in the bush working for weeks, I once woke to find someone's hands inside my sleeping bag. Of course, it was the most vocally homophobic workmate who did this. (He then pulled his rifle on me and told me not to tell. I agreed, if he stopped immediately, which he did. Then, when he was otherwise occupied, I stuffed some twigs way down the barrel. I hope it blew up in his face the next time he used it).

Sex workers from cities in the south and the east fly in for a week or two and make a bundle. But if the evangelicals want to be popular with the red-blooded blue-collar crowd they won't want to start off by preaching about that.

I got a lift from Alice to Darwin in a very nice motorhome which was rotating sex workers between the various towns between Port Augusta and Darwin. The girls hated the men in Darwin ("violent") but loved the opal miners in Coober Pedy ("generous").

Posted by: Lynna, OM | February 1, 2010 4:12 PM

There was a question up-thread about the legality of the mormon church contributing time and means to the Prop 8 campaign. I'm too debilitated right now by embarrassment to provide my own thoughts, or a summary of the legal issues. So, in lieu of that, here are some good sources:
http://lds501c3.wordpress.com/
News for the Mormon Legal Community
Understanding Proposition 8

Posted by: boygenius | February 1, 2010 4:27 PM

Lynna,

I'm confused about the Paypal thing. (Never used it before.) Where is one supposed to enter the email address? I didn't see a likely spot for it on the Paypal site and their search engine returned no results when queried w/ the email you provided.

I can't do much, but I'd like to help out a little. I'm just not down with the procedure.

Posted by: Miki Z | February 1, 2010 4:32 PM

Does anyone with more internet savvy know how much trouble I may have caused?

My person email address has been posted near-daily on the web for about 10 years now. I used to get in excess of 500 spam emails a day, but recently the isps have gotten better and better at sorting these, and I usually get no more than 10 per month now that aren't handled by either my isp or my mail program.

Unless your daughter is prone to opening emails to fill out delivery forms which need her bank account info to deliver packages she has not ordered, or if she thinks a Nigerian prince needs her help smuggling money out of his country, the result is likely to be annoying at worst.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 1, 2010 4:40 PM

Jadehawk:

The distinction between my "me want" and yours just goes to show you how thoroughly domesticated I am!

That said, the Volt looks (and, if the article is to be believed, feels) surprisingly unboring. More to the point, my daily round-trip commute is <40 miles, and I find the prospect of driving for weeks without pumping any gas very sexy indeed.

Posted by: A. Noyd | February 1, 2010 4:41 PM

Lynna (#270)

Does anyone with more internet savvy know how much trouble I may have caused?

Probably not much, presuming her ISP/email service has decent spam filters as most do these days. And I'm sure PZ can just edit your post for you, if you want to lower the spam risk further.

Posted by: boygenius | February 1, 2010 4:49 PM

Oh, and Lynna;

There is absolutely NO shame in accepting help when it is offered, be it from friends or strangers. I know exactly the position you are in. I am self-employed, uninsured, and living in Idaho. I just thank FSM I haven't had any medical issues to date.

Posted by: boygenius | February 1, 2010 5:02 PM

Jadehawk,

Thank you. Done and done.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 1, 2010 5:09 PM

Jadehawk:

Actually, my own personal car is a 2-door hatchback (a Hyundai Accent), and if there were a version of that car with a Volt-like drivetrain, I'd be on it like white on rice! But ever since our daughter was born, it's been the rule that at least one of the family cars be a 4-door (my wife's current car is a Honda Accord sedan)... and now that my daughter is not so much of a concern (she has her own car), we're beginning to have adult friends who're of an age that doesn't easily accommodate crawling into the backseat of a 2-door.

Ah, well; if that's the worst thing about getting old, I think I can live with it.

Posted by: boygenius | February 1, 2010 5:21 PM

I wish I could get by with only a compact car. :( They just fare poorly when pulling a trailer filled with 3,500 pounds of woodworking equipment. This requires me to maintain insurance and upkeep on both a 3/4 ton work truck and a grocery-getter (Geo Prizm).

Posted by: windy | February 1, 2010 5:26 PM

Discussing beer on a Monday morning? Very cruel. Now I want a Fat Tire *sulk*.

hmmmm...perhaps you're correct. Perhaps I am an unwitting captive of the prevailing panadaptationist gradualist capitalist misogynist racist ultradarwinian poopyhead paradigm. Perhaps I would benefit from adopting a more, hmm, pluralistic worldview.
If only someone would step forward and write a rhetorically brilliant if metaphorically hamstrung corrective!!

On the other hand, considering the spirit of the thread, maybe the corrective could be published in a less articulate but more entertaining form, as an Irish drinking song:

Plura-loora-loora-lism,
plura-loora-loora-lism,
give that man a jar of porter!

etc.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | February 1, 2010 5:36 PM

I dream of the day I can finally live in a place where a car isn't necessary*. Fargo will be a big step up from the current wasteland, though.

-----

*not that I actually use it much. mostly, it's there so my boyfriend can get to work. Which means it's not actually ever used in the summer, where bikes are the preferred form of transportation.

Posted by: Dania | February 1, 2010 5:39 PM

Apropos of nothing, but I just saw an interesting and sort of unexpected advert on TV for a HIV prevention campaign. Target audience: men who have sex with other men. It made me smile. I'm so glad to see that we're going in the right direction.

So, I went looking for the ad on YouTube and found out that there are two of them, one depicting a casual encounter and the other a stable relationship. Nice.

Posted by: David Marjanović | February 1, 2010 5:49 PM

Dude, don't shoot the messenger.

Didn't mean to. I was just too lazy to spell out that the attitude you describe is one of my pet peeves and the root of 30 % of all evil.

It's made by Wasatch Beers.

I suppose it's not as old as the oldest known horses, though?

Deep Truths about the Ultimate Ground of Being, which are beyond words

...but not Beyond Capital Letters, it seems.

PZ wrote a destruction critique of The Case for God a bit after Newtonmas, IIRC.

And then Sastra weighed in and showed that Armstrong isn't a Christian – she's a faitheist. (...Unless I'm confusing Armstrong with someone else here.)

it strikes me as possible that, in a world without the Jesus story, monotheism itself would have withered away.

Unlikely; the Jews would have kept going, people would have kept converting to Judaism (at a low rate), and there's always Zoroastrianism. Wasn't the Mithras cult rather monotheistic, too?

But it's nonetheless possible that the ancient Roman attitude – "all religions were thought by the common people to be equally true, by the philosophers to be equally false, and by the magistrate to be equally useful" – would have stayed in force and prevented what always happens when a religion gains secular power.

Epicureanism would have spread a lot. But Epicurus is the guy who invented the concept of dogma – he thought that doubt makes unhappy! The moron! Considering how the Pauline epistles are to a large part a reaction to Epicureanism, he seems to have a lot of blood on his hands, posthumously.

(Warning about that link... it's a night-waster.)

Benedict XVI says legislation safeguarding rights of same-sex couples violates 'natural law'

Note how hard he tries not to give a religious reason.
Note how hard he fails.

I wish I knew how to say "paranoid."

There's not going to be another word for this concept that, IIRC, Freud came up with. There isn't in German...

But perhaps Gee merely needs to be reminded that the Nazis didn't care about the Jewish religion? They defined "Jew" by ancestry, and by ancestry only. A couple of Catholic saints are such primarily because they were killed for being Jewish.

Me want! Sniny!

Making street-colored or otherwise background-colored cars should be forbidden. If I ever buy a car, it will be SCREAMING YELLOW. Embarrassing? Sure. But it beats causing an accident because I wasn't seen.

Does anyone with more internet savvy know how much trouble I may have caused?

Depends on your daughter's spam filter.

I'm still praying to the Spaghetti Monster for this:

Oh for crying out loud. Is the testosterone crystallizing out of your blood already?!?

But, actually, it fits your interest in canine teeth, I suppose.

Alternatively, I'll take this cute little critter.

An electric Smart! That's neat.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | February 1, 2010 5:59 PM

Oh for crying out loud. Is the testosterone crystallizing out of your blood already?!?

Posted by: David Marjanović | February 1, 2010 6:06 PM

Blockquote fail in the very first line of comment 293.

* * *

From the sidebar...

I slept with Faith, and found a corpse in my arms on awaking; I drank and danced all night with Doubt, and found her a virgin in the morning.

[Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies]

* * *

everything I own (including boyfriend)

Nicely put. :-)

You haven't seen my turtle traps.

For this kind of turtle?

Posted by: Lynna, OM | February 1, 2010 6:10 PM

David M., my blockquote fail in #290 was more spectacular than yours in #293. My blockquote fail is bigger than your blockquote fail.

Posted by: David Marjanović | February 1, 2010 6:12 PM

pffft.

