I am remiss in my duties. The last episode of the endless thread has expanded to excessive size while I was off frolicking in the antipodes. In my defense, I have been distracted by the remarkable habits of Australians: every time my hands were empty, they would put a beer in it. I once made the mistake of having both hands briefly unoccupied, and received two beers for my trouble.
The Pharyngufest with Chloe here in Melbourne has been captured on video, right here. Unfortunately, I don't remember my performance at all—infinite beers, remember.
More like this
... sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler – Robert Frost
It was a typical hot and humid summer's day, so I entered a nice dark bluestone pub, hoping the dark would offer some cool and beer. As it was about 11 in the morning, the bar was empty save for one fellow sitting at a table…
The official kick-off of the Melbourne Global Atheist convention is tonight, but we're starting without the the officials.
I met Bride of Shrek (who is not green) and Rorschach (who wasn't wearing the cool shifting pattern mask) for dinner last night. I can't say I was exactly lively company — I…
I’ll admit it: I’m a bit of a beer snob. I make no bones about it, I like my beer, but I also like it to be good beer, and, let’s face it, beer brewed by large industrial breweries seldom fits the bill. To me, most of the beer out being sold in the U.S., particularly beer made by Anheuser-Busch and…
At today's 2nd annual Distracted Driving Summit, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood laid out the U.S. statistics: "thousands of people are killed or injured every year in accidents caused by distracted drivers" and 500,000 more are injured. Distractions while driving can be new age, such as using…
lol... sure, just like the U.S. supreme court is free from politics. I mean, sure, they don't run for reelection, but pretending like "politics" are only about elections is kind of silly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGVnH39UzI8
That's a great list I'll bookmark when I'll get home.
Nowhere near. It's not like all sympathizers of a party were its members.
Jeez, just caught up @ Hammond. There are some un-be-lievable personality displays going on over there as per usual.
But I will limit my review to one example: The Commenter Whose Name I Usually Spell With Asterisks for Os quoth:
I will not comment on this quote, though I regard it as classic enough, in its manifold features of interest, to archive.
so: Quoted as Essence
[One of the reasons I will not comment is that the last few times I have made the mistake of engaging said c*mmenter directly, (s)he has made clear in her or his otherwise obtuse replies that (s)he has googled me up in real life, which...why would you make it a point to do that? It creeps me the fuck out sometimes.]
Hmmm. The answer to this is by no means simple, but I think there is one - for me, at least.
As I mentioned earlier, humanity has a very strong tribal instinct. Human beings like to divide themselves into groups along arbitrary lines, separating "us" from "them", and identify with their group to the exclusion of those outside it. This manifests itself in nationalism, religious sectarianism, racism and ethnocentrism, and in other more harmless contexts such as sports fandom. It's an instinct that can be seen in children from a young age, too. Teachers know that when you divide a school arbitrarily into "Houses" (a British tradition), or split a class into two teams for a competition, most of the kids will become very enthusiastic and competitive on behalf of "their" house or team. It's a bizarre and completely irrational phenomenon - and was always something I found completely inexplicable when I was a kid.
We need to recognise that the nation is one of the most powerful forms of this tribal self-identification. Look at its manifestations in speech: how often have you heard people using "we" and "us" in talking about their country's actions, even actions which occurred before they were even born? You will often hear Britons saying stuff like "we won the World Cup in 1966", or "we won the Second World War", and the like. Indeed, people do this kind of thing even when criticising their country's past actions; they might say that "we were wrong" to invade country X, or express some sort of personal shame and remorse at some harm their nation caused in the past. Nor is this kind of deep identification with the concept of the nation restricted to right-wing nationalists and jingoists, or to people who feel a special affection towards their own nation. Left-leaning people will often talk about the right to "national sovereignty" or "self-determination" of "a people", for instance - without explaining just how it is that the concept of "a people" is even coherent, or how we identify which groups constitute "peoples" possessing the right of self-determination.
I mention all this not because I think it's a good thing. I don't. I'm adamantly opposed to nationalism in all its varieties, and I find the tribal instinct bizarre and destructive. But we need to recognise that it is a very deeply-ingrained aspect of human behaviour. And with this in mind, people of a nationalist bent tend - especially in time of crisis - to identify on a deep emotional level with "their country", and, implicitly, with the leaders of their country. Hence why one heard conservatives, in the aftermath of 9/11, accusing liberal critics of the Bush administration of being "unpatriotic" at a time when "the country should be united behind the President." I assume you will agree with me that this kind of thinking is toxic and dangerous. At no time, however dire the circumstances, should a country's political leaders be beyond criticism. The idea that we should "unite behind our leaders" in time of "national crisis" is a very fast road to authoritarianism, tyranny, institutionalised discrimination and a range of other ills.
Does monarchy do anything to help this? Perhaps not, in practice - but it does provide an overtly non-political, "uniting" figure on whom this kind of tribal loyalty can be focused. It's very unhealthy for that kind of loyalty ever to be directed towards a party politician or an elected government.
Kausik Dauta just posted (a link to a link to*) this on another thread:
http://ataraxiatheatre.com/2010/03/12/what-erv-really-stands-for/
*(but I don't feel like linking to NN or Coturnix at the moment, so I'll go direct to the source)
Hmmm... reading it, I realise that #506 is not a terribly good argument for monarchy. But it's raised quite a few interesting points for other discussions, which I thought of as I was writing it.
Nerd's link @#492 also contains what I propose should become the symbolic flag of the Order of the Molly:
Not only does it include a translated reference to the honorary OM designation, but its rainbow typeface denotes inclusiveness and diversity. The radiance of the Molly is straightforwardly depicted, and all is cradled gently in the welcoming hands of Pharyngula, or teh Thread, maybe, or PZ when he forgets to trim his fingernails. We can work out the details later.
OK, the symbolism is apparently actually supposed to be about Reiki or some shit, but I personally have no ethical problems with nonprofit co-optation.
Ha! *pumps fist*
Total Allied HTML victory!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNJ7d52llic
see also: lángos
That's what I was groping for! And in the clear light of day* I remember a big piece of it off which one pulled smaller pieces to rub with the garlic clove.
Once upon a time in the early '70s there was a Hungarian restaurant, Paprikas Fono, on the top story of Ghirardelli Square, a tourist trap made out of a chocolate factory in San Francisco. I remember it as pretty good.
That's where I had langos, and the joke on me was that I had to come all the way here from central and northeastern Pennsylvania to try a Hungarian food. (Google "Coal Region" and "anthracite region" for my roots.)
My ur-hometown, Girardville, has a big-deal annual St Paddy's Day parade; it's next weekend. Girardville has been mentioned here in connection with the pirate-lady statue that got the amusing attention of the parish priest.
The smart Micks, like my mother, learned to cook from their Italian friends among others. I still use Mom's Pa. Dutch cole-slaw recipe when I make cole slaw at all. It ain't angio-friendly but it's good.
I quite agree with 'Tis and others about the disaster of that old boy Padraig. I used to wear black and all my Celtic stuff on 3/17 but the best T-shirt is lately too tight. Maybe I'll just walk around with Shep the Snake on my neck, if the weather's warm enough.
Maybe I'll also take a garlic clove or two to the next powwow. They call them Wailaki tacos there because the stand and the divine entities who make frybread come down from the Round Valley rez for the occasion.
Best evah: The Wu:k Snack Shop across the plaza from the San Xavier del Bac mission south of Tucson. Those are Tohono O'odham.
This is silly, quite frankly. I don't find any aspects of "tribalism" bizarre and not all destructive. It's natural, but the destructive aspects (in which I don't include, say, debating or athletic competition) should be focused more toward play, and this should be emphasized, and cooperation should be encouraged. I don't think people should "unite around" anything other than what and whom they believe in, for good reasons. Not a government, not a state, not a nation, not a symbol of a nation, not a party,... And those organizations and actions we support should only be those in which we participate actively in democratic decision-making. (I think this can only really happen on the basis of confederations of smaller units.) You're simply encouraging the "unite behind our leaders" as "unite behind our 'nation', as symbolized by this person," rather than really challenging and trying to counteract that which you claim to find distasteful - the submissive and irrational uniting. And you still haven't responded to the question. Reasonable people can unite around a set or principles or rights or a political/economic program. You've presented no need for the "trappings of monarchy."
oo, ouch, brutal cut.
*shrug* I posted it for the sort-of on-topic nature of the intro and the one line at 2:13
Oh, FFS. Now you tell me. :)
...to which the answer turns out to be "no".
OK, gotta function
Yes, I should go, too. But first, JeffreyD:
:)
I find this comment strange. What about those organisations which are not meant to be, and shouldn't be, democratic, yet have been major drivers of social progress and liberalisation? The greatest force for good in US political history, by miles, is undoubtedly the federal court system. It was the Supreme Court, not any democratically elected body, which ended racial segregation in schools, which guaranteed the right to contraception and to abortion, which eliminated sodomy laws, and which allowed interracial marriage. The record in Britain is less stark, but there are plenty of good examples of social progress being led by judges: from Lord Mansfield's famous anti-slavery dictum more than two centuries ago, to the 2004 decision in X v Secretary of State for the Home Department which ended the arbitrary detention without trial of foreign terror suspects at Belmarsh Prison, "Britain's Guantánamo". In all these cases, judges were able to make courageous and socially progressive decisions because they are not democratically elected, and don't answer to the mob.
By contrast, when "the people" make decisions, the result is usually a reversal of social progress, motivated by bigotry on the part of the majority: as with Proposition 8 in California, or the recent ban on minarets in Switzerland, or the fact that voters around Europe keep voting far-right and crypto-fascist parties into the legislature. For this reason, I don't see democracy as an unalloyed good, by any means. And I harbour far more "support" for the courts than I do for any kind of democratic process or institution. It doesn't matter to me that I don't personally get a say in the decisions of the courts; what I care about is the outcomes, and whether they make people's lives better and promote justice. Democracy has a lamentably bad record in this regard: because we live in a world where the average citizen is aggressively ignorant, prejudiced, and easily manipulated by demagogues.
In the end, we have to have political institutions which work with human nature as it is, not as we would like it to be. And to that end, while we should have some democracy in our political system, I don't see democracy either as the ideal form of government or as an inherently legitimising process. Some institutions and decisions should be outside democratic control. And I don't, therefore, think we should cast away existing political institutions in the name of "democracy". Again, this isn't necessarily an argument for the monarchy, since the monarchy has precisely no effect on any of the issues I've raised above; I'm going off on a tangent here, but I think it's interesting.
Jen @484
Yes, disgust and dismay are the appropriate responses. The religious nutters are playing this as if it were a one-off, uncommon and all that. That's a lie too. They're good at burying this kind of thing, but it's not uncommon.
This is the kind of society you get when 60 percent of the state's residents belong to a patriarchal cult, and more than 85 percent of the legislators also belong to the cult. And the cult does not recognize that it is a cult, despite email evidence from Tanya. Go, Tanya -- you revealed the cult-like qualities of mormonism quite by accident.
David M,
Whilst we wait for SC to come up with some references to Anarchism may I suggest 3 books
1 Anarchism-a beginners guide by Ruth Kinna ISBN 10:1-85168-370-3
2 Demanding the impossible, A History of Anarchism by Peter Marshall ISBN 0 0068624504 (this is a doorstep of a book)
3 Anarchism by Peter Kroptokin ISBN0-486-41955-X( A Dover book by an anarchist genius.(This may be available online as I know SC has linked to some of Kroptokins writings in the past)
I have just order someworks by P-J Proudon and William Godwin from Amazon, these writers are 2 of the originators of Modern(?) anarchism.I would suggest going to Freedom Press and AK press (Google them) for suggestions as to other books
East_midlander
Quackalicious (#486)
Knockgoats said no such thing: "So here we have a Cochrane review, which says being touched may have a modest effect on pain relief. [Bold and underline added.]"
No, it should not. Science exists because we can't rely on what's "obvious." You try to warp science into giving you confirmation for your pre-determined beliefs about the world. The difference between you and the rest of us? What makes us non-"quacks"? We take the world as it is.
We use science to discover how things work. If our hunches are right, that's exciting! If our hunches are wrong, that's exciting, too! We're not arrogant in the way you are because science can always show us we're wrong. Reality humbles us, whereas you will ignore whatever makes you wrong. Oh, sure, you'll give a little here and there and pat yourself on the back for being open-minded, but you're so stuck within this fantasy that you're some sort of healer that you won't risk letting reality in to shatter the alternative "medicine" framework it's built upon.
You're a parasite, is what you are. You borrow esteem from the work of real doctors and play pretend with your placebos. We don't need to "prove" it because science already says your alternative modalities are bogus. It's on you to show us otherwise. And you can't. You wow your "patients" with your handwaving, but you wowed yourself first; you don't understand that you're doing something wrong, so it fascinates you that we're not fooled by your cargo cult approach to science.
Reality, being the Grand Arbiter of All, that is what you must bow before in order to be accepted here. You must abandon what you wish to be true and become humble before what is. No clever redefinitions, no clinging to cherrypicked data, no hinting at conspiracies, no denial when you're shown that you're wrong, no twisting the words of others to support you. And no telling us your sure-to-confirm-your-beliefs approach to science and medicine are "how it's done" when there are professional scientists, students of science, and actual doctors among us. We know we can be wrong. But we also know that truth is not determined by whomever can bludgeon the rest into silence with his favored paradigm, bristling with assertions and dripping with the slime of special pleading.
So. Do you have what it takes to belong here or are you going to continue on as a spoiled brat with your playacting, finger-pointing, whinging and tantrums?
Damn P-J Proudon=P-J Proudhon
East_midlander
I totally agree. Nonetheless, I think we must accept that they will do so - and hence design political systems that limit the damage and reduce the potential for demagoguery, populism and authoritarianism. I'm not saying constitutional monarchy always does this - anyone can think of counterexamples, starting with the fascist takeover in interwar Italy - but I think this is an argument, sometimes, for maintaining political institutions that have a proven track-record in this regard, of which the British constitutional order is certainly one.
but I think this is an argument, sometimes, for maintaining political institutions that have a proven track-record in this regard, of which the British constitutional order is certainly one. -Walton
Walton, you've been quite rightly expressing your outrage at the ever-increasing demagoguery, populism (w.r.t race and immigration) and authoritarianism of the UK government ever since you first posteed here. Exactly what has the monarchy done to impede the process?
*crickets*
Yesterdays Feudal Times and Reactionary Herald in one of its usual thoughtful editorials, ¹ observed “that it was unusual to see a young person showing such perspicacious loyalty to the finer things in life as the person known as Walton. His valiant battle to demonstrate the wondrous nature of the Crown to the disloyal American rebels is a sight to behold. His defence of Our Sovereign Lady Elizabeth is to be commended. Of course we still believe that the disloyal American rebels may come to their senses and return to the British family and swear allegiance to the Crown again. We would observe that such an act would mean that the extinction of those mountebanks who call themselves “Republicans” and their scurrilous opponents the so called “Democrats” and result in more voters for the loyal socialist party or our conservatives both of whom have a deeper understanding of political theory and loyalty”
¹For those non English readers of this blog see the links below for edification, Britons of a certain age may remember Peter Simple and Way of the World.
Peter Simple
Heinz Kiosk et al
Joking aside, there is a solid case to abolish the monarchy in Britain, and replace it with a written constitution which firmly defines the state as a secular one and also to
Define the electorate as the fundamental basis of sovereign power and to prevent politicians ceding power to unelected bodies. An even better case can be made to dissolve the UK and similar bodies and devolve power to the lowest possible level where decisions be made by consensus. Indeed the abolition of “political power” should be our target and society run by social consensus
East_midlander
Holy Shit! That there's a hell of a lie! Do you think it's a real reading comprehension fail? Knockgoats' post was pretty clear.
Eh... Kill file, meet the Quackster. You guys are going to be great friends I can tell already :D
We should have political systems and cultures that encourage us not to do so. You're accepting nationalism, you just prefer a certain flavor. A monarch is supposed to embody a country, and I don't accept that a country (nation-state) is something people should unite around in the first place.
Tell that to the rest of the fucking world, Walton.
In any case, didn't you just acknowledge that hereditary monarchies were unjust? So even if it were the case that it had "reduce[d] the potential for demagoguery, populism and authoritarianism," it would have done so at a human cost and in a way contrary to your stated principles. In keeping with your principles, you can only advocate elected ceremonial monarchs. So any track record has to be of those, and it's quite clear that people can (and should) get along without them.
