It seems the latest topic in the immortal thread is underwear, so here you go, more underwear. The ladies and the gay men may enjoy this video, the rest of us…well, smile and buck up over your temporary objectification.
More like this
You are a male physics professor, and you want to improve science education. What could possibly be a better idea than to team up with a bunch of professional cheerleaders and make a video of them shouting out science tidbits while they shake their pompoms? Science cheerleaders!
I know, right…
[1203.1895] Classic Nintendo Games are (NP-)Hard
We prove NP-hardness results for five of Nintendo's largest video game franchises: Mario, Donkey Kong, Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Pokemon. Our results apply to Super Mario Bros. 1, 3, Lost Levels, and Super Mario World; Donkey Kong Country 1-3;…
They keep dragging me back in. I try to drop it, but my inbox is full of people still arguing this point, and it's getting ridiculous. The thing is, they keep throwing godawfully bad arguments at me, as if they're trying to hit me in the head with a brick enough times to make me stupid enough to…
Here's an amusing flash video for your morning: what if, after humans went extinct, alien space probes arrived to survey our civilization…and they arrived in the ruins of Kansas?
I think we need to rename the Bible Belt. It's more like the Dirty Underwear of America — and you know what your…
I know. Blatant pandering.
Going back decades:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcvjXAtzaMU
@Lynna, 661 on old thread
Smoggy uses a rather colorful vocabulary. The pearl-clutchers seem to have simply searched for "fuck" and "die" and posted what came up*, which would miss most of his genius.
*Although they didn't post things word for word, they mangled the subsequent texts which makes it impossible to definitely source several of the statements they "quote". Further, in some they changed them to make them seem more like direct threats to another poster. Such as the following invective regarding Donohue's rape apologetics:
"F*** that shithead sideways with a rusty knife. (Umm, but only metaphorically. *Draws self heroically back from cliffedge*)"
on The Intersection, this becomes
“you should be f***ed sideways with a rusty knife”
It's thoroughly dishonest. The people there don't even care if what they're accusing people of saying was actually said. Someone on the Intersection said it was, and by Jove that's good enough. Anyone who points out people are lying or acting in a generally sleazy and deceptive manner are simply apologists for brutal non-consensual sex acts.
No bears, though.
(Quick link to the latest endless thread still points to episode XXXIV)
This just in, before I hit bed, in full sleepwear including doona :
Republican anti-gay senator caught after leaving gay club
No idea, but I've it mentioned so often, even in innocuous TV shows, that it's evidently considered obvious. Either there's something about it somewhere (I wonder how to search for that in Google Scholar...), or everyone just takes it for granted (which wouldn't automatically make it wrong, mind you).
If so, I most likely would, too.
Incredibly bad writing, though. Let's remove the repetitive parts, shall we...
<innocent whistling :-° >
Undershirts: yes, except in summer and (duh) at night. In contrast, I never wear 2 T-shirts above each other.
Socks: I would buy some if I needed to. So far I have enough for 4 weeks. =8-) That's not taking into account that I wear sandals, without socks of course, when it's hot enough. And no, I don't wear socks for more than 1 day before washing them again.
Dick "Dick" Cheney he used to be called...
Richard the Lying-Hearted.
</span style="Mr Burns">
That must be it.
Paul @ #3:
Well, yeah, of course it is. Dishonesty is the core of M&K's faithiest preaching. When dishonesty is put forth as a good thing, there's no reason to expect the chorus of the song to be any different.
Ah, I see Lynna in the previous thread beat me to it, apologies !!
Soooo if I'm to understand this correctly, if I've posted the phrase 'Go fuck yourself...' more than once in an online forum...
I'm now a serial rapist?
Man. The law don't mess 'round 'round here, do it?
(/In other news, I'd just like to say that when I did the video PZ just posted, I was young and needed the money.)
Hey guys, this is the Unending Thread, so it's a good place to post the following:
Joe Fucking Stupak (D) is claiming he (and his followers) are going to sink the Health Care Reform bill over the lack of sufficient support for Forced Childbirth. This fucker needs to be held accountable for his fucktardery. And I know the way to do it.
Look, one of the best ways to fight the powerful is by mockery and humiliation. It worked with Senator Rick Santorum and "santorum". Google the word. My suggestion is we make the "stupak" mean the infection which kills women who suffer clumsy, illegal abortions. Email or phone Stupak's office and ask him how many women he wants to have die from stupak.
Use "stupak" in your blog posts, in letters to the editor, in articles (if you write them). That's how new words get into the dictionary and into public usage.
You're in Australia... and it's midnight over here. So you go to bed at noon?
Just curious.
I thus remind myself of a cartoon that showed who profited from the right-right coalition government in Austria. One of the pictures didn't really have anything to do with that government, but one of the two right parties were the xenophobes, and one of them, Hilmar Kabas*, is the guy who conducted those "security checks" (his word) in brothels with the party's credit card. So that picture illustrated one group of winners: the comedians. Someone stands on a stage and simply says "HILMAR!", and the audience goes "HARR HARR HARR!"
* Incredibly Germanic and incredibly rare first name, Hungarian last name. The Viennese xenophobes are often inherently funny that way.
Sweet & Spicy Bacon
1 1/2 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
Rounded 1/4 teaspoon cayenne (or 1/2 tsp, to taste)
Rounded 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 lb thick-cut bacon (about 12 slices)
Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F.
Stir together brown sugar, cayenne, and black pepper in a small bowl.
Arrange bacon slices in 1 layer (not overlapping) on rack of a large broiler pan. Bake 20 minutes. Turn slices over and sprinkle evenly with spiced sugar. Continue baking until bacon is crisp and deep golden, 20 to 35 minutes more (check bacon every 5 minutes). Best to drain on a wire rack over paper towels. Crisper and no sticking.
How about something more women experience and live to talk about. Why not use his name to describe the smelly hydrorrhea you get after cryosurgery, during pregnancy, and generally after having the cervix messed with?
Have not worn anything to sleep in since I was out of kiddie jams, except in hospital and the few times kids slept with me. Kept a sarong on the bed post for when I had to get up to tend to them or some such. Still naked at night...well...do body paints, sequins and crotch jewels count?
No undies either. Always obey the first law of male thermodynamics, give the balls some air.
Oh, and for the nervous Internonsexuals - please submit to sexual advances by a rhino in a sand pit full of squid.
Nude is good, naked is better, nekkid is best.
Totum dependeat.
It's 10am here, welcome to the world of night duty...:-)
PZ Myers :
*best ID4 creepy government guy imitation :*
That is not entirely accurate, Mr President !
:D
David Marjanović | March 4, 2010 5:47 PM:
In other words, it's no more likely to be true than any other randomonly chosen urban legend.
For example:
"Man... cryosurgery sucked. I must have had a gallon of stupak in there. Fucking gross. "
Or
"The pain wasn't so bad, but the stupack is so nasty and smelly."
Or
"There's nothing more disgusting than stupak up in you vag"
As many have suspected, Episode XXXIV shattered all previous records, coming in at only 1.37 d due to a blistering commenting rate of 487 comments/d.
Somewhere back in Ep XXXIII teh Thread rocketed past the 30K mark.
And I have no time to catch up.
30733
David Marjanović | March 4, 2010 5:47 PM:
In other words, it's no more likely to be true than any other randomly chosen urban legend.
TEXAS PENAL CODE § 9.41. PROTECTION OF ONE'S OWN PROPERTY. (a) A person in
lawful possession of land or tangible, movable property is
justified in using force against another when and to the degree the
actor reasonably believes the force is immediately necessary to
prevent or terminate the other's trespass on the land or unlawful
interference with the property.
And even worse than that:
§ 9.42. DEADLY FORCE TO PROTECT PROPERTY. A person is
justified in using deadly force against another to protect land or
tangible, movable property:
(1) if he would be justified in using force against the
other under Section 9.41; and
(2) when and to the degree he reasonably believes the
deadly force is immediately necessary:...
"Uh, that's right neighborly of y'all to brang me that there apple pie and... what's all this, heah? Y'all say I'm goin ta Hail? Wall, I'm gunna have company, ya know whit Ah mean..."
The foregoing is in no way to be construed as advocacy of violence or intent to commit violence. It was a dramatization with actors. Do not try this at home. Your mileage may vary. For entertainment purposes only.
That video's just not even close to fair.
Spring is truly going to be the death of me.
I am reposting my question from the last segment of the undead thread. Ol'Greg and Pygmy Loris, are either of you bothered or made upset when I inform a person that they should fuck them self. Yeah, I ask because of that Intersection dust up.
Ok you all, I need some encouragement. In a few hours from now, I want to be calling that guy and suggesting we go out on Saturday...yeah, that guy, the one I worked with till I got sacked.
Never did this before, a little nervous......
*flag post*
MAJeff just insinuated that he was going to be murdered!
*flag post*
badgersdaughter just tried to trivialize the very real problem of legalized violence by insinuating that said reference thereto was not in fact a reference to advocacy of said violence even though said reference was clearly an advocacy statement thereof and so forth.
*flag post*
Sven DiMilo clearly referred to one entity shattering something else, which is an act that can only be committed by an act of force and is therefore violent.
*flag post*
I'm not sure exactly what Ol'Greg said, but it sounded rude.
What's that? Underwear? "Ladies and gay men" will enjoy this? A video?
Damn you, locked-down work computer!! What am I missing?
This stinks like yesterday's stupak...
Bibles-For-Porn upsets christians. No surprise there.
So, how about the good Senator Roy Ashburn of Bakersfield, CA?
He's virulently anti-gay; his voting record shows it. Well, he was just arrested for drunk driving, weaving down L Street in Sacramento at 2 a.m. Wednesday in his black Chevy Tahoe.
He got hammered, apparently, in a well-known gay bar in Sacramento, called Faces, and had an unnamed male with him in the car.
That's right. Another Republican who has dedicated his life to voting against gay rights, out for a little fun.
Hypocrite...
http://cbs13.com/local/ashburn.arrest.dui.2.1534505.html
Just do it.
You're reminding me of this long weekend I had about 34 years ago, fretting over whether I ought to call that girl I knew in high school and ask her for a date. It was miserable: butterflies in the stomach, I was absolutely sure she'd laugh at me or was engaged or would remind me of what a dork I was (and still was). I let myself suffer for days, just freaking out with nerves.
And then I just picked up the phone, called her up, had a nice conversation catching up on what we'd been up to for the past year, and she said yes. Wow. It was so easy.
She's still saying yes every time I talk to her. It's kind of weird.
Dust: Three useful quotes:
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained." (Mom)
"Happy girls are the prettiest." (Audrey Hepburn. Something similar goes for men too, and to blazes with pouty Chippendales models.)
"When you want something you've never had, you have to do something you've never done. Do it trembling if you must, but do it!" (Emmit Fox, in one of his stopped-clock-right-twice-a-day moments.)
Let us know how it all went down... and don;t be ashamed if things didn't go your way; we won't think less of you for it.
I've done well; I've managed to resist going back to the Intersection to see whether or not the local flame-thrower armed monkeys were keeping the visiting rescuers away from salvaging anything from the train wreck.
But I'm sure what y'all want to hear about is last night's Amanda Palmer gig. She opened with Fake Plastic Trees (a Radiohead cover) on the ukelele (which I adore; I'm seeing Lady Carol, a beautiful, foul-mouthed, Irish ukelele player tonight) follwed by three more songs on the delightful instrument.
She then got into keyboard mode and played a couple more songs, then got some friends from another band playing in the Fringe (The Jane Austen Argument) and did a couple of numbers with them before they left and she did a couple more songs then finished with a cover of Nick Cave's The Ship Song.
No Dresden Dolls songs; one of the first things she said was, 'well, if you're hoping to hear a Dresden Dolls 'best-of', you're fucked; I'm gonna play mostly new stuff'.
Thing is, I like the Dresden Dolls songs - but what she did was better. They really were new songs; she's actually recording in Adelaide while she's here and some of them were songs she's only written in the last few weeks & months.
The Intersection* crowd, of course, would have hated her; they'd have been fainting and gasping and dropping their monocles and clutching their pearls - she said 'fuck' at least ten times and, in one of the songs she even mentioned having her [gasp!] period.
And it was fucking fantastic. She's so talented and luminous and genuine and beautiful. Damn you, Neil Gaiman. I'm dark (kind of) and a writer (in a sense); why not me?
*What's it the intersection of, anyway? Dumb and ass? Clue and less? Clown and shoe? Intellectual and dishonesty? Lack of integrity and Templeton Money?
Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but yesterday the NCSE announced it's first annual Upchucky Awards, where you can vote for the "Most Nauseating Creationist."
http://ncse.com/evolution/first-annual-upchucky-awards-announced
Some good candidates...
Looks like the climate people will need to refine their models a little. Methane is being expelled from the tundra faster than expected. Methane is a more a potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, but doesn't stick around in the atmosphere as long. But it is oxidized to carbon dioxide and water eventually.
WowbaggerOM @ 31:
Yes.
Janine,
No, it doesn't bother me at all. What bothers me is when people act like polite language makes it okay for them to be bigots, and when you tell them to fuck themselves, they clutch their pearls and cry "Oh noes! You have offended me." Well, get over it. Their opinions offend me.
Wowbagger: Amanda Palmer is dating/married to Neil Gaiman!? Damn, isn't there some kinda law of conservation of talent? One that says talented people should be with non-talented people so as to keep the distribution of talent relatively even.
I just trotted off to myspace...Lady Carol? Fan-fucking-tastic thanks for that.
Kerry asks FDA to lift ban on gay men donating blood
#Ok you all, I need some encouragement. In a few hours from now, I want to be calling that guy and suggesting we go out on Saturday...yeah, that guy, the one I worked with till I got sacked.
Never did this before, a little nervous......
Do it. You never know what will happen if you don't try.
In case you're not following the other thread and would like context for Janine's query, they repeatedly make accusations similar to:
while the vast majority of the quotations they provide are "go fuck yourself with x|y|z", with some violent imagery tossed in hyperbolically.
Dust, frankly there is a guy at work who I can't approach, nohow, no way. It would almost be worth being sacked if it meant I had a chance with him. So believe me, my heart goes with you. :)
Oh, other topics on the thread:
I don't wear underwear to be. Like Lynna said, you have to air the lady bits out. I do wear pajamas in the winter because I keep my house cold to save money, and I need to be warm to sleep.
Walton,
Cute new moniker :) As for being tired of changing your opinions and seeing that simple answers aren't simple, that's called growing up. You're very young, and you'll find that you change a lot over the years. This is a good thing, not a bad thing. You wouldn't want to live under an absolute monarch, would you?
One of the things getting an education does is teach you how to think about things. This invariably means changing your mind and accepting that new information means revising your ideas. Ideology sometimes serves a purpose, but adhering to a strict ideology regardless of reality is the sign of a weak mind, not a strong one. Think of fundamentalist Xians. They have their ideology about the nature of the universe and cannot handle anything that challenges it. This cripples their thinking about nearly everything and their ability to respond to changing conditions.
We have to inaugurate this new thread properly:
Bacon, lesbians and rock & roll.
Go have a flying fuck with a rolling doughnut.
Sorry.
Go have aeronautical intercourse with a circumnavigational pastry.
Fossil Fishy, #36
Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman are engaged; in fact, she announced last night that after they get married next year they're going to spend four months in Australia - which is great news for us since it means she'll be performing while they're here and - fingers crossed - he'll be doing some signing or appearances or Q&As or somesuch as well.
Glad to be of assistance re: Lady Carol; she's a wonder. Last year she was part of an ensemble show (my favourite from last year's Fringe) while what I'm seeing tonight will be her on her own.
Thank you Pygmy Loris. At the other site, I revealed that I did do volunteer counciling for victims of violence and that I found their conflating of bad language with the encouraging and engaging in violence to be sicking. You can guess the response.
I just wanted the opinion of people who know from experience.
Once more, thank you.
The Intsuctionees apparently have never come in contact with 12 year old boys trying to prove their masculinity to each other.
I find people who speak in euphemisms to cover up the barbarity of their positions as violent and repulsive as any "profanity" like "go fuck yourself with a rusty knife." I find their mewling insistence on propriety offensive and more dangerous than direct speech because it's the language equivalent of putting a pretty cover on hate and violence, aka gold-plating a turd. You can gussy up an idea that stinks in as flowery a language as you want because it's still ugly, and the prettification is a fucking lie.
They can't see how their use of language does nothing to hide their virulent hatred, and compound their crime by adding a lie unnecessarily.
That's what these ignorant fucktards just don't get.
Janine,
You're welcome. I, too, find this whole thing about the language at Pharyngula to be distasteful. I don't think having epithets hurled at you on the internet is the equivalent of being threatened with real violence. Nor do I see it as encouraging violence. Some people are just too sensitive, I guess. Who cares what kind of fucking language someone wants to use to convey the depth of their loathing of vile ideas?
Janine, MOFMA, OM @ 45:
The folks at the other site seem to have zero insight when it comes to being sickening. It's always the same, the pearl-clutchers who claim to have the high moral ground exhibit the most sickening behaviour. I saw plenty of that sort of thing when I used to escort at Planned Parenthood and other clinics. Swearing lets off steam and is a good way to express yourself. It's a far fucking cry from the fanatical threats and wished for oppression of others that those "moral-minded" beasts toss around.
Aw PZ! At least let us type away until #1000 before closing the thread.
Anyway, a confused article to read:
http://www.slate.com/id/2246553/pagenum/all/
strange gods, this might be of interest to you in particular:
I attended a debate this evening on the role of religion in politics. One of the speakers on the side of secularism was Baroness Flather, who was the first Asian woman in Britain to serve in the House of Lords, and is a prominent secularist and a member of the British Humanist Association. She is also a member of my party, the Conservative Party.
I just wanted to point this out to you, since you have frequently criticised my choice of party affiliation in the past - based, I believe, on some misconceptions on your part about what British Conservatives stand for.
The Ballad of PZ Myers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgyv7MuzFV0
Sorry, I'm not musically inclined.
I knock these things out pretty quickly so they're not greatly polished :) The newer ones go after the religious nutbars. I need to make a few fan productions about Hitchens, Dawkins, Harriss, Miller, etc.
Oh, and Behe... gotta work in a jab at that guy.
Would anyone be on board for April 1st, 2010 being International Creationist Day?
Seems like Ray Comfort likes to call it Atheist day, but I'd like to see a web wide teaming up of the rational.