Seriously, I get all aggressive just from <HRRR> looking at it. Road rage even.

it's snowing

It snowed heavily over here in the morning!

But only for about an hour, and it was too warm.

Posted by: SC OM | February 1, 2010 6:15 PM

You haven't seen my turtle traps.

Ooooh, baby.

(I realize that makes no sense, but anything that starts with "You haven't seen my" invites, nay requires, flirtatious silliness.)

Posted by: David Marjanović | February 1, 2010 6:19 PM

My blockquote fail is bigger than your blockquote fail.

<sob> I want to play in the snow with Jadehawk... <whimper>

Oh, I almost forgot... I bought bread yesterday. Pérène multicéréales again. <nom nom nom>

a funny exchange between Laden and CPP

Ouch. X-D I don't dare looking it up!

Posted by: boygenius | February 1, 2010 6:24 PM

Minot

Oh, dear. Worse, much worse, than I had imagined. Get. Out. Now.

May I be so bold as to inquire your initial reason for moving to Minot, of all places? I was under the impression that Minot was a place people moved away from.

Posted by: David Marjanović | February 1, 2010 6:25 PM

I don't dare look[...] it up!

Ehem.

Does this make me a bigoted Islamophobe?

Religion might help with kamikaze actions, and it obviously provides something to quarrel about, but it's not necessary. Anything will do if people consider it worth dying for. This is most clearly shown by the PKK, the Kurdish Workers' Party, which had suicide bombers (many female) a few decades ago, and which is a Stalinist organization. In other words, those are atheists we're talking about here, atheists who don't believe in any afterlife at all whatsoever.

did CPP actually threaten to sue Laden?

ROTFL!

Posted by: Lynna, OM | February 1, 2010 6:26 PM

My small donation has been sent. It may come through with my real name and information. I would prefer that your daughter not reveal that, if possible. Please keep us updated.

Thanks to everyone for the help.

For that kind of money you'd think these tests would be guaranteed to reveal all my faults.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | February 1, 2010 6:32 PM

May I be so bold as to inquire your initial reason for moving to Minot, of all places? I was under the impression that Minot was a place people moved away from.

And will it make it worse if I told you I moved here from Seattle?

-------

*And oh yeah, my boyfriend was here.

Posted by: boygenius | February 1, 2010 6:37 PM

And will it make it worse if I told you I moved here from Seattle?

Holy culture shock, Batman...

Don't they have boyfriends in Seattle? ;)

Posted by: Miki Z | February 1, 2010 6:38 PM

Kausik Datta,

If you think Islam encourages violence and extremism, leads to the slaughter of innocents, suppresses science, women, and others not of their faith: this does not make you an Islamophobe as that term is normally used. If you believe Islam does this and other religions do not, you may qualify as an Islamophobe.

I think of myself as a fundie-phobe. I don't particularly worry whether the particular fundie religion and culture uses suicide bombing, random shooting, machetes, poison gas, knife attack, vehicular bombs, plane crashes, beheading, crucifixion, drowning, burning at the stake... if your particular group thinks killing others for not being you is a viable option, your group should be stamped out. Education, legislation, liberalization, prosperity seem to be the best at stamping out extremism.

Posted by: Blind Squirrel FCD | February 1, 2010 6:40 PM

Minot

I was under the impression that Minot was a place people moved away from.

BS

Posted by: Wowbagger, Man-Hating Man of Pharyngula | February 1, 2010 6:42 PM

Someone posted this on one of the other pages: the Global Atheist Convention has sold out - even with no help from any level of Australian government.

The sad thing is, of the two major parties it is the slightly less right-wing one that is in at both national and (my) state level. I'd like to vote against them to indicate my disgust but doing so risks putting the even more scumbag bunch back in.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | February 1, 2010 6:45 PM

Don't they have boyfriends in Seattle? ;)

So many trees downtown...

Also, I can totally see my house :-p

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | February 1, 2010 6:46 PM

I cannot quite follow...

Her business has been successful enough they can move to a bigger, more costly area and still make ends meet.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | February 1, 2010 6:49 PM

I cannot quite follow...

Posted by: David Marjanović | February 1, 2010 6:50 PM

Makes sense. I should have gone to bed long ago (I'm not quite healthy at the moment).

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | February 1, 2010 6:55 PM

Lynna,

This is fucking embarrassing,

Don't be embarrassed. We, as a country, should be embarrassed that you can't get the medical care you need.

I sent you an e-mail from my RL name and email address. I would greatly appreciate it if you don't mind keeping it to yourself.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 1, 2010 7:03 PM

SC said...

Lynna,

My small donation has been sent.

Yah, mine, too.

It may come through with my real name and information. I would prefer that your daughter not reveal that, if possible.

Heh, that ship has sailed in my case, hasn't it? Though with some of the stuff I've posted about porn in the other thread, I'm beginning to wish I were anonymous!

Please keep us updated.

Yes, please do!

BTW, PL wrote...

Don't be embarrassed. We, as a country, should be embarrassed that you can't get the medical care you need.

Yup. I was delighted to contribute to Project Diagnose Lynna ™, but I would've been happier still to pay the same amount, or even 10× as much, in higher taxes so that neither you nor anyone else would have to face a crisis like this.

Posted by: Miki Z | February 1, 2010 7:16 PM

Has anyone else seen this study on sex education for 6th and 7th graders?

Efficacy of a Theory-Based Abstinence-Only Intervention Over 24 Months

They report a lower prevalence of self-report of initiation among the 'abstinence-only' group than the two groups that include sex-ed and the control group (health class, no sex ed).

No difference was found as far as condom usage between the groups, but the abstinence only instructors were specifically told to give accurate information about condom effectiveness if asked. There's no indication whether or not these questions were asked in the groups.

Do any health researchers here have experience with this type of study? I'm wondering about the accuracy of the self-reporting. Does the abstinence-only group have a stronger incentive to misreport (perceived -- there's no indication that there was a real incentive to do so)? How are such things controlled for?

The designs in this study were carefully responsible: the abstinence education does not disparage sex or characterize it was 'wrong', the truth is told about condoms, etc. What they did is not what is typically "abstinence-only" education.

What is the chance that we can move the "abstinence-only" advocates towards this model and prevent the study result from being used as justification for sin-based abstinence education?

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | February 1, 2010 7:29 PM

the commercial art is googleable via "jadehawk" (i seem to take up the majority of google images under that handle :-p). The fine art isn't really present on the internet much, especially since I haven't had the time or motivation for that in years... all I have is my old Elfwood account;

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 1, 2010 7:30 PM

Miki Z:

The designs in this study were carefully responsible: the abstinence education does not disparage sex or characterize it was 'wrong', the truth is told about condoms, etc. What they did is not what is typically "abstinence-only" education.

I don't mean to be snarky to you, Miki, with that FTFY, but really, by what definition is a 6th/7th grade sex ed curriculum that neither demonizes sex nor discourages condom use considered "abstinence only"? I suspect most curricula advise kids that age that they should delay sexual activity; AFAIK, what distinguishes curricula as "abstinence only" is precisely that they do identify premarital sex as "wrong" and they do withhold information about safer sex practices, including condoms.

Posted by: Rorschach | February 1, 2010 7:42 PM

Karen Armstrong "A History of God" covers a lot of ground.

I bought that book because it seemed to be the only one in the store that was about what I was after, read the first 50 pages and threw it away.
It irritated the crap out of me that she treats jesus and god as actual historical figures and biblical stories as facts.Her writing style makes it obvious that she has no doubts that all those accounts are historical facts.
I just couldn't stand it.

So, any others ?

In the cited case, Gee is blasting away at pharynguloids. That is normal for that blog. [...] So, really, unless I'm missing the point ... Henry Gee pissing all over other commenters and the blogger at Pharyngula is normal and expected and is not exceptional or relevant to this argument.

Greg could not have more thoroughly missed the most fundamental point about the subject than that.

I like Greg's blog, but he (and Stephanie Zvan btw) get this wrong all the time and then cry and scream when it is pointed out to them.
How annoyingly and irritatingly stupid to confuse emphasis on content of messages instead of tone with poo-flinging and stupid talk of the kind Gee or our creobots commit .

Posted by: shatfat | February 1, 2010 7:49 PM

Say, anyone know the Yiddish term for "douchebag"? ;))

Well, there's shmuck (prick) and TL or tuchus-lekker (brown-noser). The Acura TL never ceases to amuse me.

Really, I think shmuck best expresses the idea of a "self-absorbed, arrogant waste of humanity", but I am open to being corrected on that.

Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa) | February 1, 2010 7:52 PM

ll, that's a different kind of complicated. :) (They seem very nice, though. Once I stopped over there to ask if someone could come by here and clear up a math question, and they did! Were very patient about it, too.)