Double Damn those links should lead to the sites below, just cut and paste please
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Wharton
=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Peter_Simple%27s_characters”
I shall now hide in shame
East_midlander
A. Noyd:
I'm going with this ^ option.
I put my full support behind the Hammond reference for that place.
Well, Kevin Garn (he of hot-tubbing with 15-year-old-girl fame) has just resigned. Apparently, the public condemnation of his treatment and his wife's treatment of the girl finally had an effect. His fellow legislators may support him, but comments from the public are trending the other way. The Salt Lake Tribune is reporting the resignation, but the scrappy Salt Lake City Weekly should take credit for digging into the details with a four-page story.
And those organizations and actions we support should only be those in which we participate actively in democratic decision-making. (I think this can only really happen on the basis of confederations of smaller units.) - SC, OM
If a democratic decision is made to delegate decision-making power on specific issues and periods of time to individuals, small groups, or even computers, I can't see the problem, so long as the "assembly of all" remains the source of this power and can revoke the delegation. As for "can only really happen on the basis of confederations of smaller units", (a) This may have had some force before worldwide effectively instantaneous communication, but I see none now; (b) It seems to me incoherent: if decisions on larger scales are made on the basis of confederation, this implies the election of representatives or delegates (representatives vote as they choose, delegates are mandated), and everyone else is not participating actively; and (c) Indirect election of any kind is liable to be manipulated from the centre.
The greatest force for good in US political history, by miles, is undoubtedly the federal court system. It was the Supreme Court, not any democratically elected body, which ended racial segregation in schools, which guaranteed the right to contraception and to abortion, which eliminated sodomy laws, and which allowed interracial marriage. - Walton
In all these cases, the decisions of the Supreme court followed an intensive grass-roots political campaign by those adversely affected and their allies.
An even better case can be made to dissolve the UK and similar bodies and devolve power to the lowest possible level where decisions be made by consensus. - East_midlander
No, it can't. In practice, "decisions made by consensus" mean "decisions made by those prepared to sit through tedious meetings longest".
Knockgoats actually looked at the Cochrane analysis of Therapeutic Touch and said it works. - Quackalicious@486
Quack, I quoted the conclusion of the review: "may have a modest effect on pain relief". That you can turn this into "it works" indicates both how dishonest and how stupid you are: it's unwise to lie when your lies are easily checked by anyone who cares to look. It makes it clear to everyone that nothing whatever you say is to be trusted.
Agreed. It's inspired.
I can't read any further over there. The repeated references to "Stu’s abysmal advocacy of raping Sheril and then killing her, Chris and others (probably myself included)."* make me want to bust something.
Woman dies during religious fast...a 55-year-old woman died alone in a bedroom of her central Florida home after locking herself in the room for several weeks for a lengthy religious fast.
Evelyn Boyd told her husband, a preacher at a Pentecostal church in the city of Bartow, not to disturb her when she locked herself in the room Feb. 7 to fast and pray with only water to drink. Family members forced open the door March 5 and found her dead.
...The woman's husband, John Boyd, told the paper he didn't check on his wife because she felt she was doing what God called her to do and he wanted to respect her privacy.
Yes - and I don't mean to downplay the fantastic work of several non-profit groups, particularly the ACLU, in campaigning for the right decision in many of these cases - but, in general, those affected by illiberal laws, and their allies, weren't in the numerical majority. If they had been, they could have won their rights through the democratic process rather than the courts. The role of the unelected court remains central, however you look at it - and I think it's beyond doubt that if the judges of the SCOTUS were directly elected by the people, as many state judges are, half a century of social progress would likely be reversed in just a few years. In the end, as counter-intuitive as it seems, giving certain areas of power to nine legal scholars has produced, on average, better outcomes than giving that power to the voting public - and if we are serious about building a better world, not in some aspirational future but in the present reality, we need to look at outcomes rather than process.
Kg, you're right. The parenthetical remark should have deleted as I almost did. It was intended to counter the acceptance of the nation-state model, but didn't address the contemporary possibilities, which I ordinarily would. Stupid.
Thunderfoot has a new video out: The Internet: Where religions come to die
Agreed. It's brilliant. I don't think I can venture into the carnage again, though. The breathtaking inanity* of comments like "Stu’s abysmal advocacy of raping Sheril and then killing her, Chris and others (probably myself included)."** make me want to bust something.
Three cheers for rationality. That is good news.
*Yeah, I said it.
**That's Kw*k in Hammond comment #258, for the record.
Oh crap, sorry for the borked html and double post. I cancelled, refreshed and didn't see it.
SC, in light of what I said at #518 et seq., I find it hard to understand why you place so much emphasis on democracy.
SteveV #470
Thanks for the correction. I was sure that since St. Patrick was bad for Ireland, he came from England, which as we all know is the source of all Irish badness. At least that's what the Irish say.
Incidentally, do you know how Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland? He gathered all the snakes together and said: "Any of you who want to stay, raise your hand."
Thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the veal.
Quackalicious #486,
Reading helps for comprehension.
My comment #113 was not related to the level of quackitude at BYU (which I ignore), but to the value of a measure of "popularity" as defined by the U.S. News & World Report survey. I gave a hypothetical example where a school for quacks entirely populated by complete morons could have 100% "popularity".
I just can't. It's too sad. Maybe that's because relatives died in this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartford_circus_fire
@SC, OM -
My email is spokesgay at gmail.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2kxlZDOHeQ
The OM sign is beautiful!
@Quackalooney, #486 -
My "official epithet?" I don't think that word means what you think it means. Yes my dear, I am a white boy, and very, very sick. But what does that have to do with anything? If you're going to insult me, please be clever about it.
Lynna #535,
Very sad. Very stupid, but also very sad. I used to debate with a "John Boyd" many (~10) years ago on the MSN boards (or maybe it was T.O., I forget). He wasn't a bad bloke, so I hope it's not his wife. Well to be honest I'd hope, whilst I'm hoping for things, that it's no one's wife and this sort of thing never happened, but I'll start small and work up to that.
Louis
What a strange thing to say. In light of what you said, you don't understand my position? I didn't even see that comment, but I just skimmed it and it's nothing but a series of unsupported claims. Further, it's talking about specific forms of representative democracy in state systems within a global capitalist system.* Have you noticed that I advocate none of this?
In any case, I'm not getting sucked into one of these abstract discussions, whether you find it interesting or not. You're historically and sociologically/anthropologically ignorant.
You've been supporting monarchies, and the British specifically, for quite some time now. Based on what you said above, will you acknowledge that you do not now advocate hereditary monarchies or not? If not, how does forcing people into that without their choice square with your principles?
*(ignoring rights-enshrining documents altogether, apparently)
Walton #518,
Oh because you think the SCOTUS stops far right crypto-fascist parties from taking government control ?
Remind me what happened with the first BushII election ?
Knockgoats,
"An even better case can be made to dissolve the UK and similar bodies and devolve power to the lowest possible level where decisions be made by consensus. - East_midlander
No, it can't. In practice, "decisions made by consensus" mean "decisions made by those prepared to sit through tedious meetings longest"."
so, organise the meetings so that they are not "tedious".remember the much vaunted democracy can be oppression, ask the catholics in Northern Ireland, before the Good Friday agreement they were routinly out-voted on a First past the post system. If PR results in a permanent minority this can be just as oppressive.Consensus might be slow and tedious but it maximises agreement and reduces oppression. I will agree that some rights can and must be over-ridden, oppressive belifs such as racism should be brought into the open and faced down even if this requires oppressive control. There is no justification for discriminating against some one on those grounds which are beyond their control, Race, sexuality and natal gender( no-one controls whom their natal parents are)
East_midlander
Walton,
Fixed that for ya ;)
The era of a socially progressive court was an anomaly in SCOTUS history. We're already seeing the consequences of the end of that era. The recent Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and Ledbetter v. Goodyear are excellent examples of reversing social progress. Congress will have to act to rectify these two horrible decisions.
The lifetime appointment of SCOTUS justices means that we will have a major extremely right-wing voting block for many years to come. Obama has shown that he doesn't have the balls to nominate liberals to counter the Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts block, so I have very little hope that social progress will come from the SCOTUS any time soon.
Sorry, poor wording on my part. What I was trying to say is that I wanted you to answer the criticisms of democracy I made at #518.
I don't know quite what you want. When I talk in general terms rather than using specific examples, you tell me that you're not interested in abstractions. But when I cite actual specific real-world examples of where democracy has produced awful results, and non-democratic (principally judicial) forms of decision-making have produced concrete social progress and liberalisation, you tell me that these examples are "specific forms of representative democracy in state systems within a global capitalist system".
Are you going to explain how your desired form of participatory democracy would make things better? How would it overcome the ignorance, bigotry and prejudice that afflict large numbers of voters in actual real-world democracies? I don't think this is an "abstract" discussion at all. I'm arguing that in the real world, too much rule by "the people" leads to the tyranny of the majority, authoritarian and illiberal measures, and the institutionalisation of bigotry. By contrast, the enshrinement of constitutional rights, and their enforcement by a (non-elected) independent judiciary, has tended to produce better outcomes in the real world.
Walton #518,
I think it's been about two days since you've started spouting nonsense about the benefits of monarchy, of life-long apolitical ceremonial head of state, and God knows what, and you still haven't managed to find one single argument to justify your "firm belief" that monarchy was better ?
You know what I call people who can't seem to justify their "firm beliefs" but keep going on and on about their merits ? Faith-heads.
As Ed Brayton, among others, has highlighted, Citizens United was nowhere near as bad a decision as a lot of people have been (hyperbolically) claiming. In the end, there is always a delicate balance to be struck between protecting free speech under the First Amendment - which does include the freedom of individuals to band together in corporations and use them as vehicles for speech - and respecting the right of Congress to impose campaign finance restrictions in order to prevent the wealthiest interests dominating the political process. It was already established by previous decisions that the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech applies to corporate speech; the ruling in Citizens United was neither surprising, nor necessarily wrong.
I tried. I even posted a link to a whole page of such arguments.
I knew I'd be fighting a losing battle on this one. And I do recognise the strength of SC's point about the unfairness of the system, as regards royal heirs born into a role in the public eye that they may not like or want.
But I like monarchy, and I respect the Queen deeply on a personal level. At the very least, I don't think there's any need to consider any change during the remainder of her lifetime.
The Everlasting Thread™, where the discussion can go from genitalia to abolition of the British monarchy. Gotta love it. :-)
First, I have no desire to do so. Second, again, your understanding of "democracy" is not mine.
I'm not interested in having abstract discussions of politics on this blog.
You've made claims using hand-picked examples concerning a specific type of democracy.
Because they are. That's a form of democracy, and of course better than less democratic alternatives, but not what I'm advocating. Not that you're not wrong about it, or democracy in general, anyway.
Of course it is. I've discussed specific movements and organizations - historical and contemporary - in the past, and when I'm in the mood to debate them I do. My choice.
And you're wrong. And it's due to your lack of knowledge about the real world.
This is a bizarre non-comparison. The constitutional enshrinement of rights and democratic practice are of course not antithetical.
Again, are you going to acknowledge that hereditary monarchy goes against your principles with regard to individual freedom?
The First Amendment does no such thing. Applying the protections of the First Amendment to corporate speech requires the acceptance of the obiter dictum in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, that corporations are entitled to the same protections under the law as individuals. Some of the justices have made it clear that they do not feel constrained by earlier court rulings, but they make no effort to overturn more than a century of unconstitutionally granting corporations the rights of individuals. We have a SCOTUS majority that believes in protecting corporate interests through jurisprudence while trampling the interests and rights of the people.
I noticed that you commented on the Citizens United decision but not Ledbetter v. Goodyear. Why?
I don't know. All I can say is that I like and deeply respect the Queen, and for as long as she is willing to continue serving our country in her present capacity, there is no reason to change. There might be an argument for changes to the current hereditary system after that.
Good grief. Is there a foot stomp and quivering lip that go along with this?
Just for Walton and/or SC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9UxevnYcec
Da Pope is being set up!
In other words, "Nasty Ratzi shuffled the molesters around in approved fashion, and his actions are above discussion!"
*spits*
Yeah, who know that the Catholics and the Mormons had so much in common? Better to have the appearance of moral superiority, force the victims to be quiet and allow their predators to roam free than to actually punish those who abuse their position of power.
Walton
So you think no harm is caused by claiming your family to be chosen by "God", or by calling yourself "Defender of The Faith", or by being so intimately connected with the CofE that you have to be crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury?
You think no harm is done by having an unelected "Heir to the Throne" using his position to promote and support religious beliefs, as well as various quackeries and "woo"s?
You think no harm is done by the monarchy being so strongly linked to the British Armed Forces, and that link then being used to attempt to prop up support for unpopular and divisive foreign wars?
You think no harm is done by having Britain being represented by the richest woman on Earth, and by the head of the family of the biggest landowners in Britain? A family that, despite its fabulous wealth, still thinks it is entitled to state handouts and special treatment, and whose junior members treat public assets as their own (military helicopters etc).
You think no harm is done by Britain being represented abroad by someone like Philip, with his long history of crass racism and offensive remarks?
Personally, I'm ashamed to be represented on the world stage by a politically and religiously divisive, disfunctional, unrepresentative, unelected family of spongeing parasites who have virtually no comprehension of ordinary life, and who think the world smells of fresh paint.
Give me someone like David Attenborough, or Stephen Hawking, as Head of State anyday.
Well that was clear from the begining.
That reminds me of my grandmother when she says:
But I like the church, and I respect the Pope deeply on a personal level.
Then I know there is no point discussing further about this.
Janine:
When it comes to the catholic church, if all those who abused their position of power were brought to justice, the vatican would be empty. Not that I'd have a problem with that.
Until catholics at large shed their cognitive dissonance and denounce the criminals for what they are, that viperous nest is going to stay in business.
But I like monarchy, and I respect the Queen deeply on a personal level.
Elizabeth may be a fine person, I do not know, I really do not care enough to find out. But the position she holds is a prime example of unearned privilege. And it is the end result of murderous and exploitative system. I do not care if the monarchy and nobility have been defanged during the past century; the process was bloody, two world wars. The money the flows into their coffers can be better used else where.
Ring Tailed Lemurian:
A common factual error. She is nowhere near the "richest woman on Earth". The Queen does not personally own the Crown Estate, the Duchy of Lancaster, Buckingham Palace or the Royal Collections (which include the Crown Jewels). These are vested in the Crown, which is a corporation sole with a legal identity separate from the Queen as an individual, and is the legal personification of the state. The properties are held on trust for her successors and the nation, not owned by Elizabeth II in a private capacity, and she does not receive the revenues from them. There are certain other properties which she does own privately - Sandringham and Balmoral being among them - but these are nowhere near sufficient to make her the "richest woman on Earth".
As I explained, the lands that are vested in the Crown - the Crown Estate, the Duchy of Lancaster, and so on - do not belong to the Queen personally, but to the Crown, which is a separate entity in law. The Queen does not "own" these properties; she would not be entitled to sell them, does not receive revenues from them, and would not keep them if she were to abdicate or if the monarchy were to be abolished. They belong to "the Crown" as the legal personification of the state.
(For clarity, I should mention that there is another, very technical, legal sense in which all land is "owned" ultimately by the Crown. The Crown holds the "allodial title" to all land in England and Wales (Scotland has a different system of property law); technically, all other landowners hold freehold or leasehold estates in land, rather than owning the land itself. But this is a technical legal point, and certainly does not mean that the land all "belongs to the Queen" in common parlance.)
As I clearly outlined earlier in the thread, the Royal Family pays for itself. The revenues from the Crown Estate and the Duchy of Lancaster are paid into the public treasury. This profit (around £226 million, as of the 2008-9 financial year) far exceeds the cost of the Civil List payments made to the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh, which have been fixed at £7.9 million since 1990. And this isn't even factoring in indirect revenues, from tourism and the like.
Show me one jot of evidence that the links between the monarchy and the Armed Forces have been used to "prop up support for unpopular and divisive foreign wars". I have never heard a single person use the links between the Armed Forces and the Queen to try and defend a particular war. And incase you hadn't noticed, those "unpopular and divisive foreign wars" to which you refer have, in all cases, also been embarked on very enthusiastically by the United States - which has not had a monarchy for rather a long time.
It would be perfectly possible to disestablish the Church of England and Church of Scotland, and secularise the British constitution, while retaining the monarchy. Sweden disestablished its national church in 2000, and still has a monarchy. I am in favour of a secular political system, but this doesn't, in itself, mean that the monarchy would have to be abolished.
