Pharyngula

Posted by: Birger Johansson | August 31, 2010 1:34 PM

Just in:
"Why Americans believe Obama is a Muslim" http://www.physorg.com/news202474157.html

Posted by: Part-Time Insomniac, Zombie Porcupine Nox Arcana Fan | August 31, 2010 1:41 PM

Yes, I made it before the portcullis slammed down!

I'll second Kevin's post. The human mind is an odd thing.

Posted by: Randomfactor | August 31, 2010 1:47 PM

Apparently the flat-birthers have new competition in teh crazy department: the "dunkers," who demand to see Obama's BAPTISMAL certificate.

Posted by: Birger Johansson | August 31, 2010 1:53 PM

Deliberate distortion of facts is the sign of a real knöl (Swedish definition)
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/08/what_is_this_abomination_calle.php

Posted by: Birger Johansson | August 31, 2010 2:04 PM

cicely: Another fire tornado.

Microweather like this is why it is so hard to stop those Californian firestorms. Burning embers get carried far and wide...
I suppose you could stop firestorms with a system of double firebreaks a quarter mile apart, and with planted succulents in between. The succulents would smoulder, but not feed the firestorm.

Posted by: MrFire | August 31, 2010 2:15 PM

I'd like to briefly resurrect the topic of Truck Nutz, for one final, potentially gut-busting, laugh.

I can't remember if this (NSFW) was ever posted at the time Truck Nutz were being discussed, but I've just found it - and almost died laughing from it...especially at the end, where the exchange gets really personal.

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | August 31, 2010 2:26 PM

MrFire:

I'm going to be giggling like an idiot all day. Why did I click your link?

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | August 31, 2010 2:33 PM

Yeah, everybody has some biases; it does not follow that everybody's a sheet-wearing racist asshole

I have to 2nd that Feynmaniac never said anything like this.

Furthermore what is this? You live in a racist society you're going to absorb some of it.

The jump to sheet-wearing seems a bit like the worse-than-Hitler reaction to any suggestion of examinable prejudice.

Posted by: Randomfactor | August 31, 2010 2:40 PM

I think attraction issues are probably something like imprinting.

It's only a problem in those rare instances where someone thinks his dating preferences justify different application of hiring practices or access to housing as well.

Like another poster upthread, I have zero romantic interest in other males, but I wouldn't let that invluence whether or not I'd rent a house to them.

Posted by: MrFire | August 31, 2010 2:46 PM

Oh hey Antiochus, I don't remotely deserve the honor or the effort, but I speculate that it would be very meta to try and do an impersonation of me as part of your ongoing project.

Why? Because I myself have already taken to assimilating and attempting to replicate (like a wannabe Peter Petrelli) the styles of a number of commenters here. The thing is, can you tell which?

Posted by: David Marjanović | August 31, 2010 2:59 PM

Cholerstwo. I get in how many comments per subthread now? 2? And each one of them takes half a day to write, dinner and other activities included!

Part 1 of 2 – too many links again.

========================================

Bizarre new dinosaur found. It's a dromaeosaurid closely related to Velociraptor, but with a couple of twists. For instance, the third finger is reduced to almost nothing like in modern birds, while the first two stay large and retain their large claws; and not only the 2^nd but to some extent also the 1^st toe has a sickle claw. Because of its generally robust build, the animal – "the size of an oversized turkey" – is considered a kickboxer more than a runner.

National Geographic
ScienceDaily

The ScienceDaily article has links to other recent news about dinosaurs closely related to birds. Especially check out this one with its impressive picture.

========================================

Some people here dislike Razib "Gene Expression" Khan rather strongly. Now I understand why.

========================================

That Burgeoning Internet Romance™ is going so well that I need to pay attention so as not to live through it vicariously :-}

^_^

========================================

Though I like the idea of Pharyngula trading cards. Do we get hit points, and strengths and weaknesses? :-D

*giggle*

That would be so awesome... X-D

The Pharyngulista cards should come with statistics. Number of insightful posts, Kw*k references, invectives aimed at creationists, YouTube links, and regrettable drunk postings.

Yes, except that those numbers are always increasing*, so I suggest to use a rate (number of such things per month, averaged over 6 months maybe) rather than an absolute number that would have to be updated.

* Well. Some of us aren't capable of drunk postings. But I don't think none of mine have ever been regrettable. :-þ

And there have to be bonus points for really creative insults.

Ridiculously porphyritic granitoid FTW!

Weakness: incapable of inflicting oral sex on [a] women.

FIFY.

Then what is the point of all those electronics?

To make the ballot process much, much easier,

How? Did you follow the link to how it's done in Italy (it's more or less identical in the rest of the First World)?

plus handle ADA requirements, etc.

What are those, what does ADA mean?

Then go to bed earlier. :-| Do you know how many hours of sleep you need per night?

As best I can gather, 16.

Then something is clinically wrong with you.

Your nose requires its own hour of sleep?

It overproduces, thus restricting my rate of oxygen supply, especially when I lie down. And I don't have the blood pressure to sleep without lying flat.

I'm feeling so immature right now. Wish I could blame it on the alcohol. :P

If you need alcohol for it, you're doing it wrong. :-)

I warned you not to expect it to make sense, and what do you do? ....

I specifically asked how it would make Mormon sense. Didn't I? :-)

Well, at least the subject prompted exclamation marks from David M. Counting coup, Pharyngula style.

What!?!?! Oh, I see – that's another one of your misconceptions about me*. You know, it took me years to train myself out of putting at least three exclamation marks behind just about everything!!!

* I'm not going to forget how surprised and relieved you were to find me citing TV Tropes. You called it "trivial". :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D

it seems that controversy over the fraudulent or non-fraudulent nature of the Kensington Runestone just goes to show that archaeologists are always disagreeing about everything, therefore they are wrong when they doubt evidence of the Book of Mormon's account of history, as proven, for example, in the Bat Creek stone.

Oooh. That I understand, thanks.

The Borg seems to be very fond of the "NoSuchBucketExists" error too. Images of sad walruses and blue buckets pop into my head every time...

You win 1 (one) sniny new Internets.

@ Walton: Sure, you're blushing like a schoolboy, and I'M sitting here trying not to get scared at the idea of a Pharyngula pile-on-the-virgins. I blame my imagination.

<sitting down 1 m away from PTI, to her right>

<stretching left arm out>

<tenderly stroking her hair with back of fingernails>

I know that I, personally, am not physically attracted to people outside a certain range of skin colouration.

Same for me. I blame it on not having grown up around people with more than a certain amount of melanin – it's possible to be sexy and darker than I used to see, but not a lot darker.

No fear is involved, just not fitting into my expectations.

Beauty is similar. Faces too far from European are not attractive – though sufficiently European-like faces occur at least as far south as Rwanda, where people's skin color is very dark indeed!

I don't think they're similar things at all. Sexual orienatation is something you're born with. Not being attracted to those outside your race is not.

What? How do you know? Do you now find people sexy you didn't earlier (or vice versa)?

(Light complected redheads are an exception, luuuuuv redheads, both genders.)

<hiding under desk and shivering>

I find the question "Do Zebras have white stripes on black skin, or black stripes on white skin" extremely helpful in that situation....;)

White stripes on dark brown fur.

How do I know? Phylogenetic bracketing. Which is Scientific for "look at the other horse/donkey species".

is there a point where a woman crosses the line between average and big, while still stay on the, er, lower end of the spectrum?

That varies individually (and culturally) so much that I don't feel like spending 10 minutes on researching my own preferences and trying to write them down. :-) What I can say is that you have to distinguish between the amount of fat and its distribution; those can interplay in complex ways, different ones for different people.

Do that many men really find women who are clearly malnourished (I mean this literally, not as snark) jaw-droppingly sexy?

No; but those who – apparently – do have somehow hijacked the fashion/modeling industry. The backlash started long ago, but it's proceeding very slowly.

For the atheist MMO players *cough*

The comments section is actually quite an interesting read. Well... if you're a WoW geek that is.

Benjamin beat me to it.

It sucks to be an only child

YMMV, extremely. both my brother and i would have benefitted greatly from the nonexistence of the other, while growing up. We didn't wrestle, we went with kitchen-knifes at each other.

The older of my 2 sisters, my brother, and I beat each other up regularly, and generally made each other cry the rest of the time, ranging from misunderstandings (as mentioned we're extremely different personalities) to deliberate pressing of each other's well-known buttons. Add to this that when my brother gets angry enough, he wants to really hurt people; he loses a lot of restraint. Together with me, he ruined the kitchen door, pulling it off its upper hinge and actually ripping into the chipboard itself. (I spent years gluing and regluing it.) And when my sister went to school in the French-speaking part of Switzerland for a year when she was 16 or so (so I must have been 21!), I didn't miss her.

While kitchen knives were never involved, interesting blunt instruments were wielded and sometimes thrown, once even a pair of scissors was sent flying, and a hand drill was used to ruin a pullover that was being worn at the time.

Still I wouldn't have preferred to be an only child, except probably in Dania's situation (lots of other kids around all the time). This is based not only on the rest of the family experience, but also on the only children we knew.

spoken by someone who until recently needed at least one beer to not get stomach-aches from just talking to people

And still you talk a lot more after the third beer than before the first one.

and regrettable drunk postings.

shit, i don't actually think I've ever done that. I blame it on my lazy ass and my teetotaling boyfriend.

Could be, because your rate of TMI spillage in meatspace seems to increase markedly with decreasing percentage of blood in your alcohol. <toothy grin>

Don't forget the Mormon names. I quite enjoyed calling myself "Waltonvilar Bodily Q. Tabernacle, Prince of the Stars."

And there have to be bonus points for really creative insults.

I see... my card would be the most boring one of all. Tragic.

I wasn't even there when the Mormon names are distributed. And while "fuckgnome" isn't original to you, it's way more creative than anything I've ever said in the last 20 years, "ridiculously porphyritic granitoid" (© Josh the geologist) perhaps excepted!

But does your beau know you're poly?

having multiple (internet)crushes is not a sign of being poly; wanting/needing more than a monogamous relationship is being poly.

Shit, I forgot the smiley.

I know full well Pikachu was joking; I tried to continue the joke by taking what he said far too seriously. I usually fail when I try to extend other people's jokes. <pout> <hands position="pockets"> <kick object="gravel">

(Seriously, it's my fault. It must be seriously difficult to guess how clueless I am and how clueless I'm not.)

The Waterworld of white self-pity...

"Glenn Beck's rally was large, vague, moist, and undirected—the Waterworld of white self-pity." :-D :-D :-D

The bonus was discovered after getting to know her and finding out she also liked sex multiple times a day, which for any guy is like =8D news.

I have second- or third-hand information that someone's friend complained that the guys she knows that well only want about twice a week. Apparently, thus, you overgeneralized a little.

Posted by: Randomfactor | August 31, 2010 3:16 PM

I have second- or third-hand information that someone's friend complained that the guys she knows that well only want about twice a week. Apparently, thus, you overgeneralized a little.

A good female friend of mine is quite plus-sized and is by her self-description the most highly-sexualized fundie I've ever heard of...the sex she denies herself would be multiple-per-day if it weren't sinful unto the Lord.

Before her discovery of how well fundie Christian religion works if you want to beat yourself over the head with it, she repeatedly bemoaned the fact that *NO* boyfriends/lovers she had ever had were anywhere near as interested in it as she.

I never understand their lack of interest (it isn't size, as she hasn't always been large in the quarter-century I've known her). But then, I also don't understand what it is besides my fundamentalist atheism that always ruled me out as a candidate. Hair color, maybe, as she likes blond guys.

Even then, she's jokingly mentioned that it wouldn't be sinful if we were married...but I have religious objections to getting married just for sex. (I have financial objections to paying for it.)

Posted by: Randomfactor | August 31, 2010 3:22 PM

I seriously think the woman was on meth.

This wasn't a California dentist, was it? Woman named Taitz?

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

Feynmaniac:

Can people focus on what I actually wrote...

Actually, no.

I really wasn't interested in having a narrow argument with you¹, and I certainly wasn't interested in arguing with you over your response to a single sentence from Ch'tturgha. Instead, I was trying to comment more broadly on the ongoing conversation, which involved many more voices than just yours and Ch'tturgha's, and which contains echos of other conversations we've had here about racism (and by analogy, sexism), and about what folks consider sexy, and why. My generic references (i.e., to "some here," "folks," etc.) weren't cutesy circumlocutions, but a genuine attempt to make this not personal.

My typical impulse, I confess, it to expand these conversations, rather than to hone in on particulars. This is not about wanting to strawman anyone; it's about wanting to be involved in something more conversationally nutritious than simply quibbling over details.

All that said... since you ask, I will respond to a couple points:

Roughly half the human population is made up of people I have absolutely no sexual interest in (for lack of a better term, let's just call them males), yet I'm pretty sure I don't harbor any hatred of them, nor any invidious impulse to treat them unjustly.

I've already mentioned why saying 'I'm not attracted to people of certain gender' is very different from 'I'm not attracted to people of certain races'.

You did, indeed, and I don't disagree with your point, as far as it goes. But I was attempting to make what I thought was a slightly different point (though you might disagree): It seems to me that sexual interest by itself — regardless of whether it's based on gender or non-gender-based physical attributes (which may or may not map to "race"), and regardless of whether one's sexual preferences are inborn, acquired, or consciously chosen — is not an essential aspect of treating our fellow humans equitably. What matters is if my attitudes toward others are just and fair; whether or not I get a boner when I look at them is almost certainly incidental to that question. Certainly some people may find members of a certain race unattractive because of their a priori racism, but the converse doesn't necessarily follow: Not finding people who look a certain way attractive doesn't, by itself, make one a racist.

But in any case...

The fact that these "aesthetic preferences" just happen to match with the American segregionist past...

...why do you assume they do "match with the American segregionist past"? Even the comment from Ch'tturgha that's been the focus of your response...

I know that I, personally, am not physically attracted to people outside a certain range of skin colouration.

...doesn't necessarily match prototypical American racism: Unless I missed it (entirely possible, as I've had to do a bit of skimming to keep up), we don't know what colour Ch'tturgha's own skin is, nor what "range" of coloration it is that bounds Ch'tturgha's sexual interest. Perhaps this particular preference flies in the face of, rather that matching, our culture's traditional racial proscriptions. Certainly I haven't heard others in this conversation saying anything that sounds anything like "Whul, Ah'm whaaaat, and I dang shore won't sleep with anyone who ain't." I don't doubt that such people exist, and I'll stand right next to you and call them out as racists... but that doesn't seem like what's been going on in this h'yar thread.


¹ Just as an aside, I also wasn't particularly interested in arguing with you personally, because I count you as One of the Good Guys™, and don't want to fight.

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | August 31, 2010 3:28 PM

@David M:

My sister and I look very much alike aside from body shape (she's a bit on the heavy side, I'm skinny as a rail.) We're both tall. We've both got really dark hair. We have the same general facial features. Her eyes are brown, mine are hazel.

Posted by: Part-Time Insomniac, Zombie Porcupine Nox Arcana Fan | August 31, 2010 3:32 PM

1 m? Is that meter or mile?

Oh wait, never mind, it's meter. Just did some quick conversions to see (otherwise I'd be asking how your could stretch your arm a la Mr. Fantastic). You can go on stroking my hair now.

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | August 31, 2010 3:58 PM

I don't think I minded being the only child. It probably was to my advantage actually.

To be honest, one thing I don't pine for is more family.

Posted by: MrFire | August 31, 2010 4:04 PM

MrFire: You have my attention. This is going to be fun.

!

Just remember that, in my case, imitation is the sincerest form of flatulence: my impersonations stink.

Posted by: Kristjan Wager | August 31, 2010 4:07 PM

Some people here dislike Razib "Gene Expression" Khan rather strongly. Now I understand why.

Is Razib still blogging? Who would have thought. Haven't looked at his stuff since sometime before ScienceBlogs started. It was bad back then, and it doesn't look like it has changed.

Posted by: Aaron Baker | August 31, 2010 4:21 PM

Feynmaniac cited this excretum from Ann Coulter:

COULTER:You walk past a mixed-race couple in New York, and it's like they have a chip on their shoulder. They're just waiting for somebody to say something, as if anybody would. And -- DEUTSCH: I don't agree with that. I don't agree with that at all. Maybe you have the chip looking at them. I see a lot of interracial couples, and I don't see any more or less chips there either way. That's erroneous. COULTER: No. In fact, there was an entire Seinfeld episode about Elaine and her boyfriend dating because they wanted to be a mixed-race couple, so you're lying.

Since Ann Coulter is always the ne plus ultra in idiocy, and idiocy conveyed so as to be maximally offensive, she may not be the best example of standard-issue idiocy.

To give a (perhaps) better example, I remember a very bad short story by Joseph Epstein, in which a conservative, Jewish narrator recalls a radical, Jewish former student of his (I think), who married a black woman. For the narrator, the former student's motive must have been the cachet that naturally attaches to marriages between whites and blacks in the minds of lefties. Pretty dumb, and striking, too, given that Epstein is not by any means a stupid person.

My observations are as anecdotal as anybody else's, but since I speak as a white man married to a black woman for 29 years, maybe they carry some weight. When we go out (in Chicago and its vicinity, not New York), we're not generally aware of any chip we're carrying on our shoulders; nor is there the slightest feeling that we have cachet. (In fact I think I may be the most cachetless person on the planet.)

Now maybe other salt-and-pepper couples are cacheting and shoulder-chipping with a vengeance, but I've known quite a few such couples, and I doubt it.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | August 31, 2010 4:23 PM

Ol'Greg:

Yeah, everybody has some biases; it does not follow that everybody's a sheet-wearing racist asshole

I have to 2nd that Feynmaniac never said anything like this.

I didn't say he did... or, at least, I didn't mean to say he did; I meant to be commenting on the risk of conversations like this one sliding off to extremes. Perhaps my repsonse to him (#27, which I was pecking away at even as you were writing your comment) helps clarify that I meant my comments more generally... or perhaps it just made things worse; I can never tell.

You live in a racist society you're going to absorb some of it.

Sure, we all soak up stuff — good and bad — from the cultures we grow up in, and that includes enculturated racial biases and stereotypes. And yet there's a profound, philosophical (and functional) difference between the sort of cosmic-background-radiation level of bias that even the best among us can't escape and the systematic, endemic (and often conscious and deliberate) denigration and hatred that characterizes the worst of us... a difference that, it seems to me, the language we use in these discussions often obscures (for which I don't mean to be blaming Feymaniac or any other individual in this discussion). It seems to me that racism connotes the extreme, hate-driven end of this spectrum, yet because our language is what it is, we end up applying that ugly word to something as innocence (or so it seems to me) as finding a certain hair color or skin tone beautiful.

Even though it jumped off from something Caine said in response to something Feynmanic said, my whole comment in the last subThread was really a meditation on how the language of these conversations elides important distinctions, and not at all an attempt to engage Feynmaniac in point-by-point debate.