I had notice that Good Math, Bad Math had been on the "most active" list and I went there to see if I could join in. It just reminded me of why I hate math. (I thought I should explore other online communities. After reading my post on Towleroad, I realized raven was rubbing off on me.)

Lynna, I made a small donation. Hope it helps.

Posted by: Ichthyic | February 1, 2010 7:56 PM

speaking of Henry Gee...

this was his last post on the blogwarz thread on NN:

Saturday, 30 Jan uary 2010 - 23:51 UTC

Henry Gee said:

For the last time, it wasn't my rug, Greg, it was John Wilkins's. Do at least try to keep up.

I've been quote-mined by creationists for years and years. I've been insulted in print and online and in person more times than I can count. This is all par for the course. One of the first things the Late, Great John Maddox told me when I joined Nature was 'in this job, you will make enemies'.

Now I find that all I have to do is say, quite reasonably, that 'This Halibut Was Good Enough For Jehovah', and now I am the subject of all sorts of abuse from a lot of yahoos on ScienceBlogs who seem to have nothing better to do, and their various hangers-on who like to swear a lot. But what perhaps irks me most is a public ticking-off from Maxine. I started on NN to supply it with some easy content (free, too) and people seemed to appreciate my doing so. But it could be that my work here is done. I certainly have better things to do. All this tzores, and no stats, either (yeah, yeah, it'll be here someday. Do you know what? I think I can see the continents begin to drift apart).

seriously?

He's gonna take his ball and go home?

who the fuck does he think he is, Eric Cartman?

I don't understand how someone who is supposed be a "good" communicator and editor can have such thin skin.

Frankly, I'd be sorely tempted to call him on his bluff.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 1, 2010 8:01 PM

Miki:

This is why I ask specifically about how we move "abstinence-only" as it's "taught" now to the model used in this study.

As the quickness of my initial reply no doubt indicates, I haven't read the study. As you describe it, though, I think the best way to "move 'abstinence-only' as it's 'taught' now to the model used in this study" would be to call the study model something other than abstinence only. This model would not satisfy the existing abstinence-only advocates, and calling it that will torque off everybody else.

The authors are careful to note their skepticism that this model would work at all for older children; the mean age for the study was 12.2 years old.

So the goal is to get preteen middle-schoolers to delay initial sexual activity until they're teenaged high-schoolers? I'm OK with that... but I'm still surprised that it's any different from current, non-abstinence-only programs. Are current curricula really not already suggesting that 11- and 12-year-olds should wait a few years before they start boffing each other? Sounds like I should get myself back to middle school! ;^)

Posted by: Ichthyic | February 1, 2010 8:04 PM

btw, that's a very juicy thread, if you're so inclined:

http://network.nature.com/people/U6E5B2CE1/blog/2010/01/26/nature-network-blogs-receives-50-000th-comment

a great poke at Henry:

Saturday, 30 Jan uary 2010 - 03:53 UTC

Arikia Millikan said:

Hey Henry Gee, you know who doesn't like you? Me.

I was sitting behind you in Dr. Isis's session on civility at ScienceOnline, and the way you belligerently yelled at the woman sitting next to me made me sick. Furthermore, at the conclusion of the session that you single-handedly turned into an episode of Jerry Springer by exhibiting a complete lack of self-control and masculine aggression, when you stood over her (and me) and yelled insults at her again before storming off, it made me afraid for the physical safety of us both. You may as well have physically attacked her, because the outcome was the same — it created a chilling, silencing effect. Because of what you did, the brave woman sitting next to me, as well as others in the room, might be deterred from speaking out against hegemenous patriarchal constructs in the future because they'll be afraid assholes like you will come at them with testosterone-fueled rage. What you did there was defaming to you and the institution you were there representing, and are here representing on this forum, and you deserve every bit of criticism you have coming.

If there is anyone who is casting a pall over the enterprise, Henry Gee it is you.

again, the true Henry becomes exposed.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 1, 2010 8:09 PM

Lynna:

BTW, if everyone paid into a universal health care service like any other sensible first world nation, it would cost you less, not more, to help people like me. And there would be a strong possibility that I, as a tax-paying citizen, would also be a contributor to my health care. I don't know why people vote against their own best interest.

From your fingertips to FSM's ears!

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | February 1, 2010 8:24 PM

Hugs for you too, Lynna. I hope you can get to the bottom of what's going on. Any little bit us Ebil Atheists can do is well worth the disrepute that comes from doing good ;)

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | February 1, 2010 8:26 PM

Richard Galliano is the hippest accordion player in the world.

You think that's oxymoronic? You haven't heard Richard Galliano.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=34082261076

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3627127952358176719&ei=pX5nS6bIC4WUqwLop4TuCg&q=richard+galliano&hl=en#

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=2036479454

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | February 1, 2010 8:36 PM

From what I've read of Dr. Gee, my armchair psychological evaluation is the guy has some real anger problems.

Posted by: Owlmirror | February 1, 2010 8:38 PM

It occurs to me that SEF and Henry Gee have the same psychological problems.

SEF: "A group of people criticising/mocking me are gang-rapists !!

Gee: "A group of people criticising/mocking me are genocidal Nazis !!

Hm.

Has anyone ever seen them together?

Posted by: Ichthyic | February 1, 2010 8:42 PM

maybe that's what he meant by his "continental drift" comment?

nawww, looking back on it, I think he was referring to the slowness of NN to adopt viewable stats.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | February 1, 2010 8:44 PM

I belong to a minority (the Jews) that is despised by the same cadre of Left-leaning academics who speak up so pompously for women and minorities.

I do not doubt that behind that is a can o' worms, but wtf?
This does not sound like any of the (many, believe me) pompous left-leaning academics I know, many of whom, y'know, are Jews.

Posted by: Ichthyic | February 1, 2010 8:45 PM

It occurs to me that SEF and Henry Gee have the same psychological problems.

so did that "Nancy" person, IIRC.

Didn't she threaten to sick her pet anthropologists on us at some point?

Posted by: SC OM | February 1, 2010 8:47 PM

Do you think when Henry said this:

But it could be that my work here is done. I certainly have better things to do.

in the post i quoted earlier in thread, he really meant it?

Or is he just being a petulant child, as usual.

No idea. The "better things to do" bit was really respectful of his readers/commenters/fellow bloggers, though. Stay classy, Henry.

I do get the distinct impression that several other regular bloggers at NN were attempting, discretely, to distance themselves from him.

Hm.

maybe that's what he meant by his "continental drift" comment?

Oh, possible. I found that totally cryptic.

Posted by: Rorschach | February 1, 2010 8:51 PM

Regarding Gee, I hadn't read much of his stuff here, always thought it was just the usual religious cult persecution complex of a group that via lobbying and direct political representation actually has a large amount of political and social influence.
Like, with all the other religious kooks.
But yeah, he does seem to have anger management issues.
Btw, I noted that SEF commented in some thread yesterday, rehab already completed ?

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 1, 2010 8:54 PM

Giant Squid Invasion!!!!!

Did you click through to the TV report linked from that article? I had no idea there was any such thing as sportfishing for squid, but the story was all about charter boats going out full of clients and catching these by the hundreds.

Why? Are these Humboldt squid edible? I had the impression that the bigger the squid, the less tasty; not so? If they're not edible, what's the allure? Do they fight like finny gamefish?

<HeadScratch>

Posted by: Lynna, OM | February 1, 2010 8:59 PM

Any little bit us Ebil Atheists can do is well worth the disrepute that comes from doing good ;)

All of y'all are blithely ruining your reputations as Ebil Atheists.

Posted by: AJ Milne OM | February 1, 2010 9:02 PM

Hrm...

Well, it does occur to me, having read a bit of the Gee stuff, that I may have failed to follow broadcasting code guidelines re adequately frequent repetition of my standard position statement...

So without further ado...

(Clears throat)...

I think Judaism is incredibly fucking stupid...

I also think Christianity is utterly fucking moronic...

And you'd have to be completely fucking brain dead to buy a word of Islam...

Oh, and Hinduism, Mormonism... All pretty much spectacularly fucking stupid, too. Just what do you people take us for, anyway? Gods 'n demons? Right. Tell us another one. I mean, have any of you checked the calendar lately? Here's a hint: it says '2010' somewhere in there. Get a fucking life already.

And this has been your hourly call sign identifier.

Oh, also, for the record: I have no interest in sticking either Mr. Gee nor any member of his family (nor any member of any other spectacularly moronic religion, whatever it might call itself) in a gas oven... Tho' I might just feel compelled give Mr. Gee some noogies or somethin' if he won't stop it with the obsessive-compulsive Godwinning bit of his already...

Yeah, that's right, baby. Mad noogies. And I will feel no pity. And I will not stop until you have a brand new bald spot. That's just the kind of sick, demented, Reichstag-burning psychos we New Atheists™ are, see...

