The attack beasts of Pharyngula have been talking about their pets, so here are some vicious carnivores devouring their prey.
Talk about whatever you want.
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The attack beasts of Pharyngula have been talking about their pets, so here are some vicious carnivores devouring their prey.
Talk about whatever you want.
I've been highly considering getting a leopard gecko lately.
I'm really hungry all of a sudden.
Be careful to wash your hands after eating a baby.
I miss my snake some times. But the cost of setting up another aquarium and mini fish farm seems prohibitive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrlD2POrDD8
Now you know the greatest pet ever.
Portcullis crash! My carryover...
David:
Nope. Velocity is a vector quantity, with both magnitude and direction; speed is a scalar quantity, the magnitude alone of velocity. Acceleration is change in velocity, not speed... which is why circular motion is always an accelerated frame even when the speed of travel around the circle is constant.
Not bad for a guy who flunked second-semester college physics — twice! — before giving up on Engineering and becoming an English major, eh?
Pets (our cats) are not children. I agree. They are, however, members of the family. Who don't leave home and go off to college.
If this thread had been created by a higher power, implying that it was created with perfection, then the thread would not be continuously evolving to meet the needs of the thread users and perusers. There is ample evidence that this thread has evolved (this version alone has gone from whale penises to taxation to (oh, hell, I can't go through all of the peregrinations of just this itteration of the thread) where we are now which is discussing the ability of the right to convince people to vote against their own interest and discussions of the thread itself. Definately not intelligently designed.
Though some may argue that some/many of these comments were created by sovereign intelligences. Others can point to me and claim the opposite.
I've got a large number of micro-organisms I keep as pets. They're cute, and round, and lovely - and boy do they breed well!
The only problem is that, when I wash, a trillion of them die.
Sigh. I was so attached to little Spiro Keats.
Oh, never mind, they're back again!
Definately not intelligently designed.
But what about the complexity of designing such a thread? Why is it that a thread seems to flow in such a way so that any human can read it?
Proof of an intelligent designer on this blog. QED.
And my previous comment (I was writing it when the gate crashed) should actually refer to the previous itteration of the thread, not this one.
No, but this site does need two everlasting threads. One exclusively for food so that it doesn't fill up the other one every day, and so
a) it doesn't take two hours for those of us not obsessed with food to trawl through to catch up ever time,
b) the food fetishists don't have to search XLIII threads for their favourite recipes.
:)
Coffee grounds.
Where I grew up there were three categories of meat. In descending order of quality - "meat" (for white folks), "dog meat" (for pets), and "boys' meat" (for servants).
MrFire - you should be sent to the Dungeon for posting an Elton John link. Some things are beyond a joke.
I think I linked to it - easy way to remember:
I've got speed (that's how fast I am moving)
I've got velocity (that's my speed and direction)
'Tis Himself,
You have my sincere condolences and my empathy. We lost our 22 year cat, Kachina in 2008. We'd had her for the last 16 of those years. She was an awesome cat. Not only did she even put up with the 2 puppies we adopted after the loss of our dog and roommate, Bear, she taught the puppies to mouse. This led to some species confusion on the part of our pitbull-boxer mix, who to this day tries to pur when you pet her (I'm not joking!).
In our grief over the loss of Kachina, we wound up adopting 4 cats. Hmm, lose one dog, adopt 2 puppies; lose one cat, adopt 4. I'm seeing a worrying trend here.
Shala: But if it had been intelligently designed, it would have been perfect from the start. Between double postings, typos, comment registration problems and other imperfections, it seems to be as 'intelligently designed' as the human knee -- two pedestals, one atop the other, held together with rubber bands). Obviously, this a random scattering of brain farts which only look designed because human beings are patter-seeking organisms.
Shala: But if it had been intelligently designed, it would have been perfect from the start. Between double postings, typos, comment registration problems and other imperfections, it seems to be as 'intelligently designed' as the human knee -- two pedestals, one atop the other, held together with rubber bands). Obviously, this a random scattering of brain farts which only look designed because human beings are patter-seeking organisms.
PZDIDIT!
*runs*
I so totally won that argument god damn!
And remember to wash your baby after eating your hands.
In other news, Pope Stupid is claiming to be the victim of "a smear".
Ewwwwwww!
Ignorance and fear are effective blocks against reaching defensible conclusions.
Ignorance produces fear, and fear produces conservativism.
I can imagine!
By just not telling them about that evidence.
<headdesk>
Becoming an English major may not be coincidental. That's because this distinction is simply not made in German, regardless of how technical a text is. There's only one word for both.
And yes, I knew that a circular motion is constantly accelerated because it's a constant change in direction.
I can't believe I'm getting sucked into this thread.
I have a house full of various geckos (10 at last count), and also shelties. My dogs and I compete in sheep-herding trials (think _Babe_, the movie with the sheep-herding pig), which is a great opportunity to discover how thousands of years of instinct on the part of the dog can trump human reasoning.
It certainly is, just not with different words – "speed", "the speed vector", "the absolute value of the speed vector"… where "absolute value" can be as short as Betrag.
And remember to wash your baby after eating your hands.
This thread is slowly becoming delicious.
An English General would disagree...
And remember to wash your baby after eating your hands.
This thread is slowly becoming delicious.
Sorry to hear about all the dead pets. I have bawled my eyes out over several over the years. I prolly will again now that I have one of my very own (even if he's still young).
I see the speed/velocity scalar/vector issue has already been clarified - I'm too slow. The distinction exists in Danish, but is never used outside the specialised field of Physics.
You insisted my plain white bread had to be brioche, just because I used a little sugar to get the yeast going. :raspberry:
Don't go breaking my heart, RTL.
And if I do get sent to the dungeon, I think it's gonna be [for] a long, long time.
Leomongrass, basil, and chili.
The only problem is eating with your feet. Using chopsticks. And babies don't fit into my oven.
Free range, though.
Kevlar and advancements in coin-operated machinery.
So even God is helpless against the liberal media. I guess we can add pulp and ink to the list God wishes he'd never created, right under 'iron for chariots' and 'the human brain'.
David:
That's fascinating: I thought German was the mother tongue of all physics... but it would seem that failing to make such an elemental distinction would make things really confusing. Perhaps mere Newtonian mechanics isn't hifalutin' enough for the quantum Germans, eh? ;^)
There's a similarly confounding linguistic problem regarding mass and weight, for those of us philistines whose daily life is not yet ruled by SI units: Because the slug is not well known, the pound is commonly used to refer to both weight (force) and mass... which tends to make it hard to get students to understand that weight and mass are in fact fundamentally different. Try explaining to an American layman that even though objects in microgravity (e.g., in Earth orbit) are virtually weightless, they still possess the same mass they would in the familiar 1G environment.
In my workplace, the engineers are in the habit of distinguishing units of weight or force from those of mass by referring to pounds force (lbf) for the former and pounds mass (lbm) for the latter. Makes my head want to 'splode!
Correct.
speed= distance/time
velocity= displacement/time
Displacement is change in position, hence a vector.
It can also refer to the inertial mass i.e, resistance to acceleration. The equivalence principle states that the inertial mass and the gravitational mass (i.e, "charge of gravity") are the same.
Ok I'm off for a weekend of debauchery at the most red neck of locations, Myrtle Beach South Carolina.
But fear not Pharynguloids, I will be elbows deep in funky southern fried music and whiskey at the House of Blues and not on the strip with the bike shorts, Coors Light tall boys and mullets.
You people behave yourselves.
David:
Just so you know, I hadn't seen your clarification (argument with yourself?) @19 when I composed my comment @27.
Unfortunately, I just have to take the comments in the order they are received. If you’ve written profanity and I don’t get back to you, please feel free to keeping typing like drunken monkeys.
Thank you Nerd, for showing me just how scientific you are. Rather than engage in independent thought, you want your religious text editors in the Skeptical Inquirer to do your thinking for you.
Dear Carlie,
Unfortunately for your oft repeated argument that shows you haven’t been following the thread, I have provided large scale, double-blinded studies. I’ve actually provided the meta-analyses of hundreds of those studies to prove various parts of my discussion. The wit of trying to claim that alternative medicine that works becomes medicine denies the basic realities of modern medicine. Simply because something works does not mean it will be used in medical practice. It is a horribly naïve view of the way medical care is provided. Please take a moment to read a few of the previous posts.
Yay, Bride has provided a study, which is a FIRST for this thread. If you notice, it covers two states and extrapolates from that data. I’m going to use the http://nccam.nih.gov/news/2008/nhsr12.pdf data because it is the most recent I could find: “Consistent with results from the 2002 NHIS, in 2007 CAM use was more prevalent among women, adults aged 30–69, adults with higher levels of education,” noting that CAM use does not necessarily convert to Naturopathic Doctor visits. The vast majority of CAM users do so without telling their conventional doctors and without using an alternative practitioner. It is the most dangerous situation possible, and we still don’t see large scale deaths from CAM use.
Carlie still hasn’t read the thread but asks me if pregnancy is a disease. Healthy body functions are not a disease, but when healthy body functions get out of balance, we call that a disease. That is why we have people who specialize in pregnancy. Women who vomit for three months non-stop need help.
Ol’Greg, unfortunately they rarely have an organic disease that can be treated with surgery. Most often it is a hormonal imbalance that I can help with, particularly if they cannot tolerate the standard BCPs.
Bride, no, being female isn’t a disease. Life itself is a terminal condition. But we do the best we can to muddle through and improve quality.
Nerd, are you for real? What was the deal with B’s first three lab reads turning up positive? If you are the scientist you claim to be, why don’t you provide some data, or better yet address the specific data I have provided? Honestly, you write like some 13 year old meth addict from the Bronx and show the same sort of logic. “Do everybody here a favor and shut the fuck up” are not the words of any scientist, or any adult.
Ol’Greg: actually, there are easily twenty life style changes a woman in that situation can do to alter her hormones without resorting to replacement.
Bride: when the editorial was written H1N1 vaccine was not widely available here in Maine.
Sven: The stuff at the end referred to the lovely individual that you all defended so vehemently here and across the web because I was “prosecuting” him. I shall not name him, because it’s obvious who he is and he doesn’t deserve any more publicity. He has managed to get himself “censored” by a social networking site, but I haven’t heard any hew and cry from this lot. He’s also decided that, regardless of reality, I’m responsible for causing him to have a pathetic no-life. So, with all of your blessings, he’s started stalking me. Here’s a repeat of who he is, your true Myers disciple:
The anatomy of a skeptic:
18 year old English major.
Desperately lonely.
Starts blogging to make friends, falls into Pharygula.
Starts attacking older, attractive bearded men and fixates on them.
Gets parking ticket, spends time attacking local police force. Returns to beard obsession.
Creates “newspaper,” and delivers said paper to Quack’s neighborhood in the predawn hours. Frightens disabled retirees who think he is a burgular.
Cackles on blog about how clever he is. Doesn’t realize he has just become a stalker.
Receives praise and encouragement from many other bloggers who also do not have lives.
Myers pretends he hasn’t received any warning about his encouragement of this behavior. Denies responsibility for creating a stalker.
Ol’Greg evidently took this one personally, which is a bit bizarre. MH is an individual but he exemplifies many of you. The speed with which you swallowed and rebroadcast Myers’ error shows a complete lack of independent thought.
I’ve found the term I was looking for to describe what I see here: authoritarianism. Altemeyer has written a free book describing the mob attack, the unthinking obedience, the illogical attachment to being scientists but maintaining a dogmatic stance. To be clear, this is a wonderful discussion of the religious right and gives a tremendous insight into the compartmentalization of fundamentalists. Altemeyer basically loves you guys, but you aren’t open minded scientific thinkers. http://members.shaw.ca/jeanaltemeyer/drbob/Introduction_links.pdf
“Bruce Hunsberger and I asked a sample of active American atheists the same question, only it was along the lines, “Is there anything conceivable that could happen that would make you believe in the traditional God?”Fifty-one percent of them said no. “Most (64%) of our active atheists also said they would be uninfluenced by the discovery of a “Roman file on Jesus” that confirmed much of the Gospels, including the resurrection”
“I have given several groups of atheists the mirror-image scenario in which a teenager who had been raised as a strong and active Christian comes to them for advice because he is now questioning things. Very few Manitoba parent atheists said they would tell this teen that his parents were wrong, nor would they try to get him to become an atheist. Instead they almost all said they’d tell him to continue searching and then decide for himself. A sample of active American atheists was pushier. About two-thirds would have thumped the drum for atheism, loudly or softly, and about half said they would want the teen to become a nonbeliever. But far, far more of the fundamentalists, we saw, would have tried to convert an atheist’s child.”
“Bruce Hunsberger and I found in our study of active American atheists that the few members of that sample who said they had “advertised” their atheism through such things as bumper stickers found that it attracted a lot of parking tickets and vandalism. Some highly religious people are outraged that atheists would publicly declare their lack of faith. Accordingly many of the people who belong to atheist associations hide their beliefs from most others, knowing from experience it could affect their employment, membership in other clubs, and social connections.”
If you take the time to look through the book, there is a wonderful section on zealotry, which can happen to any group of individuals.
If we look at nerd again, we see his multiple postings do not address any of the logical arguments I have made. He may have a degree, but his arguments do not attempt logic, only profanity. The relative anonymity of the web allows him to express who he truly is: an authoritarian.
Myers is uncomfortable with who he has become, a leader of a conformist movement, but he is no longer a liberal in any sense of the word. As he has calcified in the crust of certainty, he has ceased to question even his own snap judgments. When they are wrong, he is unable to examine the basis of his decisions and apologize. He also maintains a fearless persona but only attacks non-entities like myself rather than say, going after the pope. The truth is he is terrified of actual confrontation with a larger authority figure like the pope, because somewhere inside he realizes that that same tactics he promoted for attacking me will land him in prison if he starts on an established figurehead. I simply don’t have the resources to confront him, allowing him and you to bully without fear of reprisal: classic mob behavior.
Ambulocetacean, discussing one or two of my pages without looking at the whole is a bit bizarre. I don’t do chelation therapy, but patients ask me about it. I don’t promote or reject vaccination, I discuss it. I’m a scientist, we discuss things. I give information. The Poling case is the clearest example we have of vaccination causing a problem. You need to look at the Hopkins data and not spout the “authoritarian” AMA propaganda. She was growing and flatlined for two years. Then she “magically” recovered from her “rare mitochondrial disease” and is doing much better. Why don’t you attack my stance on acne, or back pain? Cherry picking from my site to try and support any sort of quackery on my part is foolish.
By the way, why don’t you have a look at my site again? I refund money if my treatments don’t work. Ask any conventional doctor to do the same. I have the highest level of integrity and I suspect you do not
.
Bride, using me as a screensaver? I don’t want to be your personal obsession. I have MH already and I’m not comfortable with the groupie thing. It’s not a fake, I use it to listen to lungs to check for things like bronchitis and pneumonia. For which I sometimes –gasp- prescribe antibiotics.
a_ray_in_dilbert_space: need to read the thread. Never had a patient die on me, had a metastatic patient die last year while co-treating with local conventional cancer center. When I look in the mirror I see me. Someone trying to help people, without being attached to any one doctrine or idea. What do you see?
Stephen Wells: Clever derogatory comment duly noted. How about reading the thread?
A. Noyd: you are a very disturbed human being. I was such a problem for Novella he called in Atwood for backup. When I followed him over the homeopath thread, we were just getting started talking about things. Read the thread again, without your “authoritarian” worship glasses this time.
In terms of attention? Please, I never wanted any of your attention. But you all decided I was a “fun” target, so I’m here to tell you once again that you are a thoughtless mob incapable of independent, open-minded, or scientific thought.
David, the reference is directly about MH, who has definitely been lurking all over my neighborhood.
Jadehawk: great, you take that BCP. Just remember the study where it showed an increase in nearly every disease. The older pill was much safer. My stuff blocks breast cancer, yours raises your risk factors. Thanks for the profanity, I had a feeling I wasn’t pissing people off enough anymore.
Alan: Evidently, you are all suffering from an overdose of homeopathic whale sperm. Best to ask Myers for his cure (maybe his excretions are better:)
Yet another thread? People, we are going to fill up the whole internet at this rate.
That clip reminds me of this music video (slow-mo dogs set to a hardcore techno track).
Bill Dauphin,
Personally, I'm holding out for conversion to the slug-furlong-fortnight system. I've threatened to start truning in all my technical reports in those units. Or better yet, I may start writing procurement specs in that system and watch the heads of salesmen 'splode.
Passive agression can take you a long way in the work world.
Velocity vs speed eh?
OK, Ready - Steady - Go!
Pfft. Speed loses. Went off in the wrong direction.
Plus, also, speed is stupid, keeps you up for days. and has a hideous comedown.
Ecstacy, on the other hand...
Oh, fuck, I cut them off.
Well, baby meat was worth the price.
And touch-typing with my toes seem such a small price to pay.
Don't shoot MrFire; he's just the piano player! (Sorry, no YouTube links from work.)
Shala: Of course, I read what I wrote at #15 and see no less than 7 typos/grammatical errors/punctuation errors, so more proof for no intelligent design.
AnthonyK: I much prefer a schmear. On a bagel. Not a Popetart.
Oh, FFS. Not you again, phoney doctor dude.
Definately not intelligently designed.
Perhaps the "creator" of this blog, PZ Myers is a myth altogether. That supposed photo of him does look a little photoshopped.
MrFire#24 Stop it! I don't care! I hope that's the last song of Elton's that you link to, but I know it ain't gonna be easy.
And, anyway, you're wasting your time :) My IP is giving me a max of 112 kbs at the moment, so I can't watch any videos.
Quackalicious - you're a fuckwit, so please go away.
This just occured to me in referrence to Carlie @ 32: Advances in speed, commerce, and storage on the internet thingies was credited to the growth of the online porn market. Do you suppose this evolving thread will force internet providers to open up even more bandwidth to accomodate? Or will some providers just start blocking this site?
Translation from quackese:
Meta-analysis=fraud.
Caine: The oft-changed story of Berenice/Veronica, right? Veronica's veil and all that.
That would be the one. ISTR I had to threaten to wash a couple kids' faces at various times in gradeschool over that.
Those wacky Teabaggers are at it again (sigh).
Speaking of pets:
Has anyone had any luck turning tropical house geckos loose inside a house in a temperate zone--with heating and cooling, I mean--like Missouri?
And can someone please breed a designer dog that is a cross between a dachshund and a pug? We could portmanteau the names into "dag", which, around here at least, will be pronounced "dog".
Yup, he's a myth - well, technically a mythter - and no one who posts here "believes" in him.
However, it has to be said that, for a non-existent being, his influense is ultimately greater than the god he denies.
Plus he's witty and clever.
I hold to my irrational faith in PZ Myers
My son's HS physics teacher didn't make the distinction between mass/weight and velocity/speed. My engineer husband Had Words with him. don't know how much good it did - teacher said he did it to "avoid confusing the students."
I see our purveyor of Placebo is back with another tl;dr attempt to pretend he is scientific (not). What a loser. He has no chance of convincing us he is anything other than a fraud, as every well run test of his methods shows Placebo, Placebo, Placebo. He needs to find a morally better job. Executioner might be good. That way, when they die at his hands, it will be because the state paid him to make sure it happened. But then, he would probably give them homeopathic poisons...no doubt it would take them a while to die, like the rest of their natural life spans...
Unusual groups of languages:
Languages with a different word for the vector velocity and the scalar speed:
eg
English (Velocity, Speed)
Spanish (Velocidad, Rapidez)
Swedish (Hastighet, Fart)
Languages with the same word for both:
eg
French (Vitesse)
German (Geschwindigkeit)
Italian (Velocità)
Strange.
@47: "Yup, he's a myth - well, technically a mythter"
I thought he wath a profethor.
Dude. The skull.
In retrospect, you wanted the skull, no?
(or...is that just me?)
Not at all. Totally homologous. In fact, the amniote esophagus/trachea crossover is just a variation on the ridiculous sharing of the pharynx between the gut and the respiratory system (which forms, embryonically, as a gut outgrowth, whether gills or lungs) which dates back to the first ur-vertebrates with gills; arguably back before that to the ur-deuterostomes that invented pharyngeal slits.
Fantastic. But not a guitar. (And more fantastic for that.)
quoted for poignancy.
Get a tortoise.
Or a parrot.
Not quite. "Energy" is an extraordinarily slippery concept that is usually defined with a wave of the hand as "the ability to do work." Therefore it's measured in the same units as work, but they are not synonymous concepts. It's kind of like defining 'water' as 'the ability to quench thirst' (no, I will not be defending that analogy).
Here's a favorite quote of mine, from Stephen Vogel:
Bill D. has "velocity" covered.
Indeed. How can you be so sensible, Bill, and still be so wrong about "data"?
[need it be added? smiley-thing]
ah, the Rev refers here to his go-to fave Widespread Panic, new and improved (IMO) by Jimmy Herring playing the shit out of lead guitar.
Rock on, my friend. Both shows?
aw, jeez, Maloney.
Dude. Fuck off already.
I'm sorry, notaDoc, I do not know what you are talking about. I'm guessing this all refers back to PZ's original post(s) about you?
*shrug* I don't care. Personally, I have never "defended" anybody you were allegedly "prosecuting," and the same is true for the vast majority of readers and Threadizens.
So deal with your personal shit on your own blog, is my civil suggestion.
Your concern is noted.
Now, please, fuck off.
Is my incivil suggestion.
Becca:
Aaarrrrrggggghhhh!!!!
I'm a teacher (maths/English) - education involves "confusing the students" - until you enlighten them, that is.
They, like me, are ignorant, - but not "stupid" - until they learn. And yes, delightfully, there is much confusion in education: the delight is in sorrting it out. And learning, is, of course, a delight in itself.
"It's a myth! Myth!"
"Yes?"
Greta Christina has written an Open Letter To Believers, a wonderful letter thanking believers for their concerns abount our rude and uncouth potty mouths, and their kind and generous explanations of the best tactics and strategies we should use when trying to promote viewpoints opposed to theirs.
Chris Mooney and Matt Nisbet, though not believers, would do well to read this letter.
Yes, they did manage quite well. They also gave us the terms ansatz and gedankenexperiment.
Reminds me of something I read awhile ago: Americans generally don't know what 'schadenfreude' means nor have a single word for it, but many have definitely taken pleasure from the suffering of others.
Nowadays, physicists tend not to like needlessly complicated terminology. For example, if you look at the Very Large Hadron Collider article at wikipedia you see: "Not to be confused with Large Hadron Collider or Super Large Hadron Collider." Or, as Neil deGrasse Tyson points out, they saw spots on the sun and what do they decide to call them? Sunspots.
self-corrections:
should be ur-craniates, possibly even stem chordates
Was partially jocular; I do not condone the vast majority of the exotic pet trade in any way. Verified captive-bred animals are another story IMO, though most are still only second- or third-generation from their unethical removal of their ancestors from the wild.
