RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive29

Homeopathy is
... like tossing a gold tooth into a bag of nickels and declaring all of the nickels are now gold coins. The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 18:29, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Nice straw man argument there. You shake the bag afterwards and voilá, gold! 18:34, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Toss one quarter into a bag with 1,000,000 slugs. Remove 1 random unit from bag and add it to another bag of 1,000,000 slugs.  Repeat once more (and don't forget the shaking!), now remove 1,000 units from bag.  They are now all quarters!  18:44, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Zing! I forgot the shake part. I am so burned out on homeopathy right now, though. I just finished my thesis on it for English and I am just glad it is done! Props go out to PalMD, for adding the Lancet Paper link in a way I could cannibalize for the citation at 4:30 AM when my brain decided to fizz out and to ListenerX, I think, who uploaded and tweaked the magnitude.svg file that illustrates my page 5, right after I spent half a page talking about how kick-ass Avogadro's number and the mole are. The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 18:45, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * If you need an article that you found on PubMed but your school doesn't subscribe to the particular journal, try scholar.google.com. Often they have links to other sited hosting the pdf.  Just a tip.  Corry (talk) 04:23, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, homeopaths don't argue that the nickels don't turn to gold. They argue that the nickels remember the gold.  Corry (talk) 04:24, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Aw, snap! I was just about to deposit them.... My bank account "remembers" having a balance... 05:20, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It's more like; toss one quarter into a bag with 1,000,000 slugs. Remove 1 random unit from bag and add it to another bag of 1,000,000 slugs. Remove 1 random unit from bag and add it to another bag of 1,000,000 slugs. Remove 1 random unit from bag and add it to another bag of 1,000,000 slugs. Remove 1 random unit from bag and add it to another bag of 1,000,000 slugs. Remove 1 random unit from bag and add it to another bag of 1,000,000 slugs. Remove 1 random unit from bag and add it to another bag of 1,000,000 slugs. Remove 1 random unit from bag and add it to another bag of 1,000,000 slugs. Remove 1 random unit from bag and add it to another bag of 1,000,000 slugs. Remove 1 random unit from bag and add it to another bag of 1,000,000 slugs. Remove 1 random unit from bag and add it to another bag of 1,000,000 slugs. Remove 1 random unit from bag and add it to another bag of 1,000,000 slugs. Then put three drops on his tongue, if that doesn't cure him, I don't know what will.  13:00, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

WhyEvolution.com
Oh wow, I just stumbled across this gem of a site and couldn't find any reference to it here. A bit of interesting what-the-fuckery, but most of it is the usual guff (ignore the tired crap arguments on the homepage and delve into the utter shit such as their Giraffe page which completely ignores the secondary sexual feature argument of the neck evolution instead). 20:54, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You bastard. You've just fucked up my brain as I was about to go to bed. Now I'll be refuting that stuff all night. 21:54, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Gods and godlings, you've stumbled across a whole website of the weak. -- 22:08, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, the front page scores at least a 0.45 on the Time Cube Scale of Horrendous Formatting. 12:58, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Have a look at the HTML. It is quite remarkable. Because they have just as much understanding of web formatting as they do of evolution, they are using around the whole page to get a right margin :) The font colouring and placement is all very childish. I suspect the author was late teens when they first started on it (either mentally or physically). 13:39, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm afraid that I take the opposite view: it's an antique nutter who's tried to learn the bare minimum of HTML (note the repeated ineffective use of   ...  ). Possibly someone even older than me trying to show these damn kids how to do it! It's fun anyway. 15:28, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * And running it through the w3c validator makes for interesting reading... 15:30, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Goat Quote
[…] the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent and have to be led. (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods) I'm sure most of ya'll have seen this, but I quite liked it. 08:35, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually reading Small Gods right now. Just saw that quote. ENorman (talk) 22:03, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Small Gods is the best, but some of the others are funnier. -- 22:46, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Public information
Norfolk in a caravan park (US: trailer park?) in bad weather, even for free, is not my idea of a holiday. If the only entertainment is a crappy TV signal (no digital!) and a village pub (when you're banned from alcohol), then coming home, even for an outpatient appointment, is heaven. 15:41, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Nice. It could be worse, you could be in a tent in this weather. 15:43, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Whereabouts in Norfolk? I grew up in Norwich. 15:44, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * On the coast (nearly) at a place called "Sea Palling"(!). About 25 - 30 miles from Norwich - got a lot of reading done And some nice (but flat) seaside walks. 15:58, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Mustn't forget the famous Waxham Barn of course! 16:01, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Heh, there isn't that much to do in the whole of Norfolk. Everything's spoilt and ruined now. There was a fantastic, beautiful pub called the Ugly Bug just outside Norwich which had a lake, peacocks, and a little dove house in the garden, but it started getting more and more scum infested as time went on and we stopped going when a group of chavs made a racist comment to my wife. 16:05, 21 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh dear, English caravan parks can be depressing even in good weather. I spent a lot of time in Norfolk during the 80s (Horning, North Walsham, Snettisham) and know that it's not exactly interesting. Have you tried fossil hunting around Cromer? 16:25, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It was fucking raining! Anyhow I'm home now after the "rest". We spent almost two years drifting round Scotland caravan park to caravan park in a tatty old motor home (RV) - it's OK if you've got the health & stuff but I haven't & it was B O R I N G in Norfolk. 16:32, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * According to Stephen Fry - so it must be true - there's a medical condition known as NFN which stands for 'normal for Norfolk'. Silver Sloth (talk) 16:54, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh that isn't a condition, per say. Just a way of saying "Yes, this person is retarded in some fashion, but they're from Norfolk so it's the norm". A politician did get in trouble in Norfolk for saying that the high incidence of diabetes is due to the inbreeding. 18:22, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * According to old motormouth Jeremy Clarkson, Norfolk Life is the world's smallest magazine. 18:52, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Minor USian clarification, what you describe would more likely be called a campground here. A trailer park is a place where people live in "mobile homes". 00:28, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Dunbar's number
According to our statistics page we have now passed the commonly cited wp:Dunbar's number in terms of active users. Just thought I would point it out. tmtoulouse 17:44, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * What's the statistic's page definition of an active user?  17:55, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Activity in the previous seven days. 20:24, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I didn't think Dunbar's number would be relevant to online communities, as you don't really need to be aware of everyone's existence in the same way as in "real life". 18:22, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I think it is arguable, the issue with Dunbar's number is the idea of a sense of community and goal-directed behavior. When a community reaches a certain size you loose out on "community memory" as a mechanism for establishing action, goals, and behavior. Instead you have to start establishing a much more rigid system of rules and bureaucracy. Also people who seek out the sense of community will no longer find that in the site as a whole, and rather you start developing splinter communities with smaller numbers of people with in the sub-groups. It is just an interesting observation to keep in mind, that if we continue to grow as a site we are likely to run into conflicts where community memory can no longer solve the problem. Keep an eye out for sub-groups as well, which I think can all ready be identified. tmtoulouse 18:59, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * P.S. just a plug again for one of my favorite wiki's MeatBall Wiki Community may not scale has some good discussion of this issue as it applies to online communities. tmtoulouse 19:04, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * No wonder we are becoming so cliché. 192.43.227.18 01:24, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't you mean cliquey? 08:23, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * No cliché. 11:56, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Dunbar's number is also referenced in The Tipping Point, I believe. Sterile 01:44, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * My Dunbar's number is about three. :( 08:24, 16 July 2009 (UTC)


 * This is a bit nuts. You don't even know who each other are - the next poster could be serving 3 consecutive life sentances for axe murdering. MarcusCicero (talk) 10:05, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It' only two consecutive life sentences you insensitive clod! Silver Sloth (talk) 10:49, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I see what you mean, Trent, but I think we're already going off into sort of sub-groups now, although they're not exclusive and there is a lot of flexibility. For instance, if I wander over to Talk_WIGO:CP for a bit, I see names pop up that I've never seen before so I think we already have the group that is interested in the wiki as a whole, and the group that focuses on Conservapedia almost exclusively. But I think with Dunbar's Number it sort of assumes that everyone is equally present in the community. Even among the wiki's active users (are you defining this via the statistics page that says an active user is one that has made an edit in the last 7 days?) there will be a massive variation in posting/editing rate. The ones that edit very infrequently - at least as far as the much more regular contirbuters are concerned - may as well count as just one person. I think online communities do suffer those problems when you get above a certain threshold, but I think (unless we find a way of redefining "active" so that it matches) that threshold is much higher. 12:23, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Armond has a good point. As a heavy user, I mostly "keep track" of who is who, but random two time posters are kind of all the same to me.  Obviously, the more active people are ones I "recognize", and have "relationships" with (meaning, I piss them off). But still, we are verging on the Dunbar threshold.  Please let it be so, so Trent can whack off to it ;)  This little project, should it grow beyond that point, would be so fulfilling to him :)  03:35, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, exactly. But either way, as a project grows in size, you get potential problems so it's definitely worth keeping some sort of tab on numbers - the big question is, which number is it? If there were 50 users as active as Pi and Human, for example, the wiki couldn't function the way it does now. All hell would break loose pretty quick (although, I dare say it would be fun to watch, if you could keep up). But particularly on a wiki, editing rate is important than just the number of users (perhaps there's just a critical level of edits a day) because that controls the speed that things drop off Recent Changes and eventually people need to start relying on watchlists and watching categories. And that's how you'd loose cohesion between the community as a whole and have them split up and need to be herded by bureaucracy or a higher level of organisation than simple and community driven mobocracy. 07:58, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Obama
Thoughts so far? 09:16, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Better than #43. (Or is that damning with faint praise?) 09:51, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Definiatly showing his inexperience I'd say. Ace McWickedNecron99 10:04, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Astonishingly good. He is putting the social issues on the back-burner for later, since they require little political capital, and pushing forward on health care and climate with great prowess, despite the fact that a majority of legislators would natively oppose both agendas.  Sotomayor will probably prove to be a great pick from my viewpoint, and politically speaking she has already been amazing when it comes to further accelerating the GOP's infighting and crash.--Tom Moore fiat justitia ruat coelum 10:08, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * This is pretty much exactly what I expected. Despite what the right tried to force everyone to accept, Obama has never been a strong liberal.  He was a center left Senator, a center left candidate and now he's a center left President.  There have been a few things I'm a little disappointed with, but overall I think he's doing great.  15:27, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me so far.--BobNot Jim 15:33, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * ANYTHING is better than Fuckwit and Co. 13:05, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I think he's trying too hard to be conciliatory with people who have sworn to destroy him. (Repubs, not Iran.)  Besides that, I wish he was more "liberal", but I surely don't regret voting for him (yet). --Gulik (talk) 20:35, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Carnivorous robot?
This is one hell of a story. An eco-friendly killer robot. Article includes the quote of the year: "We completely understand the public's concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population".--BobNot Jim 14:45, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I occasionally do some perusing of robot technology for work and am constantly amazed at how many roboticists seem to be working on making the sci-fi of their youth come to "life" (the largest supplier of robots to the U.S military is a company called IRobot) and how cavalier these sci-fi fans turned roboticists are about the end of the world scenarios they seem to be working towards. "Ah, those are just science fiction stories this is real science . . . Ah, my arm! my arm!"  Me!Sheesh! Mine! 15:46, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Full quote: "We completely understand the public's concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission." LOL 15:58, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Can we add that to RationalWiki's motto? 01:21, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Seconded.--BobNot Jim 15:16, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I first became interested in neural networks after finishing Dune. The admonish of the Butlerian Jihad was a motivating force. Of course, I was 14 so that probably played a role in it. tmtoulouse 16:01, 20 July 2009 (UTC)


 * On the subject of giant tanks, might I refer you to The Onion, which isquite authoritative an the subject. -- 00:14, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Holy flippin' Hell that was hilarious! The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 01:05, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That's a project I could get behind. 13:04, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * If only it would load (at all!), I'd know what y'all are talkin' 'bout. --Kels (talk) 15:47, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm glad you said that. I thought it was just me.--BobNot Jim 18:16, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I see NO POSSIBLE WAY this project could go wrong! --Gulik (talk) 20:37, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Help me. My life is a fucking mess.
I need to get organized. Really. Like a top-down, bottom-up total life conversion/change. I think I have a case of mild PTSD or something. They told us to look out for memory and concentration problems when we re-deployed and that it could take years for PTSD symptoms to surface, but fuckin' A, this is getting ridiculous. I'm stressed out, my short-term memory is fucking shot and everywhere I look there is disorder, chaos and confusion. I have 0 in mental problems stability and I am spiralling out of fucking control.