(/Oh, and that Godwinning shit was pretty fucking stupid, too. Thankew and good night.)

Posted by: shatfat | February 1, 2010 9:07 PM

Yes, it's literally arse-licker. My bad if I spelled it wrong. (Actually, all American orthography of Yiddish is a kludge. It's properly written in Hebrew letters. It also went through a major phoneme shift. Medieval Yiddish can be accurately rendered with German orthography, but 19th century Yiddish is a significantly different beast.)

I'm aware "lekker" means "interesting" in Dutch, but Yiddish owes more to medieval Hochdeutsch (Southern German), as well as Polish.

IIRC, the Netherlands were inhabited by significant communities of Sephardic Jews. In some Hanseatic cities there were both Sephardic and Ashkenazi communities.

Okay, this is just logorrhea at this point. I'll stop. I wish my damn browser's idiotic spellcheck would realize that Sephardic is SO a word, though. Sephardic, sephardic, sephardic. Happy now, Firefox?

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 1, 2010 9:19 PM

Lynna:

Just followed the link in your profile to your website. I need more time to poke around, but I'm very impressed.

If you're ever in Connecticut and can stand the company of an aging tenderfoot, let me know and we can take a little stroll on the AT.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 1, 2010 9:24 PM

shatfat:

Yes, it's literally arse-licker. My bad if I spelled it wrong.

No, brown-noser is probably a perfectly good idiomatic translation: It means essentially the same thing as butt/ass-licker would, and is probably in more common usage. I was just curious about the literal translation. Thanks.

Posted by: boygenius | February 1, 2010 9:27 PM

Sven @357:

Thanks for those links. Amazing!

You always know when you hear people say "I don't like [insert instrument] music," what they really mean is "I don't know how to listen to (hear?) music."

Posted by: Blind Squirrel FCD | February 1, 2010 9:44 PM

I gave up reading Greg Laden some time ago when he jumped down my throat when I pointed out errors in one of his posts. "I was wrong" apparently isn't in his vocabulary. At least he hasn't been around here blog-whoring lately.

BS

Posted by: MikeFuckingG | February 1, 2010 9:50 PM

Take care, Lynna. I sent what I could.

We can't afford to lose our Morridor connection.

Posted by: Miki Z | February 1, 2010 10:05 PM

Oh, and guys? You can totally bike to/from the grocery store. Use a backpack, cold packs from the freezer (if you lack these, just buy some frozen peas) and those thermal bags you can buy at the grocery store for your dairy and whatnot.

The grocery store in my neighborhood has a dry ice machine. You buy refrigerated goods, and you can get the ice for free. Bags cost extra, though -- they really want people to bring their own.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | February 1, 2010 10:24 PM

@372, Yes! That Little My. Though my daughter is not an angry, aggressive little being. We both love the truth-telling aspect of Little My. And her ability to cause mischief is admirable. ~:) We can fix our hair to look like that. Little My is notably not afraid of adventure, she revels in it. Big forces of nature come in small packages.

Posted by: ambulocetacean | February 1, 2010 10:37 PM

Ring Tailed Lemurian @ 267,

Wow. Sounds like you had some wild times up North.

I just pulled the 3:1 figure out of my arse. I have no idea what the ratio really is. 25:1 is amazing, though.

How do you think that evangelical family will go up there?

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ homintern radfem | February 1, 2010 10:49 PM

Is it widely used to godwin any argument a jewish person sees as being in danger of losing ? You betcha.

Not by a single Jewish person I am acquainted with offline. Honestly I think this impression is driven by a very few very loud professional advocates for the state of Israel -- high profile on op-ed pages, but not significantly representative of the norm.

Posted by: Ichthyic | February 1, 2010 10:55 PM

Honestly I think this impression is driven by a very few very loud professional advocates for the state of Israel -- high profile on op-ed pages, but not significantly representative of the norm.

does Henry Gee count as one of those?

Posted by: Rorschach | February 1, 2010 11:00 PM

Not by a single Jewish person I am acquainted with offline

Hm yeah, I was over-generalizing there.Some of my jewish collegues do have that habit, fwiw.

Posted by: cicely (Inadvertent Phytocidal Maniac) | February 1, 2010 11:08 PM

Lynna,

Re project Diagnose Lynna, is there a snailmail address to send donations to? (Though I won't be able to follow through 'til after the 15th. Oh, to be independently wealthy!) Maybe I could email the Art Meets Adventure address, and you could sorta slip me an address?

Posted by: SC OM | February 1, 2010 11:45 PM

The idiot Stuart

I'm somewhat suspicious of Stuart's claim to be Jewish, though I could be wrong.

did something similar here last month: "leftists are throwing Jews under the bus, etc." When prompted for examples post-Stalin, he had none.

Neither has Gee. Doesn't seem to stop him:

I pointed this out to a particularly patronizing member of the audience. I didn't hang around for a response. I thought Jew-hatred was a pathology of the militant Left in UK academia but it turns out it's rife in the U. S. and A., too.

He also asserted flat-out in the comments on his blog that "The Left hates Jews."

Zuska and others have asked what was said that was antisemitic (not that it would be reasonable to jump from a single comment to such wild claims), and I haven't seen an answer from him yet.

Posted by: windy | February 1, 2010 11:48 PM

Richard Galliano is the hippest accordion player in the world.
You think that's oxymoronic? You haven't heard Richard Galliano.

er. no offense, but how many other accordion players have you heard?

...that second video was pretty good though. So OK, maybe he's the 'hippest'. But I'd say there are plenty cooler accordion players:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEoNb2QldYk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8--FQM8rwGM&feature=related

Of course the real trick is making a polka sound cool...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8--FQM8rwGM&feature=related

Posted by: Lynna, OM | February 1, 2010 11:51 PM

Hi, cicely @403, go to artmeetsadventure.com and click on the Work History & Resumé link. That should do it.

In other news, Janine has started a bar fight on "Numbers herein.." thread.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | February 2, 2010 12:01 AM

Owlmirror, that was a great link, not to mention a tremendous demonstration of google fu. From the linked comment:

Sure, I shouldn't have sunk to the low standard of debate in which Pharyngula regularly wallows. I think I was provooked, though. I had the sensation that everyone was standing back while a person called 'ichthyic' started hurling abuse, suggesting that the reason I didn't like Dawkins was that he's sold more books than I have. He has, but what's that to do with anything? At one point somebody else chimed in to say I shouldn't mind ichthyic's outrageous attacks on my Judaism, because s/he had laid into a Christian the week before, or something -- as if it made everything all wright.
     I get the impression that Pharyngula is a rather rough bar where only people actively damaged by religion can hang out, so as to lick their wounds in company of their own choosing. What's sad is that these people seem to think that because they haven't had a good time, then nobody else is allowed to, either.

Ichthyic, I was so pleased to see that you had been hurling abuse and making outrageous attacks.

I take exception to the description of myself as someone who hasn't "had a good time", and I am even more insulted by the claim that I don't want anyone else to have a good time either. Bring on the vibrating lingerie.

Posted by: windy | February 2, 2010 12:12 AM

Not that it isn't fascinating in a train-wreck kind of way, but should we be wasting all this effort psychoanalyzing you-know-who?

(Superficially, I find her "rules" and their rationale a bit, well, totalitarian.)

See, their morals, their "code"... it's a bad joke, dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these "civilized people", they'll eat each other. We are not monsters. We're just ahead of the curve.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | February 2, 2010 12:14 AM

Perhaps Lynna could send her address to PZ and PZ could pass it on to those regulars that ask?

Just for fun, here's a wee bit of prose from Kevin Barry:

Behind the bar: the Guinness tap, the Smithwicks tap, the lager taps, the line of optics, the neatly stacked rows of glasses, and a high stool that sat by a wee slit of window that had a view across the water toward Mweelrea. The iodine tang of kelp hung in the air always, and put me in mind of embalming fluid.

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | February 2, 2010 12:19 AM

Just a suggestion. I do not have nor want a credit card. Just wanted to have a way to send a few dollars. Sadly, seeing that I do not have much, it would be just a few.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | February 2, 2010 12:52 AM

Janine, much love from me to you. I figure if PZ knew me personally, that would be different.

I am saddened and heartened at the same time by your few dollars. I dislike the whole credit card industry, so don't patronize 'em I say.

Here's a wee bit more prose from Kevin Barry (for Janine, change the pronouns: "him" to "her" and "he" to "she" for maximum effect):

Vivien slapped and roared at him as he stroked her massive haunches. She reddened and chortled as he twisted her around and pulled her vast rear side into his crotch area. Nobody apart from me paid a blind bit of attention to the spectacle.

Posted by: Leigh Williams, Feminist, OM | February 2, 2010 1:22 AM

Lynna, please don't apologize for providing a way for us to do what we wanted to do all along . . . help you get a diagnosis. We want you safe, whole, and happy!