Heh. negentropyeater said "fart."
Touché, Ring Tailed Lemurian. It seems you're not left-handed either :)
(any excuse to link to one of my favorite scenes ever)
Feynmaniac:
In a related note, Americans generally don't know what irony means, either! (North Americans, that is... Alanis!)
BTW, regarding neg's lists @50... geschwindigkeit is such a f*ckin' awesome word that I take back any previous comments that sounded like I was criticizing German! Off the top of my head, the only cooler word I can think of is ausgezeichnet!
And yet they insist on using the word whenever possible.
How ironic.
:P
My older brother has a parrot. Some breed of Macaw. It always scared the crap out of me. Those things are mean.
Attention, anyone who gives a damn:
I just changed my Facebook profile to list myself as officially an atheist. It was surprisingly hard.
I listed my political affiliation truthfully: fuzzy-thinking liberal.
that is all; you may return to your previous conversation.
nigeltheBold (@59):
Shut up, Beavis!
;^)
And if Pz doesn't exist?
I'm cool with that. But wow. I was such a beleiver! What next - homeopatthy?
Becca - good on you. That's something I can't bring myself to do; too many complications. :(
Gesundheit!
Hey, I just watched the video, and I canNOT believe that teh CO used a freakin dogfood commercial.
Instead of, for example, the greatest petfood commercial of all time.
Of ALL TIME!!!
Wow, not even 100 posts yet and that idiot Quack is off on another condescending rant with no scientific backing.
Please don't come to Copenhagen.
I don't think you'll survive the kanalrundfart. Nor the occasional lift saying "I fart".
Shut up Quack! The dogs are jumping! IN SLOW MOTION.
Much more interesting to watch. Oooo look at that graceful fur.
I was at a forest fire in northern California some years ago working as a security specialist 2 (means I don't carry a gun). I worked night shift to keep the locals out of the camping area (in a city park) occupied by the firefighters. I came on duty at 4:00pm and was off at 9:00am.
Around dusk, I walked down toward the picnic area and heard some scrabbling sounds in one of the trees. I looked up and saw a parrot. An African Blue parrot. He was three-walking along a branch.
I met the owner a few minutes later. He said the parrot was wild-caught in 1929(!) when already an adult. The wings were broken so he couldn't fly. This man was the third owner -- he inherited the bird from his grandmother. He figured the bird was around 80 to 90 years old. If he was being honest (and I have no reason to doubt it), holy crap! Damn bird was pushing 90 and still climbing trees. If only I could be so lucky.
Congrats. I have not done this.
well, it'll be interesting - the leader of my Circle is a friend on FB. We may have some interesting conversations. Still, our tradition has always been about practice, with the individual putting what ever meaning onto it that they choose.
I've been reading so much about the LGBT movement (my daughter is working on the play The Laramie Project this spring), and coming out, it just seemed the right thing to do. It's not the same, no where near the same, but still...
One more data point on speed vs. velocity: in Portuguese they are separate if you are doing physics: "rapidez" and "velocidade", but these are both everyday words for speed (is the similar thing true in Spanish?). Also "velocidade escalar" ("scalar velocity") is a synonym for "rapidez" in technical use.
Becca (@84) and Carlie (@87):
IIRC (though I haven't actually checked it in some time), my FB profile lists my religious affiliation as "gradually disappearing." I'm considerably farther down that road now than when I established my page, but I probably won't update it: I don't want to be too in-your-face with my wife's (Catholic) family, nor do I want to create a PR problem for my friends and allies in local politics.
I guess that's a bit cowardly on my part, but there it is. Nobody would hate me or abandon if I used the A word, but it would cause pain and difficulty for people I care about.
Yeah. People would wonder why I was always in hysterics. Probably not good.
It's rather sad my only contribution today is an adolescent bi-lingual pun. I think my emotional development stopped 30 years ago.
Should I see a doctor about that?
It probably won't be that hard then. I became increasingly distanced from meaning in ritual and began to view all of it as a sort of performance art.
My family does Tarot readings and things like that. I still like to play with them but I don't consider it anything but a physical way to talk to myself.
Over time I just became comfortable saying I just flat didn't believe in God. Since I hadn't believed in what most people considered God and had been more and more distant from it, no one was really surprised.
But I don't put my religious, political, or relationship status on facebook. I figure anyone who needs to know, knows.
That's all I have to say about dogs and their owners.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/03/26/constance.mcmillen.tension/index.h…
Look guys, some more news about the lovely lesbian that "ruined" everyone's prom (so they think.).
Yeah - I'd previously left most of those personal fields blank, and may very well go back and delete them, because as you say, anyone who needs to know knows. Entering Atheist was more symbolic though. My parents just recently came out to me as atheist, and I to them, with the general feeling of "well, that's out of the way!" and then we went on with our conversation.
Oh don't talk to me about dog fur... this is the moment when my Golden Retriever starts sheding bags full of really long and fluffy hair, I must brush him every day, and he seems to think this is just another playtime moment.
Anybody knows if it's possible to use that stuff for kniting a sweater?
Hi strange gods, SC, Jadehawk (I think), and anyone else who might be interested:
The Roy/Chomsky Seminar 'Democracy's Endgame?' is now going to be streamed and archived on MIT's TAC website.
Hopefully everyone will be able to enjoy it!
Not sure about GRs, but the mom of a childhood friend had 2 big long-haired dogs of some kind, and she carded and spun her own yarn and knitted awesome fuzzy sweaters & stuff.
mattheath (@75):
Yah, it's the same in English, of course: Velocity and speed are generally interchangeable in common, nontechnical usage. But my comment was made in the context of a more technical discussion (i.e., I wasn't totally being a pedantic asshole!).
Sven (@68):
I can't hit the link from work, but I'm guessing that's a live Alpo commercial from the old Tonight Show? What's next? Tomahawk-throwing demonstrations by Ed Ames? ;^)
Becca (@74):
Forgive my potentially ill-informed question, but do I take this to mean you're a Wiccan (well, a Wiccan atheist, obviously)? If so, did you happen to catch the conversation we had in the recent thread about unbelieving priests, concerning whether Wiccans and neopagans believe in the supernatural in the same way followers of more mainstream religions do? Any thoughts?
Oh, that would be nice. I couldn't talk about atheism with my Dad because strong God-belief was the only positive thing he brought back from his tours in Viet Nam, and I can't bring it up with the rest of my family because fuzzy happy afterlife with dead relatives in the clouds is the only thing that keeps them from going to pieces over Dad's passing.
Sorry, going to visit family this weekend. Not a good day. Feel free to ignore.
nope. Not even close.
Though now I'm-a haveta google up that tomahawk clip.
Zeitgeist and Götterdämmerung are also cool words. German has a bad reputation in North America. While French and Spanish are considered "sexy" languages German is considered "angry". Maybe that's because one of the few times it's heard here is when one is learning about Germany in the 30's and 40's. I like how it sounds however.
We'd had a furred fiend of a cat named Magic -- Tortie with catitude. She passed away after encountering the contaminated pet food (at a vet's!) and we haven't found a new friend yet.
Waiting on whether Shadow-spouse's parents are coming over to visit, or we're going there. In the first case, the fiend may take a dislike to spouse's parents (previous one didn't like any of Shadow-ling's friends -- some wierd bonding I guess). Since the in-laws didn't have pets, dealing with one that was stalking them would be 'bad'.
In the second case, we'd be gone 1 to 2 weeks, and don't have any neighbors who would care for the new pet (besides not really being fair to it either).
So, we're in limbo -- especially since spouse was just 'downsized' and wouldn't have any vacation to go to Tokyo.
Still miss the morning 'conversations' with Magic, though.
Check out the name of the author of this piece on the Vienna Boys’ Choir scandal...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7065824.ece
Feynmaniac:
Not to mention zitterbewegung. But nobody ever mentions poor zitterbewegung.
SRSLY? How sure are we that's not a cleverly disguised link to The Onion? ;^)
Sven:
If you haven't seen it/don't know what I'm talking about, you've got a treat coming. Don't watch with a mouthful of milk!
That is funny. Reminds me somehow of 'stralian friends sniggering when the Roto-Rooter truck goes by.
In colonial America, a fictional character who showed up in humourous writings as a stand in for sexual intercourse. In a book on colonial sexuality (name escapes me for the moment (and the book is at home)), the diary entries of one colonist refer repeatedly to 'roger[ing] my wife last night.' So Roger Boyes is amazingly un-apropo.
dogfood (bit 4 of 4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1oAts8Yr9c
tomahawk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSUQ3qnwCFU
Well, I took Quackboy's somewhat lengthy and generally content-free ravings from above, dumped 'em into a file. Ran a script that picked one letter out of ten, sprinkled 'em into a new file of the same length, but otherwise full of spaces...
Took the output out of that file, ran it through the same thing again...
Did that 30 times. Our result:
... an entire file full of spaces.
... which, actually, come to think of it, was rather an improvement from the original input, coherence-wise.
(/So someone call Nature. I believe I may have just demonstrated the methods of homeopathy may, after all, have one use, anyway. Nobel nomination, here I come.)
I'd seen it, but somehow forgot Carson's pefectly wait..for...it-timed tagline.
That guy was a comedic genius IMO.
I can only speak for my particular dialect, but 'velocidad' in everyday speech is used to mean both speed and velocity. I have no experience in how its used when doing physics, but looking at the Wikipedia Spanish article it seems that 'celeridad' and 'rapidez' are used for speed and 'velocidad' for velocity.
It's also interesting that in everyday English 'acceleration' usually refers the scalar quantity of change of speed over time and only if the speed is increasing (deceleration for when it is decreasing). When doing physics however it refers to the vector of change in velocity over time. Probably somewhat responsible over the confusion that an object in uniform circular motion is "accelerating" that Bill mentioned. A lot of confusion can come from not figuring out how words are being used!
Reminds of this comment:
Ol' Greg (@79):
A few years ago, when my Lovely Bride© and I were doing the tourist thing in Salem, I found myself in a bookstore scanning through books on Wicca and paganism, and being really intrigued and attracted... until it dawned on me that I was thinking of it as a sort of lifestyle hobby, equivalent to RennFaire or SCA or Civil War reenactment, rather than as an actual belief system... so your comment about performance art rings a bell for me. I ultimately decided it wouldn't be prudent to merely dabble in something — as a game — the adherents of which (and opponents, as well) took seriously.
This is partly why I was so fascinated by the conversation in that other thread: I'm still not sure how much of it is "real" woo, and how much is just sexy games in the woods.
Is #31 a poe? I remember Malarkey Maloney from a while back, but I didn't think he would still be here. How can you, without irony, accuse someone else of having an obsession with a bearded guy on the internet when you're still around Pharyngula posting TL; DR diatribes? Did anyone figure out why his handle was Quackalicious?
Another, more important, question. Why do fools think that "freedom" means "freedom from criticism"? It's like the ultimate idiot gambit, the calling card of every quack, charlatan, crank, and conspiracy theorist, used basically to tell you "Fuck off, you can't criticize me or you're an authoritarian! And by authoritarian I mean a Nazi-Fascist-Communist who hates free speech!!!!"
Seriously, though, what a silly world they all must live in, with enormous conspiracy theories involving scientists, organizations, megacorporations, and powerful individuals, all working in tandem to prevent the "truth" from coming out, and the conspiracy theorists (of which cranks and frauds are simple subtypes) are the only people who know the "truth" about how alternative medicine works better and the medical establishment is covering it up/how UFOs are real and the government is covering it up/how the government sabotaged the World Trade Centers and committed 9/11. I could go on and on with such nonsense.
I wonder about the prevalence of these conspiracy theorist-types worldwide. My guess would be that in more collectivistic cultures, this type of conspiratorial thinking would be much less common. The "last stand at the Alamo"/"one man against the world" mind sets of the conspiracy mongers lead me to believe it's mostly a by-product of the "rugged individualist" mythology.
Oh well. This astounding observational nugget from Malarkey made my day:
Does he read this blog at all?
My religious views on Facebook is just listed as "none of the above."
Truly? Without messing up the dirt's pH or anything?
My cats eat Friskies cans, and I can tell you, they ain't that impressed!
I suspect that the ad's production team slipped something hallucinogenic into the demo can.
You said "long and fluffy", so I'm thinking yes. I know there was a woman in Oklahoma a few years back who advertised that if you'd send her bags of your departed pet's fur, she'd knit you up a little something to remember them by, for a price. I dunno; maybe if it was really short staple, it might have to be mixed with some other fibre, which would seem to qualify it as Forbidden for Biblical Literalists.
There's probably a joke in there somewhere about guarding the purity of your Fluffy hairshirt, but I can't for the life of me see it....:P
On the slim chance that it hasn't been mentioned before, there seems to be an entire store dedicated to covering babies in bacon before consumption:
www.babybaconboutique.com/id1.html
Crushed abalone shells. They are decorative, too.
Oh, boy. Texas creationists are just lunatics. They're getting into it with Mark Morford now.
Here's their quote:
Read more here and here.
MikeM
oops,
http://babybaconboutique.com/id1.html
Which reminds me of this:
from The Science of Discworld III: Darwin's Watch.
Impressionable? Vulnerable? Have these guys ever been inside an American high school?
Does cherry picking count?
No, the Qwackster is not a Poe. Just an idjit. Somehow, he thinks he becoming an authority via his repetative posts, so we will believe his malarky. That isn't working, and he looks more desparate and deluded with each post. If he had even a smidgeon of intelligence he would just fade into the bandwidth, and quit wasting his time.
I'm basically waiting on my cat to die, but she's stubborn. She needs oral chemo twice a week, and subcutaneous fluids, an appetite stimulant, a stool softener and steriods daily. Despite all that, she's generally stable and giving no indications at all that she's weary of life. I don't want her to die but it's hard, too, having her so dependent on daily care and monitoring.
Speaking of animal remains, I got to touch a chunk of fresh hippo skin and a piece of intestinal wall with its carpet of villi yesterday. Holy shit, their skin is dense. Also, speaking of predators, I'm in the middle of Where the Wild Things Were by Will Stolzenberg about the relationship of predators to ecosystems. Fascinating so far. I was put off by his writing style at first, but it's starting to grow on me.
~*~*~*~*~*~
Gyeong Hwa Pak (#69)
But everything he says is scientific. All you have to do is agree to his redefinition of "science" and join him on the carousel of circular reasoning.
~*~*~*~*~*~
nothing.besides.remains (#102)
I wish I knew. I suspect the devaluing of expertise and the postmodern notion of equality of ideas is a large part of it, though. I had several people tell me the other day that all opinions are true because they're opinions. So I asked them if I held the opinion I could fly by flapping my arms, would that be true. The only person who replied said that was a "belief," not an "opinion," and then refused to explain the difference between the two.
That has to be a nice feeling. My dad's in AA again, so he's got religion again. He's also really not, nor has he ever been, interested in what I think. Or if he is he can't wait long enough for me to say anything before he starts talking again.
Ever met one of those people who are like "So tell me about your religion because I don't know if you know about mine but..."
Somehow the opportunity to respond never manifests.
My mom is reading about genetics and human consciousness, and becoming more and more willing to think about it, but she's basically a non-skeptic by default. She thinks skepticism is bad. She thinks skepticism is bad even if it is being skeptical of a bum asking for money really needing that money for what he says he needs it for or even being honest enough not to rob you. Yeah, she yells at me for not handing out cash to random drunks on the street :(:(
I donate shittons to PP and other organizations I support! I don't support begging in the street. Ever.
She still thinks atheism is just "making up a religion around no god" which doesn't even seem to strike her as an illogical statement.
She could at least say she doesn't like atheism as a political platform or something, but then again that would suggest there are atheist politicians or, like, more that 6 of them in the US...
Poor mom. She's so damned smart too! She reads much better than I do and can digest books I find painfully complex. But she hates hates hates anything that is critical of anything else.
@102 & 113
Re: "freedom of speech" vs "freedom from criticism"
It's a very prevalent misconception. Just a few months ago a relative of mine said something to the effect that there's no freedom of speech any more because when he voices his opinion people call him a homophobe. Being the polite relative that I am, and the fact that we were together for a funeral, I didn't say anything. I didn't tell him that freedom of speech is why they get to say that (though I wish I had). Calling somebody a name and preventing them from expressing themselves are totally different things and silencing the voices of dissent is not freedom.
I also remember a few semesters ago the local campus newspaper had some comics that criticized Christianity. It caused an uproar, as you can imagine. A Facebook group was started to call for the comic to be banned. Now, I know free speech doesn't guarantee the right to choose the medium, but they were trying to restrict the expression of a dissenting opinion. The funny thing was their response. They said that it was their free speech to call for the ban. How fucking stupid is that? Of course you're free to call for the ban, that doesn't make it any less immoral or stupid.
Ah, but I'd never call brioche "cake". It's its own category where I come from.
I'll have to read the recipe.
Win.
The Nerd isn't incredibly productive here, but let me, as a scientist, disagree with your claim. Scientists have not undergone the full kolinahr, and I can't see a reason why they should if they could.
I still don't get who he is. So, how about some evidence for your claims…?
Define "conceivable", and explain why we should automatically assume that the "file" was genuine and, if so, not based on hearsay…
So? What criteria do you use to determine whether a treatment has worked? Surely they don't boil down to "I know it when I see it"?
Besides, if you didn't live in a country without universal health insurance, this wouldn't even apply.
Different kinds of German sound very different…
lol. way to not pay attention, idiot.
Just dogs! Not too terrifying.
That being said, the vid is just an ad for canines.
I really just don't know what this refers to I guess. David M seems to be equally uninformed of this mad newspaper terrorist that PZ has apparently employed via his vast mind control or perhaps through secret desires which convey chemically through our hive?
So obviously we didn't "all" defend anybody. Just sayin'
Related to the topic of "speed" and "velocity" in various languages; how about the colloquial expression of "rate of speed" as in "The NASCAR driver slammed into the wall at a high rate of speed".
We used to make our HS German teacher, Frau Rollinson, lose her shit by deliberately pronouncing our memorized dialogs with a thick Texas accent:
<drawl>"O, Mutti! Dieser Pullover! Es costet nur dreißig Mark!"</drawl>
Quatsch! Mein Pullover kostet fünfzig USD.
@86
yeah, I followed that conversation with interest.
this is going to be long - feel free to skip over it (as if you needed my permission!)
My path has been a long and windy one, but I've been (sometimes more, sometimes less) affiliated with a specific tradition of Wicca since 1975 or thereabouts. I never *believed* in a pretty young thing with a crescent moon on her forehead being chased through the woods by the stag king with a major hard-on -- but I liked the sense of what they stood for, a dynamic dance between elemental forces in the universe for creativity and life and intelligence.
I still like what I believe Circle stands for, a recognition of, and wonder at, the cycles of life: spring, summer, winter, spring again. But then, the circle I've been affiliated with these last several years has been more philosophical and astronomical in orientation than mystical. We do have one member of our circle who is very invested in studying what she calls the subtle energies (but then, while I have a great deal of respect for her sheer intelligence, I have less respect for how she chooses to use it).
I've had several cycles where I suffered a "death" of sorts (death of dreams, of a way of life) and had to re-create myself de novo to appreciate the symbolism of life/death/rebirth. But I've come to not believe in any life after this one, and while I tend to be pantheistic in my view of the universe, I don't believe that there's an overarching intelligence behind it all. If anything, I'm a Terry Pratchett stylist in my more theistic moments: we create the gods we (think we) deserve.
OTOH, I could never lead a circle again, because I recognize that there are people in our circle who *do* take the stories more literally, who do believe in a literalness of our gods. For whatever reason, they need that story in their lives, and while I wouldn't try to take it from them, I don't have to believe it either.
My tradition strongly stresses orthopraxy, but is militant about not defining any orthodoxy.
My husband doesn't understand my love of ritual, of celebrating the seasonal changes, but he humors me. My kids don't understand it either, and that's cool. Daughter's finding her path in biology and technical theater. Son's not sure what his path is, but doesn't let it bother him. Husband and I share our science books (man, you should *see* the books in our house. We don't have shelves for any given topic, we have rooms.) It's all good.
quite. And I'm completely incapable of understanding any "local" German spoken south of the Harz, east of the German/German border, and north of the Elbe. :-p
Ah, the Quackster thinks we are having a discussion. Sorry Quackster, you have made no logical arugments for many posts now. Hence nothing for me to discuss. You have been refuted by the scientific literature. Take your arguments there. Your whole practice is based on nonsense and illogical thinking, and the Placebo effect. You are just preaching your nonsense at us, and that can be ignored. If you truly had logic arguments, you would also be able to cite journals like Science, Nature, JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, or Lancet, to back up your claims. The journal of alternative medice is a quack organ, and meaningless to any rational scientific discussion.
By the way Quackster, I don't swear at you. I just call you a fraud, delusional fool, and victimizer of your poor patients. That isn't profanity. It is also the truth. Neither is suggestion you find a more moral profession. If you think so, then you think anybody who doesn't agree with you profains you. What an inflated loser ego. Here is some real profanity. Fuck off fuckwit.
Piffle. It's just an utterly naive idea of what historical research consists of to imagine that a "Roman file" (I suppose their filing system was unstoppable?) turning up would settle much of anything. For one thing, the resurrection is a claim about how God acted in the world. It is not, cannot be, a fact of history that someone was resurrected. There are always going to be more plausible explanations than divine activity, and similarly to the state of affairs in science, that simply isn't allowed in history as a reason for anything, because it could be the reason for everything.
Agincourt? Will of God.
Kennedy assassination? Will of Allah.
Reunification of Germany? Will of Odin.
Election of G.W. Bush? Satan!
See how that really just doesn't work at all?
History is a secular discipline, every bit as much as science is. Your "file," at most, and if genuine, would show only that there were persons in the Roman administration who believed one thing or another about Jesus, not that anything supernatural took place. So 64% of atheists are perfectly correct to say so.
I used to confuse things on purpose by tossing in some Yiddish slang here and there for no good reason (I'm not Jewish)...
Ich habe kein pullover. Ich bin zu arm. Vielleicht,
wenn ich eine Koorvah geworden bin, die ich mehr Geld machen würde...
(My German is horrible now that I never use it at all.)
I wish more people around me approached it the way that you do.
deliberately pronouncing our memorized dialogs with a thick Texas accent:
You were hoping to be mistaken for Bayerish then?
to someone who speaks both German and Polish, that sentence is fully comprehensible and... interesting.
Yiddish seems to be precisely that: a mix of Polish (or some other slavic language) and German, with exotic spelling.
I thought Yiddish was a high German language with fusion of Hebrew and Slavic written in the Hebrew script.
Say can you comprehend Pennsylvanian German, Jadehawk?