Ahem. I made this same point in the last subthread... not that anyone was obligated to respond, but I'm beginning to suspect I'm in Walton's killfile :D
Walton,
The United States have never had a monarchy. You're thinking of the American colonies, which are, of course, not the same thing.
I really wouldn't call it a "privilege". I think SC was closer to the mark when she talked about the unfair burden that hereditary offices place on their bearers. Since 1952 (and, to a lesser extent, since her birth), the Queen has been required, by reason of the accident of birth, to perform a particular public role; to refrain from expressing political opinion; to be conscious of the fact that every single one of her words and action is in the public eye and taken as representative of an entire nation; and, in every other context, to subordinate her personal wishes and interests to her official duties. She was deprived of the basic privilege that all the rest of us, as ordinary citizens, enjoy; to choose who and what we want to be in life, and how we want to live. It's certainly not a life I would wish for myself.
Yes, the Royal Family is materially privileged. But I certainly wouldn't exchange my background for theirs, given the choice.
Huh? What then is their claim to the throne if not the continued lineage of those who had a divine right to rule? Shits and giggles?
Sorry. I probably embody all your worst thoughts of Americans, but I don't get what you are saying in this instance.
in general, those affected by illiberal laws, and their allies, weren't in the numerical majority.
One reason why your identification of democracy with "the numerical majority gets (or should get) whatever it wants" is so naive. No-one here is advocating that, so attacking it is attacking a straw man.
so, organise the meetings so that they are not "tedious". - East_midlander
1) How is it decided how the meetings are organised? If this is decided by consensus, then it will be decided by those prepared to continue the preliminary meeting to decide how meetings are orgnaised, longest.
2) In the opinion of many, me included, decision-making meetings are necessary, but inherently tedious. Tastes differ: consensus gives those who like such meetings (I guess you're one of them and don't really understand how anyone can feel differently) overwhelming influence.
If PR results in a permanent minority this can be just as oppressive.
Unclear what you mean here. In any case, I'm not claiming there is any system without drawbacks, for the very good reason that there isn't. There may be cases where consensus works well, but it is not a panacea.
Consensus might be slow and tedious but it maximises agreement and reduces oppression.
Assertion is not argument. Try harder. Some examples of consensus actually working, particularly in cases where a rapid decision and/or one affecting a very large number of people is needed, would help. We can't, for example, afford to wait for a consensus between 6.8 billion people before reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Uncomfortable with breaking my self imposed ban, but politeness wins out. Thank you Sven and SC.
Some people drink deep at the fountain of life, others just gargle and spit. The spittle level is too deep for me to ever return to the Intersection, certainly not while wearing my suede shoes.
Ring Tailed Lemurian
Sorry to knitpick, but she's not the richest woman on earth.
Christy Walton, Alice Walton and Liliane Bettencourt are the richest.
She's not even the richest woman in Britain.
Joanne Rowling is.
Poor Queen !
Yes, the Royal Family is materially privileged. But I certainly wouldn't exchange my background for theirs, given the choice.
If that is the case, why are you willing to have other people go through it?
All I can say is that I like and deeply respect the Queen - Walton
Well I dislike and deeply despise her. I owe her no allegiance whatever and resent her claims to the contrary. What right have you to impose your views on me?
JeffreyD, it was a heroic effort. I think mental health is better sustained away from the crossroads. :)
JeffreyD - I'm glad to see you posting. It's good to have you here. :)
I agree totally. That and they offend me by making trivializing something real by conflating it with, well, things that are actually trivial.
Wish you'd keep popping up. You seem like a lovely person, sorry we don't know each other better. I'd say more but it's not my place.
Isn't it funny how human beings are imprisoned some times that way in their loneliness?
Turns out Jadehawk only told us half of the story. The other half starts here: the Reptilians have been in and out of this issue for quite some time now.
They also vote them out pretty quickly. Austria's xenophobes got into government following the election of 1999, collapsed in the election of 2002, and had to leave altogether following the election of 2006. In the meantime they split in two, and the very funny divorce war still isn't over.
No. :-] That might change after my thesis is finished, but so far, I don't have time to read books at all. There are some I got, like, for Christmas 3 years ago and still haven't read.
You also got Kropotkin wrong both times :o)
And nobody in that family knew that it's not possible to live without food for longer than 2 weeks, perhaps 3? Yet they waited over a month?
TSIB.
Nice, nice.
LOL!
No, we didn't discuss genitalia, only what to do with them. This is a discussion of genitalia.
(...It's only 2 clicks away from the Thunderf00t video. Honest.)
The Titoists had funnier songs.
windy,
I don't have a killfile. If I overlooked your post, I apologise.
Ol'Greg,
The British monarchy still retains some vestigial claims of the Divine Right of Kings - as in the title "Elizabeth II, by the grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and her other Realms and Territories Queen", or in the English royal motto Dieu Et Mon Droit. But in reality, no British monarch has sincerely claimed a "divine right" to rule since Charles I (and I trust you know how that incident turned out). The implicit understanding, in our constitutional order, is that the monarch reigns by consent of Parliament and the people. And there is no reason why this should not continue if the two Established Churches were to be disestablished. As I said, Sweden seems to be getting along fine - as do the 15 other Commonwealth realms, including Canada, Australia and NZ, which share the Queen as head of state but have no established churches.
There's no reason why we should pay lip-service to the absurd fiction that the hereditary principle confers some sort of magical "right" to rule. We have a hereditary monarchy not because of any Sword-in-the-Stone-esque "claim" to rule, but because it functions as part of our constitutional settlement, which stems from a series of historical compromises between countervailing political forces. It is an institution that can, and does, change with time to meet the changing needs and social conditions of the nation.
She is nowhere near the "richest woman on Earth". - Walton
Name a richer woman, Walton. No reliable accounting of Liz Windsor's personal wealth is available, because she makes bloody sure there shouldn't be. Forbes Magazine estimated it at $650 million in 2008, but this could be badly wrong in either direction.
Oh my, being pulled back despite my intentions. Sucks to be polite.
Caine, you are certainly correct. Thanks for your kind words and thank you as well Carlie and Ol'Greg.
Ol'Greg, it is as much your place as anyone's to say as you wish. Not to blog whore, but you can always post anything you wish there.
Thanks to anyone else who offers a kind word.
In the old sense of the phrase, I hope you will all fare well.
"...think of lovely Queenie..."
– Elizabeth I in Blackadder.
David: and some of us just laughed at the title, because we're mentally 12. :D
I see negentropyeater has named some supposedly richer women than Liz Windsor. I maintain my scepticism of Forbes' list. (Note that they claimed - maybe still do - that Fidel Castro personally owns all Cuban state property. Now I've never forgiven Castro for trying to kill me in 1962, but that's just absurd, and shows that the "rich list" is distorted for political reasons - as well as being unreliable because many of the extremely rich conceal their wealth, while others make inflated claims.)
You think I'm not!?!
Carlie@590,
Yes, my thought was "Well, at least they're not size queens!".
Walton #571
Spoken like a true lawyer! :)
The legal nicieties are irrelevant. The Queen, and her extended family of children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, cousins etc etc, have exclusive use of all those "public" assets, whether they "own" them, or not.
You mention a couple of castles. So, they're squatting in all the others, are they? Call the police!
You've never seen any of the fawning, uncritical, media coverage of various "princes" and their military service in the Falklands, or Afghanistan? You don't think that has been used as propaganda to legitimise those wars?
Your argument about the republican USA being involved in the same wars is also irrelevant. I never claimed that the British monarchy was the cause of Britain's involvement in any modern war, merely that that their position is used to attempt to prop up public support for them, and to try to make it tacitly accepted that opposition to that war is "unpatriotic".
I find your only reason for abolishing the monarchy (poor little psychologically damaged non-volunteers forced to live an abnormal life of priviledge) just about the weakest argument for abolition. I'm far more concerned about the psychological damage caused to the population by the whole cringeing, forelock-tugging, religiously justified, charade. It infantilises the British people. Time they/we grew up, and stopped believing in Santa.
As for that old claim that the monarchy brings in tourist dollars - I'm sure we'd make more money from kicking them out and opening all their residences as tourist attractions than from any hypothesised tourists who visit the UK in order to see the Queen.
Fancy meeting for a drink sometime? (Along with any other London Pharyngulites, of course). Can't let those Aussies have all the fun.
JeffreyD,
Hi, no email from you as yet. I will be coming to London in a week or so - let me know if you'll be around and would like to meet up. I still have to book my train down and could come down as early as Saturday 20th - going back on the sleeper on 23rd.
JeffreyD, very nice play to point out that Frank McCourt would be embarrassed by the behavior of certain person posting on the Intersection. :-)
Keep on keepin' those suede shoes free of spittle.
There is one good reason to keep the British Monarchy:
Comedy gold.
Everything Prince Phillip says is unintentionally hilarious. He's nearly as much fun in diplomatic circles as Dennis Thatcher was.
Oh and I'm laughing AT him, not WITH him.
;-)
Louis
Ring Tailed Lemurian, Walton, any other London area Pharyngulites:
Same applies as to JeffreyD. I've just created an email account knockgoats gmail com - send me an email if you'd like to meet up next weekend from Saturday evening, or Monday 22nd.
I think Prince Harry sincerely wanted to serve in Afghanistan. Indeed, he was able to do so for a brief time (until the Drudge Report, bizarrely enough, chose to leak the information of his whereabouts). Rather than choosing to rely on his privileged status, he wanted to face the same dangers that other officers in the British Army face. That, I think, is worthy of respect, whatever you think of the war itself. And it is not his fault that he was not permitted to do so.
As to it being used as "propaganda to legitimise the war", I don't see any evidence of that.
Not easy, I'm afraid - I'm snowed under with exam preparation, having to revise nine subjects for my finals. My exams run from 1st-11th June, and there's really no prospect of me escaping from Oxford before then (I'm staying up for the whole Easter vacation).
I think the official wording is: "Let's have a look at this[,] shall we!"
Quotes from there:
WHAT YOU SAY !!
Third paragraph, first argument:
Benefits??? Oh, is this an argument for having a head of state that can make diplomatic visits in general?
I don't actually need to comment that, do I.
So has religion. :-°
Has been dealt with in this subthread. Also, anyone that afraid of the future needs to get their head examined.
O horror. O pain. <faint>
Who needs that?
And, as mentioned above, is it a good idea to use people as symbols?
So what.
President tends to be the last step in a career.
See (way) above.
1) So what?
2) Should they even?
In countries with very powerful presidents, yes... elsewhere, a president can't achieve much and can't set traps.
Details, please.
Er... "valuable ceremonial and charitable duties"???
O_o
Speak for yourself, anonymous author. I can even imagine countries that were enemies for centuries agreeing on such things. http://europa.eu
Show me the poll numbers.
Not easy, I'm afraid
True - you really should keep your nose to that grindstone! Best of luck.
BTW, the email address is of course knockgoats [at] gmail [dot] com - I forgot what happens to angle brackets!
You know, Walton, studies have shown that the brain remembers more when it gets periodic breaks... :)
Yeah... I possibly shouldn't have spent so much of today arguing about the monarchy. I guess I'll have to stay up all night again until I finish revising causation and remoteness of damage in tort. :-(
*wonders whether it would be greedy to eat fourth bowl of cereal*
Indeed. But of course, some specific types of breaks are better for this than others.
(a lesson I've yet to learn, alas)
Knockgoats I've emailed you.
As long as it doesn't involve bacon :)
A good analogy for the monarchy is perhaps state funding for art galleries, the Royal Opera House, military tattoos and airshows, and other purely aesthetic endeavours of the state. These things aren't "necessary" to the survival of a nation, yet most countries still spend some public money on subsidising aesthetic pursuits. Similarly, we could cope without a hereditary monarch, or indeed a ceremonial head of state at all; but having one enhances our national quality of life.
First comes eating, then morals.
– Bertolt Brecht
No, seriously, eat till you're no longer hungry. Pay no heed to time of day or night; when you're hungry, eat.
In the meantime, I'll translate some of the French Young Royalist manifesto...
What freaking experience? If the monarch serves in an entirely ceremonial fashion, what do they have to say that any other person with experience in politics and diplomacy could not also say? I really don't get this. In the USA we simply ask our elder statespersons for advice.
Sven #605,
I'm learning that too. a 45 minute fresh air break for a walk around the park on a summers day = good for study.
3 years in a Amsterdam "coffee" shop with what can only be described as a truckload of White Widow = bad for study.
It's amazing how hard those two are to tell apart.
Louis
Did you see that, Lynna, Carlie, SC, Sven, et al? Knockgoats didn't invite us to visit him in London next weekend. It's a Brits only meeting, probably discussing how to overthrow the monarchy and establish the British Soviet Socialist Republic.
Minnesota: 62
Purdue: 34
About 4 minutes to go.
those are very high scores for curling
It's worse than that. If you're going to have a ceremonial head of state, at least get one with some panache. Elizabeth II? I mean, look at her. She was dowdy and bereft of style even at 21. The woman has single-handedly kept makers of shapeless shifts in business far longer than nature would permit.
No, I've had enough. What Britain needs is a SpokesGay.
Preferably one who is NOT Graham Norton.
:D
I bet there will be violence involved. I'm telling.
Well, duh. It should be obvious that what Britian needs is Me™. This, Carlie, is why Lynna is Number One Wife, not you.
He should not be allowed to dress himself. That's all I have to say on that matter.
I now feel overstuffed and slightly ill, having had that extra bowl of cereal. :-( And still have to stay up all night.
====
Josh: Historians think we have had a few gay kings in the past. Edward II was well-known for his affair with a French nobleman named Piers Gaveston. And James I was almost certainly inclined in that direction too; IIRC he was a great fan of young George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, who in 1615 he appointed to the rather suggestive office of "Gentleman of the Bedchamber". Apparently, a recent restoration of one country house in Northamptonshire, frequently visited by the King and Villiers, revealed a hitherto unknown passage between their bedrooms. :-)
Admittedly, though, James was not known for his fashion sense (or indeed his personal hygiene; he had a skin disease and rarely washed). He was also a religious nut, and a Roy Ashburn-esque hypocrite when it came to sex: he wrote religious pamphlets condemning, inter alia, the "crime of sodomy".
You can't be serious.
Hmpf! And here I was, just trying to save you the effort of an intercontinental flight, and what thanks do I get? That's ok, though - that means Lynna has to go look pretty at all the public events, while I can stay home and read books.
What about me!?!
'Grabs and tries to lift Josh OSB by his collar.'
(Breaks down because she knows she gave the neo-prigs more proof of our collective celebration of violence.)
SOB!
Hmmm. Are you a descendant of the Electress Sophia of Hanover, as required by the Act of Settlement 1701?
(Incidentally, the Act of Settlement is controversial in some arch-conservative circles. I have a few Catholic friends who are committed Jacobites, who believe that the Stuarts should be restored to the English throne. As a token act of protest, they sing "God save the King" instead of "God save the Queen".)
I've always kind of liked the way she looked :(
I could never pull off the shapeless conserva-brit look though.
Janine, we'll just have our own fun while Josh and Lynna have to go eat at stupid state dinners and such.
*sticks tongue out at Josh and Lynna*
They're arch- something. How do you possibly not see how asinine this all is?
I always liked the nerdy sidekick, who filled out the shapeless garments, and if you got the glasses off of her, was a knockout...Like the Redhead...
I know!
NO FUTURE!
NO FUTURE!
NO FUTURE FOR YOU!
You knew this was coming.
Oh, I will be the first to acknowledge that the Jacobites are pretty darn crazy. I do seem to have a lot of eccentric friends. In my defence, I live in a city with a disproportionately high number of eccentric people per capita. :-)
Sven and SC: To clear up any confusion, I meant this type of military tattoo. The kind with drums and marching bands and elaborate drill displays, not the kind with needles and drunkenness at 3am.
(This perhaps explains SC's initial bemused reaction to my comment.)
bollocks?
what bollocks?
Fucking, aye, I noticed that Knockgoats does not love us, does not invite us, does not think we are precious. I would say, "fuck the Brits," but they would enjoy it too much.
We americans should just all go sailing with 'Tis Himself (oh, yeah, and drinking too). Is salt water bad for brass bosoms?
Well, I'm off to the wild lands where there is NO Cell Phone Coverage and NO wi-fi, and No [sob] Pharyngula! The horror. The horror. If I do not freeze to death, and/or am not eaten by mountain lions or wild asses (yea, there are multitudes of wild donkeys there), I will return.