You say my "sheet-wearing" comment was extreme, and it was. Deliberately so: I was trying to define the extreme boundary of the conversational space. I meant it to be exemplary rather than inflammatory, and perhaps I miscalculated. And yet... down-thread from your response, Feynmaniac quotes *nn C**lt*r, and it's honestly beyond me to imagine how any of her hateful natterings about "racial mixing" (or any other subject for that matter) could possibly be relevant to anything anybody here has said on the topic.

Posted by: Jules, Bride of Death | August 31, 2010 4:29 PM

I have no personal frame of reference for the alternative, but I know that I really love having siblings. Sure, we fought miserably when we were younger. Sister was particularly crafty and cruel. Brother 1 had a temper that could scare even Sister. Brother 2 and (Semi-Adopted)Brother 3 are a bit too young to have participated in those adventures, but we still found ways entertaining ourselves at their expense, and vice versa.

I'm really social and from a really social family. It's nice how that worked out. By the time Sister was 16 and I was 15, we were best friends. I still get into conflicts with Brothers 1 and 2 (mostly because they are unbelievably spoiled and the favoritism gets to me), but we still have a lot of fun. Brother 3 is too young to fight with, and he's a teddy bear anyway. He's 6'2", over 200 lbs, and still tries to sit in my lap.

I like having built-in friends, especially ones who have known me my entire life and therefore "get" me better than most folks.

Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe | August 31, 2010 4:35 PM

While kitchen knives were never involved, interesting blunt instruments were wielded and sometimes thrown, once even a pair of scissors was sent flying, and a hand drill was used to ruin a pullover that was being worn at the time.

Still I wouldn't have preferred to be an only child

yes yes, you wouldn't want to be a single child. That was clear from the first time you said that. that however isn't transferable onto other people. Not only would I have preferred to be a single child, I'd be significantly less psychologically damaged if I had been one; and the same goes for my brother. Your experience is not universal. And it's not a valid argument for breeding more than once.

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | August 31, 2010 4:36 PM

Anyone got a suggestion?

Danscos or Naots. They make some pretty enough to wear with dresses, but very comfortable.

Pricey but if you bargain hunt you can find them for a better price. And I wore one pair for 10 years, so they tend to be well made.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | August 31, 2010 4:38 PM

Some people here dislike Razib "Gene Expression" Khan rather strongly. Now I understand why.

way tl;dr

A quick skim suggests somebody's butthurt over something mean Khan said about cultural anthropology.

Posted by: Ogvorbis, Parenthetical Death | August 31, 2010 4:47 PM

If they nest, will they reproduce?

That would (possibly (probably, actually)) explain my writing (lack of) style. Apparently, I have a breeding pair of parentheses nesting in my skull (well, there's plenty of room).

Reaktivney Protivotanko[v]yi Granatomet

There's something seriously wrong with me that I attempt pedant and achieve pathet. Screwing up a pedantic sugestion may be the ultimate fail. Sorry, David. I know you have better things to do (I hope, anyway) than correct incorrect pedanticisms.

Posted by: Aaron Baker | August 31, 2010 4:58 PM

On another subject completely: I've already mentioned this a couple of times, way back in the endless thread, and as far I could tell, not a single person responded. I'm going to try again, and I really wish someone would respond, as it's genuinely important.

Gregory Koger, who was arrested basically for filming in front of the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago when they didn't want that to happen, had his trial last week and was found guilty. Probably because of his previous record, he was taken straight to jail, where he remains. His sentencing hearing is on September 8, at the Skokie Courthouse (I don't know in which courtroom yet; but his case is so well known in Skokie that the folks at the information desk just have to hear the name "Koger" to steer you to the right place).

I've been asked to testify as a character witness at the sentencing. I think that just as important, maybe more so, would be this: as many people as possible going to court in Skokie to show moral support, OR, if that's not feasible, sending him their best wishes. I'm happy to find out ways to get a supportive message to him.

Would someone, anyone, please respond, so that I know I'm not just speaking to the ether?

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | August 31, 2010 5:05 PM

Gregory Koger, who was arrested basically for filming in front of the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago when they didn't want that to happen, had his trial last week and was found guilty. Probably because of his previous record, he was taken straight to jail, where he remains.

That fuckin' blows. Have you informed PZ? He can post about it.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | August 31, 2010 5:19 PM

Walton, cool! I haven't gotten a copy yet, I'm looking forward to it.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | August 31, 2010 5:25 PM

@ Aaron Baker,
Not much I can do except send stern thoughts toward Skokie's judiciary.

Regarding the siblings vs not, I think I got a little of both. Two brothers, both old enough that I felt like an only child with cousins who slept in the house. We didn't conflict because we were on opposite sides of the world even though we lived in the same house.

Posted by: JeffreyD | August 31, 2010 5:32 PM

Walton, Caine -

Walton, cool! I haven't gotten a copy yet, I'm looking forward to it.

I enjoyed Unseen Academicals very much. A little different and not sure I liked it at the start, but came to like it. I bought it, forgot to take it to the UK with me, and ended up buying an ecopy.

Posted by: Paul | August 31, 2010 5:49 PM

That fuckin' blows. Have you informed PZ? He can post about it.

It would be good if he could follow up and shed some light on it. He did comment on the situation when Koger was first arrested (here and here if anyone is interested in some context).

I'm truly disappointed that charges weren't dropped, horribly moreso that he's been convicted (what were the charges, specifically?).

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | August 31, 2010 5:54 PM

Jeffrey:

I enjoyed Unseen Academicals very much. A little different and not sure I liked it at the start, but came to like it.

The wizards aren't my favourites and I know it's about football, which is not my thing, but if anyone can make it entertaining, Terry Pratchett can.

Posted by: JeffreyD | August 31, 2010 5:56 PM

Caine, like wizards, hate football, but it worked for me. Pratchett could make the phone book interesting.

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | August 31, 2010 6:08 PM

I have three brothers, all younger than me, and I don't think we look much of anything alike. You can tell we're related, though, so obviously there are some triggers there, they just aren't obvious. The weird thing is that I have never thought I looked anything like my mother, but the other day I was taking random pictures of myself for my Facebook profile (as I am wont to do), and for some reason one of them looked exactly like my mom. The lighting, the expression, everything made me think "Mom" before even registering it as a picture of myself. That was strange.

Posted by: Aaron Baker | August 31, 2010 6:17 PM

Paul,

The charges were criminal trespass, resisting arrest, and simple battery (and he was convicted on all three counts).

These are all misdemeanors; but, given his conviction for a very serious prior offense, some jail time is likely. His legal team plans to appel btw.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | August 31, 2010 6:26 PM

Feynmaniac:

My typical impulse, I confess, it to expand these conversations, rather than to hone in on particulars.

Well, if you do that please indicate so, especially if you mention me by name in the post.

Yeah, what I really meant was "Hmmm... what Feynmaniac said (or more precisely, what Caine said about what Feynmaniac said) provides a convenient jumping off point for this stuff I've been thinking about anyway." Should've been clearer about that. Obviously, your comments were part of what I was responding to, but only in the context of the larger discussion. (For future reference, I'm usually pretty anal about quoting stuff that I mean to be responding directly to.)

I count you as One of the Good Guys™, and don't want to fight.

FWIW, I feel the same way.

Cool; I'm relieved.

It's not about being a racist, it's about discriminating on the basis of race. Everyone does it.

Sure we do. But except for committed racists, we don't do it all the time, and we aren't necessarily doing it even when we talk about things — like physical characteristics — that sometimes map to "race" in other contexts.

Take Ch'tturgha's comment about a "range of skin coloration": Maybe that's just code for racial discrimination — certainly we're conditioned to think of it that way — but what if we take it at face value? What if it's just a statement of color preference, not fundamentally different from the sort of preference you might express standing in front of the paint chip rack at Home Depot? And what if the range Ch'tturgha had in mind was from dark tan to medium brown? That would encompass a huge diversity of people, spanning the majority of the so-called "races" on the planet, many of whom would not resemble each other in any other particular besides falling into that range of skin tones. In that case, would it still seem like an expression (perhaps unconscious) of traditional American segregationalist racism?

Another distinction I was trying to make is between an exclusionary "preference" such as Ch'tturgha's and the preferences for particular attributes expressed by almost everyone else in the thread who expressed a preference. Rejecting people who fall outside certain boundaries may be racial discrimination (if the specified boundaries correspond to some sort of racial definition), but it's not possible to make any such inference from a preference for some attribute: If I say I think red hair is sexy, it doesn't follow that I dislike, or would reject, people with other hair colors.

All of which is just a longwinded way of saying I fear we (by which I explicitly do not mean you as an individual) are a skosh too quick to interpret any discussion of people's physical appearance through a lens of racism (not to mention sexism). It can sometimes be a real challenge to articulate anything about what one finds sexy or beautiful without risking being perceived as some flavor or other of jerk.

Maybe the answer is to simply not talk about what's sexy... but if we succumb to that impulse, The Puritans Will Have Won!®

;^)

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | August 31, 2010 6:31 PM

Just a pop in to say "Teardrop" is one of my fav songs EVER from one of the best albums EVER.

Maybe I'll catch up on what I missed. And maybe I'll go back to playing Mass Effect. We'll see.

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | August 31, 2010 6:47 PM

MrFire from the last thread:

I deliberately avoided getting braces - at a time when it would have been free, too (as a child in the U.K. NHS) - because the three years that I would have had to wear them would have meant getting bullied and being rejected by the ladies.

Oh holy shit. Braces.

I spent over five years with all sorts of metal contraptions in my mouth to fix my screwed up teeth. It was painful and (since I was already a huge nerd in middle school) embarrassing. But you know what? I'm glad my parents made me do it.

My teeth have moved a bit since then, but it's not too severe or noticeable. It's my own damned fault anyway-- I had a "permanent retainer" on the inside of my bottom teeth that I got frustrated with one day and ripped out on my own.

Not the wisest decision for a 17 year old to make, but whatevs. I wasn't planning on going back to my orthodontist, anyway.

Posted by: otrame | August 31, 2010 6:52 PM

Check out Steve Hughes' take on
gay vs. straight.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | August 31, 2010 6:59 PM

What's happening to Kroger is probably a travesty of justice. However, I can't get excited about the case because of some of the other people involved.

Kroger is an associate of Sunsara Taylor who is a follower of Bob Avakian. I've previously written about Avakian. I'm not a fan of him or his minions.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | August 31, 2010 7:03 PM

David:

Bookish? Odd? First, I'm all those, and second, those aren't bugs, they're features!

I'm all those too and they are definitely features!

Posted by: Paul | August 31, 2010 7:16 PM

@Tis, 81

First the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago had the Maoists arrested for trespassing. I did not speak up...

Somehow, I doubt they hold strident atheists in much higher accord than strident Maoists.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | August 31, 2010 7:32 PM

'Tis:

This is a bit after-the-fact, but I was thinking of you Sunday. I'd been working at a candidates' booth at the Brooklyn Fair, and on my way out I stopped by the main stage, where a Jimmy Buffet tribute band was playing. Now, given that you're a fan of authentic maritime music, I can't guess whether you think Buffet is cool or just a frickin' poseur, but these guys put on a good show, and I thought of you when they got to this part of "Son of a Son of a Sailor":

Haul the sheet in
As we ride on the wind
That our forefathers
Harnessed before us.

Hear the bells ring
And the tight riggin' sing,
It's a sun of a gun
Of a chorus!

Did you make it out sailing in the beautiful weather we had?

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | August 31, 2010 7:36 PM

I realize that Kroger is being screwed over by the justice system. I also realize it's the principle of the thing rather than the specifics, so I should give a damn. However, I've got a strong prejudice against Kroger because he's a follower of Bob Avakian. I really dislike Avakian because he's an authoritarian Maoist. If Avakian were running the country Kroger wouldn't see a judge, just a hangman.

Posted by: Part-Time Insomniac, Zombie Porcupine Nox Arcana Fan | August 31, 2010 8:03 PM

Man I almost wish I didn't have to go to work tomorrow. I just know the first day is going to drive me to the brink. Well maybe I can finally get that new pair of glasses I've been saving up for this weekend. Small consolation.

Posted by: Ogvorbis, Parenthetical Death | August 31, 2010 8:05 PM

Part-Time Insomniac:

I know the feeling. Tomorrow is Monday. And I know, just know, that there will shitloads, and I mean shitloads, of stuff piled up which needed to be done by real world Monday not Ogvorbisvere Monday.

Posted by: David Marjanović | August 31, 2010 8:10 PM

Did anyone here hear of Citizendium before reading this post? It's a very impressive example of How Not To Do It™.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | August 31, 2010 8:16 PM

Whenever I think of 2D Goggles these two pictures come to mind.

Posted by: Ogvorbis, Parenthetical Death | August 31, 2010 8:26 PM

Thank goodness this coming weekend is a long one. I need a vacation stat!

That would be nice. Unfortunately I deal with tourists -- you know, the people with the long weekends?

Actually, I like holidays. And I really like working holidays.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | August 31, 2010 8:29 PM

Aah, taking Friday off for an even longer holiday. But, in my case, somebody (not me) makes plans....

Posted by: David Marjanović | August 31, 2010 8:41 PM

Americans with Disabilities Act

Oh, thanks.

I don't see a contradiction.

You said your lack of attraction to darker people had to due with the fact that you grew up with light skinned people. That is, it wasn't because of biology (like sexual orientation).

Fine, but I still haven't chosen it and can't change it.

Well, there has been race riots and tensions with Muslim immigrants.

No. That's xenophobia (including islamophobia), not racism. (And a complete lack of future on the other side: having finished school, people – French citizens, born in France – sit around lacking a job and having little or no hope of ever getting one.) It's really difficult to compare that kind of thing to an American race riot.

There is also a history of anti-miscegenation laws.

Oh man, was that long ago.

I am afraid however I'm not sure I see the relevance.

Unlike Austrians of my generation, but like many Americans since ever, Parisians of my generation have grown up with the full skin color spectrum. Unlike the US, France lacks a history of segregation based on skin color (back when the public opinion would have supported such a thing, there simply was nobody to segregate, except in the colonies). So, if I'm right about my condition being due to the homogeneity of the people I saw when I grew up, I'd expect to see lots of latte-colored and otherwise "mixed" children in Paris, and that's what I did see (and what my parents already saw).

If Avakian were running the country Kroger wouldn't see a judge, just a hangman.

Tsk, tsk. How bourgeois. In China, people are shot, and the family is made to pay for the bullet.

Posted by: mferrari | August 31, 2010 8:57 PM

Hey guys! Another Eric hovind poll to pharyngulate! Let's make him cry!

Drdino.com

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | August 31, 2010 9:02 PM

Nerd:

Aah, taking Friday off for an even longer holiday. But, in my case, somebody (not me) makes plans....

Mr. C is taking Friday as well. Labor Day weekend is a *huge* 3 day party in Almont, hundreds of people descend on our itty bitty 'town' to party.

Posted by: mferrari | August 31, 2010 9:28 PM

Ogvorbis:

Interesting, I accessed the site from my iPhone. I'm sure they don't have malicious code for iPhone users trying to pharyngulate their inane polls.

Posted by: Birger Johansson | August 31, 2010 9:35 PM

I feel the same way about exoplanet discovery: http://www.xkcd.com/786/
Clueless stand-up :) http://www.xkcd.com/785/

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | August 31, 2010 9:52 PM

Oh holy shit. Braces.

First, nobody who didn't play a brass instrument can complain much to me about braces.

Second, please pity my fabulous strong daughter, who got braces on Monday and went to highschool* orienation Tuesday.

*an undistinguished, regular old Long Island highschool with few if any famous alumni afaik**.

**I stand corrected!!! According to 'kipedia:
* Paul Krugman, economist, Princeton University Professor, and columnist for The New York Times, Nobel Prize in economics.

* Amy Fisher, convicted of the 1992 shooting of the wife of her lover Joey Buttafuoco (did not graduate)

* Steve Levy, host of ESPN SportsCenter

and some other people I never heard of.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | August 31, 2010 10:06 PM

Buttafuoco

I had a student with that surname here on Long Island! Poor kid.

Posted by: Part-Time Insomniac, Zombie Porcupine Nox Arcana Fan | August 31, 2010 10:22 PM

That's kind of an unfortunate surname to have around immature, crass-minded folk like me.

Oh brother . . . it's not even one of the worst names to have. Look up a list of Italian surnames and see just how many there are that are pure joke fodder.

Posted by: Part-Time Insomniac, Zombie Porcupine Nox Arcana Fan | August 31, 2010 10:24 PM

Sorry, blockquote fail. The first part was supposed to be the quoted part.

Posted by: irenedelse | August 31, 2010 10:35 PM

@ Feynmaniac #88:

Well, there has been race riots and tensions with Muslim immigrants [in France]. There is also a history of anti-miscegenation laws. I am afraid however I'm not sure I see the relevance.

Allow me to correct a few misconceptions, as someone who does live in France and know more than a little about the history and current problems of the country.

1) You have to go back two centuries to find examples of anti-miscegenation laws in France, at a time when slavery was still legal in Europe (and elsewhere in the world). In fact, the Wikipedia article you link to says that interracial relationships became quite common in France in the beginning of the 20th Century. So, on that issue, yes, there's certainly less hang-ups in modern France about interracial relationships than in modern USA. (It doesn't stop a very vocal minority of French xenophobes to deny equal right to immigrants, of course. But they are also against White immigrants! One of the rising French politicians is Norwegian-born, and the xenophobic loudmouth Le Pen is calling to ban her from running for office!)

2) To call the 2005 urban riots in France "race riots" is problematic. Better call it social riots, because a major issue was about people who live in poor and degraded neighborhoods, whether they are Blacks, Whites or Arabs. And there were a lot of White people involved in the riots, and often in the same gangs as non-Whites.

What may be confusing is that recent immigrants do gather in the "bad" (poorer) parts of towns, and they are often non-Whites (though we do have immigration from ex-Eastern Europe). But there are no all-Black gangs, or all Asians, or all Arabs. Neither are they all Muslims! A lot of African immigrants are Christians, and Evangelical Christians, even (which doesn't sit well with the Catholic majority in France, but that's a different problem). The same is true of Roma and other ethnic minorities targeted by the French xenophobes.

What is often a real source of violence is geographic gangs: youngsters from one neighborhood clashing against what they perceive as intruders on their turf, be it the police, or people from the next neighborhood... But these gangs are mixed race. The only thing we have that could be termed "racial gangs" are some White soccer hooligans whose political outlook is a bit similar to the Tea Partiers.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | August 31, 2010 10:46 PM

Feynmaniac:

People change their views on race all the time.

Perhaps I misunderstood him, but I thought David was saying he can't change what he finds attractive, which is not quite the same thing as a "view" about anything, let alone race.

This may be a fundamental disconnect in this conversation: If we think of "what turns me on" as an opinion, something about which we can simply choose to change our minds, then it would indeed be rational to infer other related opinions (e.g., about race) from that, and it would be rational to hold people accountable for those opinions.