If you have a blog, set aside an article with your favorite science links that show how nonsensical creationist claims are.
Got a YouTube channel? Make a video about real science, or strange creationist claims, and use the annotations to link to your 10 favorite science oriented videos. (Or Tim Minchin's 'Storm', or Dara O'Briain) :P
And then maybe my virus that eliminates the superstitious part of the brain will be finished in time for next year.... Muah ha ha ha ha.
Okay, I'm better now.
Walton,
Bad link.
Thank you, Caine. Amazing how braying idiots can cause one to doubt one's own motives.
Addendum to @#51: Sorry, that should have been Baroness Flather.
Seriously, Walton? "CP has secular People of Color, so you should feel bad for criticizing me for supporting them"?
If I recall correctly, strange gods was criticizing your support of the Conservative Party because as a whole, they will vote for acts that disenfranchise minorities and women. Acts that you say you disagree with. And you say you support the party, you don't simply support the candidates who hold social positions you agree with.
Pointing out one progressive member (I'm assuming, I don't know much about the BHA) does not at all change that. I mean, it's nice and all, but it has absolutely no bearing on the criticism strange gods levelled at you.
As I've mentioned before, that whole thread is a testament to the allure of the fallacious appeal to emotion by the weak-minded, intellectually dishonest and grudge-bearing banned-at-or-hounded-from Pharyngula weaklings.
But my scorn is more at the posters themselves than (in this case) Sheril, since by leaving most of our posts intact it should allow readers with no preconceptions about either blogs' regulars to see exactly how pathetic the attempts at argumentation were once it became clear that posters there were either a) making shit up, or b) taking quotes completely out of context without even bothering to read them to see if they supported their position.
However, I'd like either her or Chris to weigh in more on what they start. The liars over there needed to called on it, and asked to either produce evidence that supported their claims, or stop making them.
What a great video.
I will take the one on the far right.
Just for a little while.
I promise i wont break him......much.
KJ
Hey Dust as a very shy person I can relate. In order to convince myself to approach women I always just worked out the very simple logic of the situation.
two options 1 I ask her out, worst case scenario she refuses I then have no date and no chance with a relationship with her, Best case scenario she accepts which is exactly what I want. 2nd option is not asking her out at all in which case the best and worst case scenarios are the same no date and no chance with a relationship with her, when you realize the best possible result of not asking is the same as the worst possible result of asking not doing it just seems stupid.
At least thinking that way always helped me to pluck up my rather meager courage, and it worked out for me in the end I'm sure it will for you as well. Good luck!
Well, it is true for some people.
And, evidently, for important parts of the ladies' underwear and swimwear industry.
NO PAIN
NO GAIN
– Hot Shots. You know, the torture scene.
Who evidently wasn't entirely happy with her life at large... <duck & cover>
Shit.
Shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit...
We already got the methane concentrations from 400,000 years ago back!?! And more is coming!?! That is horrible.
Looks like we can start evacuating Banglafuckindesh.
Part of me is ashamed that the video made my day. *sigh* I need a life.
ahh, dating ... I think, out of about 40 women I asked for dates, I got about 3 yeses, and a second yes from 2 of those 3. My longest relationship ran to 5 dates. Eventually, I learned to stop associating with people who were constantly telling me I needed to find someone. Then the desire to find someone mysteriously went away. Problem solved. All that anguish, upset, and self doubt was entirely unnecessary.
Paul @#56: I didn't say that strange gods should "feel bad". If people were obliged to "feel bad" for getting things wrong, and subsequently having to revise their opinion, I'd be the most guilt-ridden person in the universe.
But strange gods was wrong. This example is relevant. I'd like to reiterate that Baroness Flather was the first Asian woman, of any party, to sit in the British House of Lords. And she is a Conservative - and an outspoken secularist. We are a party in which people with a liberal secular outlook can find a home.
Interestingly, two of the speakers on the anti-secularist side, Stephen Timms and Paul Murphy, were Labour MPs who identify as "Christian socialists". The British left is not the natural home of secularism in the UK, and the Labour Party is no more institutionally secular than the Conservatives.
Doing my part to encourage violence; Set Yourself On Fire.
*insert whine about wanting to study environmental science, but probably needing to go into Emergency Management instead if I want to study something useful*
seriously, this fucking sucks. humans are idiots :-(
Thank you for the video PZ.
I haver nevr wanted to be a pair of hair clippers so badly in my life.
Quick. Someone tell the Rev BDC that Caine posted a bacon recipe at @12.
Janine, MOFMA, OM @ 54:
It is really difficult, especially when you work or volunteer in an area in which you have to counter the sugar-coated poison constantly spewed by the "moral-minded". It wears you down, especially when it gets to feeling like you're seriously outnumbered.
Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 4, 2010 6:42 PM:
Not tundra. subsea permafrost.
Very bad news, but there have been hints of this emerging for over a year now. A similar problem probably exists with tundra, but the Shakhova et al paper seems to only cover subsea permafrost. I'm hoping Shakhova et al. are wrong.
When there is nothing left to burn, you have to set yourself on fire.
Qwerty @ 67:
:D Bacon is already delish, but that bacon is oh-so-special. Especially if you up the cayenne a tad.
NO PAIN
NO GAIN GOOD
What's the rate of permafrost methane to livestock methane? (Could enough bacon be produced to offset the permafrost?)
Caine - I like to use bacon in homemade beans soaked in water and slow-baked in a dutch oven.
As the monster in Young Frankenstein says, "mmmmmm."
Oh, and salt pork works just as well. It slowly turns into that soft blubbery texture if you cook the beans ever so slowly.
Personally, I'm not much into tattoos. But even so, those are some fine, fine fellows. *sighs wistfully*
And, P.Z., thanks for pandering to the ladies. :)
Paul's right, Walton, this is irrelevant noise.
And who were the rest?
And who were the rest? And are Timms and Murphy Christians who advocate socialism, or are they advocating Christiansocialism as government institution? Details are needed before these sound bytes are meaningful.
Really. Citation needed, Walton. Exactly which misconceptions do you suppose that I have, and where are the quotes that suggest I have them?
Again, citation needed. Exactly what was I wrong about? Quotes, please.
And Michael Steele was the first black person to chair the national committee of a major US party. And some of Hyperon's best friends are Asian.
Is the Conservative Party still dedicated to fucking over the poor? Is the Conservative Party still anti-choice? Is the Conservative Party still allied with the gay-hating Michał Kamiński's Law and Justice party?
Yes, yes, yes.
@Walton, 63
If your claim is that sgbm is wrong, you need to do a hell of a lot better substantiating it. That was the point I was making. His point wasn't that Conservative MPs are all snotty foppish aristocrats. His point was that as a whole, they will enact legislation against the interests of women and the poor. As I said, pointing out one minority female secular MP does not make that any less likely.
Mmm om nom nom. Qwerty, I do that too. I also have a recipe for whiskey baked beans (that I have altered considerably) in which the beans are completely topped by bacon. Good, good stuff.
Qwerty - "Did you just make a yummy sound?"
I like to cook my beans with smoked bacon and maple syrup, over about 7 hours. More bacon, more maple = more yummy! The expense of real maple (imported in Australia @ $A6/200ml) is phenomenal, but wow.
Bacon. [droooool]
Not tundra. subsea permafrost.
The methane clathrates?
One sf scenario I'd rather not see IRL...
http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2008/11/05/global-storytelling/
Jadehawk:
So study it. I studied something even less useful (botany, if I haven't been obnoxious enough about that already)...and guess what? I am gainfully employed as a motherfucker. I spent all day climbing trees and gluing mistletoe seeds onto the branches of trees*. It was fun as hell, and it counts as work.
Then I saw a seminar by an environmental science (wetland restoration...nice) who is also gainfully employed. Unleash your inner goddamned nerd and get paid to do it.
This week I found out that
1) My first Master's student was accepted into a Ph.D. program
2) One of my undergraduate research people got into medical school
3) Another undergraduate was accepted into a pretty prestigious summer internship.
If I may quote Ice Cube, "didn't even have to use my A.K. I gotta say it was a good day."
*This is the best and imitation of a cedar waxwing that I can do.
Dammit! I accidentally submitted before I removed all the stupid.
Replace "an environmental science" with "an environmental scientist"....and there should be a period after "medical school".
& cetera...the point is, don't settle for the crumbs.
Pharyngulette - I live in Minnesota which produces a lot of maple syrup. One thing I'd like to try that most people have never heard of is birch syrup from birch trees. I have heard of it and found in on the internet but have never purchased or tried it as it is more expensive than maple syrup.
Here's some info on Minnesota syrup production:
http://www.myminnesotawoods.umn.edu/2009/03/saps-and-syrups-in-minnesot…
Caine - don't know if I'd like whiskey beans as I don't much care for the taste of whiskey.
And I was about to make a rash accusation. The permafrost dealt it!
Although methane doesn't linger in the atmosphere as long as CO2, I think its half life is still on the order of many decades, like 50 years or so. Two places where there are trillions and trillions of cubic feet of methane, all liable to release due to global warming, are trapped as free gas or gas hydrates under the permafrost and as hydrate ices in the deep cold ocean sediments. This shallow biogenic methane is where most of Russia's huge arctic natural gas reserves come from. If there were a good way to capture it, this gas would be all humanity would need for energy for 100's of years, but its too widely spread out, and too far from any markets. A natural gas pipeline from the Alaskan North slope across NW Canada into the Midwest would make capture of this gas a bit closer to reality, but it would be the most costly single thing every constructed, like of the magnitude of 100 billion dollars.
So which is it:
Are the Liberal Democrats not more secular than both the Conservatives and Labour?
Or are the Liberal Democrats not on the left?
I believe the term preferred at The Intersection is "gigolo."
@ Jadehawk: let me echo AE's advice- go into something because you like it not because you think you can make money at it.
You can make money doing anything.
If you don't love something, doing a degree in it will suck and you will hate getting out of bed in the am. I *lurrved* my degree, and it was a great stepping stone to something that I could be interested in and make a career doing.
Meh. I might like the video if the boys weren't compelled to wax/shave off all their body hair. Weren't we just talking in another thread about the tyranny of the hairless body norm? Sorry, they don't do it for me. Plastic boy-wannabes. I can has some menz up in heah?
Bacon Jam from Not Quite Nigella
1 pound smoked bacon (or use regular bacon and liquid smoke)
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 medium onion, sliced
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 cup coffee
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup maple syrup
black pepper to taste
Tabasco sauce to taste
about 1 cup of water
Fry the bacon in batches until lightly browned and beginning to crisp. Using a pair of scissors cut the bacon into 1 inch pieces. Fry the onion and garlic until translucent in the rendered bacon fat over medium heat. Transfer the bacon, onion and garlic into a heavy cast iron pot and add the rest of the ingredients, except for the water. Simmer for 2 hours, add about 1/4 cup of water every 25 to 30 minutes or so and stir.
When cooked down, cool for about 15 to 20 minutes and place in a food processor. Pulse for 2 to 3 seconds so you leave some texture to the "jam" or if you like you can keep processing and make it smoother and more paste like. Store in a glass jar in the refrigerator. Serve on toasted English muffins or sliced baguettes. This is slightly sweet and slightly spicy unless you add a lot of Tabasco.
@27
Jeez, I WORK at UTSA and I never heard about this. You go guys. Good work.
Well, it's a swim team. It's the nature of the beast that is competitive swimming.
Josh, do you watch Community? Tonight was a whole screenful of shallowly gorgeous Joel McHale awesomeness.
Pharyngulette: I'm a Canadian now living in Australia. I tried to get Medicare to pay for maple syrup supplements because clearly I need them to survive. Alas, no luck. Friends and relatives visiting from the old country are now required to bring maple syrup in quantities that are least 3/8ths of their total luggage allowance.
And bacon? The only thing I miss since turning vegetarian. The Unending Thread is pure torture I tell yah.
@aratina
Indeed. Doesn't change the fact that I don't find it aesthetically appealing, and doesn't change the fact that the "swim team look" is now considered compulsory in many sections of the gay community if you're to be considered Hawt. Just expressing a personal opinion about what I like, and what I don't.
@ Carlie:
You'll have to forgive me. . .I don't know what "Community" is, or who Joe McHale is. I'm assuming this is a TV show? I haven't had a TV in 7 years (not saying that to be snotty, just explaining), so I'm completely out of touch with things most people take as common cultural knowledge:)
Josh - Community is quite possibly the best tv show since Arrested Development. It started off kind of bad, but has become fantastic. Episodes can be found on Hulu. Joel is the lead character of the ensemble and quite smokingly hot in the latest episode. There are very few shows I watch, but this one made the cut.
oh, ffs. guys, I already do what I like, which is art. what I need now is a reason not to feel like a waste of oxygen, so I want to study and then work at something that will be useful and helpful to others. This is a question of self-worth and mental health, not a question of money. If it were about money, I could have just followed my familiy's advice and gone into banking like my rich-ass cousin.
Yeah. What I said seems to have come out wrong. I wasn't trying to be down on you or anything. I just meant that full-body shaving is probably not out of the norm for them if they really are swimmers. After all, nobody is safe from razors on a swim team, not even bears!
Josh - This is the most pertinent clip from the episode that got me into that show.
besides, the comment was mostly pure bitterness at humans being idiots and ruining everything.
Ugh, sorry Aratina. I'm wicked touchy tonight, and I just realized how my post sounded. . .eesh. Mea culpa!
I had the unusual (and highly unpleasant) experience of a colleague screaming at me on the phone today, including a string of "fuck yous" and insults, followed by a loud hanging up of the phone. Totally shocking, and unnerving. Didn't realize how off-kilter it put me, but I've been carrying around a huge chip on my shoulder all day because of it. Feel free to slap that chip off:)
I can't think of anything with a greater long-term benefit to humanity that environmental science, actually.
well, neither can I, hence the choice. the comment was me trying to make the point that it's looking more like there won't be a long-term, and therefore emergency management (you know, for the evacuation of half the planet, plus the inreased natural disasters, etc.) would be more useful.
bah.
Carlie - ha! I love that they all came down on him for being agnostic!
You see, I wrote you this very nice very long reply. But it got lost in space. Long story short, no. No it doesn't offend me. Not even close.
Some things do. Not that.
Six atheists walked into a bar, and once again no smiting occurred, and the bar remained standing.
The second get-together of the Baltimore Pharyngula Fans AKA the Baltimore Blaspheming Bastards was tonight, and IMO, the evening was outstanding, with lots of great conversation and laughs, plus excellent food and beverages.
One of our group had a picture of PZ and himself on his iPhone, and the rest of us passed it around, admired it, and like good fans should, drooled with envy.
How awful! If only you could send that colleague over to the Internmentsection for a mental health examination with Dr. bilbo. That'd teach 'em. :)And just so you know, as our Official SpokesGay, your opinions carry great weight with me. *bows humbly*
Oh, and a special thanks to all the Pharyngulites who've waded into the swamp that is the Intersection Thread. Knockgoats, Janine, and the others (I'm sorry if I didn't name you, I did notice you). I've seen a lot of bullshit on the Internet, but that pile of intellectually dishonest nonsense, the pearl-clutching about language while ignoring genuinely uncivil - nay, hateful - comments about gays, women, rape victims...
I get genuinely angry when I see that. I expect the Fred Phelpses of the world to be bigots, but seeing supposedly "liberal" people soft-pedal actual hateful, damaging comments while castigating those of us who react to it in legitimate frustration with "vulgar" language sends me close to white-hot hate.
These people are not our friends. They're not on "our side." They're not progressive, they're not liberal, they're not humanitarian. They're petty little shits concerned with flying the flag to signify their allegiance to their tribe, the ethical consequences be damned. Even if it means lying. And as such, they're as dangerous and ethically compromised as the people who come right out with blatant statements of bigotry. More so, because they masquerade as people of reason and compassion. And for that, they should be vilified and scorned.
Josh, I like 'em a bit furry myself, and older—I seem to have lost my taste for cradle-robbing some years back—but damn, it was fun watching 'em shave each other.
Moar nekkid menz pleeze! I believe there's someone out there for every taste. I'd like to see that tested anyway.
I'm not particularly bald myself, and trust me: It's even more ~normative~ for women than for men.
And yeah, that would've been an annoying experience. Counting down now to Some Pearl-Clutcher squeaking "SEE?? I TOLJA so!" As if.
I have copied that bacon jam recipe with gratitude.
Jadehawk, I've been a hospital pediatric nurse and I've been a pro artsy-fartsy arborist and generally I feel one was about as useful to other humans as the other. YMMV: I confess to being a tad bitter about our species. If you do practice emergency stuff, be ready to burn out and when/if you do, don't look back.
Dinner's on; more later
Ron Sullivan
Windy @80:
also Mother of Storms by John Barnes. Out of print now though.
Oh, bilbo. Sweet Christ on toast. . . .he's like the anti-blood-pressure medication! Sorry for flaunting my petty woes, just needed to explain why I'm such a crankopotamus. Oy - I'm a hardass muthafucka. . . it's surprising how a stupid work dispute can throw you off for the whole day. I need to get over myself before I earn an entry on Encyclopedia Dramatica. . .lol!
You're very sweet:) I'm gonna use that next time Locutus of Gay drones on about assimilating the Pharyngulites. Gack, what a bore that one, like a broken record.
@Ron
Ol'Greg, thank you for your reply.
I guess I needed reassurance that I am not encouraging what those people at the Intersection are accusing me of. I am grateful and I also feel better about myself.
Yes! I am a Real Pharyngulite! Now I have been misquoted at the intersection, I can hold my head up high at atheistcon next weekend. *Proudly flourishes entirely metaphorical rusty knife in the general direction of torture and rape apologists again.* Ha! Take that! I have caused some pixels to make scary words!
@Jadehawk- sorry, then. I guess I took the comment more seriously than meant.
Qwerty @83
[scribbling shopping list]
Birch syrup
Birch syrup
Birch syrup...
That sounds interesting in a delicious way. Somehow I have to try this.
Fortunately, I have 'Americanian' rellos coming to visit later this year. Maybe I can get one to bring me some birch syrup from Minnesota!
FossilFishy @94
I feel your pain. I'm completely addicted to maple in all its forms, liquid and solid. I'd probably chew the Canadian flag if I thought I'd get some flavour from the leaf. Imported maple syrup (or sugar) is like importing gold leaf, but worth it, I think.