This is NOT me. I'm a fucking Staff Sergeant in the US fucking Army. I keep my own shit and 9 other soldiers' shit straight and on point for a living. I almost wish I could go back to Iraq right now so I could simplify my life back down to setting up observation posts and finding IEDs.

I've been looking at organization websites and commiting everything to lists (to do, done, this week, next week, long-term, etc.) and now even the LISTS are fucking disorganized. "Start with small things" they say. Well how in the world am I supposed to find the small thing to start on when EVERYTHING has gone off of the rails?

How can I straighten this shit out? I'm willing to try almost anything at this point. Even Jesus It's that bad. The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 14:39, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It sounds like you're stressing so much about trying to get organised that you can't get organised, kind of in the same way insomniacs stress about getting to sleep which stops them from getting to sleep. I think you have anxiety issues rather than organisation issues, which may or may not be related to PTSD. You should see your GP as soon as possible, who will send you for counselling and / or anxiolytic medication. Whichever way, don't get wound up about things. Take time out if things are getting on top of you. 14:44, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * One thing that can really cause a lot of unnecessary stress is overcomplicating the unimportant stuff.  So instead of using a bunch of tech to get your lists in order, just use a notepad and pen.   Though they can be very powerful tools, computer-based organization systems tend to lead to annoyances like "Oh I need that next version of software to do what I REALLY want to be able to do", "This awesome listmaker needs an OS update on my computer", "What's the password for my account on this site?" or "Why the fuck won't this software PRINT ANY GODDAM LIST?".   Inevitability leads to banging printers upside the tray, shouting and stress.   Just make t simple for now.   Paper and pen worked for thousands of years.  --DogP Marmite Patrol 15:01, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Read Doonesbury's "The Long Road Home" and find out just how much you're not alone. The profits go to Walter Reid centres so you're supporting a good cause at the same time. Silver Sloth (talk) 15:29, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That's what I am rocking for now, DogP. I can't be bothered with any software crap because I can't download shit to my computer at work and when I get home, my wife's new business venture ties up our laptop as soon as the kids hit the sack. I have to bargain for time to write papers, check e-mail, and all of that. I found an idea for the | Hipster PDA, which seems to be working out, but now my note cards won't fit into the binder clip. I think what I really need is a way to simplify things. The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 15:32, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Will do, SS. Thanks. The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 15:33, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I assume you're just doing this list thing because you say your short-term memory is shot. This is probably quite cyclic, if you're worried about forgetting stuff, you'll forget it, which will make you more worried and forget more stuff. Eventually this spirals out of control and you forget even the simple, unimportant things but it stresses you out like they were big things. It certainly sounds familiar as I've seen people do it before. 15:39, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * If you can get away then grab a tent and spend a week in the wilderness on your own, either mountains or near the sea. Travel light, watch the wildlife, feel the sun on your back and the wind in your face, go walking and swimming. Yell if you feel like it. You need to relax and wind down without the stresses of everyday life. Then remember how much you miss your wife and kid and come back for them. 15:57, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Basically, you need to re-learn the idea that "I'm still breathing so I haven't properly fucked up" attitude so you stop worrying about disorganisation and lists and life. Getting away for a little while to chill and get some new perspectives (maybe) would be a good way of kick-starting this. 16:07, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Man, whatever works for you I hope you find it soon. I agree with the recommendation to hit up your doctor (VA?), no harm in that.  Also, the "getaway" might help if you can do it, even just a weekend or something perhaps?  I suspect that even having the courage to come to a group of total strangers and describe your plight was a good idea, not that we can necessarily help, but that unburdening yourself (and, obviously, not hiding from it) might be/have been a useful step.  Good luck!  00:24, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

<--Undent> Thanks for the suggestions and comments, everyone. I realized while reading the posts that since I re-deployed, I have had exactly one night alone with the wife. That's it. 21 months and only one night without a kid or two to worry about. My son had terrible colic when he was a newborn, so that shot three months. We recently found out that he has been on a medication (that actually WORKED) for three times the length that the manufacturer says is the maximum. The risk was permanent tardive dyskinesia. An EEG last week says that he's clear, but we can never put him on another motility drug again. I have an ankle arthroscopy coming up next week to fix the ankle I jacked up jumping a canal during a raid in Iraq. My mother-in-law was in town for MOST of last month. I was on anti-anxiety meds back in May because I had an attack that left me unable to breathe. Everything everyone has said has helped me put things back into perspective. I'm still disorganized, but I don't feel like I did this morning. Now, I am going to go relax with the wife and a glass of gin neat and plan a vacation for the two of us when my mom comes down to watch the kids. Goodnight, folks! The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 02:02, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow. Nice to see something like this get relatively resolved in such short order. I hope that vacation comes soon!  02:58, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Good luck with everything. On the "Getting organized" front, I read a rather good book recently called "Getting Things Done".  It's intended for executives, but a lot of the advice applies to anyone, I think.  (I _still_ procrastinate, but now it's due to laziness rather than disorganization.  :) --Gulik (talk) 21:30, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Help! Help!
tehmissuz has suddenly got broody and spent a good while talking about having a baby last night. Simple fact is, I hate kids (unless properly cooked) and she knows this, and our relationship has always been build on the foundation that we would never have sprogs. What do I do with her? Arn't I meant to pop a few fertilised eggs under her to hatch or something like that? 09:41, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Enjoy your life while you still can. 09:44, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Bollocks. There's only room for one incontinent screaming shit with a breast obsession in my house and that's me. 09:52, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Get the snip and just "keep trying" until it's too late. 11:57, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It's the X-Box 360. Those things are implanted with RFID chips that trigger women's biological clocks, or something. The wife bought me mine when I re-deployed and immediately started talking about having another baby. I figured it was just because I was back. A week later, she announced that she was pregnant. Even though I went and got the snip after my son was born, every damn time I turn it on, she starts yammering on about another baby. I say, "Well, we made sure that can't happen" she says "We could always get a fertility doctor to extract some" and I counter with "If you think I am dumb enough to be within 5 miles of you going into labor again, then you're crazy. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Well, another one would be thrice, lady."
 * Then I shut the game off and she stops browsing baby name books and the One Step Ahead catalog. It's freakin' MIND C O N T R OL, I tell ya! The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 13:18, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Holy shit! That's scary man. Is there a special chip in the 360 which beams images of cute babies directly into the minds of any females around? How do I disable this chip? I'm sure there's a guide I can buy for this sort of thing on fleaBay. 13:50, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm positive that this is an agenda from the Religious Right. If we're going to be g odless heathens running around blowing shit up and other blasphemous things, then they can use T3H T3KN0L0G13Z to make sure a never-ending flow of potential evangelical converts is produced because of it. I'm just sayin'... The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 14:00, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Question: does your mistress implicitly equates "having kids" with "raising kids"?  If so, let her know about the fallacies differences of them.  If not, I think you know what I am referring to.   18:40, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Theemperor approves this thread. -- 18:34, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

can i haz writting skilz?
Any recommendation on books teaching one how to do creative writing? Something I wouldn't find in my College Writing or AP Language/Composition or AP Literature classes. And of course, something not based on New Age 'find the source of your inner creativity' bullshit; I have ideas, I just wanna know how to convey them effectively. 11:04, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think there is anything. They usually just go on about how plots should roll to a crescendo but don't really say how to do that. Still, there might be plenty of websites offering tips if you shove a few ideas through google. 12:01, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You could try the Dummies or Idiots guides to Creative Writing. Both are widely available. 12:09, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Armondikov, that's what I've found as well in the few essays I've read pertaining to the subject. I'll use my google fu, but I prefer physical books. Genghis, will check library soon and peruse, thank you. 12:26, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Stephen King's | On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft was a very interesting read, at least for me. It starts out a little autobiographically, but transitions into his thoughts on what writing actually is and various ways to do it. The key point is read, read, read. Once you know what you like to read, do your best to mimic it, but don't copy the style. Your own style will begin to present itself after a while and you can polish it from there. The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 13:45, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I absorb writing styles unintentionally. Charles Dickens was the worst, my internal monologue became phrased in the most annoying way for a few days after reading "Great Expectations". Thank you for the reference. 14:19, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * As someone going into a creative field, I say copy, copy, copy. Just don't put that work out in the public sphere.  Think of it the way I view my sketchbook.  It's for me.  It's where I experiment.  It's my operating table where I dissect the works of the artists I respect to see how they tick.  When I copy the work of, say, Pierre Alary, Rodolphe Guenoden or Jose-Luis Munuera, it's not to imitate, it's to learn how they do what they do.  Then I practice what I've learned.  A lot. If you do likewise, you'll absorb the bits that have resonance with you.  Your style will be like your handwriting.  There'll be influences by those who taught you, but it can't help being uniquely yours in the end.  But it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of willingness to tear apart the things you respect to see how they tick.  And there's nothing wrong with that. --Kels (talk) 14:56, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Do you,, go to the market and occasionally make up the lives of the people you meet/see there? If not then "creative writing" might not be for you. I know many peoples what are "creative" as well as peoples what are writers, rarely, are both the same peoples but when they are, they are well done.

Besides books on teh subject try various online writer's fora; wade through wafts of teenage angst poetry, breathe deeply the stench of poorly crafted prose then decide you really don't want to do this, then, if the muse is still on your, back do it anyway.

Music is food for the soul and writing/reading is food for the mind...if you are one of the lucky few you may find that writing is both nourishment for your soul and mind. There is music in (them thar) words and the ability to coax it out is a joy in life that is [taxable, should you publish,] indescribably precious.