But in my experience (and apparently in David's, as well), "what turns me on" is not a matter of consciously chosen opinion, nor is it subject to volitional change. That's not to say it's immutable: Like my tastes in food and art, my taste in beauty and sexiness has changed over time. But it's not something I've ever been able to decide to change. If big enhanced breasts got me all hot and bothered (they don't; it's just a hypothetical), I couldn't simply decide not to feel that way even if I had a reason to want to. It's not a "view"; it's an involuntary feeling.

Posted by: Mattir-ritated | August 31, 2010 10:53 PM

Your daughter's going to high school with Krugman? Kewl.

Actually, not kewl. He graduated from high school years ago. So why's he going back?

I skipped 6th grade and went from 11th into college without graduating from HS. Despite the JD/PhD, I still have dreams where I have to go back and finish elementary and high school as a middle-aged woman. Needless to say, I don't really fit in in those dreams...

I took all the squares to Borders tonight and spent knitting group sewing them together. The Hitch afghan is is going to look really great!

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | August 31, 2010 10:57 PM

irenedelse,

In fact, the Wikipedia article you link to says that interracial relationships became quite common in France in the beginning of the 20th Century.

It didn't say common, it said some occured with "non-white soldiers, mainly Indian" during WWI. It also said that female nurses' conctact "with black African labourers and soldiers were more severely restricted by both British and French authorities".

To call the 2005 urban riots in France "race riots" is problematic

See #112. I'm going based on what I've read in the press. If you (or anyone else) can show that it's wrong I'll retract it.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | August 31, 2010 11:00 PM

Seeing gingers on another thread reminds me, anyone hear from BoS lately on how her therapy is going? And let her know a blog full of atheists aren't praying for her (or PZ), but still wishing her well.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | August 31, 2010 11:14 PM

Bill:

You have rules about not taking too many days that extend other time off?

A lot of places have that rule. When Mr. C worked for Bobcat, they were extremely serious about that sort of thing - you couldn't take a Friday or Tuesday on a long weekend; You had to be back at the end of a holiday or you'd lose holiday pay, etc.

You couldn't take days which extended your slated vacation either, nor could you take the day before or the day after the xmas break.

Posted by: Audley Z. Darkheart OM, purveyor of candy and lies | August 31, 2010 11:15 PM

Ogvorbis:
I've gotta agree w/ Bill-- your situation is assy. Hell, I can even take sick time w/out explaining why.

I'm still waiting to hear if my October vacation has been approved, though, which totally sucks. Usually I hear back w/in a day or two, but I've been waiting for two weeks now. And my emails are going unanswered.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | August 31, 2010 11:42 PM

Wow. A couple subThreads ago I posted about being reminded not only of my social privilege, but also of my personal good fortune, and this discussion of vacation policies has reminded me of that again.

I knew my company had good benefits (I'm eternally thankful for our insurance, which got us through my daughter's cancer treatment with nary a hassle and not much more out-of-pocket medical costs than a "normal" year), but sometimes I forget how good they are, including liberal vacation scheduling policies and functional, highly adaptable flex time. I guess I shouldn't have moaned about the furlough days, which were an (IMHO preferable) alternative to either layoffs or permanent salary reductions in the wake of the 2008 economic downturn.

Rules about not taking vacation around holidays strike me as particularly obnoxious, since they often effectively mean employees can never travel for Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. In the case of my friend from FL, like me, he's a middle-aged, portly, sometimes-runner, and I've been trying to get him to come up here and run the Manchester Road Race. But since the race is on Thanksgiving Day morning, and he's not allowed to take the day before off, the logistics will never work out. 8^(

Posted by: Ch'tturgha | August 31, 2010 11:48 PM

Rules about not taking vacation around holidays strike me as particularly obnoxious, since they often effectively mean employees can never travel for Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc.

My workplace has those. If you take both days on either side of a weekend, you get charged for both weekend days. If you have a three-day weekend due to holidays and you try to sling on even one more day, you have to give up paid time-off for all of those days.

Then again, they also leech an extra day out of me each month (at least once a month it's a seven-day work week (Mon-Sun), with the following Monday off, then Tues-Fri, back to normal the following week). Still, the pay/benefits make it worthwhile, especially since they're willing to let me work odd hours to allow for university.

Posted by: Jules, Bride of Death | September 1, 2010 12:01 AM

David M
My semi-adopted brother is a kid that my mom started babysitting for when he was a very young infant (5 weeks). His mom is a single mom, his dad is completely out of the picture (Brother doesn't even know what his dad looks like except pictures), so he basically lived with us, especially when his house was only a mile away. His mother is a very devoted mother, but she's practically family too, so there were a lot of nights (especially when he was younger) that she just stayed at our house for dinner (or, more likely, until bedtime). As he got older and didn't need us anymore, they still came over all the time. Sometimes he packs a bag and tells his mom it's time to go to his other house, and he comes and stays for however long he wants (about a week).

People used to tell my mom he looks just like the other boys or my dad. It was pretty amusing because he's half-black. They also used to think he was my kid (I'm 15 years older). Now that he's 14 and looks 20, we don't get those comments as often (especially me).

It's one big integrated family, and I really love it. When we put Dad's obituary in the paper, I made sure he was listed under the children.

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | September 1, 2010 12:15 AM

And more lightly, I have been working on a lecture I'm given tomorrow on species concepts. I have this lovely quote from the Charles

“Nor shall I here discuss the various definitions that have been given of the term species. No one definition has satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of species.” --C. Darwin Origin of Species

And I thought...would it be so false if it read thus:

“Nor shall I here discuss the various definitions that have been given of the term species porn. No one definition has satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of species porn.” --C. Darwin Origin of Species

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | September 1, 2010 12:17 AM

giving. F-me.

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 1, 2010 12:30 AM

sure thing:

https://mindonline.uchicago.edu/media/history/fishbein/darwin_2009/coyne_512k.mov

his definition appears to be basically the standard BSC, modified by his knowledge of population genetics.

he makes no argument in defense of the BSC itself, but does make an excellent argument for why we need to look at population genetics when we discuss the issue of speciation, especially wrt to how speciation takes place.

I found his take on polyploidy in plants as an example of why we need to take population genetics into account in this sense enlightening.

worth the time to listen to.

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 1, 2010 12:37 AM

Ultimately, I might allow electric Jerry to give my lecture. And I'll go out for a smoke.

let Jerry steal your thunder?

:)

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 1, 2010 12:39 AM

last comment:

I often disagree with Marjanovich on his take regarding species concepts, but I have to admit he's up on the material; seems a special interest of his (not surprising).

might want to have him float some references, as he will have the latest at hand I'm sure.

Posted by: Ragutis | September 1, 2010 12:44 AM

Don't know if anyone's mentioned this previously (so hard to keep up around here) but figured this would be interesting, at least to our host:

The Case for Cephalopod Consciousness

(via io9)

Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa) | September 1, 2010 1:25 AM

I still think the fundamentals of what I was saying were right. Everyone has racial biases and I urge everyone examine them, whatever they may be.

I also think you're fundamentally right. But it's not an easy side to argue. Most people don't want to acknowledge that they may have these biases, and it's very easy to get clouded in emotions.

I hope you don't fret over it, Cheon na.

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | September 1, 2010 3:03 AM

Piltdown Man commenting at FSTDT:

Tempus wrote:

"Isn't this the guy who claimed Meyers was demon-possessed or something?"

Urban legend. I actually said the individual calling himself "FSMdude" was in all probability a victim of demonic possession.

There is some evidence that PZ Myers could be suffering from the condition known as demonic obsession, but full-blown possession seems unlikely.

(BTW I gather Professor Myers has been very poorly lately. May God grant him a swift recovery and contrition for his sacrilegious acts.)

He also responded to Gyeong Hwa Pak calling him "the most deluded Catholic I've ever meet".

Posted by: SteveV, Death's Pissant Haberdasher | September 1, 2010 4:02 AM

Everyone has racial biases and I urge everyone examine them, whatever they may be.

QFT As the father of 'mixed child' I have had to confront this in myself. It's not pleasant or easy to admit, but it is necessary.

Posted by: Rorschach | September 1, 2010 4:29 AM

Seeing gingers on another thread reminds me, anyone hear from BoS lately on how her therapy is going?

No.

On the plus side, there may be some progress in my contemplation

Good luck ! I recently found out that I can cry now over Doctor Who episodes, so my social life sure is heading in the right direction....

To the optometrist who got my axis wrong by 20 degrees, they were making fucking glasses fucking 500 years ago !

Posted by: Birger Johansson | September 1, 2010 5:29 AM

David Marjanović # 103 : “In China, people are shot, and the family is made to pay for the bullet.”
This is a common demonstration of power in communist countries. In East Germany, when someone was shot down trying to escape across the border, they billed the family for the bullets used to kill him, too.
--- --- ---
Irenedelse # 121: About race riots in France: During the Algeria war, the French government launched a de facto pogrom against Algerians living in Paris; dozens were killed by members of a militia of arabs working for the French. The minister of justice during this illegal mass execution was a certain Francois Mitterand, later president of France who lived on to die of natural causes, saluted as a statesman by world leaders. Fuck him.
--- --- ---
(Crossposted) Coby Beck wants our creative input at “A few things ill considered: Fun with asteroids” http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2010/08/fun_with_asteroids.php
“I thought it might be a kick to apply a climate denialist mindset to the issue of an asteroid impact. What arguments might the likes of Lord Monckton make? What junkscience would come from The Heartland institute? Let's say that we have one monster in our sights set to strike in 2020.”
Example: “Asteroids are great sources of mineral wealth, the more the merrier.", “Jesus is riding the asteroid and we should welcome the Apocalypse”
:)

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | September 1, 2010 5:36 AM

Mildly freaking out here! I have to go to a briefing (I don't like briefing anyone) with the big boss (who could take my job and have it for breakfast if he wanted to.)

So... completely... nervous.

Posted by: Franklin Percival | September 1, 2010 6:05 AM

Caine FdM #152, GHP #153 & others before.

This business of little-considered assumptions prompts me to state that I am a 60 year old caucasian, but had to wait till I was 35 for my damascene moment - had grown up in medical household, worked in hospitals, met and mixed with all nationalities and assumed that I had no prejudice.

My son injured his right eye-lid in an accident involving barbed wire. Took him to casualty, nothing life-threatening, but it being Sunday afternoon, we had to wait a bit for the on-call ophthalmic surgeon to come in for some pretty fine needlework.

My Moment of Horror came when the chap arrived and I found myself wondering for about a second if this was the best the NHS could do for my lad because the guy was (a) black, (b)casually dressed, and (c)younger than me. My only prejudice that he complied with was as to gender.

I blushed to the roots of my hair,(and the memory can still make me blush to this day if it catches me unawares), but it offered me a valuable lesson I hope I have learned.

Posted by: Kel, The Privileged View From Nowhere | September 1, 2010 6:36 AM

*BLOGWHORE ALERT*

An exploration of unsinkable rubber ducks

Posted by: Rorschach | September 1, 2010 6:40 AM

*BLOGWHORE ALERT*

Actually, I reckon the regulars should be allowed to bloglink, as I call it....

Posted by: McCthulhu is taking ∞ to eat all the pi | September 1, 2010 7:01 AM

Heh! Kel has all his ducks in a row. Thanks for the post, you BW*, you!

*Blogwhore - I knew I had to asterisk it because someone would be sitting there with a befuddled look.

Posted by: SteveV, Death's Pissant Haberdasher | September 1, 2010 7:31 AM

Aquaria
Sniveling, gullible, self-pitying sociopath.
Heh - sounds like my cousin, same age as me. I remember with guilty glee punching him smack on his whiney nose and causing a HUGE nosebleed. I can still feel the satisfing shock wave travelling up my right arm.
It was may 5th (and best) birthday party.

Posted by: Ogvorbis, Parenthetical Death | September 1, 2010 7:51 AM

Bill Dauphin:

You have rules about not taking too many days that extend other time off? And you have to provide reasons for your vacation days?

I work for the federal government. If a supervisor thinks someone is abusing sick leave, they can put the offender on leave probation (or whatever the term is (can't recall it right now)) which puts severe limits on all types of leave taken. My boss (and boss's boss) went one further and began looking at all my leave. When they found out that almost 2 in 5 of my sick days were on a day that 'extended the weekend' they went after me. Until, in a formal hearing, I pointed out the absurdity. Only if one is on probation can things get sticky. Or, if I'm sick for three or more days, they can ask for a doctor's note (like when I had fucking pneumonia last fall).

Off to work. HAPPY MONDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted by: SteveV, Death's Pissant Haberdasher | September 1, 2010 8:05 AM

Just found This Image


1968!

Posted by: SteveV, Death's Pissant Haberdasher | September 1, 2010 8:10 AM

Lunch eaten, back to work now.
but see here

Posted by: KG | September 1, 2010 8:17 AM

Fuck Mugabe Fuck the RCC - Steve V.

Quite so. As a matter of interest, Mugabe is Catholic and was educated at a convent school.

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | September 1, 2010 8:33 AM

*thumbs up*

Meeting went great. Head honcho asked a single question, then a follow up, and I was free to leave.

Still scary, but I survived :D

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | September 1, 2010 8:38 AM

Carlie and Sven: Good links. Muchas gracias.

Others...One thing that I stress is that the species concept employed by a systematist is often contingent on practical considerations...Even if you lurve the BSC, if you work on extinct organisms, you don't get to use it. For example.

Posted by: llewelly | September 1, 2010 9:04 AM

John Morales | September 1, 2010 8:45 AM:

Here's a news tidbit: Towns battle monkey menace after 60 attacks.

Uh... they waited until after 60 attacks to start battling the monkey menace? I know forbearance is a virtue, but this is insanity. Sometimes you've got to nip it in the bud.

Posted by: llewelly | September 1, 2010 9:13 AM

McCthulhu, Vendor of the Pudding Author Profile Page | September 1, 2010 8:20 AM

SteveV #177: Raquel gave me instant wood for my sins? Now I'm really freakin' confused.

Obviously, wood is necessary to the commission of the sins under consideration.

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | September 1, 2010 9:22 AM

@Windy:

So can zebras have white skin and rainbow stripes? Or is that gum lying to me?

Posted by: windy | September 1, 2010 9:31 AM

So can zebras have white skin and rainbow stripes?

It's probably another weird equine hybrid, like zebra-pink unicorn, or zebra-my little pony

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | September 1, 2010 9:49 AM

Ugh - Metro is stupid:

Article here

I've always been really sensitive to sound. A high-pitched noise like that can actually make me physically ill.

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | September 1, 2010 9:55 AM

Sven - fantastic link! I always tell my students there are scads more concepts than I'm introducing, but that's a great listing to show to back up that I'm telling the truth. :)

Posted by: MinnieTheFinn, kaamea ateistifeministinarttu | September 1, 2010 10:20 AM

First female Lutheran bishop ordained in Finland took up her post today (sorry, couldn't find any links in English for you, so I'll give you a non sequitur instead, complete with a picture of our Conan O'Brien lookalike president).

Should I go "yay women!" or "bollocks, another priest(ess)" now?

Posted by: MinnieTheFinn, kaamea ateistifeministinarttu | September 1, 2010 10:28 AM

Kev:

of course it applies. Just let me know your specs and I'll find a suitable wife for you =) (hey, maybe there's a profit to be made here!)

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | September 1, 2010 10:34 AM

Gah! It looks like everyone is going to marry their way out of the states before I do!

Posted by: Jules, Bride of Death | September 1, 2010 10:49 AM

Minnie, how is my future ticket out of herespouse coming along?

Posted by: MinnieTheFinn, kaamea ateistifeministinarttu | September 1, 2010 10:50 AM

Jules:

I'm gathering corraling them up as we speak. You'll get to pick yours first =)

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | September 1, 2010 11:02 AM

Saw the Coyne vid (but had to use a different URL), and linked back to PZ's post.

My thoughts on this remain the same, and I will probably not show this to my class. Coyne sets up a strawman when discussing sympatric speciation; not only is there no geographic barrier to gene flow in Coyne's conceptionn, but there is no barrier at all. Diversifying selection is all that drives divergence. By this definition, of course sympatric speciation is improbable. However, there is no reason to think that the lack of a geographic barrier means that no barrier to gene flow could exist. There are all kinds of temporal, mechanical, chromosomal, etc. barriers that are demonstrated to prevent gene flow among segments of a population. But these are not admitted. Why is geographic isolation so damned special?

Imma have to read Speciation again.

Anyhow, thanks for the morning think, Ichthyic. It is good to revisit these topics from time to time, even if the result is confusion.

And luckily, I won't be talking about speciation (the process) as much as the myriad ways that "species" are recognized.

Posted by: Weed Monkey | September 1, 2010 11:05 AM

*getting ready to be corralled*
But I'm picky: female Pharyngulescapees only! Sorry, Kevin!

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | September 1, 2010 11:07 AM

AE - so Coyne just defines it out of existence? Nice.

Posted by: Chgo_Liz | September 1, 2010 11:12 AM

Kev @ #163:

Good luck!

Franklin @ #165:

What a great example.

Kev @ #183:

Excellent. Ignore my response above.

McCthulhu @ #184:

+10 Sir. That was sly.

I need to go back to posting only a couple times a year, like before Teh Thread started. It's idiotic responding to someone only to catch up on the 150 posts afterward and realize that the situation is already resolved.

Posted by: AJ Milne OM | September 1, 2010 11:13 AM

...so they threw leave abuse at me and assumed I would meekly accept.

Yeah... Did actually occur to me it might be somethin' like that... Seein' as you'd think they'd probably be looking at a spreasheet that sez somethin' like:

Leave taken adjacent to weekends:

Everyone else: ~.4
Ogvorbis: ~.4 ...

... honestly, it's awesome you did come back as you did, but I'm almost thinkin' there shoulda been some workplace harassment reg you coulda hung the asshat from to dry in response. Let him try to explain to a committee how he got quite so weak with numbers.

Posted by: Jules, Bride of Death | September 1, 2010 11:16 AM

I think those of us who are mixed race but don't "look" it are particularly sensitized to the subtleties of people's racial prejudices. How many times have you or I been tacitly included as "one of us" when a statement is made behind closed doors which wouldn't be said in an obviously mixed crowd?

While I'm not of mixed race, my youngest brother (I talked up him somewhere upthread; he's sort of an adopted sibling) is half black. My younger brother is a racist. Not the sheet-wearing kind, but it's pretty obvious to me (I believe I also talked about him on this thread; he's the one who said he'd just think of the white half of my half-Mexican boyfriend). He does that sort of thing to the youngest one all the time. I've had talks with him about it, but they don't go far. He doesn't realize that his acceptance of his younger brother, who is mixed, does not mean that he does not have racial prejudices. He essentially thinks of the youngest one as white, and ignores what doesn't appeal to him. Then, he ends up saying racist things to or in front of the kid, who is at an age where he's really forming his identity.

It just makes me crazy. I would immensely appreciate any insight chgo_liz or Caine (or other mixed race folks) have on how to help foster positive self-image in a teenager being raised in an environment rife with latent racism.

Posted by: MinnieTheFinn, kaamea ateistifeministinarttu | September 1, 2010 11:21 AM

chgo_liz:

oh, been there, got the t-shirt.