Ron Sullivan @ 110:
I'm one of those women who has very little body hair. I rarely shave my legs, and when I do, it's from the knees down; I've never had enough hair above the knees to bother with, and the little there is, is damn near transparent. Ditto under the arms. On the downside, I barely have eyelashes and my eyebrows are nearly non-exsistent. However, my head hair grows thickly and very, very fast.
Cath, you were a real Pharyngulite long before that point. And, yes, I linked directly to your quote so that people could read where you were coming from.
Fat lot of good that did for those who work hard to keep the wool over their own eyes.
'hefts her splintering telephone pole, looking for a place to put it'
Antiochus Epiphanes:
Why? (If you don't mind my asking, that is.)
Janine wrote:
Don't let those pissant scumbags get to you, Janine. You're a good person, and far better than the best of them.
Really, they are only being obtuse as an excuse to criticise us (for using naughty words and vitriolic expression) and PZ (for not adhering to their pathetic standards) in a fit of idiotic tribalism.
Each one of them knows full-well that 'go fuck yourself' is nothing more than the impolite equivalent of 'I don't agree with what you're saying', used by someone who is so offended by an action that they act like an expressive human being.
I said what I said (and was quoted over there with many a gasp, faint, dropped-monocle and clutched-pearl in response) to Dendy because he was a content free, misogynist homophobe who refused to engage; I'll have no hesitation in using similar expressions if another idiot troll of his ilk shows up and bleats his bigoted nonsense.
But to claim that saying such things - with or without the graphic superlatives, which any functioning adult with half a clue would recognise as hyperbolic - is actually wishing physical harm upon the person is a pathetic act of intellectual dishonesty.
Josh OSG
A quiet "temper, temper" while they're ranting usually zings 'em...they get madder, but to the point of self-embarrassment. And it gives you some modicum of control over the situation.
Janine of the Foul Mouth
I don't post much, but I read regularly. I find the verbal wuppins you pass out to be entertaining and well deserved.
So take that self doubt and stick it up some troll's nether regions.
Did a quick CTRL-F on this thread, and didn't find even a single mention of "banana hammock"...
C'mon people! Get with the program.
ARRRRRRGGGH!!!
Shaved men? That's disgusting. I want a little hair lawn to curl between my toes.
Oh wait, maybe that means I'm old. *sigh*
I just had to go to the store to buy some emergency cat litter, and I snagged a pound of bacon because I HAVE TO MAKE THAT SWEET BACON RECIPE. Low carb, though. It will still be OK. There's a not-too-bad ersatz brown sugar made from isomalt that will be just fine in the small quantity required.
And birch syrup? Is that the usual sucrose-and-fructose-in-some-combination sap stuff, or is it a xylitol product? I'm all about xylitol and erythritol these days.
Speaking of xylitol... you all will laugh... on low-carb, one does get mighty sick of meat and cheese, cheese and meat, the eternal cauliflower and broccoli and lettuce... A Korean dentist friend suggested I make some kimchi for a change. I did; I sliced up three fat daikon radishes, used Texas sweet onions, a handful of sliced baby carrots, green onions from the farmer's market (there are some consolations to living in Houston; it is daikon season). Lemon pulp and zest, ground chili peppers, sriracha sauce, light soy, yada yada... it's a weird recipe but it's good. I wound up with about a gallon of refreshingly blistering stuff.
My friend came over to vet the final result and pronounced it good and told me to wait a week. So I did. She tasted it again and thought for a second and told me to wait another week. So I did. Then she tasted it yet again and kind of cocked her head to the side and asked me if I had made a new batch, fresh. No, I said, this is the same batch from a week ago. She made me go over the ingredients again. Then it clicked and she laughed... what did I use in place of the sugar again? Xylitol? Oooooh. Turns out dentists use that stuff to inhibit bacterial growth in the mouth. That stuff was never going to ferment.
@ Wow
That smug, arrogant fuckwad Dendy can go sit on a fire-ant nest with maple syrup smeared on his ass.
Patricia, there you are!
SaintStephen, I am not sure if I am more amused os more disturbed.
Wowbagger and Kamaka, thank you to both of you.
Janine, MOFMA, OM @ 114:
Janine, never, ever think that. You do a lot of good for people, and part of that good is telling people who need it to go fuck themselves with rusty razor wire. (Or the implement of your choice, of course.) It helps me to read you giving a good smackdown when I'm still busy trying to pick my jaw up off the ground.
*nods head, giggling*
*nods head vigorously* It's one of the things I dislike most about many other popular liberal blogs, and to make things worse, the bigots have their ways of avoiding the foul-word censors to continue their female/gay/liberal/atheist/etc. bashing. Apparently that was a problem on the ex-RDForum, too.
Heh. Misquoted over an insult aimed at Bill Donohue no less, one of the most hateful blowhards out there.
BTW, I found another fun insult by Josh, OSG: (link).
I couldn't resist going over there and saying as much myself.
But mostly, I was just bemused at the hypocrisy of claiming Pharyngula should be (...what? Censored, banned, filtered?) because of Seed's terms of service, while merrily reproducing all of the stuff they find most objectionable over on Discovery Magazine's site... whose terms of service also prohibit posting such material.
Of course, the first respondent claimed that quoting it was a legitimate excuse. But I'm pretty sure running down the hallway shouting "Timmy said fuck! Timmy said fuck!" gets you sent to the principal right along with Timmy.
After all that obscenity-spamming, I look forward to Intersection showing up as the #1 Google hit for "sideways with a rusty knife"... :D
I wonder if I have, I don't have the patience to actually read through the blather there anymore.
Janine, here is some reassurance... You comment here in a place where you are accepted and liked almost purely because of what you say. If they were truly, madly, deeply offended and outraged by what they are reading, they would do what other sane people do on the Internet... skip the stuff they don't like! This is the Internet, not a prison! It's the picture next to the dictionary definition of "free expression." Nobody strapped them down and held their eyes open with toothpicks, OK? So what can it possibly mean that they're getting their panties all in a wad over something you posted? Those twits are trying to control your thoughts at a distance, that's all. They're making you responsible for the fact that they're too chickenshit to just say "Meh" and move on.
It was a while back, but some concern troll from RDForum was getting the biker-bar treatment here, whining away about it. He was shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, that Dawkins stops by to comment here!
As I remember, he went complainin' and cryin' back to RDForum.
Janine, what vile comments? You made some comments that those idjit pearl clutchers deserved, nothing more. You are good hearted and passionate. You give help where you can.
Nil illegitimi carborundum.
Janine, honestly I find the kind of way they're behaving a lot more offensive. If I have/had a reason to find something you said offensive I would tell you how and why right here. If I got angry enough I might even tell you to go fuck yourself.
It's a lot more offensive to suggest for instance, as some people who have provoked a "go fuck yourself with a rake" type response have suggested, that women could keep themselves from getting raped by looking less sexy.
How I dressed never entered into it. It was an abusive relationship from the get go. I see their censor-any-vitrol response as a similar motivation. Basically they want to shut people here up, and they're using the "fuck you's" as a reason to excuse their own nasty thoughts and desires or their own sense of entitlement about how they should be privileged on a blog.
Hey Pharyngulites,
Thanks for all your encouragement, I a got a tentative 'Yes' due to a possibility of him having to work on Saturday.
So he suggested I call him tomorrow night to see if he has to work. OK, I will.
:)
And badgersdaughter I had your posting on the screen when I called, so poignant.
Whew! I lived through it!
Dust, Yay! Now you can relax a bit, eh?
If I have/had a reason to find something you said offensive I would tell you how and why right here. If I got angry enough I might even tell you to go fuck yourself.
And you did just that a couple of weeks ago. And you were right and I apologized.
And to everybody who have gave me reassuring words all of tonight. Thank you. Each and everyone, thank you.
Kamaka:
You're so right, I know. That's very difficult for me; I'm hot-tempered myself by nature, and I have to fairly bite my own tongue to shut up. I work on it, but it's not easy. A little easier as I get older.
@aratina:
Yes, it was, and thank you for recognizing the phenomenon. . I'm glad I'm not the only one. That said, I think the RDF mods did the best they could under a stressful situation. Still, the idea that bigots can get by within the letter of the law, while the exasperated break it (and then get punished) is a problem many forums need to address.
@ Caine #12:
Yep, that delicious-sounding bacon recipe got emailed straight to Mum. Thank you very much!
This Sunday AM, after her weekly religious indoctrination, she will make it for me and Pa.
Does this make me an accommodationist ?
You're welcome, SaintStephen. I hope you enjoy it!
Oh.
Jadehawk, please forgive the oh-so-serious sermonette re: enviro studies vs. emergency management; I must've written that while you were posting. You might infer from it that I'm a burnt-out enviro as well as a burnt-out nurse, and you'd be right. I still advocate madly where I can, and the garden column does give me a soapbox, but I flinch a lot even when it's the stuff we subscribe to in the mailbox.
There's damned little good news, even when you're tracking restoration work locally. There's lots of that here, and sometimes it even keeps up with the idiots who trash the places that have been restored, and the response can be gratifying. But in the long run, ugh.
I keep telling myself that one thing I learned in the hospital is that saving a life is always temporary, yadda yadda, humility and all that shit. I don't know if it's working anymore, but I'm old. There's a lot that doesn't work anymore.
Thanks to Lynna and Loris and um someone else for condolences about my allergist. How about y'all just stay alive for at least another decade or two, that'd really make me feel better, hey?
Badgersdaughter, I don't think it's real kimchee until at least one crock in the batch explodes. Didja know there are purpose-made refrigerators for kimchee? I guess they approximate the temp underground in certain parts of Korea. The one I saw was in Phoenix, which IIRC has hardpan so you couldn't dig a deep enough hole in the average yard to beat the heat. Gets hot in Houston but aren't yall on some kind of alluvial mud? Not that that's easy to dig either.
Josh, glad to help. That shit does stick. Ever read any of Robert Sapolsky's stuff? I flog it a lot, but it makes sense of those feelings with absolutely zero woo OR psychomoosh.
Ron Sullivan, ODing on words again
Janine - Yep here I am, clutching my pearls over shaved men...buurrr! Ya know what, anyone that says you tell them to fuck off when they don't deserve it - needs to fuck off. It is a heavy burden, being the reigning Mistress of Foul Mouthed Abuse, you wear it well.
Oh, and you are still gruesome.
Janine,
I truly enjoy your comments here. Don't worry about what the concerned ones think. They're all style and no substance :)
Arghhhh... the Intersection reads like a Bizarro Pharyngula. Style trumps substance, opinion overrides evidence and people who are despised here are celebrated over there.
Kel wrote:
I've sworn to not set (figurative) foot over there - on that thread at least - again. I've said all I can say on the issue, repeatedly, and it had no effect on the weakminded regulars over there.
Fuck. That. Shit.
What I did notice while there, though, is that there weren't many names I recognised from when I was spending more time there a while back. Maybe they realised exactly how pathetic the discourse there had become in recent months.
Gross, they're all shaved. Yuck. (the underwear guys)
Josh - The more they scream abuse at you the more guilty they actually feel. Trust me on that one. It isn't you.
Becca @ 90 - I am SO making your recipe. Our next news flash should be that Rev. BigDumbChimp has filled his pool with it and is never coming out.
The funny part is at least one example from the Long List of Obscenities from Pharyngula they were parading around WAS someone quoting something. It went something to the effect of "A Christian left the following on my answering machine: Go and die, ok? etc etc".
Thanks for making that post, Kagato. I wanted to say much the same thing, but I said I was done posting there and it's better for my blood pressure to just stick with that.
Quiet everyone, I'm trying to dream of Bacon jam
Cicely #120: I want to see how they grow. I'm especially interested in finding out how the little mistletoe babies recognize a host.
Maybe you were asking about the glue. Mistletoe seeds normally pass through the gut of a bird (like a Cedar Waxwing)...but they are sticky, and the bird has to wipe them on a branch when they pass through his little cloaca. Otherwise, they have all these mistletoe seeds stuck to what passes as an ass for a bird. My choices are to 1) force feed a bird some seeds and then drag his ass across a tree branch...but that would require permits...or 2) to just glue them there myself.
Pygmy Loris wrote:
They aren't even that. We kick their asses on that level, too, because we have both substance and style.
Writing good, satisfying insults takes effort; I (for one) don't just get down & dirty without putting a lot of thought into how it's going to read after it hits the screen.
To assume it's just a case of 'write 'fuck' a few times and giggle about it' indicates they're just as pig-ignorant about writing as they are about everything else. But that's hardly a surprise given the last few days.
Rev. BDC: if you can't sleep, perhaps this Jack-In-The-Box ad will help.
Yeah except I pretty much follow a rule of never ordering burgers from fast food places.
But they are talking a lot about bacon.
Meh. I always get stabby when the subject of romance comes up.
How many disadvantages can one man be expected to work against? As if it's not bad enough to be obese and generally unattractive, the few women around here (so far, two in a hundred-mile radius) who actually give me a second glance tend to run screaming when they find out I'm an atheist. To make matters worse, the most common advice I've heard about meeting people is "go to church" (usually followed by "suck it up and go anyway").
Yes, I've taken my meds today, why do you ask?
@Pygmy and Wowbagger
If you weren't already Mollyfied, this comment would surely do it. LOL!
You know, one of the things I've learned over the years is that women are as insecure about their looks as men -- even if it is true that all women are actually radiantly beautiful objects of overwhelming heterosexual desire. You're assuming they aren't interested in you (which is actually true for most, but not all of them), while they're assuming that none of those jerkwad men around them are actually interested in talking with them.
The answer is always to just ask. If all you're asking for is a pleasant evening of conversation, a movie, dinner, that sort of thing, you might be surprised that there are many women out there who are willing to give you a chance, and are appreciative of your interest.
You won't know until you try. You might get turned down a few times, but you'll also find a few who'll say yes.
PZ's advice to the lovelorn is now complete for the evening.
I can't think of anything with a greater long-term benefit to humanity that environmental science, actually.
my first job out of grad school was forming a west-coast office to garner political support for forming a "National Institute for Environmental Studies", rather similar in function (if not scope) to the way NIH works.
The organization was called the Committee for the National Institute for the Environment. Legislation was introduced both in the house and senate...
and tabled every year it was introduced.
I gave up after 3 or 4 years of that.
still, the organization lingers, and generates good ideas:
http://ncseonline.org/
Bacon Pie
12 slices bacon, crisply cooked, and crumbled
1 cup shredded swiss cheese
1/3 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup Bisquick
1 cup milk
pepper to taste
2 eggs
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease pie plate. Sprinkle bacon, cheese and onion in pie plate.
Stir remaining ingredients in a bowl until blended. Pour into pie plate.
Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until a tooth pick insterted into the center comes out clean. Let stand five minutes before serving. (serves six)
This is an old Betty Crocker recipe, I like to add chopped spinach and pimento's to this if the girrrls are coming over for brunch & champagne.
By the way, fuck all y'all. You write too fast and I read too slow. I'm still racing through old incarnations, catching glimpses of recipes, Walton upgrading his handle, and the tasty running commentary concerning The Intersection.
I'll leave you with Melting Pot by Booker T & the MGs.
Nice
@pz
Ya know, you're sweet to offer that advice to the hetero boys, PZ, and you may be right. But, you've obviously (as you know) never been to a gay bar as a . . customer. .beyond ordering drinks. Trust me boyz, them menz iz. . .beyotches. Don't go out without your brass codpiece (or Plate of the Brass Breasteses, if you are a lady).
PZ's advice to the lovelorn is endorsed by Patricia's advice to widows.
We do kick their ass in substance. I generally find the comments here to be both witty and well-written.
However, for many people here style is mainly a tool for effectively delivering substance. It's secondary. Over there it's everything. Have a few four letter words in an argument and that trumps whatever message you were trying to get across.
I think this is part of a larger problem, in the US at least. The media generally focuses more on sound bites or whether a politician is coming across as 'likable' rather than discussing real issues. That's my main problem with M&K. They think scientists should take the PR techniques used by corporations and politicians. While they definitely should adapt their message to make it accessible to the general public they (and everyone else for that matter) should strive for more meaningful dialogue in this superficial, sound bite culture.
I figured the bacon would make up for the fast-food stuff. You can't have your bacon and eat it.
While you're around, can I ask if you're a fan of pulled pork, and if so, is there any one facet that you think makes it (e.g. cooking conditions, spices, sauce)?
Rev. BDC @ 150:
And Sweet & Spicy Bacon (# 12) doesn't even garner a comment? I'm crushed.
Josh - shayshays in - The brass bosoms have a whole other function than showing up in a gay bar. shayshays out...
xkcd wisdom:
http://xkcd.com/642/
Oh wait! I didn't even see Sweet and Spicy Bacon.
daaaaaaaaaaaamn
I wonder....
Could I dip Sweet and Spicy bacon into Bacon Jam....
Thank you very much, PZ -- your terrific start to this thread reminds me why I love science!
My major barrier to a relationship is - well, apart from the current meatspace aversion - less to do with not feeling confident about approaching someone and more to do with not being able to find anyone worth risking being shot down for.
I've always ended my relationships after only a short time, and tended to do so out of boredom more than anything else. I have a horrible feeling I just don't have an attention span long enough to ever have anything long term. Meeting someone who I could even comtemplate it working with just doesn't seem to happen.
Antiochus Epiphanes | March 4, 2010 11:16 PM:
The mistletoe that make you think this will outbreed their relatives.
Rev. BDC @ 170:
Yes, yes you can!
Caine - I think Chimpy is about to OD on bacon, all he had to comment on my recipe for Pig Nuts was: sweet.
If he doesn't snap out of it I say, lets pelt him with Vienna Sausages!
Rev BDC:
I should add @166 that I only ask since (i) you are an ex-chef, (ii) you're from a place where pulled pork is done right, and (iii)I like to sponge tips off people who fit (i) and (ii).
Wowbagger - Do I have to try to swim over there?
Patricia, you ignunt slut, thinking you can just sashay in and out of here, without greasin' up your cast-iron breast plate for a demonstration (and I know you seasoned that shit 'til it's non-stick. Mmm-hmmm).
I'm with you, Patricia, appreciation must be shown! I snaffled your recipe for bacon pie, that one is going to get made in the next day or two.
Interesting to note, the adjacent thread to the Intersection Train Wreck of Doom™ is infested by AGW-denialists who are frequently going unchallenged. Says a lot for the "quality" (that is, bad quality) of the posters at the blog, though I've noticed a few of those with sensible things to say on the Train Wreck thread are also active against the denialists, but outnumbered.