Josh, please don't take a new First Wife while I'm away. You know how much I value my asexual, but highly sensual relationship with the SpokesGay.
No crazier than you. :)
Not by a mile.
Josh OSG, my sweetest one, you seemed to have run off all three of your wives. You have a lot of work to do to get us all back.
Good luck with that, sweetums!
Nerd:
For some reason, that reminds me of Dr. Kate Murry and her yet to figure out she's beautiful daughter, Meg in A Wrinkle in Time.
I feel for you. I have a family reunion (Redheads side) coming up, and I feel the pain already...
SC,
I think this may be an inter-cultural misunderstanding. Honestly, constitutional monarchism is a pretty uncontroversial middle-of-the-road position in the UK. Most leading politicians, and all the main parties, support (or at least don't actively oppose) the monarchy. There is a republican movement, but they don't have much popular support. The average Briton doesn't seem too bothered either way.
I realise that to an American, constitutional monarchy seems like a pretty weird and crazy idea. But in the end, we're all grounded in the cultural and political traditions of our own countries; it works for us, even though it almost certainly wouldn't for you. So perhaps we can agree to disagree.
Well, if I must, I must. I guess I could give by best hiking boots a fresh treatment of water-proofing.
How?
Anyway.
Picture above "Agenda", from top right corner:
Proud
Social
Patriotic
Insolent
Anticonformist
Politically incorrect
Youth is the embers of the world
YOUNG ROYALISTS
You, too, join us!
Text, paragraph by paragraph:
About as militant as a militant atheist, eh?
The style is even heavier than I've managed to get across – that "like" is à l'instar de, a phrase so overformal my two-volume dictionary can hardly cope with it.
...Whatever.
The manifesto begins:
The first rule of Politics Club is: you accuse the media of something. Anything.
The last few words were difficult. Relever can mean a lot of different things, and passéisme, which I hadn't encountered before, clearly has negative connotations that "nostalgia" lacks. Again, the style is so elevated that the writing is poor.
I refuse to look up affre. Guess it from context. We once had a troll who wrote by thesaurus; the Young Royalists seem to suffer from the same affliction.
Note how immigration is bad. But I suppose I should even given them credit for considering it an effect and not a cause of "the hell of unemployment"! ("Hell"? In the USA perhaps. Not over here.)
"Evolution"! ARGH!!!
As I told you: France, the wondrous land where even the royalists are revolutionaries.
Or a long list of other -ist -isms, one supposes.
Note how terrorism leads the list. "Communitarianism" probably means "Muslims who don't immediately throw themselves into Europeanist centralism". :->
Funnily enough, it literally is "believe in", croire dans. That must be... new. What happened to croire à? Globalism? Europeanist centralism maybe? :-Þ
I get the impression the authors can't find the semicolon on their keyboard.
Capitalizing République is normal in French, especially when the French Republic is meant, as it is here; capitalizing Histoire is altogether ridiculous.
That stuff about the Republic having given birth to all totalitarianisms probably alludes to the fact that all big ideologies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, all across the spectrum, were invented in France, because that's where most of the crazy thinkers were.
Christian and humanist in this order.
Occidentalism.
So could Le Pen if you were stupid enough to let him.
Leadership is in English in the original. I suppose "leading role" would be better... "Truly strong Europe" as in "true Scotsman".
And again, the lepénistes will tell you the exact same paranoid hogwash about their own leader.
Démocratie équitable is a term they made up. It refers to, well, more or less this concept (in German). It starts with the question why there are only professional politicians, mostly lawyers, in parliament, and no workers, housewives, or pretty much anyone else. The idea is to have, instead of parties, representatives of four classes in parliament: employees, families, entrepreneurs, and civil servants. (Never mind how incredibly stupid it is to miss the fact that "families" overlap with the other three. TSIB.)
It's one of those ideas that look intelligent if you don't think about them for longer than 10 seconds.
Like a religion: they want to believe; the Earth is a vale of tears ("dead end"); there's a hell ("the programmed death of our civilization"); and there's salvation ("the choice of a true break").
That was the whole manifesto. I'll catch up with the Thread and go to bed, it's late enough.
Dash it all! I shall have to come up with some wooing words for sure. Oh, and Janine, I don't even see you as part of the hierarchy - you occupy a sort supervisory role:)
Must. Leave. Pharyngula. And. Do. Work.
Carlie? Lynna? Is there any place we should go while Josh gets his act together?
'Tis? Do you have room on your boat?
That doesn't make it less crazy or dumb. Nor does it make it OK.
Janine, I will be camping out, in a tent, in a place with no facilities nor amenities whatsoever. Scenery will be, however, knock 'em to their knees fabulous. Temperatures at night will be below freezing. Shall I set up extra tents for you and Carlie?
(Bring your warmest bras, the furry ones.)
David M: Wow. Those people are actually insane.
And I'm reassured to hear that the style was particularly formal and laboured. I had been wondering why I couldn't understand much of it when I went on the site. (My schoolboy French is not great, but having studied Spanish to a higher level, I can usually get by with reading comprehension in French.)
Dash it all! I shall have to come up with some wooing words for sure. Oh, and Janine, I don't even see you as part of the hierarchy - you occupy a sort supervisory role:)
You better run! You better hide!
You better give yourself enough time to get over this insult.
Supervisory?
'sob'
I could put you up in the boat but it's out of the water right now. That means there's no shower, no functioning toilet, no water in the sink, and no ice for cooling your vodka collins. The stove and the lights don't work either.
But at least you won't need fur-lined bras.
Lynna, I will have to grap extra comforters and my thickest ropes, but, yeah, that sounds good.
I see. It's not enough to insult my intelligence with your pro-monarchist arguments, now you insult my ancestors too!
slaps Walton across the face with his glove
Choose your weapons, Knave!
Does someone need to make a cartoon of Pharyngulites in the wrestling ring?
I've got some sleeping bags and an extra propane stove. I'm there!
Okay, then. Meet me at the head of Crack Canyon in the San Rafael Swell. The road into the Swell is gravel, 2WD for the first few miles (pretend you're going to Temple Mountain at first), and then the turn to Crack Canyon is not signed, is a 4WD two-track with vegetation growing between the tracks, and it may be snow-covered or muddy. There are no nearby towns, but you can rent a jeep in Green River, Wyoming and then drive west into Utah.
I think that covers it.
It would probably have to be manga, you know.
I just started Longitude. Flamsteed twice in 24 hours? Spooky.
:)
That wouldn't be any more surreal than the Bavarian Soviet Republic.
(Bavaria is a very conservative place. And yet...)
This is the place to say it: one of her half-mythical hats was once called a strawberry tart. That description fits.
Speaking of monarchism and anarchism...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvKIWjnEPNY
"Well, how'd you become king, then?"
"The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. That is why I am your king."
"Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony."
RTL: I apologise for the insult to your ancestral honour. I don't want to have to fight a duel; using the Dread Cepalopod of Doom on a Stick against you would not be pretty. :-)
SC: Yeah, maybe we're a nation of crazy people. ¿Quién sabe? *shrugs* But it works for us.
Uh, Lynna? I think I made a wrong turn somewhere: I'm in Red Deer. And I think I dropped my passport when I stopped at Tim Horton's in Medicine Hat.
Wow, thanks for that translation, David. Those kids are fucking nutbars; and for people who whine about abuse of History, they seem to have a rather... strange and shallow understanding of it.
Oh, and the word for passéisme you were looking for is fuddy-duddy-ism (well ok, reactionism) ;-)
'Tis, I guess that, in lieu of a tent, you could haul your boat out to the head of Crack Canyon and set up housekeeping in an ocean of desert. Bring whiskey.
...so I'll be a little bit late.
From David M's link:
Forgot to add this:
You probably just swallowed too much air. Try to get it out at one end before it gets out at the other and gives you that bloated feeling...
People here have said it doesn't work for them. Anyway, you've acknowledged that it's unjust, that it's wrong, that it violates the principle of individual freedom, so I don't know what you're still on about.
Never really gets old, does it? :)
Carlie, here are your coordinates: 38 degrees, 38.136 minutes North; 110 degrees, 44.515 minutes West. Please note that coordinates are given in the Degrees-Decimal-Minutes format. You must match that format on your GPS device, or do monumental amounts of math to convert the coordinates to another format of your choice.
Dunning-Kruger effect – the louder someone whines like that, the less likely it is that they understand what they're talking about.
Aaaah, thanks.
No; they could just have written that.
Of course they wouldn't have. "Reactionary" is enough of a swearword that they'd have to say "we're not reactionaries, but", and that would be too long-winded for even a badly written manifesto.
(...Yeah, OK, actually, it wouldn't. The Communist Manifesto has, what, 76 pages? It drones on and on about the role of art in society and whatnot. But I hope that's the exception that proves the rule.)
uh-oh, uh-oh! Urgent. Rent your jeep in Green River, Utah! Utah! What the fuck? I've got to stop packing camping gear and trying to post at the same time. I double checked the coordinates for the head of Crack Canyon. Those are correct. See you there.
But Green River Wyoming has all the good fossils! :D
(Have a good trip!)
archaism?
o_O
Reminds me of Bill Maher talking about Rush Limbaugh:
"I think it’s interesting that he is now the undisputed leader of the Republican Party. It shows how clueless they are. They went looking for the future and they found radio."
'Checks Google Maps.'
That's it! I knew I should have taken a left turn at Albuquerque!
Yep, the left turn at Albuquerque is a must. Here's a link to a photo of Eardley Canyon, which is about 12.5 miles north of Crack Canyon, and this is another stop on our route.
http://www.wildernessbooks.com/lee/lee/san_rafael_pond.html
Janine, watch out for [yxxxxxxxxxxxxxssq]* wascally wabbits.
*That bit of brilliant commenting brought to you by Bruce, my rat.
Google Books did a totally crap job of reproducing the page, but here's the page from my Utah Wilderness guide that features me in Crack Canyon. Photo by Leland, of course. As you can see from the outfit, it was damned cold that day.
I'm feeling really quite ill - warm, and yet shivering, and really tired and run-down. I think I might be coming down with some illness. Time for sleep, I think. (Tort can wait.)
Lynna: Enjoy your camping trip. :-)
Lynna, wow!
Bad choice of weapon.
I'll turn your DCoD against you by reminding it that I have never eaten any of its relatives (or indeed any molluscs), whereas you almost certainly have. It'll be down that stick and across you face faster than you can say "constitutional monarchy".
Sorry, Lynna, but I have to link to this page.
Oh, I hope it's not serious and that it passes quickly!
I told you so. I do not lie.
anachronism?
***
http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2010/03/brain_scans_read_memori…
Feel better, Walton!
Have fun, Lynna, and take care of yourself!
Janine @677: I would just like to point out that I'm wearing about five layers of clothing in that photo. As is usually the case, I am in the photo only to provide a sense of scale.
Wow, that's fantastic, Lynna!
Walton, get some rest. You might just be overtired and a good sleep will fight off whatever that is.
Lynna, that is outrageously cool.
I am sorry about the repeated link. Apparently, the address did not change as I flipped through the pages.
[pedant]Where is the scale ruler?[/pedant, CSI watcher]
Nerd, I am 5'2" tall in stocking feet. Add another inch for the hiking boots.
SC, the outrageously cool places are often the ones where Leland and I find ourselves alone. On the other side of San Rafael Reef is Goblin State Park, a place rife with tourists. They miss so much. One has to be willing to explore. Or, just follow me. Janine can post links to sappy songs with "I'll take you there" in the lyrics.
Attempts at levity aside, your brother takes beautiful pictures Lynna.
Sappy? No song with that bass line can be sappy!
From your comments I'm seeing with my minds eye a woman of 6'+ with attitude. Just like most of the women of Pharyngula. Cross at your own risk, and I like to keep my own skin intact...
Hmmm, I wonder if any of the Pharyngula women are 6' or more. I'm 5'6", so I don't have the height. The attitude, that I got. ;)
Me too. I'm a just over a lowly 5'9" but since I wear heels most of the time I usually stand at 6' or more :P
Janine @689, Thanks! I had forgotten how great that song is. Mercy!
Nerd, I'm small, but I'm deadly.
Walton, I'd better not come back to find you sickly. Get well. (Note that I frame my good wishes as threats.)
You know I always envied petite women. Grass is always greener I guess, that and my mom is 4'11" and tiny and I guess as a little kid I always just assumed I'd look like her.
Ol'Greg, I envy your reach. We'd make a good team.
Ol'Greg, well if you're going to include heels...I can do 5'10" in heels. However, my preference is barefoot (you would not believe how much I get yelled at for going out barefoot in the snow), so I'll happily stay at my 5'6". :D
#52, Benjamin Geiger:
Wow, that's a coincidence - I am concurrently chatting with the inventor of the Ook programming language in another window, and there you are writing in it.
Talk about Brainfuck.
Mountains and sail boats are contra-indicated. However the whiskey is a good idea.
Janine can post links to sappy songs with "I'll take you there" in the lyrics.
...The Road to Nowhere?
I *love* that song.
Heh, Brainfuck.
[Intersection readers, stop here and be squicked.]
The joke is too good not to give away.
Brainfuck.
I'm not tall myself, only 5'10" in my younger years. The Redhead is 3" shorter. I'm a little more stooped these days, which is why my back can sound like rice crispies at times...
I love "The Road to Nowhere" and just about everything the Talking Heads did.
Ichthyic, my brother and I tried traveling with a friend once, Emily. Emily wouldn't let us stop and camp in any place that was not named, because, she said, "But, it's nowhere!" Right.
We stopped at sunset once about ten miles from the north rim of the Grand Canyon. A grove of Ponderosa pine trees did their usual thing of creating a park-like setting under their boughs. There was even a nice stand of grass. "What are you stopping here for?" says our Emily. Hmmm. How to explain that even places without names are somewhere, and often the best somewheres?
So, back in the vehicles and on to Beaver Dam Wilderness, where we had to leave the truck lights on to avoid the cactus as we set up our tents. But we were somewhere.
GPS should solve that problem. Your place may not be named, but it has a numb3r.
Nerd:
Pfft, well The Redhead is still an inch taller than me. So far, I'm coming up on the short side.
How to explain that even places without names are somewhere, and often the best somewheres?
don't.
can't.
people either grasp it, or they don't.
tip:
never take someone hiking in Joshua Tree Natl Monument who is goal oriented.
We have started naming places that have no official name. Hence, there's a "Howard Lake" in one Idaho Mountain range, and "Steve's Folly", and "Watch This!", and "Ponderosa Park". Next time I'll be ready when Emily complains. But the first time she refused to stop at an unnamed spot, Leland and I were so stunned that we just stood there speechless.
GPS coordinates can be named as a waypoint. I could do that, and it would look all official and all.
Walton: feel better soon! I hope sleep is all you need--there are few things more pathetic than sickly students trying to slog through finals week.
Lynna: Awesome photo! That plus all the ensuing discussion of scale makes me think we need a 'Women of Pharyngula' Calendar. I'm sure we could think of some creative poses swaddled in bacon and calamari. (on second thought, maybe we should save the calamari for the 'Men of Pharyngula' edition). All proceeds could go to JREF or something. But we'd send one to Sheril for free :->
BTW: Me: 5'9''
"But, it's nowhere!" Right.
Oh, I'll take you there.
my last trip to nowhere was 11 thousand miles.
come to think of it, I'm still on that one.
John:
:D Someone should name something equally esoteric Mental Mindfuck, as in "a mental mindfuck can be nice."
Oh, and speaking of TTH, this is one of my faves (audio only, but, hey, Happy Monkey!)
Hmm... I never have a problem with the *idea* of wilderness. Sadly I don't come from a camping culture. I like studying plants, but my camping experiences have included giardiasis, one memorable night of hundreds of infected mosquito bites (it turns out those things flock to me). They got all green and full of puss before I finally went to a doctor. It seems the wilderness doesn't want me hanging around. So I prefer any nature expeditions be brief.
That being said, I can not stand going to a park or museum (museums are especially bad with this) with some one who has a damned agenda about what has to be seen. Nothing makes me appreciate what I'm looking at less than rushing to get there, standing there waiting, and then saying "yep, seen it."
As a result I have no plans of seeing the Mona Lisa while I am in Paris. Waste of fucking time if you ask me. Frankly, it's probably cooler just to watch people sitting around having a smoke.
Word. You have to beware of taking photographers too, though, at least ones like me, else you might never get out. ;D
Exactly. They also don't seem to grasp the charm of being slightly lost, and finding a new vista, unexpected water source, etc.