Years back, I spent a pleasant afternoon in Dublin at the immigration office, waiting to get my residence permit renewed (this was before Finland joined EU). There were maybe 30 - 40 people waiting, of which only two were white (myself and an elderly South African minister), and only one female (myself).

After hours of waiting, it was my turn to see the officer, who, after having a look at my passport, blurted out: "Why didn't you let me know that you're Finnish? I would have let you in before them!" - with heavy emphasis on the word "them".

Afterwards, I have come up with any number of smart retorts, but to my shame, right there and then I was absolutely speechless. It was just so wrong, in so many levels, that my brain just shut down.

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | September 1, 2010 11:32 AM

But I'm picky: female Pharyngulescapees only!

Hi Weedmonkey!

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 1, 2010 11:36 AM

7(7(7(

7(7(7(

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 1, 2010 11:38 AM

7(7(7(

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 1, 2010 11:40 AM

7( 7( 7( 7( 7( 7( 7( 7(

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 1, 2010 11:44 AM

I took an undergrad evolution course that was team-taught by 3 profs, and 2 of them were Guy Bush (sympatric speciation) and David Sloan Wilson (group selection) and this was back in nineteen-eighty-mumble.

Thge third guy taught straightahead population genetics.

Posted by: Ogvorbis, Parenthetical Death | September 1, 2010 11:47 AM

Clarification on my comments regarding a 15-year-ago meltdown concerning sick leave.

This was an aberation caused by peronal friction among myself and two supervisors. This is not normal. In my office we are really good about asking who is taking vacation time when and we try to scoot around each other. For instance, I'm the only one with children still in school. I take two weeks off from just before Juel to just after New Years so (((Girl))) misses a minimum of school and we can visit my parents in Maine and (((Wife)))'s parents in Florida. It works.

Actually, I've reached the point at that I use annual leave when I'm sick as there is no way I can use all 26 annual days (plus three to six award days) in a year -- that way there's very little use or lose in December.

Posted by: Ewan R | September 1, 2010 12:07 PM

MtF #234

My mother brought me up never to judge anybody by race, colour, sexual orientation, sex, clothing, religion etc etc etc - so long as they weren't English, if they were English apparently they were scum.

I'm still not sure whether or not she sees the bizaritude of her views - I'm convinced she'd support the Hitler Youth XI vs England in a football match.

As far as I can tell my father brought me up to fall asleep infront of the TV after a days work, maintain a house in a constant state of reconstruction, and to avoid any arguement by going to the pub. I'm sure he was against discrimination too however...

Posted by: MinnieTheFinn, kaamea ateistifeministinarttu | September 1, 2010 12:16 PM

Ewan:

the painful thing about realising that our parents are only human is the fact that it might apply to us, too =)

Which just can't be true, because I just know I am absolutely right about everything... right?

I TRY to behave differently with my own kids, but I'm sure that I make mistakes that they will despise/laugh at/try to understand when they grow up. Hope they'll find it in themselves to forgive better than I have been able to forgive my father. Not that I haven't, mostly, but forgiving doesn't equal forgetting for me. Unfortunately.

Posted by: Ewan R | September 1, 2010 12:22 PM

#236 - apparently the highland clearances left her livid. Which I still find odd as I'm pretty sure that she wasn't around during them, and given the wealth her side of the family comes from I wouldn't be overly surprised if ancestors on that side of the family were the folk burning down crofters property rather than those being burned out house and home (dad's side of the family are crofters for generations back and so at least have a basis for hating the English, although live so far North that the English for the most part still won't acknowledge that anyone lives there)

Posted by: Ewan R | September 1, 2010 12:32 PM

I'd hate the English too, but an awful lot of my ancestors were also English. Uh... like most of them.

I do try to explain to her that given the time difference and the geographic diversity of her family tree hating any one nationality based on what they did to your family is probably likely to be an exercise in self loathing. I know there's Portuguese in there in the past 3 or 4 generations, and we do have a family tree going back to the 1600's (I believe my grandfather stopped as soon as he hit someone remotely royal - thus claiming royal heritage) which is bound to cross the border numerous times.

On the other hand I'm semi-sure that my Dad's family tree probably doesn't extend much outside of a 100 mile radius back to viking times until his generation. Although that may be pushing it a tad.

Apparently the impending spawn is going to be 1/64th native American, so he can hate all Europeans including himself I guess. I'll have to sleep with one eye open.

Posted by: MrFire | September 1, 2010 12:38 PM

Ewan: in your mother's book, were half-Scots/half-English ok...or were they even worse?

Posted by: MinnieTheFinn, kaamea ateistifeministinarttu | September 1, 2010 12:40 PM

Ewan @239:

I had to google Highland clearances, but yup, got the picture now =)

I kinda see where your mother is coming from. I was married to an Irishman and for years I had very extreme and emotional views on the Northern Ireland situation (anti-English, naturally). The opinions weren't mine, but I felt GOOOOD having them.

The good thing about growing older (for me) is starting to see the multitude of grey shades between the black and white*. And also admitting that I might be wrong, or mislead, or just not in possession of all the facts...

I guess what I'm trying to say that for me, it's refreshing to review opinions and attitudes that I once held as gospel truth. I love learning. I think it's the opposite of stagnation.

Which may be one of the reasons I love hanging out in Pharyngula (the main reason being that I have a bad case of IQ fetishism).

*not applicable to religious issues.

Posted by: MrFire | September 1, 2010 12:48 PM

Someone's copy of "Demon Haunted World" is in a drawer near the printers.

Funnily, I have kind of the opposite situation. I've seen Grow Younger, Live Longer by Deepak Chopra, sitting on a random shelf, untouched for months now.

Of course, unlike in your case, I can understand why.

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | September 1, 2010 12:48 PM

@Ewan R:

I wouldn't be stealing it, I would have it here at my desk - read it during lunch breaks, and replace it when I'm finished.

Besides, I don't know where a library is around here, anyway.

Posted by: MinnieTheFinn, kaamea ateistifeministinarttu | September 1, 2010 12:51 PM

Ol'Greg-OM @242:

I'm so jealous of you New Worlders who have family roots all over the place.

My family is eastern Finland on Daddy's side*, western Finland on Mommy's side. Geographical distance is maybe 400 miles tops, and that's it.

I bet I could learn to play the banjo in no time if I wanted to. My kids don't have webbed toes, but only because I had the good sense/luck to breed with a Paddy.

*Hence my surname, which comes from Russian, meaning "Fisherman". And by the by, the toyboy's surname is Rusi, which was the name of the tribe of Vikings who went and named Russia after themselves =)

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | September 1, 2010 12:53 PM

My family is eastern Finland on Daddy's side*, western Finland on Mommy's side. Geographical distance is maybe 400 miles tops, and that's it.

See, but I find *that* fascinating.

Posted by: Ogvorbis, Parenthetical Death | September 1, 2010 12:59 PM

WARNING!!! Fire Story

Back in 2000, I was at a forest fire up in Montana (this is the same fire as the Cuban Cigar Story). It had been a tough year and NIFC was desperate for crews. One of the crews at this fire was a pickup crew (not a regular crew who had been together for years, but some brand new FF2s with minimal training) made up of Zuni, Navajo and Hopi men. When they were working, things went fine.

One evening, right after I picked up my meal for the evening (spaghetti, tomato sauce and smoke kielbasa), two Native Americans started beating the crap out of each other. I dropped my food and jogged over.

Now, I'm not small. I stand 6'1" and weigh in at around 250 to 280 (pounds, not kilos), but these two made me feel small. I engaged 'parent voice': "You! Over there! Now! You! Over here! Now!" Luckily they stopped beating each other. Then they looked at me and I started to wonder whether security was as safe as it sounded. They went where I told them to go.

I walked up to the first one and introduced myself. I asked where he was from (Second Mesa (which made him a Hopi)). Then I went over to the other, who was from Teec Nos Pos (probably Navajo). When I felt both were calmed down enough, I called them together. And I said, "Y'know, the Hopis have some damned good historical reasons to not like the Navajos. And the Navajos have some good historical reasons to not like the Hopis. And if ya'll were on the res, I'd let it go. Does this look like Northern Arizona?" (I do slip into my southern accent when I'm stressed as it slows me down.)

Both shook their heads 'no.'

"I spent some time living in Arizona. In my class, we had a Navajo, two Hopis and a Havasu. I heard it all before I was out of fourth grade. So I may be an easterner, but I have a clue.

"Here's whats going to happen. Either the two of you can shake hands and stop this now, or bad things will happen. I do not expect you to erase 500 years of shit, but I do expect you to leave it at home."

They did not shake.

"Okay, here's the bad thing that will happen. Your crew is already down two. I can demobe both of you, send you back home, right now. You'll be out here tomorrow. Of course, your crew will not be big enough to use, so everyone else on the bus will miss out on another week of 15 hour days with free food. And you'll have to ride all the way back to Arizona with them. And everyone on your crew will be blackballed for next year. A trouble crew. Which means no fire pay next year.

"What's it gonna be? Shake, or go?"

They shook.

"Remember, no more of this in my camp. If ya'll wanna beat the shit out of each other back home, go for it. Not here. Not in my camp."

No more trouble from that crew for the rest of the fire.

These two, strangers up until a month ago, were willing to fight it out and risk their pay over stuff that happened 100, 300, 500 years ago. Then again, the Irish still hate King Billy, The French hate the Germans, The Germans hate the Poles, Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch, and I don't like anybody very much. Bum-Bump!

Posted by: Dianne | September 1, 2010 1:00 PM

I'm so jealous of you New Worlders who have family roots all over the place.

You'll love mine then...My father's family is supposed to be Dutch, German, and Irish. I say "supposed to be" because his Y-chromosome maps to a rare variant most commonly found in Pakistan and my aunt's mitchondrial DNA suggests origin in the British isles. My mother's family is from Spain via Mexico, Asia via the Bering Strait and...well, we're not sure about the others because, although they appear phenotypically predominantly European, no one's been able to trace an ancestor off the American continent. Perhaps it's just as well.

Posted by: MrFire | September 1, 2010 1:05 PM

When a neurosurgeon tells you that a picture he's going to show is "graphic" reach for the zofran before looking at it.

*shrug*

I'd be like, "coooool....."

Posted by: Ewan R | September 1, 2010 1:09 PM

Why not hate the people who took over your home and exiled you? (Well, apart from the fact that it happened multiple generations ago and isn't the fault of anyone currently living.)

Because hating a people is a bloody silly thing to do - hate the actual people who did it by all means (the perpetrators of the clearances for instance were asshats extraordinaire), but transferance of the crimes of the father and all that is something which should be reserved for crazy books about magic pixies.

Plus it's probably highly likely that you're related relatively recently anyway, people apparently are about as discriminatory about sex as turtles (anyone who's owned turtles will know not to leave shoes around, or to at least check for residue if they accidentally do) as soon as populations mix at all.

Posted by: MinnieTheFinn, kaamea ateistifeministinarttu | September 1, 2010 1:18 PM

Dianne:

oh wow! That makes you a Jubilee Mix =)

I recall reading somewhere that, contrary to eugenics thought, the healthiest (least likely to have genetically inherited baddies) people are those of mixed racial background.

At least that's my excuse. Apparently (not sure, just recall reading it somewhere) Finnish and Irish are the two gene pools most distant from each other (except for the Basques) in Europe. Thus, my babbies are the healthiest, best lookingest, smartiest lads in existence :D

Posted by: cicely (Inadvertent Phytocidal Maniac) | September 1, 2010 1:22 PM

The Hitch afghan is is going to look really great!

But what about the quilt? (signed: Uninvolved, Completely Disinterested Bystander)

Aquaria, your tale of fraternal sociopathy just catapulted me straight into my own childhood. Every time my brother got beat up after school (quite a lot, in my memory), there was a frantic effort to get him cleaned and patched before my mother got home from work, not because he was too precious for injury, but because Mom would reliably go ape-shit on everybody, at full volume, 30 minute minimum, no upper limit, no past infractions ever exempted from re-examination. And yet, somehow, the woman is...not laboring under...what word do I want?...relishing? glorying in?...the delusion that she "raised 5 kids without ever once raising my voice". The dissonance is breathtaking.

"The attacks started very suddenly," the official said. "We don't know why. Only the monkeys can tell you why they started."

And they aren't talking.

Oh, wait. They can't talk. Nevermind....

Posted by: Ogvorbis, Parenthetical Death | September 1, 2010 1:28 PM

If the 'hybrid vigour' hypotheosis works, then the Poles must be (genetically) the healthiest in Europe. Every army (Not the USian, though (yet)), at some point, marches over/through Poland leaving pregnant women by the score.

Posted by: MinnieTheFinn, kaamea ateistifeministinarttu | September 1, 2010 1:31 PM

Ewan:

as I said, I only recall reading something like that somewhere, so I might be horribly wrong.

But yeah, I would thoroughly cherish the moment if scientists came out to say that mixed marriages are the only way to save humankind from inbreeding =)

Posted by: Ogvorbis, Parenthetical Death | September 1, 2010 1:37 PM

The village from which my father's surname is derived

Odd. I had no idea that KOPD was Finnish. I would have guessed FMish. Or TVish.

Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa) | September 1, 2010 1:46 PM

Riiiiiight. I don't like what you say, so you must be demon obsessed! That's Pilty, alright.

"Demon obsessed" is simply a synonym of liberal, communist, marxist, gay, nazi, feminist, atheist, satanist, socialist, and evil in the fundie dictionary. Which all means "someone who disagrees with me".

And Pilty is the most deluded catholic I've ever met and that's saying a lot since I know tons of catholics.

Posted by: owenevans00 | September 1, 2010 1:48 PM

On the topic of hating each other, I present Professor Lehrer

Posted by: AJ Milne OM | September 1, 2010 1:50 PM

My Irish republicanism story is kinda strange. Or seems to me. Guess it's all a bit strange...

I've got like 1/8th Irish in me. One great-great grandmother, tho' the only one who lived to meet me. Dimly remember her as this huge woman, that's about it...

But it was my father's father whose mother it was. And he was sorta dominant in the family. (Read: loud.) And tho' the family is otherwise genetically Scot 'n Protestant on that side--and, amusingly enough, a twig off a long, looong line of soldiers mostly fighting for England going back over various fiascos 'n conquests--and far more English/Welsh and also very Protestant on my mother's (with a thick sliver of French/German via French Canada), well, he had a way of getting his words in...

So I have odd memories of some of my really not very Irish cousins, in my otherwise not the least bit Irish context, singing IRA anthems. Weirdly enough.

Found myself thinkin' it almost rang like some kinda inherited guilt. As in, yeah, our lot kinda did some of the work of oppressing, in the day. And yeah, gramma was one of the oppressed. Should maybe make up for it, a bit...

(We didn't get that much at all, mind you. My father and our family in general were somewhat less close, I guess, various reasons...)

In other news, my kids 'll have a slightly more varied story still to tell, when they do. Their mom's a mix of much of the Mediterranean basin, with strong Arab/Egyptian elements.

(/So I have, also, been paying some attention to the experiences of mixed kids, over the past few days. Our context is, I think, not really a place you'd expect a lot of trouble, but still, I figure some shit or other will happen, sooner or later. Never hurts to keep your head up.)

Posted by: AJ Milne OM | September 1, 2010 1:52 PM

...erm, correcting, that's just 'great' where I wrote 'great great'...

In my defense, she was large, or seemed so to my probably like five year old eyes. Seems to need another great, is all.

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | September 1, 2010 2:06 PM

I'm Spanish, Native American (Mesoamerica), Chinese, Danish, English, German, Jewish, and there's probably a whole bunch of other stuff I'm not aware of.

Posted by: MinnieTheFinn, kaamea ateistifeministinarttu | September 1, 2010 2:13 PM

Picachu @273:

In the immortal words of Christy Moore:

Hey Ronald Reagan
I'm black and I'm pagan
I'm gay, and I'm left, and I'm free
I'm an anti-fundamentalist
environmentalist
so don't bother me

Jules @274:

In my experience, Irish & Scottish (Celts) are mostly dark hair/fair skin. I associate red hair/freckles with the Anglo-Saxon ilk.

AJ Milne @277:

As far as I can tell, even if you're 1/32th Irish, you're still one of them =) Especially when it comes to things cultural. And yeah, singing rebel songs is a big part of the culture, especially in US, where you're safely removed from the everyday experience of having to deal with the (fucked-up) Irish politics.

Having said that, I'm still a raving hibernophiliac, I love them rebel songs although they're not my sentiments =)

Posted by: Katrina, radicales féministes athées | September 1, 2010 2:15 PM

Twenty-four hours and 500+ comments behind, (I've only made it as far as #39 here) but I wanted to chime in:

Now maybe other salt-and-pepper couples are cacheting and shoulder-chipping with a vengeance, but I've known quite a few such couples, and I doubt it.

As a "salt-and-pepper" couple of 20 years, I can't say as we've ever had much to do with either cachet or chips. I can remember when we were first married and living near Detroit, feeling extremely vulnerable in certain parts of town.

But we are part of the "Military Community" now, where sometimes it seems that mixed-race couples are more the norm than the exception.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | September 1, 2010 2:21 PM

My descent is on some trail hereabouts. I have pale skin, light hair and hazel eyes so I figure I must be from European stock, but I don't strongly identitify with any cultural traditions in that sense though so I find I just don't care.

Growing up we did the American T.V. holidays with bunnies laying chocolate eggs and fat elves delivering presents through the chimney, but that sure didn't make us christian, it just reinforced that we were products of the media.

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | September 1, 2010 2:25 PM

But it still sounds FMish or TVish to me.

It's mostly GIBBERish.

Posted by: Jules, Bride of Death | September 1, 2010 2:32 PM

In my experience, Irish & Scottish (Celts) are mostly dark hair/fair skin. I associate red hair/freckles with the Anglo-Saxon ilk.

I just assume I got one* of the genes associated with red hair from my great g-pa, whatever the hell he was, and leave it at that.

I think people get too weird about that stuff as it is. Perhaps that's just jealousy speaking because there is no way for me to trace mine back past great-grandparents due to poor records and lotsa unofficial adoptions and infidelities. But mostly, I just tend to think of myself in my immediate context, and I have more interest in family stories than family bloodlines.

*I say one of because in my (limited) understanding of it, at least 2 are typically associated with red hair, and since I'm only lightly freckled and have kind of strawberry/sandy red hair, I figure I didn't get both. DISCLAIMER: My education on this comes from some googling that I did one time in order to explain how I could have red hair when everyone else in the family was brunette. I know it's not very thorough. Corrections are welcome.

Posted by: Ogvorbis, Parenthetical Death | September 1, 2010 2:45 PM

Gyeong Hwa Pak:

That actually makes a great deal of sense.

I toss in the Finnish when I speak of my ancestry because, supposedly, a great-something-or-other grandmother had a Swedish officer for a father and a third daughter of a minor Polish nobleman as a father. Then again, given the amount of time the Finns spent laying waste to Poland, even if the story is apochryphal, I most likely have some Finnish blood.