Let us create a subpage under your user name and see what you got. 15:12, 22 July 2009 (UTC) CЯacke ®


 * Write something, not your magnum opus, and pass it round some acquaintances (not friends - they'll tell you what they think you want to hear) and take criticism on board then apply it to your intended writing. Don't put anything you intend to publish on RW. 17:25, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

I should note I'm not trying to get anything published, I just want to be good at everything. It's my goal. It should take, eh, maybe two or three weeks to finish. ;) But seriously, thanks for the advice everyone. It's summer break and I've been really focusing on improving myself in various fields, what with the vast stretches of free time and all. Kels, I may have artsy questions for you at some point, so be warned. :) 18:22, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I anticipate your question and say for the record that no, you can't do that with a flatfish. But I can see why you'd want to. --Kels (talk) 19:33, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Maybe not flatfish, but you can use pipe-cleaners to modify a haddock to do the job just as well and no one can tell the difference. Though, interestingly, there is Authonomy which is for creative writers. I know at least one person who frequents it, but to get the most out of it you probably need more than a passing interest. 22:00, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * If you fancy becoming a master of everything here's a music lesson from Peter Cooke & Dudley Moore:
 * http://stabbers.truth.posiweb.net/stabbers/audio/disco/Peter_Cook_%2B_The_Clean_NOBA_Tapes_%2B_The_Music_Teacher_%2B_wwwDOTstabbersDOTorg.mp3|autostart=no|shuffle=yes|bg=0x800000|leftbg=0x800000|lefticon=0xFFCC00|rightbg=0x800000|righticon=0xFFCC00|track=0x663300|loader=0x996633|slider=0xFFCC00|text=0xFFCC00|border=0x996633|rightbghover=0xFFCC00|righticonhover=0x800000
 * 22:15, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

The best advice I've heard for ex per in aspiring writers is to...write. For an hour a day. On anything. And then put it away and read it again in a mnoth. --Gulik (talk) 03:48, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

God's beautiful autumn foliage
Apparently some pesky liberal scientists have come up with a deceitful atheistic explanation of those autumn colours... (new readers start here and here) Cantabrigian (talk) 16:49, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That's very cool, although I kept looking for the "edit" buttons to fix the typos... 21:35, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Design theory
Looks like it's got legs after all. A lot of legs. --Kels (talk) 17:48, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Dating the article at June 2010... is my calendar broken or are they claiming to be prophets?  18:58, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Read the by-line. "Tomorrow's News Today". The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 19:06, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Homeopathy & Nutritionists vs Real Science!
This is bloody funny. It's basically just taking Bad Science and turning it into stand up, but it's awesome. 20:09, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

And this. OK, the Dara O'Brien one is funnier but it's much longer. 20:20, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Those are really good! -- 20:36, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Xbox
(drool) my xbox 360 I got for free using my CokeZone points arrived today. So, knowing fuck all about teh 360, what should I be farting around with first, oh great skeptical gamers? (I have Bioshock in the post from fleaBay) 15:16, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Gears of War, no contest. 15:22, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd go with COD4 over both of those. If you have the time to invest....Elder Scrolls: Oblivion is probably my favorite game on the 360.--PitchBlackMind (talk) 15:26, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, while COD4 is certainly one of the most awesome experiences of my life, Gears just has this amazing style and is much more escapist - COD4 on hardcore mode with realistic health levels is a hellish experience while Gears just thrives with it's over-the-top action and larger than everything characters. So they're both good, but different. 15:42, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I have COD5 on the Wii. Is it worth forking out for 4 / 5 on the xbox as well? What's elder scrolls? not a MMORG is it? Armond, is that GoW 1 or 2? 15:43, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Skip Oblivion, unless you really want to invest in the downloadable content, and go straight for Fallout 3. I got it for Christmas last year and it is still the only game I play when I have the time. I have an unopened copy of Fable 2 that I got in the same package, but Fallout is such a great game that I will continue to forsake it until I have explored every square inch of the Capital Wasteland. The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 15:49, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oblivion is a first person action RPG. Foxhole's right about Fallout 3, it's a fantastic game, but I prefer Oblivion. You really can't go wrong with either one. Fable 2 is worth playing too, it's far easier and much less time consuming. --PitchBlackMind (talk) 15:51, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh shit! I forgot that I have game rental with LoveFilm. I can try all these out first without wasting dosh! 15:53, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * GTA4 definitely worth checking out too. Vulpius (talk) 16:09, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah that works too, GT4 is impressive on all accounts. Also, the new Tomb Raider games are awesome. TR:Legend - particularly with the super-Lara they made for the 360 version - was just the best thing to happen to the series in years. I'm currently going through Anniversary. Oh, and don't forget that Final Fantasy XIII will be along soon-ish. 16:12, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

(outdent)I agree with most of the above, especially Oblivion, Fallout 3, and GTAIV. What types of games are you into, Crundy? 16:14, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I feel like the first Gears was the better experience, at the time. It was a really novel and well executed shooter, and Gears 2 simply failed to build meaningfully on that success. At least, that is, to a degree that justifies an extra $60. That having been said, you aren't losing anything buying and playing Gears 2 if you haven't experienced the first; so it really depends on how much you want to shell out for a few nifty features and arguably worse dialogue.WilhelmJunker (talk) 16:21, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I'm into Half Life 2, so I might get a copy of the Orange Box as I haven't finished Ep2 yet on the PC. I don't play very much, so anything too involved won't suit me. By the way, my Wii seems to have turned slightly green since I set up the Xbox next to it, is this anytihng to worry about? 16:57, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Assassins creed. Bitchin'.  -- 18:25, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Creed for sure... If you're into RPGs, check out Mass Effect and Lost Odyssey. Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Crackdown are good for a quick beat the hell out of people getaway.  19:20, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Also, things to look forward to: The Saboteur,  Assassin's Creed 2, and  Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 are all coming out this fall. 1st quarter 2010 will see the release of  Mass Effect 2 and  Fallout: New Vegas will be coming out sometime during the first half of 2010. Oh, to be single and 21 again... The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 19:50, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Creed is on play for a tenner, which I am tempted by. 19:54, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I have to go with Assassin's Creed, perfect game for promoting atheism. If I had a Xbox, I would get Ace Combat 6 and Start Ocean 4(damn you Xbox exclusive games, why couldn't you come to my PS3? At least I get free online)--Tabris (talk) 00:51, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't agree with Tabris on the 'promoting atheism' thing, but that's a different topic. Now, all that time spent playing will be worth something! First off, you have to ask what kinds of games you enjoyed before you got your 360, then get some games you think you'll like, based on what you liked before. Also, in case the console games get expensive, the Arcade is filled with fun stuff like Castle Crashers, Duke Nukem 3D, and other classic or small games for a small price. With that in mind, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is coming out, and the remastered Monkey Island is ready for download. -- CodyH (talk) 12:16, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Is monkey island a point and click game? Because I fucking love them. I've played Beneath a Steel Sky through about 5 times, finished both the Discworld games, and finished season 1 of Sam and Max (as well as episode 1 of series 2). 13:44, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It is one of the great grand-daddies of point-and-click games. The writing is hilarious, the characters are memorable and overall the game sticks with you. Also, telltale games is coming out with the 5th game in the series, using episodes to move the story along...I really need to download those. -- CodyH (talk) 16:57, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

If you like games that make you think, I'd recommend Braid. It looks like a nice, simple platforming game, but it quickly becomes an utter braintwister. --Gulik (talk) 03:19, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Eh, Braid was kinda short. Then again, thinking in the terms the game forces you to think tends to give you headaches around world 5 or 6. -- CodyH (talk) 17:26, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

XBOX Live
Crundy, are you on XBOX Live? Anyone else? 16:14, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I guess I will be, but having just discovered that the 360 doesn't come with wireless as standard has buggered that one up temperarily. 16:57, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, I managed to piggyback the xbox connection through my media center pc, so I'm on live now. My gamer tag is crundy1. Oh, and by the way, HOLY CRAP! The media center extender functionality is absolutely bang on. Rockin! That's what I got it for in the first place, so I can get a telly in the bedroom and stream TV / Music / Recordings from my MCE PC in the living room. 19:49, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * P.S. I now have a 1 month free Live Gold trial. So while this is ticking away what should I be doing? Is there downloadable content only available to Gold subscribers? 19:54, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've got it too, same username. Don't get a headset is my only advice. For some reason, shouting racial slurs seems to be the standard of dialogue on XBOX Live.--PitchBlackMind (talk) 20:47, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, same as CounterStrike. If I want to be told I'm a useless faggot I'll go and talk to my wife, thanks very much. 20:37, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm thinking of getting a PS3 sometime soon as I'm still killing people on PS2. Is the PS3 compatible online with Xbox? As in can you play Xbox players on the same game if you're using a PS3? 09:39, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Probably not. I know you can't play against xbox players with the PC version of Team Fortress 2. 09:54, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * No it isn't (unfortunately) - completely different servers. Which makes sense give that the XBOX is a pay service and the PS3 is free.  I got the XBOX for nothing (present) but can't be bothered to pay for the online service. Worm  (t  11:46, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * GamerTag: Xooiid. I'm waiting, RW. -- CodyH (talk) 12:16, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm on there too, but with just a Silver account. GamerTag AboriginalNoise.   21:37, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Against god and nature!
The proof of evolution! An evil hybrid of man and pig! Stalin and his ape men can eat his heart out. -- 21:48, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Er ... Eeeeuuuuggghhh! 21:57, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I threw up in my mouth a little ENorman (talk) 22:08, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, come on. It's cute. I'd have it as a pet. -- 22:12, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You're nearly a laugh but you're really a cry.--PitchBlackMind (talk) 23:10, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much, my what-the-fuck-o-meter just blew up. 23:31, 21 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That's probably a good thing, considering some of the other things that the BoingBoing thread threw up. -- 00:28, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Holy hell. That one I didn't need to see. Why Jeeves, why?--PitchBlackMind (talk) 00:32, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * "Threw up" is _definitely_ the right word. Ugh.  --Gulik (talk) 21:38, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Words just escaped me and my colour has drained away. Rad McCool (talk) 02:15, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

The mother lode
Scientific Committee Exposing Pseudo-Skeptical Cynicism of the Paranormal. 216.221.87.112 04:56, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hehe, "SCEPCOP is the world's first organized counter-skeptic group." What does that make them?  Credulous idiots...  05:23, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Why they have "Scientific" in thier name while having this is beyond comprehension.  06:40, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow. Just... wow. That site is hideous. And while yes, it's important not to confuse cynicism and skepticism, that site is just plain special and seems to be missing the mark somewhat. 06:47, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * We could almost replace CP with a source for endless articles and commentary with this one site. Is it actively updated, or fairly static?  07:00, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Eh, its probably pretty static though they do have a forums that is pretty entertaining. tmtoulouse 07:11, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * And the "committee" members all seem to have blogs. Worth monitoring for a bit I think. tmtoulouse 07:12, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Probably the most ludicrous straw man that they use is the invisible pink unicorn or Santa Claus gambit. They compare every paranormal experience in the world with Santa Claus, an invisible pink unicorn or some fake tooth fairy they make up out of thin air. Of course, it is absurd to compare actual real life experiences with something they make up on purpose. But that's what they do to ridicule and demean any paranormal experience or claim. And forget the fact too, that there are not significant numbers of highly credible people out there claiming to have experienced invisible pink unicorns, tooth fairies, or Santa Clauses. Seems almost like a fair enough comment. Although, this in itself is very straw man by saying that this is how things are refuted. No, this isn't how it's refuted, they're refuted more thoroughly and then ridiculed like this. Jeebus. 07:15, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * So, Trent, how come you are too lazy to log in? Anyway, yeah, the forums are active (and loony, of course, dang, I just proved their thesis!).  07:20, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Tooth fairy used to bring me coin for milk teeth. Father Xmas used to bring me toys + sweets in the middle of Xmas eve night.  Then I got over it and swore my allegiance to Her Hooviness (PBUH) and piracy.  07:22, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The pink unicorn is usually used as an analogy to show why their arguments breakdown. One does not compare the paranormal event to the pink unicorn but rather uses the pink unicorn as something that everyone agrees doesn't exist, and then shows why the claims of the paranormal proponent fall flat by using them against the pink unicorn. For example, "ghosts are real because you haven't proven that they are not" is a horrible argument. By tossing back "pink unicorns are real because you have not proven they are not" is a quick way to try and establish why what they are saying is not evidence. tmtoulouse 07:25, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow, those forums are an absolute mine of logical fallicies. For example, argument ad popularum, argument from authority, and too fucking stupid to delete the test PHPBB post. Does anyone else think it's worth crashing the party with some common sense? 07:44, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Wait, I just had an idea for a new drinking game! Start / reply to a thread on there, and every time you get called closed minded you have to take a drink? We'll all be dead from alcohol intoxication before you can say woo (apart from Ace, or course)! 07:46, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