I gotta go to work - don't have too much fun without me.
oh, yeah: the bacon jam recipe was a disappointment: too much onion, not enough bacon. I gotta try the idea with more bacon next time, see if it comes out any better.
Re: knitting with dog hair...
Among my other 'old-e-world-e' skills (brewing, soaping, sourdough etc), handspinning fibres is something I enjoy - I use a top-whorl spindle - so I have a little experience here.
Sheep's wool is very easy to spin and makes a nice solid yarn because of the surface of each fibre has interlocking scales that tend to bind each hair together when twined. Other animal hairs don't necessarily bind in the same way and can be much more difficult to keep wound, unless the staple (the length of the locks) is long enough to twist several times and give the strength needed to knit or weave the yarn. Alpaca hair, for example, isn't nearly as easy to spin as sheep wool. Vegetable fibres are similarly hard to spin, though not, of course, impossible. Just not as strong when finished. (One way around that is to double up the yarn and spin it again, around itself.) I've not tried dog hair - or cat hair, even with a house full of ginger tufts on the furniture, sigh - because the hairs are too short for hand spinning. Maybe with a spinning wheel...
Having said all that, I know it's possible to knit dog hair into jumpers and scarves as I once saw a display of a bunch of such things, knitted by a woman who owned Samoyeds. They were attractive to look at but... Honestly? The idea of wearing dog hair made my skin feel itchy. Ultimately, I think if you're really determined, I'm sure you could do it.
Sounds like the Redhead. This weekend, the St. Pat's day stuff comes down, and the Easter decorations go up. "Packy" (me carrying the boxes) will be busy.
Becca:
Hah! If you think that was long, you obviously haven't been reading my stuff! ;^)
Hardly: What you wrote was precisely the sort of thing I hoped to elicit with the question. Thank you for sharing (and I say that without the slightest hint of snark).
I'll ruminate on it, but at first blush it seems as if you've found for yourself the sort of thing I was musing about: Something that satisfies many of the same personal and emotional needs — including esp. the desire for ritual and practice — as religion, but without requiring any theistic belief.
I continued to observe (however imperfectly) Lenten fasting long after I stopped believing there was any God to care what I ate, or when. I eventually gave it up, because it seemed like a sham... but I confess, I miss the notion of a ritual behavior tied to the seasons like that.
BTW, orthopraxy is a fabulous word! I'd never heard it before; now I'm going to have to look for excuses to work it into conversation! ;^)
Gyeong Hwa:
D'Oh! I can't believe I spelled kostet with a c! Just goes to show you how far removed I am from my German studies, eh?
I don't know, since I never heard any of it.
Shala:
I highly recommend monkey-tailed skinks. Fantastic lizards. Large, prehensile tails, capable of scaring large cats, eats an easy vegetarian diet.
Rev. BDC:
Woohoo, have fun!
Oh please. How the hell do you expect us to behave when our Reverend is off partying?
Auntie Ron:
Hahaha. Ahem. Yes, that 'cloth' could be pulled quite tight, I imagine.
For Fuck's Sake, don't you have people to kill, Quackass? Go away.
Becca:
Yay! Congratulations, Becca. That's a big step.
A. Noyd:
I read that a while back. I enjoyed it, it was very interesting. I'm sorry to hear about your cat, that has to be wearing on you.
Hier ist eine Stichprobe auf Wikipedia:
Shit, the dialect reminds me of a modern German dialect, but I can't recall which one (basically as I was reading it, I was seeing a particular German comedian speak it, because it looks the way he'd speak in parts) :-p
I can read it, but I suspect it would be tricky to understand it when spoken
True, I should have been more precise. Judging from the little German I have heard (no, I couldn't tell you what dialects they were) and the few loanwords in English I think it's a cool language.
Tea party rally to draw angry crowds, scrutiny
I list as "Militantly Ignostic Apathist" because I'm a smart-arse...
You're not the boos of me! Poopyhead!
Milne @98: Ha!
or
...an entire pile full of feces.
AJ Milne:
Bravo! You've proved the dilution of quacks does indeed improve them. Absolutely brilliant.
Bill @76:
I really liked your longer comment on the same subject from a thread or so ago; that's how I feel exactly. I don't tell my family lots of things (like how I really don't like my mom's recipe for lima beans), and this is one of them because it would hurt them a lot more than it would make me feel "good" about being all "real" with them. I do stand up against the encroachment of religion in places it shouldn't go, and even with them I stand up against intolerance of other people, but I guess my laser sights are on the institutional effects of religion rather than specific practitioners. I'm not an accommodationist, but I'm not going to try and rip religion out of my mom's hands, either (or stomp all over it right in front of her).
The monkey-tailed skink does look nice, although I am a bit worried since it'll be my first lizard and I heard leopard geckos are good to start with. I wasn't sure from the website how easy it is to handle the skinks other than their diet.
Thanks for the suggestion. :)
At 45 secs on the video at the top anyone tell me the breed of that dog.
We have one that looks near identical and were told it was a cross skye terrier / papillion but looks more like a Jack Russell / something else.
Facebook atheist for years, although I have work people as friends there, I don't think anyone cares much.
Quacky I will ignore.
The tea party movement, its backing by Fox and everything to do with it has me a bit worried, they might just succeed and turn the USA into an idiocracy, if it isn't already one.
We have one that looks near identical and were told it was a cross skye terrier / papillion but looks more like a Jack Russell / something else.
not important! all that's important is that it's a...
Terrier!
;)
What's better is dogs with lasers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BxM47oHrfI
Shala, there are a lot of sites with in-depth info about Corucia zebrata. Damien was fairly easy to care for; they do appreciate a large habitat, with the ability to climb very high and plants to curl up in. Damien was fond of sleeping on the curtain rods or curled up in a hanging Creeping Charlie (Glechoma hederacea) plant. He had large pothos plants in his enclosure, they do eat those as well as sleep in them. Temperature, air flow and humidity control are important, but they are with all leezards. The prehensile skinks like a good soak too, so a very large water dish is a must.
Damien was a joy, he enjoyed riding around on my shoulders with his tail wrapped around my neck in the late evening. They live to be 15 to 25 years old and can grow to 30 inches. They also have one hell of a bite, so bonding properly is important. :D
If it's your first leezard, yes it is best to go with an easy one and one where the habitat will be easy to provide and maintain.
David,
You are not alone :)
Sven,
I want skulls! The boyfriend brought an immature possum skull home from a hike the other day. It's now sitting on my dresser.
Feynmaniac,
I actually like the way German sounds, too. My friends think I'm crazy. My favorite German word is Blitzkrieg, though Zeitgeist is a close second.
It never occurred to me that my German had an accent until I went to Germany and the lady who worked at the bakery where I picked up my salami brötchen every day remarked on how cute* she thought I was with my American accent.
As for understanding different dialects, I can't. The only German I understand is standard German. Even then, I have a very good grasp of grammar, but my vocabulary is atrocious. I need to spend more time reading German, but I've got enough to read in English :)
*She was of an age with my mother and saw me as a poor lost kid since my German was so elementary and I was only 19 (looked about 12) when I was there. Incidentally, when the same lady asked me how old I was, my actual German classes came in handy. Ich bin neunzehn Jahre alt.
tkm @ 151, just link, please. Don't post vids in thread.
Rorschach:
It only takes about a minute of reading at a site or forum they populate to be fairly convinced that idiocracy is encroaching.
Quacky@31:
Unfortunately,...
TLDR
yeah, nobody gives a shit about what you have to say here.
feel free to become a part of my spam filter though.
Wow, he's still going. He must have taken the whole "not a real doctor" thing personally. Even though it's true.
You've got to wonder how it is he can take on a martyr complex like that. When a whole group of people say "you're wrong", it doesn't mean they are conformist. There's always the possibility that you're, in fact, wrong.
But that can't happen, Quacky is a real docor. The state of Maine says so...
German has some wonderful words, a number of which express concepts that require circumlocution in English.
My favourite: Zugzwang.
Kel:
Actually, the state of Maine doesn't say so. It's quite explicit in that he cannot call himself Doctor in the medical sense. Only 'doctor' of naturopathy/naturopathic doctor, etc.
Quackass seems to have been quite certain, recently, that I'm male. So much for his doctorin' skillz. He certainly displays zero reading or comprehension skills. ;D
The farce and Dunning-Kruger is strong in this idjit. So far, nothing of conclusive scientific evidence from him, just blather and woo woo woo nonsense, like citations to the quack journal, journal of alternative medicine (what an oxymoron, emphasis on moron).
To be fair, a lot of people would probably associate the name "Caine" with David Carradine...:-)
Hast du etwas Zeit für mich, dann singe ich ein lied für dich...
Ich habe Schadenfreud.
But, but Nerd, you're not a real scientist 'cause you don't do sciencey things in the endless threads! /Quackass's notion of logic.
Rorschach:
:D Indeed they do. That was one of the considerations when I initially chose it waay back in my usenet days.
@158 JM A fascinating term. I studied game theory a few decades back and never ran across it. It is concise.
Yeah, he is a real Qvack-up. I think my day job employer would beg to differ. I do believe the word scientist appears somewhere on my business card, along with my degree.
I don't spend a lot of time trying to refute the Quackster's nonsense, because it will never take. I'm waiting for him to demonstrate he scientifically right. And I will be waiting for the conclusive paper that homeopathy/reiki/therapeutic massage is truly scientific and gives results above placebo until my dying day. Same for the cold fusion crowd. Meanwhile, ridicule is called for. And more bacon. And the whiskey cake the Redhead made. Just got called for the latter.
Leopard geckoes are super easy lizards. So are bearded dragons. Both are bred to excess in captivity so it's all good ethically. Corucia is a super, super cool lizard, no doubt, for many reasons. But ooh. The reptile pet trade is so evil, and has been for so long, that I cringe a bit about keeping something like that. YMMV as always.
(Disclosure: I have 3 turtles but I neither bought them nor removed them from natural habitat.)
Sven, my Corucia zebrata was captive bred, not wild collected.
It's getting quite frustrating. I'm the eyes of the quacks, I'm either some conformist trapped in a cult of personality, or I'm a Big Pharma shill. It can never be that maybe I disagree because the evidence simply isn't there... Nope, can't be that. It must mean I'm brainwashed or something. That I must not be seeing how evil Big Pharma really is. That I don't know about these alternative therapies that would only be available and even more effective if not for the fact that they won't make a profit.
I'm really sick of this shit, I've grown up around this. If it weren't for my Dad I wouldn't have even been vaccinated because people were in my mother's ear about the dangers of vaccines (this was before the autism scare too!). I've taken herbal "remedies", homoeopathic solutions, had acupuncture done on me, just to name a few. Yet if I ever dare question the efficacy of supposed alternative therapies, suddenly I'm being closed minded, or a shill for Big Pharma, or I haven't tried it out for myself. Meanwhile I'm apparently pumping unnatural chemicals in my body when Nature provides us with all our bodies need. I don't actually take much of anything, but that's besides the point. I'm just a big pharma brainwashed drone...
... yet in 10 years, what has the CAM actually shown in terms of positive results? Multi-billion dollar funding and double-blind scientific treatments and where's the holistic revolution? It doesn't exist. Meanwhile, alt-med is itself a multi-billion dollar industry, one that is unregulated and propagates by word of mouth. Any testing done shows treatments to be at best placebos, and in some cases even more dangerous. And those people have the nerve to question my motivations of supporting a multi-billion dollar industry?
You know, magicians make a living out of lying to their audience. When you go to a magic show, you are going there to be fooled. In a way there's honesty in that lying. Similarly, pharmaceutical companies don't pretend to be anything but corporations. Meanwhile there are shelves at my supermarket stocked with supplements, herbal remedies for common illnesses line the shelves while over-the-counter medication beyond the absolute basics (aspirin, paracetamol, cold remedies) don't exist. I can buy herbal allergy medication at the supermarket, I have to go to a pharmacist to get shit that actually works (again, I've tried the herbal solution - it did sweet fuck-all other than taste bad).
The alt-med industry is worth a fortune. It's as much as business as any other, yet it spreads on the lie that they are the little guy going up against the evil industry. Pretending that it's not about the money while raking in the money - that's being dishonest. An industry run on dishonesty is bad enough, combine that with pseudoscience and controlled outrage and you've got alt-med.
glad to hear it, Grasshopper.
Kel, Quackass has heard all that and more due his persistence in showing up in the endless threads. He's a fraud and a liar who happens to be afraid of blood.
I'd dearly like to see him constantly intrude in the threads over at Orac's.
Sven:
:D It's the only way to go.
Quackalicious,
I’ve actually provided the meta-analyses of hundreds of those studies to prove various parts of my discussion.
When I followed up the two meta-analysis references I saw, one turned out to produce the stunning conclusion that sick people like being touched sympathetically, while the other had been thoroughly taken apart by real medical scientists, and rewritten in a way that effectively abandoned the claim that prayer had an effect. You then completely misrepresented what I had said about these meta-analyses - although your powers of self-delusion are evidently so strong this may not have been a simple lie.
He also maintains a fearless persona but only attacks non-entities like myself rather than say, going after the pope.
Again, only a self-deluding idiot would expect such an obvious falsehood to impress anyone. I conclude that you are living in a fantasy world of your own creation - but not a very interesting one.
Video time!
Kung Fu - TV intro
Kel,
out of curiosity how did the watching of Expelled finish up, or did I miss a follow-up post to the half-way mark comment last night? I haven't yet compelled myself to a viewing (and don't intend to, either)...
Ugly misogyny and transphobia on display in the Palin thread, as well as the usual hyperbole that people (all too easily) mistake for literal intent rather than metaphor. Suggesting the hockey mom should go back to playing the flute is obviously a liberal suggestion ("The flute is not an instrument that has a good moral effect; it is too exciting." attrib. to Aristotle)
Oh well, back to what I was doing... (have been doing a variety of other things™, so am currently in Pharyngula lurking mode)
Previous thread,
The real question is if you want to feel clean why on earth would you touch Bill Clinton?
...I'll get my coat.
It's just that it has been clarified more than once. You'd think he'd at least notice.
What about the stereotype that French "sounds gay" when men speak it?
(My sister hates it when men speak French and women speak Spanish. Though it can't be that bad... she has learnt Spanish.)
Justice has been served. Arnie, in Twins, on the plane...
Ei hef newer lissend tu det keind off mjusik bifooooohr!
<drool>
That latter one actually becomes easier if you know English, because the main distinguishing feature of its sound system is the lack of the High German consonant shift, a feature it (obviously) shares with English, and because some of the vocabulary is shared with English, as is a bit of grammar.
I'm not aware of any great east-west divides between German dialects, except in the south (Alemannic vs Bavarian).
In central Germany, just south of the Harz if I'm not being confused, there are dialects that have undergone crazy sound shifts. From what very little I've read about them, I'd have serious trouble understanding them.
I've already expounded on the following at least once... I understand about half of spoken Flemish. This includes cheating by knowing English and French (unsurprisingly, there are greater numbers of French loanwords in Flemish than in most kinds of German). I also understand about half when the Swiss speak, and this includes cheating by speaking an East Middle Bavarian dialect that is more closely related to everything Swiss than to Standard German, and by being an armchair linguist who has some idea of what kinds of sound correspondences to expect (this also holds for Dutch/Flemish).
When everyone speaks their own dialect, I can have a conversation with a Tyrolean, but west of that would very quickly become very difficult. To the northwest, I suppose it would work up to and including the Franks, but probably no further.
In contrast, you will chat freely with the Czechs (and I do mean those from Prague) and the Slovaks if any come (from Bratislava), and everyone (except me...) will understand everything except the month names* and "ice cream". Oh, and, by now they can probably restrain themselves should you ever mention you're looking for something.
I'm told this works even between Polish and Russian, though I'm somewhat skeptical about that... last but not least because it was a commenter on an armchair-linguist blog who wrote that, though she did claim to be talking about her own experience, and my Russian simply isn't good enough that I could try this on my own. (Apart from the fact that speaking Russian in Poland, at least, with the generations who had to learn it at school, still isn't a good idea.)
But then, it's also said to work or almost work between German-north-of-the-Elbe and Yorkshire English. I know such a German who was an exchange student or something... when the people there didn't want to be understood by the exchange students, they spoke their dialect, with the opposite effect.
* Most of the words are the same, so you'll think you understand, but the sequence is variously interrupted, shifted by one, and the like. Maddening to me, because I'm always confronted with both at the same time. There is something to be said for the Chinese system – the months of the Western calendar, and the days of its week, are just numbered...
Worse. Much worse.
Yes.
(Only one Polish, Russian, or whatever word in that particular sentence, though.)
At the base it's a mix of a lot of southern-but-not-too-southern German dialects (very confusing – for instance, I can't predict whether any given word will have /a/ or /o/, they're probably drawn at random). Add to this Hebrew words for something like all abstract terms (not only religious ones). Then add lots of words from Polish, Ukrainian, Belorussian, Russian, and presumably Lithuanian, and the sound system of that region, as well as a couple of grammatical elements. And write it all in Hebrew letters.
I probably could understand most of it. Can you point me to sound files...? The Wikipedia snippet makes it look easy.
(Can you believe it! They actually shrunk Wikipedia! X-D They formed its diminutive. Very Alemannic of them, almost Swiss.)
Swabian.
It gets worse! There's regional variation within Standard German! =8-) It's subtle, but it consists mostly of those things that are most likely to trigger emotional reactions.
Haven't finished it yet, will probably do so tonight. It's a pretty tough film to get through, Ben Stein playing a scripted sceptic is painful to watch.
That made me laugh. When I was a kid, my family moved from Ft Lauderdale to Ohio and we somehow ended up with a bunch of anoles in the moving boxes. We were catching anoles for months... they apparently got along just fine in the new place.
I have a hemidactylus fasciatus gecko that I'm half expecting to accidentally turn loose one day. She moves at the speed of light and it's a challenge cleaning the vivarium.
Shala, I have six leopard geckos. They make a really nice first reptile. Crested geckos are another good starter gecko -- very simple care, although they're a little jumpier. If you have space, you might consider a blue-tongue skink... docile, easy to handle, and seem to enjoy human interaction.
Ouch. Language is mentioned, and I write 4 1/2 laptop screens about it...
HWAAAAARGH!!!
<pout>
Ol'Greg:
Yes, you would. Especially since I posted a link to a photo of myself wearing a bra and a calendar. Along with the other random woman talk, periods and such stuff.
My dogs' 2nd favorite thing in the world is bunnies*. Their favorite way to enjoy bunnies is Bunny Stew:
2 bunnies (cut each into 6 pieces at joints)
flour
salt & pepper
1 tbs fresh rosemary, chopped
6-8 cloves garlic (omit garlic if serving to dogs)
1 cup white wine
2 cups chicken stock
butter
parmesan
candied lemon peel**
optional: chickpeas, carrots, and of course BACON (go easy on salt if adding bacon or pancetta)
Season bunny pieces with salt & pepper, coat in flour and brown over med-high heat (might need a little oil if your bunnies are lean)
Remove bunny pieces from pan (add small amount of olive oil if pan is dry or remove some bunny fat if obscene amount). Cook garlic and rosemary about 1 minute (stir constantly). This might be a good place to add bacon or pancetta...
Bunny pieces go back into pan and add wine and chicken stock. Cover and simmer for about 30 minutes (add carrots or cooked chickpeas) - simmer some more until bunny meat is falling off bone.
Remove bunny from pan and reduce sauce over med-high heat till nice & thick. (Remove bunny meat from bones if you want a more sophisticated dining experience.)
Add bunny meat back into pan and warm. Season to taste with salt & pepper. Add a wee bit of butter for fun.
Serve over egg noodles or some other tasty starch and garnish with candied lemon peel & parmesan shavings.
* Their #1 favorite thing in the world is cats which are not on the menu at our house.
**Candied lemon peel is just lemon peel simmered in sugar & water until translucent (about 6-7 minutes). The remaining liquid can be used as simple syrup for drinks, tea, etc.
I guess there's also a negative perception in America, especially due to the French opposition to the Iraq war. Freedom fries and all that. I remember hearing Kerry's campaign not wanting the public to know that he spoke French. About "sounding gay"....I'm not sure about that. I've been in Canada too long....
I find a woman speaking Spanish (without a non-native accent) to be pleasant. I'm sure much of that is due to my background. However, I can tell you that at least some North American girls like to hear a man speaking Spanish during intimate moments....
I'd only embarrass myself if I tried in French though. I started learning it at about 12 when my family moved to Ontario. Knowing Spanish helped a lot, but because of the way it was taught I only really learned French as a written language. Now, I can read a French news article and understand most of it, but cannot really carry a conversation and speak it with a strong English/Spanish accent. Oddly enough, when I had a free slot in my timetable and took an intermediate Spanish course in university I would hear Spanish with an English/Québécois accent. Remembering my difficulties I didn't laugh about all the letters that weren't being pronounced.
For some reason, that just makes me Lol. Maybe it's because you followed it up with "periods." Well, the least you can do missy is complete the list:
headaches, reading clubs, your kids, scented bath beads, chocolate, applique sweaters, your kids, JoAnn Fabrics.
Oh you Germanic people. I have a hard enough time understanding spoken Hochdeutsch. I can only imagine how a conversation with a southern dialect would go. I suppose German has a greater level of intelligibility than Chinese (Teochew, my ancestral dialect, sounds nothing like Cantonese which sounds nothing like Mandarin). Then you have Papuan making Unserdeutsch, a creole language, and the Amish German. And don't get me started on the dialects and creole of English!
That said I understand* all the dialect of Khmer, even Surin which sounds hella Thai.
*By understand, I mean hear and understand. I’m quite illiterate in Khmer. I try learning and the most I could read and write is my name and the word “I”.
Are any Miyazaki fans in the house?
His collaborator, composer Joe Hisaishi, composes some of the most beautiful music ever. One of my favorites is:
The Sixth Station - Spirited Away
For the linguists - could anyone give me a definition or example of the difference between a dialect and a language that could help me intuit what "dialect" means? I know I can Google it, but what I find doesn't exactly help.
As an ignorant English-only speaker (tiny, tiny smattering of French, ability to read just enough Spanish, sometimes, from having taken Latin), I'm trying to find an analogy that would help me discern the difference. It seems to me that "dialect" is used to describe vocabularies and grammars that are so different that those who don't speak the "dialect" (but ostensibly speak the same overarching "language" that the dialect is part of) can't understand a word of it. So, what makes a dialect different from a language?
Is there any English analog? I'm not aware of any part of the the world where English is spoken so differently that I couldn't immediately converse with such a speaker. I'm probably hopelessly confused, and look forward to having my ignorance corrected. Thanks!