Posted by: Jules, Bride of Death | September 1, 2010 2:49 PM

Unrelated to anything, I've been on a Toto binge lately. How many times do I have to listen to Africa on repeat before someone calls in the professionals to take care of me?

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | September 1, 2010 2:55 PM

@Jules,
I would appreciate it if any of my friends did that as soon as I hit repeat. Although, by then it would be too late because it would be waiting there for me . . .

Ah damn, another earworm. Time to turn up Chopin.

Posted by: SteveV, Death's Pissant Haberdasher | September 1, 2010 2:58 PM

AE
regarding extant Limeys English people.

Hey don't mind me. I'm proud of being a Limey

And don't forget The Limey

Don't know much about my ancestors apart from some Swiss and a village full in Corsica. Other than that, Zummerzet carrot crunchers from way back. Oh and one Welsh great uncle.

It's a lovely evening again. Sitting in the garden watching the sunset and drinking a nice Chianti.

Posted by: MrFire | September 1, 2010 3:00 PM

I believe my earliest ancestors in the US came to Jamestown.

Huh. I'd thought those folks were wiped out to a person. Unless...

...Are you descended from zombies?

FUCKIN' AWESOME

Posted by: Ogvorbis, Parenthetical Death | September 1, 2010 3:03 PM

Minnie:

Actually, a Finnish officer taking service with the Hungarian(?) army and serving down around Krakow and Tarnow in the mid 1700s. But yeah, as far as the Finns over running Poland, that was in the early stages of the 30 Years War before the Lion of the North went to Germany. The Finnish cavalry were quite effective, though the most feared were the Lapps, complete with the battle cry "Haaka Paala" (spelling approximate) meaning "hack them down".

My Polish family had an estate which, during the late 1800s and early 1900s was part in Russia and part in Austria Hungary. Hieronymus was an officer in the Polish Lancers (Grandma (his daughter) thought of him as a great Polish nationalist fighting against the evil Tsar (and went to her grave with that view (but only after her beloved Red Sox won the World Series (she said, "Well, I can die now" and did)))). He was a Polish nationalist and, on his estate (the Russian parts, anyway) there were supposedly schools teaching the Polish language.

In 1905, he (along with a whole bunch of Polish officers) were kicked out of the Russian army. He packed everyone up and moved to the US. Grandma was born in Boston and went to a Polish language school. After World War I, Harry moved 'em all back to Poland. Then, when Pilsudski took over, he moved 'em all back to the US. Yes, my family actually emigrated from Poland twice.

The Polish and English parts of my family are the easiest to trace as they were minor nobility. The others, I can usually trace to the old country but then the information goes cold (which makes me wonder if they were from where they claimed to be from?).

And I know it wasn't you.

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | September 1, 2010 3:04 PM

How many times do I have to listen to Africa on repeat before someone calls in the professionals to take care of me?

I don't suppose you were lucky enough to get this version.

Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa) | September 1, 2010 3:11 PM

IIRC, most Americans have some sort of German ancestry, don't they?

Posted by: MinnieTheFinn, kaamea ateistifeministinarttu | September 1, 2010 3:20 PM

Ogvorbis:

oh wow. I love history, and the fact that my family does not have any whatsoever (just farmers staying in one place for centuries) makes me so jealous =)

It's Hakkaa Päälle, pronounced something like Hackah Phaelle. They were nasty buggers, all right. The call is still used in the Finnish army for the jaegers (something like Semper Fi for the US Marines, I guess). Not officially, of course, because that would advocate violence, and the army is SO against it :)

I definitely must read more on European history, especially the nearby areas (The Baltic states). Makes me feel kinda ashamed that I don't necessarily know all about Europe even though I claim to be part of it :P

Posted by: Katrina, radicales féministes athées | September 1, 2010 3:21 PM

Whew! Caught up at last!

My father's ancestry is mostly Cornish, Northern Irish, German, possibly "Dutch", and a few other European areas. While his surname is Anglicized French, (tenuous connection to Charlemagne's army?) his paternal ancestry is Cornwall.

My mother's family was German, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and English. I had a y-DNA search of her father, and even though his surname seemed German, his haplogroup is most commonly found in Iceland.

My husband is African-American. His grandmother was born in Coney Island and was half-German.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 1, 2010 3:23 PM

IIRC, most Americans have some sort of German ancestry

wtf?

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | September 1, 2010 3:25 PM

IIRC, most Americans have some sort of German ancestry, don't they?

Probably some. I do, although not as much on my mother's side as one might expect in such an old family. But then I would be of some German ancestry anyway on the Polish side.

Meh... the only reason I know any of this stuff is that some people apparently already did all the hard work on the history there so it's easy to find since I guess there's a whole niche in research on it.

I'd thought those folks were wiped out to a person.

Nah... some lived. They fared better than Roanoke.

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | September 1, 2010 3:30 PM

And Cherokee. Fucking everybody's got a Cherokee grandmother. At least, so they claim.

Not me! But my maternal grandmother is Cajun.

Posted by: MinnieTheFinn, kaamea ateistifeministinarttu | September 1, 2010 3:34 PM

I wouldn't mind a Cherokee grandmother. Anyone want to trade?

Posted by: Randomfactor | September 1, 2010 3:36 PM

IIRC, most Americans have some sort of German ancestry, don't they?

Both sides. I'm Double Deutsch.

Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa) | September 1, 2010 3:38 PM

IIRC, most Americans have some sort of German ancestry

wtf?

I'm getting that info from here, although I'm probably making the mistaking of associating distribution with population.

Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy | September 1, 2010 3:52 PM

I don't know much about my ancestry, even though it goes back pretty far on the Mormon branch. One of my great-grandparents ran away from a Mormon household, so that's probably what I'm most proud of.

"How many times do I have to listen to Africa on repeat before someone calls in the professionals to take care of me?"

This looks like a job for my personal favorite earworm.

Or if you'd prefer to keep things related to Africa, then there's always this.

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | September 1, 2010 3:54 PM

For the record, my grandmothers were both quite white. But one of my great-grandmothers was born and raised on a reservation (not Cherokee, though her husband was of Cherokee descent).

Posted by: Erulóra (formerly KOPD) | September 1, 2010 4:04 PM

Clever
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DincCWWaROQ

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 1, 2010 4:14 PM

GHP:
very cool map!
Of course it's self-reported, so there's a big swath of Appalachians claiming only "American" ancestry, but still.
Lots of little submaps for individual "ancestries" here (@ bottom), and I'm not getting any work done.

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | September 1, 2010 4:20 PM

Unless you really like rain.

Actually I do!

Posted by: Walton, Marquis of Carabas | September 1, 2010 4:25 PM

My ancestry is mostly English and Welsh. Though my paternal great-grandfather (who died long before my father was born, so we never knew him) was apparently born in Barbados, being from a seafaring family. Most of my traceable ancestors seem to have been either sailors or (on the other side of the family) coal miners.

Posted by: Alan B | September 1, 2010 4:28 PM

To Lynna and anyone else interested in photogrpahy and unusual natural features:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1306378/River-turns-colour-tomato-soup-storm.html

(I first saw the article here although I understand it has appeared elsewhere.)

The article claims the cause is a sediment called argolite. Probably a misprint (not unknown for a newspaper although more common for the Garundia) for Argillite.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/Skeptics+question+river+photos/3454821/story.html

The last link refers to the Grinnell formation as being the souce of the red-coloured clay sediment. See below for details:

http://mountainbeltway.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/rocks-of-glacier-national-park/

Posted by: Walton, Marquis of Carabas | September 1, 2010 4:36 PM

I should add to #335 that (given my skinny build and utter lack of coordination) I doubt I would have been a great success at either seamanship or coal-mining. I'm rather glad that I wasn't born a century earlier.

(It does make one wonder how many people, in eras with little-or-no social mobility, wasted their entire lives in jobs for which they were fundamentally unsuited. How many farm labourers and sailors and coal-miners could have been great surgeons, or lawyers, or romantic poets, but never had the opportunity because of the circumstances into which they were born? Sometimes, the world seems like a sad place.)

Posted by: Walton, Marquis of Carabas | September 1, 2010 4:40 PM

Having had another eleven-hour working day, I'm avoiding the latest Ground Zero mosque thread, since I don't feel like getting into yet another interminable and identical argument with the Islamophobic wingnuts who always crawl out of the woodwork. (I haven't read the comments, but I can predict exactly what they willl be saying.)

Suffice it to say that I agree with the general thrust of Professor Myers' post, in this instance.

Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline. | September 1, 2010 4:46 PM

Whaddayaknow.

A blogger was a dick on the Internet and what happened? The dickee took the criticism to heart and produced a better book for it. (Some discussion of whether it's a good book still.)

Posted by: KG | September 1, 2010 4:54 PM

and a third daughter of a minor Polish nobleman as a father. - Ogvorbis

Now that is unusual :-p

Very boring ancestry here, at least as far as nationality/ethnicity is concerned: all g-g-grandparents English, and all those more remote ancestors that I know about, all working class or lower middle class. On my father's side, all from north-east Norfolk, and all rural proletariat or lumpen-proletariat - one of my g-g-g-uncles (IIRC) was transported to Tasmania for housebreaking - I have a copy of his convict record. Mrs. KG is half Danish (with some fairly eminent Danes in there, Germans further back to judge by surnames, and one Jewish g-g-grandfather).

Posted by: KG | September 1, 2010 5:00 PM

Walton@339,

Very wise. *Sigh*. I've just completed a frantic week of work, after being landed with leading a bid for a contract we almost certainly won't get (it's one of those cases where I strongly suspect they know who they are going to select, but have to go through the motions). So I need to wind down, not get further wound up!

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | September 1, 2010 5:05 PM

chgo_liz:

Caine @ #152, responding to Feynmaniac:

I think those of us who are mixed race but don't "look" it are particularly sensitized to the subtleties of people's racial prejudices. How many times have you or I been tacitly included as "one of us" when a statement is made behind closed doors which wouldn't be said in an obviously mixed crowd? We know from life experience that people modify how they say things based on who they think is standing in front of them. And most of the time, they don't even realize it.

Yes, there's a lot of that. A lifetime of it. I've been able to call quite a few people on their prejudices that way, it's effective. There are more times when you can't get away with saying anything though, and those are bad moments. Most people simply have no idea how prejudiced they actually are and how conditioned they are to ignore prejudice in others.

Posted by: llewelly | September 1, 2010 5:05 PM

cicely | September 1, 2010 2:55 PM:

(7(7(7 Theater seating? And/or airplane seating?

Well - airplane seating is sort of like that, but more cramped, as if kerned by a close approach to a neutron star.

Posted by: Jules, Bride of Death | September 1, 2010 5:09 PM

(it's one of those cases where I strongly suspect they know who they are going to select, but have to go through the motions).

I got to toss out about 20 hours' worth of work for that kind of bullshit just last week.

Working in government contracting is not so good for my faith in humanity. Perhaps I need to storm CNN to make them fix the problems I see.

Posted by: Walton, Marquis of Carabas | September 1, 2010 5:09 PM

I think the world only doesnt seem like a sad place when you manage to wall most of it off from yourself)

True. Perhaps we only manage to be happy because we don't see what's really there.

Pratchett quote of the day:

"All right," said Susan, "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need ... fantasies to make life bearable."

NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.

Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little-

YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.

So we can believe the big ones?

YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

They're not the same at all!

YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET--

Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME... SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.

Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point---

MY POINT EXACTLY.

Wow... I'm just a little ray of sunshine this evening.

Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe | September 1, 2010 5:14 PM

Ugh - Metro is stupid:

Article here

I've always been really sensitive to sound. A high-pitched noise like that can actually make me physically ill.

ditto. but then, even if i weren't, i find the ageist attitude that teens are vermin utterly despicable. Unfortunately, it seems a widespread one.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | September 1, 2010 5:18 PM

KOPD:

And Cherokee. Fucking everybody's got a Cherokee grandmother. At least, so they claim.

Oh yeah. And don't forget, Grandma was always a Cherokee Princess.

Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe | September 1, 2010 5:32 PM

It does make one wonder how many people, in eras with little-or-no social mobility, wasted their entire lives in jobs for which they were fundamentally unsuited.

you mean as opposed to now, when everybody has their dream-job?

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | September 1, 2010 5:37 PM

Swamp Queens?

Heh. I think Swamp Queen has a certain cachet to it.

Posted by: cicely (Inadvertent Phytocidal Maniac) | September 1, 2010 5:46 PM

Oh yeah. And don't forget, Grandma was always a Cherokee Princess.

And people who "discover" that they are reincarnated from a past life overwhelmingly seem to have been historically important people. Like Cleopatra, or Ghenghis Khan.

There's just not much market for unknown-serf retreads.

Posted by: David Marjanović | September 1, 2010 5:48 PM

All you lovers of roadkill and skeletons, read what great white sharks are like on the inside. Did you know the cartilaginous jaws of such a beast are flexible enough that the teeth can wiggle back and forth, even though the bite force is way beyond belief? I didn't.

Aquaria (comment 172), my sympathies. :-S

Shit, I forgot the smiley.

I know full well Pikachu was joking; I tried to continue the joke by taking what he said far too seriously. I usually fail when I try to extend other people's jokes. <pout> <hands position="pockets"> <kick object="gravel">

(Seriously, it's my fault. It must be seriously difficult to guess how clueless I am and how clueless I'm not.)

It's also my fault that I wrote Pikachu instead of Kevin. Argh.

Fine, but I still haven't chosen it and can't change it

I agree on the former, but disagree on the latter. People change their views on race all the time.

This isn't a view on race, it's a view on what is sexy!

No. That's xenophobia (including islamophobia)

Oh, I don't doubt that was part of it, but articles I've read have suggested that race also played a part (see second link in next comment for an example). However, it wouldn't be the first time that I was misled by the press.

It's no different than the tensions with Turkish or Bosnian immigrants in Germany or Austria. "They" are not only foreign but strange, "they" come to steal our jobs, "they" breed scarily fast (OK, Bosnians don't), "they" have a strange religion (never mind the generally godless Bosnians), "they" will sooner or later steamroll over us all if we don't watch.

It's similar to Tancredo-style hatred for immigrants from Mexico or beyond, but different in that such immigrants are widely perceived as somehow biologically different in the USA. There is no real concept of a "brown race" in Europe, even among racists who believe in a "Jewish race"; and while some especially well tanned Turks might count as "brown", Bosnians don't, and there are lots of Tunisians who look entirely Central European.

So, I suspect you weren't so much misled by the press as the US press was misled by a trans-Atlantic misunderstanding.

Even if it lacks segregation it doesn't mean there wasn't disapproval of interracial relationships.

Disapproval can't go far when there's nobody to disapprove of! Till a few decades ago, there just weren't any black people in mainland France. Racists who didn't have much to do with the colonies could only speak in the abstract.* They weren't able to tell their children "see those black kids over there? When you grow up, don't marry any of them!" because there were no black kids over there or anywhere else in sight.

When Loving v. Virginia happened in the US, that was AFAIK the time when Paris started becoming more colorful.

* That they did at length, though. 20th-century racism can all be traced back to Artur Gobineau's essay Sur l'inégalité des races.

Many black people in France seem to feel they have been victims of discrimination [link].

I don't deny any of that. My point is that "mixed marriages" are common in Paris, and that this bolsters my hypothesis about myself.

(I do wonder if those who discriminate against black people in France discriminate any less against people who visibly come from Algeria, Tunisia or Morocco. But I haven't got any data on that.)

I've seen a great spectrum of skin color in Latin America and even there there exists attitudes against racial mixing.

Those are places where, like in the US, people of different skin colors have been living next to each other for centuries, and where prejudices against intermarriage have just as long a tradition.

My semi-adopted brother [...]

Thanks. Fascinating, beautiful story. (Except for the racist brother mentioned later.)

the Charles

:-D

And I thought...would it be so false if it read thus:

Indeed not. The comparison has been made. :-)

(With several variants. For example, morphological species concepts when applied by splitters have been described as "if I can tell them apart, they're different genera; if I can't tell them apart, they're different species".)

When Mr. C went back to work on January 2nd, he was informed he wouldn't be paid for the holiday (he had called in and all that) because he should have known the storm was coming and gone into Bismarck early and stayed at a hotel in order not to miss the day of work before the holiday.

[...] Assholes.

I have nothing to add except my shock.

I often disagree with Marjanovich on his take regarding species concepts, but I have to admit he's up on the material; seems a special interest of his (not surprising).

might want to have him float some references, as he will have the latest at hand I'm sure.

Wow, have I been overestimated. :-S

The latest I know is a paper by David Baum in the February 2008 (!) issue of Systematic Biology. It argues for a species concept under which species are clades* defined by a long list of things that should all be taken into account.

The next older one is a book by Hervé Lelièvre, Le mythe de l'espèce. It hasn't been translated into English so far, so it's of little use to most of you, and while I've seen it, I haven't had time or an opportunity to read it. That book is, or so I'm told, where the number of 146 species concepts comes from. (Adding the one mentioned above, that's why I always claim "as of February 2008, there are 147 species concepts out there".)

Then there's a paper from 2006 by... Yann Bertrand? I'm not sure I remember the name (and I'm too lazy to look it up now). That's the source for my claim "depending on the species concept, there are between 101 and 249 endemic bird species in Mexico".

I've read 2 or so papers on the LITU concept by Fredrik Pleijel and Gregory Rouse. The oldest one is from 1999 and appeared in Systematic Biology. "Least inclusive taxonomic unit" is what they call the smallest recognizable clades; they want to replace the term "species" by it. The species, and in most cases the genera, of Mesozoic dinosaurs are already LITUs.

Then there's the 2001 paper by Michael Benton and IIRC someone else in a special issue of TREE (Trends in Ecology and Evolution). It's called "Speciation in the fossil record" and available as a pdf in several places on teh intarwebz. Before registration was introduced, I used to link to it every few weeks to beat some creationist over the head with it or to kill discussions of punk eek. It contains a really impressive example of – sympatric and gradual – speciation-under-a-morphological-species-concept (one bell curve turning into two with a gap between them, taking several hundred thousand years, IIRC); it also says that such speciations are the exception, and that most others in the fossil record fit the punk-eek model instead.

That basically is it. I don't actively follow that field. I think that many species concepts describe interesting kinds of entities that should, ideally, all have their own parallel nomenclatures; the problem is that they all pretend to describe the same kind of entities, when in fact they have nothing in common except the word species. I also find it annoying that the current codes of nomenclature force us to refer every organism to a species while at the same time not requiring that we mention which (if any!) species concept we have in mind when we describe a new species and of course not requiring that any such statements be taken seriously.

I second the recommendation for the works of John Wilkins, even though I've read very little of even his blog posts.

* Clade = monophylum = an ancestor plus all its descendants.

Piltdown Man commenting at FSTDT:

Heh. Never heard of "demonic obsession". Thanks for the link to what Fr. John A. Hardon SJ thinks about it, Caine, but... it still doesn't make sense.

<headshake> Barely disguised dyotheists, all of them.

He also responded to Gyeong Hwa Pak calling him "the most deluded Catholic I've ever meet".