My contact info is included with the money I sent this evening. DO NOT HESITATE to email me if the fund comes up short or if further tests are needed.

Love,
Leigh

Posted by: windy | February 2, 2010 1:31 AM

But musically, even the one you posted twice is not "cool" by any reasonable non-Finnish criteria. Sorry.

Oops, copy-paste error. This was meant to be the second cool one, not so much Maria Kalaniemi.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw89so4gEZs

PS. Bigot.

Those guys are master technicians and very well-practiced and all that, and even musical, but improvisation at the level that Galliano can improvise is way, way beyond any stupid polka shit in coolness, hipness

Maybe I just have a different idea of the concepts 'cool' and 'hip'.

And Galliano may be supreme as jazz improvisateur, but it doesn't immediately leap out at me as the most amazing use of accordion qua accordion ever. Sorry. And if you had heard much stupid polka shit, maybe you could tell the difference between a "master technician" playing polka shit and an artist playing polka shit (guess which one was which).

Anyway, how about this:
http://www.minnaweurlander.com/eng/

Posted by: windy | February 2, 2010 1:54 AM

(Seriously, it's been an annoying day, with Gee, Stephanie, Zuska's post, and now this Mooney nonsense. Gah.)

What's Mooney done now?

Posted by: Miki Z | February 2, 2010 2:30 AM

Hmm. Now I have to decide if I will listen to Mooney on POIP U.S.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | February 2, 2010 3:15 AM

Just a suggestion. I do not have nor want a credit card. Just wanted to have a way to send a few dollars. Sadly, seeing that I do not have much, it would be just a few.

Posted by: John Morales | February 2, 2010 4:52 AM

Hi, Leigh.

Posted by: Miki Z | February 2, 2010 5:49 AM

China warns Obama about meeting with the Dalai Lama or there will be "corresponding action". (source)

I wonder what this will be? Maybe the Chinese president will meet with these guys.

Posted by: Ring Tailed Lemurian | February 2, 2010 6:47 AM

ambulocetacean #395

Wow. Sounds like you had some wild times up North.

Craziest place I've ever been, without a doubt, and the only place I've ever been raped (by a woman!) Wild, and virtually lawless once you left town. (Well, it was, and still is, a Territory, not a State.) ALL The people I worked with would regularily have 6 beers for breakfast, and then carry on drinking all day.
If it hadn't been for the local magic mushrooms I don't know how I would have survived my time there.

How do you think that evangelical family will go up there?

No idea. Haven't been back since. I imagine that things are very, very different now, post Typoon Tracy and almost 40 years. Probably much like any other medium sized Australian town now (except with a worse climate).
Let's hope those evangelists are stupid enough to go for a swim :)

Posted by: Blind Squirrel FCD | February 2, 2010 7:17 AM

And who said it had to be a real groundhog?

BS

Posted by: Blind Squirrel FCD | February 2, 2010 7:33 AM

SEF: It took me 2 tries, but I got it:)

BS

Posted by: Alan B | February 2, 2010 8:59 AM

Might already have been posted but:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/02/02/meet-the-mormon-man-with-239-grandchildren-115875-22012171/

In the article:

Former president Warren Jeffs, who claimed to be God’s mouthpiece on earth, is serving a 10-year jail sentence over a rape. There are 11 other church members awaiting trial in Texas.

(The Daily Mirror is one of the red top tabloids - not quite in the Wall Street Journal class. Possibly more like the National Enquirer.)

Posted by: MrFire | February 2, 2010 10:01 AM

Lynna:

I'm signed in on Paypal right now, but I haven't seen the option to choose a 'Diagnose Lynna' or 'What the hell is wrong with that woman' account. Does it matter? I'm sure I have the right email, since Krystl's name is brought up.

Sorry for the delay!

Mr. Fire

Posted by: CaseyAllan | February 2, 2010 10:18 AM

A little help, please.

About a year ago I managed to dislocate my kneecap. I couldn't bend the leg at all and walking became almost impossible.

I was staying over with a friend and her roomate was very into crystals and their, apparently, magical energies. She insisted that her crystals could fix my leg and that I wouldn't need to go to any hospital.

I was a little surprised - after the crystal waving - to discover that the leg could, once again, support my weight and was capable of being slightly bent (at least enough to allow me to walk a little more steadily). I'm sure, however, that that's more to do with the support bandage that was immediately wrapped around it rather than the crystal waving itself.

I can't get my friend to accept that it was the bandage, and not the little pink crystal, that gave me back some use of my leg. She insists there's no actual proof that bandages are of any help other than to prevent infection entering open wounds.

I've tried searching online but all I find are companies selling support bandages and no-one actually giving any kind of proof/detailed description as to how they support damaged muscles/tendons etc.

Does anyone here know where I can find any article proving the point?

Thanks :)

Posted by: MrFire | February 2, 2010 10:48 AM

Thanks a lot, Bill Dauphin (cool surname, eh? :D)

Lynna-Aid now has somewhere between zero and infinity dollars from me.

Posted by: CaseyAllan | February 2, 2010 10:58 AM

Bill Dauphin, OM (@#446):

Ah, good point. I've just been trying to convince her that it wasn't the work of the little pink crystal or the positive thoughts from the person waving it.

I should turn the argument around and have her provide the proof on the workings of the crystals. Thanks :)

I'm a little embarrassed at not thinking of it from that angle, actually. My only excuse (lame though it may be) would be my over-focusing on one side of the disagreement.

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | February 2, 2010 11:05 AM

To add to the "how to use Paypal" - it's only after you put in the email address and amount and go ahead and click "submit" (or continue, I forget which) to get to the next screen that you can then verify that you did the email right and click on it to get Krystl's registration info up. There's still another click or so after that before the donation is final, so don't worry on the first page that you're submitting right then and there to what you hope is the right email.

Posted by: Alan B | February 2, 2010 11:09 AM

The use of "sniny" always brings to mind the use of the word "slithy" in the poem, The Jabberwocky, by (the Rev.) Lewis Caroll:

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock*, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

* Jabberwock - any relation to Jadehawk? We never see them together!

Several of the nonsense words now appear in the English language. Pity the word "slithy" has been corrupted but perhaps it's American English.

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | February 2, 2010 11:20 AM

The Baptist kid thing came up in some thread or other - I linked to this post which is a nice dissection of the intersections of privilege and racism and whatnot that are going on with the whole "save the Haitian babies" concept.

I saw something on the news about it and it's weirdly complicated in this instance - the guy who's the titular head of the orphanage is based in the US, and he said it was ok for them to go get the kids, but paperwork wasn't done right, and not all of the families were told what was going on, and the ones that were weren't necessarily told it was permanent, and so on.

Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa) | February 2, 2010 11:30 AM

The Baptist kid thing came up in some thread or other - I linked to this post which is a nice dissection of the intersections of privilege and racism and whatnot that are going on with the whole "save the Haitian babies" concept

I find that there is a great deal of racism in missionary work altogether. The kidnapping Haitian baby scandle is one such example.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 2, 2010 11:34 AM

Alan B (@453):

I love that poem; I actually <totalgeek>used to read it at high school speech tournaments</totalgeek>. Now here's a key conundrum:

I've always pronounced slithy (both in my head and while reciting) with a long i sound (i.e., the same vowel as in shinysniny), but I've also heard others pronounce it as a short i. Discuss. (And we'll pass right over the issue of whether the th should be voiced or unvoiced.)

Similarly: gyre and gimble... hard or soft g? The same for both, or split? And is this the same gyre Yeats was talking about?

It's not like I think these questions are as important as, say, cat piercings, but surely y'all can scare up an opinion or three? ;^)

Posted by: Knockgoats | February 2, 2010 12:00 PM

I've always pronounced slithy (both in my head and while reciting) with a long i sound (i.e., the same vowel as in shinysniny), but I've also heard others pronounce it as a short i. Discuss. (And we'll pass right over the issue of whether the th should be voiced or unvoiced.)

Similarly: gyre and gimble... hard or soft g? The same for both, or split? And is this the same gyre Yeats was talking about?

You're undoubtedly right about slithy. Both Humpty Dumpty, in Ch.6 of Looking Glass, and Carroll himself, in a hand-lettered "periodical" called Misch-Masch, written for his younger siblings when he was 23, define it as compounded of "slimy" and "lithe" - which also indicates that the "th" is voiced. In Misch-Masch gyre is derived from "gyaour" or "giaour", and means to scratch like a dog, while Humpty Dumpty defines it as "to go round and round like a gyroscope". While Dumpty could be wrong about the meaning, Carroll would surely not have put into his mouth a meaning that suggested an incorrect pronunciation - so in gyre, the "g" is soft. In gimble it is hard, since both sources link the meaning to that of "gimlet".