Bizarro version of Pharyngula, indeed.
@ Carlie #93:
How very strange. Must be karma or something.
On a completely unrelated internet errand, I accidently landed on this clip from the TV show Community that Carlie was talking about earlier.
Psssttt... It shows Joel McHale in his (banana hammock) undies, Carlie...
(Now tell me this is not the very definition of an ON-TOPIC post...)
Certainly the Pharyngula regulars are not offended, astounded, or upset at the language often used here. Often we pour it on when some tone troll complains about being verbally abused.
I will whine about one thing, however. The gentlefolk at The Intersession haven't quoted me once. I'm below the naughty word horizon. How can I hold my head high among such vulgar, cursing geniuses as Janine, Wowbagger and Aquaria when my foul-mouthed efforts don't even register on the tone freaks' radar? So fuck those asswipes with a thorn bush up their left nostrils!
PZ and Patricia, thanks for that, I need it. I'm always surprised by how many people just love me after they meet me for the first time. I like people, too. I even had a drink bought for me in a bar for the first time in my life last week and only my fifth or sixth time pretending to be a barfly (even though it was by a couple who thought I looked nice and felt sorry for me being there alone, but we had a great time yakking).
But despite the fact that I am good with people when I make myself be, I'm Aspergers-ish enough to make engineers with full-fledged spectrum disorder hail me as a long-lost sister. I have a poor opinion of my looks partly because my father was occasionally an asshole who picked on me and called me a fat slob. I am six months out of a 12-year relationship that went on 10 years too long, but finally ended when I suddenly realized I was cursed with an artist who did no art, didn't clean the house or himself, didn't go outside, refused to work, and had the nerve to scream at me because I wasn't making him happy.
Too much information, I guess. But the wonderful therapist who helped me bounce back (after a measly six visits!) said I was essentially healthy, just a bit beaten down at the moment. I'm ready for a new relationship, the kind I deserve and I should have had to start with. Despite the excellent advice upthread to get rid of friends who think that relationships are a must, the motivation to be mated really comes from me. I don't think there's anything wrong with being open to a relationship; it's natural and wonderful and one of the things that sharpens a point on this otherwise kind of pointless existence of ours. What's hard is actually getting my shy butt out there in front of people in the first place.
Speaking in my official capacity as the SpokesGay, Stephen, I must tell you no one wants to see a "banana hammock." If you're gonna dangle it in some cheap rayon speedo/thong like some obscene pickle, then put it away.
If, however, you're going to present it properly in a sexy brief, with all parts alluringly supported, including the backside, then you may proceed.
The SpokesGay has spoken. I'm sorry, there's no time for questions. Thank you.
The only cure for bacon overdose is Vegemite. It's savory and salty in ways that bacon is not.
Jesus Christ, folks, I'm sorry; I had a major pang of "comment submission regret" immediately after posting. Why did I dump all that crap on a public blog where I'm practically a newbie? Please forgive me and forget I got all messy-personal.
A good test of Mooney's philosophy really. Can he build the bridge to those fanaticists who think they know better than the working scientists in the field?
Ok I see you people are going to suck me in here.
If one nasty jelly covered sausage comes my way I'll start singing Celine Dion Songs.
It was a heartfelt sweet.
Yes I'm a fan of pulled pork. I make my own BBQ frequently. And it's DAMN good.
The key to pulled pork is of course making sure it is slow smoked over wood coals. I'm from Winston-Salem so I'm a Lexington style fan which means smoked shoulders over Hickory wood and spicy sweet vinegar sauce. Some Oak is ok. The whole hog folks are the eastern NC people and they like a more vinegary sauce that the western NC BBQ. Its good too, don't get me wrong. Living in Charleston I'm in SC Mustard Sauce country, which is OK but I prefer NC style or Memphis style or even Kansas City style more. My wife loves the Mustard sauce because it's sweet and not spicy at all.
The sauce I typically make is a vinegar based sauce with a hint of tomato some sweetness to balance the vinegar and plenty of red chili flakes and black pepper. Also, when I make the sauce I usually add some Chipotle for some additional spice and smokeyness.
But I really like all kinds of BBQ including what those weird ass Texan people do with beef. Except beef ribs. Beef ribs don't even pretend to hold a smoldering wood coal lit candle to good pork ribs.
Josh, OSG @ 184:
Agreed, agreed, agreed.
@badgersdaugher
Don't have regret. We've all done it, and you're darling:)
Rev...
a good old fashioned Texas BBQ would do extremely well as a restaurant type down here in Welly.
If you ever want to run a restaurant together...
@ Josh #184:
Butt... butt....
I apologize as the resident Bacon King for not paying attention to recipes recently.
I'm swamped ass swamped with the day job where I'm now via layoffs the only IT person for a 200 million dollar a year company (well probably not that much now), my hopefully soon to be day job being a full time photographer and supporting my busting her ass Real Estate wife.
We need a collection of recipes made so that when i can take a breath, i can go back and collect them all.
The only cure for bacon overdose is Vegemite. It's savory and salty in ways that bacon is not.
vegemite vs. marmite...
winner?
@Caine:
Shoooooz, right? It's like my good friend , L. She's into what she calls "proper breast presentation." She's not going to "feature" the girls unless they're displayed at their best. I think the least the menz can do is give us the same courtesy. . .lol.
Please boys, no dangling vienna sausages in vibrant synthetic prints. If you need tips on how to show yourselves off to maximum advantage, I'm available for a reasonable consultation fee.
Rev. BDC @ 193:
I really hope that works out fantastically great for you! It's tough, but rewarding in a special way. I'm working on making money with my photography and it's been a hard, slow road but it looks like I might see the light at the end of the tunnel.
@Saint Stephen
No butts about it. I've told you what you have to do. Now get your bidness in order, and report back. And I know you can, since I remember when your RD.net avatar was your real face. It was cute. Now don't disappoint me, young man.
/SpokesGay
very tempting, and I've never been to NZ
Josh, OSG @ 195:
Yep! These things count. If you're gonna do it, do it right.
I'm swamped ass swamped with the day job where I'm now via layoffs the only IT person for a 200 million dollar a year company
*sigh*
and here I thought I was busy managing a 4-6 man IT staff for a company that made less than half that a year.
are you SURE you don't want to come down here to Kiwi-land and show these folks what REAL BBQ is all about?
Actually, I should clarify that I do meet women I'm attracted to for the right reasons; it's just that - since they tend to be nice, smart, expressive and generally amazing people - they're never single.
That's the real hurdle - getting there before some other bastard* does.
Patricia wrote:
If you do, be careful - I live in South Australia and sharks patrol these waters...
But at least wait until after the GAC; I'm still vaguely petrifed about meeting the force of awesome that is Bride of Shrek - being around the both of you at the same time would no doubt kill me.
No I'm not sure. Not at all.
Now to convince Mrs. BigDumbChimp
the parallels are curious.
I too have been making money with my photography for the past several years...
specialty being documenting work of custom interior designers.
what are others doing to make money with their photography habit?
Not true... I, for one, regret nothing!!
Well, okay... Maybe bringing up underwear in the first place... Maybe a little. I mean, fuck... I just had no idea people were going to want to talk about underwear quite that much...
I mean, people, come on... I was trying to talk about education and creeping regimentation therein, dammit. Of all the fucking things I've said on this blog, that bit of silly takes off? What the hell is wrong with you people?
Oh. Right. Anyway, apart from that, I regret nothing.
(/... and yes, she absolutely is darling. And as requested, no such comment happened.)
I hate that nasty vinegary shit they use in North Carolina to ruin perfectly good pork. Go to Kansas City, taste what real BBQ sauce is.
Here's a recipe. Notice that vinegar doesn't appear.
1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
1 6-ounce can tomato paste
2 tbsp brown sugar
3 tbsp dry red wine
2 tbsp olive oil
3 cloves garlic, crushed
4 tbsp minced onion
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp cayenne
Cook onion and garlic in olive oil until onion turns translucent. Add remaining ingredients, mix thoroughly and allow to simmer for about 20 minutes. Makes about 1 1/2 cups of barbecue sauce.
@ Josh #197:
*A little verklempt...*
(That's one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me on the intertoobs... sobbing...)
I'll get right on it, Sir.
Ichthyic @ 194:
My husband would say marmite. Can't say myself, as I won't be in the same room with either.
I have to say that one of the odd things that has happened to me over the last year here in NZ is a growing fondness for marmite.
I never would have expected it, but I likes me a toasted avocado/marmite/mayo sandwich with a bit of smoked paprika mixed in with the mayo.
Ichthyic @ 203:
I've been doing stock, mostly bird photography. I've also become what you could call a "personal photographer" of sorts. People in town (I live rural, pop. 79) want photos of something special, they ask me to do it, the word has gotten around to Glen Ullin and New Salem (near-by towns, 18 miles and 20 miles away respectively.) I've gotten requests for calendar and card shots, too.
Well, the "verklempt" bit was funny. But you clearly don't know me, SS. Sigh. Don't you understand, I'm supposed to call you sir.
I give up. Imma have to farm some of you straight boys out to Gyeong Pikachu and RickR. Mind, I can't vouch for their quality control.
Ichthyic @ 208:
Oh man, the husband is going to go goofy when I tell him this. Avocados & marmite? He'll think heaven is real after all.
Oh gosh...
a hillbilly hug for you Chimpy.
Now start cookin!
making money with wildlife photography is a tough go!
congrats on the inroads there!
I tried for years to get galleries to sell my underwater and macro shots, to no avail.
so, instead of trying to market what i LIKE to photograph, I kept the wildlife stuff all for fun, and started marketing to custom designers.
I rather like it, as I don't like to be pressured to do things like wildlife photography for profit instead of fun anyway.
@AJ:
Fair warning: demerits will soon be handed out for commenters who use the phrases:
"I, for one,"
and
"Methinks"
There will also be punishments meted out for being a disingenous tart:
I just had no idea people were going to want to talk about underwear quite that much...
Oh, please, slut. Please. You so need to be slapped.
Awww...you should be in the same room as your husband once in a while...
Damn it, blockquote fail!
This will earn a Tart Demerit, AJ ( adjusts teacherly glasses on his nose).
Josh,OSG! Am I going to have to start swearing at you? I make use of the word "methinks". And I will not stop using it just because of a whim. Methinks you better defend your position, sir!
One of Amanda Palmer's songs last night was about Vegemite and how she couldn't remain in a relationship with a man who ate it. Laugh-out-loud funny.
Wowbagger - Ahh, the ocean makes you safe. :) B ut the Bride has a gift for you from me. *enjoy*
Man. It's that obvious?
Now I'm embarassed.
But honest. I swear. You may recall my original comment was about people who put their underwear on hangers. Full stop.
Did I start in with 'people who suspend their testicles precariously with multicolored spandex'? Noooo. Did I start in with 'people who don't wear underwear'?
Nope. Not me.
And, in fact, I'm totally fine with both of those sorts of people setting up curricula, for what it's worth... Not that we seem to be talking about that anymore.
(/Anyway, my point is: who's doing the slapping? And where? And when? I think I'm probably free Friday.)
badgersdaughter @ 183
You are not going to meet the partner of your dreams sitting at home.
I was in a "run-roughshod all over me" relationship for a similar length of time...give yourself some time to recover. It takes a while to get yourself back together after such ongoing abuse.
Josh - NO, I don't need to be slapped. That isn't funny.
Josh @ 190: You too, babe, and I'll raise you "a tactful and thoroughly decent fellow." Thanks :)
You make me think of my friend Rob who I haven't seen in a decade. He and I used to go out man-watching together. He'd see a fine guy jogging by, and he'd be all like, "Mmmm-mmm-mmm, that's a sight for sore eyes." And I'd say, "Yeah, how right you are, with those beautiful eyes and that strong jawbone." And Rob would look at me in semi-mock surprise and ask, "Oh... did he have a face?" LOL. Sarcastic bitch. I miss him.
Ichthyic @ 213:
I feel ya. I stayed away from stock for ages, but I have an excellent set up for birds, so that's what has been easiest for me to sell. Stock is a pain in the ass, and I'd rather not do it, but it does put a bit of spending money my way.
I'm an artist, recently moving into photography. Gallery showing is a nightmare; you always have to deal with the most pretentious, obnoxious assholes. I walked away from doing the gallery thing a lot of years ago, I'm not overly anxious to do it again. I have been asked, I'm just not sure if I want to get back in that world of idiocy.
Doing the custom design photography is a good way to go, you can easily build a client base from word of mouth, the best advertising there is and depending on the client, relatively stress free. I have several friends in the UK who have been able to give up their day jobs doing wedding photography, but that is insanely stressful and I'd never consider doing it.
@Janine
Milady! I wouldn't dare contradict you. . if my lexicon doth not permit of yours, then surely the fault must be mine. . .
Well, there's tact, and then there's tact. Heh.
Glove Slap
Janine - Goodnight sweetheart.
@ Patricia #222:
Patricia, our wires must have gotten crossed. If I said something to offend you, please accept my apologies. Whatever silly comment of mine you're referring to, I don't think it was aimed at you.
I'd rather do almost anything than say something offensive to you (really).
badgersdaughter,
I'm sorry to hear you were in a bad relationship for so long. That must've been really crappy. I'm glad to hear you're doing better. Good luck in the dating world :)
My 28th birthday is a week from tomorrow. In my nearly 28 years on this planet, I've had one semi-serious relationship and one other date. (In the former, she was using me for free tutoring, and in the latter, it was an online dating thing and she turned out to be nuttier than squirrel shit.)
Saying I'm kinda bitter about this is like saying the Pacific is a mite damp.
So, there's a bit more to it than "just ask". How many times do you have to lick a power outlet before you realize that it's not going to give you superpowers, and instead it'll just burn you?
And I really need to stop thinking about this. My mood continues to plummet for as long as I do, and last time I felt the way I do right now, my thoughts drifted to the macabre and I ended up talking to some nice men in white coats. (That's why I'm on an SSRI right now... which doesn't seem to be doing the first fucking bit of good. Time for another visit to the shrink.)
(*wanders off, singing, "Through early morning fog I see...")
Good night, Patricia.
Can I score any significant points by issuing a blanket compliment for all the delicious recipes and impressive culinary advice being offered here tonight? I've screen captured them all, btw.
Thank-you very kindly!!!
(Was that lazy? I can't post quickly on Pharyngula fer some reason... refresh times are perty long. That's my excuse -- stickin' with it.)
And sorry about calling you "Sir" earlier, Josh, it was indeed simple ignorance. I've only had one gay friend (in Tucson) patient enough to instruct me in such matters, and I must have been more interested in his eggplant parmesan on that particular evening. (I'll be visiting him soon for a refresher course, and I'll express your concerns.)
Um, Patricia, before you go (or if you wake up to this), please know my "slap" joke wasn't aimed at you. I was playing around with AJ Milne in my comment #214. Totally different context.
I'd so hate for you to think I was making a crass joke or crack at your expense:(((
If that G'night thing The Waltons had going ever catches on here, no one will ever sleep.
G'night, Patricia.
@ Saint Stephen:
See that you do. But if the only culinary lesson he can give you is in . . .Eggplant parm. . .eesh. . .you may have to get a new gay friend. Just sayin'.
Caine, there could be two more undead threads; one for people to say Good Morning and an other for Good Night.
Benjamin, I'm going to go take the advice I'm about to give you and I'm going to go have a nice 20-minute exercise session on my bike. Have a nice brisk walk, whatever you can do, but move around for 20 minutes and work up some of those good endorphins. This is what really gets me over the dark times when the rain cloud starts to settle over my head.
I don't mean to sound like a mom, LOL... I actually read about a study recently that said that an exercise session every day is as effective as medication for depression in a solid proportion of cases. If nothing else, it feels like doing something purposeful (in my case, getting healthier and slimmer is enough of a purpose in itself).
LMAO, Josh.
G'nite y'all. Been great fun.
*Schwarzenegger sign-off*
Janine, that's true. If we did have undead threads for Good Morning and Good Night, it wouldn't be long before the Good Afternoon and Good Evening people would be agitating for their own undead threads.
Very hot, thanks PZ, lol.
The music leaves much to be desired, but the scenery is very pretty - Dolce never disappoints.
only works when the exercise itself is marginally enjoyable. Otherwise it's just one more chore that makes life a misery, and makes the idea of crawling out of bed every day entirely distasteful [/emo]
HA! I finally took an other look at the train wreck. Bilbo is asking me to repeat my profane quotes here to victims and then say that I am only kidding.
He has no idea what he is talking about. You do not talk about your self. You are there to listen. You are there to record what happened. You are there to give information; shelters, lawyers, police stations, agencies and services. You do not talk about yourself.
I already said that I was done there. But I had to point this out here for the people here who are still reading that thread.
Jadehawk, are you feeling alright?
yeah, I'm fine. just sharing my knowledge of how completely it sucks to have to do anything when you're depressed, even if you're the only person telling yourself you have to.
Jadehawk:
I agree. Exercise in the form of taking the monster dogs out for a walk and taking my camera is something I enjoy and am almost willing to do. If I had some sort of regimen I was expected to do every day, no, not so much. I'd be much more inclined to blow it off.
Erm...
Right.
Thank you. Please notify this 'Bilbo' should you ever speak to him that just now, due to the force of the facepalm he induced, I have sustained a concussion.
... Also, I'd say something about the slut slapping thing, but I'm afraid. So I'm just gonna stay out of this, Josh... Your play. I have no wish to make bad things happen. Or at least, not those bad things.
(/Anyway, if anyone needs me, I'll be washing my hands, hanging up some desert holy guy on a cross, y'know... Roman governor stuff.)
I'd add anecdata to that; if I go too long without hitting the gym I get very moody indeed, and straight after the first session back I get a huge endorphin hit that makes me feel better straight away.
yeah, I'm fine. just sharing my knowledge of how completely it sucks to have to do anything when you're depressed..
...or sick.
:P
(/Anyway, if anyone needs me, I'll be washing my hands, hanging up some desert holy guy on a cross, y'know... Roman governor stuff.)
I made damn sure that Pilate
Washed his hand
And sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
Janine, MOFMA, OM@ 243:
FFS. That moronic mess wouldn't know the first thing about counseling or being a victim's advocate. Apparently, said critter doesn't seem to know a damn thing about context either.
It's a joke I use maybe too often, but it's appropriate here: if we're going to list the things clueless whining pissant Bilbo doesn't know a damn thing about (yet argues as if he did) we're going to need a bigger boat thread.