He played "good cop, bad cop" with him :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D

On the plus side, there may be some progress in my contemplation of possibly thinking about maybe increasing the likelihood of considering making some kind of attempt to spend time with the female person I was talking about one or more endless threads back.

:-) :-) :-)

Francois Mitterand, later president of France who lived on to die of natural causes, saluted as a statesman by world leaders. Fuck him.

Fairly soon after his death he turned out to have been enormously corrupt. France does have a tradition of "it's good to be king".

TWO TIMES A WEEK?

So I've been told.

Agent 99 gets disrobed for your amusement.

:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D

My little girl is my little 18 month-old girl (which means just freakin' CUTE-IFUL!!!),

^_^

but my mom, when she heard my girl say something in Vietnamese, well! Her head almost exploded. How dare she not speak English only!!!

I'm currently trying to ram my bony ass through the chair by beating myself on the head with both hands together.

I'm willing to put money down that it's issues with my mother-in-law, though, race...not so much. But, it's still there, in some small way.

Some people still believe that there's only space for one language in one head. Maybe that's all there is to it.

(Still headache from the ramming.)

And full apologies to David Marjanović for stealing his method of responding to the thread all at once.

^_^

What's to disagree with? I've never seen him argue for one over another.

Well, I've argued against the species rank altogether! Mwahah. B-)

Raquel gave me instant wood for my sins?

:-D :-D :-D

Maybe a zebra is completely covered in black/brown and white stripes and it doesn't make sense to call either of them the background color?

Rule of thumb: when windy disagrees with me, I'm wrong and (!) she's right.

democracy's fatal flaw?

Absolute monarchy requires that the monarch knows what he's doing. Democracy requires that just over 50 % of the entire population know what they're doing. Democracy without widespread good education is... difficult.

I haven't dared watch the video.

It's probably another weird equine hybrid, like zebra-pink unicorn, or zebra-my little pony

^_^

Should I go "yay women!" or "bollocks, another priest(ess)" now?

Both at the same time. :-)

*getting ready to be corralled* But I'm picky: female Pharyngulescapees only! Sorry, Kevin!

Seconded.

(Also, gay marriage isn't quite allowed over here. It must not be called "marriage".)

After we voted for a union, management actually began paying attention to the rules.

Ô surprise !

I need to go back to posting only a couple times a year, like before Teh Thread started. It's idiotic responding to someone only to catch up on the 150 posts afterward and realize that the situation is already resolved.

I respond while reading. When I reach the end, I press Ctrl+A and Ctrl+X, refresh, press Ctrl+V, and catch up with the comments that have appeared in the meantime.

Yes, time-consuming.

My family is eastern Finland on Daddy's side*, western Finland on Mommy's side. Geographical distance is maybe 400 miles tops, and that's it.

Eh, that's not limited to the New World. My family tree... on one grandmother's side it goes into Hungary, curves (backwards in time) north into Slovakia, and then into western Germany at the very least; on one grandfather's side, it goes into southern Serbia and then the most useless corner of eastern Hercegovina; on the other's, it goes through a Styrian woodcutter dynasty, then twists north into the Czech Republic, and then probably (that's not documented, at least not anymore) into Poland*. The second grandmother's side has not been traced to outside of Upper Austria... so far.

* There are people in Lithuania who look exactly like my mother (or so I was told by visibly shocked visitors), and the surname in question is Rossoll. Probably the ll is a misinterpretation of this thing, leading us to this meaning for the otherwise unanalyzable** name.

** That's the term linguists use. Sounds so polite, doesn't it? :-þ

Rusi, which was the name of the tribe of Vikings who went and named Russia after themselves =)

Oh no, it's not a name. It (Old Norse róðr) refers to rowing across the Baltic Sea; compare German Ruder "oar".

WARNING!!! Fire Story

Awesome.

金

Jīn in Mandarin, meaning "gold".

Wow... I'm just a little ray of sunshine this evening.

And you write this just after this?!:

*giggles* Well, if you feel like moving to England I'll be happy to propose to you. :-)

Don't rebutton so quickly. :-)

Posted by: KG | September 1, 2010 5:56 PM

And people who "discover" that they are reincarnated from a past life overwhelmingly seem to have been historically important people. Like Cleopatra, or Ghenghis Khan. - cecily

Clearly, important people have bigger souls, which fragment on death, and occupy multiple foetuses :-p

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | September 1, 2010 6:07 PM

Well, it seems my question was a little ill considered. No metric, no long term data, etc. The answers that I can find about the current state of affairs are at odds with each other because of the lack of meaningful measurements and that makes any older information even less useful.

Ah well, likely just hopeful projection on my part. As you were.

Posted by: David Marjanović | September 1, 2010 6:14 PM

Man. 11 1/2 screens. And there I was thinking that the traffic here had slowed down.

Ugh - Metro is stupid:

Article here

<headdesk> The guy in the video that says "they're not doing anything productive [so get them out of my sight, lest they might tempt me out of my Protestant work ethic]" really takes the cake.

There's a really loud cicada in the kitchen right now (midnight). :-) Vienna is in the (so far) rather small part of Austria that is warm enough for them.

Posted by: Randomfactor | September 1, 2010 6:37 PM

After reading this, I idly went to check what I believe is the oldest source of the topos that says "old days were better" -- that is, Ecclesiastes 7:10

Starts out good, then falls rapidly into misogyny...

Posted by: Lynna, OM | September 1, 2010 6:42 PM

Alan B @337

To Lynna and anyone else interested in photogrpahy and unusual natural features:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1306378/River-turns-colour-tomato-soup-storm.html

Ah, nice photos. Thanks for that.

I've seen red streams and rivers before, but they were in Utah. In particular, the tributary streams that flow into Parunuweap Canyon in Zion National Park run red.

Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy | September 1, 2010 6:57 PM

From the Mosquito article:
"The bottom line is that the Mosquito is installed where 13- to 25-year-olds aren't supposed to be,"

Huh. Up until a mere four years and 50 days ago, there were public places where I wasn't supposed to be. I hope I didn't stumble upon any of them by accident. What a load of bollocks. The whole Mosquito thing, I mean. Particularly the last bit in the article where they quote the older guy who can hear it.

"Vienna is in the (so far) rather small part of Austria that is warm enough for them."

Urban heat island?

"you mean as opposed to now, when everybody has their dream-job? "

Oh quit it, all of you, I'm trying to stay in my happy space. Though actually, sometimes I've wondered if maybe the whole idea of "dream jobs", or to be less dreamy about it, jobs for which one is best suited and would make one happiest, doesn't breed unrealistically high expectations in young job seekers, and maybe make them too easily discouraged and disheartened when they find aspects of the working world that they don't like. And of course, there has to be people to clean the toilets, too.

"On the plus side, there may be some progress in my contemplation of possibly thinking about maybe increasing the likelihood of considering making some kind of attempt to spend time with the female person I was talking about one or more endless threads back."

Dude, go for it, bro!
</dudebro>

Posted by: Randomfactor | September 1, 2010 7:02 PM

"On the plus side, there may be some progress in my contemplation of possibly thinking about maybe increasing the likelihood of considering making some kind of attempt to spend time with the female person I was talking about one or more endless threads back."

"Do, or do not. There is no 'some kind of attempt' in the daaaaark." --Yoyoda.

Posted by: pistoreyu | September 1, 2010 7:09 PM

Randomfactor at 375:

falls rapidly into misogyny...

Not surprising, I suppose, but my, you're right.

Posted by: Randomfactor | September 1, 2010 7:24 PM

And you think that stealing dogma from earlier religions somehow denies you the right to start a religion...because...?

Posted by: Ogvorbis, Parenthetical Death | September 1, 2010 7:42 PM

and a third daughter of a minor Polish nobleman as a father. - Ogvorbis

Lemme try tyat one again. She was the third daughter of a Polish nobleman (minor) and was married to a Finnish officer serving with (I think) the Hungarian Army. But now I'm not sure about the Hungarian part. He might have been Austrian, especially considering that Hungar was part of the Ottoman Empire at the time.

Keep in mind, this came from my Polish Grandmother (famous for asking "Would you like some more?" as the food hits the plate) who was sure that, since Great-Grandpa Hieronymous (my great grandfather, not hers) was in the Polish Lancers he must have fought to free Poland even though the Polish Lancers was a Russian Imperial Regiment but she was (by the time I knew her) not all there, so I take it with a grain of salt. The Czernietsky's (spelling kept changing) had a small estate that was part in Russia and part in Hungary which I think puts it in Silesia.

------

(given my skinny build and utter lack of coordination) I doubt I would have been a great success at either seamanship or coal-mining.

Here in the anthracite coal fields, some of the coal seams are less than 18 inches thick and small, lithe, skinny, undernourished and seriously desperate miners scampered into the coal layer pulling out the anthracite. They referred to these as 'monkey seams.'

One theory as to why the anthracite industry died is the introduction and enforcement of a drinking age. The coal miner walked into a bar (the second one ducked) and asked for a beer. The barkeep said, "Sorry. We don't serve miners." So, given the choice between having a job or getting a drink, he, and all his fellow miners, opted for the drink. And the anthracite industry collapsed.

Posted by: Katrina, radicales féministes athées | September 1, 2010 7:46 PM

Coming back to the deep-fried beer comment from the previous subthread for a moment. It seems Rachel Maddow gave it a try:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2010/09/01/5024590-we-lived-to-see-it-deep-fried-beer

Posted by: Benjamin "pardon my French" Geiger | September 1, 2010 8:01 PM

A spider web; I didn't see the owner.

And since I have two more links I can use: here are two more photos I'm proud of.

Posted by: 朴競花/박경화 (Gyeong Hwa) | September 1, 2010 8:29 PM

It's also my fault that I wrote Pikachu instead of Kevin. Argh.

Oh, I was going to say "I don't remember saying that".

And people who "discover" that they are reincarnated from a past life overwhelmingly seem to have been historically important people. Like Cleopatra, or Ghenghis Khan

No one ever wants to admit that they could be a reincarnation of plegue mouse. :P

Did I just call Feynmaniac "Cheon na"? *facepalm* I've been watching too many historical dramas.

Posted by: drbunsen | September 1, 2010 8:50 PM

This just in:

[Australian] Christian Democrat [state] MP Fred Nile ... one of the biggest viewers of adult content.

Mr Nile claimed yesterday he had never viewed pornography and said his staff had used his log-on and done so for "research purposes".

But up to 200,000 suspect hits have been recorded under Mr Nile's log-on, sources said.

Link to 'pedia for furren types unfamiliar with the good [citation needed] Reverend and his longstanding blight on the Australian polity.

As we're not exactly wall to wall with nutters of his ilk over here, it's a special occasion when one gets caught with his pants down, so to speak. And as figureheads of the local Xtian Reich go, they just don't get any bigger than Fred Nile.

Yes, Nile. As in de Nile's not just a river in Egypt

Hallelujah brothers, sisters and others!

Posted by: cicely (Inadvertent Phytocidal Maniac) | September 1, 2010 9:15 PM

Cooks up nice and plump.

Whenever I hear a variant of the idea, any suggestion that modern life is either equal or worse than before, I always think first of smallpox. We've defeated it. What a human, huge triumph.

A triumph, no question. But, ironically, since we've stopped vaccinating for smallpox, monkeypox is on the increase. (Here's an article at Not Exactly Rocket Science. With a picture.)

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | September 1, 2010 9:29 PM

Jeffrey:

Wow, all the ancestry stuff. My family traces all the way back to Adam and Eve...through Cain, of course.

I could rattle off a list, however, when asked I usually reply "Let's just say my ancestors got around. A lot."

Posted by: JeffreyD | September 1, 2010 9:37 PM

Caine, my family tree has a noose on every branch. :^}

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | September 1, 2010 9:41 PM

Jeffrey:

Caine, my family tree has a noose on every branch. :^}

Sounds like mine.

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 1, 2010 9:59 PM

fried beer.

seriously?

Calling Billy the Beef Tallow Boy!

Posted by: cicely (Inadvertent Phytocidal Maniac) | September 1, 2010 10:10 PM

OPPS

(It'll take a while. Be patient.)

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | September 1, 2010 10:17 PM

a river in Egypt

De Nile isn't just a psychological coping mechanism.

Don't worry about that. I basically called you "Your Majesty".

I can get used to that.

Posted by: MrFire | September 1, 2010 10:27 PM

Cooks up nice and plump

.

I raise you.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | September 1, 2010 10:51 PM

Top Chef: Bourdain's had a personality transplant. I'm afraid for Tiffany.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | September 1, 2010 11:14 PM

Carlie, YEAH.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | September 1, 2010 11:32 PM

Carlie, if the show features a chef making love to the ribs he is cooking maybe I should be watching. No T.V. for this time waster.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | September 1, 2010 11:37 PM

Carlie:

If someone is making love to the ribs he's cooking, I don't want to eat them after.

Got that right. Honestly, he does not know when to shut the fuck up. Also, the Russian bride business? Oy. I thought Steak should have gone home.

Posted by: Benjamin "pardon my French" Geiger | September 1, 2010 11:43 PM

Question, spawned from another thread:

What's the difference between gyros, shawarma, and döner kebab? I've only had gyros.

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | September 1, 2010 11:54 PM

BGeiger@390

I think that's Lagerstoemia indica...Crepe myrtle.

Posted by: Josh, "Raquel Dommage," Porte-parole Gay Official | September 1, 2010 11:59 PM

Granted, I don't do the kind of work that requires customers or clients to be served

in #424 should have read:

"Granted, I don't do the kind of work that requires customers or clients to be served on a set Monday through Friday, business-hours schedule."

Posted by: drbunsen | September 2, 2010 1:14 AM

#396 Carlie, ghoul of deluded buffoons

Sorry, don't know why my links are broken.

Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Nile

News:
http://tinyurl.com/37qzevj

I can't find a reference to a timeframe.

Posted by: MrFire | September 2, 2010 1:25 AM

I've never understood the obsession with rigid 9 to 5 schedules, and strict rules about days off.

Oh Lordy. I'm too tired right now to launch into a tirade about the endless corporate stupidity and inefficiency that I have witnessed in the past.

I'll just say that I have seen people in the corporate world spout levels of utterly meaningless, boilerplate non-speak that would make a Glenn Beck fan embarrassed.

Posted by: Rey Fox, Bird Caller Guy | September 2, 2010 1:54 AM

"An osprey (I think) on top of a light pole"

Hell YEAH you think that's an osprey. *ahem* It is. Very nice shot too. I love everything that soars, but osprey are especially cool because they have their own family in Order Falconiformes, and they sort of look like giant seagulls in the air, but more graceful, and they have those black bandit masks. And there used to be a pair that nested in the stadium lights at the baseball stadium in Boise (home of the Boise Hawks).

I finally watched disc 4 of the Blue Planet series and they had some wonderful osprey hunting footage.

Posted by: KG | September 2, 2010 3:59 AM

Ospreys were a conservationist cause celebre in Britain in my youth - the population was down to a couple of pairs, due to persecution by gamekeepers and egg-collectors. It's now back up in the hundreds, and they are a main attraction at several nature reserves around Scotland, where I've seen them fishing, and feeding their young. I didn't realise until recently that they are about the most widely distributed raptor in global terms.

Posted by: Caine, ghetto féministe | September 2, 2010 4:23 AM

Walton:

Cashiers in the US don't have chairs?

No, they don't. They get to stand all day long. The only time you see a cashier with a chair is in a privately owned shop. I don't know that it's deliberately depriving (all though I would not rule that out, to say the least) as much as it is "why bother?"

I've done time as a cashier and there's a reason why some people are willing to spend a mass amount of money on shoes. Really comfortable fucking shoes.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | September 2, 2010 4:46 AM

My company's casino, which is open 24 hours a day, has pretty rigid schedules to ensure it can be open 24 hours a day. However, we have a liberal sick time and personal day policy, paid time for jury duty, vacations ranging from two weeks after a year employment to four weeks after ten year longevity, short and long term medical and family leave, and other benefits.

As with so many things, time off policies vary from employer to employer. Some companies are extremely rigid, others much less so. And having an asshole for a boss can make taking time off difficult.

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | September 2, 2010 5:22 AM

In modern supermarkets with checkouts, the cashiers always have chairs.

Seriously? I've honestly never in my life seen a cashier with a chair anywhere. Add that to the list of "ways corporate America could be humane but isn't and no one even realizes it could be different".

Posted by: Birger Johansson | September 2, 2010 5:27 AM

Walton:

"Cashiers in the US don't have chairs?"

Toys R'Us tried to introduce American-style rules when they set up shop in Sweden. The Unions boycotted the store until they signed the same deal as Swedish companies.

McDonald´s has introduced their own style of management. Bosses often illegally change the computer record of the amount of overtime the individual staff have worked. This is a widespread culture, we had a TV documentary about it.

This kind of stuff has convinced me that businesses really do need strict regulation. Never mind the little people, it is the bosses that will realy go off the rails if no one keeps an eye on them.

Posted by: Walton, Marquis of Carabas | September 2, 2010 5:49 AM

This kind of stuff has convinced me that businesses really do need strict regulation. Never mind the little people, it is the bosses that will realy go off the rails if no one keeps an eye on them.

This assumes that we should trust the state to "keep an eye on them", which requires a certain level of faith in the integrity of governments. Speaking for myself, I don't trust governments as far as I can throw them.

I don't deny that corporate oppression is a real phenomenon. But I'm much less scared of corporations than I am of the state. At least your employer can't execute you, or lock you up in an overcrowded prison where you're likely to be raped or stabbed, or ship you across the world against your will to die in a pointless war, or confiscate and destroy your home to sell the land to a developer, or hold you indefinitely in a "detention centre" for no other crime than having been born in the wrong country...

Not to mention that government regulation of business often achieves the opposite of its intended effect. Legislators and regulatory officials often form cosy relationships with the largest businesses in the industries they're supposed to regulate: meaning that regulation often ends up being used, not to protect workers and consumers, but to protect the largest corporations from unwelcome competition.

Rather, I think the ideal would be to have more cooperatively-owned companies (like the John Lewis Partnership in the UK) where the employees are also shareholders. And I support the universal right to unionise.

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | September 2, 2010 6:02 AM

Walton, you're seriously conflating a lot of things you shouldn't be. You're throwing criminal law and civil law together, and then also taking the position that since sometimes regulation doesn't work, it's stupid to have it at all. More cooperatively-owned companies would be nice, but it would only solve the employee treatment problem for those particular companies, and only if they take an active role in governance (which the ones on the lowest rung of the ladder don't have the time for). How do you propose to address and rectify corporate treatment of employees on a large scale?

Posted by: Walton, Marquis of Carabas | September 2, 2010 6:30 AM

I just don't think regulation is ultimately going to solve the problem of worker mistreatment of employees.

This should, of course, have read "corporate mistreatment of employees", or, alternatively, "corporate mistreatment of workers".

Posted by: KG | September 2, 2010 7:24 AM

But no, to satisfy the floor manager's desire to look like a hardass or something, we had to do busywork that was of no value to the company or the line operation. - Carlie

It kept you in your place, and minimised opportunities for talking to each other and possibly coordinating some form of opposition or resistance.