So I went to the "Professor"s page.... cool, he kan haz bukz he rote! 5ive of them! (http://www.professorslimking.com/books.htm). Note, all five are "sold out" in hardcover at 24.95. Hasn't this idiot heard of publish-on-demand sites? Yeah, Trent, you're right, this place is a gold mine and needs to be explored to its lowest depths and deepest loserness. Perhaps we should replace wigo ask with it, since ask is dead in the water and does not deserve mainpage mention (oh, that's another issue, but really...) 08:27, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I second having a WIGO for this site. The forums are on hundreds of levels of fail. The lulz will come thick and fast from this little gem. 09:06, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * "Victor Zammit - A Lawyer presents his case for the Afterlife". What is it with lawyers? The site certainly has lots to keep us amused but I think it lacks the interactivity of CP and aSK to feed a WIGO. 11:55, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I dunno, the active forums would be the "fresh news", not really harder than a wiki to report on? Maybe it is time we branched out our wigoing skills to other formats?  21:22, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't think forums are a great source, they're too individual. You need a communal ethos to snipe at and people in positions of authority handing out edicts. WIGOing a forum would be like concentrating on CP trolls and vandals rather than Andy and his goon squad. You also need a degree of activity, remember how Wiki4Cam failed to take off? Anyway I have created an account at WikiSynergy (user #28) and noticed that there have already been two Willy Wheels registered. If it takes off then maybe we could do something but it's early days yet. 21:55, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * And you people call me a troll. I come with a gift they have their own wiki. Fifth Horseman (talk) 21:26, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Have a look at the JREF forum on SCEPCOP. Every single thread in there has a post by the professor telling everyone about the Randi blackmail tapes. That guy is so bitter about having his application closed it's unreal. 14:01, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You just know there's going to be something special in an article written by "Indigo Child". --PsyGremlinWhut? 14:11, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The hypocrasy on that site is just astounding. Observe:
 * Pseudo-Skeptics often use denial and cognitive dissonance. They deny and filter out anything that doesn't fit into their materialistic reductionistic view of reality, especially anything that has to do with paranormal or conspiracy theories, no matter what evidence is presented, even if its convincing and scientific.
 * 14:23, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Stuff I am working on...
2 things: 07:28, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Does this fit into a subsection of existing articles or does it warrant its own article/essay/debate/whatnot?
 * If I am working on the Conservapedian Church article, what information do I need to draw dioceses (presumably the (arch)bishops would be the admins/sysops?)?
 * On the first, please help K/T find a good place for it, it's a really good argument, but I am blank so far on where it belongs. On a completely unrelated note, K/T, you realize the only way I can refer to you due to your "username versus signature mutual exclusivity" is an extinction event?  I hope you like that :)  08:21, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I can't think of anywhere to put it. Do we have a morality article that it can go on as a subpage, perhaps? 10:10, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * a more general version is at here. It may have more fallacies than it should be having however.  Can someone check it please?   04:49, 23 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Reminds me of this. ->   23:26, 23 July 2009 (UTC) ->

I want my share!
I'm sick and tired of subsidising TMT's booze and drugs. I just found out that RationalWiki's estimated worth is $16687.8 and I demand a piece of that action after all my financial support. CP's dead so I say let's take the money and go our separate ways. 18:44, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I am amused that most of the "Canada most viewed" list is porn sites. --Kels (talk) 18:48, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Canadians must have some weird fetishes, based solely on that list. &mdash; Unsigned, by: Theemperor / talk / contribs
 * Oh honey, you have no idea! --Kels (talk) 19:10, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Inflation? rationalwiki.com Estimated Worth $18885.1 USD 19:40, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that the increased value is due to the Nils Heribert Nilsson article. 20:09, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * PS If I can get a daily rate of return like that I might consider investing part of my SIPP in RW. 20:23, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Or due to the decline of US dollar in the time period.  20:27, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Look at the websites viewed by country!

Country	       %User	Rank UNITED STATES	48.8%	42885 IRELAND	       19.2% 	 2838 FINLAND	       8.9%	7692 INDIA	       6.8%	 161411 UNITED KINGDOM	3.3%	190137

We have three times as many ducks viewing this site as Brits! Come on, people! -- 19:53, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Medical science, not prayer
Aplogies for double posting this but WIGOWorld doesn't get as many hits as it should. This item from the BBC news demonstrates medical science that could not be done by prayer (or homeopathy). 22:55, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Holy crap, that's incredible. How the hell did they hook up the nerves for the muscles? 07:13, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, not with XLR jacks, that's for sure. I think they just sorta glue them together, and the owner then has to re-learn what "signals" (thoughts/intentions) do what.  Early days of PT must be pretty awkward. But, yeah, it's amazing.  I hope I never have to experience the amazing myself.  07:21, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * From the way he was describing them, it sounded like he couldn't feel much out of them. Which is still fine, sure as hell beats not having arms. Amazing though. --PitchBlackMind (talk) 07:32, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I only read, didn't listen. Sounded like he was happy to be able to scratch, although his dream of hoisting a pint wasn't on-line yet.  So he has some control, but perhaps very little muscle strength, or control over more "powerful" use of arms/hands/fingers?  Still, as he said, we have no idea what it's like to have no arms for 6 years and then have arms again.  10:03, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Flubay
http://www.flubay.co.uk/ Take note of the homeopathy joke. 15:09, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Freakin' hilarious, man. Now be a good chap and pick the bits of Big Mac that launched out of my mouth when I clicked the link off of my monitor, will you? The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 16:30, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately I can't help you with the Big Mac problem, but you can add more to that splatter if you check out the rest of Tom's stuff, including an interesting thing to do with a cliff. 18:51, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Request for computer geeks
Are any of the exceptionally computer skilled folks here on facebook, and know how to make apps? I really want a Colbert-style "On Notice" app, in which I can have a list of people and things I am putting On Notice, which will appear somewhere on my page. I myself am no good at this stuff. -DickTurpis (talk) 15:15, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I think a pair of chalkboards would work in a pinch. And if you nick the code for the template, you could sustomize the font and colors etc.  20:53, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, shoot, sorry you mean on facebook, not here... oops. 20:53, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Good news!
My English paper on homeopathy scored 298 of 300 points. Thank you to all of the RationalWikians who have worked on the Homeopathy article, as it was the inspiration for this work. The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 16:59, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Congrats all round. 17:56, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You'll have to post it as an essay for us to see. Unless you already have and I'm blind >.> ENorman (talk) 18:16, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I was trying to, but I can't figure out how to indent the paragraphs (My wiki skills rival teh Fly's). It just looked wrong to me, but if I can't indent at all, then I'll just roll with what I have. The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 18:21, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hmmm... I don't think Media Wiki does support first line indenting (yes, I'm a fan of that too and hate when style guides tell you to remove it) so just put a line break in instead. But good work. We now officially have a better article on the subject than Citizendium. Although I think it really needs a few enhancements to some articles linked to it, the placebo effect in particular could do with a boost. 18:35, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Here it is. Should I wikify it, or do essays not receive that treatment? The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 19:01, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Essays are pretty much however you like. If you want to use ref tags, links, see-also sections or other formatting, that's up to you. It looks good though. 19:16, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Auras proven by science!
|htmlws-main|dl1|link6|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fhumans-glow%2F584160#axs988 Or at least that's what this research will be quoted as for generations to come. tmtoulouse 17:20, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It's interesting, but not especially supirsing, I mean, everything emits at some wavelength so you'd expect it to tail off weakly into the visible too, right? But I do see what you mean about the misunderstandings starting. The comments are quite... special. 18:39, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Looks more like heat generated from normal bodily function. Free radicals implies cancer....Maybe the government needs to tax us for this as well as Carbon dioxide emission. JK. Global warming is a scheme from Al Gore and he is taking billions from the people of the world. he is a true example of a crime against humanity 18:48, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Barkeep, a round for all please
Lacking any substantial human beings I will celebrate with the RWians. Today is one month since I left on my trip, nay escape, to Europe. So a round for that. A second round because I received a perfect score on my AP Lit exam. And a third round for anything worth celebrating. As far as communities in cyberspace, you are the best. Yorick (talk) 23:22, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Congrats on the exam. Are you still in Urp? Whereabouts?  00:46, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh! Of course it'd be Elsinore. 00:55, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * And a big "agree" with the bestishness of this community. 01:01, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll have a Dogfish IPA for you (or, well, for me, but you know!). Congrats! Sterile 02:06, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Nice work, let me get you the next round! Ace McWickedNecron99 02:16, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I, er, drank with my RW friends tonight, as I habitually do. I agree, Yorick, these peeps are some of the best around.  06:02, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Congrats Yorick. In one hour and twenty minutes I will be joining the festivities. Rad McCool (talk) 06:10, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Twenty minutes to go! I shall then tip a glass in sympathy and empathy with some Krazy Kiwis.  07:12, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

T-Minus 2 minutes, I can see the bottle shop from my vantage point at work. They're looking expectantly in my direction. Don't worry lads I'm nearly there. Rad McCool (talk) 07:30, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * GO RAD, GO! They need you down at the store immediately! Ace McWickedNecron99 07:44, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikisynergy
As pointed out by one of our uh, trolls, above the anti-skeptic people do seem to have a new wiki here. Just to make it more obvious for all I brought it down here. tmtoulouse 00:45, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I see someone's stock puppet has already joined... 01:28, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't see how it's a sock when he uses that name everywhere. (you did mean kettle ticket, I presume) 01:47, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I didn't call it a sock, if you read carefully. 03:33, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry I'd not noticed "decorate"; seems to me I recall ... 01:48, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * this is pretty err, interesting. Ace McWickedNecron99 01:54, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow, yeah, and I only read two sentences... "the higher one's education level, the more likely one is to believe in the paranormal" ORLY? OK, sure, I only have "some college", so maybe I am insulated by my lack of education from stupidity? (well, their kind of stupid, I gots plenty of my own!)  03:35, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

PS, does anyone else hate their color scheme? I can't even tell if a talk page exists or not... Also, in spite of all their fancy formatting and templates, why is the "line" across the top missing? The place just always looks half-borken. Of course, maybe it is... 03:37, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Education versus Intelligence.JPG's the term for that statistical phenomenon in which a value increases exponentially but then hits a point where it bottoms out? It seems to me that many of the wackaloons that we feature are normal folks until they increase their education level until they hit a certain point and then just, well, snap. Behe, Dembski, Snelling, and Hahnemann all come to mind. It's like they study and they study, then they get their "epiphany" that all of the science is wrong but their idea is the only correct answer, and then they spiral down from there. See the total shit chart I made to illustrate my point. The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 14:04, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I love that graph, especially the final "education level"... 20:45, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, despise the colour scheme. Though I don't see what they're getting at with that "skepticism is losing" thing. Actual skepticism is a method, one that just says "I'll believe it when I see it", they seem to be just using a more specific and wrong definition which just means "the people who refuse to buy into our bullshit". 14:17, 23 July 2009 (UTC)