Josh:
There, tailored. With a proviso on the JoAnn Fabrics, which gets "eh, sometimes" as I'm not into sewing, but do like to embroider. And you forgot tea. And beer. *frowns*
MrFire:
*raises hand*
The difference is hazy at best. Example, people purports that Chinese is one language, but someone speaking Mandarin will find it near impossible when speaking to a Hokkien speaker. On the other hand, Lao and Thai are considered different languages but a Lao speaker can understand a Thai speaker.
Englog and Singlish.
Josh,
IANAlinguist, but in my few linguistics classes, here's how it was explained to me. Dialects of languages are to some degree mutually intelligible. They become different languages when the two dialects are mutually unintelligible to a great degree, say 70% or more. I think of the languages like organisms. Sometimes two populations are very different, so we name them separate sub-species. When the sub-species become distict enough that they can no longer interbreed, we call them separate species. There's a lot of gray area though. Some populations don't interbreed in the wild, but they do in captivity (the Sumatran and Bornean orang utans are an example). Some sub-species only hybridize in small geographic areas, so we may call them separate species anyway (baboon species are like this).
Another thing is convention. From everything I've read, Cantonese and Mandarin are completely mutually unintelligible. They are, for all intents and purposes, separate languages, but for largely historical/political reasons they are called dialects of one language.
There are dialects of English that I cannot understand. Welsh English, the Scottish dialects to a large degree, and so on. I do, for the most part, understand all of the American dialects. To my ears, the most distinctive dialect in the USA is African-American Vernacular, which has distinctive vocabulary, pronunciation rules and grammar.
I somehow didn't really finish my comparison of languages to populations of organisms. So, sub-species are dialects and species are languages. Once you reach mutual unintelligibility (inability to interbreed in the species illustration) you have two new languages!
Caine:
Cripes, how could I forget about the beer (and tea/coffee)?
I was hoping hoping to provoke you into making up a snarky list of "random gay talk," but ah well:)
A proviso about the fabric store - since I knit, I find myself occasionally, by necessity, in one of those horrid places. But I try to get in and out with my yarn as soon as possible. They give me the creepin' willies.
Caine,
Since you know how to embroider, I have to ask you a question. Is it possible to teach oneself how to embroider, or do I really need someone to teach me. I'd really like to learn (along with knitting and crocheting), but I don't know anyone who knows how :(
Careful, that provocation could lead to dark places. ;)
Mm hm. I feel the same way. I've found it better in recent years to order from JoAnn's online. I'm jealous you knit, I never did pick it up as a kid. I did some crocheting, which I really enjoyed. I've often thought I should try to grok knitting again one of these days.
Gyeong:
Englog and Singlish? Will have to Google those, thanks.
Pygmy:
Your comparison to speciation is elegant - nicely done.
Same here, though I wonder how much it has to do with pronunciation and accent, rather than differences in vocab/syntax/grammar. I find very thick Scottish accents almost (and sometimes completely) impossible to understand. Though since I don't understand, I guess I can't know what feature of the speech I'm not understanding.
See, that's interesting. I wouldn't consider AAV a dialect, at least if dialect means anything close to "mutually unintelligible." I can understand it perfectly, and I don't know anyone in the US, even the most racist whites, who would say they can't understand it. Oh, they'll mock it crudely, of course. But anyone in the US who grew up with Standard English (but who hasn't lived under a rock and have ever had friends who use AAV) can not only understand it, but "speak" it (though one wouldn't, for various reasons).
Guess "dialect" is a fuzzy category.
I forget, Pygmy, where are you from?
Here's some more for you, then:
Itsumo Nando Demo (Always With Me): Spirited Away ending
Josh: go online to knitpicks.com for your yarn: better quality than JoAnn Etc. and better prices.
home from work, now succumbing to a very bad cold. Husband and kidlets are coughing in synchrony in the other room. I really wish my family wasn't quite so much into this "sharing" bit.
Josh,
I can understand it, but I think it's more distinct from the other American dialects. Our dialects just aren't that different compared to the variety in the British Isles.
I'm originally from the Mid-South.
Caine:
I didn't learn until one of my Aunties taught it to me when I was 30. It isn't hard at all to get the basics. Now, I'm no pro by any means. . .most of what I do is standard knit/purl stuff. Scarves, small blankets, etc. I haven't gotten around to taking any classes for more advanced stuff, though I may. For me, it's the repetitive motion that's relaxing and distracting. . .it's not what I'd call a creative outlet (though for many it is).
A word of advice: the Continental/German stitching method is quicker and requires less unnecessary hand movements compared to the English/American method. It produces the same stitches, just without unnecessary hand movements to move the yarn around. I don't know why anyone does it the American way (prepared to receive bricks to the head from those who disagree:))
Pygmy Loris, yes, you can teach yourself to embroider. There are some good basics here: http://www.needlenthread.com/2006/06/basic-embroidery-stitches.html
Just searching Embroidery Basics will yield lots of results. I know there are a lot of videos on how to do stitches too. You can always start with a stamped embroidery project too, just to get you used to doing it.
You folks and your embroidery and knitting. I'm just content that I can sow. In fact, I'd love to make a quilt if I had the time.
Thanks Caine, that looks like an excellent site! I guess when I finish my current (I've been working on it for more than a year) cross-stitch project I'll pick up a stamped embroidery project and start learning.
not just just south of the Harz, but from the Harz southward all the way into Italy :-p
aaah, yes, thanks
so I'm guessing you've never been angesächselt before? :-p
The Berliner dialect OTOH is ok, unless they really really try to not be understood.
And then there's Silesian, which I can't understand very well either, despite having a few Silesians in the family*. But it sounds nice :-)
like with "species", there really isn't a single solid definition. it's all very fuzzy around the edges. Though usually at least the writing is the same, even if the pronunciation has become mutually incomprehensible. Or as some Swiss kids said to their mom when they listened to my family talk: "oh look, they're speaking written German!"
*some of whome apparently, as my mom just informed me, live like an hour north of Krasiejów. Clearly my geographical memory sucks, since I didn't notice that.
Josh:
That would be good. I'll check that out.
Pygmy:
And don't I feel dumb proffering an explanation to you as if you weren't also from the U.S.! We're international here, and I didn't want to make that assumption based on faulty memory - please know I wasn't trying to sound condescending:)
wasn't it 'Tis Himself who told the story of the Alabaman and the Scot who had to write notes to each other because their dialects were mutually incomprehensible?
Gyeong,
:)
Homophony is evil!
Pygmy Loris, are you doing counted cross stitch? That is such a pain to do, but the results can be astonishing.
Becca:
Thanks, bookmarked! Unfortunately, I'm so far into a full-sized blanket for my bed that I have to keep buying the same brand/color of the cotton yarn I'm using. That's just one project though.
Ack, no! Dye lots, darling, dye lots! Better to buy too much all at once than to risk it disappearing.
Ay hate it when yew right too words that sounds the same. lol
Carlie:
Oh, I know, I know. But, this is a national brand, and this particular color scheme is a longstanding one that's unlikely to go away. Yes, the dye lots are slightly different, but since it's a variegated (though not too much so) yarn, the difference is barely noticeable. After putting together the strips, rearranging the squares randomly, and washing a few times, you won't even notice.
But yeah, you're right, and were I starting again. . .
Josh,
No worries :)
Caine,
Yep, it's counted cross-stitch. It takes me a very long time to finish a project, but I do like the results. I doing a 5x7 forest scene right now, and I only have about 1/6 of it left to do. I do have two other projects started, but I've lost interest for awhile. I'll come back to them next time there's a power outage :)
Oh. My. God. I cannot believe I've gotten myself caught up in a knitting derail. We've already alienated poor Sven with the recipes; now we're really going to bring out the pitchforks with knitting/embroidery talk. We should be careful, Order of the GLOP.
Plus, Ima look like a walking stereotype. . .lol!
What do you mean Josh?
Josh, hahahaha, see, I didn't need that snarky list at all. :D
Oh, young Gyeong, you keep angling for that spanking, but I told you many threads ago you're just not going to get it. You've been bad, and you don't deserve any treats:)
Pygmy Loris, if you're doing counted cross stitch, you are doing embroidery.
Josh, you don't have to worry about knitters. The Kninja Knitters will keep you safe...unless you insult them. Then you had better protect your spleen...
One moron spotted in http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/03/ayala_fires_a_shot_across_th…
Caine: link FAIL in #222:)
[Rocky Rococco] Needles? Do you know what I like to do with neeedles? Heh! I like to put them on syRINGES!! Haha!! Yes! HypoDERMics! Heh! And then USE them! to INJECT! my EXPERIMENTAL S-SERUM!! In ject the serum into DOGS! YES!! It's...it's a Fiendish EXPERIMENT! [/Rocky Rococco]
(The recipe for Mr. Rococco's Experimental Serum to be swapped later under separate cover.)
All this teasing. . . you're trying to make me beg aren't you. :P
On another note
I came out to my sister, and all she could say is that I was "icky".
@Gyeong:
Came out as gay? And she said "icky?" Yeesh, I'm sorry. Don't let it get to you (easier said than done, I know).
That's Rococo (2 Cs, not 3, my bad) on the left.
ugh :-/
all I have to make you feel better are fresh baked key lime tartlets.
Oh, boy, it's good to be back on the endless thread...but I've got a shitload or a fuckton or a whale of a lot of catching up to do.
I see bacon, some quacks, and other goings on... what's this about needles!? And why are there so many examples of Idaho moronics on other threads -- do they pop up when they know I'm not here to knock them down? Raven and others smacked them around nicely. :-)
Well, my lovelies, I promised pics of the trip to Crack Canyon and I will deliver (even though no one met me at the trailhead... Carlie, I'm talking to you). This is blatant blog whoring, and maybe even geology whoring.
Aarrgghh...corrected link.
Thanks, Josh.
ah, here it is
Rococo @ 1:55
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5XfXECpU6w
Gyeong Hwa Pak:
Damn. That's not nice at all. I'm sorry you had to hear that, especially from your sister.
w00t! Lynna's back, and so far apparently fully functioning :-)
Lynna!!!!!!Eleventy!!ONE!!111!!!
We missed you!
Yeah. Well basically it boiled down to being "icky". She said "weird" and "gross". She believes people can be born gay (from a religious standpoint) but she "has a thing against the idea of two guys kissing or having sex" (her words). Then she berated my ability to flirt with guys saying that I flirt like a "sissy". Her response sounded like grade schooler, but at least it’s over with and I berated her dear glittering vampire.
Ha! You got her good - that's the way to do it. Seriously, her reaction was offensive and rotten, but I think it's likely in six months or a year, she'll think better of it and be rightfully ashamed and apologetic. Not that we gay folk should have to forebear and put up with it, I'm just describing what I think is likely.
In the meantime, you don't have to put up with her - or anyone else's - disrespect. But you don't need me to tell you that.
That sounds like an interesting trip Lynna. Interesting pics.
it there ever was anything in the world that required berating, glittering vampires are it :-)
Yeah. Especially when she captions her pics thus:
"Leland casually climbs yet another cliff in Crack Canyon. ."
I'm waiting for Lynna's pics of Coin Slot Gulch. Oh, and also for Leland's phone number. Thank you.
Gyeong Hwa Pak:
Good! Dear glittering vampires deserve to be shredded with all due viciousness.
Josh @239: LOL! Sheesh. Ah well, Leland is not your flavor, more's the pity. But I'm sure you can get his phone number off his website.
And here are his Facebook links, where he posted more images than he did on his website:
Crack Canyon
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=405559&id=196647110439
Devils Garden
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=405560&id=196647110439
Lynna's BACK!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!
We missed you.
Lynna, I'm glad you're well. I was beginning to worry. Beautiful pictures by the way, but your site is not cooperating with my browser. X(
Gosh yes, I have so much to trash on about that book series.
@Lynna:
(In Eartha Kitt voice) Eeeeevery man is my flavor. . .hahahhahahahh!
Don't worry, I shan't stalk your brother. I have you, my pretty, and your brass bosoms too!
They really are stunning photographs, Lynna, and I hope you had as much fun on your trip as we're having looking at them.
GHP,
That's sad that your sister couldn't be more supportive. I'm sorry. Hopefully she'll get better. I did.
Ah, Jadehawk, you and Nerd might be counting my brain cells before they've hatched. Wait...that doesn't make sense.
As far as people coming out as gay (my dear PaK Man) and other people saying stuff like "icky" -- well for heaven's fucking sake! That sucks, and not in a good way. It should be outlawed to "icky" like that.
We just about had a fire here a few minutes ago. Apparently one of the extension cords had been chewed by a mouse and when a shake was spilled on it it started sparking. I'm glad I didn't freak out until after I yanked the cord from the outlet! Damn scary. I'm still shaking.
Damn scary. I'm still shaking.
OMG - I'd be shaking too. Don't fear, Pygmy - same thing happened to me with an air conditioner cord that got frayed, and then water got on it. It produces a terrifically scary arcing, and a loud noise, but if you shut off the circuit/pull it out, everything's good. I know how you feel, believe me.
Hmmm, sorry to hear my site does not play nice with Pak Man's browser. Tomorrow I'll put the pics up at larger sizes on my Facebook page, so friend me there and... problem solved.
Pygmy Loris, I missed you. I hope you kept the mormon hounds at bay. We have a reputation to uphold.
Random Woman Talk&trade here. My netflix discs arrived, I'm watching The September Issue.
Josh,
Yep, exactly as you described :) It was just so unexpected. We're okay, but the boyfriend is going on a rampage through the house checking all of the cords for fraying and rodent damage. He grabbed the wire just before I yanked the cord, so his hand is twitching a little.
Lynna,
I tried valiantly, but I don't have the secret anti-mormon underwear. Do you think you could send me some? ;P
I don't blame him, but I hope it doesn't keep him up all night. Do you have mice in the house? If so, I recommend a cat (obviously). Traps work too, but you have to have a stronger stomach for those.
I should add to my little drama that not once did I turn to prayer! I started shouting fire! fire! and tried to figure out which outlet that particular cord was plugged into. No waiting for god to intervene necessary.
Pygmy Loris:
You did right, you kept your head, stayed calm. You're alright, you're alright, boyfriend is alright, house and all occupants are alright. I'm very glad you're alright. :)
That ain't just woman talk, that's Fag Talk™. I'd watch it. Can't be half as entertaining as the fictionalized version, though. Meryl Streep was fierce hunny.
Thanks, Josh. A good time was had by all. I have scratches on my butt where I was down-climbing over some sharp rocks and slipped. The rocks cut me right through my pants. I think I need TLC from the boyfriend.
I also have (more) holes in my hiking pants at the knees -- from crawling over snow fields. Hardened spring snow has quite a bit of surface texture, which I saw up close, and appreciated of course, but... ouch. As long as there's still more pant than holes, we're good. (Note to self: add double-knee pants to wish list.)
I can usually rate how great a trip was by the number of minor wounds and decimated clothing. The more, the better.
Leland and I met a cowboy on Hole-in-the-Rock road. He had the knees completely gone out of his wranglers. "This ain't nowhere, but you can see it from here."
Glad you're alright. Fires are scary.
Actually, there hasn't been mormons here for awhile. Where've they been?
Thanks for all the support about coming out. It sucks that she had to be so condescending but at least she didn't take it any further.
Josh,
We have two, but this is the boyfriend's old, drafty, holey house. There's a dog who can't keep his food in his bowl or mouth (it ends up under cabinets, the stove, chairs, whatever), so there's always something to entice mice into the house. If we didn't have cats, we'd be overrun in no time.
Josh:
Of course. Didn't mean any sort of exclusion, M'dear. :) It's interesting, especially the bits with Anna Wintour speaking. She just talked about coming of age in the 60s, but it was brief. I wish there was more.
Pygmy Loris, you have fucking cord-eating mice!? Yikes.
It would be great if the little beasts would just electrocute themselves, but you probably can't count on that. Besides, they might still start fires while electrocuting themselves.
Out! Out, damned mice!
There are mountain goats in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness that eat tent tie-downs, rope, well, anything really. Beasts.
Glad you're okay. I'm sure you shouted "Fire!" in a way that would make us all proud.
Gyeong:
You know you have friends here, even if we all don't know each other in real life. Many of us have been through it ourselves. Remember, when you're an adult, you get to have a chosen family. You'll develop relationships with groups of people whom you'll get very close to, who will support you through thick and thin, and who will treat you the way we all wish our "natural" families would. And, people like your sister are likely to surprise you - they often get over their wretchedness. But even if they don't, you can always have trusted friends to fall back on.
Thanks Caine :)
My dad worked in industrial fire insurance for most of his career so I have detailed moment by moment plans for fires, earthquakes, tornadoes and the like. I have an escape plan for every room in my place and the boyfriend's, an object suitably heavy enough to bust out windows in all rooms and at least one fire extinguisher for every two rooms.
I may be crazy and paranoid, but I don't want to die in a fire because I couldn't be bothered to plan. The boyfriend gets a little annoyed when I make him do nighttime fire drills though (only once every other month!).
See you tomorrow, my lovelies. My body is still in rise-before-dawn mode, so I'm crashing now.
That's the one thing my furry housemates don't do. The house is full of cables, but there's not the slightest nibble anywhere, not even in the areas they do frequent.
maybe I'm feeding them enough that they don't feel the need to eat plastic :-p
or they're only nibbling in the inner wiring of the stove, which I wouldn't know cuz I can't see in there :-/
Gyeong, everything Josh said #262. We are all here for support whenever you need it.
Pygmy:
Ah, yes, I get it:) I hope it has enough charm to make it worth the while. I have a 140-year-old house that, thankfully, makes up for its faults with its own attractions. Yeah, you're always going to have something in an old haunt.
With an old house, you'll probly never be able to prevent all critters from getting in, but there are a few things to check:
1. Plumbing holes - are there big gaps where your sink pipes go to the cellar? If so, sealing them with spray foam could help.
2. Attic - do you have squirrels/mice living up there? If so, can you plug up any holes where they might be getting in? While you're at it, laying down more insulation is good too.
3. Are your walls filled with insulation, or are they hollow? Rodents like hollow walls (and it costs you heat dollars).
We lived in an old Victorian for many years when I was growing up. There was no way to make sure that no mice ever got into the house, but when they tried to overrun us in the spring, my mother put out traps baited with peanut butter on crackers. That helped. Now, you may have qualms about that, so it's up to you.
Caine:
Oh, I know that, silly:)
Damien was a joy, he enjoyed riding around on my shoulders with his tail wrapped around my neck in the late evening.
That sounds adorable.
Thanks for your and skeptical_hippo's suggestions.
Gyeong,
What Josh said.
In cord related news, the boyfriend has completed his cord survey and found one other nibbled cord (from the same general area as the one that started arcing). He even pulled out the range and we found dog food and mouse poo under it.
I'm feeling better now. Drama is over, cords have been examined, maybe I'll be able to sleep tonight.
I hate to say it, but traps are far more effective than cats at getting rid of mice.
had mice living behind my stove once in a studio apt in Santa Cruz, CA.
bought a box-trap (one where it has a lever to actuate the trap inside the box, and you just pull the level to release the trap again, so you never actually have to "see" the mouse in the trap), put peanut butter in it, and waited quietly about an hour...
*snap*
aha! got it, i thought, and dumped the critter unceremoniously into the garbage. Then thought... better make sure...
12 *snaps* later... it's now 2 am, and finally got the last of the buggers.
trust me, those traps *do* work.
Josh,
No qualms about traps, but worries that one of the cats might get hurt. I'm going to pick up the sticky ones tomorrow at Wal-mart. Also, the cats and I need to have a talk. They're not living up to their end of the room and board bargain :)
Pygmy Loris, I was in bed but got up again because I couldn't stop thinking about your problem with the frayed cords. For now, you could just unplug everything before going to sleep. Do you need one of my headlamps to wear so that you can make your way around your house?
Shala:
Oh, it was. :D Even so, it is a bit strange to feel a tail go all the way around your neck (with overlap). What's a bit of a wake up is forgetting you have monster leezard sleeping on your shoulder, and bending down or otherwise moving quickly - it's quite noticeable when that tail tightens up a bunch!
but worries that one of the cats might get hurt.
they have lever traps in boxes, like I said, so kittehs no get hurted.
Pygmy Loris:
Not to be a downer, but the snap traps are more humane. Mice can actually rip limbs off on the sticky traps and other rather cruel and gory things.
Ichthyic,
Can I get those traps at Wal-mart? I'm seriously angry at the mice.
Ich wrote:
Yep, sometimes traps do a way better job than a lazy cat, I know. That's why my mom resorted to them when we were growing up. If you've just got to get rid of the mice, you've just got to get rid of them. We used the old classic steel-sprung traps that broke their necks, but they worked. Whatever. They didn't suffer, and it's not like they're endangered.
Pygmy:
I can understand the worry about kittehs getting hurt, but in my experience, the kittehs have no interest in peanut butter on a cracker, on a plank, under the sink. None of our cats ever toyed with the mouse traps.
But yes, you absolutely have to sit those cats down and give 'em what for. I mean honestly, they get free food, water, a clean litter box, nuzzles, and they can't even keep your house rodent-free? It's almost enough to make me vote Republican.
Lynna:
Oh Christ, Lynna, you're giving other people your OCD! Jeez woman, Pygmy's got it bad enough without you telling her you got up in the middle of the night because of her problem:)
As a genuine sufferer of OCD, I order:
a. Lynna to shut her well-intentioned mouth and go to bed
b. Pygmy Loris to just go to sleep and ignore Lynna
Don't make me spank you.
Love,
SpokesGay
heh, the best our cat ever did was manage to "hunt down" a cocktail weenie from the neighbor's trash...
and even then he lost it under the couch.
*sigh*
Halo-Halo: Filipino Shaved Ice
2 ripe mangoes or 1 cup canned ripe mango
1 cup firm gelatin set into gel and cut into 1/2 inch cube (or by the pre-made ones. It doesn't matter :P)
1 cup canned ripe jackfruit
1/2 sweet red beans
1 cup young shredded coconut, fresh or canned
1 cup cooked sweet yams or taro, cut into 1 inch cubes
2 cup shaved ice
2 cup of sweet condensed milk
4 scoops of taro ice cream
1/2 cup chopped peanuts
Cut everything into small cubes if it isn't done already.
Prepare four glasses, and distribute the ingredients (except for shaved iced, ice cream and peanuts)
Put the ingredients in the glasses.
Place the shave ice on top.
Place the ice cream on top.
Sprinkle some nuts.
Thanks guys you are right. I've had much better time when I came with my friends. I thought my best friend's response was interesting; he said that it doesn't matter since he still sees me the same way he's always sees me.
Caine,
I didn't know that about the sticky traps. Thanks. Although I don't have a problem killing the mice, I don't want to be inhumane.