These are of course matters of great significance, as it is known that Jabberwocky is actually a set of instructions for travel in a fourth spatial dimension (see Lewis Padgett: Mimsy Were The Borogoves). Get the pronunciation wrong, and you could end up in Tumbolia!

Posted by: A. Noyd | February 2, 2010 12:02 PM

Bill Dauphin (#444)

OTOH, if it's not cruelty to pierce a human child's ears, why should it be a crime to do it to cats?

Well, I'd be worried about the cat damaging itself by scratching at the piercing site or getting caught up on sheets or bushes or whatnot and tearing the piercings out. Most people use breakaway collars on their cats for this same reason so it makes me wince to think of a cat with piercings having to rip its own skin apart to get unstuck.

Posted by: David Marjanović | February 2, 2010 12:13 PM

David, how is Opera working out as your browser?

Unlike Safari, it's too stupid to cooperate with the character table*, so I need to undertake complex copypasta movements whenever I want to comment on a blog other than this one. And while just about all of Unicode is displayed, Cyrillic letters are spaced very widely apart in most fonts, which is completely baffling… though I haven't needed that this far.

I think I mentioned I finally found out how to turn off the spellchecker. There's only one word I need to have spellchecked, lbockqutoe, and it didn't know that one…

* That of the Mac anyway. At home, where I have Windows, I keep IE!

Man, Jadehawk, I am drooling over your art deco.

I wish my papers were this easily appreciable ;-)

and when he and Isis fight they both seem entirely wrong.

:-D

Yeah, they're both a bit strange. I only read their blogs when some interesting post title turns up in the Top 5 Something…

or am I turning lekker into a false cognate?

No – even though the correspondence of /k/ to /k/ is not regular.

I'm very glad I have no need to submit anything to Nature.

<pft> They reject almost everything anyway. :-) Many a manuscript goes through a multi-stage process: submitted first to Nature, then to Science, then to PNAS (or Cell where appropriate)…

actually, fishing for humboldt squid is fun […]

so, while you do indeed get a nice initial fight out of a big squid

I'll never understand that attitude. When I want a fight, I don't need to go kill something. I just walk over to my little sister and let her teach me some Wing Tsun the hard way. (…Or so I think, till she tells me "I'd have poked you in the eyes 20 times already".)

And before she got that far, I got more fights than I wanted anyway, because my brother gets aggressive when he's scared, and he's usually scared.

and pints of Guinness...

"403 Forbidden

Access to this resource on the server is denied!"

Now, isn't that interesting.

Someone else spotted another consequence of low standards of English

:-D :-D :-D

But, seriously, that's just the spelling. The w in whore isn't even etymologically justifiable.

if it's not cruelty to pierce a human child's ears

I think it should be.

Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline. | February 2, 2010 12:26 PM

Mooney is going to be one of the new hosts of the Point Of Inquiry podcast.

I finally started listening to POIP when Grothe was made prez of JREF. Very nice bloke, indeed.

I even listened to Mooney and that director/producer fella whose name I can't recall. Not as bad as I'd expected, but certainly not someone I'd like to listen to regularly.

Ah well, the Guardian just told me that the Royal Society has a podcast of their own. Time to switch.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 2, 2010 12:38 PM

KG (@461):

Now that is why I love this place so much! ;^)

These are of course matters of great significance, as it is known that Jabberwocky is actually a set of instructions for travel in a fourth spatial dimension (see Lewis Padgett: Mimsy Were The Borogoves).

One of my very favorite SF stories! Sadly, what I read about the movie version released a few years ago so disappointed me that I didn't bother seeing it.

A. Noyd:

I hadn't thought about the scratching issue. But really, that sounds like an engineering problem, potentially solvable by breakaway jewelry, or jewelry carefully designed to avoid snagging on claws (and, of course, declawing would make it moot... if declawing weren't an horrific practice). Mind you, I'm not in favor of the practice — quite the opposite — I just thought charging the person with animal cruelty was a bit of a disproportionate response. A regulation banning the practice in future might have been better advised, IMHO.

David M:

if it's not cruelty to pierce a human child's ears

I think it should be.

That's a whole 'nother discussion!

My Lovely Bride® doesn't have pierced ears, and had no intention of getting my daughter's ears pierced... until she begged for it (@~7 yo, IIRC). Of course, after the first ear, she also begged to be allowed to leave the second one unpierced, but my wife (and her mother) insisted on symmetry. AFAIK, she's now very glad to have the extra holes in her head... but she has not shown any interest in getting stabbed anywhere else. The relationship between pain and the quest for beauty is a complex one, no? ;^)

Posted by: David Marjanović | February 2, 2010 12:47 PM

Discuss.

From here…

"16 English spelling doesn't need a reform - it needs a bloody revolution! (See under Spelling Reform.)"

And while I am at it…

"04 Noam Chomsky should stick to politics, Roger Penrose should stick to interior decorating, and Andrew Lloyd Webber should stick to the ceiling if hurled aloft with sufficient force."

If she suggests heating you to high temperature to anneal out the dislocation, run the other way. Er, if you can.

ROTFLMAO!

Posted by: David Marjanović | February 2, 2010 12:53 PM

until she begged for it

That's something else.

(Though, isn't 7 a bit early?)

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 2, 2010 12:53 PM

she has not shown any interest in getting stabbed anywhere else

...as far as you know...

Nah... my wife likes to chat with her while she's taking a bath. Leaving aside the manifest unfairness of the fact that this opportunity for unguarded conversation is forever forbidden to me, it does mean that if any new body mods had shown up, I'd've heard about it.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 2, 2010 1:07 PM

SteveM (@474):

I like the alliteration with both hard gs as well, but I don't assume what I like necessarily matches the author's intent.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | February 2, 2010 1:13 PM

Actually, both "gyre" and "gimble" are pronounced something like "throatwarblermangrove."

Hope this helps.

Posted by: Knockgoats | February 2, 2010 1:14 PM

SteveM@474 - yes, turns out they are right! Carroll says gyre (as well as gimble has a hard "g" in the Author's preface to Looking Glass; which raises the question: how was "gyroscope" pronounced in Victorian England? Merriam-Webster online says in British English it can be pronounced with either a soft or hard g - I've never heard the latter as far as I recall, so that's the source of my error. I agree it sounds better with a hard g.

In the same preface, he also says slithy is pronounced "as if it were the two words "sly, the", and that "rath" should be pronounce to rhyme with "bath" - but as "bath" is pronounced with a long "a" in southern England and a short "a" in the north, that doesn't help! Carroll was born in Runcorn, Cheshire (the north), but educated at expensive schools, where any northern accent would probably have been thrashed out of him. Come to think of it, "the" is pronounced differently before a vowel and a consonant, but slithy must surely have a final "ee" sound!

Posted by: Leigh Williams, Feminist, OM | February 2, 2010 1:17 PM

Hi, guys! I am back from behind the Pine Curtain, but still pretty tied up with working (now remotely, thank God). There is some small chance I may have to go to Oklahoma to help work the ice storm, however.

In another life, when I had a real job, I got to go to Rome and Chicago and L.A. and NYC. Now I go to East Texas and Oklahoma. How the mighty have fallen.

Posted by: Alan B | February 2, 2010 1:25 PM

#466 https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id?id=AItOawmHzDpTLP2mp-qpt639sa9q2J8Wl4QREfQ

We need an abbreviation for this ...

My question is is this our Alan B?

No.

Signed: The REAL Alan B©

Posted by: Alan B | February 2, 2010 1:49 PM

#486

Nice one, Mr Batzrubble. Very much the way I was taught it at school and have heard since in the UK.

Posted by: Walton, Marquis of Carabas | February 2, 2010 2:01 PM

if it's not cruelty to pierce a human child's ears

I think it should be.

IMO, it would be cruel to pierce a human child's ears if the child did not consent. But if the child really, really wants her (or his) ears pierced, I don't think the parents should deny this.

Piercing animals' ears is a whole other issue, since the animal can't consent.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | February 2, 2010 2:03 PM

Mind you, I'm not in favor of the practice — quite the opposite — I just thought charging the person with animal cruelty was a bit of a disproportionate response. A regulation banning the practice in future might have been better advised, IMHO.

Anyway, all the talk about piercing body parts and children reminded me of the story a friend (now an evangelical christian housewifey type, but a runaway punk and later stripper in her youth) whose "rebellious" nephew was bragging about his nipple piercings and asking her if she wanted to see them, just to shock her.
To which she just shrugged and announced that it's no big deal, she had them, too.