 * No, rather it's the failure of the skeptical movement for the past few hundred years to stamp out woo. Skepticism is a method, but the skeptical movement (and don't tell me that doesn't exist, it's the term used by CSI), is losing. Rationalwiki is a prime example, I only discovered it a few months ago.  Skeptics talking to skeptics while everyone else ignores them. Having a color scheme is better than looking like a lamed version of Wikipedia. You guys couldn't even be bothered to change the background image, FGS.  And having an image of a whole brain on Rationalwiki is really silly if you think about what the brain as a whole does.  What does it mean with the brackets "closed minded?"  "Internally linked?"  Well, I'm not calling you closed minded, but that's what the image looks like.  Yeah, human, whatever the cause the fact remains: more educated people are more likely to believe in the paranormal.  Which contradicts all the self-satisfied skeptics who say only stupid people believe in woo.  Tarantallegra (talk) 21:37, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * So stripping away your rants about color schemes, we are left with what? You assert a fact that higher educational levels means higher belief in paranormal. I just hopped over to scholar google and reviewed several meta studies. Seems to me that your "fact" is wrong. At best the evidence is contradictory. But so what? What does that have to do with anything? tmtoulouse 21:50, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * To re-use an old meme, "because CSI said so" isn't a valid reason for anything. Even breathing. --Kels (talk) 00:24, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't know, the police forces of many jurisdictions rely on Crime Scene Investigation. 00:38, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Not the TV show. Well, I guess some parts of Texas, but nobody else! --Kels (talk) 00:41, 24 July 2009 (UTC)


 * What does it have to do with anything? Well if skepticism isn't taught in institutions of higher learning, directly or indirectly, or else if it is taught and ignored, that means skepticism is failing.  I would have thought that was obvious. Cite your sources to say we are wrong.  Tarantallegra (talk) 01:10, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * This is the only meta study I could find that seems to be open access . tmtoulouse 04:33, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Nice to see you back, Tarantulleeggra (sp?). Are you an editor on wikisynergy?  05:59, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks Human. Yeah, I'm at WS.  I can't spell it either.  Anyway, about paranormal and education, that paper seems to be neutral on the subject, -nice paper though- and other sources say the more educated you are the more likely you are to believe in paranormal.  Anyway, the thing is only in there, I think, because skeptics are always saying that people who believe are stupid and less educated.  And because if they can't teach skepticism in education doesn't that mean skepticism is losing?  One could say that education picks out the stupid people.  But anyway, the reason it's important is that skeptics think woos are dumb While 23 percent of college freshmen expressed a general belief in paranormal concepts — from astrology to communicating with the dead — 31 percent of seniors did so, and the figure jumped to 34 percent among graduate students. This seems to contradict .  Tarantallegra (talk) 06:47, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You're welcome. From your first source: "In general college students checked the "Believe" box less than the general population surveyed by Gallup."  Hmmm.  From your third, "The results showed that university students had less paranormal beliefs than vocational school students, which was partially due to university students' stronger preference for analytical thinking. Of the university students, those majoring in medicine and psychology held the least beliefs and the students of education and theology held the most beliefs. Length of university education was, however, only slightly negatively associated with paranormal beliefs."  I'm not seeing the alleged correlation/causation between "higher education" and "credulity".  07:10, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The evidence about education attainment and belief in the paranormal is, as I said, at best contradictory. It is certainly not clear cut that there is any relationship at all. I don't know the last time you took a college undergraduate course but skepticism is certainly not part of the curriculum. So this isn't an issue of the principles of skepticism being taught/presented to students and having them rejected. Skepticism is actually presented in a negative light in many programs. More than a few of my English, philosophy, history and political science courses discounted skeptical approaches. Even some of my psychology and sociology courses. Even in Science I was disappointed. The first two years of science courses (all that are required of non-science majors) focused on memorization of the body of knowledge of that discipline and had only token reference to methodology and scientific thinking. The courses that best emphasized the power of the scientific method and skepticism were my upper division science courses, and interestingly enough, my economic courses. So I guess what I am interested in now is breaking down education level by major. tmtoulouse 15:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, presumably because younger people believe more than older ones, which again may indicate skeptics are losing. The other one is from Finland and says women are less analytical than men, so maybe skeptics are winning in Finland (you did this last time I came around, picking quotes so as to support only your ideas... in this case you left out that it was Finland). Maybe WS should say that this is a US poll though. Tarantallegra (talk) 07:46, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Cannabis and paranoia
I got back from Amsterdam recently (lovely place which has been a little bit ruined by its own success) and picked up a catalogue for this seed place. Today I thought I'd have a little browse on their site and came across their forums. Sweet jeebus! Anyone who says dope doesn't make you paranoid should hang out there for a while. Check out posts like this one. Fucking stoners! 09:27, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * As both a stoner advocate for the legalisation of cannabis and an Australian, I am terribly embarrassed by this guy's idiocy. I mean, suhweet jeezus, what kind of messed up, probably dusted mix has he been smoking? As for the paranoia bit, it's been over five minutes since I've checked to make sure nobody is stealing my motorbike, excuse me... 10:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I know the guy from the Youtube video. I hav e seen him in a NWO paranoia film. Ace McWickedNecron99 11:05, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Somewhat ironically, Obama is like these guys best hope for having their "habit" legalized. It's not a massive hope, but their best regardless. 11:54, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * While an indulger myself upon occasion I still dont fully support legalisation. Medical use and a decriminalisation is fine, but I think it wrong to make it totally legal. Ace McWickedNecron99 11:57, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I actually had quite a good workable solution to the problem based on the attitudes and laws in other countries (NOT Amsterdam). I suppose I could turn it into an essay here. 15:11, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You may laugh, but I know a guy who went out with a girl who's brother BUILT those "massive underground gas chambers". --DogP Marmite Patrol 17:12, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I opened the first video, but didn't see much anything before the way-too-close-for-comfort closeup made me shriek in terror and close the browser. Vulpius (talk) 00:41, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

A Sad Day On The Black Pig
John Ryan, creator of Captain Pugwash, has died. Those of us who are both British and old enough will shed a tear. Before anyone starts there never was a Seaman Stains not a Master Bates and the cabin boy was called Tom, not Roger. Snopes article here. Silver Sloth (talk) 12:04, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * We in the colonies shed a tear also. Ace McWickedNecron99 12:06, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm sure I heard Master Bates in just the one episode but I assume I just misheard the Master Mate because I wasn't properly paying attention. If there was even just the one slip on the show I'm sure it would have got around faster than the Rainbow double-entendre vid. 12:21, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I used to love Pugwash. Speaking of the innuendo aspect of kids TV, I recently bought The Trapdoor on DVD for a mere 3 quid, and in one of the first episodes (maybe the second) Berk picks up a plank of wood and starts hitting a trapdoor monster over the head with it saying (in a strong Somerset accent) "Oim gonna do me some bonking. Oi loves a bit of bonking I do". Made me almost piss myself. 13:01, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * '80s cartoons were full of innuendo, mostly because they were produced by the comedians of the '70s. Bananaman was just one long penis joke, as I recall. I guess kids of today are missing out on the rich experience because as far as I can tell, kids TV now is just saccharine bollocks. -- 13:24, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I have an mp3 of the (possibly) offending line which I downloaded from somewhere. It's probably on my central storage but I can't find the site where it was hosted. 13:42, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Friend of mine told me a story about how he was working on Ollies Adventures, and they had a scene where the cast were arguing with this rich kid who then had his goons throw them off his lawn and onto the sidewalk. So they put the scene together, and ran it by the lawyers, who told them that it's mostly fine, but they weren't allowed to have the female character assaulted like that.  So they rejiggered the scene to have a big security guy push her off the lawn, while her heels left furrows in the turf.  Looked great, was funny.  Lawyers said even that was too much.  So in the end, the best they could do was have the goons loom over her, and she walked to the sidewalk under her own power.  If kids TV is neutered these days, it's because of the insane restrictions put in place by overzealous parents' groups, and now most of the producers are too scared of lawsuits to push them. --Kels (talk) 14:54, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That's bad news. Cap'n Pugwash, Noggin the Nod and Doogle will always have a special place in my heart. Never mind 80's cartoons, what about 70's cartoons, which were drawn by 60's hippies. Has anybody looked at the backgrounds on a Scooby Doo episode for... oh... 8 straight hours before? Trippy, dude. --PsyGremlinWhut? 15:23, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Found it. It was on the snopes website. 15:33, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Heh, a friend and I were talking about Scooby Doo just yesterday. Apparently there's one episode where Fred is walking up a set of stairs, and if you look at the bottom of the screen, you can actually see the bottom of his character cel moving in and out of frame as they shifted it up and down.  So Fred was, quite literally, just a static, floating torso. --Kels (talk) 15:37, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Overheard on the playground...
While pushing my kids on the swing last weekend, I witnessed this exchange between two other boys: Boy 1: Stop pulling my shirt! It's my favorite shirt from GERMANY! Boy 2: Sorry, man! I didn't know! Boy 1: Well, you should have... Boy 2: Besides, it's just black. How could I have known it was your favorite? Boy 1: (Punches Boy 2 in the chest, knocking him off the slide.) Why else would I be wearing it on a SATURDAY?!?! The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 13:42, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * What an undeniably unusual exchange of words. 13:54, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thats fucking hilarious....I had a good old belly laugh. Ace McWickedNecron99 13:56, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You know that feeling when you're sort of glad but really curious as to what the rest of the conversation was... like when you pass someone who's speaking on a mobile phone and they say "...so, how did you get it stuck up there?". Yeah, it's that sort of thing. But it's black, he must be an atheist mass murderer!!  14:30, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Obama T-Shirts
In the last two days I've seen more and more Obama T-Shirts with the President looking inspirationally upwards to the heavens and with the slogan "Change" beneath his beautiful mug. I love how everyone most people think Obama's awesome, cuz I could never imagine any British Prime Minister on the front of a shirt. Are Obama shirts popular in America? 19:29, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, they're popular among children, hipsters, and the feeble-minded. Conservapederast (talk) 19:31, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * (EC) I think Maggie was similar when she won in 79 and Blair when he did, look how they ended up! 19:34, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Urgh, imagine people running around with Thatcher shirts on! That'd probably just be a fashion tihng because she was the first woman Premier though. Weird how she was in the Conservative Party. 19:37, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * There must have been a grey, outside his trousers y-front sporting John Major t-shirt. I'd lose my faith in humanity were that not so. -- 21:29, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I saw a shitload of Palin shirts post-election while at College. Putting any politician's face on your chest pretty much marks you as a tosser though. ENorman (talk) 23:39, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Cosmic Fingerprints
Does anyone know anything about Cosmic Fingerprints. Should we have an article on it? Silver Sloth (talk) 17:57, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Why do I think the "Atheist's Riddle" is going to be something incredibly stupid? --Kels (talk) 18:02, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * And I'll have to wait for day 4, too. That's over halfway through! The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 18:05, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Nevermind, I just took a look online, and it actually is something stupid. The same stupid shit PJR relies on, a lot of weaselly redefining of terms to make a new reality, and then applying argument by analogy to it.  Then trying to shift the burden of proof.  Hell, if I want that I can go over to aSK and get it by the bucketload. --Kels (talk) 18:12, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yep. You don't have to go all the way through the course You can skip right to it HERE. I might also add that he's a fellow graduate of Information Theory and Communication Dissemination Epic Phail Emporium, University and Evangelical Fish Fry (note the "Gentlemen" opening). So now my throwaway e-mail addy is now on about a billion Xian mailing lists. Hoo-f'in'-ray. The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 18:26, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * This guy's an epic-scale loser, ain't he? His response to the various (valid) objections he's gotten all boil down to "no it isn't" with no more evidence than his original false assertion.  And then he challenges his readers to join in a discussion where he's thoroughly schooled and ridiculed.  Way to make your case, bro! --Kels (talk) 18:37, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It IS funny. He's all: "DNA is a code! Codes don't just come into existence without a mind to create them!" And his opponents are all: "DNA is made of molecules, which are made of atoms, which follow strict principles in how they interact with other atoms which is governed by physics and can be quantified by math, but since we use mathematics to understand the relationships of everything, this "code" you speak of has ENTIRELY naturalistic causes and need not have been "created" by anything at all. YOUR mind is the one that experiences it, recognizes the pattern and then translates it into something useful. To the DNA itself, it's just doing what it's atoms "tell" it to do in the first place..." And he's all: "Dudes! It's a freakin' code! Codes don't just come into existence without a mind to create them!" And everyone goes off to have tea or sex or something worthwhile while he creates a webpage about the "ATHEIST RIDDLE" and then some dumbass comes along and subscribes to his shit in the HOPES that it'll be like "What wasn't before and won't be after?" and now my inbox is FUCKING FLOODED with Chick/Comfort style tracts... Damn. The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 20:29, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Good, Luke, let the anger build inside you. Complete your path to the Dark Side. 21:13, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Gawd, I am trying to read http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/audio/newevidence.htm and it's so poorly written I gave up. The guy is just another IDiot. 23:24, 22 July 2009 (UTC)