Lynna,
Like I said, the boyfriend has now surveyed all of the cords for fraying and we unplugged the only one with damage. I do appreciate the offer of a headlamp :) The batteries in mine died awhile ago and since I haven't been out camping at night in quite some time, batteries for the headlamp are on the list of non-necessities.
Gyeong:
Thanks for the recipe; snagged for the cookbook.
Pygmy Loris, a lot of people are unaware of that aspect of the glue traps. I have a houseful of utterly vicious predators who happen to purr now and then, so I don't worry about mice. If we do have any, they don't make any obvious appearances.
It's mostly because I have a rat, I suppose, that I do have compassion for the rodents; I understand the need to kill them, but I just don't have the stomach for inhumane killing. Even imagining my Bruce pulling one of his limbs apart in a struggle to get loose makes me queasy. Better a quick death, if death it must be.
Josh,
I'm convinced my cats are libertarian. They've got theirs so fuck you...
Caine, when I saw your by-line, I thought of Zelazny's Amber books. The word 'grasshopper' never once came to mind.
Absolutely!
And besides, the moment the hawt wolf-dude took off his shirt, Sparkletoes became yesterday's old fish-wrappings! :)
Lynna, glad you're back, how're you doing?
That's what cats are domesticated for!
Cicely:
Ah, that takes me back. :)
Gyeong:
I know! As I mentioned, I have a house full of vicious killers hunters. ;) Mine are a bit unusual in that they don't go for the whole "play and torture it" business, they go straight for the kill. It's sudden death, and much better than a glue trap.
Caine,
On the last sub-thread I mentioned our old girl is getting tired, so she doesn't hunt as much anymore. The young feller hunts, and he has killed several mice in the last couple of weeks. It's spring and I think the mice are coming in too fast for him to keep up. It's just a seasonal thing, I think.
Pygmy Loris, yes, the mice could be breeding already. I remember my most beloved Shandy Kane (this was when we lived in SLC) going outside with me one day. She ran off around the side of the house, and came back with a grin and a tiny tail hanging out of her mouth. She'd found a nest of newborn mice. Got every single one.
*Yes, I was rather appalled at her joy in slaughtering newborns, but she was a cat. The evil just comes with 'em. ;D
My cats bring mice whole to my door. I grusome gift if there ever was one. One of them was still alive, so I released near a hill next to my house. Don't think it lived long though because there are snakes up that hill.
Caine,
I bet that was cute, though :)
Cats are evil, but so cuddly and cute and purry. I'm amused by your rat stories. I've never felt much affinity for rats or mice. Both of my parents grew up in farm country so rats and mice were viewed as vermin in our home. After our class pet rat in high school biology developed cancer and died very quickly I decided they were too delicate to have as pets. OTOH I've had gerbils, guinea pigs, and hamsters. No more hamsters, they're nasty, mean, smelly, and cannibalistic.
Gyeong,
A friend of mine actually has a cat door, so her cat can go in and out as he pleases. He once brought a whole, live rabbit into the house so he could finish playing with it indoors.
random assortment of German music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7nPmn3soiM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMlEsFbWuvo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWwhz4hPkSk
Pygmy Loris:
Aaaw. That's hard to take. They actually aren't all that delicate, at least mine haven't been. No cancer deaths, but the average life span is two to three years, with four being pretty amazing.
The latest monster, Bruce, he's a story in himself. Some asshole somewhere bred for aggression, and succeeded. I usually rescue, but came upon Bruce at PetSmart when we were there for other stuff. All his siblings had been tossed to snakes out of anger by the store staff; several people had been severely bitten.
I didn't really think I'd be able to do Bruce for a while, he seemed damaged beyond my ability to help. Things have gotten much better, although he's not a easy going guy like my others were.
The story of Bruce:
1. http://moblog.net/view/900854/bruce
2. http://moblog.net/view/901743/cant-do-it
3. http://moblog.net/view/902309/cry-freedom
4. http://moblog.net/view/903668/the-longshot
5. http://moblog.net/view/903891/you-can-call-me-chuck
6. http://moblog.net/view/915078/bruce-the-intrepid
7. http://moblog.net/view/918689/bruce-loot
8. http://moblog.net/view/922542/recycling-of-a-sort
Right now, Bruce has run off with two slices of pizza, and is having a rest after wrestling them up 3 flights of rat ladders.
*Apologies if this is boring you (or anyone else) half to death.
Oops, I got held in moderation. Too many links. I'll try this in parts.
Pygmy Loris:
Aaaw. That's hard to take. They actually aren't all that delicate, at least mine haven't been. No cancer deaths, but the average life span is two to three years, with four being pretty amazing.
The latest monster, Bruce, he's a story in himself. Some asshole somewhere bred for aggression, and succeeded. I usually rescue, but came upon Bruce at PetSmart when we were there for other stuff. All his siblings had been tossed to snakes out of anger by the store staff; several people had been severely bitten.
I didn't really think I'd be able to do Bruce for a while, he seemed damaged beyond my ability to help. Things have gotten much better, although he's not a easy going guy like my others were.
The story of Bruce:
1. http://moblog.net/view/900854/bruce
2. http://moblog.net/view/901743/cant-do-it
**Candied lemon peel is just lemon peel simmered in sugar & water until translucent (about 6-7 minutes). The remaining liquid can be used as simple syrup for drinks, tea, etc.
I do that the other way 'round. A friend gives us a bag of Meyer lemons every couple months and I make simple syrup with some of them. Then I take some of the candied lemon slices and sliver them very very fine with an equal part of the North African-style salted lemons that Joe makes out of some of the rest. Good instant relish for, oh, porkchops and the like.
I got into making syrups because we can get fizzy water cheap at Costco to mix up sodas. Basil makes a good one too. Two cups sugar, two cups water; boil till dissolved, turn off heat, add a big handful of slivered fresh basil leaves and stems, put lid on, let steep overnight. Strain and bottle and refrigerate.
Anybody who likes to cook should rush right out and buy Willian Woys Weaver's books. Interesting take on the language ("Pennsylfaanisch") too. I was browsing one of them from our shelves when I found out about the Lebanon bologna available here, too. We finished off a pound of that today. Thuringer sausage is the closest thing to it that I've found so far, and it's not exactly It.
Languages? Here, you want to feel old? I used to be pretty fluent in German, less so but OK in Spanish. Took four years of German in highschool, two of Spanish; started as a German major in college. (Ask me about Georgetown sometime, but wait a couple weeks, OK?) All gone.
I was rummaging through mostly-blank notebooks the other day and found one with a couple lines of Farsi on the back page. In my handwriting. I have no idea what I wrote, though of course I did when I wrote it.
Gyeong Ha Pak, on the one hand Yes that was a nasty reaction fro your sister. On the other hand, she's your sister. That's what sibs think about each others' sex lives no matter what. On the gripping hand, what a bringdown. Yuck.
I'll have to go look at the Mizayaki Sixth Station tomorrow. Think I'll wash my own face and go to bed.
The rest of the Story of Bruce can be found here: http://moblog.net/tag/Caine/Bruce
Go from the bottom up.
Jadehawk,
Thanks for the German music. The video for the last one was pretty bad since I didn't really understand what they were saying (low volume combined with my utter inability to understand lyrics in any language unless I listen to the song over and over and over!). Then I checked out an English translation. Weird to know the lament of the Nice Guy™ transcends cultures.
aaaaand, some northern German "culture": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgERvJBLR4w&feature=related
Caine,
Bruce is reasonably cute all things considered (you know, the whole rat thing :D) I'm glad that he has settled down because those bites look very painful.
Hah! I've been there, done that. I have always had cat doors, mostly because I hate doing the litterbox cleaning thing but also because I like to give my cats the same autonomy that I would want, were our roles reversed. Chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, birds; all in varying degrees of eaten.
I currently have a doggy door. A couple years ago, I was having a quiet evening at home when the dogs went BATSHIT CRAZY. I went to the back room to investigate and found a young raccoon cowering in the corner. Had to wrestle the dogs into another room and try to shoo the coon out the sliding glass door. Coon was cornered and didn't want to move so I ended up putting a laundry basket over it and sliding it to the door. Gave the little fucker a boot out the door and never saw it again.
I'm just glad it wasn't a skunk.
I should have guessed that Lynna has read some Edward Abbey.
Pygmy Loris, sorry if I bored you (or anyone else half to death), that bit of my first post got lost. ;D
Bruce is a monster, there's no getting around that. He's a relatively happy monster these days though. The bites were bad, but everything healed up fine and it was a good while ago. No point holding grudges.
Caine, I have to admire your patience and compassion. Bruce would have bitten me once. Full stop.
boygenius,
Wow, poor little baby coon. It must've been terrified.
My cats don't go outside. The young feller wants to and he escapes every so often, but the boyfriend lives near a road that people tear down at all hours, and I routinely see cats, among other animals, killed on the side of the road. The old girl has no interest in going outside. She was feral before she followed the boyfriend home one day, so I think that she gets how posh the indoor life is. Young feller was brought in when he was only 12 weeks old, maybe he didn't get the chance to sow his wild oats :)
Yes, I'm anthropomorphizing my cats, but I like to entertain myself with little stories about what they're thinking.
Elroy:
Nice sentiment and all, but it's one I take issue with. My cats have a very large, completely enclosed kennel they can access 24/7, all year round. This lets them get outdoors, prevents an untimely deaths, and more to my point, avoids them being an unholy, nasty pain in the ass to any neighbors.
I do live rural, and have no neighbors to either side; however, cats outside roam. I get irritated enough by assholes who let their dogs free roam and said dogs end up on my property; I do not like other people's free roaming cats on my property either. Fucking cats go under my deck, threaten wildlife I feed, spray all over the damn place, etc. Sorry, Elroy, but I think people's cats should be kept on their fucking property.
Thank you, Elroy. Believe me, I got close to killing him. Too close for comfort. It wasn't his fault though - he had been bred for aggression, and nothing in his life had informed him to be any different. I couldn't fault him for that. He does well now, and wouldn't think of biting me these days. The intense fear which drove him is gone. :)
Caine,
Not bored at all. I actually like hearing about other people's pets :) Bruce is cute.
Thanks, Pygmy Loris. I am, of course, biased. :D
Caine;
I can see your point of view. I have had this debate many times with many people and have always had to agree to disagree. Your points are quite valid, I just have a philosophical objection to restricting the activity of the feline masters. (Don't even get me started on the de-clawing gig.) It's kind of the same way I feel about keeping a bird in a cage.
I've had cats my whole life and never had a complaint from a neighbor. (Believe me, I've had some neighbors who would not hesitate to complain about the smallest perceived slight.) Never had a cat get hit by a car. (Jerry used to sit at the curb and look both ways before crossing the street, just like a responsible child would do.) As far as natural predators like dogs, coons, raptors, coyotes, etc; my philosophy is "let the chips fall where they may."
Now, dogs roaming loose is a different kettle of fish.
Love the "Wizo" YT link by Jadehawk above !! And they are from Sindelfingen where I used to live, yay !!
And Lynna is back, WB !!
I used to be pretty good at speaking one of them, and can still understand them, struggle a bit with the northern varieties tho.
Josh @ 188,
Gerhard Polt---bavarian dialect(southern german)
Juergen Becker--rhine region dialect(north-west german)
Hmmmmm ...
I only have mice when the stupid cat brings them in.
Sorry to hear about your sister, GHP, but to be fair to her, I don't particularly want to know about my sister's sexlife, myself. But I take it her reäction was a bit more than that.
Any other poopyheads going to Copenhagen in June?
I haven't been there as a tourist since I was a wee kid (pre-metro and -bridge), so I'm thinking it might be worth it to go on the sightseeing tour. But I'd rather hang with some ossum Pharyngulistas. Any chance of combing fun with pleasure? PeeZed - pub or bus?
Oh, and I forgot the classic :
A language is a dialect with an Army and a Navy
Elroy:
That's just grand, but I doubt your cats are perfect little angels when they are not on your property. What good would it do it your neighbors did complain? It's not like you'd care enough to keep your animals on your property.
Your cats are your responsibility, and I simply do not fucking care for other people's cats coming onto my property, trying to (and often succeeding) killing songbirds I feed; spraying on my house, etc. It's damn arrogant for people such as yourself to shrug and say "well, they are cats, they weren't meant to be locked up." In that case, you shouldn't have them, unless you live on a property large enough that they don't roam off it.
You have options, you could compromise, like I do, but no, your cats can do whatever the fuck they like, where they like. You don't like cleaning out catboxes? Well, I don't like dealing with other people's catshit in my garden. The fact that you understand all this and simply don't care is one of the reasons I find attitudes like yours unbearable.
As for the declawing and all that, people who declaw infuriate me, so I do understand where your feelings stem from; however, I compromise so that everyone can be happy, including my cats. They have a tree in their enclosure, everything is allowed to grow wild, etc. They will, of course, howl to get out when they see me outside with the dogs, but that's in the nature of any animal. Cats running loose are no less destructive or a pain in the ass than dogs.
So, we'll agree to disagree on this one. Honestly though, I can't respect the view that it is wrong to keep an animal on their own property. It's a pet owner's responsibility, so be responsible. That's hardly too much to expect.
Oh, and Caine, I should mention that in my experience the "problem" cats I've had to deal with have either been feral or barn cats. Sure, I admit that house kittehs may cause some problems here and there, but for the most part the biggest culprits are feral. (Not neutered or spayed, don't have a full food dish waiting at home.)
YMMV.
Oh, by the way. This seems to be a week for lizards.
that's crap. cats are killers, and if they roam, they will kill rodents and birds. my old cat is like that. she's always been an indoor cat, but she'd still catch birds in flight on the balcony and throw them indoors to finish them off (not anymore, since she's completely blind now).
And when she was staying at my aunts place when we were gone, she wouldn't eat catfood. she'd roam and kill her food, and deliver "gifts" to my aunt. And all because my aunt couldn't be bothered to keep the cat indoors.
and declawing is fucking cruel. so glad it's illegal in Germany
Caine,
I can see that I have touched on a sore spot. I'm sorry. I have been cat-less since last summer and have no immediate plans to acquire another. So, for the time being, the neighborhood gardens and bird-feeders are safe.
Peace.
Elroy:
That's a bunch of catshit. The cats who are allowed to free roam onto my property - all of them have loving homes, are well fed, and most of them are spayed or neutered.
I've begun to make money with my bird photography. I have an excellent set up for it, and for every single person like yourself, who thinks it's cruel a/o unnatural to keep cats "locked up", one of those damn "kittehs" gets into my set up, on my property and fucks things up no end. That literally takes money away from me.
What it comes down to, is that attitudes like yours cause damage you never see, let alone think about. It might be a hoot to you that your cats slaughter the wildlife at will; it's not funny to me.
Elroy, peace. And thanks.
Caine,
I must say that you have given me more reasons to reflect on my free-range-kitteh policy than anyone has in the past. I shall have to ruminate on it.
I do take exception to:
It's no more a "hoot" to me than when an alligator slaughters a wildebeest. Mother Nature is a cruel mistress. A cat, when killing birds and rodents, is just being true to it's nature, no?
Anyway, I'll stop digging my hole now. You have given me something to think about and that is something I always appreciate.
boygenius,
You weren't.
Are you a subbie??
Just curious......
it's, its, whatever :(
???
Define the term please.
Sub
You just seem so apologetic all the time, and I dont think you have any reason to be, since your arguments are usually good and well thought-out...:-)
Well sorry, not my business at all really....
Rorschach,
Not so much submissive as passive/aggressive? I'm a poor communicator in the best of circumstances and even worse when communicating via keyboard. (I'm also still a bit intimidated by the intellects 'round here.)
Caine was presenting a much better argument for her position than I was for mine, so I decided to stand-down.
:):):)
Pets! Kittehs!
I have 2 new kittens, and I need names. One is a silver spotty tabby and I really don't want to be so cliched as to call him Misty or Smoky.
(And they will be let out, eventually. Our older cat is a fearsome exterminator of rodents, but has never touched a bird.)
housecats are an invasive species pretty much everywhere. that's not very "natural".
Don't ask me, I have a dog named Muggs and a dog named Toad and am constantly having to explain the origins thereof.
Don't let Caine hear you say that! ;-)
Benson and Stabler.
Starsky and Hutch.
Goran and Eems.
Mork and Mindy.
Oscar and Felix.
Mick and Keith.
Paul and John.
....
Sodom and Gomorrah...
*runs*
I apologize for that, Elroy. I'm sorry. Yes, it's in a cat's nature to hunt, just as it's in a dog's nature. The thing is, you either go with an animal being domesticated or you don't. I can understand that; what I don't like is someone refusing to take responsibility for a domesticated animal on the grounds that's its nature isn't domesticable. To me, it's both silly and a casual dismissal of responsibility.
My cats manage to catch and kill birds which fly through the chainlink of their enclosure; they'll try like hell to kill the bats which get in the house and they'll kill any rodent they find, in the house or outside in their enclosure. I don't punish them for that, I wouldn't dream of it. As you say, it is their nature. For the most part, anyway. I've had cats who really couldn't be arsed to to lift a paw. It's also in a cat's nature to piss, shit and sometimes spray. For all that, I take the responsibility, and all those things aren't inflicted on anyone else, on their property.
Cath:
Years ago, I named my silver gray boy Argent. It's a nice choice in that regard.
*grumpy*
Does it dig up daffodil bulbs and shit in the hole at all?
*/grumpy*
)
Oh, fuck it. I give up, Elroy. Headed for bed. ;D
Cows, pigs, Asian carp, Eurasian milfoil, starlings,etc. are all "invasive species" in N. America. That doesn't mean that they aren't being true to their nature when they do what they do, right?
Any of you cat lovers remember This Movie ?
I feel you Caine. I need to crash as well. Let's find something else to argue about tomorrow, eh? ;-)
Watchmen is the beginning and end of this thread :
Comedian's funeral
Rorschach's death *sniff*
My father lives in a very small village where all the cats live free and mostly outside, and the most part of the dogs too. There are a lot of mastiff guarding the sheeps, and hunting dogs sleeping in the street, at the door of their houses. Sometimes they kill a cat, or they kill a hen if they can, but the dog's owner pays the price of the hen, and nobody says anything more, because the dogs are dogs.
I had a siamese that used to scratched the dogs faces, she used to wait to the last moment when the dogs try to cacth her. A lot of dogs feared her, including our alaskan malamute.
Now my sister haved a cute, ankle-bitter westie, when she first came to the village she tried to hunt the cats, now she is scared of them. Sometimes she run after the cats, but in the moment a cat stop and look at her she run off.
There is no road near the village, and there are only a few cars so no dog, or cat is killed by a car. But there are foxes and owls, so sometimes a cat disapeared.
Oh shit, I forgot !
Got to Please the lord !!
Should have known, since The times they are a'changing !
This is also on the Watchmen soundtrack, but this version is much better :
Jimi Hendrix--All along the watchtower
Jadehawk: do you have a key lime recipe somewhere? I'm a little confused about what to use, since I have read that key limes are small and yellow - but over here I can get small dark green limes (generic limes) and large yellowish limes (Tahitian).
Hm, 60s shit...
Janis live in Germany 1969
Janis--Summertime live in Sweden 1969
Me and Bobby McGee rare studio recording 1962
I'm late to what was the overnight (for me) knitting party, but :
Oh hells yeah. I taught myself to knit from a book, and since I had learned crochet from my grandmother, I just held the yarn the same way as in crochet and accidentally set myself up in the Continental method. Once I joined a knitting group no one could figure out how to help me with a few stitches until finally someone said "Hm, you hold the yarn like X does, you need her to help you". Turned out X was German, and that's when I found out I had been knitting Continental. So much easier.
Now I'm thinking about knitting - the last thing I made was a squid baby hat, but that was over a year ago. I'm overdue for a project.
And yea Lynna's back!
Sorry about the micey fire, Pgymy Loris. I also vote for snap traps, baited with something like peanut butter. Effective and fast. Can you find places to put them that the kitty can't reach, like under the sofa or bookshelf? Depends on how much yours gets into stuff, but even a shoebox with a tiny mouse-sized cutout put over the trap might work.
Do any of ya'll sleep?
If you ever want a painfully humourous experience, attend a performance of My Fair Lady done in full Southernese. I experienced that while in high school in Western Maryland. To hear Professor Henry Higgins drawl and say ya'll, to hear Eliza Doolittle dropping aitches while adding or subtracting other sounds (southern Cockney?) makes it hard not to laugh in the wrong places. And most of my friends did not understand why a few of us were damn near rolling on the floor trying not to guffaw loudly.
My German is limited. Mostly to military terms: panzerkampfwagon, funkwagon, sonderkraftfuhrzeug, etc. I can read German (as long as I have my handy-dandy decoder ring (er, dictionary) on hand).
Cats and mice.
Last fall, a mouse wandered into our kitchen. It cowered in the middle of the floor trying to blend into the linoleum unsuccessfuly. Sherman (our oldest (and most neurotic) and balding cat) took one look, let out a yowl of fear and was not seen again for the entire day (he hides in the basement ceiling). Dust (our 25+ pound mook) tried to play with the mouse. Not the way a cat does -- picture a dog crouching down with a ball between his front paws. Oreo (our most catlike cat) walked over, batted the mouse across the kitchen and up against a cabinet door and, as the mouse lay there, stunned, she dispatched it with a quick bite to the back of the neck. KC (a 5-pounder who is also the youngest) just watched. (The whole thing happened so fast I was unable to catch the mouse in a tupperware container which I had grabbed -- the mouse was going back outside. I wasn't fast enough to get it while still alive).
So only 25% of my cats have any survival instinct at all. The responses were terror, play?, kill and watch.
Und Guten Morgan, ya'll!
Lynna, those are wonderful pictures - makes me want to go back to backpacking again. Don't know whether I'd be physically up for it or not.
The cat who just died last Monday was our best mouser. Our other cat doesn't seem to be interested in them. We have to use snap traps, but it does seem to keep the population down. We live way out in the country - I've never seen our cats go out of our property, but we tend to try to keep them indoors if we can. We had one cat who was so desperate to get out that she clawed all the screens out of the windows.
we had a cat door for awhile, but had to close it up because the only critters who used it were the raccoons, to get at the cat and dog food. (you know your dog's a beta animal when even the raccoons aren't afraid of it.)
now that sounds 'icky'
(Inigo Montoya does not think it means what you think it means)
As Caine points out, they don't kill, just hold. "Pulling limbs apart" is hyperbolic for the vast majority of cases, but the struggling animal is permanently stuck until it dies of dehydration probably. I agree they're inhumane in practice.
Plus, a curious cat paw in there, maybe with a mouse stuck, and the fun really begins.
(Should something like that happen, btw, vegetable oil will melt the glue; corn oil seems to work especially well. I have used them to catch many many lizards. Alive and well, but stuck real good. The tails are a bitch.)
that's like just too easy.