There's also the conundrum of what to reply when they say, "Are you sure this a road?" Not "the road", mind you, but "a road" -- applies sometimes to trails as well.
If the Redhead and I are seated on a couch, we appear the same height. The difference is in our limbs. I take two strides to her three at a brisk pace, and her arms, with our shoulder even, only reach to my palms.
PSA, time change tonight in dah USA. Spring forward. Loose an hours sleep.
Everybody is taller than I am ... by several inches. [sniff]
Regarding the Women of Pharyngula calendar. That was suggested before, and we almost got the project going. Rorschach, IIRC, thought he was going to get Pharyngula titties. He salivated all over the thread.
well, we could make it into a calendar of medical images. Lynna and her brain would make a lovely January, and if I can figure out if my mom still has that head x-ray of mine floating around somewhere, I'd so volunteer that one for the calendar ;-)
You have to beware of taking photographers too, though, at least ones like me, else you might never get out. ;D
ditto!
I'd show you my JT pics, but my flickr pro account expired, and they have gotten "lost" in there somewhere.
:P
jenbphillips:
This is as close to a calendar shot as I'll get:
http://moblog.net/view/222373/nakedness (it's safe, more or less, despite the title) :D
That was taken to celebrate a nekkid women calendar which was done to help a friend cover medical expenses for Hodgkin's Lymphoma treatment. That's the actual calendar I'm clutching, I didn't pose, as at that time I was 49. I declare myself officially too old for calendar shots.
Damn. If you find them again, holler at me!
questions that will inevitably be asked (or at least mildly felt in their general gut area) by Europeans, who have lost the concept of places that don't have designated roads/paths which you're supposed to use while staying off the lawn. :-p
yeah, I'm afraid I can't oblige there, but Rorschach, if your'e reading this, believe me when I tell you you won't be missing much.
Jadehawk, I have MRI's of my spine somewhere. ;p
So, we have:
Ol'Greg & jenbphillips at 5'9"
Caine at 5'6"
Lynna at 5'2"
This is as close to a calendar shot as I'll get:
you look remarkably like a small camera.
;)
Lynna, I'm only 5'2" if I really stretch and stand tall. :)
oh yeah, btw, y'all get to congratulate me:NDSU has accepted my application, and the gubmint sez I'm eligible for $5500 in grants. This school thing might actually really happen :-)
Now I just need to sort out the vaccination stuff. I've not the faintest clue when I had my last MMR-shot, or where the records of that would be...
As close as the photophobic Redhead would get to a calendar picture would be one of her wigs on a hatrack. One wig even matches her natural hair color.
Of course, one of the advantages of modern digital cameras is that you can get candids without bringing it up to your face. So it made it much easier to get shots of her if she was busy with something else.
Jadehawk, congratulations!
Ichthyic, that's not what most people were lookin' at. ;D
Indeed--I was just wondering how many of our 9 year old basketball players will be late for the championship game tomorrow because they forgot to set the clocks ahead. Honestly, why do we even do this? Can anyone give me a valid 21st century rationale?
Caine, you're adorable! But bullshit, you are not 'too old'. I reject the suggestion that there is an age limit (or a size limit, or any other damn limit) to beauty--not on my calendar!
Not sure if I have any medical pictures of myself (excepting some ultrasound images in which my uterus is really not the main attraction), but I could contribute some kickass immunofluorescence of zebrafish retinas :)
Fair enough; that's an achievement.
Congratulations, Jadehawk!
*tries to jump up and down to applaud Jadehawk, only succeeds in shaking the house*
*Clap and cheers anyway*
Thank you! It's not the age so much, it's more the effects of gravity after a certain point. It's grand having a rack when you're young, but it tends to go for the ground at an alarming rate after a certain point. ;p
Oh, really? *insert much grumbling here* Thank you for saying, I would have been clueless as usual.
big Gratz to Jadehawk!
Lynna,
I am barely taller than you, 5'3". I really wish I could go out camping right now. My list of things to buy once my debt is paid off is topped by a new backpack and sleeping bag, so I can start backpacking again.
I'm right there with you. The only "goal" I ever have when I'm hiking is to take lots and lots of pictures. Digital photography has saved me hundreds in development costs. I can take two thousand pictures and only print 200. It's awesome!
Hey, Carlie is only 5' 2"! I feel so much better now that there are two short people. That's a group, right? or a club or something?
Nice boobs below the camera-face. :-) (Caine's "naked" shot)
Hooray for Jadehawk! And kudos to the government for supporting something useful for a change.
Jadehawk, that's great news--congratulations!
Caine, yeah, I'm starting to appreciate my boy-body a bit more as I settle in to my 40s. I'm sure, however, that your endowments can be suitably presented for the photo-op.
Ooh I want to be in the calendar. But only if I can be Ms. April.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/61796875@N00/sets/72157617883046653/
Jadehawk,
CONGRATS!!!!!!
I vote that we include Pygmy Loris in the Short but Deadly Women of Pharyngula subset of the Wild Women of Pharyngula.
Ol'Greg, those are some impressive images! Wow. I especially like the slatternly approach to eating your cake and having it too.
The only "goal" I ever have when I'm hiking is to take lots and lots of pictures.
true story:
travelling over the a mountain pass on the South Island, I stopped the car so many times to take pictures, one of the tourists behind me walked up and said:
"You should just leave the car here and walk, you'd probably get there faster"
:)
Ha! Yes, they are great photos--but what is that grey, squidlike thing near the end of the series?
@Ol'Greg 712
My favorite painting in the Louvre is The Coronation of Napoleon. Skip the Mona Lisa and see that instead XD
Hahaha, thanks Lynna. They're okay when they're in their sling. ;D
Oh, I suppose...hmmm, now I'm thinking of Calendar Girls.
A trussed cow's tongue.
*whistles*
:)
Seconded! I love the vibrant color of the dress against the green of the grass and the pale blanket.
Uh-huh, but with BACON!
Agh!
Ichthyic,
LOL! That's what traveling with my dad and me is like :)
Oh hey. I'd love to be part of this, in keeping with my red hot desire to continue as one of the Wild Women of Pharyngula, but only if my face and body can be obscured by my beekeeping suit and veil! The bees won't mind and some of us have countenances that are best appreciated when we're covered wholly up!
Heh.
Congrats Jadehawk! Also, congratulations to NDSU for getting a bright mind.
What field are going into?
Cool! But where will you put the bacon?
nuh-uh--please see #729. Cover up for privacy, if it suits you, but not for aesthetics.
Pharyngulette, you didn't say how tall you were! So far, we have:
Ol'Greg & Jen: 5'9"
Caine: 5'6"
Pygmy Loris: 5'3"
Lynna & Carlie: 5'2"
Well, not entirely... [/Asterix mode off]
Me = 172cm. I think it's about 5'7"..? I used to be considered "on the tall side" back in the day; now it seems like young women tower over me (something of a relief, actually).
172cm, let's see, you'd be just under 5'8".
Well, we're running on again. I wonder if this thread will make a thousand before PZ notices.
Checking in briefly. I am five foot nine inches tall though I feel I should have been at least six foot four inches.
Congratulations, Jadehawk.
Nice series, Ol'Greg. But I have to admit, I think I am a little afraid of you now. But in a good way. You sure were not nice to that little bunny!
Put me down for the 'short' list; I'm 5'3 1/2", plus a smidge. And I insist on that smidge!
Jadehawk, congrats!
Janine:
*sigh* I'm gettin' tired of being all alone in the middle.
Congrats!
---
ps. I am 5'10" if I recall these weird units correctly
Congrats, Jadehawk! Say hello to the ole alma mater for me.
Wild Women of Pharyngula, you need to recruit a few more willing models or we'll have to round out the calender year with a few months of PZ in beefcake. :(
Lynna, have fun on your trip! Watch out for dropbearsjackalopes.
I'm currently trying to work out the logistics for my July:
July 10,11,12 Oregon Country Fair in Veneta, OR.
July 16,17,18 Northwest String Summit at Horning's Hideout, North Plains, OR.
July 29,30, Aug 1 String Cheese Incident also at Horning's Hideout.
I'll be working (volunteering) on the recycling crew for all of these events. That means many days of sorting through cans, bottles, and trash. With scant/non-existent shower facilities. Living in a tent for a month. No internet.
I will have a weekend off to spend in P-town between String Summit and String Cheese. Any suggestions from locals re: free things to do would be greatly appreciated. (museums, botanical gardens, music, etc.)
Good lord, but Teh Thread grows exponentially faster!
Ol'Greg:
I know what you mean about doing the tourist-by-the-numbers thing. However, my cynicism was blown away several years ago when I got dragged to a traveling Van Gogh exhibit in Atlanta. Everybody's seen "Starry Night," or so they think. Seeing the size of it (it's freakin' huge), the actual physical depth of the paint on the canvas, was a revelation. And the colors - they can't be reproduced even by the best photographic technique. It was an entirely different, and richer, aesthetic experience than I could have predicted, and taught me that none of us can really experience a painting without seeing the real thing. The very physicality of it was an essential part of experiencing the work, and it was breathtaking.
And also, hoopsnakes. OH NOEZ!!
Josh,
Oh yeah. There's something about being able to see the actual brush strokes in 3D that's unreal. I was at an exhibit in Chicago some years ago that had both Starry Night and Starry Night over the Rhone. Simply amazing stuff.
My screwed up spine is demanding I lay down, so I'm going to give in, curl up with a book and say goodnight. G'night, G'morning, G'afternoon and G'evening to all! I'll leave you with:
Guinness Stout Truffles
3/4 cup fresh cream
1/2 lb cooking chocolate
1 lb dark chocolate
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons Guinness Stout
cocoa powder
1. Melt butter and cooking chocolate over hot water.
2. Add cream and whisk until mixed well.
3. Remove from heat and stir in Stout, chill until firm.
4. Melt dark chocolate over hot water, stir until smooth, remove from heat.
5. With chilled chocolate and stout mixture, make 1 inch balls with a spoon and by rolling between your hands.
6. Dip balls in warm dark chocolate until coated, place in tray of cocoa powder, roll to coat, and refrigerate.
These are wonderfully messy to make and damn near divine to eat.
Damn it! Just as I was looking forward to some company from others who have nothing better to do on a Saturday night than haunt Teh Thread. Hope you feel better:)
And, thanks for the recipe. I'm snaggin' it for the Pharyngula cookbook I'm putting together.
Hmm.. With all those other ingredients, one would hardly notice a measly 2 tablespoons of Guinness. I think this entire recipe was contrived as an excuse to open a bottle of stout.
I think this entire recipe was contrived as an excuse to open a bottle of stout.
wait, since when did that require an excuse?
Sorry, Josh! Ordinarily I'd hang around, but the pain pills are not doing their job properly tonight.
Boygenius, I up the Guinness a tad, but you actually can taste it. And of course it's a reason to open a bottle of stout!
Okay, really, I have to go lie down...I just saw this though, which has me laughing:
Laden, mouthing off to a telefundraiser:
Yeah, he's so influential. Hahahahahahaha.
Caine, that is funny! :)
Icthyic: I'd show you my JT pics, but my flickr pro account expired, and they have gotten "lost" in there somewhere.
(weeps bitterly)
Congratulations, Jadehawk! Ha—this is the second time in two days I've congratulated somebody on getting a grant. They must be in season.
Lynna, you get to go to some beautiful places. ~envy~ And the PDFs you sent are quite appetizing. Thank you!
What Josh said about Starry Night—yeah. I've seen a few like that. There was a smallish bronze sculpture of a horse in one of the first big traveling shows from China that caught my attention from directly behind my back when it was in the DeYoung. There are probably photos of it around: The horse is pacing and its off hind foot (IIRC) is the only one on the ground, but it's not the ground; it's a flying swallow. Kansu Flying Horse? Memory fails again.
I drink to forget, and it seems to be working.
Um, I'm five-feet-three-and-three-quarters-inches and inclined toward beekeepers' garb for photos myself. Maybe I can get the new allergist to get me a copy of my recent sinus CT, in which I have been told are no blind albino alligators.
Ol' Greg, that is one hell of a set, those Easter images. Is that feral flat chives all around you with the cranesbill?
Boygenius, you know about Powell's of course. Give it a day. There's also a Chinese garden in Portland that's supposed to be interesting. And see if Darklady has anything going on (and tell her I sent you). My sister Jeannie and her partner Tom were Cheezer Geezers. I guess Tom still is.
Ya know, I posted my recipe for chicken stock many sub-threads ago, but never posted anything to do with the stock. Here's Pygmy Loris's chicken soup recipe.
8 cups stock
5-8 carrots sliced
1/2-1 lbs. of chicken cut up (more if you like it meaty)
4-5 medium potatoes (I use Yukon Gold)
2 stalks celery minced (use less or none if you don't like the flavor)
Minced garlic to taste (I use 5-8 cloves)
1 tsp. onion salt
1 Tbsp grilled chicken rub (optional)
Cooked rice or noodles if desired. Note, don't add rice or noodles to any portion you want to freeze as both will absorb the liquid and become gross.
Put all ingredients except chicken in a stockpot and cook over medium heat until veggies are tender (about 30 minutes-1 hour). During the last 10 minutes add the chicken. Add cooked rice or noodles if desired shortly before serving. I usually use brown rice for texture and flavor.
Oops, I forgot to put "cut into slightly larger than bite-sized chunks" after the potatoes in the soup recipe.
Also the amounts for onion salt and chicken rub are approximate. I shake stuff in until I like how it looks.
ronsullivan, I saw that horse in Seattle, and I just stood and looked at it, walked around it and looked at it some more from the other side, for a long time.
As Granny Weatherwax said, "That isn't what a horse looks like. That's what a horse be."
Sleep well, Caine, and here's to a pain-free Sunday for you (clinks wine glass).
Thanks for posting the stock recipe again, Pygmy. I'm making a special effort to archive all the Pharyngulite recipes for some sort of cephalopodic cookbook we can all enjoy.
Oh, and ronsullivan - did you refer to yourself as "auntie ron" at some point in the recent past? I hope so, for I should like to call you Auntie Ron from now on:)
BTW - fabulous photo of that cactus-like plant called "vegetable frisbee." Did you take that?
ronsullivan:
Dammit! I asked for recommendations that are free and you remind me of one of the largest book stores in the world and suggest I "Give it a day". Have you ever walked out of a used book store without buying anything? I haven't.
Heh. One of my buddies played a gig for a Darklady event a while back. I think he was a bit.. gobsmacked. (He's hopelessly prudish.) Since I will be fresh from Country Fair, I may even have proper fetish attire with me. I shall fit right in. :)
The Chinese gardens sound interesting, I'll check them out.
Thanks!
If we're into chicken soup reciîes, here's mine :
Henri IV's Poule au pot
1 whole chicken
6 to 8 carrots peeled (leave them whole)
4 to 6 turnips peeled (leave them whole)
2 leeks cut in 2 inch pieces
2 large onions peeled with 1 clove in each
6 cloves of garlic
2 bouquets garnis : laurel, thyme and celeri branch tied together
Salt (Large grains) 1 tsp + Salt (Guérande) and pepper to taste
Clean and empty the chicken, rub 2 cloves of garlic on skin, pepper the inside and the outside of the bird. Place it in a large pot, cover with water, bring to a boil for 30 minutes. Add everything else in the pot. Cover and cook at simmering heat for another 1 1/2 to 2 hours depending on the size of the bird.
When cooked, seprate bird from vegetables and broth, skim and ungrease broth.
To serve : cut the chicken in pieces, serve with the vegetables, salt (preferably de guérande) crunched, dijon mustard, and a bowl of broth to the side. You can serve with boiled potatoes or rice if you want. In any case, cook them separately from the poule au pot.
Only use good quality (red label or better) chicken. For cooking, use a thick heavy pot type Le creuset.
thanks everyone
To be honest, I won't really believe that this will happen until I've gotten through the first semester without major fuckups, but this is further than I've gotten the last time I tried this university thing, so yay me :-)
weeeeell.... right now my major is listed as the impressively vague "social science", but the actual goal will be to combine Environmental Studies and Social Studies, and still get something useful out of the whole mess ;-)
also, dinner tonight was a can of pineapple. I might have to go to the gas station and buy more edibles for tonight :-p
and maybe tomorrow I'll even manage to drag my ass to the grocery store
Congratulations, Jadehawk.
=====
Arggh. This morning has not gone well for me. I woke up with a massive headache after only a few hours' sleep, and then spent ages trying to find my glasses. I'm currently debating whether to have some coffee, as caffeine may either improve or worsen my general feeling of illness, depending on what's causing it. It feels like a hangover, but without the redeeming feature of actually having consumed any booze the night before. :-(
Maybe I should just go back to bed. I'm not going to get anything done at this rate.