I'm not even sure we can get to everything even on an eternal thread.
Wowbagger, too true. Like many others, I've found Bilbo to be the anti-blood pressure med.
Josh,
But there are also many sections where it is not (eg bears, leather, ...). Preferences also vary greatly with age and location (eg from my personal experience the NY Chelsea boys are much more likely to go for the shaved clean cut look than the Barcelona boys).
It's true the fashion industry tends to focus on the really young "swim team look", but who cares ?
Patricia
..ah yes, I most certainly do. Guaranteed to take Wowbagger to new "heights".
Bwaaa haa haaa haa haa
strange gods,
Well, both of those are arguable points. The Lib Dems are probably more secular, on balance, than the other two major parties - but there's still plenty of variance among the individual MPs. I have heard a few Lib Dems taking a strong line against faith schools, though this tends to represent their own views rather than party policy.
As to them being "on the left", it depends on who you talk to. They were formed from a merger of two centrist parties, the Liberals and the Social Democrats, and they incorporate both "classical liberal" and "social democratic" traditions, leading, at times, to a fairly incoherent ideological agenda. They're undoubtedly to the left of the Conservatives, but whether they're "to the left" of Labour is debatable; they're certainly less authoritarian and less statist, but that doesn't necessarily make them more or less "left-wing". Depending on their leadership at the time, they have sometimes positioned themselves to the left on some issues (e.g. in the 2005 election they argued for a 50% tax on the highest income-earners - something that actually ended up being implemented last year by Labour), but this doesn't necessarily reflect a consistent ideological agenda. They're certainly well to the right of the Green Party, the Socialist Workers' Party and the other avowedly leftist minor parties in the UK.
I'm really excited about next weekend now. Should be awesome.
strange gods,
The first of your points is just meaningless partisa rhetoric on your part, as you well know. I'm dismayed; it's not like you to use tactics which are transparently equivalent to "Are you still beating your wife?"
On the second point, no; abortion is a free vote issue in the UK, as I've explained. I can't be bothered to have the same argument for a third time.
On the third point, this "alliance" consists of being part of the same party-group in the European Parliament. The fundamental difficulty is that the European-level "parties" are meaningless; parties from across the various Member States are supposed to form groups with their closest ideological counterparts from other states, yet this ignores the fact that each Member State has a different political history and tradition, and it is not necessarily possible to identify a "counterpart" to any of the mainstream British parties in some European countries. Certainly, the Law and Justice Party does not have
Incidentally, though I agree that Michal Kaminski is a reactionary loon, and I certainly wouldn't want any of his ideas to be adopted over here, there may well be two sides of the story. See this conversation between Kaminski and Iain Dale - Dale is a gay man and a Conservative blogger, and, at the end of the interview, he said "I came out absolutely convinced that Kaminski doesn't have a homophobic or anti-Semitic bone in his body." I'm not defending Kaminski's views in any way, but it is also true that the Polish Law and Justice Party has been abused in Britain as a cheap political shot against the Conservatives by the other parties, and has been caricatured as something they are not.
Guaranteed to take Wowbagger to new "heights".
I want to take you higher.
Sorry, forgot to finish a sentence at #259. Should have read:
Certainly, the Law and Justice Party does not hold views which I would agree with - but being part of a broad, largely arbitrary coalition in the European Parliament does not imply approval of their positions.
Janine
..after I'm finished with Wowbagger he'll be singing that in a tad higher register. Patricia has asked me to "goose him in a manner that makes him rise at least 2 inches off the ground". She's a cruel and relentless woman that one.
BoS OM, well now you've gone and warned him. You're going to have to top that 2 inches now.
She is the Queen. Sometimes being cruel and relentless comes with the job. Sometimes being cruel and relentless is just plain fun.
Gee, Ed Brayton was on Rachel Maddow apparently last US night ? Is he that famous now ??
I totally fail to speculate what that might be, probably better that way...:-)
Apparently I will have met you and 63 other pharyngulites by now in 7 days time !!! I believe it when I see it LOL
Hi.
Sorry for bursting in like this, but this is an open thread, right ? :)
I've just been challenged by a christian bloggers' parable, and I'm unsure how to counter this..
(nope, I'm not trolling, I cant figure out a good response, but I know there is one..)
It's a norwegian blogger (google-translated here) and the parable goes something like:
in the game Age of Empires a couple of workers (you know, people spawned from the "town center") discuss "how they got here". One is supposed to represent atheists and say "there was nothing before the "big booting" (big bang..)", and the other wonders that there must have been a creator..
I know this doesn't apply in the real world, but I cannot seem to remember how to counter this one.. Help please?
(Thanx in advance for your time..:D)
Since I have not noticed anyone else do it, (reaches up and gently removes the chip from Josh's shoulder) - Josh, you are too valuable to this community to be weighted down with nonsense from others.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMy3AbpkYvw
Dust - good for you. Fingers crossed that things go well.
Badgersdaughter - I have also written what I consider TMI here (apparently too, too often in my case as been pointed out to me - a question of balance), but yours was hardly that. Necessary to say things out loud some time and if not here then where?
Back to the UK later today. Anyone want to try a PZ's Playhouse meeting this spring somewhere in the south or west of the UK? Knockgroats, will write you soon.
JD
Atheists are not astrophysicists, they just don't believe in gods.What I would say to this is that even if our current theory of the big bang turns out to be incorrect, "therefore creator" does not follow, and vice versa.
Also, if you ask the 2 billion folks who believe in a "creator" to define the term, I dont think you would get just one answer.
Rorschach
Make that 67 other Pharyngulites. Like woodlice, we keep on just appearing and appearing.
BTW, that's just at the dinner. The number that turns up to drinks on Friday arvo is anyone's guess. I'm estimating about that but we may be inundated with hundreds. .. all wanting to just turn up to bask in the glory and warmness of my rich personality, I'd like to think but in reality it's because PZ might turn up.
.. And I stress MIGHT people. He's been invited but cut the poor lad some slack. He turns up in Aus only that morning and has quite a few other functions to attend. If he's not shattered by mid-afternoon and just wanting to go to his room and have a long kip then I'll be a monkey's ancestor...oh wait...
So you all might have to just have to mingle amongst yourselves. If you all get bored I can show you my party trick of juggling stubbies. Not sure about Rorschach- given his background he might be able to yodel or something.
Yodel hmmm ?
The only time I've ever seen anyone yodel for real was the result of an unfortunate choice for a culinary experience, in Surfers Paradise, QLD, AU.
I have a party trick too, uhm.I can drink 12 stubbies and still talk about football philosophy !
;)
Slight change of topic :
Can any of the paleo/geo folks comment on this ?
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/327/5970/1214
(Title : The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary)
And one more from the category "Science, it works bitches !"
Exotic antimatter detected at RHIC
@#268 Rorschach
Tnx for reply.
That's a valid point.. why is this his "creator"..? :)
I was also thinking "obviously designed" contra "obviously not designed", as another approach too.
This video is responsible for making me want to be sinful.
I do wish they wouldn't shave so excessively though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gO7uemm6Yo&feature=related
214 comments overnight, and I didn't go to bed early. <shudder>
+ 1
Eh. Between Cath the Canberra Cook and myself we can cover soprano and alto/tenor/bass, and by the sounds of Patricia/Bride of Shrek's present for Wowbagger we might have a sopranist amidst the ranks (the equivalent of a castrati without the snip-snip)
We don't know what, if anything was "before the big booting*." There's various guesses about the pre-big bang but that's all there are, guesses.
*The universe was kick-started.
The main problem in that idea is "before", since time itself doesn't exist outside the universe as we know it, so if the big bang is the beginning, then there is no "before". (Excluding cyclical universes of expansion followed by contraction to a "big crunch", but that again doesn't reflect our current scientific understanding of an expanding universe.)
He made it all the way to the full monty in last night's episode, which was why I mentioned it among the talk of the underwear boys in the post clip. :) Not that they showed it all on the tv, but enough. Plenty enough. I am anxiously awaiting its arrival on Hulu. The episode also featured everyone trying to get Abed a date (he's depicted as having Asperger's, although they never come right out and say that), and I nearly choked laughing so hard because my elementary-aged Aspie has already had some of the exact same encounters and actions towards girls.
badgersdaugher, don't worry about oversharing. That's what the aliases are for. :) "Pseudonyms are useless" my ass.
Emergency management can only be done right if the environmental science is well enough known. Contribute wherever you find it easiest (in the long run), and if it's, I don't know, paleoclimatology, geochemistry...
<uninvited hug>
You're of course right. I just couldn't let the opportunity for a literary allusion slide.
Repeated for truth.
Oh no. "Just" the flattest coasts, and not quite as quickly as I implied – ice caps simply can't melt overnight. It's still a matter of decades, not years.
I'm off to lunch/dinner, see you later.
That's cruel. It's mobbing. I wouldn't be able to watch that.
That reminds me, I haven't had breakfast yet.
Ramen to that. Of course, the only thing better than Kansas City barbeque is St. Louis barbeque. :p
Exactly. That's one of the hugest things that most people miss. They're told to do one particular exercise or another, and if it's not fun, you won't keep doing it. Worse, you might then think that you just don't like exercise period, and give up instead of trying lots of different things to see what works. Of course, the flip side is when you find one you love, then it's fun, and then it becomes something you give up on because you're so busy and it's "selfish" to be doing something fun when there are so many things you have to be doing for other people, but that's a whole other ball of therapy... um, never mind.
ernieball - the easiest retort if you don't want to deal with it is probably "Well, what created the creator?" followed by the explanation that posturing a creator who existed without a backstory is even more stupid than posturing that at one point nothing existed but energy.
Re the Age of Empires example, if these workers in the game are living in a universe where major buildings and cities are deposited from the sky or spontaneously vanish away, and periodically a giant cursor waves overhead and marshals everyone into formation, they'd probably conclude, correctly, that a supernatural (from their perspective) being is fucking with them.
If we lived in a universe containing evidence of an interventionist god, we'd conclude there was one.
David - it didn't really have that vibe to it, I didn't think. The conceit was that the group found out that a girl liked him (they thought), and wanted to try and get him to talk to her, thinking it was in his best interest. He went along with what they were doing, and there were multiple references to every pop cliche about transforming a person into someone else to become popular, along with references to every afterschool special that warn against such behavior in favor of being oneself. At the end, it turns out that Abed went along with them in their scheme only to make them happy, and that girls actually tend to frequently proposition him (but none of the group had ever noticed). I can see where it could have been in the realm of mobbing, but there's enough backstory at this point in the series that it was clear from the beginning that it was a) being done out of how much they care about him and b) was sure to end badly for them because pretty much everything they do turns out wrong - a lot of the humor of the show hinges on the characters trying to do something they think is helpful and turns out to be entirely inappropriate. (this is now the fourth out of the 6 main characters that has had some variation of this storyline).
St. Louis BBQ is good, if all you're looking for is imitation Kansas City BBQ. It's edible, unlike that nasty North Carolina crap.
Ooh! I was just linking (again) to an earlier talk by Oreskes on one of the other threads. Won't be able to watch this till later, but it looks good:
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/03/naomi_oreskes_on_merchants_of.p…
oh please
David - of course, YMMV. I was only trying to explain why I thought it worked in context of that particular show, not that everyone ought to find it funny or acceptable for entertainment.
Tis - pppphhhhbbbbttttt.
(For the record, I like both kinds.)
Rev. - it's difficult to describe the initial reaction to vinegar-based barbeque when one has had a few decades of thick tomato-based and has no idea of the existence of the other kind. It's as weird as getting a fruit plate that's doused in mustard or something of the like.
*"Both kinds" as in KC and St. Louis styles, which is somewhat akin to the Blues Brothers quote "We've got both kinds of music here - country AND western!"
Rev BDC,
The NC natives put vinegar in their BBQ sauce. Then they try to counteract the vinegar by putting in too much sugar. How anyone can think it's edible, let alone delicious, is one of those mysteries like why does gawd hate amputees.
Some places put too much sugar, but that can be said for some St. Louis and Kansas City and Memphis sauces too.
What BBQ joints in NC have you eaten at?
Hahaha, great answer :)
Thanks for the inspiration. I see now that this just begs the question, as usual..
Yes I understand, sort of.
It is where BBQ started of course.
/ducks
Oh and there is vinegar in pretty much ALL bbq sauce styles (even that white sauce from Alabama).
Imagine that, youngsters having to dodge military recruiters to get to schools that are intimidated into teaching English as the official language and not teaching science in any serious way... wait did I say English? I meant whatever language these Somali schools teach.
Benjamin Geiger | March 5, 2010 12:57 AM:
Look on the bright side. When someone says "just ask", you know, from the total vapidity of those two words, they don't actually have any advice, and aren't capable of being any help. So you can move on without suffering through the usual confused post-hoc sophistry.
The whole idea of going out to meet people for dating has always seemed odd to me.
But then, I like alone. I like it too much even. I get to be me, do things I like, keep my own money. It's great.
The only thing that bothers me is when people, often women, complain about not being able to find some one and then shoot a look at me as if I'd never know what it feel like to be lonely or feel ugly. For most of my youth I modeled but I felt like a beast and I've had the wonderful experience of having "You know, you're really smart aren't you?" as the last things said to me by a guy I was moments before making plans to see that weekend. Those plans never materialized.
So... ladies and gentlemen, I agree with PZ. Keep trying, be nice, try not to get too downtrodden. Or else you may realize, as I have, that intimate relationships are no longer important to you!
That being said I'm in a crisis of a bit of a different flavor. Having left grad school and taken a job in an unrelated area has made me happier. Now I'm trying to decide whether I want to keep pursuing this track, or go back to school and start over in something new and different.
Okay, I'm just having a quick glance at what's been written while I've been out seeing an improvised Jane Austen musical, a man who is apparently not psychic but somehow manages to make it look like he is by making absolutely unbelievable predictions, and an Irish ukulele-playing cabaret performer who I'm now at least three-fifths in love with. What can I find...
Oh. Dear. God.
I've had BBQ in Raleigh-Durham, Fayetteville and Cherry Point*. Each time, except the first, it was because I'd say how nasty NC BBQ was and people would say "oh, but you've never had Aunt Berthatrude's BBQ, let me take you there." And each time there was the same nasty vinegary BBQ as I'd had before in North Carolina.
I have had some decent dry-rub BBQ in North Carolina. If that was what the natives bragged about I'd have no trouble with their ideas about BBQ.
The thing I like best about Kansas City BBQ is the lack of vinegar. Also I've never had Alabama BBQ. Thanks for the warning, I'll make a point of not having any.
*I know people in the military who were stationed at Ft. Bragg** and MCAS Cherry Point.
**I've always wondered why one of the largest US Army bases is named after one the least successful Civil War generals.
So the 'immigration minister being a jerk over gay rights' thing is still simmering along in Canada... CBC talking about it this morning, human rights groups still generally pissed, as they should be.
Facts on the ground as previously (old story, here... newer stuff seems mostly to be commentary)--minister had references taken out of a citizenship study guide, but is generally denying this despite the fact that he might as well be standing there with his hand in the jar sayin' he didn't take no cookies...
(/... this update on our nation's nutters currently regrettably in charge provided free of charge. As you were.)
I realize this should have been earlier in this thread (wow, can you imagine the confusion if nested comments were enabled?) or on the last neverending thread but I work for the government, I'm the father of teenagers, and I'm old so I'm slow.
That said:
Many years ago, my fellow office rodents and I were discussing the realative merits of different types of underwear (toward the end of what had been a busy day) and I turned to an older gentleman in our office and asked him, "Boxers or briefs?"
He thought for a moment and answered, "Well, depends." As the words were leaving his lips, his expression changed. He tried to stop himself completing the sentence. He failed.
Ten years later, this conversation still comes up in our office even though he retired 7 years ago.
iambilly #302
Just for your information, blowing hot tea out of the nose hurts.
Late to the party, but:
There's a variation on Caine's bacon recipe called "Bitch Bar Bacon Breadsticks." It's from The Sweet Potato Queens' Big-Ass Cookbook (and Financial Planner) (a book my wife treasures above all else, probably even me). This has always been a hit at parties.
Bitch Bar Bacon Breadsticks
30 slices of thinly sliced bacon (about)
box of grissini bread sticks
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons chili powder
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Wrap a thin slice of bacon around each long, skinny bread stick in a delightful spiral of fat. Mix together brown sugar and chili powder in a long, shallow dish (long enough to lay a bread stick down in) and smash out any lumps with a fork and generally mix it all up real good. Roll each bacon-wrapped bread stick in that hot sugar and set them, one by one, on the rack of a broiler pan, about 1/2 inch apart, and then bake them for about 20 minutes - during which time that sugar will caramelize in the bacon fat and the bacon will turn wonderfully golden. They'll then be loosened with a spatula and cooled on that rack on the counter for a few minutes before they are placed on a serving platter, but that's okay - you want to eat 'em at room temp, anyway.
The only use I have found for vegemite is in fine scale modeling. I lay down the base coat (say a nice weathered metallic steel) and let it dry. Smear a little vegemite in strategic wear locations and let it dry (put the model (usually a tank) where the cat cannot get to it (learned the hard way)). Spray the exterior colour (say a nice vibrant olive drab) and let dry. Then use a knife, a needle, and a damp cloth to remove the vegemite and the paint on top of the vegemite. Then weather. I had no idea anyone actually ate that stuff.
I should include a bacon recipe:
Rinse and de-silver a couple of pork tenderloins. Wrap each tenderloin in thick-cut smoked bacon -- no overlaps, but no large gaps either. Sprinkle with black pepper. Bake at 450F (no idea what that is for all you fehrengi) until the bacon is cooked and just beginning to brown. Pop under the broiler for 2 minutes until the bacon on top crisps. Slice and serve.
As (((Wife))) says, "Bacon makes everything better."
(((Billy))) The Atheist
@Janine MoFMA, OM:
I finally caught back up with the Intersects, skimming over their replies.
They do not like PZ because he calls out their precious M&K on their concern trolling, and so have chosen their side. They are intentionally delusional. They choose to be willfully ignorant, and they will deny any reasonable argument which contradicts their own biases.
If they can't take a joke, fuck 'em. Gently. With a chainsaw.
I absolutely adore vinegar-based barbecue. Oddly enough, even though I grew up about 10 miles from the NC border, I didn't have NC-style barbecue until I moved to Florida.
'Tis Himself @ 303:
I accept no responsibility for any damage to nasal passages or keyboards created through my relation of conversations from the last century.