Aw, man. I just have to say that this kind of shit is not OK with me. Google up Stan Temple's work for a clue about what your little subsidized introduced predator is doing to local wildlife populations. [linked directly below after I got steamed enough]
Unless you've got a barn full of mice, cats should be kept indoors, always, full stop.
deep, deep rifts here...I'm solidly on Caine's side.
Seriously, that's a bullshit anthrompomorphic position to take, with real, documented consequences for the animal populations that fucking belong where you happen to live. And despite your anecdotes, you're not doing your cats any favors in terms of health and life expectancy, and there are clear data on that too.
but this is my last word on the subject since I gave up internet arguments
how could you possibly know this of a rat bought at PetSmart?
Nothing pisses me off more than feral cats and their enablers, but their existence hardly trumps personal responsibility.
Gah!!! It is not "true to their nature" to be in fucking North America at all! And the real point is that it's not "true to the nature" of the wildlife that does belong here to even know what a cat is.
Here:
http://wildlife.wisc.edu/extension/catfly3.htm
http://www.audubonmagazine.org/incite/incite0909.html
You. Cannot. Know this. To be true. See links above.
man, teh Thread has put me in a shitty mood off the bat today.
Think I'll spend the day in RL.
Genghis Khat & Kublai Khat
Sven: All four of our cats are strictly indoors (We do take Dust (a Maine Coon / Ragdoll mix) outdoors to brush -- produces a hairball the size of a basketball. As soon as the brushing is over he runs back inside and hides for an hour.)
When I lived at Grand Canyon back in the 70s (no, I am not 'place-dropping' a la the one who shall remain nameless -- I am merely putting it into context) we got permission from the NPS to have cats or dogs. Only two. Must be indoors only (dogs (outdoors) had to be on a leash with a human attached to the other end!
When we moved back east, the cats really were not all that interested in going outside. They preferred sleeping in a sunny windowsill to sleeping outdoors in the sun. And yes, they lived to ripe old age and were quite healthy.
Oh, but a quick peek at the Pharyngula March Madness Bracketologicality Challenge shows me and Billy tied after the round of sixteen...we're each down to four of eight, but we both still have the potential to have picked 3 of the Final Four.
Unfortunately for Billy, he had Georgetown winning it all. It's going to be close, but I am liking my chances a lot here.
Bill, Rev, Celt: thanks for playing, better luck next year. What do we have for our losers, Wink?
oh, nothing?
Sven: That game was hard to watch. I really though Georgetown had a real chance at a surprise championship. Now, I'm just cheering for the underdogs. Bust everyone elses to shreds.
350 comments in a thread I've only just touched. That's what I get for having a social life outside of The Thread.
I live in an apartment. We have cats because they'll live quite comfortably being indoors. In her 18 years of life my* cat Hammerstein has never been outdoors. She doesn't appear to be too traumatized over not going outdoors.
There's the further point that indoor cats usually live longer than outdoor cats. Indoor cats don't have to suffer cars, raccoons, roaming dogs or angry neighbors.
*She sees it more as I'm her human.
Over at Ben Goldacre's Bad Science, someone just posted a link to a (possibly rather old) post, Gravity:
And here I was thinking The Man in the Moon would complain about you being messy and leaving your pens and other rubbish behind…
Caine,
Since cats are quantum beasts, capable of teleporting into dimensions we know not of--particularly when one is trying to put them into the cat carrier for a trip to the vet or to bathe them--I would suggest good quantum mechanical names: Schroedinger, Heisenberg, Hilbert, bra and ket, and so on. And on the matter of naming cats, it pays to consult an expert:
The Naming of Cats
The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey -
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover -
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.
- T.S. Eliot
(from "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats")
Whoa, I go away for 48 hours and the living beast that is the "never ending thread" overtakes me.
I note that the Quack has responded and whilst I hesitate to state it's name lest it come back I must discuss this point
.. this is in reponse to a jab I made regarding the stethoscope that our resident Quack has around his neck in a photo.
I am now completely and utterly horrified that a person with no real medical training can "diagnose" serious illnesses such as pneumonia and be in a position to treat such. I did a 3 year B.Sc in Nursing Science to gain my R.N. status in Australia and yet am still unable( legally and also professionally) to be in a position to diagnose such illnesses let alone prescribe medications for such. And, quite honestly, I would not be so arrogant to be able to presume to do so after only 3 years training.
This is is solely the province of real doctors, you know Quack, the ones that have done 7 years of training.
blf: The pens will end up in the kitchen junk drawer with the scissors, the tape, twelve keys for unknown locks, dry-rotted rubber bands, a tube of dried glue, one shoe lace, and some paper clips. The pens will not end up staying on the moon.
I'm with Sven and Caine on this. There are just too many good reasons not to let your cat roam around. Digging in neighbors yards,killing off the birds, lizards, frogs, and other small animals native to the area, and lastly the risk to the cat from disease, contact with feral cats, contact with larger animals, or contact with automobiles.
I have two kitties. One is older and has been declawed (not by me!) and the other I raised from a kitten. Neutering males early helps prevent spraying, and plenty of attention/interaction really seems to keep the scratching to a minimum. Mine does scratch some of the furniture though, including a freaking $$$ seat cover I just had replaced. Meh... that's part of the sacrifice I guess. He leaves the speaker cabinets alone so we're ok.
Where I live, in a addition to the damage my kitty would do, I also have to worry about coyotes which will re-instate the natural order of things pretty quickly if they get hold of a kitty.
For that reason he suns himself on the enclosed back porch and that's as much of the great outdoors he'll ever see. As for the other one, she's too afraid of the outside door to sit out there even.
Plus some people just hate cats and will poison them, or shoot them. I don't trust people enough to let my kitty potentially get killed by a "harmless joke" but YMMV. This is Texas :(
Fuck & You. ;-)
Slightly less mischievously:
Oook! & Oook!
Or a little less sensible:
Frumious Bandersnatch & Jabberwock.
I am positively and utterly convinced that Ol'Greg does not sleep. It takes the intestinal fortitude of a camel to not only do the US time sweep but also but here and cognisant for us Antipodeans.
*tentacle fist salute to Ol'Greg*
What makes you think there's only one Ol'Greg?
blf: Do not create entities withoug necessity -- Occam.
Janine @301
Friggin' Abbey pissed me off the first time I read his work. He had stolen, stolen I tell you, my use of "whiskey" to describe a certain light. "Hey, I thought of that," says I to myself. There were other similarities as well. The fact that Abbey and his work predates me doesn't preclude my view of him as plagiarizing my work. I assume he time-traveled to the 21st Century, read Lynna's books and stole the best phrases! Yeah, that's what happened there.
I do admire his impulse to throw a single beer can into one painfully pristine setting just to put a dent in its perfection. Not that he did, mind you. He did kill a Moab-based rabbit with a rock.
Ok
*Tentacle fist salute* to all of you that do not live to the west of the International Date Line that still continue to post far and beyond normal waking hours (from our perspective).
Of course I write this at 12:30 a.m. so it's pretty obvious I don't have a life...
Oh, it was. :D Even so, it is a bit strange to feel a tail go all the way around your neck (with overlap). What's a bit of a wake up is forgetting you have monster leezard sleeping on your shoulder, and bending down or otherwise moving quickly - it's quite noticeable when that tail tightens up a bunch!
That sounds suspiciously like a facehugger from Alien.
Try again to get some REAL meaning
... and give me some fucking credit for being able to do HTML commands when I've had a (quite) few fine glasses of verdelho.
cicely @285
You are a dear for asking. I think both Leland and I needed a trip into the backcountry. We're not healthy without occasional expeditions into the wild -- but I needed it more. Leland paid for the gas and did all the driving. I haven't had even a hint of trouble since the brain-offline-event of January 15th. I'm still a little wary, but am beginning to think it was a random and possibly not repeatable event. Nevertheless, I used some of my medical funds to see my doctor again earlier this month, and am being tracked and watched more closely than before, just in case. ... Besides, I don't want any of my doctors to lack for funds. They have boats and vacation homes to care for after all.
Nah, bollocks. HTML commands are beyond me..
I was trying to say those of you that DO live west of the IDL.
.. see what I did there though!
iambilly, the possibility of multiple Ol'Gregs seems about equally likely to BoS's postulated posting camel, albeit I concur, dogs are well known to post. However, come to think of it, camels are widely misunderstood. So we have proof! Ol'Greg is a camel. ;-)
The coherency of this post is not guaranteed. Your sanity will vary. Read with caution.
Caine @314: Jeez, I wish my neighbors took care of their cats like you take care of yours. I have one shrub that stinks so much of cat spray that I think I may have to just dig it up and throw it away. Unfortunately, it's close to a spot in my yard where I like to sit to watch the sunset, so every time I smell the cat stench I'm ready to kill the little fuckers. Not that I actually would. I've tried raking and washing the area frequently, but nothing deters the neighborhood cats.
I added cactus to my south-facing flower/rock garden. That worked to keep the little shitters out of there.
I caught one of my neighbor's cats shitting in my yard, while the neighbor was also in her yard, watching. I asked her to come over and shovel the feces into a bag and she refused because, "Cat poop makes me throw up."
I think our main problem is over-population. The number of dogs per household is sort of, sometimes enforced. Cats... have as many as you want.
Bride of Shrek OM: We all live west (and east) of the International Date Line. Go either way far enough and . . .
So does that mean that today is both yesterday and tomorrow? And how does Daylight Savings Time affect that? Would that make the equator the International Seasonal Line (and in the National Park Service, seasonal means you can work 1039 scheduled hours)? Or have my sinus medications (Northeastern Pennsylvania may be the worst place on earth to be allergic to red maples) affected my thinking? Or what I percieve within my linear patterns to be thinking?
blf: Actually, we have on old Greg who works here. A law enforcement officer who just may be the most gormless mook ever to inhabit human form. As for dogs posting -- I've seen cats tread the keyboard lightly. I have difficulty picturing a Rottweiler pounding away at the keyboard.
Not to be taken orally. Not to be taken anally. Not to be taken nasally. Not to be taken seriously. May provide temporary relief of some symptoms (but not the ones you want relieved). Do not read while driving or operating heavy equipment. Do not use metal cooking utensils as it may finish the scratching.
Oh, I am a little embarrassed! Yeah, I sleep here and there. I post from work so that helps, and I usually am up by 5.
So anytime from US Central 5am to 2am I may be around. I actually do things besides post on here!!!! I just always seem to have access to the internet though.
I work 8-10 hours a day so in the evenings I try to cram all the things I care about, and take my breaks on the nets. Weekends are about the same.
I go out, but I'm usually home by 12 which leaves a couple hours of spindown time. Yeah... so maybe I don't sleep.
I see that Quack has left yet another steaming pile of droppings on the endless thread.
I wish he would stop posting his drivel, thus allowing it to become more dilute. Call it an experiment in homeopathic trolling.
AJ Milne: Thanks, it’s good to read a true scientist at work. Now try sanction’s experiment (at home in privacy please).
Nothing besides remains: I’m here because I’ve been trying to understand the mindset that allows people to continually claim to be scientists while exhibiting illogical mob behavior. When confronted with an argument, I provide data. When you are confronted with an argument you all generally respond with profanity. Then you accuse me of being unscientific and later claim that you have beaten me in debate.
The Quackalicious handle is a clear indication that I don’t really care if you call me a quack. On this thread the term is horribly ill defined (see www.maloneymedical for where someone used the term to describe Mormons). It does not hurt my feelings, and it doesn’t help improve the level of conversation. Despite all of the arguments that scientists abound here, I have yet to deal with a single person providing contrary data from medline supporting the general assumptions maintained here: 1) I have harmed people 2) nothing I do works. When I have provided peer reviewed studies showing the contrary position, no one has responded coherently, or even at an adult level with the exception of Sastra.
As a result of the inadequacy of your logical thought, I have finally found a context within which it makes sense: authoritarianism. The book quotes I gave are based on surveys taken by the author of atheists and show fairly clearly that I’m working against a belief system rather than a logical group of thinkers. You are also a group that is widely prosecuted in the real world, so you have a sub-culture here online. Myers maintains an open thread, but the prejudice and “group think” here is absolutely evident.
Myers criticizes the pope and range of authority figures, but he has not, at least recently, called for a web wide attack on the pope, as was done in my case. Since my personal experience was one of violent threats, I suspect strongly that Myers would find himself in serious legal issues if he were to go after someone truly able to defend themselves.
Nerd: You have created a false personal avatar online. It must be fun, being a juvenile meth addict and pretending to be clever. I quoted your swear words back to you in my post. Try to maintain your fiction better. I also must say you need to get caught up on your medical knowledge. We don’t use individual journals as authorities anymore. We use meta-analyses. Why don’t you go back to school, get a real degree and try to make a logical argument against what I’ve already posted? No, you haven’t engaged in any sort of logical response, showing your ineptitude as an adult. But I keep giving you chances to try again.
A.Noyd: go look at the book. He adores you guys and the information I quoted is based on your surveys. If scientific = reality, I live here and you don’t.
Caine, if you’re going to comment, at least read the posts. Otherwise, you are unable to even claim to be a rationale human being.
Ichthyic and Rorschach: hmmm. “We’re ignoring you, go away.” Why do I feel like you both never made it out of junior high emotionally. Adults ignore, children come and tell you they are ignoring you. Good boys, just wait till I leave and then tell everyone what a great whooping you gave me.
Kel: I’m trying to help you all understand not only each other, but your opponents. I now consider you a repressed minority with all the equivalent anger. Of course you lash out incoherently, because very few of you are out of the closet to your family and friends as atheists. I’m not being attacked because of logic, but because you see me as some who holds some beliefs contrary to your own. What is strange is that I do not. I don’t “believe” in the things I do, I use what works from many different medical traditions. I don’t believe in homeopathy any more than I would believe in a wrench. I don’t believe in one diet or treatment program, and I created custom built treatment plans for patients based on their beliefs rather than applying my own.
Caine, I’m glad my confusion about your gender is providing you with enormous pleasure. But you took a male name as you yourself admit. I simply assumed your French was poor.
Nerd: please run over to www.maloneymedical.com for the Cochrane analysis and several back up studies on therapeutic touch. Looks like your days are numbered, because the data exists. You just haven’t bothered to read it: authoritarian.
Kel: Here’s a plan. Don’t take alt. med. It’s like complaining about all the people who are forcing you to go to church. I don’t think you’re a conformist or a shill, but I do think you’ve got a chip on your shoulder about alt. med. Even when I do have good data on a treatment like butterbur for migraines, sometimes it doesn’t work. A lot of my patients show up precisely because the drugs don’t work for them. Even if the drugs are effective, my patients are the ones telling me they don’t want them. Sometimes they have to suck it up and take the meds, but other times they can change their lifestyles, drop fifty pounds and normalize their blood pressure without meds.
Caine: I’m here because you attacked me. If you don’t want attention, don’t attack people. And it isn’t blood, silly, it’s needles. Stop commenting if you don’t read the posts.
Knockgoats: follow the thread (or go to www.maloneymedical.com to get my posts). In response to Sastra’s comments I posted a meta-analysis of acupuncture that discusses the hundreds of studies done on this “energy” medicine as well as the definitive Cochrane analyses of those studies. Being an inept researcher means you need to ask for clarification.
As I mentioned before, Myers has not ordered you all to attack the pope in the same way you attacked me. To do so would mean his eventual imprisonment.
Bride: four years undergraduate, two years Harvard premed, four years N.D. med school, hundreds of clinical hours and a year overseas for internship with D.O.s. Where do you get your idea of no medical training? You may not like it, but I’m qualified. In Australia N.D.s aren’t licensed and that’s your problem.
Methinks The Rat's international paedophile ring is getting rattled, Child abuse scandal is war 'between church and world', says Italian bishop:
There multiple articles on the New York Times site, including (but not limited to):
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/world/europe/25vatican.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/world/europe/26church.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/27/us/27wisconsin.html
Oh, no, Ron Meldrum is back in the news. Remember his lying ass from previous threads? He even produced a "documentary" (scare quotes well-earned) in which he abused and misused the work of real scholars, and for which, Expelled-style, he tricked real experts into participating. Excerpt from current news:
The only good thing about this is that, with mormons fighting among themselves about the historicity of the BoM, a few of them may, accidentally learn the truth and stumble out of the dark ages. The comments that follow the Salt Lake Tribune article are good reading.
NO, you are a fraud: You deprive people of health and money.
oh. Maloney again.
Hi NotaDoc. I sincerely hope you will fuck off soon. Thanks ever so much.
.. no not really MY problem since I wouldn't pay your ilk a squillion even if you were offering me the cure to cancer.
The problem is the misinformed, the uneducated and the gullible... your target audience.
BTW they're not licenced for reason here in Australia- because we recognise you for the charlatans you are and would never disgrace the honourable term of "doctor" by allowing you to be called such.
Please tell me that you then deliberately walked over, picked it up, and deposited it on her front porch while she was watching.
OK, guys, I'm home sick with a horrible cold, and don't have anything but old romantic suspense novels to read -- entertain me!
I'm caught up with all the blogs that I follow and all my email lists. You folks are letting me down by doing silly things like sleeping, working, having a life... somebody post something controversial!
thank you.
Spoken like a trooper!
We need to keep that economy going.
--o--
Btw, has anyone seen Lynna around?
I see the grand Duck of Placebo is back, inanely trying to justify his unscientific and predatory existence with another tl;dr inane and insane post.
*holds envelope up to turban ala Carnac*
*how does one describe the Qvack's post?*
*Opens envelope, failure, like always.*
What a loser. How can we tell he is a loser? The Qwackster is still trying vainly (and it will always be vainly, since REAL scientific evidence seems to elude him and his "profession") to convince us he isn't a fraud. He should just give it up. But he is too stooooopid and too much of a loser to do so.
Er, Ok: “Something controversial!”
Feel better now?
What we need is a poll:
Is the something too controversial?
○ Yes.
○ No.
○ No.
○ Answer 6.
○ MUSHROOMS!
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility
Will and Grace
Greg and Dharma
Crime and Punishment
Alibaba and the 40th thief
Abercrombie and Fitch
blf @ 385: you're too good to me.
and the kids won't let me cook with mushrooms, say that they're gross. I don't know where I went wrong with them (that's what I get for teaching the kids to think for themselves.). But at least they'll eat broccoli - what they don't feed to the dog, that is.
I nicely double-bagged the cat poop so it wouldn't stink too much, then I took it to my neighbor's door...and she called the police. The local policeman came and talked me into "never doing that again" as it may be a prosecutable offense. If fact, I was instructed to never step onto her property again. Maybe he owned cats that ran free?
That neighbor finally moved away and took her unspaded and eternally-breeding cats away with her. I still have cat problems, but they are much less now. I don't think I have a criminal record, but who knows. The police probably recorded the "warning".
I once had a dog owner tell me that her little yapper dog never dug holes, and she said this while the dog was digging a hole in my flower bed. I've come to the conclusion that you shouldn't comment about people's children or pets.
Sili @ 383 asks if anyone has seen Lynna around. Is that a joke, Sili? If not, here's official return to the endless thread.
BTW, I appreciated your encouragement to keep the economy going. I am particularly concerned about the upper middle and the upper classes. They are not good at being poor, so I'm doing my bit to shield them from that experience.
Becca @382, Sorry to hear you're under the weather. Sniffling about and being intimate with disease, are you?
This is not really as controversial a subject as you'd like to distract you from your virus-laden condition (unless you think turning Africans into mormons is a good thing?), but it is interesting, and it does ping the old irony meter nicely:
The excerpt is from an article in the Salt Lake Tribune, http://www.sltrib.com/ci_14751371?source=most_viewed
BTW, Becca, thanks for your earlier compliment about my photos from the trip to Crack Canyon (every time I write "Crack Canyon" now it reminds me of Josh, Official SpokesGay's comments -- Crack Canyon will never be the same).
So, what do you guys make of the UFC and Wrestle-mania ads on the side right now?
Mooney and Kirshenbaum ?
Or are those names better reserved for pet weasels ?
Interesting comments culled from readers of the Salt Lake Tribune:
Pat Condell has new video out that comments on the latest sex scandal involving the Catholic Church (blf commented on the scandal up-thread). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKg4HLsu5gE
Well, cats are accommodationists of a sort, in that they expect you to accommodate them.
Oh, good grief. So you putting it on her property is an offense, but her putting it on yours (via her cat) isn't? Good riddance to her. I have zero tolerance for people who let their pets outside without being tethered either by a leash or inside their own jump-proof fence. Once when I was growing up a dog across the street that "wouldn't hurt anybody" according to its owner ran over into our yard and bit my little brother while we were getting into the car, giving him a huge bruise (thankfully the dog was old and had worn-down teeth) and a lifelong phobia of dogs. Just...no. A person's dog or cat might be just fine to them, but they never know how it will act around other people, and they don't know what kind of damage they're doing to the other person's yard and/or pets, and they have no idea whether the person down the street is deathly allergic to them and now has cat or dog hair all over their own porch.
BTW, those pictures on Facebook of your trip are beautiful!
Lynna: Husband went to a SF convention (one of our odd hobbies: working security and operations for special interest conventions) a couple of weeks ago and brought home a particularly nasty version of the Con Grunge. Son spiked a 103.5 fever and missed a solid week of school (and David is *never* sick). It's hard to tell how much of Tori's lassitude is Grunge and how much is mourning the death of her cat last Monday. By comparison, I'm doing fairly well -- except that the damn cat (we had 2) woke me up at 5:30, and there are just so many science podcasts I can listen to before getting antsy and needing to get up.
The whole Mormon take-over of Utah upsets me. I wouldn't live in Utah (be it never so beautiful) for the world. I tend to be a live-and-let-live type, but that's just the trouble, they don't "let live" if you're not One Of Them.
I've been reading Making Light and PZ isn't the only one invoking the specter of Kristallnacht. Yeah, the parallels aren't exact, but the seething anger (but I think the Tea Partiers are angry at the wrong people) and unthinking calls to violence are similar. It's all very upsetting. If I wasn't such a pacifist, I'd wonder whether we needed to get a gun just to protect ourselves from the Weird Right. I remember when cities burned during the race riots, and worry about it happening again.
Carlie @396, yeah, you never know with pets. I was once bitten by a dog while the owner was shouting, "Don't worry! He doesn't bite!" This was in Minnesota, many years ago. What "He doesn't bite" means is, "He doesn't bite members of my family" or "He's never bitten me" -- I was doing nothing but standing still on a walking path.
Ahh, you looked through the Facebook album. See what you missed? And did you see the lovely setting for the "kitchen" where we could have set up your stove?
Becca @397: Alien virus! Those SF conventions attract aliens, you know.
Well, I prescribe a nice, long nap, if you can manage it.