I would have paid a weeks income to see the expression on his face! :-p

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | February 2, 2010 2:18 PM

I wish my papers were this easily appreciable ;-)

Posted by: Knockgoats | February 2, 2010 2:22 PM

Hi Leigh; there's something waiting for you on the "Catching up with Molly again" thread.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | February 2, 2010 2:27 PM

well, I don't know Walton... IANAL, but his condom policy for Africa comes pretty damn close to:

(k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.

don't you think?

Posted by: Paul | February 2, 2010 2:35 PM

For the purpose of this Statute, "crime against humanity" means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:

(g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;

(k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | February 2, 2010 2:38 PM

IOW, I think this is something that needs to be corrected rather than punished.

As for wildlife tags... I always wondered if those things don't make life harder on the critters they're attached to. especially true for smallish critters (those tags are pretty big usually), and I've also wondered about this when I was watching a show about tundra critters, when they were attaching black tags to white snow hens (i think). doesn't that make them a wee bit too visible?

Posted by: cicely (Inadvertent Phytocidal Maniac) | February 2, 2010 2:47 PM

He's right, you know. Just as the legislation against murder imposes unjust limitations on the freedom of religious communities to slaughter heretics and unbelievers.

Indeed, as well as infringing upon the rights of those whose religion mandates human sacrifice.

Posted by: uselesstwit | February 2, 2010 2:54 PM

Most farmers where I grew up switched from branding livestock to eartags to show ownership. If millions of livestock are pierced through the ears how can it be a crime for pets?

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | February 2, 2010 3:00 PM

If millions of livestock are pierced through the ears how can it be a crime for pets?

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 2, 2010 3:04 PM

Janine (@500):

Yah, I know; I've done that before. In this case, though, I got distracted and copied something else before I'd pasted my previous comment, wiping it out of the buffer. C'est la guerre, eh?

Sven (@502):

Flame away.

Sorry, no flame from me. I've never had a cat declawed (and mine is a strictly indoor kitty), but I've known cats who were, and as you say they didn't seem any the worse for it. OTOH, the procedure itself, if described, seems pretty awful. On balance, I'd probably support a ban (and one on the other things I mentioned)... but it's a fairly close call for me, and not something I'd really fight for.

I clicked on the goth kittens link this morning because I thought it would be a cute/funny story that might give the crowd here a chuckle, and then when I read that the groomer involved was being criminally charged, I thought that was a bit harsh. All in all, though, I mostly just thought it was a News of the Weird sort of item.

Posted by: MrFire | February 2, 2010 3:25 PM

Some suggested themes and names for future thread incarnations follow.

Literary: Where Angels Fear to Thread

Princess Bride: The Thread Pirate Roberts

Shaolin Monk: The Thread-itation Chamber

Kitsch 90's pop: Right Said Thread actually fuck this it's crap

Robocop: Thread or Alive, You're Coming With Me

and my personal favorite:

Lord's Prayer: Give Us This Day Our Daily Thread

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 2, 2010 3:30 PM

Jadehawk:

Not meaning to perpetuate a conversation you're not really up for (per #506), I nevertheless wanted to clarify my earlier point:

...it's not like lawmakers can think of every possibly cruelty a person can think of and specifically forbid it (that would only be for very specific and common things). that's why we have this catch-all term of animal cruelty, after all.

I wasn't making a whatever-isn't-explicitly-forbidden-is-permitted argument: Of course, we have to be able to punish unanticipated innovations in evil behavior. But given the context of what's currently considered acceptable — including cutting off parts of the ears and tails of dogs and cats just so they'll look "right" in shows — I think this groomer could make the argument that a reasonable person could conclude what she was doing was no less acceptable than unambiguously legal practices.

Punishing her, personally, does nothing to change the context.

And that, as Forrest Gump might put it, is all I have to say about that! (Didn't mean to start anything unpleasant.)

Posted by: Janine, The Little Top Of Venom, OM | February 2, 2010 3:46 PM

A tribunal of mercy

As I face Alzheimer's, I want to die at a time of my choosing. We need a better way of assisting loved ones who wish the same

Terry Pratchett

As a pallid and nervous young journalist, I got to know about suicide. It was part of my regular tasks to sit in at the coroner's court, where I learned the manifold ways the disturbed human brain can devise to die. Coroners never used the word "insanity". They preferred the more compassionate verdict that the subject had "taken his life while the balance of his mind was disturbed". There was ambivalence to the phrase, a suggestion of the winds of fate and overwhelming circumstance. In fact, by now, I have reached the conclusion that a person may make a decision to die because the balance of their mind is level, realistic, pragmatic, stoic and sharp.

And that is why I dislike the term "assisted suicide" applied to the carefully thought-out and weighed-up process of having one's life ended by gentle medical means.

The people who thus far have made the harrowing trip to Dignitas in Switzerland to die seemed to me to be very firm and methodical of purpose, with a clear prima-face case for wanting their death to be on their own terms. In short, their mind may well be in better balance than the world around them.

I got involved in the debate surrounding "assisted death" by accident, after taking a long and informed look at my future as someone with Alzheimer's. As a result of my "coming out" about the disease, I now have contacts in medical research industries all over the world, and I have no reason to believe that a "cure" is imminent.

And so I have vowed that rather than let Alzheimer's take me, I would take it. I would live my life as ever to the full and die, before the disease mounted its last attack, in my own home, in a chair on the lawn, with a brandy in my hand to wash down whatever modern version of the Brompton Cocktail some helpful medic could supply. And with Thomas Tallis on my iPod, I would shake hands with Death.

This seems to me quite a reasonable and sensible decision for someone with a serious, incurable and debilitating disease to elect for a medically assisted death by appointment.

The Care not Killing Alliance assures us that no one need consider a voluntary death of any sort since care is always available. This is questionable. Medicine is keeping more and more people alive, all requiring more and more care. Alzheimer's and other dementias place a huge care burden on the country. A burden that falls initially on the next of kin who may even be elderly and, indeed, be in need of some sort of care themselves.

A major objection frequently flourished by opponents of "assisted dying" is that elderly people might be illegally persuaded into "asking" for assisted death. Could be, but the Journal of Medical Ethics reported in 2007 that there was no evidence of the abuse of vulnerable patients in Oregon where assisted dying is currently legal. I don't see why things should be any different here.

Last year, the government finally published guidelines on dealing with assisted death. They did not appear to satisfy anybody. It seems that those wishing to assist a friend or relative to die would have to meet a large number of criteria in order to escape the chance of prosecution for murder. As laid out, the best anyone can do is keep within the rules and hope for the best.

That's why I and others have suggested some kind of strictly non-aggressive tribunal that would establish the facts of the case well before the assisted death takes place. The members of the tribunal would be acting for the good of society, as well as that of applicants, to ensure they are of sound and informed mind, firm in their purpose, suffering from a life-threatening and incurable disease and not under the influence of a third party. I would suggest there should be a lawyer, one with expertise in dynastic family affairs who has become good at recognising whether there is outside pressure. And a medical practitioner experienced in dealing with the complexities of serious long-term illnesses.

I would also suggest that all those on the tribunal are over 45, by which time they may have acquired the gift of wisdom, because wisdom and compassion should in this tribunal stand side-by-side with the law. The tribunal would also have to be a check on those seeking death for reasons that reasonable people may consider trivial or transient distress. If we are to live in a world where a socially acceptable "early death" can be allowed, it must be allowed as a result of careful consideration.

I would like to die peacefully before the disease takes me over. I hope that will not be for some time, because if I knew that I could die at any time I wanted, then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.

• This is an edited excerpt from Terry Pratchett's Richard Dimbleby lecture for 2010, delivered on Monday 1 February 2010. Read an extended version of the lecture in G2

Posted by: blf | February 2, 2010 3:52 PM

The total stupidity and complete incompetence of the clewless fools who run Sciborg continues:

For fucks sake, you fucking brainless twits, get a fucking clew!

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | February 2, 2010 4:01 PM

Yet they waited until there was a General Medical Council finding of misconduct against Wakefield to do so. Seeing as the report was thoroughly discredited long before then, this is no credit to a "respected medical journal". It appears to be little more than saving face, as opposed to caring about the accuracy and authenticity of their studies.

No argument... The Lancet should have done this years ago... their actions (or, more accurately, failure to act) are reprehensible.

Nonetheless, the facts and the headline are getting some real press and that's a good thing, in my opinion.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | February 2, 2010 4:21 PM

Celtic_Evolution (@516):

Apologies if this has already been pointed out

It has! Neener, neener, neener!!

That said, my mention of it got lost in a gyre of jabberwocks and kittens; you, they pay attention to!