 * ""The Discovery of the Century" - Stephen Hawking" Really? That's what he said about the results from COBE but I don't think it's what he said about how these guys are interpreting it. That quote-mine template could come in very useful here... 14:42, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
 * One of my favorites is when he brings in expanding universe theory as the proof of God, because evolution is based on 'the idea that the universe is static, infinitely old and infinitely large.' E.U. states that our universe is expanding, not that we're young or small by any means. He tries to stealthily cram in a creationist view without calling it what it is. Also notice that he uses the old Comfort standby that God is separate of time, therefor is not bound by the 'beginning of time' paradox in creation. This website is making my head hurt. -- CodyH (talk) 14:40, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Gah! Stupid packaging!
So, at lunch today I got a bottle of what is described as "chocolate fudge brownie flavoured milkshake" although if you asked me to describe it, I'd have said it was caramel flavoured milk. For reasons best known to themselves, it is labelled "doesn't contain real brownies" and the picture of brownies on the bottle is labelled "serving suggestion." Is this the pedantry our legal system has driven us to? -- 21:28, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Private Eye cartoon this week:
 * Picture of child in hospital bed with parents at side:
 * "Don't blame yourself, darling. How were you to know that 'Mr Peanut's Nutty Peanut Brittle (now even more nuts for a nutty taste you'll go nut for)' contained nuts?" 22:15, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I can top that. A bag of salted peanuts I bought the other day was labelled "may contain nuts." Apparently, they aren't certain. -- 22:19, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that "may contain nuts" is the default for all packaging - even for furniture! 22:23, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I found a bag of nuts in an IKEA flat pack. 06:48, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Have they started laser etching "may contain nuts" on coconuts yet? Fortunately for my sanity it isn't on any of the tins of coconut milk I have. -- 22:33, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * If it contains actual brownies in a drink wouldn't people got choked on it by now?  22:43, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * One of the "possible side effects" listed on a vasectomy brochure was "sterility". 00:01, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Should have been "will not contain nuts". 10:42, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Should that be "will not contain contents of nuts"? 22:53, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Listen Children to my Story, It was Written Long Ago
So I just had to tell somebody and I figured you guys would love it. So my friend asked me and my band (and by my band I mean a few friends who happen to play insturments) to play at what he called a "Young Consevatives Meeting." Not having anything to do and needed the check, I agreed. So we set up and I find out something very interesting.... What my buddy conviently left out was that it was a "Young Evangelical Conservatives Meeting." Needless to say, I was a little annoyed already. Then the head speaker got up and talked about how it was America's duty to protect Isreal and that if Iran doesn't back down right away and give up it's Nuclear ambitions Obama needs to bomb them. He then went on to say that if Obama wouldn't do it, it's time for Christians to take over and do it themselves. He ended by giving out the number for Congress and telling everybody to call and demand action..... I was so pissed at this point I almost walked out, but instead I decided to hit them with the music. We opened with One Tin Soldier, which really upset them and then just went through every protest and anti-war song we knew until ending with Bob Dylan's Masters of War. It was a very rewarding experience, and I got veiled death threat from a Christian..... A good day. 00:05, 25 July 2009 (UTC)


 * To paraphrase Stephen Colbert

It's amazing how easy it is to make "I'm praying for you" sound like a threat

-- 00:12, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * To quote AC/DC, you've got Big Balls--Tabris (talk) 00:34, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It is Superman's job to police the world, not that of the United States--Tabris (talk) 00:47, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You're a god among men, Chuck. That took a lot of moxie. This might not be your cup o' tea, but Heresy by Nine Inch Nails probably would've started a riot. I got suspended from school in junior high just for bringing it in. Fucking Catholics.--PitchBlackMind (talk) 03:00, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I don't even think it was that "brave," I was just pissed that my buddy lied to me to get me to do this stupid thing and ever more pissed that this guy would say stuff like that.... I'm just glad he didn't say anything really racist, I would've had to play Ol' Man River. :)  04:18, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * We can often be foolhardy when we're pissed off. But well done anyway, it sounds like it was really cathartic for you. 08:28, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Pity you needed the cash. Walking out not really an option. 08:34, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * As I said to some random woman at work the other day, you got balls as big as watermelons. Good job. 10:14, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * So this isn't going onto youtube as well? :( 11:08, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

(unindent)No video on this one, I didn't bring the camera cause I didn't think it would be anything worth taping.... I didn;t think it'd turn into a personal protest moment. 22:56, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Problem?
Is it just me, suddenly RW's pages have stopped completely loading (still got the little circular thing going round in the tab) for ages - this page is still going on after all this typing as is Rc for about 5 minutes. Only RW - other sites OK. 01:41, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Forget it: it's stopped. 01:47, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I had the same bug last week, it went away on its own. Irritating, but not disabling. 02:29, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Not disabling but I like to 'hover' over the diffs until the little box comes up so I don't need to open the page & it wouldn't do that. 02:56, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Until what happens? Is this a feature I don't know about?  And, yeah, that sort of stuff doesn't work until the browser thinks it's "done" loading...  05:04, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hover over "diff" (or "prev" if you're using enhanced) and wait: the little boxy thing expands to shhow the actual diff - not just the page title. I'll do a screengrab whenI'm back downstairs on tnhe desktop m/c (this on phone in bed) 06:44, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Here: File:Screenshot-Recent changes - RationalWiki - 090725.08-35.png. Not thumbing it here: it wouldn't be readable. 07:41, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I lol'd at the top-right of that image - "User Contributions for Ed Poo..." 07:43, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've smiled at it myself oft in the past.;-) 07:52, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I can't do that trick (on IE or Firefix); in fact the RC layout looks different to your screenshot (diff & hist are on the left of each change). Are you viewing it with any Java scripts or something?   12:16, 25 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Prefs - See :File:Preferences - RationalWiki 1248550881419.png &File:Preferences01.png 19:51, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks for the explanations and the screenshots! 22:51, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * A picture's worth a thousand words.[[image:Smiley.gif]] 23:02, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Firefox 3.5
Is anyone using this version? I was auto-upgraded to 3.1.12 and only just noticed that there is a new version - I've been busy recently and hadn't caught up with all the latest IT developments. Also my long time PCW mag has just folded after about 30 years. Very disappointed as it was a lot more techy than the replacement the've offered (CompuerActive). 16:00, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I was going to download it the other day but it told me that some of my extensions wouldn't work afterwards - so I didn't see the advantage. But looking at this (now slightly old) list, it doesn't look like I'd lose anything to important to me. So I'm going to give it a shot.--BobNot Jim 16:15, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for reminding me, I had the installer downloaded and totally forgot to run it. Doesn't seem a lot different to me at first glance, but I don't have a lot of add-ons or extensions, so there's not a heck of a lot of change I see. --Kels (talk) 16:20, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Some of my downloading video stuff seems to not be supported - on the other hand it now claims to be able to do this direct from the browser. Have to try it out.--BobNot Jim 16:28, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I notice this stuff a bit earlier (was using 3.0.x back then) when F11 is out and using it. one big different thing I notice:  the big + button on the tab bar to add new tab, instead of double-clicking the tab bar to get new tabs.   21:06, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've been running it a few weeks. Lost my "tiny modern" or whatever skin, but whatever.  I'm getting two buggy glitches, neither fatal but irritating anyway.  Sometimes, at fairly random times, a tab will "jump" into its own new window (can be dragged back but it's weird), and the other one I forget right now.  It does seem a bit faster at a few things.  Oh yeah, sometimes, usually when opening a new window, it collapses a bunch of my "bookmarks toolbar" into a drop down on the right.  That one is irritating because when I sort of drag them back out, the order gets all mucked up so I don't know where they are.  21:44, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Isn't 3.5 still a beta? I'm still on 3.0.12. 23:09, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's what pissed me off. "3.5" ain't a "stable" release, "3.507" might be, and yet they released it as the latest upgrade.  I think TK infiltrated the firefox community...  02:39, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I noticed when I downloaded it that the update wasn't automatic, it only happened because I manually told it to check for an update. My biggest issue is that tabs I close sometimes reopen by themselves anywhere up to two minutes after I've closed them. It's a bit of a worry if someone else walks in and I quickly close all my porn tabs.  03:31, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

onion
I haven't been over to the Onion much as of late but I did find this particularly funny. Ace McWickedNecron99 00:36, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't let RobS see it, or he'll remind us that HITLER!!!!!1111!! asked God to watch over his country too. --Kels (talk) 00:58, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