Walton,
While I agree with you that cooperatives and worker shareholding should be encouraged, and that corporate-state collusion is a real problem, you overlook both the historical role of the state in ending some of the worst abuses, and the continual campaigns by sections of big business (e.g. the Kochs) to abolish regulation - they wouldn't do that if regulation was in their interest.

Posted by: SteveV, Death's Pissant Haberdasher | September 2, 2010 7:46 AM

PS to my last.
IFIRC the East India Company did all those things.

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | September 2, 2010 7:52 AM

Good morning everybody.

Posted by: David Marjanović | September 2, 2010 7:58 AM

IFIRC the East India Company did all those things.

Oh yeah, and the Hudson Bay Company, and the Dutch East India Company...

And the good old Mafia.

Posted by: SteveV, Death's Pissant Haberdasher | September 2, 2010 8:00 AM

because we weren't allowed to ever look as though we weren't actively working at every single moment.

Yep. BTDT. But: I recall a plant maintainance engineer saying to me: 'I love to see my guys sitting down, playiing cards or dinking tea. If they're doing that, the plant's running, and that's what we're paid for"

Posted by: Rorschach | September 2, 2010 8:08 AM

Jealous? :-)

Of 21yo virgins threatening to propose to a woman they have never met ? Nope.If anything, it makes me want to resurrect our get Walton laid fund, so if he ever wants to propose to anyone, it will be beacause he likes and appreciates the person, not because he's horny beyond belief.

Talking about that, here's Robin Williams on Via**a

(stars necessary b/o spam filter, as I found out the hard way)

Posted by: boygenius | September 2, 2010 8:28 AM

HAPPY WEDNESDAY from the Ogvorbisverse.

Dude, it's only Tuesday.

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | September 2, 2010 8:36 AM

24 hours split three ways

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | September 2, 2010 8:47 AM

Uhuh.I'd like myself some humanitarian relief too.Maybe I go watch some Boston Legal...

LOL!

Well no worries. I don't think Walton's going to marry me so I doubt he's in any danger. Besides, I'd prefer an open marriage anyway. Better not to have to make excuses.

Posted by: Ogvorbis, Parenthetical Death | September 2, 2010 8:58 AM

Dude, it's only Tuesday.

Well, yeah, if you're in the Boygeniusverse.

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | September 2, 2010 8:59 AM

I'm listening to yesterday's Rachel Maddow about "Obamacare."

Am I missing what everyone is so angry about? So far I see a single possible issue for the American public to be mad about:

People must obtain health insurance (unless they've got financial problems or it offends their religious beliefs)

Well... I agree with that. What's the Republican issue with this?

Posted by: Rorschach | September 2, 2010 9:07 AM

Has anyone read Stephen King's "Under the Dome" ? I bought it the other day, haven't touched it yet, I still have Celia Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy to finish.I haven't bought a King book since "It" I think, that or "The Gunslinger"(Dark Tower IV), which I loved.
Night.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 2, 2010 9:13 AM

My company's casino

Please tell me you're the official economist for the Mohegan tribe.
Because that would be an awesome business card.

I'm much less scared of corporations than I am of the state.

When Walton uses the term "the state" I reach for my killfile.
Seriously, dude, hasn't the one consistent criticism of your political ideas ever since you started posting them here been that they are absurdly ideological and not rooted in any appreciation for the complexities of reality (not to mention the empirical lessons of history)? Do you really regard all possible governments as some monolith called The State?

Pannonia

? I had to look it up, but afaict Vienna isn't even close.

here's Robin Williams

NSFW, even if they let you sit down.
Pretty funny though, in the usual OTT Williams manner.

It's seriously unhealthy.

citation needed.
As long as you move around a bit and walk down to the bagging area occasonally to keep the venous return from your legs going, I don't see why it would be unhealthy.

I've done the marriage thing, its basic premise is flawed I think.

YMMV I suppose, but I'm in 'schach's camp any more.

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | September 2, 2010 9:24 AM

@Carlie:

Seriously?

I hate Republicans...

Posted by: Ogvorbis, Parenthetical Death | September 2, 2010 9:29 AM

David M:

Protestant work ethic.

I think part of it is the sneaking suspicion that somewhere someone is either getting a better deal than I or having more fun than I. Whether it is Social Security, health care, worker's comp, welfare (including food stamps and WIC (and WIC may be one of the best food programs out there because they specify what foods you can get and the price of the food doesn't matter (and (truth in blogging) (((Wife))) and I were on WIC when (((Boy))) was an infant and I was a GS5 (19k a year back then)))) and even working conditions.

One of the reasons this guy treated the front line people like shit is that he was treated like shit when he was a GS5. If he wasn't allowed to have fun as an interpretive ranger then no way would he tolerate anyone else having fun. That would have upset his Protestant work ethic. Treat everyone like shit and no one is getting a better deal.

Yeah, I know that's a perversion of the PWE, but I see it so often that I think it is the mandatory unspoken corrolary.

---------

"An introvert will marry the first woman who sleeps with him, I seduced your father and he proposed within two weeks."

(((Wife))) was the first (and only woman) with whom I have ever made love. I had one previous serious relationship (an RC who was then born again and dropped me because I was a universal deist (at the time)) before (((Wife))) and that got me to second base (traditional, not Calvinball).

Don't knock it. For some of us it works. We've been happily married for 20 years.

I've come to the conclusion that there are three sexual types for humanity: total monogamous, serial monogamous (or serial adulterous (take your pick)), and polygamous. And, as long as like is with like, things work well. If a total monogamous marries a serial monogamous, someone is going to end up unhappy. Just my two cents and remember, I am not a trained professional in this field, just a field observer.

Posted by: Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom | September 2, 2010 9:41 AM

Your average cocaine corporation in Colombia does the kind of things you list, because the government hasn't been able to stop them.

Somalian Pirates We~

(((Wife))) was the first (and only woman) with whom I have ever made love. I had one previous serious relationship (an RC who was then born again and dropped me because I was a universal deist (at the time)) before (((Wife))) and that got me to second base (traditional, not Calvinball). ....

What are the Calvinball bases? Inquiring Minds want to know!

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | September 2, 2010 9:46 AM

@Birger:

WTF ? "Democrats unlikely to repeal tax cuts for the rich" http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/09/01/99992/democrats-unlikely-to-repeal-tax.html

Yes, that will make a really good slogan for November: "The Republicans may be evil, but we are utterly useless!"

From the article:

Sean Neary, a spokesman for Senate Budget Committee Chairman Conrad, said the senator backed such an extension "for now."

"The general rule of thumb is that you do not raise taxes or cut spending during an economic downturn. That would be counterproductive," Conrad said.

*facepalm* Geniuses! The economy is weak because of the tax cuts! Repeal the tax cuts and the economy will bounce back!

Posted by: Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom | September 2, 2010 9:48 AM

....

See, I was expecting like...

First Flag: Deep Cuddles

Bth Goalpost: Kama Sutra Page 24

Achzen: Cheek Kiss.

I am disappointed.

Posted by: Ogvorbis, Parenthetical Death | September 2, 2010 9:52 AM

Rutee:

I am the father of teenagers. If you are disappointed, my job here is done.

Posted by: Ewan R | September 2, 2010 10:07 AM

I'm convinced that not all cashiers here in St Louis are chairless - I'll have to be a tad bit more observant next time I'm out shopping - I know that Aldi cashiers sit (and are superhumanly fast) and think, but don't know, that the other two localish grocery stores (Dierbergs and Schnucks) also seat their employees - although as part of my brain is trying to tell me I've seen sitting cashiers at Walmart and Sam's club... I could be deluding myself utterly on all counts other than Aldi - I'm normally desperately trying to avoid any eye contact or conversation and so probably miss all the details (some days the question "where is that accent from" makes me want to stab people in the eyes - wish I had the gall to answer, as our CEO did to GWB, "St Louis" (originally he's Scots, and still sounds it, although I heard a rumor he changed his nationality to "hellspawn") - but I don't want to confuse folk too much, or suggest that they're as moronic as Bush)

On corporations and government regulations - I think government regulation is an absolute neccesity but that self policing should also be something injected into corporate culture - not as a replacement for government regulation, but as an addition to it. I don't mean that govt regulations should be lax and that corporations should be expected to take up the slack, the regulations should be such that anyone with a job is treated as a human rather than a part (with vacation time, sick time, safety standards etc etc at acceptable levels (which is apparently utterly not the case for most people)) and corporations should be raising this bar (this is probably an unrealistic expectation for most corporations, but when the most evil corporation on the planet(tm) can kick the living crap out of the govt mandated health and safety (and other HR doodads such as health care, vacation time, sick time etc) for its workers I see no reason to at least hope other, less evil, corporations could do the same. (with the general JH inspired caveat that with this hope, and five bucks, one can get a latte at starbucks)

Yes, that will make a really good slogan for November: "The Republicans may be evil, but we are utterly useless!"

How many Democrats does it take to change a lightbulb? 60

Posted by: Ewan R | September 2, 2010 10:19 AM

Although if you piggybacked a ban on gay marriage or stem cell research onto your lightbulb changing it'd fly through in no time.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | September 2, 2010 10:23 AM

OK, I've been submerged in work and am entirely unaware of what's the latest-and-greatest on teh Thread®, but my morning survey of headlines turned up an occasion for (brief) spleen venting: I've always thought Buzz Aldrin was something of a self-important blowhard (in contrast to Neil Armstrong, who's almost maddeningly reticent about his own place in history), but he seemed to avoid stepping on his own crank in last night's Top Chef episode. His vision of an English-only Mars, though, is just cringeworthy. I realize there are plenty of reasons for an expedition to share a common language, but can Buzz really be deaf to the echoes of European imperialism in this comment? Apparently so.

Grrrrr... space exploration enthusiast face enough of a sociopolitical headwind as it is, without crap like this!

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | September 2, 2010 10:34 AM

Oh, by the way. Preemptive critique on Metroid: Other M (I remember someone saying they were interested in it):

Voice Acting - Samus's voice actress is a little monotone at times, the opening sequence is extremely monotone, despite the fact it's very emotional.

Graphics - Beautiful. Although they have Zero-Suit Samus extremely sexed up (she might as well be nekkid) I don't really mind it. The visuals are pretty.

Controls - HOLY crap I hate them! The 2.5D thing is fine, and really not too bad. Switching the remote from horizontal to vertical is awkward because you've got to swing it up and move your hand to the right place.

Other annoying stuff:
No energy pickups. If you are close to death, you can do a move that recharges your health - but only a single bar. Half of the time in boss battles I'm running for cover to get my health back because I entered the battle with less than optimal health.

Boss battles are irritating. Often there's a special way to hurt them that I don't even know about. One battle in particular took me about two minutes to realize I wasn't hurting the boss. The way to hurt them was so awkward, switching back and forth between the two firing modes.

Dodging is awesome - in 3rd person. 1st person dodging requires stick waggling, and I'm often hit anyway.

Niggling thing, E-tank Parts (like Zelda's pieces of heart) and Missile Tanks only holding 1 missile.

Also, why the heck would Samus - strong, powerful warrior - give a damn whether she's approved to use an item? There's an expansion in one of the first rooms I was in, but I couldn't get it because she wasn't authorized to use bombs. But I can't get it now because the door between where I am and that spot is sealed. ARGH!

Posted by: Lynna, OM | September 2, 2010 10:37 AM

AJ Milne @482. You're welcome. You earned the love.

Posted by: windy | September 2, 2010 10:43 AM

Maybe a zebra is completely covered in black/brown and white stripes and it doesn't make sense to call either of them the background color?

I think the answer is different Melanin expression in different skin areas, a mosaic pattern, genes for Melanin synthesis turned on here, turned off there, regulated by toolkit genes, hence the stripe appearance.Sean Carroll explains it in one of his books.

That's the proximate/developmental reason for it, of course, but it doesn't tell us how the stripes originated.

More weird colour genetics: Eclyse the "pinto" zorse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krAhedzqiik

Posted by: JeffreyD | September 2, 2010 10:52 AM

When I saw the book my first reaction was "Simpsons did it" - I'm assuming from the "good light reading" that they infact, didn't.

I realize it means I am not a good 'Merican consumer of pop culture, but I have no idea what the above means. :^}

Posted by: Rutee, Shrieking Harpy of Dooooom | September 2, 2010 10:58 AM

@Jeffrey:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Ptitleo00tgxbo?from=Main.ItsBeenDone

Which used to be called "Simpsons Did It!"

I'm beginning to dislike the shift from evocative, interesting (But memetic) Trope article names. It seems like an attempt at avoiding the INCREDIBLY obscure (Wronski Feint, a term from a throwaway line in Harry Potter) has become "Avoid all references".

Posted by: Ewan R | September 2, 2010 11:02 AM

I realize it means I am not a good 'Merican consumer of pop culture, but I have no idea what the above means. :^}

The reference was to
a) Southpark, who did a whole episode illustrating that the Simpsons did everything first

b) The Simpsons movie, which had the premise that Springfield was put under a dome.

As I considered the Simpsons movie a work of suck (other than spiderpig, which was in my eyes the saving grace of the movie) I was reevaluating my assessment of the King book based on your review.

(Herein lies an illustration of the old Maxim - if you have to explain it, it ain't funny)

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | September 2, 2010 11:09 AM

The makeup may not be a gay marker in their society. But it's still odd to have such a display of male beauty alongside a record of some much pederasty that Mullah Omar had to ban beardless boys from Taliban units. All the while, the Taliban made women into second class citizens at best (maybe third class, behind the goats), and all the while requiring women to be completely covered, generally disrespected, and grateful when their husbands beat them.

So, basically, their ancient Greeks now.

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | September 2, 2010 11:11 AM

Fucknuts!

Why can't I ever use the right one?

I think I'm just going to stop using the contraction altogether so I have to say they are until I can have some reasonable expectation of not looking like an idiot.

Posted by: Jules, Bride of Death | September 2, 2010 11:16 AM

Ol'Greg
My dad was a machinist for 35 years. Eventually he owned a shop, and I (and 3 of my sibs) worked for him. It is grueling, tedious work, and he was the type who was even harder on his kids than he was his other employees. But I still liked the job well enough, having only done it for a year or so. He was also a very generous employer and took care of his guys exceptionally well. His plant manager made more than he did for the first 3 or so years he was in business.

As far as occupational hazards go: Dad was dead at 54 of lung cancer, and he hadn't had a cigarette in 30 years. Years of solvents and metal dust do not do good things to your lungs.

Standing on the job: At the hotel I worked at, the corporate office would spy on the front desk attendants via the video cameras. If we were caught sitting, whether there was anyone else around or not, we got reprimanded via phone calls. Which was pretty fucking freaky. Also, there wasn't a laundry attendant, so front desk was expected to do all of the laundry for the entire hotel. So, on top of front desk duties, you had linens for 112 rooms to do. And front desk also took out the trash for all of the public trash cans. I was 28, had a BA and several years professional experience, and I was doing that shit for $8/hr. (Not to mention getting propositioned *at least* weekly as if I were some kind of fucking call girl.)

Hooray for recessions and shitty work environments!

Posted by: First Approximation, L'esprit de l'escalier | September 2, 2010 11:18 AM

When Walton uses the term "the state" I reach for my killfile.

lol

Posted by: Lynna, OM | September 2, 2010 11:28 AM

Ah, the smell of infighting and dissent among the ranks. This was posted today by an ex-mormon:

Outside of Utah, Mormons think Utah/Idaho Mormons are a bunch of bad-mannered hillbillies. The Utah/Idaho Mormons think everyone in the mission field are a bunch of inferior, not-descended-from-pioneers, Mormon pretenders. Ask any Mormon and they will tell you people only leave because they are offended. So either Mormonism is a defective religion that produces spiritually week, emotionally-stunted people who turn their back on God because their feelings are hurt OR Mormonism produces such rotten people that more than half the people who join up with them would rather loose their family forever than spend one more minute with a TBM [TBM = True Believing Mormon]. And Mormons don't QUESTION this - they just believe the party line about being offended ... That Mormons are totally offensive is completely believable to the membership, even if they don't articulate it that way.

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | September 2, 2010 11:34 AM

Jules your dad sounds like he was a good guy :)

Yeah, the last company my dad worked at was actually pretty good. They made medical parts, joints for hip replacements and the like. Treated him well. The thing that really makes a difference in how tolerable a workplace is ends up being how well you get on with the people I tend to find.

But yeah, toxicity is high. I'm nervous my dad may have lung cancer or something. His breathing isn't great and I can see something is wrong with him, and yeah I know years of hard drinking and drugs and whatnot blah blah. It's something worse. I won't minimize the problems he gave himself, but at the same time is anything ever that simple?

He doesn't see doctors ever, and I guess that's how he likes it.

I'm basically dealing with it by not thinking about it. There's just not much I can do, ya' know?

Posted by: Lynna, OM | September 2, 2010 11:39 AM

Glenn Beck caught in (most recent) lie:
"I went to the National Archives and I held the first inaugural address written in his own hand by George Washington." -- Beck

Susan Cooper, National Archives Spokeswoman said: "Those kinds of treasures are only handled by specially trained archival staff."

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | September 2, 2010 11:41 AM

Hey Lynna do you have any idea what that comment on there means "Not one of us on this board is this girl's Father in Heaven."

I don't understand.

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | September 2, 2010 11:43 AM

Oh, and 6. Someone might fall off of a chair and sue us.

7. In case of a fire or other emergency evacuation, the chairs might impede the ability to exit, and someone will sue us.

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | September 2, 2010 12:00 PM

@windy:

Huh... equating the American work environment to a video game about a space bounty hunter...

Posted by: Katherine Lorraine, Chaton de la Mort | September 2, 2010 12:12 PM

@Ol'Greg:

Here's the full quote.

Not one of us posting on this board is this girl's Father in Heaven, not one of us is this girl's Savior, and not one of us is this girl's bishop, so not one of us gets to determine whether or not she bears any responsibility for what happened. It's nobody's business but theirs. How would you like it if you had your mistakes plastered all over the news, and everybody sat around arguing over how much guilt you should bear? How is it any of your business if she's morally at fault or not?

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | September 2, 2010 12:20 PM

Oh weird. Some how the quotes aren't showing up right for me so I didn't see all of them, or the complete one.

Ugh... that's nauseating.

Posted by: Algernon, elle sans chapeau | September 2, 2010 12:37 PM

People love them some unrealistic expectations, don't they?

I think my cat should know right from wrong as written in the book of Don't Shit on the Floor verse 23 chapter 7.

But no matter how much I read it to her she chooses to ignore it.

Posted by: Bill Dauphin, avec fromage | September 2, 2010 1:09 PM

OK, I've at least skimmed last night's posts, and am kinda' sorta' caught up.

Carlie:

But they had this supercool idea that they had to make dishes that could be used in the space program, but then didn't follow through and make them freeze-dry the dishes and reconstitute them for the judges.