Jadehawk, that's wonderful news! I'm so happy for you.
***
Laden:
I know he means physical therapists, but I first read it as the other kind, and it was funny to imagine him getting calls - "I'm a professional therapist. People have contacted me about you. I think you need my help...."
***
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (where Starry Night, uh, isn't) is phenomenal. Those are paintings that absolutely should be seen live. For others that should, I would skip the Louvre and go to the Musée D'Orsay.
Congratulations, Jadehawk.
A man I know who did 20 years in the Navy got a BS through a program the Navy has. His degree is in "Industrial Education." He refers to it as a "generic bachelors."
Happy Pi Day, everyone!
Congratulations, Jadehawk!
Ooo, I like the subtitle. I want to dress up like the Ask A Ninja guy.
Huh. This
http://scienceblogs.com.br/carbono14/2010/03/jesus_existiu_parte_2_resp…
is in the "Most Active." I don't think I realized those included all of the Sb. I'm going to try to read it.
Happy π day!3.14159265358979323846264338327950288...
Show off.
The cake is a pi.
No further comment necessary...
I sometimes got those under a list called "Most European". I always thought that was an odd title, wondering how one would tell which was more European than another. That hasn't popped up in awhile, though.
Although being without access to any worldly news for 48 hours the amazing Bride of Shrek did manage to pick up on the fact that the Texas SBOE apparently approved new creationist-friendly standards for social sciences.
Translation: I am intelligent, witty and clueful. You are just a nerd.
[Editor's note: Guilty as charged.]
I just have to say, everyone looks great in the picture PZ posted of the Aussie gathering, and Wowbagger in particular is completely adorable. What is with everyone on this site looking so good?
Wow. I woke up thinking it was the middle of the night, but then the sun was up and now I see it is in fact morning. Life with daylight savings time I guess.
Hey... congrats Jadehawk!
I think I'll be staying right by it actually!
Yeah actually. There's a kind of woods behind my house that goes back to the Trinity river. One of the things I love about my house. I love it back there. I have some pics of the little creek and some refuse in it some where in that flickr account. So... many.... pics... to edit.
But yeah, that day the ground was covered in those and it couldn't have been more "Spring" at all.
I get a lovely assortment of flowers in my yard since I stopped mowing the grass too. I freaking love plant life that doesn't involve daily pruning. I'm sorry guys but I never heard of anything so stupid as freaking St. Augustine in a yard here. Reminds me of the palm trees in Bakersfield. Just useless.
Happy Pi day, ya'll.
Regarding 'places which are not named':
When I was a kid (last century), we went backpacking every summer. Once, in the San Juan Mountains, we took a wrong turn. Luckily, Dad had plenty of maps -- USGS and USFS -- but we found ourselves in an area with no trails, no names and the most incredible lake complete with large fisherman-ignorant trout, bountiful berries, and no other people. Dad declared, "We are here."
Sister asked, "Where is here?"
Dad answered, "I don't know. But I think it's better than where we planned to be."
This backpacking trip was also my first experience with Danish canned bacon. I'm not sure if the bacon was actually that good, but with the mountains, the lake, the solitude, it was good.
Fresh trout with freeze-dried fettucine alfredo is quite good on a camping trip. Can't say I recomment the freeze-dried stuff at home. Of course, this was almost 40 years ago, so . . . .
I remember this trip fondly. We came out of the woods (three weeks backpacking and loafing (alternately, not concurrently)), used the last part of our Durango & Silverton ticket to ride into Durango, turned on the TV and discovered Nixon was no longer President. Good times.
I know the ladies/women/girls/XXers have been discussing height. I might as well get the men involved: currently 5'11, in the Army I was 6'1. Things shrink with age.
Hey Walton. People here may not agree with me, but I say go to the doctor. I got sick with weird things like strep and mono when I was in undergrad, it seems like it goes around pretty badly. Also, a couple months ago I had what I thought was just a little flu and expected to get over it. Had I gone to the doctor as soon as I felt the symptoms maybe it wouldn't have gotten so bad :/
Anyway... just my $.02
/mothering internet people
I really enjoyed seeing the exhibition that's been taken from the Museum and is currently at the National Art Gallery of Australia. I'm not normally into paintings as an artform, but Starry Night Over The Rhone just floored me.
Ol'Greg: Going to the doctor now might be a bit premature (especially as it's Sunday so I'd have to use the out-of-hours service), but I'll go tomorrow if I don't feel any better.
(The shivering fits and sweating seem to have gone away, but I now just have a massive headache for no apparent reason.)
While we're on the topic of paintings: this may be the saddest song ever.
*wipes tear from eye*
In case anyone cares, I am 168 cm tall.
In honor of Pi Day,
Top 3.141592.... Formulas for π
I had a similar experience, Josh, when I saw some Monet garden paintings. I'm not much for impressionism, but when I saw them in person I really got it. He was very intelligent about placement of hues and warm/cool tones within them. So he made full use then of placing slight contrast (say blue and orange) against each other in such a way that it creates an optical illusion of vibrancy or light. Yeah I'd heard "light" before but I didn't understand that was how it was done until I saw it done in person.
That being said as far as older art I'm more fond of Dutch momento mori paintings and still life.
Weirdest way to approximate pi: Buffon's needle. Randomly drop needles on lined paper. You can then use the percentage of times a needle crosses a line to estimate pi.
There's a simulation here. Not a very efficient method. After 10,000 needles dropped I got 3.1387. Still closer than the Bible though.
Don't let Walton@737 mislead you. While republicanism is certainly a minority position in Britain, it's not the preserve of a wacky fringe as he would have you believe (Dawkins, incidentally, is a republican). Nor, of course, is its majority support any more an argument for its benefits than the majority support for theism is an argument for the existence of god.
Feynmaniac: Fascinating. I got 3.1162 as my pi approximation. Much close than the 22/7 we usually used in high school calculus.
A torture/execution technique used historically in the far east (not Washington DC, that was waterboarding) was the death of a thousand cuts. So, would this be the pi of ten thousand needling cuts? And would each slice of pi taste more like the knife than the pi? (Sorry, it is my Friday. I need weekend.)
I guess I would fall into that category, too. Well, the "Short" part, at least. I'm 4'9". :)
Did you see that, Lynna, Carlie, SC, Sven, et al? Knockgoats didn't invite us to visit him in London next weekend. - 'Tis
All welcome, of course! Any Pharyngulista who will be in London at that time, do email me!
It's a Brits only meeting, probably discussing how to overthrow the monarchy and establish the British Soviet Socialist Republic.
Yes, we were hoping to complete Walton's conversion - once properly indoctrinated, he could be very useful, provided he gets a reasonable degree! It'll be The Səʊshlist Ripublik uv Bri?n, actually - we're planning to enforce spelling reform at the same time! (The "əʊ" is "eau" as in French, "?" is a glottal stop.)
Ah'm almost two Kilometers tall
Oh yeah? Well I'm about 1569 mm in height, which sounds VERY TALL. :p
I'm currently seething - my child still attends church after a fashion (it's a family decision) and came home having watched... Louie Giglio. This video, in fact. Argh. I immediately went into damage control mode and showed him not only the nazi potassium channel, but also the Jesus on a dog's butt. It's so difficult to try and deal with this stuff without making him feel like he'll upset me if he talks about it (so won't) or feel like it's something he has to take sides on between me and his dad. Grrr.
Buffon was the shiz! One of my favorite scientists--he wrote lucidly about the Congo, but also probability theory, electricity (corresponded with Franklin), geology, and evolution...some of the earliest writings that clearly indicate an understanding that the pattern of phylogeny is produced by the process of descent and modification.
“On pourra dire égalemant…que l’homme et le singe ont eu une origine commune comme le chevale et l’âne…” or “one could just as easily say...that a man and a monkey share a common ancestor as a horse and a donkey…”
Histoire naturelle, générale et particulière: Quadrupèdes. 1799.
Despite having a long weekend, I'm still in the process of catching up from Three Weeks of Crazy™ at work, and haven't got anywhere near caught up with my Pharyngureading. I've skipped like a stone over the last couple hundred posts in this thread, and I just wanted to say...
* Walton, I hope you feel better.
* Jadehawk, congratulations! I'd love to hear more about your planned course of study, and in what direction you hope to take your work.
* Caine, I'll happily look at any naked (or nekkid¹) pictures you choose to publish, gravity notwithstanding. I bow to nobody in my respect for Sir Isaac Newton, but I'll be damned if I'll let his infernal discovery stand in the way of a good eyeful! I was going to remind you of Calendar Girls, but you evidently already know of it. That being the case, I'm shocked that you think a mere 49 years (or a few years more) is any bar to delightful nudity. In a previous iteration of the Thread, I commented about several older women — Dame Judi Dench, Julie Andrews, Shirley Jones (and her TV daughter, Susan Dey), and Dawn Wells — that I still find enthralling. It's not that I have some kink for older women; just that I find these particular women's charms undiminished (if not in fact enhanced) by the passage of time. I have no doubt, based on the (admittedly scant) evidence you've provided, that you would prove to be another case in point.
* Ol' Greg, since you've published your pictures (in a set titled cute, no less!) in this context, would it be permissible to respectfully comment that you're freakin' delectable? This image, in particular, was... umm... appetizing.
* Pygmy Loris, in light of the image in Ol' Greg's set immediately following the one I linked to, I think what we really need a recipe for is not so much chicken soup, but rabbit stew!
¹ There's a difference: According to some humorist of my dim recollection (perhaps Roy Blount, Jr?), "naked means you ain't got any clothes on; nekkid means you ain't got any clothes on, and you' up to sump'in'!" ;^)
Carlie,
They've got to indoctrinate them young in the Jebus insanity. Since logic and reason aren't on Jebus' side, they have to use whatever they can dredge up.
Me (@812):
Caine, the instant I hit Submit, I realized that I should've made it more explicit that I didn't mean to equate your age to that of any of the list of lovely older women I rattled off (which list should have included Helen Mirren, of course). You're clearly much younger than any of them (even Susan Dey is 57, if I'm doing my sums correctly); a mere child, in fact... wait, that doesn't seem right, either. And I'm commenting on women's ages... why, exactly?
<FleesInTerror>
I realise that I made a huge mistake in translating my recipie for the poule au pot #778
We don't use a chicken, but a hen (the mature female of the bird that has been laying eggs). That's why we cook it for so long, and that's also much more tasty.
I don't know how easy it is to get a hen where you live. It's fairly easy in France.
The poule au pot was instituted as French national dish by king Henri IV around the year 1600:
If God spares me, I will ensure that there is no working man in my kingdom who does not have the means to have a hen in the pot every Sunday!
Thanks, Knock. I was wondering.
It's also funny that he would be bringing this up, given how much time he's spent harping on this thread about the dangers of bigotry and authoritarianism due to majority rule.
By the way, I hate to be ignorant, but can anyone give context for some of the footage in Matt Penfold's video link @ #37 - especially the part in the synagogue (if it is a synagogue)?
Oh, and I'm 5'4".
Knockgoats
Aha! The first split in the BSSR!
I'm with Jonathon Swift on this one. There won't be any lawyers in my BSSR.
SC and Knockgoats, in no way was I arguing that monarchy is right because the majority of the British people support (or at least don't oppose) it. That would be a very weak argument. Rather, I was simply trying to clarify an apparent inter-cultural misunderstanding; it shouldn't be surprising to me that most Americans find monarchism a quaint, bizarre, reactionary idea. I was just trying to explain that in Britain, it's quite normal, and doesn't make me part of some sort of neo-medieval lunatic fringe. :-)
I do think we're now going round in circles with these arguments, so I think we'll just have to agree to disagree. It's a decidedly minor political issue in any case.
How I need a drink, alcoholic in nature, after the tough chapters involving quantum mechanics !
Consider. [No, of course I'm not equating constitutional monarchy and honor killings (though there are relationships). The point I'm making is about the "inter-cultural understanding" bit.]
Cease arguing and get back to work on that "reasonable degree." You don't want to disappoint Knockgoats and make him find somebody else to be Senior Law Lord when he reinstates the Lords of Appeal in Ordinary in the BSSR.
Sunday morning contemplation:
Glen Beck--more scary than funny, or the other way round?
Exhibit A.
Carlie, IMO you did the right thing. But this is coming from the woman who just yesterday expounded on the pro-Christian/anti-Gay policy of the Salvation Army in answer to my son's question about why we never donate there.
Bill Dauphin, you'd better run!
~Danio~
(23)
Que j'aime à faire apprendre un nombre utile aux sages !
Immortel Archimède, artiste ingénieur,
Qui de ton jugement peut priser la valeur ?
negentropyeater - I encountered my first stewing hen last year, and had never until that point appreciated the origin of the phrase "tough old bird". They cook up well, but the prep sure does build up some muscles.
jen - thanks. It's a fine line to walk.
Dear Sastra:
Some very good points.
I was going to include the journal abstracts below because of complaints that others can’t find them, but the abstracts are over five pages, so I put them on www.maloneymedical.com under Quackery (bottom of the page) subheading PHARYNGULA ENERGY RESPONSE WITH ABSTRACTS.
Would something like acupuncture be proof of an energetic field? There are hundreds of randomized studies and dozens of separate Cochrane reviews, only a couple of which gave definitive positive recommendations. But if acupuncture is proof of an energetic field, then we need go no further.
The Mayo clinic has done an analysis of the acupuncture reviews (yes, it’s an alt. med. journal article, but the analysis was done by Mayo) and concluded that the methodology used to even find studies varies. It is a constant problem that alternative medical treatments are not categorized efficiently on medline. They may show up with studies and drug interactions under the specific herb, but not show up when searching more broadly.
If acupuncture doesn’t work for you, what about prayer? The difficulty with prayer studies is listed out as the problem is getting people to not pray for the control group. I’m most fascinated with the negative prayer studies, where those prayed for did worse than the control group. I already cited the current problems with the Cochrane on this subject.
Your most interesting point was why aren’t physicists interested in the energy fields? I know many of them are, and there are many discussions online, but I’m going to limit myself to medline.
We all know that the human body gives off energy as heat, and we can detect the human body’s electrical field in a number of ways (EKGs, people). So has anyone attempted to measure the human energy field using say, actual equipment rather than a child’s hands as Barrett did?
Yes. (Abstracts are at my site, because I don’t want to accused of data dumping or whatever you call it)
It turns out some people can alter their electrical output dramatically. “One subject emitted a magnetic field at the level of 200-300 mT (2-3 mGauss) and the other at 0.13 mT (1.3 mGauss). In both cases, moreover, the magnetic needle compass rotated 30 degrees (this was tested 32 times). When the rotation of the needle occurred, a reproducible magnetic field of 800-1500 mT (8-15 mGauss) was indicated on the digital measuring device (this was tested 12 times). It is concluded that traditional Oriental Qi Gong breathing appears to stimulate an unusually large biomagnetic field emission.”
In an earlier study, the researchers checked 37 people who claimed to be able to do the changes and found that: “The only 3 subjects …exhibited strong bio-magnetic field of 2 to 4 mGauss in frequency range of 4 to 10 Hz. This magnetic field strength was greater than that of normal human bio-magnetism by 1,000 times at least.” So a lot more people think they can do it than actually can.
So people can make their bodies emit fields, does it have any effect? How about tested on wound healing? “At the lowest level DNA* was significantly lower when both fields were present than would be expected from the effects of either field alone. At the highest level, DNA* was significantly higher. There were no significant effects for medium field strengths.”
Ahhh, a test tube effect, but will it have any effect on people? Cochrane analysis of fibromyalgia: “Within a multicomponent therapy setting, selective CAM therapies (acupuncture, vegetarian diet, homeopathy, Tai Chi, Qi Gong, music-oriented and body-oriented therapies) can be recommended for a limited period of time.”
Libertarianism, like socialism, is an opinion about the desirable size of the state - Walton
Socialism, of course, is not an opinion about the desirable size of the state - Walton, what glibertairians or conservatives say about socialism is, almost without exception, wrong. Opinions about the role of the state among socialists range from Stalinism to anarchism. Socialism is advocacy of (at least a considerable degree of) collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.
Meh, I don't mind but I'm not that palatable I guarantee you. I try pretty hard to look interesting if nothing else. Those pics are about two years old though, maybe one. I can't remember. My hair is long now. However long it took my hair to grow out is how old they are :P
I'm one of those people that looks like a different person depending on the light anyway.