Here's Christopher Hitchens' take on the Catholic sex/pedophile scandal: http://www.slate.com/id/2248557/ Excerpt:
Rorschach, a belated thanks for the Janis and the Jimi.
On the subject of pet names, I was once asked the name of my horse, and my reply was "Blaze, but sometimes it's "GODDAMN IT BLAZE!"and other times it changed to "WHOA DAMMIT!" which is a common nick name for many horses. :)
Blaze was my good grey horse and I named him when he was born as he was a dark red with 4 white socks and blaze of white down his face. However, as he greyed out his marking disappered and I was asked more than once why I called him Blaze.
Alas, when Blaze was 9 years old he broke his R front leg and had to be put down. :(:( I cried over that horse for two weeks straight. That happened over 10 years ago and I can still cry for that horse sometimes.....
After listening to Pat Condell (Lynna@394), this was suggested as a related link: Those Old Fat Catholics (sung to the tune of "That Old Black Magic").
I know nothing about horses, so I've always wondered why they "have to be put down" when they break a leg. Why can't the leg just be given medical care?
Just let out the cat (sorry) and started my first ever sourdough (not sorry).
And, yes, Lynna, I was joking. Yesterthread I asked what had happened to you, despite having read that you were going trekking. Of course, I had to be reminded to recall that.
alien virus, eh? that explains why pseudoephedrine doesn't help much.
I only know about horses what I read in Dick Francis novels, but it seems to me that horses are so over-bred that they're actually very fragile. I know colic can kill them. Wasn't there a famous race horse recently (last few years) that broke his leg, and they had to put it in a sling to keep it upright but off the leg, and they spent millions of dollars on it, but it died anyway?
ha! found it.
Why do they have to kill race horses after they break something?
also, the horse I'm thinking of was Barbaro
Hi Josh,
Good question. A horse is a quadraped and carries about 60% of it's weight on it's front legs. In order for many injuries to weight bearing limbs they are required be non-weight bearing (NWB) for a long time, for humans 3 months NWB very common. Also, many breaks require internal fixation (plates, screws and pins and the like) plus physical therapy once the limb can begin to carry weight again.
For a horse this means to be NWB it must be put in a sling, for months.
This can create all kinds of other problems for the horse which can be quite horrible, not to mention life threatening in their own right (acute laminitis) for example.
Another prolem is simple transport, ie; taking a horse to a vet center. Horse ambulances do exist, but they are few and far between. Just the thought of trying to put my broken legged horse into a horse trailer was a nightmare, the loading of the horse and the horse being transported the 150 miles (over the Sierria Nevada mtns. to the Davis Uni vet hospital) would have been very, very cruel.
Horses can heal and recover from broken limbs, but it depends on where the break is on the bone column and how sever it is. My horse's break was high up and just an impossible injury to come back from. I read in a vet book that type of injury had a very dim prognosis in the best of circumstances, and then the horse would not be expected to ever fully recover it's original soundness. The most humane thing I could do for Blaze was have him put down. :(
What was ironic to me was 4 years before this I had fallen of Blaze and broke the shit out of my L ankle (5 pins, 2 screws and plate needed to put it back together.) I could be put back together, but Blaze could not.
Lynna, next time the animal is on your property call animal control. Two can play at that game. If you keep calling and the cat is found there even once they will take it. She can also be fined.
Two can play at that game.
But now I've got to head out again and oooh I am becoming self conscious of posting here :P
my old cat doesn't have a name. depending on the situation, she's either called kittykitty or varmint
Lynna,
What a tacky neighbor to let her cat crap in your yard and then call the cops when you bring the poo back to her.
The boyfriend's dog isn't on a leash when he goes outside to potty, but he is voice trained and never unattended. Several of the neighbors allow their dogs to roam free in the village. It's dangerous and we have to be careful not to take his dog out when those dogs are around the house. The loose dogs also urinate on my garden and poo everywhere. I hate that so much!
As I said, some horses are lucky and heal broken legs. There are many successful cases out there. But alot of horses owners are like me, their horses is an expensive, if not extravagent pet that is not paticularly valuable, except for the intrinsic value for the owner.
The cost of treating a horse like Blaze can quickly outstrip it's value. Blaze was a gelding so he had no value as a breeding animal, but even if he had been a female, that still would have been true. The reality for many horse owners is having to decide how much vet tratment they can afford and what to do if they can't afford much.
I don't know how Blaze broke his leg as I found him broken in the pasture and as far as I know, no human witnessed the injury. Such things happen.
There is an agrument to be made that there is an overpopulation of horses from back yard breeders. Since I could be called one of those for producing Blaze (the one and only horse I have ever created) I promised him I would give him a home for life. And I did, still sad it was so short tho.
Dust,
I hadn't thought about the difficulty of transporting an injured horse before. I followed Barbaro's injury and treatment in the news, and it seemed to me that he was undergoing tremendous pain and discomfort for treatment that had only a small chance of working.
I'm sorry Blaze had to be put down. That's never easy no matter how necessary or humane it is.
Dust - thank you for the explanation.
Thanks Pygmy Loris,
On a horse list I used to read, these types of issues were frequently discussed. One poster said something along the lines of 'the reality of owning livestock is that they will eventually become deadstock'. Too true, but still sad, whether the livestock sleeps in the barn or sleeps on the bed.
I have 2 new kittens, and I need names
Karl and Groucho, the Marx Brothers.
I saw the first two eps of "Life" with Oprah as the narrator yesterday.
let me tell you one thing:
*shudder*
[comic book guy]
worst narration, ever.
[/comic book guy]
randomly mispronounced words, randomly emphasized words...
just...
horrible.
I feel quite sorry for any audiences forced to watch the whole series in such fashion.
I'll be grabbing the original BBC version from here out.
Overall, the photography is good, nothing terribly new or extraordinary so far. Did learn about an amphibian with opposable digits in SA I had not know about before.
If you can only find the Oprah version, suggest just turning off the sound and playing some nice background music would be the way to go.
Ichthyic, try complaining to the BBC. They've been know to taken mutilation of their programs seriously.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fld7YmVpymY&feature=player_embedded#
I love it. Some people might not like her music style. She shot this in my city though. Damn, if I'd been downtown on the right day I could have seen Erykah stripping down the street!
I’m here because I’ve been trying to understand the mindset that allows people to continually claim to be scientists while exhibiting illogical mob behavior.
well, there's your problem.
you're lying to yourself.
Ichthyic, try complaining to the BBC. They've been know to taken mutilation of their programs seriously.
I doubt that muchly, in the case of the Discovery Channel, which the BBC has sold them programs before they have slaughtered.
no, unfortunately I will bet anything it comes down to a big paycheck for the BBC for selling out to the Discovery Channel.
Please, show me to be wrong. Give me hope that the BBC will attempt to show some integrity in the future, and NOT allow their documentaries to be hacked to death and dumbed-down for american audiences.
I remain cynical.
*sigh*
I keep thinking back to how, not that long ago, even the americans were able to produce good documentaries themselves. "Nature" comes to mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_%28TV_series%29
now... americans get fucking "Ice Road Truckers" or "Dangerous Catch", and the average (yes AVERAGE) nature series the BBC produce (like Planet Earth and Life) get hacked and the narration replaced simply in order to try and attract a slightly larger audience of dumbed-down americans, now used to the very things like "Dangerous Catch" as "nature documentaries".
sorry, I'm getting my rant on here, I know, but it was nature encyclopedias and those very nature shows that got me interested in being a scientist when I was a kid.
now? WHAT is there really to interest a kid in looking beyond "Oooh, purty animules!"
*sigh*
fuck me, but you'd think after 30 years of doing nature documentaries that talk about evolution, the writing would have evolved past an elementary school level of addressing the issue, for one thing.
GRRRRRRRR.
*pant* *wheeze*
ok, deep breath...
Calm down Ichthyic. Think of the wily tool-using capyouchin or the icy vistas of Antarticker.
I used to like the Green Channel... but they're going the way of all other originally sciency channels now, too :-(
buffybot isn't kidding about the pronunciations, btw,
that IS how Oprah pronounced them.
"Antarktiker"
*sigh*
sorry, whatever the argument was about getting more people to watch based on Oprah's fan base was entirely destroyed by the hugely oversimplified writing, and her entirely hackneyed attempt at narration.
even if there WERE more people watching, it's actually a bane instead of a boon, at least seeing the first two episodes.
maybe it gets better later on?
one can only hope.
Have to post this in two parts. Too many links in it, even though I edited the quoted YouTube ones. It's seriously long anyway.
I've only read till comment 396.
:-| Chinese is like the Romance languages. And Mandarin is like French, the one that drops consonants at the ends of syllables.
At this point most linguists will refer you to comment 313.
As has been mentioned, it's like "species" and "subspecies": there are lots of competing definitions, and each one has counterintuitive results when applied consistently. A tree cannot be divided except arbitrarily.
For both species and languages, that's just one definition out of a lot.
Indeed not, but from what I've read it's remarkably close to Standard German.
The actual dialect, which few people speak anymore, was a Low German one, similar to "north of the Elbe".
From what I've read about that (I looked it up last time you mentioned it), there's a lot of diversity within it, but I should be able to cope with most of it.
It's not that the writing is the same, it's that German dialects are not written*; instead, Standard German is used as the written language. Consequently, it's called "writing-language", Schriftsprache, where I come from. (Hochdeutsch, High German, is a geographical term; it refers to the dialects that are spoken where the country is literally high, as opposed to the Northern German Plain. Standard German was developed from a sort of mixture of eastern southern and eastern central dialects in the 16th century, so it counts as High German, even though my dialect is quite a bit Higher.)
* Except from remarkably inconsistent attempts by the occasional poet or the like, and now a couple of Wikipedias with similarly inconsistent spelling systems that (again) make very clear that nobody is used to writing or reading any German dialect.
There are also German-speakers left in Krasiejów itself. We could do a linguistic survey of the village if we get one of the speakers of Polish Silesian to join ;-)
Indeed, some prefer to speak of "the Scots language" rather than calling it a group of dialects of English.
At a scientific conference early last year I encountered an amateur who now lives in England, and has started dropping his Rs, but otherwise speaks Standard English with the Scots sound system. Occasionally I didn't even recognize it as English – even though, once I reminded myself that it was English (every time anew), I understood almost every word.
I think I've dealt with what little Jadehawk and a few others left of him. Including the "baiting" metaphor, which could be part of the Biblical "fishing of men" metaphor.
That surprises me. Doesn't she understand how it's possible to be into men? ~:-| She's not lesbian herself, is she?
I was going to write "I can hardly resist"... then it turned out I can't resist at all :-þ
Beautiful rocks, beautiful photos.
From there:
What? Late Jurassic? All of it is Early Jurassic (not even Middle), except for the bottom of the Wingate Sandstone which is Late Triassic.
:-)
It is with mine (IE8), except that it eats up a lot of RAM. Scrolling took forever, and changing to another tab took forever; I closed the tab immediately when I had finished watching the photos.
X-D
"Random"? LOL. You designed it intelligently. This one is fully on topic – one of them speaks very northern indeed.
I laughed almost the whole way through!
This one is also good (and, as music, a whole lot better):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gO0ooqAnuQ&NR=1
For those who don't understand the lyrics, just look at the pictures and keep in mind that the lyrics are about a golden turd that is awarded like the golden raspberry... to all the right people.
Near the end, is that a failed attempt to imitate the distinctive smoky voice of Gerhard "Gazprom" Schröder?
"Even though nobody likes me, I'll soon sit in [parliament]" is brilliant, but I take issue with the resignation that the world is evil. Perhaps this generalization went a step too far, and it's only the living who are evil, as opposed to the undead.
(...Been looking for an excuse to post this ever since I read it about 24 h ago. There comes Jadehawk and delivers one on a silver platter. Verily, there is a FSM.)
X-D Typical Wäänää: the watchable parts are fucking hilarious, the others are revolting. The whole thing is a bit... overdone, especially towards the end, like so much German humor.
Most of this isn't in the dialect, it's in Standard German with a remarkably strong Bavarian accent. But he code-switches back and forth mid-sentence all the time.
(Deliberately. He's changing the level of formality he has with the audience: whether he gives his speech or comments on it; whether he uses stock phrases or speaks freely. That's widespread in Austria, too, except the separation between dialect and standard tends to be stricter.)
You're shitting us. There's just one sentence in dialect at 1:57. (Had to listen to it twice, because one word has a completely unexpected pronunciation.) All the rest is in almost pure Standard German except for a bit of accent.
Stevie Wonder Institute for Observation of Buildings? Huh? What has that guy got to do with the self-destruction of Cologne?
well, evidently David is better at understanding dialects. I only understand Hochdeutsch of the Lower-Saxony variant, and American English of the Northern variant :-p
Saxon is incomprehensible, and the fuckers know it, too.
Part 2 of 2.
(Yay, that was a seven-screener. I've caught up now.)
What? This year already? And 160 $, travel and lodging not included? No chance.
:-D You Fail Geography Forever.
What are you talking about?
And your glib assertion that you take what works – how do you find out what works? What method is there to reliably and repeatably find out what works other than the good old double-blind clinical trial, which is something you can't afford?
Enough.
(Warning: behind this link lurks greater horror than Rawhide.)
I can help you with that one. To be rendered edible, broccoli must be put through a blender and served as a soup with a bit of butter in it. It's not so much the taste (beyond what the butter takes away), but the texture that is annoying, and blending takes care of that.
:-D :-D :-D
Don't you just love it how they put the languages among the horrors? :-D
Yeah, that's what they all say.
I'm getting one for Bitefight instead, a free Gothic Fantasy online game. B-) In French.
Wow. I didn't know about that either. Do you remember any info that might make Google find it?
And finally...
Part of the reason is that the sound systems of many don't even line up with that of the standard (or each other). Basically, every dialect has undergone its own phoneme splits and mergers from Middle High (or Low) German. So, just taking the sound-letter correspondences of the standard doesn't work.
All this also holds for most English dialects, except that the sound system differences are even crazier.
I know I asked to be entertained, friends, but really! Importing Graeme Bird over on the These Guys are Dangerous Nuts thread, and Daniel Smith on Sins of Omission -- it's all I can do to keep track of the hilarity. What fun. Beats listening to science podcasts and knitting (which I haven't the attention span for anyway). I don't know what I can do to express my appreciation [/sarcasm]
Hee, hee, I knew what that link was before stomping on it. So have some shish kebabs in return…
*grabs libation, and settles in to read DM's cogent long post, unlike the Q*ster who is a incoherent*
*finished reading post, raises libation in salute to DM*
Sorry Becca, sometimes the idiocy level gets out of hand. DS tries, but can't examine or acknowledge the concept his deity doesn't exist, so will always fail because he is a presuppositionalist. GB has the Aussies apologizing for him. I salute our regular Aussies...
David,
Well yeah...I just use it to illustrate the messy nature of both biology and linguistics. Just to ask, which species concept do you favor? Do you like different concepts for fossil vs. extant species?
Well, I'm at least learning a little from the discussion with DS. One of these days I've got to take a course on formal logic. our local community college offers a class on critical thinking that I'm encouraging my kids to take next year - if they do, I might take it with them.
but as I said on that thread, you can use logic to prove just about anything, depending on where you start, so I don't totally trust it.
Part 3 of 2:
Also:
Well, duh – I speak one natively, one that is pretty far away from the standard (though tame when compared to anything Swiss, or even actual Alpine-valley Tyrolean*).
I'd appreciate a Saxon sound sample, however! :-)
* Once met a South Tyrolean ( = from Italy) who... sometimes I had to ask back. For instance, "that stuff" is dieses Zeug /ˌdiːsɛsˈt͡sɔɪ̯g/* in Standard German. In my dialect, das Zeug is used instead, and pronounced [d̥esˈt͡sɛɪ̯g̊]. That guy said [sɛɫˈt͡suɪ̯g̊] – yes, that first word is completely different (reminds me of French celle), and it ends in an English-style "dark L", and the rendering of eu is unique as far as I know.
* Note my clever use of phonemic slashes so I don't need to go into the phonetic detail that differs within the standard.
Finally, the recipe, which I used again today:
Rice with artificial gravy
(Almost vegetarian, depending on the gravy.)
Ingredients:
Rice:
1 mug Basmati rice from a 5-kg sack from a French supermarket
enough oil to cover the floor of a frying pan
2 mugs water
large amounts of pretty much all spices you have; curry is mandatory; no salt beyond the following item (the salt is in the gravy)
salted butter (or, obviously, salt and butter separately... or maybe no salt at all if you don't like it! I have low blood pressure and like salt a lot.)
Gravy:
4 gravy cubes from an Austrian supermarket
1/2 l water
Cover floor of pan with oil. Pour rice in, mix well. Set stove to 2/3 of maximum heat. Stir occasionally, keep going till the rice looks fried... it should not get brown, or at most it should just begin to do so. At that point, pour in the water and set the heat to maximum. Throw in spices and stir; put lid on pan. (Careful with the lid; mine is too small for the pan and rests on the wooden spoon, so there's no danger of anything boiling over.) When the water boils, set heat to 1/2 or 1/3 of maximum. Stir occasionally. When the water is gone, the rice should be cooked if the lid closes well enough; if yes, turn the heat off; if not, add water and stir. When the rice is done, add copious amounts of salted butter (more than you think) and stir it in.
Then prepare the gravy as it says on the box (basically just boil the cubes in the water under a lot of stirring). I did that in 2 settings because I ate the rice in 2 settings and neither wanted the pan or the casserole to run over nor the fat to freeze out of the gravy while I'm still eating.
Put rice and gravy together. I took half of the rice out of the pan, put it into the casserole with the gravy, ate that, made the second serving of gravy, poured it in the pan, and ate that.
That should be 2 to 4 portions for people with normal eating behavior. I didn't eat anything else today, unless you're generous enough count the two mugs of milk or the now 6 or 8 sugar-coated aniseed grains.
For spices, I had a cheap so-called curry (it's yellow, and smells & tastes much like the real thing, but it's not hot at all), "cinq parfums" (a mixture that smells like some kinds of dark bread and consists of fennel, aniseed, cinnamon*, black pepper, and cloves), and nutmeg.
* Though not as much that the rice would taste like what's eaten with ṭikkā masala. On the other hand, that wouldn't be a bad thing either.
So I finally find an opportunity to watch that one. LOL.
I just have to whine about the facial anatomy...
Cogent perhaps, but only the part after each quote is even supposed to be coherent :-þ
Several concepts designate biologically interesting kinds of entities that have nothing in common besides the word "species" and usually don't overlap perfectly. I think there should be parallel nomenclatures to account for them all.
Clades should be named separately – so separately that the requirement to assign every organism to a species should fall. For things like... all or almost all Mesozoic dinosaurs, where no approximation of population biology can be done, all we can do is name clades, and it should be all we need to do. (All the way down to the LITU, Least Inclusive Taxonomic Unit, if necessary.)
For Mesozoic dinosaurs that's pretty much what's already being done. Almost all genera have a single species, and almost all newly discovered species get a genus of their own; the genus is almost being treated as the unit of biodiversity.
The Biological Species Concepts require systematists to figure out if populations can or do interbreed. If the populations don't reproduce sexually, that's not applicable. Indeed, Ernst Mayr wrote that asexually reproducing organisms "do not form species". But the currently valid codes of nomenclature force him and his successors to pretend anyway.
Sastra disagrees, and he showed up to agree with Sastra: he really does believe his faith is founded on reason & evidence, and convincing him that this isn't true would make him deconvert.
So far, however, he's above his head in medieval philosophy and can't look at the world any other way. (Aristotle's Four Causes! For crying out loud!) As long as he can't get out of that, he might just as well be a presupper. :-/
Whether you're starting at the right place is what science can tell you. For instance, Aristotle & Aquinas started from the assumption that everything has a cause and nothing comes from nothing; the Casimir effect, radioactive decay, that gihugrongous supernova I mentioned a subthread or two ago, and other things strongly suggests that this assumption is wrong. Any conclusion validly drawn from at least one false premise will itself be wrong, according to pure logic.
For our persistent alt-med troll, Quacky: Where's my Big Pharma money?
Sili:
Ah. I suspected as much. Obviously, I haven't caught up on the back issues of the endless thread yet, so I'm flailing around in the dark. I may never catch up because (and this is a good thing), I have work to do for three clients who need some writin' and designin' done.
Our loss, not theirs...
well, I looked for some examples of saxon dialect, but I've only found accented samples; nothing even close to what my mom's former co-workers used to do when they wanted to be assholes to us non-saxons :-p
Kitty names:
Fella and Ursula
David M:
Thanks, David M. That's what I thought, but I found an unreliable source on wiki (I know, I know) that talked about a fossil that changed the dating. There was one other source that questioned the dating as well, but I'll be damned if I can find it again. Anyway, I'll amend the post on my blog.
They didn't really have different dialects but rather their accents were un-understandable.
If I make my gravy out of a vegetarian, then wouldn't be be natural gravy?
Gravy = watery flavor plus cooked rendered fat plus starch (so says the gravy maker for the Nerd ouch, Redhead household).
Kitty Names:
Sacco and Vanzetti
Damnit and Shit
Peeves and ???
Plus and Minus
Breakfast and Lunch
Hey and You
What do I know, though: My cats are Sherman (named for William Tecumsah, an ancient neurotic and partially hairles gray tabby), Oreo (real original -- she's black and white), Dust (a 25+ pounder tiger stripe with white blotches and a tiny dustlike spot on his back) and KC (a little bitty version of Dust, who is Katie's Cat -- KC). We're not the most original when it comes to cats.
The smell of a Rat starting to fry, Pope faces fresh wave of child abuse scandals in Italy:
Interesting, but Linnaean taxonomy is so ingrained in biology that this may not be possible.
This is largely where Linnaean taxonomy is going. Each named category is/should be a distinct clade. That's the reasoning behind the shift to hominin for humans and our direct ancestors instead of hominid. Hominid is now the entire great ape clade.
The BSC was only ever applicable to sexually reproducing organisms, but I think it is tremendously useful. When genes can no longer pass between two populations, we know that the genetic distinctiveness of both populations is now permanent. Each species (should they survive long enough, of course) will produce genetically distinct clades of daughter species. Until the gene pools of both populations are permanently separate, that can change*.
Everyone working on hominins names species. It's sort of our holy grail to find a new species. I like to watch paleoanthropologists justify their new species by saying "I just don't think it would interbreed with species xyz." They're using morphology to approximate the BSC, so the big debates are how much morphological variation we can expect in a single interbreeding species/population. The extreme splitters will justify their view by referencing galagos. Thirty years ago only two or three galago species were recognized, but now, thanks to actually studying them there are ten or more species. None of these species exhibit very much variation in their skeletal structure. The specific mate recognition systems are largely based (from our view) on various patterns of dark and light facial fur, which is very distinctive during the night (galagos are nocturnal). The people using this model say it's better to err on the side of caution than to underestimate the number of species, but I think it's mostly so that they can name a new species every time they find a new fossil that's slightly different from its contemporaries.