And if you think hot tea through the nose is painful, never, ever, ever sneeze while dry-swallowing a Prozac.
From a new post at the intersection:
No, it's not that the topic of the devolving state of science blogs was so enthralling, but that a lot of the intn's Vapor of commenters couldn't stop tattling and posting bad words that other people said.
And yes, if one needed any proof that they like to call attention to PZ to increase their page hits, there you go.
Ya'll know that reading this thread is a high cholesterol promoting act. Now I need to go and eat some of my pickled cauliflower.
Regarding the discussion of bar-b-q sauces: Duke Ellington's response to music was "If it sounds good, it is good." I would say that when it comes to bar-b-q, if it tastes good, it is good. Arguing which is better is like arguing which bacon recipe is better. Or which IDiot Cretinoist is the biggest moron. Or which of McCain's personalities is the most annoying. Or which god(s) are the most absurd. It can be fascinating, but, ultimately, it's like arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
iambilly | March 5, 2010 9:07 AM:
Sorry, don't believe it. You got that from a 1999 User Friendly strip.
Music arguments, vegetable arguments, underwear arguments...wastes of time.
Now barbecue arguments, on the other hand...
I like all kinds, but generally prefer less sweet and less tomatoey versions; vinegary is better. North Carolina BBQ: yes, please! But I have also enjoyed St. Louis, KC, and Texas styles. They do a very interesting Texas/KC hybrid style in Oklahoma that's pretty good (although they seem to think that BBQ bologna is somehow appropriate).
The one thing I will say about all of these styles is that they are all better than Long Island-style barbecue.
Shown here.
Bah. BBQ is nothing more than a sauce to disguise the fact that the meat hasn't been smoked properly.
Oklahoma style also involves the sauce served on the side...smoked meat is what you get and you can sauce it as you please.
So the Colgate Twins are proud of 400 comments. The eternal thread has had 1142 comments since I could ascertain the first report for their thread (eposide 33 #534), but it could be more as there was a report of Orac's comment further upthread. Of course, we also discussed important topics like underwear and BBQ.
Yeah. But (pardons to Bill Hicks) I plan on diein' with a sloppy grin on my face.
re: exercise. I'm bipolar, and am supposed to exercise in addition to my meds (stable for 4 years now, thank you!). I mostly find exercise truly boring, and have never in my life gotten an endorphin high from it. My secret to making it bearable is to listen to audiobooks while I work out. It keeps my mind engaged, so the activity isn't as boring.
re: meeting people for the first time. I'm a member of a foodie list (I'm not a great cook, but am trying to get inspiration to be better) and a small group of folks from that list are meeting for lunch in a town not too far away from me, and invited me to go with them since I'm so close. I'm back and forth on it.. they all know each other, are excellent cooks, and I'm mostly shy... but I probably will go, because it beats staying inside and trying to keep up with the endless thread.
Many bbq places follow this rule, in all styles.
Well, that's damned hospitable of them.
Y'know, I spent several months in OK in basic training and AIT. I never once had Oklahoma BBQ. I might have to reproduce it on my own, as I've sworn an unbreakable vow to never go back to that hell-hole of a state. ("It's like a fun-sized Texas!")
hahaha
Shameless blogwhoring: I just posted some Whistler pictures...
(/Fair warning: I am not Lynna's brother.)
I have to say that the boys in the video would have made fine footmen if they'd just lived at the right time.
Good lord. I waded in just for a minute, and was immediately met with a person claiming that I'm a hypocrite if I don't think that threatening someone's daughter is equivalently ok to telling someone to go fuck off.
If the Intersection and Laden groups ever all got in a room together, the world would implode from the combined suckitude.
This biggest sin being thrust upon the BBQ enjoying public is the continuing switch over from real wood to gas fueled BBQ "pits".
It's shameful.
... today's lesson: you can always be more disgusted with someone.
(/You may keep thinking you can't. But apparently, you always can.)
No, it really did happen. I have never even heard of User Friendly. When he said it, he meant that he wore either, and it depended on the weather. Of course, that is not how it came out. Man's name: D. Myer. His grade at the time: GS-0025-05 Park Ranger.
I am a government employee. I am not a political appointee. I do not have the grade level nor the political support to be able to lie.
If I mention I'm going to look in on that thread again, someone slap the shit out of me.
That place is a fucking disaster area.
The level myopic thinking being displayed by the crybabies over there is toxic.
I'm going to send that thread to the Super Fund program.
*sheepish grin*
I must admit, I have a small gas-powered smoker at home. It is, however, no substitute for a full-on wood smoker. It's just more economical than firing up a full wood smoker when I wish to have a nice smoked brisket or ribs or burgers, rather than a whole side of beef or half a pig.
(Laughs...)
(/... see also Snowcrash, 'sacrifice zone'.)
But you at least put wood chips in it right?
What I'm talking about is BBQ places not even really smoking their meat and just relying on sauce and "fake smoke".
A lot of the newer wood smoke pits use gas to fire the logs and produce smoke but they are at least actually smoking the meat.
Some places just have taken the easy way out.
Well, that's my last wade into the Interdungeonal cesspool. Not only are those idiots immune to logic, reason, common sense, reality, and thought, but even an attempt to explain things at their level failed utterly.
One of the worst parts is that the namesakes of both bilbo and Seminatrix are pretty cool IMO.
Liar for Kershenbaum sniffled,
For the record, Philip Jr. has not provided links to these "quotes":
And it just so happens that I did find one more of the lines that make Philip Jr. weep, and we are weeping right along with the fucker:
"Go fuck your mother and sister" is actually a misquote of the troll Simon who slimed us with "is it allowed for atheists to f**k their mother and sisters ?" (link).
AND, the only comment that jibes with #6 above is from an auto-insult generator, www.ultimateflame.com (link).
WHAT?
Please tell me you are kidding. How can you have smoked meat without smoke? That's completely irrational!
That's like saying "go fuck yourself" is wishing someone would get raped and killed.
Yep it's unfortunate but true.
Some of it is a result of city ordinances not allowing smoke and some is purely out of cost, less work, not knowing what the hell they are doing.
Mine will be in about 4 months…
I've had no relationship and no date.
So true, so true.
And going outdoors is just too boring alone. I only even go for a walk (with a bit of running) anymore when, on a weekend, my legs start hurting from lack of movement. Never mind various museum exhibitions and the like that I'd probably visit if I weren't alone.
Bingo.
I have no idea what that might be, but it sounds scary.
Incredibly, we don't have fulltext access to Science (or Nature) here, but from the abstract it looks great, even though I'm not sure there'll be anything new in it. Among the authors, Christian Köberl is a geochemist at the University of Vienna who has done a lot of research on impact craters, and Greg Ravizza is the first of two authors on a 2003 Science paper that shows that the main phase of Deccan Trap eruptions ended 100,000 years before the K-Pg boundary and didn't cause anything global other than a transient rise in temperature*. And last but not least, the sheer number of authors is highly unusual in that field; that means we're looking at a really broad consensus.
* From all the outgassed CO2. One of the few cases in the history of the Earth that greenhouse gases increased for any reason other than increasing temperature.
Cool, cool.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countertenor
Minus the actual training, that's more common than one might think. For instance, although I speak in a male voice (on the high side of the range, but still), I still don't sing in one, for reasons that go back to denial*. I've altogether given up on singing in situations where my voice could be tracked down to me (outside the family).
* I simply liked my voice well enough and didn't want to lose it. Cried for it in advance a couple of times, in fact. The entire puberty thing came too early for me, even though it came late. Why doesn't it start at 18… <sigh>
OIC. I retract everything. Still, why didn't they try to get her to talk to him, then? Just because of the tradition that says that's the man's job?
I can hardly grasp it at all…
In theory, I can. It's a bit like the difference between countably and uncountably infinite sets, isn't it.
:-D
ARE YOU READY TO ROCK LIKE IT WAS 1978?
I left this on the Intersection disaster thread. Quoting here in case it's blocked by the fuck:
Could I point out that anyone who doesn’t want to be terribly deeply insulted by having nasty things said to them at Pharyngula has the option of NOT GOING THERE. If you don’t like a style of argument that includes profanity you don’t have to go over there. As it is we have the pearl-clutchers fastidiously dipping their tongs into the Pharyngula archives, finding cases where A tells B to go and do ridiculously hyperbolic act C, and oh won’t somebody think of the children. You might as well call the police to a rugby match because that big nasty man tripped up that other man and he fell in the mud, how terrible.
Personally I think commentators who post claims which boil down to “you scientists are all fools, frauds, liars and/or idiots” – which is the implication of pro-creationism/anti-evolution arguments, and of climate change denialists- are being far more offensive, even if they don’t use a single swear word, than a response which includes the recommendation that they go engage in a private act with an agricultural implement. A world of “civilised discourse” which regards “Atheists can’t be really moral” or “Evolutionary theory is responsible for the Holocaust”or “Climate change is just a left-wing conspiracy” as less offensive than “fuck off” has neutered itself.
I will not, not, repeat not be giving those irrelevant, pandering, patently, pathologically dishonest asswipes one fucking bit worth of traffic, but for what my saying it here (again) is worth, this is it exactly.
(/Clenched tentacle salute.)
I've been off doing other stuff, but I was catching up a bit and then checked my email and found this little gem forwarded by my mother. A poem. About how we say things. Nothing to do with profanity, but still relevant, if you ask me, especially since I think most of the people on this thread have been attacked for doing what this poem encourages.
A. Noyd - brilliant. I'm collecting a few choice videos to give to my students for spring break, and am definitely including that.
Hey, my birthday is next week -- I'm spending it on a plane to Australia.
And our 30th wedding anniversary is the week after that...and my wife and I will be celebrating it in different hemispheres.
Taylor Mali is generally brilliant. His bit on the naive, unthinking use of spellcheckers as a substitute for proofreading was cited here sometime back, too, and is also worth a look, tho' not quite so on point, here.
Wowbagger @172
Too true. Well, Leland will kill me (not literally) for this if it ever gets out .... but .... He pried himself loose from the clutches of a passive/aggressive mormon woman who laid all her bully tactics at god's door, only to go out on a date with a woman recommended as highly intelligent by a friend. Turns out she was Greek Orthodox and spent the entire evening telling him how evil mormons are because they are worshipping the wrong god, or worshipping god in the wrong way, or worshipping Satan without realizing it ... or all of the above. Being a little worn and wary from past drubbings administered by religious females, he just nodded his head and ate his dinner and sighed inwardly.
Sad to come to the conclusion that most people aren't worth the time. For a long time he thought that an intelligent female who had been unfortunately brainwashed since birth might at least modify her commitment to extreme craziness if she was occasionally, and in a non-pushy way, introduced to other ideas. Museum visits, films, that sort of thing. But no.
As an aside, Mr. Fire, I liked the Booker T & the MGs "Melting Pot" performance. Very nice.
I just realized that Phil Lesh turns 70 next week.
wow.
The difference between profane and offensive shows up everywhere. On my blog I have a frequent commenter who goes by the name of Matthew. This is one of his recent offensive comments:
No fuck. No shit. No rape. No obscene gerunds. But, without doubt, offensive.
Before this thread the difference between offensive language and profanity had not even occurred to me.
Oh yay! We'll all be 28 together :D
I,FOR ONE(sorry), am feeling the thirty pushing down on me. It makes me sad.
Reverend, belated thanks for sharing your thoughts on pulled pork.
Closely related to that, the BBQ discussion is awesome. As a British person, I used to think that the dish that we invented - I am of course talking about Indian curry - was king. But after several years in the US, I am beginning to re-think that.
Oh, and Cajun cooking is my other great food revelation since being here.
Just dropping in, haven't read the thread (though I did notice the very tasty sounding recipe Caine posted @12, which I've saved and will try out this weekend), but I wanted to deliver this programming notice:
According to my DVR's trusty program guide feature, the next episode of Alton Brown's Good Eats, which is on the topic of combining sweet and salty flavors, will feature a recipe (Alton calls them applications) for Bacon Pralines. Mmmmmmmm....
On the subject of salty and sweet combinations, the French, especially in Brittany, have long had the habit of adding salt to caramel. It does cut down on the intense sweetness whilst keeping the caramel flavour.
I used to have a recipe for a chocolate and salted caramel tart but I can no loner find it.
That's next month for me. I'm not sure how I feel about it, yet. I'm telling myself that it's just some arbitrary number, that it's just a count in the decimal system of the number of times the earth has orbited the sun. If we were using hexadecimal or duodecimal, it wouldn't seem an important number at all. And yet, I still keep thinking about it.
Wow, AJ Milne, he's fantastic! Just listened to the rant on What Teachers Make.
Again, exactly.
I'll happily keep banging on about it. This is the whole fucking point. It needs to be emphasized.
And as to my personal reactions, honestly, a good 'go fuck yourself', voiced in the clear context in which it effectively means 'Sir, I really strongly disagree, so strongly that emphasizing my disagreement appropriately and reasonably tersely will require me to call upon some of the older words in our language' doesn't bother me one fucking bit. There is nothing offensive about that...
Whereas the bit from your commenter pretty much just made me throw up in my mouth, never mind its lack of anything in certain verboten sequences of four letters. There is a disgusting, obnoxious, underlying arrogance (and, unless I miss my guess, a very real apologia for extremely vicious behaviour, since I'm betting the context was about Repaint, Amardillo, right?) about that screed which, in my ever so humble opinion, if it does not offend you, there's something wrong with you.
(/Or, more tersely, the word 'fuck' really isn't especially profane. Not with shit like that to compare it to.)
Yeah, my sister (who is a teacher) pointed him out to me, a while ago.
I'm not, myself, a teacher--despite having a whole lot of 'em in the family, I don't seem to have received the 'ability patiently to repeat things on occasion' genes. But I know more than enough of 'em and respect 'em enough that that bit practically brought a tear to my eye.
I'll be 62 in three weeks.
Zero sympathy from me.
AJ Milne @ 353: Yeah, Repaint Armadillo (Love the rephrasing). His take on the golden rule is breathtakingly selfish and nonempathic.
And so I will repost the Platinum Rule: Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.
Obviously, if this gentleman was word-hipping Satan, he would not wish to go out with that Jesus fellow. That makes no sense whatsoever. Especially if he word-hipped Satan like a typical atheist: not at all.
(Why does everyone who fantasizes about being sodomized by Jesus believe that atheists worship Satan, and the only pleasures of the world are to be found in drugs, sex and cretinous behavior? I mean, drugs and sex are nice and everything, but they aren't the only pleasurable things in the world.)
If he were truly an atheist (rather than a Satan word-hipper), it would be like someone with, y'know, taste in music being invited to a Pat Boone concert.
nigelTheBold @ 357: I suppose I should have cleared up the twits typos for clarity but that really is the way he types and comments. And I had no idea that word-hipping had a prurient meaning. Or did I miss something?
And for all you late 20-somethings complaining about approaching 30 -- GET OFF MY LAWN!!
(Of course, I'm only 44, but I did live in West Virginia for a few years so I am old enought to be your father!)
Wake up in the morning, reading The Thread, sir
So that every post can be read
Oh, Oh, the Pharyngulites.
iambilly,
I know he meant "worship." I just liked his misspelling, and so ran with it. I'd rather have the full semi-literate effect to go along with my content-less arrogant deiphile rantings.
I turn 43 in a couple of months. To all the folks approaching 30: don't worry. 30 is a breeze. 40's not much of a problem, either. I can't say much about the others, since I haven't turned 50 yet.
Glad you liked it Lynna! I love those guys.
In other news, I just read what you said a thread or so ago, and I'm compiling some comments on your work. Did they have to be of a particular length?
Stay well,
Mr. Fire
I,FOR ONE(sorry), am feeling the thirty pushing down on me. It makes me sad.
Yeah, at 30 you have to get a real job and start acting like a grownup. (I say, having reached 42 and only gotten a "real job" last year.)
'Tis Himself @182:
Excellent attempt, 'Tis. So, now, if they alter their search terms to include "thorn bush" and "nostrils" they will be amply rewarded.
I'm with you on this, those fly-bitten boot-lickers haven't quoted me either. I feel so ignored. [sobs] I am forced, forced I tell you, to link to myself.
I also claim: "Mr. Brown is a pusillanimous pouch of putrid pedantry." And there's this, inspired by Smoggy:
...call Floyd Rubber to double
the sod's trouble with concretions
equigranular from his regions
left unwashed for several seasons.
Actually, I forgot I don't have birthdays anymore, just anniversaries. Next month is the 9th anniversary of my 21st birthday.
Dear Pharyngulites:
Do you like your Enter The Dragon theme music regular, or extra-funkified?
Mix the BBQ and Cajun and try a Cochon de lait po-boy
hoooooooooooooooooo nellie
I figure it's the forbidden fruit thing... Y'know... They're told they're not supposed to do it, so it must be awesome...
(/Given this, we can probably assume the following: if somewhere there were a sect of Christianity in which their version of the bible had Jesus forbidding the gargling of broken glass, we'd never actually know. They wouldn't have been around long enough.)
Not only is his comment offensive it's fucking stupid.
*drowns in drool*
An interesting 'cooking shed' method I found when looking it up. Like a giant jury-rigged rotisserie, I suppose.
Yep, and it works well. It's an especially good facilitator of beer consumption.
The traditional way I spend mine is giving a talk at a conference. Unfortunately that won't happen this year, because the museum lacks the money to finance this one for me.
Oh, great. Now Jadehawk's birthday depression will come back. :-(
Or yet another postdoc :-)
Too bad I know French, because that completely ruins the joke for me…
(Anniversaire means both. Happy birthday = bon anniversaire.)
A couple of those guys bear a very close resemblance to members of the Blues Brothers Band.
Shocking isn't it.
Rāmen.
Methinks, I, for one, would like to write to Ask Pharyngula about courtship:
What do you feel about not taking no for an answer once one has worked up the courage to ask?
I finally confessed my wee, silly feelings and the reply was "I'm flattered, but no thanks." We agreed to remain friends but I fscked that up in a misguided attempt to demonstrate my sincerity (or whatever the hell it is/was). That freaked her out, but even then she for some reason couldn't get her self to tell me. I must have known she was unhappy, though, since I dragged the truth out of her.
So now I haven't talked to her in a long(ish) time, but she hasn't really left my thoughts.