For clarification the set is called Easter.
By the way the local coyotes (four legged not two legged) ate the cow tongue. We pulled the nails out of it as I had visions of coyotes with internal bleeding if we didn't.
Oh well, interestingly enough I'm off to take pictures (in a graveyard no less, how goth).
Walton (@818):
But don't you think "going round in circles" is a perfectly appropriate celebration of Pi Day?
jenbphillips/Danio (hadn't previously made the connection; curse registration-driven rebranding!) :
I laughed out loud (literally; that's not just spelled-out LOLspeak) when I read this...
...until I ruminated on the ominous lack of smiley face! I managed 5K in just barely less than 35 minutes on the treadmill recently; I fear that won't be nearly swift enough!
Knockgoats:
Here in CT, many of the locals use that glottal stop, most notably the residents of the town of New Bri?n. I had thought it was a feature of CT (or perhaps just southern New England) dialect; I had no idea anyone in Old "Bri?n" said it that way.
Knockgoats @#826: Yes, OK, I was using an inappropriately restrictive definition of "socialism", and I apologise.
No, you claim energy fields, but can't detect them in double blind studies. Which means your whole philosophy of healing is based on a falsehood, as if you can't detect them, you can't change them. The hard core scientific evidence that I linked to above says all you have to offer is the PLACEBO EFFECT. So, why do you keep trying to convince us you are anything other than a fraud? Your inane explanations aren't convincing us of squat. Stop wasting your time.
I have very little to contribute to the discussion of monarchy in general*. However, one thing about the shared royalty of Europe is apparent. Breeding people as if they were horses has unfortunate consequences.
*I suppose I could say that I find it repellent on a a very basic, emotional level. However, I am an American of recent Irish ancestry, so my upbringing was steeped in anti-royal sentiment.
Milü = 355/113 = π + 0.0000002...
The Chinese mathematician Zu Chongzhi computed this approximation around the year 490.
Just about 1100 years before the first European got it.
Thankfully, this doesn't happen so much any more.
Even as an anarchist (perhaps more so as an anarchist?), I can sympathize with hereditary royals. People tend to focus on the privileges and wealth that go with the condition, but the other side is that people who are held to be living embodiments of something simply due to the circumstances of their birth are confined to certain roles, unable to develop and express their full humanity. - SC, OM
Indeed. The British "royal family" is profoundly disfunctional. The whole Diana saga made that quite obvious - Charles marrying this naive young woman even though he had a lover he had no intention of giving up, simply for breeding purposes - but it goes much wider than that. While divorce is not itself an indication of psychological damage, three out of four children divorced (Charles, Anne, Andrew) raises eyebrows, and the exception is Edward, universally believed to be a closeted gay. Going back a generation, their father, Philip, had a wretched childhood, which has apparently left him incapable of having, or at least expressing, any affection for his children while Margaret (Liz's sister) drank and smoked herself to death; and Liz herself quite obviously prefers dogs and horses to people.
Back another, Liz's mother was also a heavy drinker and gambler - although she lived to 101; Liz's father was a timid neurotic who also smoked himself to death, and her uncle was a Nazi sympathiser with severe psychosexual problems. There is a recorded saying of George V, Liz's grandfather:
"My father was frightened of his mother; I was frightened of my father, and I am damned well going to see to it that my children are frightened of me."
Carlie,
there is a saying in French that goes
vielle poule fait bon bouillon
(old hen makes good broth)
Er, no comment. :)
Knockgoats,
It's entirely up to you whether you wish to use the Queen's actual title, but at least show her the respect you would show to any member of the public. Would you ordinarily call someone you didn't know by a diminutive that he or she doesn't use of him- or herself? Calling her "Liz" is surely a little disrespectful.
Ol' Greg:
Why do women say stuff like that about themselves? Is it some culturally enforced modesty, or a preemptive defense against sexism/objectification, or something else entirely that makes women (nearly all of them, in my experience, except those for whom being beautiful is a significant part of their profession) downplay and even denigrate their own attractiveness?
There's lots of "conventional wisdom" (most of it fairly reductive, IMHO) about What Men Like™ when it comes to women's looks... but IMHO "interesting" is almost always hot.
You say that like it's a bad thing! ;^)
And if you're hinting at a Seinfeld scenario, I'm not buying it.
Yah, I realized after the fact that I'd mistaken the image title for the set title. Sorry.
And do you really think you're entitled to spread rumours (in some cases, entirely unsubstantiated ones) about the personal lives and psychiatric issues of members of the Royal Family?
oh yeah, btw, y'all get to congratulate me:NDSU has accepted my application, and the gubmint sez I'm eligible for $5500 in grants. - Jadehawk
Yah! Congratulations, Jadehawk!
What Britain needs is a SpokesGay. - Josh, Official SpokesGay
We have one: Stephen Fry. Mind you, he is a bit too establishment these days - hobnobs with the royals himself.
Walton: Note that one of the points of reticulation in the Victorian family...ermmm..."tree" is the union between Elizabeth* and Phillip in 1947. The issue of this union are still extant.
*That's as respectful as I likely am going to get.
Self preservation. Saying something positive about oneself is an invitation for abuse.
"I like my shoes!" leads to "who does that ugly whore think she is... I'm gonna key her car up and kill her dog" in my experience :( :(
Maybe not so disrespectful: I hear she's a pretty nice girl.
AE:
Presumably breeding like horses (or dogs or cats or cattle... i.e., selectively breeding for desirable heritable traits and ruthlessly culling undesirable outcomes) would work, however morally horrifying the prospect of applying those methods to humans might be. It's breeding based on nongenetic attributes like name and title, along with nobody having the stomach (or nads) to cull the monarch's monstrous offspring, that creates the problems you reference, AFAIK.
Hey, a little outbreeding might be a good thing for the Royal Family.
Walton | March 14, 2010 4:54 AM:
Those are the symptoms of insufficient sleep. I am not a doctor, but I would recommend less socializing with socialist atheists and more zzzzzzzzzzzzzzs.
knockgoats,
are you the same commenter as the one who received an OM in Sept. 2008 and whose name rhymes with your handle ?
Keep this in mind, though:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purebred_(dog)#Eugenics_and_history
Walton:
Yeah, that Catherine the Great thing slowed them down a bit.
:-)
As long as people like you are defending the hereditary monarchy, you betcha. Absolutely. Anything to decrease respect for the institution, and the people who participate in it.
More, please!
(I might change my mind if there was ever an heir to the throne that wasn't rich or white or upper class. Until then, the tawdrier the better, IMHO.)
But if you'd rather discuss heads on pikes...
For the record, my "no comment" response to that wasn't reading anything like this into it. I was defending those of us who like (and to whatever extent prefer) to hang out with dogs and horses.
Because most republics have had so many elected leaders who weren't rich, white and upper-class, of course: and because we all know that racism, class and wealth play no role whatsoever in democratic elections. I was forgetting about the long line of disabled gay African-American women from poor rural backgrounds who have been elected President of the United States.
So evidently it's OK to insult and degrade people, and speculate wildly about their personal lives and emotional problems, to make a political point: because, of course, it's their own fault for being born into the Royal Family.
[/snark]
It's entirely up to you whether you wish to use the Queen's actual title, but at least show her the respect you would show to any member of the public. - Walton
Ah, it's good to know I can still tweak the stick up Walton's arse [note to lurking Intersectionists: this is a metaphor - maybe you've heard of them]. Walton, I'll do that when she stops claiming I owe her allegiance, mm'kay?
And do you really think you're entitled to spread rumours (in some cases, entirely unsubstantiated ones) about the personal lives and psychiatric issues of members of the Royal Family?
Yes. If any of them renounce their royal status I will stop doing so. While they maintain it, they (as long as they are adult) are fair game.
Ol' Greg:
<sigh>
I was afraid it was something like that. What a truly fucked up world we live in, eh?
Ah, well... in deference to your safety and wellbeing, I will keep your quirky prettiness a closely guarded secret.
I had no idea anyone in Old "Bri?n" said it that way. - Bill Dauphin
Yes, they do. among the yoof, I'd say it's more widespread than any other pronunciation. That's why we'll adopt it for the BSSR - yer godda be, like, darn wiv de yoof, init?
Yikes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedigree_Dogs_Exposed
Walton:
Yes. Sure. As long as their heads are on coins and not pikes.
More sleaze, please.
No, it's their fault for not denouncing the institution and recommending that it be abolished, and trying to maintain a pretence that it's respectable.
It's not respectable. It's bread and circuses. I might as well have some fun at the circus, laughing at the upper-class clowns.
Or if they're going to go along with it at all, they should at least marry the occasional person of a different class or race. If it's going to be a symbolic marriage anyhow, like Charles's, how about marrying, say, a black person rather than yet another hereditary aristocrat? (You know, like Bowie marrying Iman. How awful would that be?)
Hereditary aristocracy? Yikes. Don't you notice a little racism there? (Ever heard of a "grandfather clause"?)
Defender of the Faith? Gimme a fucking break.
Until they start showing a little real respectability, fuck 'em.
Besides, poking at you is fun. :-)
it's their own fault for being born into the Royal Family. - Walton
No, for staying in it. This is not to demand that they cut off contact with their relatives - just renounce any hereditary titles, and their place in the order of succession.
I find that impossible to square* with my impression of you. Please wear stilts if you ever get photographed with PeeZed.
Congrats, Jadehawk! Knock'em dead!**
*Pun intended.
**Not to be taken literally.
Walton,
you don't like people calling the british monarch Liz, maybe it's because, as you've said, you have "deep personal respect" for her ?
btw what's the difference between "deep personal respect" and "respect"? And why do you show her this "deep personal respect"?
Knockgoats,
did you see my question to you #847 ?
Walton,
Granted my knowledge of the UK is limited, but from what I hear the royal family regularly makes the tabloids there. They're sorta like your Paris Hilton. At least most of us are embarrassed about our overexposed heiresses.
(Ewwww....I just got a disturbing mental image of a night cam video and Elizabeth II....)
Well there's Evo Morales who wasn't any of the those three things. Same with Hugo Chavez*. I know you probably don't like either of them, but they were popularly elected. Barack Obama is from a fairly humble background and while his mother is "white" he is seen as "black" in the US.
How many British monarchs were minorities from the lower class?
* Well, I think he has some European ancestry, but I don't want to reopen the discussion on race.
Wanda Sykes for president!
___
Honestly Walton, why is this such an important/emotional issue for you?
Ol' Greg ... feral flat chives
Yikes, that the damned stuff has got all the way up there. Then again, it's tasty and you're doing a good thing if you eat it all.
boyg: One of my buddies played a gig for a Darklady event a while back.
We know each other from the old Usenet alt.recovery.catholicism group.
Menyambal, that's pretty much what I did when I saw the bronze horse. I think I interfered with traffic a bit. I think I got my toes stepped on. Didn't notice. Granny's right.
Josh: Oh, and ronsullivan - did you refer to yourself as "auntie ron" at some point in the recent past? I hope so, for I should like to call you Auntie Ron from now on:)
I'd be honored. I'm a total haole Hawai'iphile and I'm using it in the Hawai'ian sense. I was thrilled the first time someone in the ohana at the Templebar called me "Auntie."
BTW - fabulous photo of that cactus-like plant called "vegetable frisbee." Did you take that?
Thank you! Yes, at the San Francisco Flower and Garden Show a year or two back. It's an aeonium from the Canary Islands; lots of Canary Is. plants get used in the landscape here. A. tabuliformium, if I've got the modifier right.
I took one of a couple of protea blooms (I think it's in the same Flickr set) that I really like, too. Kinda lucked out that year.
It's a lovely sunny day in Berkeley and the goddamnedsumbitchshitpissfucking fruitless mulberries on the street are starting to bloom already. I think I better get out of town for the day.
Happy Pi Day, all.
O.o
If you are getting this response from someone, then this/these individual(s) is/are psychotic. Avoid them as much as possible.
/worriedly.
RuPaul for Queen.
Dear monarchists/republicans (or, I suppose, Walton/everyone else),
I have thought of an absolutely brilliant compromise solution that I am 100% certain will make everyone happy.
Nothing can possibly go wrong with this idea. Nothing !!
However, I will wait until the next incarnation of The Thread to post it.
Oddly enough, none of the Presidents of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, post-apartheid South Africa, Nigeria, China, Taiwan, Korea (North or South), Vietnam, Ghana, Botswana... have been white (although Ghana and Botswana have both had one Presidnet with one white parent). The Presidents of India have included several Muslims and one Sikh (members of religious minorities), and the current incumbent is a woman, Pratibha Patil. But then, India is only the world's most populous democracy, so it hardly counts, eh Walton?
neg, yes.
I just watched "Pedigree Dogs Exposed." People are idiots.
You know Morgan-Mar?!!
::fanbois::
Bill Dauphin, thank you kindly for the compliments; I didn't take anything you said the wrong way. :) I'm notoriously camera shy, always have been.
SC, I'm having trouble with you being 5'4". I imagined you as being quite tall.
Walton:
Tu quoque much, Walton? Fuck it up much?
We just elected a "black" man president of the U.S., and his opponent for his party's nomination was a woman, and the vice-presidential candidate on the opposing ticket was a lower-class woman. (Too bad she's low class, to boot. Damn.)
We've had a number of presidents from dirt poor as well as middle class backgrounds for quite some time now---ever hear of Abe Lincoln?---and several just in my lifetime. (E.g., Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton were poor, and several others were middle class in the American sense.)
When y'all have somebody born poor or a black person or an avowed non-Christian in line for the throne, do let me know and I'll ease up.
Or even when the heir apparent decides to marry one, and it's not an issue, as it was last time your King decided to marry---*gasp!*---an American, and abdicated to do it.
Until then, please shove your oh-so-respectable racist, classist, nationalist traditions up your ass so far that they come out your nose, and I owe you a keyboard.
(Walton---sorry if that's a bit over the top, but I thought I'd give the Intersucktion prigs a thrill.)
The Rabid Rat and his syncopates are having a bad time. At the end of an article on the Primary Syncopate in Ireland admitting he helped to cover up some child abuse cases is this list:
Yeah... except that was in 1936. Would you like me to judge American society on what it was like in 1936?
Walton:
For fuck's sake, Walton, give your fantasies a rest and visit reality. No, it's not 1936 anymore, but the whole "who you can and cannot marry" crap is still going on with regard to royalty. If it wasn't, Charles wouldn't have Married Diana. And putting the prospective brides on the slab to check their virginity?
Yeah, things have really progressed. /sarcasm
not to forget that it had to be decided for him whether or not Charles could finally marry the woman he's been fucking for years anyway.
what a pile of crap.
That's only true to the extent that the Act of Settlement 1701 provides that no one who marries a Catholic may succeed to the throne. When someone in the line of succession marries a Catholic, he or she is simply excluded from succession; this was most recently the case with Prince Michael of Kent, who married a Catholic. There are no other repercussions, other than being unable to succeed to the throne.
It is also technically true that under the Royal Marriages Act 1772, a person in line to the throne (other than the issue of princesses who marry into foreign royal families) is not allowed to marry without the consent of the Queen in Council. Any royal marriage contracted without permission is void. However, in practice, consent to a marriage has never been refused, so this is a non-issue.
Er... what?
SC OM@866,
Yes, and this is by no means a new problem. Konrad Lorenz (not someone whose views on moral issues I'd normally endorse!) was complaining about it in Man Meets Dog, published before 1954 (the date of the English tranlation from the German).
Walton:
No, but I said that partly as an opening for you to say whether in fact things have changed all that much.
My impression is that the Royals still play along with the date-within-your-peer-group thing, where "peers" does not include people who are not hereditary aristocrats.
E.g., Charles marrying Lady Diana Spencer.
Do you think that was just coincidence?
Do you really think that's changed? Will his son marry a commoner? An American? A black person? An avowed non-Christian?
That's not a rhetorical question. Please answer it.
I would hope and expect that that's not quite as far-fetched as it once was, but so far as I know, the Royals aren't making any real effort to undermine that reprehensible aspect of their tradition. They're not going out of their way to socialize with and date people from other classes or or racial or ethnic or religious groups.
They're not even saying it would make a nice change if the Prince happened to find a nice black girl to marry, are they? (I would be delighted to find out I'm wrong, and the Royals are making noises about not following the tradition of noble inbreeding and insularity.)
Which, I argue, they should do if they don't want the system abolished. It's not like there aren't plenty of suitable mates among other groups---intelligent, well-educated, attractive people who just happen not to be descended from the same pool of European aristocrats, or belong to the Church of England, or whatever.