The leader
I have been looking at various systems of quack medicine lately. And the one thing I keep seeing again and again is that all of these systems can point to the "founder" who figured it all out single handily and published it creating the miracle we know today. Then I start wondering, in real science and medicine do we have "founders" like that? Can we point to someone and say that is the person that developed that system of medicine, or that is the person that solidified a particular discipline of science? tmtoulouse 18:16, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Quite a few actually. Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, Christiaan Baarnaaaaard, Sigmund Freud, William Harvey... The difference is that these people had a brilliant moment of inspiration, but they also turned out to be right. Totnesmartin (talk) 18:30, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I have been mulling over some of these names as well. I guess what I am getting at is the difference between having a major idea that revolutionized some element of medicine or science, and creating out of whole cloth a whole system of medicine. For example, homotoxicology was created by one man to describe what causes all disease and how to treat all disease. The analog to that is something like the germ theory of disease. It seems that the germ theory of disease was developed over time with many fits and starts and discoveries and dead ends. There isn't a single person or a single event that can be pointed to. To me the closest in that list to doing something like that is Sigmund Freud, and frankly most of his ideas have stood up to close scientific scrutiny about as well as homotoxicology has. tmtoulouse 18:37, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I am having some goalposty issues with trying to respond here. I think you defined what the person had to have done so tightly that it never happens in real science.  IE, Einstein would be one hell of a good example, except he incorporated and subsumed Newtonian mechanics completely with his "new math", so, like in all revolutionary scientific movements, he didn't "invent out of whole cloth", he came up with a more accurate explanation.  Freud, however, I think is a good candidate, even if mostly debunked and criticized these days.  23:55, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I think what you might be getting at is the need for people to think narratively, to tell a story about an event. In this case, people like thinking in terms of main characters and sudden inventions, so you get big names in both science and pseudoscience and people will always try to turn it into a bit more of a personality cult because that's more interesting and has a better narrative than uncomfortably slow progress made by many individuals. So, as Totnesmartin pointed out, you can get such people on the side of science. Though I think, if there is a difference here, it's that in pseudoscience it will try to be sold on the personality cult, rather than anything else. For example, special relativity would have occurred and would have become accepted regardless of a single individual, Einstein, could pin his name on it and essentially make it famous, but woomeisters don't have a chance unless they can pitch a story, "Andrew Wakefield, maverick doctor, challenging Big Science..." for example. So it's not quite that alt-med has founders, it's just that in the pseudoscience they're (usually) hailed as something much bigger and better than their science counterparts, where usually the theory or idea becomes the celebrity rather that the individual behind it. 12:07, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, true. Also, as far as "slow progress made by many individuals", well, in pseudoscience the only "progress" they make is improving the marketing...  22:55, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Definitely good point about the marketing. But you also have to admit that Big Pharma are just as good at this, but they - at least they should - have products that aren't just placebo's in expensive dressing. 10:57, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Warning
Toast + Runny Hunny + Keyboard = Sticky Mess. 00:16, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You couldn't figure that out in advance of the empirical test? I hope the runny hunny on toast was tasty, at least.  PS, what manner of bread do you prefer as the base for your toast recipe (I can't believe we haven't covered this at the ever-thorough RW yet!)?  02:28, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thick sliced Wholemeal Batch (brown & nutty flavoured); Honey: Rowse Blossom Honey. The toast/honey was made for me & delivered to me at the kb so I didn't have any choice. [[image:Smiley.gif]] 02:54, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I feel your pain. Logitech G15 + Coke = $200 keyboard (I think they cost less these days) with non-functioning F, G, X and 7 keys. Thank god for the macro keys, I just programmed them to replace the letters that don't work. Now everytime I'm using someone else's keyboard, I keep reaching over with my pinky to type those letters. 03:36, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've never done Coke on a keyboard.... How do you get the straw into those deep cracks? 04:16, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It's actually much easier to lift the keyboard to your mouth, tip it and enjoy! Don't mind the grainy bits, that's just dust, crumbs and dead insects. 04:32, 25 July 2009 (UTC) Edit: Or are you talking about the other type of Coke? In which case, just pop the keys off, fill up the underside with chalk, hold it up to your nostril and snort.
 * I have at least two dead keyboards thanks to red wine. 08:32, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That (well coffee lately) is why I only buy cheap keyboards. 08:36, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * A bit different, but I have a friend who once spilled a full bottle of Coke on a theatre light board about an hour before a show. I have never seen anyone quite as angry as that director was. 10:03, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Ha! I worked lighting boards back when they were a wallfull of foot long rheostats. When we got the beautiful thermistor/ thyristor (?) controlled 1 metre x 40cm thing we though we were in heaven until the council decided to store it in the janitor's cupboard (for safety being worth more than two pence) where it got Domestos on it. Insurance took almost 6 months to come through . 10:39, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Ha! I worked lighting boards when we had to get the lightning bugs to twitch in unison, and we walked twenty-seven miles in the snow to school - uphill both ways!  03:44, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * HA!, I worked lighting boards when we had to hit two rocks together to make sparks, and we had to be at school before we got there after climbing a 25,000 foot precipice at -200oF. Tell the kids today that, they just won't believe it. 05:51, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh. Great. Now my mum and dad are on RW. --PsyGremlinWhut? 10:18, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It's your grandma. You little whippersnapper! [[image:With a whip.gif]] 10:39, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Moar breakups
Me, this time. 7 years down the drain. Five weeks after my mother's death too. Tears, too many tears. Life is great, eh? --DogP Marmite Patrol 03:00, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Shit man, sorry to hear this news. Look after yourself, ya hear! Ace McWickedNecron99 03:07, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow, seven years. My heart bleeds for you.  Life will get better, but that ain't the message you can hear right now.  Condolences, DogP my friend.  Shit.  03:16, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * To have loved and lost. I tend to think more in line with Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black when Will Smith says the same to him.  His response is... "Yeah, you think?  Try it!"  Strangely, this made me think of getting in contact, through Facebook, with a lady I knew nearly seven years ago.  Here goes nothing.  04:20, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Sympathy, man. 05:52, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry mate. My thoughts are with you. As an Irishman, you know the solution... 09:48, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks all.  Even anonymous online friends are helpful at the moment.   I'm trying to actually stay away from the booze as much as possible, as that could go horribly pear-shaped if I'm not careful.  --DogP Marmite Patrol 22:19, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Please help with Palin
please... As far as I know, this is actually The Sarah twittering. But it is so bad, and rapes the language of Shakespeare so hard I am beginning to think it is parody... Do you know if it is? Too lazy to do my own research, and if it is real, it is pure comedic gold so you need to follow it. Dendlai (talk) 09:45, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, her and JPratt seem to share the shame English teacher and we all know he'd willingly drink her bathwater. Following her (and JPattt - you can't ban everybody who follows you, idiot) oo, just to see what develops. --PsyGremlinWhut? 10:39, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * WIth the notable exception of Stephen Fry, pretty much all the celebrities on Twitter are fake. It's practically the only use for the site. 10:49, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's really Palin. --WJThomas (talk) 11:09, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The Beeb's World News has had a bit about her every thirty minutes - haven't watched it though. 11:17, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * (Edit conflict) Yeah, I got directed to the twit from some news story about how people were faking Palin on twitter and how this was the real deal (with Bill McNeal). But but.. I can't wrap my head around it... This person, who twits like a dyslectic valley girl, was a governor..? And a candidate to become the vice president of the US? And she still has millions of wingnut fans? ... WHY, oh spaghetti monster, WHY? Dendlai (talk) 11:23, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Alaska and Republican politics are male-dominated groups--any time a hot(ish) chick is willing to talk to them, they'll be all over her, like Elvira at a sci-fi convention.--WJThomas (talk) 11:45, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The account has a little blue tick on it that says "verified account" that leads to this page. Not much research required. 12:05, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oy, I didn't notice that. But I have a problem beleiving a site that is based on "blog in 140 characters or less!" is trustworthy when it says "O hai! Diz is real account! Promiz!" Dendlai (talk) 12:17, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It's really her, she has confirmed it several times and if it weren't her, she would be all over the news denouncing this imposter as some Democratic/Liberal elite plot to hurt her political standing...... 19:02, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That's what Palin never understood...she didn't need the Media, the Democrats, the Liberals, the NWO or the Illuminati to destroy her reputation. She did a perfectly fine job destroying it all by herself as soon as the cameras rolled. -- CodyH (talk) 02:25, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

WP
seems to have vanished? 14:00, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * iz back, but struggled to load at first. Totnesmartin (talk) 16:50, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Woohoo!
I just got my tax refund, just over a grand. Beers all 'round! The worst part now is that I have to go to bed instead of celebrating, it's 12:35am and I have to get up for TAFE (college) in five-point-five hours. 14:35, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * At least I'm actually going to get my GST rebates this year. Unfortunately they're all going to get blown on transportation since the bastards put an age cap on student bus passes. --Kels (talk) 15:02, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * really? Don't they think adults deserve to partake in education? Or that somehow we adults are more capable than younguns at holding a fulltime job while doing fulltime study? Bah! I hope you get some sort of student concession at least. 58.163.175.133 15:58, 26 July 2009 (UTC) (rebback, posting from in bed using my iPhone coz it's too cold to go to my computer)
 * Seriously, as far as I can tell the only reasoning that went into this was "how much money can we save" and "how low can we set the bar". The cut-off for student passes, effective July 1, is 27.  So if you're 28 or older you can't get a discounted student pass.  Which is garbage, since by and large mature students don't have all the funding sources that younger students have and so are hit much harder by the lack of discount.  I haven't lived with my parents for a long while now, but at least I'm fortunate enough to have a roommate who accepts barter (cooking and cleaning) for a reduction on rent. --Kels (talk) 15:08, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Isn't the joy of tax refund simply an illusion? I mean, you lost the interest gained between tax collection (when you have your salaries) and tax refund. Perhaps I have said too much. 00:43, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's true (although interest these days is so low it wouldn't make much difference), but people like them as a sort of "enforced savings plan". The $20/week Redback didn't have last year would probably have been frittered away on meaninglessly small amounts of heroin and cocaine, negligible in effect or memorability.  A thousand bucks all at once buys a very nice party for RB and a hooker or two.  00:57, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Look, no matter which angle you view it from, the fact remains that my bank balance is one thousand dollars higher than it was yesterday... well, actually I've whittled it down to about $600 (paid off all my bills, and paid some rent in advance). Now, where are those hookers? 09:02, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Maitreya
Has anyone heard of this rubbish ? I think I've come across it before but never really looked into it. They also have a YouTube video about some crazy star. 21:47, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Wasn't Maitreya an alter ego of the Buddha? 21:54, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Supposedly the second coming of Buddha. But SHARE International seems be touting some guy (seen in Kenya - no not Obama) as a four-in-one messiah (Judaism, Christianity, Islam & Buddhism). Amongst all the fuzzy pictures of bright lights on the Youtube video there is a picture of him. 22:14, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

A little bit of advice...
...if anyone ever steals a pint of your blood, do NOT try and replace it with pint after pint of beer... 13:19, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Fool! Don't you know that the cookie and juice they give you afterwards transmogrifies into a pint of blood. (or a six pack and pizza if you haven't actually donated blood). --PsyGremlinWhut? 16:37, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * But if you're asleep and someone sneaks into your house and steals your blood, and you're out of cookies and juice, then what!? 17:07, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Defensive weapon of garlic should be pretty high on your next shopping list methinks. --PsyGremlinWhut? 17:17, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * If only I could afford such sweet pleasures as food... 17:57, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Remember: Discarded pizza boxes are an excellent source of cheese. -- 19:10, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