Is it just a question of wanting the forbidden fruit? The dog chasing the car, not knowing what to do with it if it catches it? Should I turn to drink and leave her alone? (I've blocked her webpresences from this browser just to help resist the temptation to stalk.) Or is it still possible to make a tentative approach without being a complete creep?
Oh. Man. I am so spreading the gospel of the cooking shed.
Thank you so much, Mr. Fire. You are a gem. I think I may have guilted Katrina into similar action.
Don't worry about length. Do keep in mind that my publisher will excerpt whatever he wants from comments we receive from various readers. He is most likely to excerpt bits about 3-4 sentences long, considering the committee's short attention span (don't tell them I said that). But... you never know which bits will strike the publisher's fancy, nor which bits will be needed to give a full and well-rounded picture of my ass awesomeness.
Possible. But not likely.
Chances are, pursuing her in any way would be disastrous. It will only lead to hurt feelings; shouting; acrimony; long nights spent bawling in the abandoned lot across from her apartment, telescope lying forgotten beside you on the grass; and restraining orders.
Then she'll say, "No, nigel, I'm not posting you bail," and then you'll be like, "You don't love me any more!" and she'll be all like, "Stop calling me."
No really does mean no.
you're not the only one. and worst of all, I was hoping that watching others turn 30 without damage to themselves would help, except that's not even close to what's happening. turning 30 apparently does weird things to you: one of them dropped all his altie projects and got himself a career in IT; the other suddenly decided he needs a second job, save up, and buy a house :-/
PZ, are you taking a birthday cake on the plane with you? (Minus the candles, of course.) Really, someone should orchestrate a B-day party for the Professional Poopyhead on da plane to Down Under.
My condolences to you and the Trophy Wife for not being able to share your Anniversaire, nor your wedding anniversary. Perhaps this will be a good excuse to organize a massive blow-out party when you return.
That means be very, very careful. "The descriptive power of Lynna's writing creates more than a picture; it reconstructs the very landscape, the rocks and trees and sky, the bushes and streams and birds, sight and smell and every flutter of the breeze," will turn into, "Lynna likes to kill small birds with rocks."
“A more thorough analysis of a larger data set, and a more careful analysis of distribution of characters that they argue support their grouping actually show that that this is a very interesting fossil related to lemurs and lorises but not related to human origins at all,” Ross said. “To assert that you can reconstruct relationships on thirty characters is just wrong-headed, it’s stubbornly primitive science. And I just don’t understand it.”
I'm basically just posting this here so I can bookmark the source of that quote which I'll need to use a lot. The context is the second paper that shows that Darwinius is more closely related to the lemurs and lorises than to us with the exceptions of Pygmy Loris and obviously Cuttlefish.
For me, I'm hoping that my thirties will bring actually making some sort of living doing something interesting, rather than just trying to survive on inadequate education and experience. I spent half of my twenties just trying to get out of my parents' house. What exactly does one leave behind with one's twenties? All-night drinking and partying? I was never into that anyway.
Sili,
Seriously, in a situation like that, you have two honorable choices. Wait for her to come to you, or don't wait at all and try to move on. If you try to re-establish contact while harboring deep feelings, you are attempting to get her to change her mind.
That's not fair to her, and it is especially not fair to you.
That's my take on it, anyway. Others might have better advice.
Carlie, nice try at the train wreck. Pretty damned frustrating, isn't it?
(Laughs...)
Spoken like a man who knows...
I'd say, for my part, a lot depends on you and her. If you can actually visualize yourself tentatively saying 'Hey, you mind if I try to open up an old subject again, real gently', and her not actually calling the cops, you might have something. But I think only you are likely to really have any sense of this, out of those here. And I think, tho' it should go without saying, you should also be real ready to drop it like a fucking hot rock again if that's where it looks like it should be going.
Re the whole turning 30 thing, I dunno. I'm 40.
It's weird. I don't feel 40. But there was a bit of a feeling of crossing a threshold, sure...
But it's not all bad. Sure, you have to remind yourself it's now probably more than just a year creepier if you catch yourself looking too long at twentysomething babe, and okay, what with cultural expectations, it's not exactly just a number, it's not like it's a fucking death sentence, either. I'm definitely a hair fitter this year, actually, mosly from the probably to-be-expected realization I should probably be taking a bit more of an active hand in staying that way...
And honestly, in my modest version of a mid-life crisis, I think I'm a bit braver. There's this sense that, look, while I've had a decent life til now, done some fun stuff, I haven't done everything I wanted to by any stretch, and since ya just don't so much know how much time is left, let's start making it count. My mother's side of the family, especially, is not generally long-lived. So I look at that number, some of the ones they made it to, get to thinking: kid, don't mess around. Get stuff done.
(/... that's all. Dunno how much help it is at 30, I guess, but anyway...)
nigelTheBold@360: I was just wondering if I was hopelessly ignorant about yet another slang term. "I'm so unhip, it's amazing my legs don't fall off."
RevBigDumbChimp@368: That's actually one of his less offensive comments.
And regarding courship, I'm a bad one to ask. I rested my feet on her lap in a dorm room while watching "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" and "Dawn of the Dead" on BetaMax and told future (((Wife))) she was cute. We were engaged three months later and married when I got my bachelors (in history (and yes, I did sell cars for a while; why do you ask?)). I don't recommend my method. I think it only works once per universe.
That you should respect that answer, once given. Rejecting someone you like and / or respect but are not necessarily attracted to can be as difficult as being rejected, emotionally. Making it worse by overtly continuing a pursuit only compounds the emotional strain.
No... I don't think so... that implies mere infatuation. It's just my opinion, but if you were merely infatuated, her rejection would have been less stinging to you. I get the sense you have genuine feelings for this person.
To a certain degree... although I'd put it more along the lines of "keep a guarded but friendly distance" so as not to make her uncomfortable... if she wanted you to simply leave her alone, I think she'd make it pretty clear. And if she has, you need to be aware of it and react accordingly (by leaving her alone).
Just my opinion, but I think you should probably step back and concede the possibility of developing a romantic relationship with her... then evaluate what her friendship means to you and take steps to resume the relationship on that level, making sure she feels comfortable that you will not pursue the romantic angle again. It is possible that in doing so and remaining in her close-knit circle, such feelings could develop, but I think it would be in your own emotional best interest to assume that will not happen and look to move on, as hard as that might be.
All of the above given with the sincere caveat that these are merely opinions from a 30-something year-old divorced male with a fairly large amount of dating experience, who also seems to have more in common with and more friendships with members of the female persuasion.
So... it's just my advice, but it's given in earnest desire to help. Take it for what it's worth. ;^)
nigelthebold, I really like "Lynna likes to kill small birds with rocks" -- it sets me apart from the rest of the field of nominees. However, because this blog prefers truth to truthiness, I offer this further edit: "Lynna likes to kill grouse and other edible birds with rocks." This highlights my survival skills.
And now a linky for Josh, Official Spokesgay. This is mild torture for our fashion-aware spokesgay. http://mormontimes.com/people_news/people_church/?id=13651
[Careful inclusion of all time/place facts so Josh can attend]
[If you have to say it's "hip", is it hip?]
[Help! Editor urgently needed at Mormon Times! ... wait... maybe they meant that?]
birthday depressions only happen on and around birthdays. i have other things to be depressed about the rest of the year.
Rey Fox, #383:
Are you saying I will have to give up on that some day? Please say it isn't so! :p
Ok, Rev. BigDumbChimp's advice for those leaving their thirties.
I spent all of my twenties after college (and some during college) being a ski/climbing-bum in a couple Western US cities. I had a degree (Ecosystems Assessment / Natural Resources) but never once did I use it. While not being pressured by my parental units to "find a career" I wasn't not being pressured, if that makes sense. I started dealing with computers because it was the only thing in a ski town I figured I could do well and make a living at it past being a cook, waiter, or some other service industry job (not that there is anything wrong with that). When finally in 2000 I blew out my shoulder skiing and the company I was working for in Telluride went belly up, I moved back east to SC.
Now during the whole time out west I was thoroughly enjoying being a budding photographer and living in the area I was in, but felt some societal / family / peer pressure to come back east and pursue the IT career path which I did, and have worked myself into an existence at age 38 of sitting behind a desk and working for people who don't give a shit about my future (not to mention a company getting slammed hard by the housing industry downturn). Don't get me wrong, the IT career has allowed me to own a home (that I personally built with my own hands), meet my wife, live fairly comfortably and do some things I have wanted to do.
But I currently hate my job. Loathe it.
Had I kept up with working on being a pro photographer (something I love) I'm pretty sure my level of professional bitterness would be different and I'd hopefully be in a different place career wise. Maybe not, but at least I would have tried. So I'm currently working on a career change at age, 38 and that's got me fired up again. We'll see.
So Advice from Uncle BigDumbChimp for those approaching age 30 and feeling the "pressure"?
Don't feel pressured to find a "real job" unless that is what you really love doing. You can really back yourself into a corner down the road that is not impossible to escape, but can be difficult.
And remember 30 is the new 20.
And no, I'm not buying a Corvette.
/mid life crisis bitterness off
Hmmph. All you youngsters in your thirties and under...think about this. I lost my virginity before you were born.
That should have been
YAY
Ah! Get me some mental floss, stat!
Man, did I fuck up the HTML. <headshake>
Sili, first of all, did you notice that an almost-dinosaur has been named after not-you?
Regarding your question, you might try to place your awesomeness (but not yourself) into a place where she's going to notice, and then wait till she starts asking you. But letting your awesomeness lie around like that may not be feasible. You wouldn't be starting from 0 again, but from negative numbers… So I rather recommend you start looking for someone else.
Of course, I'm not speaking from experience. I've never been rejected… I've never made any advances in the first place.
People tend to forget the scariest option: "or both".
Dammit... once imagined, cannot be un-imagined. Thanks, PZ.
Coincidence?
one wonders...
Not me, though, I'm 50. But I don't feel 50. Except after ice-skating.
My day was made by a very very very cool post from Chris Clarke. I thought it was so cool that I blogged it myself. Then I blogwhored. You are reading the latter.
[does anybody know why Blogger is cutting off the right half of videos embedded at the smallest availavble size? thanks in advance]
And from the evidence on this thread, PZ continues to enjoy more sexual activity that any of you damned youngsters!
And get off his lawn!
And stop peeping in his windows.
Holy freaking mirror, batman!!! Do you have any idea how eerily similar this is to my very own life? I've since shed the wife and am 39 (to your 38)... but yikes... the industry, the path... the loathing... too weird.
My birthdays are non-events these days, every other year I get someone ringing me accidentally and remind me, but that's about it.
I have fake birthdays in all my public online profiles, so I get plenty of birthday wishes in all the wrong months, which kind of is not quite the same.
Make sure they offer you copious amounts of bubbly on the plane!!
Hmmph. All you youngsters in your thirties and under...think about this. I lost my virginity before you were born.
DADDY!
Well, only if you puberty while you were in your single digits and other assorted things that probably really such not be explored too deeply.
OK... this is going to sound bad... but after posting #400 I actually had to stop... think... and count before coming to the realization that I'm in fact 38 and not 39 (not till December).
Has this happened to anyone else? I'm a little shaken by it... ;^)
Not me. 42, got into computers when I was 12, not long after the Apple ][ came out. I was programming it within a week of our school getting one, in 1979.
Except for a 3-year stint in the Army, and undergraduate physics, I've been programming computers since then. And I absolutely freakin' love it. Even today.
Even given that, I'd like to second Rev. BDC's recommendation. The best advice my dad ever said was, "Son, you don't want to grow up like me, working at a job you hate just to support a family. Find out what you love, and then find out how to make a living at it."
I just went to the Found Footage Festival. Here are two guys who love kitschy pop culture, and figured out how to make money at it: go around the country on a tour. If they can figure out how to make a living off such a flimsy premise, whatever it is you love should be easy.
Oh, hey, I was mentioned last inthreadination. The sensation of silk on the skin can be very distracting. It's fun to play with if I don't have to focus on other things, though. A lot of what I dislike depends on how much it disrupts what I'm trying to do or experience at any given moment.
And speaking of bird brutality, earlier this week I found out what happens when a pigeon tries to take off from under a moving bus. The bus drove off in a spray of tail feathers, the poor bird rolling down the street after it. It managed to right itself and limp to the curb, but it had lost its entire tail and looked to have a broken wing and busted leg. I couldn't think of any way to help it without inflicting further torment before my bus showed up. I'm guessing the pigeon died later. But, hey, that's evolution, right?
When I told the keepers in the gorilla unit at the zoo where I volunteer, they were horrified, but my mother, who loves birds, was doubled over with laughter.
I actually don't keep a value for "how old am I" in my memory, at all. Every time I am asked, I need to subtract birth year from current year, and adjust based on whether it is before or after my date of birth. It's not something I consciously did, I just never cared all that much about exact age.
So not really odd to be. But not sure how typical or atypical I am.
Celtic Evolution @ 403:
I found a way to avoid confusion. All I do is look at what the last Super Bowl was. Since I was born in '66, I turned 1 about the same time as Super Bowl I (and yes, I know it wasn't called that yet). So, to determine my age, I just translate XLIV into 44 and I know how old I am. Won't work for you, but your just a kid, so what do I care?
Hey, at least you spelt "blckoqoute" correctly.
Asilisaurus kongwe - seems to me they're more likely trying to disown me.
Thanks for the Ida update. I just saw a headline about it today and couldn't understand what took them so long: duh! it's not a missing link. Welcome to 2009.
--o--
Thanks for the good advice. As you may've guessed it confirms my expectations.
I should have put more emphasis on this never having been a meatspace friendship, though. That was my big, squicking error: I offered to visit, in the hope that I might make a better impression (not likely).
Having had access to other computers lately, I've had a look at her Deviantart and left a few comments on her recent works - so I'm definitely channelling nigel, here. (Comments on the art, though, and her references to life, so nothing unprovoked, at least.) She's replied politely, but not being banned is not exactly equivalent to an invitation. What I'd considered was reädding her to MSN, but I suspect you're right and I'd just be more hurt by pursuing the impossible, and the only result would be souring what little memory she might have of me further.
I appreciate David's suggestion I flaunt my awesomeness, but 1) I don't have much too flaunt, 2) we 'defriended' on LJ, since I obviously shouldn't be privy to her life any longer.
--o--
And just for the record: I didn't have time to be depressed about turning thirty - I was already depressed from failing my ph.d. and losing my mum.
The 'real' apprentice where I am this month just told us today that his nan was a servant to Niels Bohr (she played cards with him too). We suggested he put it on his CV.
And further to the record keeping, my virginity is fairly intact.
Sounds good in theory, but I don't know many people who have managed that feat, certainly not me.
First wrong choice of field of study(should have done Law), then wrong subspecialty in the field that I did study(should have done Anaesthetics).
Problem is, during the time of life that those decisions have to be made, this did not seem such a high priority somehow, and almost came as an afterthought.
And now it's life without parole....
And now it's life without parole
After a long day of protesting, marching, and hip-hop dancing, I wake up to hot Italian models on Pharyngula. Sounds about right.
Oh, then you won't like what I did to my body.
Princesses can be bullied at school too?
Or did I misunderstand the article?
Close to my Dad's version: "Find something you like to do, then find someone stupid enough to pay you for doing it."
I started out in computer engineering. I was good at the math. And I hated it. So I switched to what I enjoy (history) and now have a career with the NPS as a cultural interpreter dealing with labour and industrial history. And getting to go to forest fires is fun, too.
I guess part of it is recognizing what you like and (hopefully) doing so before you are entrenched in a career, marriage, mortgage, and all the other complications which accompany midlife.
Well, I guess it helps if you love a lot of things. I got into computers before the big explosion. I was attempting to become a physicist (I wanted so bad to work at CERN); physics was my first love, ever since I found in the library a book on subatomic particles when I was 10. Computers came second. Then through a series of events, I ended up with computers as a career (with little formal education).
I guess I was fortunate my second choice was strong.
/waves from the cell next door
Repeated for truth Aww, you didn't need to say that.
Remember that movie clip I linked to many threads ago with the pervert and the wall? You may now shift the setting to me and my monitor, you saucy minx.
The other thing that can happen is that you figure out early what you love, figure out how to get paid for it, establish a career of sorts, and then gradually realize that as a job it's not nearly so fun. Not nearly. But by then one has responsibilities and obligations and never trained to do anything else that might pay nearly so well to start over at.
or so I've heard
Yeah there's that too. That's somewhat of how the IT biz started out for me.
There is that, too.
Allllllllllllrighty.
Now for something less depressing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YknjhnywGGI
"Chicago would be awesum", Jadehawk wrote a few subthreads ago. It is.
My mother always needs to calculate to get her age down to the exact year. Sounds like comment 406.
That's actually normal. Pigeons can drop the feathery part of the tail at will.
I'm not going to ask exactly what that means… :-)
Almost every single professional scientist…?
Evidently.
While that is the correct response, I feel the need to add that persistence is how I got my to date me. For two weeks she kept saying no, but I finally convinced her. It depends on what the reason is for the rejection. In our case, it's not that she wasn't interested in me, it's that she didn't think we'd work very well as a couple. We discussed it. She outlined her reasons. I addressed them. Now we're happy. But it did take a bit of persistence to get that dialog to happen, and to maintain it.
Well, given that we're talking career choices, I might throw out the career choice standing before me now, for you to mull over.
I'm from the Netherlands, currently studying in the UK. My supervisor approached me last week, asking if I might want to do a PHD here. The spot is pretty much guaranteed to me, along with a relatively small scholarship, and it's a good uni.
Problem is, I'm not sure I want to spend another 3-4 years in the UK. What I would like to do, is go to yet another country altogether, and do a PHD there or go into the industry, but I'm not sure how feasible that is. To make matters worse, there is a deadline and I need to have decided in just over a week.
So, any advice or new angles to look at this?
Yes, this.
Like RDBC, I hate my career in IT, but find life getting in the way of being able to do much about it at this point.
Well, I am. She says she is, but how anybody could be happily married to the likes of me is a good question. I'm an atheistic, nerdy scifi geek who spends entirely too much time playing video games and listening to metal, and not enough time taking care of myself or the house. And I always want bacon.
I'm confused... is this anything like being "a little pregnant"?
KOPD #421
Sure... and each experience will be unique... and in a vacuum there will be cases where persistence might be a recommended approach... this will be determined by the interactions and circumstances, of course.
I based my answer not just on the initial question, but the context Sili provided subsequently that indicated to me that continued pursuit was probably not the best course in this case.