Ah, now I see what motivated ALL THOSE CAPS earlier. And it would have been cool if they'd been able to demo the space-food versions of their dishes. But I suspect the process of conversion of any dish to its freeze-dried, reconstitutable, flight-ready eequivalent is a nontrivial bit of food engineering (ooooh... food engineering goes on the list of careers — along with TV critic, travel writer, and voice actor — that I would so consider if I could start my life over at age 16), and I doubt it would be feasible to do within even a whole week of the competition, let alone a couple days. Heck, even developing the normal dishes they create to the point where they could be reliably reproduced by a line cook in a restaurant is probably a nontrivial effort.

It'd be cool, though, if they had NASA's version of [winning chef's name redacted]'s dish ready to sample in time for the season-end reunion show.

Then too, it's generally true that both the cheftestants and the judges seem to take the quality of the food far more seriously than strict adherence to the terms of any challenge. That's probably as it should be — it's a cooking show, first and foremost — but it does lend a certain bogosity to the concept of challenges to begin with.

Posted by: Jules, Bride of Death | September 2, 2010 1:14 PM

Fuck.

I am *this close* to giving up on humanity.

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | September 2, 2010 1:31 PM

I am *this close* to giving up on humanity.

What the fuck????

Oh my god.

To be really crass, though, since nobody was killed, nobody's going to fucking care.

Posted by: Jules, Bride of Death | September 2, 2010 1:42 PM

Hmmm. All these years of drilling in the Gulf and no explosions, then suddenly we have a president who opposes drilling there, along with a party in control of both houses who also opposes drilling, and there are all these explosions now.

The stupidity of this argument just makes me insane. Why the fuck do they think environmentalists want to stop the drilling, and do they seriously believe that anyone will irrevocably damage the very thing they are trying to save in order to get a little political pull?

Of course, if they are pinning it on Obama, it's probably because it's part of a vast Muslim conspiracy to make us more dependent on Saudi oil barons.

/HULK ANGRY!

Posted by: Ewan R | September 2, 2010 1:46 PM

To be really crass, though, since nobody was killed, nobody's going to fucking care.

I dunno, the fact people were killed in the first explosion was pretty much glossed over because of the spill - so if there was a leak then people'd care.

Accidents on rigs probably aren't entirely avoidable however - the fact safety precautions weren't in place to prevent catastrophic leaking is what made event horizon as bad as it was - one wonders how often explosions occur on rigs anyway and go totally unreported because they're boring (even if people do die) due to safety precautions in place which limit the damage.

BG @%533(and prior conversation) The whole underage issue is a tough one to grapple with for me - in my mind (because of where I grew up) the whole problem in this case is of authority and hypocrisy rather than one of statutory rape (admittedly it is one of stat rape due to the US law, but having grown up with an age of consent of 16 rather than 18 I have difficulties taking the aoc of 16 to be anything other than farcical) - the guy should categorically lose his job and not be allowed to be in a position of authority which can be abused - and the hypocrisy involved is staggering (Mormons, putting the semen in seminary since 1825) - Jail - well, I'm unconvinced, but again this is because I've had it wired into my head that 16 is a perfectly good age of consent (I struggle to come up with a good actual aoc - given that age isn't necessarily a reflection of maturity - particularly during the mid to late teens) - I'd actually be interested as to whether there are sound reasons behind any given arbitrary age - 16 just seems good to me, but not through any sort of logical process, just b/c that was what was legal - I' hope that were I to have been brought up in Vatican city I wouldn't consider 12 to be just dandy (I'd probably be undergoing many hundreds of hours of therapy if I'd been brought up in VC but that's besides the point)

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 2, 2010 1:50 PM

ll these years of drilling in the Gulf and no explosions, then suddenly we have a president who opposes drilling there, along with a party in control of both houses who also opposes drilling, and there are all these explosions now.

strangely, the article I just looked at this morning on the current incident had this quote by the Director of Marine Affairs at Roger Williams Uni:

"This is one other piece of evidence that demonstates the human and enviroment risks of our appetite for offshore oil," said Susan Farady, director of the Marine Affairs Institute at Roger Williams University School of Law. She said there's been more than 800 offshore explosions and fires in the Gulf since 2001 and 55 deaths.

strange, I don't recall that information being featured at all in any of the previous media articles on the big explosion and spill previous.

I wonder why...

Posted by: Carlie of the lacy, gently wafting adjectives | September 2, 2010 2:05 PM

Ewan - it's the power disparity that makes it so bad. 16 is still an impressionable age, especially when older adults are involved. Older teachers, elders, particularly. There's not much way to have consent that isn't informed by coercion in that kind of situation, whether the coercion is purposeful or not.

Bill - But right now? Four months after the BP disaster? Every other company with an oil rig should have been battening down the hatches and inspecting and reinspecting and testing everything to be sure they wouldn't have something like that happen, or be implicated in industry laxity, or have even the slightest sniff of impropriety. That this could happen even under these circumstances is troubling, to say the least.

Posted by: KG | September 2, 2010 2:29 PM

The stuff about Taliban pederasty reminds me of Katherine Burdekin's Swastika Night a speculative fiction written in the 1930s but set 7 centuries in the future, in a Nazi-ruled world. Women have been completely subjugated, heterosex is for the purpose of reproduction only, with the result that male youths are the only possible objects of romantic feelings for older men.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 2, 2010 2:51 PM

The challenge was to create food for the International Space Station

Ah, I see.
Well, that was a pretty stupid challenge.

Willie Nelson is a fucking national treasure!!

Agreed. And he seems like a hell of a nice guy taboot. Got to see him sitting in with the Dead once.
Have you heard his record with Wynton Marsalis? It works.

the book of Don't Shit on the Floor verse 23 chapter 7.

Cut off the cat's Amazon card before it moves on to Book 2: Don't Shit on the Bedclothes.

license plate holders to replace the ones plastered with the dealer's logo

My ex took her new car in for scheduled service to a different dealership than she bought it from, and it was a few days before my daughter noticed that they had surreptitiously swapped the plate holder!

Never read the comments

blog comments > news comments > You-Tube comments

so far there are no reports of adverse environmental impacts from this particular incident.

That's incorrect:

A mile-long oil sheen spread Thursday from an offshore petroleum platform burning in the Gulf of Mexico off Lousiana,

Posted by: Ogvorbis, Parenthetical Death | September 2, 2010 3:10 PM

Unfortunately, I've probably been a little too frivolous lately.

Nonsense. Frivolity is a good way to unbottom.

There were just a few aphorisms that (((Dad))) always threw my way:

1. The key to happiness in life is to find something you like to do and then find someone stupid enough to pay you for doing it.

2. Be only as mature as the situation warrants. And the correlary: be as frivolous as the situation allows.

Posted by: Ichthyic | September 2, 2010 3:12 PM

But it still doesn't strike me as a reason to give up on humanity... or even to rhetorically flirt with doing so.

...especially sensitive to that after the Lee episode.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | September 2, 2010 3:19 PM

My ex took her new car in for scheduled service to a different dealership than she bought it from, and it was a few days before my daughter noticed that they had surreptitiously swapped the plate holder!

I would be livid! What right do they have to decide what businesses I advertise.

___

@Kev Q Kevque F,
Thanks for the details. We had already read enough to know that this Metroid isn't for us, but your review certainly confirms our worries. We enjoyed Corruption because the control scheme worked amazingly well, (for us.)
___

I have had both sitting and standing jobs and I will work on my feet, thank you very much. Sitting lets me do horrible things to my back and neck and not notice until I try to move. Standing means I am always aware of bad posture and ensures that I finish my day comfortable.
___

I think that the problem with monogamy is part and parcel with the sex=love paradigm. If people could get over equating one with the other there would be a whole lot less grief. I have found it easy to be emotionally attached to the same person for nineteen years, but we don't have the same hangups about sex play that seems to be the common mentality.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | September 2, 2010 3:28 PM

Ogvorbis, SIotO

There were just a few aphorisms that (((Dad))) always threw my way:

1. The key to happiness in life is to find something you like to do and then find someone stupid enough to pay you for doing it.

2. Be only as mature as the situation warrants. And the correlary: be as frivolous as the situation allows.

A wise man your father.

Posted by: Ogvorbis, Parenthetical Death | September 2, 2010 3:32 PM

Dhorvath:

Yes, he is. Didn't realize until I was about 25, but yeah.

Oh, and dieting and exercise is a good way to unmbottom. Frivolity is a good way to unbutton. Just once I'm going to surprise myself and actually read what I right before I hit submit.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | September 2, 2010 3:39 PM

Now I have to fear the unbottom and the unmbottom, especially if they get unbottoned. I also despair about some of the things that I thought I wrote correctly, but it turns out that I just can't write right. (Or remember about paragraph breaks in blockquote apparently.)

Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline. | September 2, 2010 3:45 PM

Aphorisms?

Life is short. Then you die.

Posted by: Walton, Marquis of Carabas | September 2, 2010 3:47 PM

Damn it. I guess I'll send the dress back then. Or maybe I'll hold on to it and start hoping some one likes and appreciates me :P

Awww... I like and appreciate you very much. :-p But, while I'm not an expert in such matters, I gather that it's traditional to actually meet in person before deciding to get married.

Rorschach seemed, however, to sincerely believe that I was just looking for... *blushes* um... er... well, you know what I mean. I was anxious to reassure him that my motives are entirely honourable.

*giggles nervously*

Posted by: Silič O'Nopolitanopoulos, Färschdbischuf Beesknees aus Ulm und Klein Elguth, Elector Pharynguline. | September 2, 2010 3:51 PM

And in on odd case of synchronicity Chad Orzel just linked to:

"Would more holiday be good for America?"

Posted by: Randomfactor | September 2, 2010 3:53 PM

Aphorism is better than no rism at all.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | September 2, 2010 3:56 PM

Life is short because you die.

Posted by: Walton, Marquis of Carabas | September 2, 2010 3:57 PM

As an addendum to #567: In some US states (though, thankfully, not in England*), private prison contractors are even entrusted with disciplinary powers over prisoners, and with decisions as to prisoners' security classifications. Obviously, this creates a direct conflict of interest, since tougher sanctions mean more profit for the company. Yet in many cases, there are no adequate procedural protections and no routes of appeal. In essence, prisoners are denied basic rights so that a vast corporation can scrape a little more profit out of them. It's horrific. :-(

(*We have private prisons in England, but each one has a government-appointed controller, who is a civil servant and is in charge of overseeing all disciplinary matters. It's not perfect, but it's a little less self-evidently corrupt.)

Posted by: cicely (Inadvertent Phytocidal Maniac) | September 2, 2010 4:00 PM

But it still doesn't strike me as a reason to give up on humanity... or even to rhetorically flirt with doing so.

Nope. I'm convinced that this particular incident wouldn't be catching airtime if not for its chronological proximity to the recent EPIC FAIL.

Humanity usually just sucks quietly, in the background and at a steady rate. Or as you so aptly put it, "It does not have to be apocalyptic to reinforce to me that too many humans don't give a fuck about the implications of their actions".

On a completely unrelated subject, does anybody know what became of Cubicle 7's much anticipated (by me, if no one else!) RPG based on Stross' Laundry books? It was scheduled for July, and I've seen a re-schedule for something like August 10, and Amazon describes it as "out of print; limited availability".

Um... for the record, I was joking. I thought that was reasonably obvious. :-/

Looks to me like your leg has come off in their hands, pard. :D

(This illustrates why I rarely make jokes. There's always potential for misunderstanding. Unfortunately, I've probably been a little too frivolous lately.)

Bzzzzzt! Wrong answer! This is Teh Thread, dude. Kick back, be loose.

Posted by: Dhorvath, OM | September 2, 2010 4:03 PM

@ Kev Q, Kevque F,
We tend to prefer a sandbox approach to rails, we heard the newest Mario was a herding game as well. Truth is it would have cost us a Wii as well, we sold the whole thing because of a paucity of interesting titles.

Now we time sink in The Capital Wasteland with Three Dog, "Awooo!"

Posted by: Jadehawk, cascadeuse féministe | September 2, 2010 4:06 PM

Are you really saying that American companies deliberately deprive their cashiers of chairs, out of sheer sadism and/or a desire to maintain "discipline" in the workplace? I hope I'm misunderstanding you. If not, then... that's really horrible.

yup. not consciously probably, but that's the mindset. And it's not just about the cost of having to re-design the cashier stations. You can get in trouble for sitting on he job even when sitting is possible and doesn't actually impact your performance: prepping veggies as a cook and sitting on a bucket; as a hostess, during dead hours, sitting on the waiting bench in a restaurant while cleaning menus; etc. It's the sitting itself that is a no-no, because it implies laziness and slacking off on the job. Hell, I even once got chewed out by a customer for taking my government mandated and sorely needed lunchbreak where she could see me, because she felt it was too busy for me to be taking a break (and nevermind that this was the least busy it had been all day)

I don't deny that corporate oppression is a real phenomenon. But I'm much less scared of corporations than I am of the state. At least your employer can't execute you, or lock you up in an overcrowded prison where you're likely to be raped or stabbed, or ship you across the world against your will to die in a pointless war, or confiscate and destroy your home to sell the land to a developer, or hold you indefinitely in a "detention centre" for no other crime than having been born in the wrong country...

you don't think businesses kill their employees? you don't think they herd them into camps where there's no rule of law and therefore violence happens? you don't think they are capable of separating people from their families? or steal all your property?

you're such a child sometimes. this happens all the time, everywhere where the government doesn't stop them from doing so. Historical and modern examples abound: EIC, Hudson Bay Company, slave traders, drug cartels, South Korean Cheabols, mining companies, trafficking of women for prostitution, and every American company that prefers hiring illegal immigrants because they're cheaper and can be treated like shit without anyone stepping in and stopping them.

Not to mention that government regulation of business often achieves the opposite of its intended effect. Legislators and regulatory officials often form cosy relationships with the largest businesses in the industries they're supposed to regulate: meaning that regulation often ends up being used, not to protect workers and consumers, but to protect the largest corporations from unwelcome competition.

another libertarian lie. sure, some regulations do make it more difficult to enter an already established market; this, in comparison to the above mentioned human rights abuses, environmental destruction, and overall pure unadulterated evil created by corporations is fucking peanuts. The true problem, in any case, is that the US, and increasingly the European nations as well, are plutocracies rather than democracies. And I've already told you that a strong social democracy is the only thing keeping the tyranny of money at bay. We're weakening our democracies precisely because of libertarian lies about how bad governments are, and handing them over to those who do know what a government can do, despite them often being the ones who spread the anti-government propaganda in the first place.

And I support the universal right to unionise.

is that so. have you changed your mind on that other favorite of Libertarians, the "right to work"*pftui* laws? because a union in a "right to work" state is just playing pretend; it's useless.

Rather, I was making a broader, more abstract point about the relative dangers of government oppression and corporate oppression.

you were talking ideology from the POW of someone who lives in a place where people have fought and died to get their governments to put corporations on a leash, and takes those victories for granted.

wonder how many managers/CEOs/company owners even think that far, at least consciously, and how many just believe these are God-given standards on what a company is supposed to be like.

like i said, they don't consciously think that way; it's the Protestant Work Ethic and the deeply ingrained belief that being comfortable and having fun leads to unproductiveness and "difficult" employees. Compare it to the extreme discipline of fundie homeschoolers who brag about the mindless obedience of their children, and about how they don't have difficult teens; only those rotten, unchristian, undisciplined families do.

Not to mention that government regulation of business often achieves the opposite of its intended effect.

"Often"? Numbers, please.

seconded

I think the ideal would be to have more cooperatively-owned companies (like the John Lewis Partnership in the UK) where the employees are also shareholders.

Now this does sound good... though, on its own, it doesn't really prevent any of the items on your list. Some people even find it easier to be assholes in groups.

sure; I'm fully willing to accept that America is capable of producing co-ops where people are willing to cut off their nose to spite their face, and vote for their own work-conditions to get worse just to make sure some other group is even worse off. Such a co-op wouldn't last very long though. and most of the time, if you don't have this vile competitive culture as deeply ingrained, people actually prefer to cooperate for everybody's benefit than to compete to everybody's misfortune, as long as fairness is enforced.

Most places like to get more than one kind of work out of you anyway. And people here hate people who look like they might be resting. Americans hate rest and relaxation, it's reserved only for people who "deserve it" and that usually isn't you (you entitled fuck, what do you think I had to do...etc). To see some one sitting or looking contemplative means they're lazy and unmotivated. Some of it really does come from that. I'm not defending it, just saying it's been socialized. We're Americans. We hate each other.

QFT. that's what a national self-image/mythos based on individualism and competition gets you. a bit of socialism goes a long way to make people hate each other less.

Sean Neary, a spokesman for Senate Budget Committee Chairman Conrad, said the senator backed such an extension "for now."

"The general rule of thumb is that you do not raise taxes or cut spending during an economic downturn. That would be counterproductive," Conrad said.

in most other states, Conrad would be a Republican.He's also the one who claimed France, Germany, and a bunch of other European countries didn't have government healthcare, and therefore the U.S. didn't need the Public Option, either.
*sigh*

on behalf of the state of North Dakota, I apologize for that man's existence

Fuck.I am *this close* to giving up on humanity.

seconded. fucking hell.

Unfortunately, I've probably been a little too frivolous lately.

bullshit. you're far more fun when you're being frivolous then when you're being a libertarian ass.

I gather that it's traditional to actually meet in person before deciding to get married.

depends on the tradition, doesn't it?

Posted by: Jules, Bride of Death | September 2, 2010 4:10 PM

In any case, even if these people are evil, or even if all people in the oil industry are, I still don't get reacting to this by giving up on people in general.

I apologize if my use of hyperbole was too convincing. Sometimes my mad acting skilz get translated into my writing. No, I'm not actually giving up on people in general. But, yes, my faith in humanity did die a little. I don't think that's a bad thing because, frankly, they don't fucking deserve it. I'm probably more hopelessly optimistic than most people on this thread, but even I've learned that it's a terrible idea to not recognize how dangerous some people can be (and how dangerous all of us can be as a whole).

The point of my machines break comment earlier was that this is an inherently difficult enterprise, and sometimes bad things happen even when the people involved are doing the right things.

And my point is that we shouldn't have machines that can do that kind of damage in the fucking Gulf. The cost-benefit analysis on this one seems to have fallen under the "Well, probably we'll be all right, and oil is at $XX/bbl!"

But then, I'd rather see a financial meltdown of modern culture as the result of our own flaws than see entire massive ecosystems destroyed because of them.

And, no, that doesn't mean I've given up on humanity. It means that I'd choose the diversity of life on this planet without humans over humans destroying everything. That's not the scope of what's at risk in offshore drilling (yet), but it is the scope of the attitude that allows that shit to happen.

Posted by: Ewan R | September 2, 2010 4:14 PM

How to describe a p-value of 10^(-156)? Ridiculously certain?

Too many samples error - try again later.

Although I think ridiculously certain would suffice - essentially whatever you'd use to describe a p of

Posted by: Ewan R | September 2, 2010 4:17 PM

meh - damned less than sign... p of less that 0.0001 would be suffient should be the end of #582