Why not preferentially hang out with and date those people, so that if you do meet somebody and fall in love with them, you can do a little outbreeding? (For the symbolic value if nothing else.)
And if Royal matings are about "suitable mates" and not about love, it's an even better idea to do things differently than they've done before. Then it's dead easy to find a mate from outside the inbred circle of the "nobility."
The more important you think the tradition is, as a symbol, the more important I think it is to change it, as a symbol.
As it stands, it is symbolic of many of the worst things, including self-congratulatory racism, classism, religious bigotry, nationalism, and xenophobia.
It doesn't have to be that way, does it?
And if it does have to be that way, shouldn't it be abolished?
Near as I can tell, the Royal Family is behind the curve of social change, when it should be ahead of it, for the symbolism.
Jadehawk:
Yep. The lives people are forced to lead, whether they want them or not, it's pathetic. Slavish lives led in costumes.
Walton, you have no business pointing out that this isn't 1936 when you'd rather live in the fucking 1700s. That crap is not relevant. As for virginity checking? Apparently you don't pay much attention to what goes on with modern royalty.
Hey! I'm the king of the world!
You ought to hear my song!
You come on and measure me!
I'm fifty inches long!
Paul W. @#876: I honestly have no idea who the Princes William and Harry are likely to marry, and wouldn't like to speculate on this point. Bear in mind that Prince William was a student at the University of St Andrews (where he studied geography), and that both Princes have trained at Sandhurst and served in the British Army, so both of them know plenty of people from outside royal/aristocratic social circles.
But there would be no legal or political issue regarding whoever the Princes wished to marry, unless either of them wanted to marry a Roman Catholic. (This does not apply to any religion other than Roman Catholicism; either Prince could marry a Baptist, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Mormon or an atheist without any problem whatsoever.) Even then, I suspect that, if either Prince married a Catholic and was excluded from the line of succession for doing so, the sympathies of the public would be on the Prince's side (and it's not unlikely that the Act of Settlement would be amended).
Ich bin der Kaiser und ich will Knödel.
My German is fairly rudimentary... "I am the Emperor and I want a dumpling"?
Walton:
Oh, it's just Catholics, specifically?
And it's just a rule who about who can be on the throne?
Golly.
How do you think Catholics in the U.K. feel about that, e.g., in Catholic neighborhoods in Glasgow, or in Northern fucking Ireland.
Are you totally clueless why a lot of people despise the English?
Give me a break.
The idea that such a law is on the books and you want people to respect the Royal Family is patently ridiculous.
If there's a rule about not being able to succeed if you marry a Catholic, all Royal heirs should just say no---refuse to be monarch, or play along with all the Royal tomfoolery---until that unjust rule is changed, whether they personally want to marry a Catholic or not. They shouldn't be party to it. It's wrong.
And if they won't just say no, and demand that it should be changed, other people should say throw the bums out and (symbolically) put their heads on pikes.
Bill Donohue is right about you.
You have hatred of Catholics---not just Catholicism, but Catholics---enshrined in law.
Good going, asshole.
Yeah, as long as you defend the Royal Family that way, I'll be asking for more sleaze, please. Those people don't deserve any more respect than our heirs and heiresses, like Paris Hilton. Less, I think.
Walton@874,
Allegedly, Diana had to submit to a medical examination to ensure that she was virgo intacta before her engagement to Charles was announced.
I believe it's still technically a serious crime to screw the wife of the King or that of the heir to the throne. However, Diana's lovers during the time she was married to Charels (allegedly at least 3 of them, one of whom, James Hewitt, cashed in on a considerable scale by publishing supposed details) got away with it.
Been without electricity for a while...amazing winds last night. Saw a few mentions of pi day above; anyone linked this catchy little tune? (via my daughter):
http://pi.ytmnd.com/
Paul W., I'm not personally responsible for the Act of Settlement 1701 (which was passed nearly three hundred years before I was born). Nor, indeed, are the Royal Family responsible for it. It's an Act of Parliament, and can only be amended by Parliament. The Royal Family don't get any say in the rules that govern succession. It's a matter of law.
For the record, I support (and have advocated in the past) amending the Act so as to remove the discrimination against Catholics. I also support disestablishing the Church of England and removing the monarch's religious role. So I don't know why you're so personally hostile.
Happy Pi Day!
Habanero Pumpkin Pie
2 minced fresh habanero peppers
1/2 cup brown or maple sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin
2 eggs
1 (12-ounce) can evaporated skim milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 (9-inch) pie crust
De-stem and de-seed the habanero peppers and mince finely. It is recommended that habaneros be handled with disposable plastic gloves. Do not touch eyes or other sensitive areas until you wash hands and utensils well.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a medium bowl, mix the sugar and spices well, breaking up any lumps of sugar. With a mixer or whisk, blend the pumpkin into the sugar and spice mixture. Beat eggs separately, then add to the pumpkin mixture along with the evaporated milk and vanilla. Blend well.
Blend the minced habanero peppers into pumpkin mixture evenly. Pour into a 9-inch pie crust and place in oven. A pie skirt may be placed underneath to catch spills.
Bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 375 degrees, and continue baking for 40 to 45 minutes, until set and evenly browned. Cool completely on a rack before serving.
Serving this pie with plenty of whipped cream will contrast well with the heat. This recipe may be varied by adding 1/2-teaspoon nutmeg. Also, instead of vanilla extract, maple flavoring or cinnamon extract may be substituted.
because you're being personally defensive about the monarchy, which makes no fucking sense.
Does anyone want to explain that quote to Walton, or shall I do it?
Janine, I think you should handle it. I'm going to get more tea.
Seriously Walton, why is this so important to you?
I'm not trying to be condescending. I really don't get it.
Well, it's the one last bastion of my former arch-Tory beliefs. Over the last two years (to the dismay of some of my friends and acquaintances) I've mutated into an "unsound" secular progressive pro-choice pro-gender-equality godless libertarian. I'm not "conservative" any more, in any real recognised sense of the word. Yet I can cling to one vestigial element of conservatism; my support for monarchy, and consequent ability to sing God save the Queen and participate in the Loyal Toast with some sincere enthusiasm. I feel like if I abandon monarchism, I will basically have completely abandoned any remaining claim to be a real Tory. :-)
Plus, don't forget, I did take an oath of allegiance to the Queen when I joined the Officer Training Corps a couple of years ago. I feel like one shouldn't break one's promises.
Randy Milholland did the best ever send-up of that in Something Positive but as usual his utterly unnavigatable archive makes it impossible to dig up. (Seriously?! What's the point of giving strips/storylines names, when those names are never ever shown alongside the strip when it's read?! arrghle rarrghle blarrghle)
I haven't waded into the neo-revolutionary discussions, but this seems eerily similar in structure to when Walton and strange gods were arguing about the Conservative party. In both cases you have an institution that is a status marker of a particular caste of British citizens, and Walton disagrees in substance with pretty much everything they stand for, yet keeps a fierce hold on them. Maybe because they are markers of the class Walton aspires to (or is already in and wants to stay there)? Or because he's been taught that a proper English subject supports them, and he's very patriotic? I'm not trying to armchair diagnose Walton as much as provide some lines for him to think along - if you do disagree with so many of the details and effects of those status markers, what is it that is keeping you tied to the markers, and are there other ways you could think of express what those markers stand for?
TAKE ME NOW, BIG BOY!
unf unf unf
Good lord, Walton, people expect better from you. You're an intelligent guy willing to debate his views with others and change them if warranted. This emotional clinging to monarchy is embarrassing, and it's beneath you. If you like the aesthetic of the whole affair, then just admit it. Lots of people enjoy the spectacle of pomp and circumstance. But please stop trying to justify with these flimsy arguments.
Am I the only one who wants to make Walton sit through The Ruling Class? That's breeding speaking to breeding.
Move ahead to 5:20 to get to the part I want.
Thanks a lot, Sven. Now I'm going to be singing that song all freakin' day. Both verses.
Caine (@886):
Two whole habs? Even de-seeded, that's some serious heat. That's got to be one flaming pie, indeed!
Word!
Word up!
In fact, don't touch sensitive areas for a day or so even after you've washed... or at least do so with great care. I've had the heat linger perceptibly in my skin (and especially in my fingernails) for up to a week after handling habaneros, even though I put on gloves before I started cutting. And my habs, grown as they are in the relatively cool, moist climes of CT, are probably not as hot as what you'll get in your (as AB would put it) local megamart. Be careful.
That said, I loves me some habaneros! Despite my best intentions, I've not yet attempted the Sweet Spicy Bacon you posted earlier; now I have two hot-sweet items I need to cook!
The inbreeding that is done to keep titles and land within a dynastic house does great damage to the people born into that family. Charles II of Spain was brought up as a fine example of where inbreeding ends up, a dead end.
The line I quoted, Ich bin der Kaiser und ich will Knödel., is by Ferdinand I of Austria. He was of low intelligence, suffered from greatly from epileptic seizures and was deemed to be incapable of fathering a child. It was claimed that this line was one of the few intelligible things he said, though he was able to keep a diary.
As I stated before, the monarchy is a drain. It took some extremely bloody wars to defang the power of the aristocracy and the monarchy. It is not an institution worth keeping. And for the sake of the descendants of the royals, the monarchy should be renounced and be allowed to mingle with the general population.
And, frankly Walton, you should have enough pride in yourself to not grovel to such an unearned seat of power.
Might I interrupt with a modest request of those of you living in the U.S.? Tomorrow begins the week that will in all likelihood make or break healthcare reform, starting with key votes in the House of Representatives. I've spoken with my congressman today, and he tells me that the Tea Party types are continuing to protest and flood the phones and mailboxes of members, in an attempt to drown out the voices of support.
Even if you've already told your representative what you think... even if you're sure your rep will vote to pass reform, please take a moment to call or send an e-mail to reaffirm your support. Strange as it seems, the numbers of calls matters, and it will matter again in November when your rep will have to defend his/her vote against accusations of "not listening to constituents" from Tea-Party-driven opponents.
I know many of you are disappointed with the scope and reach of the proposed reforms, but AFAIK almost nobody supports retaining the status quo, and that's the only other option on the table: Republicans insist on no change at all, and backing the proposed reforms is the only way we'll ever get off the dime.
Of course, counting phone calls and e-mails in no more scientific than an internet poll... but there are people out there who take it seriously, and this is one poll that desperately needs Pharyngulating! You can locate the contact information for your elected representatives here; at the moment, it's the House that matters, but it wouldn't be amiss to call your senators, and the White House, too, for good measure.
I apologize for the intrusion to all you anarchists, communists, monarchists, und so weiter, who read these pages from outside the U.S.; you may carry on with your regularly scheduled conversation.
Janine: I'm well aware that inbreeding among royal families was, historically, a huge problem.
However, this is much less of an issue today, because royals are no longer restricted to marrying members of other royal families, and royal marriages are no longer used as tools of international diplomacy. Don't forget that the late Prince Rainier of Monaco married Grace Kelly. Princess Tessy, wife of the Crown Prince of Luxembourg, is from an ordinary background and previously served as a corporal in the Luxembourg army. Felipe, Prince of Asturias, the heir to the Spanish throne, is married to a former CNN television journalist. The Crown Prince of Norway met his wife at a rock festival, and, again, she is from an ordinary background and previously worked in a café. There are countless further examples.
Oh man. Thread growth rates beyond good and evil. Comment 668:
As an ideology? :-/
:-D
Reminds me of a deeply ridiculous Austrian reactionary student organization (German Wikipedia; no information available in English) which was founded in 1974 and belongs to this organization which is linked to the Austro-Hungarian imperial family and a long list of members of ex-noble families...
:-S In the 5th year of school, we were once told to run barefoot through a bit of snow. It wasn't even cold. It hurt. Stung outright.
...And that reminds me of the time when I wanted to check if the heat under the oil bath was on. For reasons of poetic elegance or something, I did that by whipping the tip of my right ring finger at the cooking plate and back with the kind of motion used to turn a key. Well, the heat was on... it was at 180 °C. It wasn't hot, it stung – because I developed a tiny gas bubble in the skin that stayed for days.
But do go to the Louvre anyway. It's big enough to get lost in it. The paintings are just a small part...
The Mona Lisa is, like, the size of a laptop. You'd need to get up close to see it in any detail, and, well, you won't.
:-o
D-d-d-d-d-do they have any kind of biologist who'd take a postdoc?
What the fuck. Money. Over two years in Austrian subsidies when I still got any.
...So, yes, congratulations indeed. :-)
Then you're taller than me; at 1.75, I should be 5'9" if I guesstimated the math correctly.
:-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
Sounds good, except you should really commit an anachronism and replace the turnips by potatoes.
Sel de Guérande :-9 – having access to French supermarkets, I supply my whole family with it, up to the grandparents :-)
(For those not in the know: big crystals of sea salt, up to 3 mm in diameter; slightly grayish; contains so much magnesium that it never gets really dry. It's not even sold really dry.)
Well, what could still happen, seriously? How hard can the exams be, how often are you allowed to repeat them...?
Ambitious.
Not impossible, mind you. My brother studied International Development, which had only been created shortly before, and which includes some amount of social studies as well as things like soil science... it all fit together quite nicely.
:-) You're even lazier than I :-)
(Though it does happen to me that I run out of milk, can't find the time to by any in the "morning" before I have to go*, and then get home just after the store closes...)
* A limit set by when the cafeteria closes... at 2 pm.
I hope you did.
Headache: aspirin.
Day saved. :-D
Do you mean "Top 5 Most German"? The Brazilian ones were always included with the English ones for these lists, though; only German ones have ever been Most German.
I have no idea why it was stopped (months ago). I haven't read scienceblogs.de at all since then...
The low-resolution photos allow you to project your own desires into them...?
I've read this kind of thing as an explanation for why, for instance, Ingrid Bergman was considered beautiful by so many: her empty face let people interpret into it what they wanted.
:-D
Cool! Team up with this linguist.
Though... French eau = au = ô = about half the cases of o is [o], not any kind of [əʊ]. You're not going to find [o] for an English oh outside of Scotland. That said, some southern British aw/ore sounds go all the way to [o].
Besides, I'm not sure if anyone really says [əʊ]. Most Britons seem to have passed it and veered off towards phenomena like [ɵʊ]... I've even encountered [œy], which is about the same as the Finnish öy. Madness !!
My institutional address is rue Buffon 48.
BTW, did he really write égalemant? I could believe that, but chevale is nigh impossible.
The Institute of Paleontology of the University of Vienna has, in its teaching collection, the mounted skeleton of such a beast. Huge, fully ossified, and lots of bones fused. A sight to behold!
Please explain to us the terms energy, field, and magnetism.
And try to find the study that showed acupuncture does no better than sticking needles into random spots on the body (and much less deep than official acupuncture). It looks like all effect comes from the pain – pain in one place distracting from pain in another was recently shown to occur, but I have no hope of finding the reference.
What is "DNA*" supposed to mean, and what is it supposed to have to do with wound healing???
What's the difference to communism then? (I'm used to two other sets of definitions of these terms.)
It's extremely widespread for any t behind a vowel, including words like it. Still not considered a prestigious pronunciation... so far.
Two Three Amongst our weapons are things come to mind, completely apart from self-preservation.
One is... it's not just women and Walton. I have always considered myself ugly, or average at best; before the Mad Women of Pharyngula (and even they haven't been very explicit as far as I remember), nobody ever complimented me on my looks however vaguely, and I don't think I look like what the media consider handsome men.
(Yeah, OK. My mother once said I have a "fine" face, as in "finely crafted" or "not coarse". Well.)
Then, if you're straight enough, you literally can't tell if you're handsome from looking at the mirror or a photo of yourself. I can tell I sometimes look cute, but, despite some overlap, that's not the same thing. Babies and lolkittehz are cute.
The second point is why I wrote "I don't think" in the first; I don't know for what features to look that I might have in common with officially handsome people.
Finally, tastes differ, not only where their focus lies but also in how narrow they are. For instance, yours is clearly broader than mine. Mine seems to be more like the color vision of a mantis shrimp: a few well-separated, very narrow bands (I don't even know how many) in a vast, vast spectrum.
...This closes the circle to the first point: what I just said so poetically is that most people are ugly, so I expect myself to be ugly, too :-)
Oh, that reminds me... I don't think the Mad Women of Pharyngula have seen my nose in profile yet. (Most of them certainly haven't.) I look a lot cuter from in front than from a side.
I can't keep up!