But considering your preface, I don't think we are in disagreement here. ;^)
Paul @ 406:
I do that too. *does the math* I'm 52. I just don't think about age, I never have. I'm usually taken completely by surprise when I hear "happy birthday!" from someone every November too, as I rarely remember my birthday.
Surely we can push this thread into hilarious loss-of-virginity-stories*.
It was a city park, it was winter, it was the late evening...and of course, none of that mattered to us. She had a big furry coat, so we kinda wrapped up in that, and, y'know, stumbled through it.
I thought her coat smelled funny, but I ignored it. It was only after we were done that I realised we had been rolling around in a pile of freshly-laid dogshit.
*For sporting reasons, I'm not mentioning age, since it's unremarkable doesn't add anything.
On items such as this, where my boots are, what time the party is, what we have going on June 3rd, did I forget to do something, anything and what was that movie I liked I usually ask my wife.
I felt this way. I actually like my IT job, but I don't know if I want to work in business forever. It's just a lucrative (comparatively) thing I can do. Although security is interesting and so I am considering going back to push towards that track more and make sure there are places higher on the food chain. But is it what I want or love? I really don't know. It always has beaten working at a starbucks or something.
I studied art and music. I decided to pursue art for a graduate degree and planned on working in the field, teaching, writing, making art. Then at some point while pursuing that I got deeply disillusioned with it all and started to realize how my IT job was grounding me and making me feel better when everything else sucked. I dreaded writing another article. I dreaded dealing with more pretension. I looked forward to C#, waiting for me in the alternating mornings... yet another database. Wheeee...
And then I got another promotion, and I realized if I do this for a while if nothing else I can make enough money to actually have some real control over what my life looks like in the next ten or twenty years. of course now my job is more demanding.
I guess all that really depresses me is that I realize that my music will not be going anywhere before I'm thirty. That hurts... another dream for the heirloom box :( Not that I plan to quit entirely.
As for art, my break with the professional art world is probably permanent. I still make things, but I just don't care about being an academic and I don't care about getting into galleries anymore either. Goodbye rat race.
It's really really ironic though. When I think about it.
Now I don't know what I want to do. I want to find something that I feel is important somehow to the world, or where I'm being useful.
Sometimes I feel like a giant human waste of space :(
Meh... depressing thoughts. They can fuck themselves! Who has time for that?
Because there are people at the train wreck crossroads who are tattling on Pharyngula to the Seed overlords for our no-holds-barred discussions, I thought it would be fun to look back and see what the Seed response was last time this happened for those who missed it:
They forwarded the complaint to Judge Myers for summary judgment.
I know what you mean... I think the clearest indicator for me is where I spend my free time online... and it ain't perusing IT blogs (except Crave, which I love). It's here or other science blogs.
Antiochus Epiphanes, thank you. I was undecided which of two scenarios was more interesting; that you were ranch-raising mistletoe for the Christmas trade (and would that even pay a living? Somehow, I doubt it.), or cropping it for D&D druids to harvest with their golden sickles.
Josh, OSG, "Obscene Pickle" would be an awesome name for a band!
Oh, man, JJ Ramsey is still whining whining whining. One thing sure to get you banned around here is obsession and repetitiveness...so I'm pleased to see my banning was justified.
I see Kenny is mentioned there.
He was a real fun one.
Yup. I know I'm in my late 40s...somewhere. To figure out what actual age I am, I subtract my birth year from the current year and then have to think about whether we've reached December yet. So [thinks][sounds of grinding gears]... at the end of tise year I'll be 72.
Like it matters to you young whippersnappers.
@CE in #426
And you're right, of course.
I was born in a decade-year -> easy math, as long as I remember what the current year is.
One of the more surprising things about getting older is that dreams change. We all had dreams. I dreamed of being a palaeontologist. Then I dreamed of being a cartographer. Then I dreamed of being a professional foodball player (knee). Then I dreamed of getting laid (actually, that dream was concurrent with many of the preceding and following dreams). Then I dreamed of being one of the leading lights in computer design. Then I dreamed of teaching history at the college level. The dreams kept changing but what I expected from my dreams also kept changing.
Oddly, my goals (other than getting laid (which happened (with the young lady who become (((Wife)))))) for my life didn't really change. I wanted to a)make at least a small difference in the world (hopefully for the better) and b) when I'm ready to retire be able to. A) I have been accpomplishing. I helped open a national park. I worked Katrina and the World Trade Center incidents. I work wildland fires (security (which is mostly about keeping the lookie-lous and the locals out of the way of the fire)).
Most of my life has not turned out in any way, form, or fashion like I had imagined. Would I go back? No. Am I happy? For the most part, yes. Can we ask for whole lot more?
The NC School of the Arts Mascot is the Fighting Pickles.
I think bilbo deserves some recognition for being the most dishonest little fraud over there. Somehow, this comment by me:
has morphed in his mind into this:
He ought to be a Republican.
^ tise = this
I think birthdays stop being interesting as soon as you had one which didn't make you add "and a half" to it 6 months later when people asked how old you are.
I have trouble remembering my specific age, too. But ever since I found out that I'm about a month older than PZ, I can just wait till he mentions his birthday. He's a science-type, and good with numbers.
I only remember I'm 42 because it's my "answer" year. I forgot I'd turned 41 for almost an entire year.
Bilbo sez:
*snort* That's a definite Bilbo re-write. Better get your Viking Helmet, bloodied axe and scream for mayhem, PZ.
I have to recalculate my age all the time. I know it +/- 2 years or so, but when I have to get specific, it takes a moment.
One weird thing is that I don't remember my birth year for my birth, but for another memorable event. Ask me my age, and my brain goes "Sputnik was launched in 1957, the same year I was born, subtract 1957 from current year, if it's before 9 March, subtract 1."
About PZ's comment @440
That is really vile. I'm glad I haven't gone back over there since the first day I heard of it. There is not use talking to people like that.
But if you're a month older, and you wait until I mention my birthday, you'll always be late for yours!
Sorry about sounding so maudlin above. I get melancholy sometimes.
Regarding Bilbo: Part of me (the part I try to squelch) wants to 'edit' his comment:
Not that I would, but the reptilian squidlike part of my brain wants to go there.
That'll be the 72 talking.
*runs*
PZ:
Hee. I think Sputnik and "it's the year some of the worst movies ever were made."
Just left my first and very last post on the Intersection... bilbo is one of the worst people I've ever had the misfortune to come across in my life.
His disgusting twisting and misrepresentation tactics are no more obvious than this doozy:
What a fucking festering, putrid pile of steaming hippo shit he is. I had to respond, and if it ever makes it through moderation you can read it. I will never post there again, I swear it.
Health insurance: is it worse to not have it or to have it? I'm on the phone trying to get an insurance company to cover a test without which the patient will likely die. I won't say which insurance company, but if you have Americhoice I suggest you switch now.
Funny... I posted my response to bilbo at the Intersection to what PZ referred to in #440 before I even read what PZ had to say about it... just pissed me off and I couldn't let it stand.
This is a bit off topic (but what isn't in this thread?).
Those of you in Melbourne for the atheist conference might be interested to know that the following Wednesday (17th March) sees Craig Venter giving a free lecture about "the past 15 years of digitising biology" (Details and registration here).
Not sure if anyone here would want to go along but the thought of seeing PZ, Dawkins and Venter all in the space of five days sets my geneticist heart aflutter.
My paternal grandfather had an easy way to remember how old he was. He was born in 1900. So, if he knew what year it was, the question was whether it was before or after his birthday.
PZ #447 wrote:
Oh. Right.
See, that's what makes you a science-type.
("I think that science changes the way your mind works, to think a little more deeply about things." -- PZ Myers, Symphony of Science -- the Poetry of Reality (An Anthem for Science))
[Groan] Mr. Fire, that was sooo bad the first time you did it. But, I forgot, of course. So I clicked on the squicky thing again. It's a damned good thing that I like Mrs. Fire's taste in poetry. :-)
Josh OSG-
This. I still weep openly when I see Matthew Fox's shaved chest on "Lost". Oh the humanity! Won't somebody think of the folicles??
And did Josh actually use "obscene pickle" in a sentence without proper attribution?
Why, yes. Yes, he did.
JJ Ramsey at the whiny thread of whining:
So close... and yet...
No, you noodle-brained assclown, what PZ rejects is the valuing of civility over substance.
Why is this very simple point so hard for those morons to grasp?
aratina cage @431: many thanks for posting the link to Judge Myers. That was one of PZ's funniest posts. A perfectly balanced cocktail of dry humor and needle-sharp wit. Brenda's complaint was humorous too ... only that was unintentional on her part.
@RickR
Well, I guess there are just two kinds of people in this world, Miss Sandstone RickR. My kind of people, and assholes. It's rather obvious which category you fit into. Have a nice day.
Celtic_Evolution #459 wrote:
I think a lot of people have trouble thinking of the two de-coupled. If someone is being polite, then they are saying something worth listening to; if someone is being impolite, then they're not saying anything worth listening to.
Perhaps this is a holdover from lessons drilled into their heads when very young. It does sound like a point my mommy would have made. It's a rather good point for a mommy to make.
But it's probably out of place when the topics get serious.
He shaved his chest? But . . . How will all the bear lovers ogle him now? ;-)
Also, can someone direct me to the thread where bilbo mad that insidious comment? I tried looking through the Intersection but couldn't find it.
Dianne @ 452:
Yikes. I hope you persuade them to cover it. I've had Blue Cross for years, and they are pretty good. I have to have MRI's done on a regular basis and those are always covered. The one thing they don't cover is meds.
@negentropyeater, #255:
Why are you stating this as if it's something I don't know? What does that have to do with the fact that I expressed my preference? I'm allowed to do that, right?
You may not mean to, but this reads as a snotty, uncalled for lecture about what I ought and ought not to care about. Obviously, I do care, at least enough to express some mild annoyance about it. That's all. Please don't tell me what I should and shouldn't care about. It's rude.
Pervert and the Wall?
Frankly, I don't see what business it is of ours what consenting adults and brickwork do in the privacy of their own ho... well, in the privacy of themself. Just like I think it's vile that someone would sick the police on a man getting jiggy with his bike (though, to be fair, I think the police arrived on the scene because he hadn't paid his rent, and the bike may or may not have been his).
Wow, Sastra is a year older than PeeZed? Damn. Now I feel even more useless. I'm thirtymumble and PeeZed has successful blog, a career, a Trophy Wife™ and three smart college kids and the fucking age of bloody twenty-effing-five!!
Go die in a zebrafishtank, Poopyhead!
Third from the end.
My comment over at the intersucktion made it through...
Won't know if it ever gets responded to, as I'll not be returning to that awful place... nor do I care, honestly.
Oh, and PZ... apparently pauvre, pauvre JJ Ramsey is now accusing you of flat out lying...
Yikes. I hope you persuade them to cover it.
Actually, I did. That threat to document the refusal works nearly every time. It's oddly satisifying to threaten an HMO. Probably that Pharynguloid love of violence.
I enjoy being an economist. I've worked in both government and commerce and liked the various jobs I've had. If I had to do it over again, I'd still be an economist.
Yeah I should have been more specific. In the link I gave, the guy is a pervert for getting off while dirty-calling a random female. The wall gets, er, caught in the crossfire.
No problem if someone just wishes to have sex with their own wall. I only imagine it would be challenging, even for experienced rock-climbers.
Whew! That's a relief. Professional Poopyhead Little Ped Zed is actually older than me. Within an acceptable margin of error. And no, I'm not telling anyone about my vinegary, er, sauce. That's between me and my, well, er, ah… at least there are no peas involved!
@469
J.J Ramsey has actually done that several times in different places. I'm sure PZ's seen it before. He did it earlier in that thread as well, if I recall correctly.
Yeah, it seems he's right that PZ might not be wholly accurate on his Dungeon description (PZ has subsequently said Ramsey made his attacks once on Pharyngula, but he saw them repeated at different locations). And in the interests of accuracy, I think it would be good to fix it. But Ramsey's just trying to distract the fact that he was a jerk attacking someone's kid instead of them and got smacked down for it.
Dianne @ 470:
I'll bet it is! I got stuck with an HMO once, back in So. California. Might as well have had zero coverage, that was a nightmare.
Done:
Gyeong Hwa Pak, Tai Dam lum Pun-
Well, to be fair to Mr. Fox (or "Foxy" as many refer to him, myself most definitely included) he shaved his chest for practical reasons relating to his skin-tight leather costume for his role as Racer X in "Speed Racer". To be honest, I wouldn't want to have to coat myself in vaseline to wear that thing either. ;)
And it isn't just bear lovers who take a shine to The Fox.
[Anita Pallenberg]
Pretty pretty
[/Anita Pallenberg]
Secondary sex characteristics!! Yay!!
..hell, I just turned 40 and I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up.
So far I've have had three professions ( first I was a microclimatologist, then I was a nurse and now the lawyer thing). I got bored every few years and realised it's not what I really wanted to do so had to go back, get another degree and change. I am however now entrenched in the mortgage/kids thing so that's the last profession change and I'll just get my study fix through doing higher degrees in my current field (at a snail's pace).
My number one priority is the kids though, if I ever see for a minute that they're are wanting of more of my attention and I'm unable to give it because of my study then I'll drop it like a hot potato. It's quite purely a selfish thing (with no real vocational merit. In law no-one gives rat's arse if you've got a LLM/PhD/whatever) and I'll not let it affect them at all.
.. having said all that I have the ability to do this because I am fortunate enough to live in a country with cheap, quality tertiary education and a supportive social system. I NEVER take this for granted.
Lynna, OM #460,
Yes it was, wasn't it? :) You don't f**k with P-Zed, it will bite you in the a** every time.
I happened to run into numerous references to that post by Patricia and Bride of Shrek, OMs, (they call it the "Dear Sir/Madam" thread) while digging to verify the whines of the aggrieved. It is definitely a keeper, post, thread, comments, and all!
:-)
Per requests and advice, I apologize for making apparently "creepy" attempts to insinuate myself into the lives of others by offering unwanted advice, offers of contact, and/or invitations. No offense was meant and offers and contacts are withdrawn.
JD
You all make me thankful I haven't given Kirshenbaum any of my traffic for a long time.
Huh? I some times feel like offering anyone who wants to meet up in my area the opportunity. But then I figure maybe that's scary, or creepy, or will get me killed.
Sad, isn't it?
Lynna
.. ah the most awesome Brenda (Dear Sir/Madam) thread. That was fucking LEGENDARY. It's where the sisterhood of the sluts was first formed ( and the most comedic moment when someone told Patricia what "asshat" meant").
..I love that thread. It has true historical merit.
That sounds like my mum's recipe for warm potato salad.
Only that's delicious, and I'm glad I learnt to make it - pretty much on her deathbed.
I had something called 'warm potato salad' at work Wednesday, and it was not a good experience. At least the look of the stuff tipped me off so I only took a little. But it was better than their piss-poor excuse for bacon-n-apple. That was the most disgusting thing I've eaten in a long while. It's not all bad, though, and I've been eating damn well these last three weeks - I suspect I'll be over 70 kg when my placement ends in a week.
Well, given the lack of hymen (thank FSM!), is there really any hard and fast definition of what constitutes virginity in males?
Sili, was that an intentional pun in the last sentence, or do I need to step up to the gutter?
Ah, so I guessed correctly what an asshat is... :-)
JeffreyD,
Did you actually get emails saying you came across as creepy? I didn't really find you that way at all, it's just that I'm not here to make RL friends (I wouldn't know what to do with them if I had them, really, but that's beside the point), and I'm not in the UK area. I did check out your blog though, and noted it's not the first time you've mentioned feeling like a stalker here. Perhaps it would feel less odd if you commented more on mundane things to build familiarity, instead of putting all expectations in a couple of brief "let's meet up" posts?
Apologies if this comes across as "unwanted advice".
Oh JeffreyD, I just looked at your blog. I'm really sorry for your loss and what you've apparently been going through. This must be a really difficult period.
I do that all the time. I also accept such offers all the time. someday, this might get me killed. until then, it's the only form of enjoyable meatspace socializing I ever get.
Sili #66 wrote:
No, just a little over a month older than PZ. As I once told him, I'm old enough to be his slightly older cousin.
That would make us both bloody twenty-effing-five ;)
I remember JJ Ramsey; I liked him, and was sorry to see him banned. I also remember the situation. He played it poorly.
When the Blog-o-meister thinks you have insulted his kid, and you can see why he thinks he has a case, then you just apologize and drop it. Even if you think your case is better, and it's a legitimate issue, it's off the table. This isn't backing down. This isn't pushing civility over substance. This is recognizing that, in the Grand Scheme of Things, there are some personal life areas where people (generally) get cut some slack. Kids are off-limits -- even if the "kid" is a quasi-adult and has a blog.
I'm not saying JJ was right; just that it was the wrong battle to fight. Make the point another way.
I suspect PZ would have banned someone for going after JJ's kid, also. That's not invective, or swear words.
How do people link to their blogs and whatnot in their name. You know, I don't seem to have a real movable type account... maybe that's the reason. But then how am I here?
So... confused.
No, I'm a frayed knot. Think of it as found smut.
Haha... yeah. I tend to take people up on those kinds of offers when they are made. But I really really enjoy meeting people. Go figure! Except I worry that I annoy them.
I meet people all the time and I haven't been killed once.
If you registered with MovableType, go to the comment box. your moniker should be a link. Press on it. It will provide you with a query box in which you can put your desired url. I do not have an account with them either.
I wasn't going to mention that since it was a month or so ago and I didn't want to bring it up, but since it's out there I want to offer my condolences as well.
Wow, reading back over the 'Judge Myers presiding' thread - I sure was a fresh-faced newbie on the site at that point. Then again, with the sisterhood on the rampage I wasn't needed to do much at all; they had it covered.
But it did remind me how awesome Kseniya was - does anyone keep in touch with her?
Weirdly, there's something else really odd that links that thread with this one - did anyone else notice there's a subconversation about underwear going on on that thread as well? Brownian made this comment about his preference.
Spooky!
Paging Sastra to the Sins of Omission thread.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/03/sins_of_omission.php#comment…
Looks like we'll miss 500 posts in 24 hours by a very very few.
...
As you can see, mistress Sastra, when you get to my age the first thing that conks out is memory. I just friggin' read that, but still referenced it without checking to make sure.
Happy twenty-fist birthday! May you grow old, die in your sleep and have you boytoy drop out of highschool in grief.