;^)

Posted by: Knockgoats | February 2, 2010 4:31 PM

we just had to have several of my cat's teeth pulled, because their decay was affecting her ability to eat - Bill Dauphin, OM

Well, commiserations from my dog to your cat! Said dog just had four teeth taken out, because of tartar build-up. The vet said this is due to diet: most dogs, including ours, don't get the raw meat and bones they are adapted to eat. Still, given that the average lifespan of a wild wolf is estimated at 8 years, and our dog is 10 and looks good for a few years yet, I think she's getting a reasonable deal. She seemed completely over the extraction after 24 hours, anyway - shovelling her grub down at maximum speed as usual.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | February 2, 2010 4:34 PM

Kausik Datta

A protocol I am using calls for using a 120% KOH solution.

Posted by: Kausik Datta | February 2, 2010 4:45 PM

Thank you, NoR, for responding. Can I get a PDF across to you in some way? This has the protocol that I am following. The assay I am doing is for chitin; the KOH (the protocol asks for dissolving 120g of KOH in 100ml of water) is used to deacetylate chitin into insoluble chitosan. My email address is kdatta1 at jhmi dot edu. May I request you to send a blank email so that I can attach a PDF and send it to you?

Posted by: David Marjanović | February 2, 2010 4:49 PM

artgerechte [T]ierhaltung (which I'm not even sure how to translate).

We can always try...

Animal keeping [ad]just[ed] to the species...
...species-specific petkeeping & animal husbandry...
...species-fitting...
...according to the requirements of each species...

oh shush.

:-)

(I know you do both, I'm just talking about the arrogantly wrong molecular biologists)

The funny thing is that, when we did molecular dating, it turned out that dates conforming rather closely to the fossil record come out of it as soon as enough calibration points are used and some of them have maximum and not just minimum ages. There's nothing wrong with the method, it merely needs to be calibrated properly, and usually it isn't.

(In case anyone else is reading this, molecular dating would only give relative dates on its own, and even that would only work under the demonstrably wrong assumption of a current rate of evolution. Therefore, calibration points are required – several branching points in the tree need to be assigned a minimum and/or maximum age* a priori, and the program then tries to work out the ages of the other nodes. Calibration points tend to come from the fossil record... and the gene jockeys tend to be poorly acquainted with it, often taking their information from way outdated compendia that don't explain any context and hardly any uncertainties.)

* Or a normal distribution of ages, or a lognormal one, and so on and so forth. A lot of things have become possible that hadn't yet been invented when we wrote that paper.

X-Failed-Recipients: webmaster@scienceblogs.com

Uh...

You tried to contact the webmaster, and you were told "the group you tried to contact doesn't exist"???

Posted by: MrFire | February 2, 2010 5:02 PM

Kausik:

To corroborate what Nerd said, I found this patent application in which only 40-55% NaOH is used.

Hope that's of some use.

Posted by: David Marjanović | February 2, 2010 5:50 PM

120% (wt/vol)

If this means 120 g KOH per 100 ml solution, it... most likely still wouldn't work, so I guess it's a typo. I mean, trying to suspend anything in such a concentrated solution would make the KOH crystallize out, if the solution can exist in the first place.

KOH has a molar mass of 56. 112 g KOH are therefore 2 mol... that dissolved in 100 ml water would be a 20 M solution... or pretty much what comment 528 says. It's possible in principle, but write to the authors and ask if it's a typo for 12.0 or something.

Posted by: David Marjanović | February 2, 2010 5:57 PM

112 g KOH are therefore 2 mol... that dissolved in 100 ml water

No, in much less if 100 ml of solution are supposed to result. What is the volume of 120 g dry KOH? ...Oh, wait... the density of KOH is a bit over 2 g per ml, so 120 g would be 60 ml. Dissolving that in somewhat but not much more than 40 ml of water might be just possible if you keep it hot.

This could explain why the water didn't simply boil away when they heated it to 130 °C. They say they still had an "alkaline solution" afterwards.

Posted by: feegz | February 2, 2010 6:03 PM

Ok, completely OT but this is the place for that and I feel a need to rant.

I am a lawyer. In Australia, you have two options for signing affidavits - you can swear them (by god) or you can affirm them (not by god).

Probably more than half of my colleagues just automatically delete the affirm option without even asking the witness which they'd rather do.

I've handed draft affidavits to supervisors to check (I'm pretty junior) where I have asked the witness and they've elected to affirm and had them returned to me with "affirm" corrected to "swear".

I've also noticed that one of the partners feels it necessary to make a big song and dance about the fact that he affirms affidavits (partners have to do a lot of them). So I'm not the only one that this assumption annoys.

Anyway... that's my rant for the day.

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | February 2, 2010 6:16 PM

That does seem like an insanely large amount of KOH. Given that a 5% wt/vol solution gives a pH of close to 12, saying it's "still alkaline" is a bit of an understatement. Honestly, my guess is that if several papers say the exact same thing, they've just copied off of each other and perpetuated a potential typo, while mentally inserting a decimal without realizing it. I'd also suggest stopping for now and contacting one of the prior authors.

Posted by: Kausik Datta | February 2, 2010 6:36 PM

Alan B:

It seems to me (from the questions you are asking) that you do not understand what you are doing (please take that as being no more than a statement of fact).

Carlie:

I'd also suggest stopping for now and contacting one of the prior authors.

Posted by: Alan B | February 2, 2010 7:01 PM

And now for something completely different. In the general category of the b******g obvious:

"Blood dripping through office ceiling sparks police murder hunt."

I guess it might, at that!!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1248014/Blood-dripping-office-ceiling-sparks-police-murder-hunt.html?ITO=1708&referrer=yahoo

Posted by: Alan B | February 2, 2010 7:19 PM

In the general category of just plain STUPID:

Tesco shopper, 24, forced to show ID... because she was 'too young to buy slice of QUICHE'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1247925/Girl-told-ID-buy-QUICHE-Tesco-looked-21.html?ITO=1708&referrer=yahoo#ixzz0eQVep8vw

(Background: stores are running scared because the Stasi British Government imposes swingeing penalties on shops that sell hazardous goods such as knives; plastic knives, fork and spoons; tobacco products; alcohol; boxes of eggs and bags of flour on Saturdays (where they might be used to throw at police or at other football supporters) etc. etc. The law is that you must be over 18 (although I do not know the law which makes it illegal to sell plastic spoons, eggs or flour). The Governement has threatened shopkeepers and cashiers so badly that they are demanding proof of age if they think you might be under 25. I can only assume that a slice of quiche is such a risk to health that the public must be protected from themselves.)

Another example from the same article:

Grandmother Tina MacNaughton-Jones, 47, refused a bottle of wine in a Waitrose supermarket in Worthing, West Sussex - because she could not prove she was over 18. Her 22-year-old daughter then produced a driver's licence to buy the bottle but she, too, was turned down over fears that she would pass the alcohol on to her mother.

Beware: The idiots are running the assylum over here!

Posted by: David Marjanović | February 2, 2010 7:29 PM

Her 22-year-old daughter then produced a driver's licence to buy the bottle but she, too, was turned down over fears that she would pass the alcohol on to her mother.

X-D

<headdesk>

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | February 2, 2010 7:42 PM

routine update

It looks like there is no longer any immediate danger of asymptote. So that's good.

22038

Posted by: Alan B | February 2, 2010 7:49 PM

#544 Nerd of Redhead, OM

It seems to me (and has done for many years) that we have a fundametal problem with quoting solution strengths as "%", especially for strong solutions. There are better (i.e. clearly defined and hence repeatable) ways of expressing solution strengths such as:

g per kg (or litre) of water
g per litre of solution
Molar or Molal (although this will lead to total confusion)
mole fraction - possibly the best for strong solutions.

(In a nuclear power plant we were more used to ppm and ppb i.e. mg/kg and µg/kg, respectively.)

On a different but related sunject, do you know what the strength is of concentrated HCl? IIRC it is quoted almost universally as 30% (or thereabouts). 30% of what?

Also, when using HCl for checking for carbonates we are told to use 5% HCl. Again, anyone know what this means? (It matters because we are told that dolomite hardly fizzes unless finely divided or stronger acid is used. If the original "5%" was incorrectly made up then we may be sowing confusion).

With that I must awa' to my warm bed.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | February 2, 2010 8:03 PM

Have you tried swizzling it vigorously with a swizzlestick?
That works sometimes. Or, bang it with a butterknife.

Posted by: llewelly | February 2, 2010 8:06 PM

Sven DiMilo | February 2, 2010 7:42 PM:

routine update
It looks like there is no longer any immediate danger of asymptote. So that's good.
22038

Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official | February 2, 2010 8:12 PM

The Governement has threatened shopkeepers and cashiers so badly that they are demanding proof of age if they think you might be under 25.. . .

Another example from the same article:

Grandmother Tina MacNaughton-Jones, 47, refused a bottle of wine in a Waitrose supermarket in Worthing, West Sussex - because she could not prove she was over 18. Her 22-year-old daughter then produced a driver's licence to buy the bottle but she, too, was turned down over fears that she would pass the alcohol on to her mother.