Anyway, I guess that was a long way of saying I don't have a problem with using Linnaean taxonomy. It's ingrained in the literature now, so we might as well tweak it a bit to fit phylogenetic taxonomy.
*Plants, so I've been told, are different. I fully admit to being ignorant of plant genetics and reproduction beyond the very basics. Sorry.
iambilly: Sherman is from my hometown. Had I a son, he would be named William Tecumseh.
In the event that anyone's noticed: the reason for my recent lack of posting here is that I've been studying all week for twelve or thirteen hours a day (I am not exaggerating) and don't have the mental energy to get involved in any kind of intelligent discussion. And I've got two more months of this to go until my exams. :-(
Hitchens and Maher talk about the Catholic Church:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6Wsm5LBe0w
Surprisingly, they don't have good things to say.....
David,
Wow, that's an expensive recipe. Do you have any idea the cost of airfare to France and Austria from the US? ;P
I have two cats, both inherited from children who abandoned us to live on their own in apartments that don't allow pets, leaving us to tend to their responsibilities. Their names are Midnight and Merle. Not my choice. If I had my way, they'd be called Neurotic and Trichobezoar.
But nooooo. I'm stuck feeding them and cleaning up their poop, but I don't get to give them more appropriate names.
Oh, and another surprise to add to #450: Hitchens was likely drunk. He even had a drink in his hand during the interview.
:-/ Croc, gator, whatever! I'm no herpetologist, just a lowly woodworker. (Trial run on p-bucket, hope it works.)
Wood is good! :-)
/Thanks for the clarification David M. I always get those two critters confused.
A bit on the impact of domestic cats on biodiversity from Where the Wild Things Were by William Stolzenburg. (Spelling errors are my own.)
Hunting might be the cats' "natural" behavior, but their living conditions and numbers are anything but natural, which wreaks havoc on nature at large. Stolzenburg explains that nature's solution is to have other predators like coyotes keep the cats in check, but most pet owners don't like their freedom-loving babies getting chomped. For the sake of the rest of nature, however, it has to be that or keeping them confined.
watched the Hitchens and Maher video. Hitchens does indeed seem drunk - it's very sad, and casts a shadow over anything valid he has to say.
Just caught up, and I shall borrow David's technique herein.
Better reserved for pet tapeworms.
Not necessarily — it just makes the argument unsound, the conclusion could still be correct even if not logically implied.
I know it seems like a biggie to a 20-y.o., but from my perspective two months is but a while.
Years are beginning to zoom past, in my awareness.
Sigh.
Where?
Oh, perhaps it's the phytosaur that indicates a Late Triassic age for the bottom of the Wingate Sandstone, and you misremembered that as Late Jurassic?
Tsk, tsk. "Watery" isn't true with 2 cubes per 1/4 l, and the rest... One brand of cubes:
Vegetable fat, lactose, starch, iodized table salt, flavor enhancers (monosodium glutamate, disodium inosinate, disodium guanylate), 3.5 % onions, yeast extract, table salt, aroma, spices, garlic, beef extract from lean beef, soy sauce (soybeans, wheat), sugar.
The other:
Starch, aroma (with celery, soy, wheat), flavor enhancers (monosodium glutamate, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate), table salt, lard, vegetable oil, yeast extract, sugar, glucose syrup, onions, garlic, spices, beef, cichoria extract, guar, antioxidants (tocopherol-rich extracts [of what???], fatty-acid esters of ascorbinic acid).
(Fatty-acid esters of vitamin C? Too cool!)
It's not. But of course parallel nomenclatures would be very cumbersome!
Both of them (the one that requires ability to interbreed in captivity, and the one that requires interbreeding in the wild) require enormous effort to test. Accordingly, they have been tested for very, very few pairs of populations.
Looks like that's "just" another species concept at work, if not even splitting vs lumping within a morphological species concept...
LOL!
In my field, people tend to say it's better to err on the side of caution than to risk creating a junior synonym or a nomen dubium! That's why the Australian tyrannosauroid hasn't got a name! :-D
15 years ago I tried. I gave up when it turned out I needed 21 ranks to cover just the currently named taxa between Dinosauria and Hadrosauridae or between Dinosauria and Aves (IIRC). That's nothing but silly anymore.
:-S
We'll try not to miss you.
(BTW, I think this is the first time I've been awake during a change to summertime.)
Damn... just remembered about the hour change. So it's actually 2am here instead of 1am, meaning that I get an hour's less sleep before I have to get up again and face the excitement of the Law Reform (Frustrated Contracts) Act 1943.
I somehow get both perspectives simultaneously: last year is both very recently and very long ago at the same time. Sometimes even when seen from the same topic, I think.
Not really. Before studies in the wild, most people just thought all of these little creatures were sub-species of one larger species because they looked so similar. It was assumed that they interbreed. When people went out and watched them they realized that the named sub-species didn't interbreed, even where their ranges overlapped. Hence, they were moved into separate species.
I guess I'm pampered because the species I look at the most have been rather extensively studied. Gorillas, chimpanzees, orang utans, all have long term field research.
The wild versus captive interbreeding and the BSC is interesting. Bornean and Sumatran orangs don't interbreed in the wild because they can't swim between the islands. They interbreed just fine in captivity though. Some researchers are pushing to call them separate species, some think it's fine to keep them together. Ah well.
BSC isn't really used in plants (and obviously can't be used in dinosaurs)...I'm sure this occurs sometimes in vertebrates as well, but often entity A can interbreed with entity B and entity B can interbreed with entity C, but A and C are inter-sterile, and can't share genes except through a "B" population.
Or sometimes A and C form sterile hybrids that only become fertile by chance duplication of chromosomes.
Or A and C form nearly sterile hybrids, but fertility is recovered through segregation in the rare F2...which also may not be interfertile with A or C.
Point is, its a soup sandwich. I tend to like a nice explicit morphological species concept when making taxonomic decisions myself... with the understanding that species aren't stable entities, that setting species delimitations is subjective, but that if the author is explicit, at least people can identify sources of disagreement.
I also prefer lumpers to splitters, only because an error in lumping is easy to deal with later, while the proliferation of names associated with splitting has caused me a tremendous pain in the ass.
One brief note re the Quack's veracity. I note that he says he had
IIRC Harvard College has no premed major, nor has it had such during the past 40 years. Students at Harvard College who wish to pursue a medical career can concentrate in any subject they wish. (One doesn't 'major' at Harvard, one 'concentrates.') They only have to take the courses required for admission to medical school. It does, however, have a summer school. The Quack most likely spent two summers in fair Cambridge, possibly even in 'adult enrichment' courses, and uses this to burnish his lightweight academic credentials.
Anyone who is surprised is sentenced to 24 hours in time-out, without access to the Eternal Thread. No one leaving? Carry on as you were.
Probably I've mentioned this somewhere already, but our two consumers of catfood and producers of cat droppings are Thelma and Louise.
boygenius, #454
Lowly? The woodwork in those pictures is stunning.
Antiochus Epiphanes,
I know there are ring species in arctic birds, so it applies to vertebrates too. As an aside, I got into this by comparing mutual intelligibility concepts for language vs. dialect to the BSC. You get something like a ring species in languages as well where Village A can speak to and understand Village B who can speak to and understand Village C, but C and A cannot understand each other...
All of the species concepts are sorta extra to me. Except for a brief foray into paleoanthropology, I've only done any research on anatomically modern Homo sapiens.
?
Wow. That's even stupider that most of his shit.
(Reads the rest of his shit again...)
Oh. Okay. So I stand corrected.
But I do wonder where Quackboy gets the idea anyone here takes 'orders'. From anyone.
Quackboy, here's the thing: I'm not even sure I ever read Myers' thing on you. I generally like his stuff, but I don't always get the time to get to it all. But reading him as much as I do, I'd be rather surprised if he issued 'orders' of any kind in any mention of your sorry ass... His opinion it was well worth calling you on your shit, that I guess I might buy (he's said as much, effectively, about the pope, too, by the way, or so I recall, despite your weird little lying whinge to the contrary), but then, I guess, I don't strictly know...
Regardless, me, at least, I'm calling you a quack not so much because anyone's issuing instructions or opinions in this regard but because (a) you happen so obviously to be one, and (b) because you happen to be a particularly odious, shameless, and generally disgusting one by your own clear demonstration, right here in these threads, and (c) because you happen to be available, and (d) because it seems to me I'd generally be shirking my responsibility to my fellow hominids if I didn't point out the jackal in our midst, and (e) because it's so obviously easy to feed your obsession with this place, and I figure while you're on the net arguing with us, you're at least temporarily distracted from ripping anyone else off with your generally disgusting woo.
Now I know this is probably going to be terribly difficult for your rather meagre excuse for a forebrain to grasp, but this, dear fool, is going to be the way of it now, whether your sorry ass likes it or not. Not because some Minnesota bio prof notes you're a sorry, lying sack of shit, but because everyone is noticing you're a sorry, lying sack of shit.
Yes, I'm afraid it really is that obvious. And your friends shouldn't have to be the ones to tell you. It's how this stuff works, dude. It's called getting a reputation. And congratulations, babe: you done gone and got yourself one.
Oh, and because there's a rather large and growing constituency of people in the world who are really quite fed up with assholes like you who seem to think lying your ass off for a living is somehow gonna become defensible and whatever stupid shit you'd like to be true will somehow become true if you just keep farting around with the standards for evidence long enough. A large and growing constituency, indeed, who are becoming increasingly happy to keep calling you on your bullshit until you either (i) drop it and get into a more honest business*, or (ii) simply bugger off, and crawl away into a corner whimpering in abject self-loathing the way you should have done in the first place. And they don't so much need directives, and they don't so much need leaders to get on this task, either.
Just any excuse, really, and handy target. You'll do. The pope'll do. Any dumbfuck 'faith healer' stupid enough to stick his pompadour into our crosshairs, he'll do too.
So: orders? As if these would be necessary. I am happy to kick your weasly little ass, just as long as you offer it up for the kicking, dearie. Ain't no one so much need even to ask.
(*/Speaking of, have you considered pimping crack whores? I figure that's probably a few percent less loathesome than your current line, anyway.)
I wonder what would happen if Quack and the Graeme Bird nutter currently infesting the These guys are dangerous nuts thread were put in the same room and the door locked? The stooopidity wouldn't be quite as concentrated as Sarah Palin on its own, but I suspect they would somehow react. Fuse or explode, that's the question…
Josh OSG, thank you. I like to think I have learned a thing or three in 30 years of working with wood.
I really need to get my portfolio in order. I have pics in files and folders and CDs scattered all over the place. It's time to consolidate them in one spot so I can just link potential clients to the whole shebang. Word-of-mouth kept me in more work than I could take on for the last 12 years. Not so much anymore. :(
AJ, I think you've hit on the perfect means for the Non-Doctor Quack to earn some self-respect by doing something useful for the community.
I just read through the "dangerous nuts" thread. That guy's a complete nutter. His recent post has the following gem:
Valid pants. *snicker*
Oh, and we're stupid stupid stupid blockheads.
boygenius:
Get yourself a professional, crisp-looking website with a content management system that makes it easy for you to maintain, point-and-click. I've managed sites using Joomla, and I love them, but there are others out there such as Drupal, and people here with more experience could give you helpful opinions.
For your needs, I'm betting you could get a goodlooking site done for $500 to $1,000. I bid out my last one on a site called Joomlancers, and got some very competitive offers.
I've given up on the Dangerous Nuts thread. Even after much pleading the guy won't produce any evidence to support his claims and somehow it's our fault he won't.
But as a chew toy, paranoid loser is keeping our coats sniny and our teeth clean of tartar...tastes bad though, compared to the Redhead's stir-fry...
Sorry, we're stupid stupid stupid stupid blockheads. Forgot the all-important fourth "stupid". My bad.
And apparently Special Relativity is wrong.
Fashion police. Fashion police. Your pants are not valid.
Move along.
Re our ND*'s potential new careers, thankee, 'Tis. I got to thinking since we're recommending he move up, career-wise, we might even come up with a list of careers less disgusting than his present one...
So far I've also got:
-- drug dealer to crack whores
-- crack whore
-- Ponzi scheme mastermind
-- Amway salesperson
-- serial killer
-- host of America's Funniest Home Videos
-- booking agent**
... feel free to append at your leisure.
(*/Nastily Dotty. No, really. Look it up.)
(**/Oh, come on. They have to be used to this joke by now.)
Been off being political, then in the kitchen making ice cream, all day, so I'm way behind. That said, "fools rush in," eh?
Gyeong Hwa, this sucks for you, I know, because it's personal, and I'm sorry someone you love couldn't find it in her heart to be more supportive.
But if we look beyond the personal hurt, IMHO it shouldn't really be about icky. I have to confess (albeit with some trepidation) that I find the idea of kissing another man, or fellating one, fairly icky, and anal sex weirds me out, gay or straight.
But so what? I'm sure there are things I do or like that plenty of people find icky (e.g., I've heard tell some folks can't abide cunnilingus, though that position is utterly mysterious to me). That almost seems to be the point: My aesthetic reaction to sexual things you might do — or your reaction to things I might do — has no bearing on the fact that we're human beings, perfectly equal in our fundamental moral worth and, if the world were sane and just, in our legal rights.
The very notion of discriminating against people because they do something that one finds "icky" would be ludicrous if it weren't about teh seks: While I know plenty of people who think eating raw fish is disgusting, none of them would ever suggest that because I do that, I shouldn't be able to get health care or get married or serve in the military or visit my loved ones in the hospital! That would be stupidly ridiculous... but when it comes to sex, we are so thoroughly fucked up that we actually think one group's discomfiture about something another group does¹ that isn't what we're used to is somehow a reason to frakkin' deny the second group's very humanity.
Sheesh!
Gyeong Hwa, I'm sorry you had a bad day with your sister, and if I were there I'd give you a hug (hugs are never icky!)... but at the end of the day, what anybody thinks about what you do ought to be irrelevant to what they think about you. If only we lived in a world that knew that, eh?
¹ And just one small (albeit not insignificant) subset of the vast range of behaviors that make up a person's life, at that!
Be careful, Bill. Hugs are a gateway drug to Teh But Seks.
Josh OSG;
Yeah, that thought has crossed my mind in the past. Hmm.. could you loan me $500-$1,000. I'm good for it, I swear. ;)
boygenius:
I know $500 to $1,000 ain't no small thang, trust me. But if you can scrounge it up, it would probly be a good investment in your business. Me, I'd love to hire you to do some work in my house, but I don't think I can afford you!
oy, Kentucky goes down, putting BDC (briefly!) on top. Now, I had Kentucky to win (largely because of a ham-handed disagreement with the ESPN interface plus a last-possible-second-to-pick duress, but still), so that's Not Good. My old Alma Mater, Michigan State, must come through (plus Duke, which, btw, rejected my application), for much good to come of this travesty. Celtic Evolution (I think) is out of it; he has no more possible points. Bill Dauphin is currently in the cellar, and his only hope for any improvement is for the Baptists of Baylor to beat Duke, which, hell, why not?
Billy the Atheist benefits from a Duke win (as do I), but has no other prospects. BDC has both Baylor plus West Virginia...so far so good.
It's a mug's game, bracketology.
Oh, Sven de Milo, now that your attention is on this thread: off-topic, but were you the guy who said he'd written a paper on emotion in music, focusing on sadness from descending seconds? Or, am I just making that up?
I grew up around alt-med types, I'm deeply familiar with that way of thinking in more ways that can possibly imagine.
Really? That's what you've got? Again, what I"m asking for is evidence.
No, you're "attacked" because you promote nonsense at the cost of other people's health. Again, I grew up around this. The arguments are never beyond the anecdotal for efficacy, and if I happen to question what solid empirical evidence it is I'm told I'm close minded, that I should be more open, that I'm a tool of Big Pharma, that I have faith in science, that knowledge is relative. Not studies backing it up, not empirical evidence. Transmission of information from layperson to layperson who are so wanting to believe it is true that they demonise anyone who says otherwise.
Yet where beyond the anecdotal is the empirical evidence? Sorry, but a story about how magnets cured someone's knee pain are about as believable as stories about prayer being effective. And I have heard lots of those stories, personal testimonials to the truth of God...
I'm asking for is empirical evidence of those particular treatments. Where is it?
What treatment
So basically you're playing Mr Cultural Relativist and using the placebo effect? Well done, I should pat you on the back...
...meanwhile if you want to understand where I'm actually coming from, I wrote this. My frustration with you is because you're a dishonest twat, one who promotes nonsense at the same time as belittling those who are restricted by empiricism and regulation and adherence to basic standards of evidence.
Like I said, I've grown up in circles where alt-med was standard. I see how people believe who use it, I see how these beliefs spread. I see the efficacy of treatments, and I have even participated in particular treatments when asked to try them. But you don't get that, and you will never get why people mock you here. It's not because you're some persecuted hero who went up against Big Science, it's not because people here are repressed and just need to take their anger out on you. It's because you're a promoter of nonsense, dishonest and proud of it.
Again I ask. Show me the evidence. Show me what backs up your positions on particular beliefs. You aren't doing it, instead you've created some mental profile of me to explain away why I'm asking you for evidence. Where is the evidence? Show it to me and I'll change my mind. I'm interested in what works, whether it comes from a large corporation or grows naturally in my backyard. Where is the evidence?
Well, that's something I must have been doing wrong all these years.
*pouts*
Josh: ah! No, that's true. Undergraduate Psych. Two semesters, actuallay, one on emotions in music generally and another on "The Psychology of Jazz" iirc. Long time ago. Why?
Rohrschach (@330):
Heh. I mentioned earlier that our cat's name is Miranda. My daughter named her that, just because she thought it was a pretty name... but the cat has been fairly quiet (i.e., she doesn't meow much, though she has a loudish purr) most of her life, so I like to tell people that we named her that because she has "the right to remain silent."
Sven:
Because I'm intensely interested in music theory (yep, even undergrad speculation), particularly anything that discusses emotions. There's something about descending second intervals (esp. in the context of passing tones) that strikes me a certain melancholy way, and that I've noticed in certain styles of music. When you made that remark, it stuck out. Don't suppose you have either of those papers in electronic format, and if you do, that you'd be willing to email them?
I had a cat once named Eddie Haskell.
Good names for 2 would be Wally & Beaver.
You'd be surprised. I've been whoring myself out for pennies on the dollar lately. (Though there is the inconvenient fact that your home is on the other side of the continent.)
A nifty website would be cool to have, but the high-end residential market in the Boise area is kind of a good 'ol boy situation. All of the builders who might hire me already know who I am. Or they know someone I've done work for in the past. Plus, I have standing invitations from most of my customers to give tours of the actual houses I've done. Being able to walk someone through a house so they can see and feel the actual product is the best marketing tool I've ever encountered.
The main problem is: NO ONE IS BUILDING HOUSES.
:(:(:(
David M. @458: Arrgggh. I owe apologies to you. Yes, I misread and/or misremembered the "Late Triassic" note in this bit:
Inexcusable. I should proofread my blog as if it were text for a book. Too lax, Lynna, too lax.
Ah. No. These were written before "electronic format" had meaning. 1978? Seriously, long time.
It's actually not impossible, though, that I still have the original hand-and/or-type-written originals. I know which boxes to look in. Should they manifest, I'll cite some references. It was pretty interesting. I remember one prof was impressed enough with my research to pass me despite a nasty Final-choke.
There was a poorly timed shipment, put it that way.
ARIDS (@356) wins the internet for quoting Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats! One of Eliot's most delightful moments (and, of course, the one that led him to become, posthumously, a lyricist for Andrew Lloyd Weber).
And the first gift I ever gave my bride to be, way back yonder....
And this whole "you do it because PZ tells you to" is wearing really thin. If only I didn't have my bias coloured by PZ then I would see the real person behind the quack and realise what a wonderful and brave human being you are. That PZ is the only thing standing between me recognising your role as a selfless public servant working for the greater good against the tyranny of an industry dedicated to turning us into human ATMs...
Yet this is coming from the same person who is trying to teach us to understand your way of thinking. Been there, done that and been wearing the t-shirt long before I had even heard of the sceptical community - much less PZ's blog. I didn't even know what a sceptic was, I thought it was just appropriate to hold any idea to a level of critical inquiry, that the evidence would speak for itself. What I've found in my time looking at the movement is that it follows much along the lines of cultural relativism. It was leftist ideology in the hands of the unempirical types (or course back then I wouldn't have been able to put it in such words).
It's an ideology of its own, adherents will use science whenever it suits them and will cast science off the moment science disagrees. That's not the way of looking at evidence! So many times I've been told stories of how science got this wrong, and science got that wrong, and drug X has this side effect, and drug Y has that side effect. Meanwhile promoting treatments that have no basis in reality, let alone biochemically.
Like I said, been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. At all times, I ask for evidence. At all times (so far), I get back anecdotal stories and accusations of being close minded. That's hardly a foundation to build knowledge upon...
Try to understand where others are coming from, you quack!
boygenius @469, I, for one, would love to have a copy of your portfolio after you put it in order.
@Sven:
Thanks Sven. I don't mean to ask you to go to any trouble, though.
I remember feeling like I'd won the jackpot when my mother got a portable Royal (I think?) typewriter in the mid-80s to write her (late-education) college term papers on. I tried to hog that thing, since I hated writing by hand, and my penmanship was so poor my work got graded down.
Gives me shudders to think back on a world without word processing on computers.
Names for kittehs: Statler and Waldorf.
Lynna:
Indeed. And it is not at all impossible that they may also have Hummers and/or sport cars in need of frequent exercise, and they are very high-maintenance pets.
David M., Order of the Stick link: :D
blf:
It would certainly be organic. ;)
Sven,
Of so, you could do more.
Scan → [OCR | PDF].
Yeeccch. Here's some nasty stuff from the mormons. It shows all too well how they get right into your personal life and load on the guilt, the passive/aggressive mind-fuck, etc. -- all the while making sure you stay in fold, pop out new mormon babies, and pay, pay, pay.
I'll just include an excerpt here, because it's a long post over on exmormon.org, but the whole thing is nightmarishly revealing if you want to go over there and dive in. Excerpt:
Link: http://www.exmormon.org/boards/w-agora/index.php?site=exmobb&bn=exmobb_…
PZ, there's someone using the ID "Sanction" polluting old threads. I'd call it spamming, but there's no content and the name link is just a profile.
Annoying, when I check the "Recent Posts" sidebar.
Lynna! Loads love. I still have a recommendation to write. April 9 is the deadline...right?
*crosses fingers and goes to bed, hoping it ain't too late*