Racing Friend
Weird. My friend here asked me put on the Grand Prix, and we started talking about how people become drivers in the first place, and I mentioned that I was at school with a guy called Shingo Tachi who was a Japanese F3 driver for the British Vauxhall team. I said we all expected him to become one of the famous F1 drivers, and then I got curious about what happened to him. I started typing his name into Google, and it came up in the autocomplete! Holy shit, he has his own Wikipedia page: He was killed the following year when testing a GT500 category Toyota Supra at the TI Circuit, Okayama, Japan. There was a technical failure and Shingo failed to slow down for the first corner, crashing into the tyre wall at unabated speed. He suffered massive chest injuries from the steering wheel and died an hour later. Fucking hell. It's odd how you just don't think about people you knew being dead. He was such a nice bloke. As I mentioned on the talk page on WP I have some photos and a poster which he signed for me, so I'll have to dig them out to add to his page. 12:33, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Found the poster with him in it, so I scanned it and uploaded it to WP. A bit of a crap scan, but it's nice to have a picture of him in his leathers on his page. 19:08, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Nice, too bad the scan is so rough. Also, you're gonna need to defend the copyright status to keep that up there...  03:36, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I did find one picture of him, but it's a crap black and white photo I did while doing photography at school and he's at the back of a group of friends and isn't very visible. It's times like this you realise you really should have taken more photos when you're younger and taken care of them. Totnesmartin contacted me about the copyright, but I couldn't upload it directly to WP as I'm not an "established" user. If someone else can move the image to WP for me under Fair Use then I'd be extremely grateful. 09:46, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately the image you've already uploaded will be deleted as Wikimedia Commons can't accept FU images. However, you should be able to upload the image to Wikipedia itself within four days of your account's creation and after you've made ten edits (see wp:Wikipedia:User access levels), where you can claim it under FU.KlapauciusEsteemed Constructor 23:52, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've done it for him, I'm fairly familiar with WP's copyright policies so all should be well. Touch wood. Totnesmartin (talk) 14:03, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That's awesome. Thanks so much TM. It's just a shame I don't have a better photo. 18:39, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I like wikipedia but...
What do you get when you cross "npov" with a bureaucratic system as convoluted as your average fascist state? This discussion on homeopathic literature. Keep in mind that Dana Ullman is in charge of the homeopathy article at citizendium. tmtoulouse 23:30, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I was shocked, shocked, I tell you, to discover that that references section was not a template. 00:57, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've read your talk page Trent, the bureauracy really is the main problem with wikipedia. Remember when that guy came to repost Michelle Obama's arms here and did you see the length of discussion on keeping it or not? It's just insane. But Q11 of the page's FAQ is a little disappointing. At least at RW we're allowed, no supposed to call it that. :p 12:33, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Q7 of course, is understandable and quite reassuring. 12:34, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Stewart and Kristol
Jon, who claims only to be a comedian and "fake news show presenter" once again totally pwned Bill, who thinks he is an intellectual on the July 27 show. Heavily edited as broadcast, I bet the whole thing is on the youtubez. Jon nailed Bill saying that the US govt provides "the best health care in the world" to US soldiers... while, of course, Bill claims the US govt (or any govt) could never do such a thing (provide world class health care). I lolled repeatedly and fell off my chair. PS, they are obviously "friends" and very collegial, making for that deeper question, how serious are these people about their POVs (I think Jon is, but is Bill just a media whore?)? 03:47, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * To the guy who always asks for links. Linx pleez? 06:07, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I was writing to those who make the links. I only barely watched it on TV!  This will have to do for now.  Give the utubers a few hours to polish their copyright violations?  06:37, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Also check out [the official website] they'll have the full interview posted soon. 07:14, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I have every expectation that while they might believe some of what they push, personalities like O'Felafel and Coulter are little more than actors playing roles. It's been pointed out by others that Coulter especially is noticeable in how she gets crazier and crazier as time goes by, and the fans eat it up.  I haven't seen much of her early stuff, but I'm told it's quite tame in comparison.  It wouldn't surprise me if the same was true of O'Reilley, he knows as well as anyone who writes his paychecks and he's willing to go wherever that takes him.  If that's true than he's no idiot, the heavy spin pays off handsomely. --Kels (talk) 16:31, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well here's the link to the actual video. 18:45, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

News?
I'm back from a holiday and a serious case of fried brain from trying to understand this; I just want to know if anyone interesting has left or returned while I was away. 14:10, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Someone vandalised the RW:Sandbox page, but that's about it. 17:57, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * TK sent some socks over taunt Ace and also took down his allegations against Trent & Human. Ken's just as bonkers as ever. Andy still won't admit his page views have been bumped over the 100 million mark. 18:20, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I hate Esther Rantzen
I have a totally irrational dislike of this woman. She says that she's going to stand for parliament. I might move to south Luton just to campaign against her. 15:57, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Cyrilll... Totnesmartin (talk) 16:56, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

No-follow tags
Debate:Should external links on RationalWiki be flagged as no follow? if this is an issue that you are interested in or want to voice your opinion on please come on over to the debate page. tmtoulouse 20:08, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Ray Comfort and Thunderf00t
Is anyone watching or has watched this? It's not flashy or overstated, it's not backed up with dramatic music and stuff like you'd see with a Dawkins interview on Expelled or anything like that, but it's interesting nontheless. I'm impressed by it, it's sane and respectful. It's practically in many senses a question/answer session, but slightly one-sided as Comfort can just resort to Goddidit while Thunderf00t has some explaining to do. But overall, if you're interested it's well worth watching/listening to. 16:08, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I saw the "it's on" video, but am not really following it. Linkys? 20:35, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Here you go, the entire playlist.  20:51, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
 * To be frank I was a little underwhelmed by it. Ace McWickedNecron99 01:22, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * However a it may be, thanks K/T for the link. 03:46, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * A lot of people seem to be saying that it's underwhelming but in that sort of case I'm not sure what they were expecting. As I said, it's not flashy or comedy but the content is fairly stimulating, especially seeing someone who's worldview is simply "goddidit" battle against some fairly good philosophical point. Seeing Ray skirt around "If God said paedophila was right, would that make it right?" was really interesting. At least to me. 11:00, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * My problem mainly concerns with the sound is hardly intelligible and nobody mind subtitling this.  11:28, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It'd make some interesting points to go on Ray's article here. Notably that he seems to think that paedophilla makes a lot of people happy and that there is blood at the moment of conception - clearly failing at basic biology there. And the whole thing is riddled with Hitlerium. 20:49, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Beach volleyball ...
... sport or soft porn? 07:36, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Sport, but the kind of sport you watch by yourself in a dark room with the curtains closed. 08:31, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I seem to recall it being the sport with highest number of viewers for the past few Olympics. And the least amount of female flesh covered. Coincidence? --PsyGremlinWhut? 10:27, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It was the most-watched because it was the most-broadcast. Every time I turned on the tube last summer it was women's beach volleyball, women's beach volleyball, women's beach volleyball (and men's swimming, but only if it starred Michael Phelps).  I mean, good god--there are 973 different events at the Summer Olympics, show us more than two.  --WJThomas (talk) 11:31, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Soft porn, definitely. Whereas women's tennis with the sound turned up and the picture switched off is hardcore. 11:01, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It's sport. Those women may be in skimpy outfits but they are all business. Female track and field athletes wear much the same thing and no one moans about them.-- 13:26, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * For nerds, Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball was the equivalent of Sims Porn. My roommate in Korea spent almost 96 hours solid on a pass trying to win enough credits to unlock the see-through bikini. I, on the other hand, went to the market in the 'Ville and scored an uncensored Japanese bondage mag for 1/50th the cost in 1/100th the time. The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 15:15, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * And yet one could google "uncensored Japanese bondage mag", and return 100000000 results in1/1000 the time for free. -- 13:06, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * One result only. 13:24, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * AHAHAHAHAA! In my defense, though, I had no computer for about a year over there, so magazines were the way to go. Besides, this pre-dated 3G networks, so "field manuals" were easy to carry in a rucksack when training. The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 13:59, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * And that, children, is called time management on a budget! Tecmo has always had the ability to sneak that stuff into their games without getting the infamous AO rating from the ESRB, usually by making said bra or character model extremely hard to unlock, therefor 'hiding' it somewhere in the game away from the censors. But nerds, being who they are, will always find a way. Case in Point: Hot coffee. -- CodyH (talk) 12:18, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

(undent)Back in the world of real people the line between sport and entertainment is getting increasingly blurred and we are increasingly demanding soft porn in our entertainment. As such the sports industry has to pander to this by offering beach volleyball and synchronised swimming where real, genuine competitive sportsmen and (more particularly) women are shown in a suitably revealing way. Silver Sloth (talk) 12:34, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That's why I've been so disappointed with the sensationalism in my favorite sport: female pro wrasslin'. Corry (talk) 02:40, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

So...
A tuna with a rune does more than a tree with a weed. Just saying a very important fact. 02:35, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Damn you, now I'm going spend four days solving that as a cryptic clue in my sleep. One problem with my cryptic puzzle "habit" (I can quit anytime, really) is that I look for anagrams and hidden words in mundane printed matter, like recipes and ingredient lists, truck part names, and, of course, Bible passages.  03:23, 27 July 2009 (UTC)
 * If you have Ice Cream I'll give you mine.
 * If you don't have Ice Cream I'll take it away.
 * What am I?
 * No Googling! 01:49, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Clinically insane? 15:47, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Earlier Conversation
Somebody brought this up earlier, and I just wanted to follow up. Somebody had asked about Professor Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus. I picked up a copy from my local library and I can tell you, it is excellent. Ehrman has this great ability to be entertaining and informative at the same time (although my sister would disagree on the entertaining part). This book is an excellent companion to Jesus Interrupted. I recommend them to religious and non religious alike. They really help put things in perspective. 20:45, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps augment the list when you are done?  04:58, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Concur. It's a great book.  He has at least one lecture on Youtube, if you're interested.    Corry (talk) 03:00, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Review?
Anyone find this (EDIT: they have a blog too) amusing? 15:09, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The blog entry regarding Mr X is quite interesting. That sort of thing is definitely a problem with Wikipedia, where their articles are shit and have no attention paid to them, they really are shit. 15:43, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * You know, I may have noticed that same phenomenon elsewhere. :) 15:46, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * True, true. But our shit articles don't exactly come at the top of the google search for that term. 15:53, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually I wasn't thinking of here. 16:02, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Ooops. 16:09, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Looking for a copy editor
As everyone on this site should know by now my grammar and spelling is not exactly perfect. I am starting the written portion of my comprehensive exams today and am wondering if anyone here would be willing to review it for mistakes? The exam is here in case you think you might be willing but want to make sure you won't be bored to death. Just drop me a line on my talk page or e-mail if you are willing. Thanks! tmtoulouse 17:54, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Google's wiki
Have you guys heard of Knol? I have a vague memory of hearing the announcement but never explored it. It is not a wiki but I think tried to capitalize a bit on the zeitgeist of wikipedia. It is closer to a blog, but a blog hosted on google that anyone can post to at anytime. Like all things humanity creates there is some really good stuff. But it seems mostly to be a wasteland of spam, pseudoscience, and insanity.

Some interesting bits:


 * Did Einstein not understand math?, be sure to check out the anti-semite in the comment at the bottom.
 * How To Use Quantum Physics Plus Norse God/goddess Rituals To Attract Wisdom, Protection, Rejuvenation
 * How To Keep Indigo Children Healthy With Quantum Physics
 * Official theory of 9/11 WTC tower near-free-fall collapses violates Laws of Physics

And apparently Deepak Chopra is an award winning author there. tmtoulouse 19:34, 28 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh man, I had a friend back east who get totally head-over-heels about the Indigo Child thing. But she was into a lot of that sort of rot, like Reiki and so forth.  When I moved, she'd just gotten her aromatherapy certification. --Kels (talk) 19:44, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Wow, "...the falling object will have a certain momentum. The velocity of the object will be the speed of gravity or free fall speed, 9.81 m/s. The object will continue at the same velocity unless acted on an outside force." - yeah, like gravity. "Free fall speed" = 9.81 m/s?  Hahahahahaha...  20:55, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * A little knowledge is a dangerous thing indeed.
 * I also love the part about reaction forces, if only for the implication that buildings should literally fly towards space (or at least jump). 21:48, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It's a nice concept, but lets face it, nothing is going to dethrone wikipedia anytime soon. 00:45, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * It's actually a shitty concept, and, yeah, what you said. 05:16, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I mean it's nice in the way that you can have different people can write their own article on the subject rather than have a single page of Authority that has so many disputes on it, so people can really read every opinion. Of course, there are still wrong opinions. 13:28, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Ah, ok, yeah. There's an article like that at wikisynergy, as I recall.  Yeah, EVP.  Has sections for "both sides".  18:06, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Just looked at it. I know which "side" I'm convinced by... 15:26, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

The Discovery Institutes new PR campaign
Coast to Coast? Wow that's some high quality press you got going. tmtoulouse 22:44, 28 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Crazies stick together. Sterile 14:29, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Random Mutterings From a Government Stooge
For some reason I have chosen politics/public service as my career. I could have been a journalist or a writer or even an actor but for some bizarre reason I am a politics junkie. I am destined for government however in the mean time, while I climb the ladder, I must work as a government stooge as opposed to a real policy maker. Just another chair moistener sitting round with the rest of the organ banks. But some of these people are just straight up weird folk. It seems every government job I have worked in (aside from when working directly within a party) I come across the strangest and most demented people I have ever had the displeasure of encountering. Case in point - I wear headphones all day. I am not always listening to music, I just wear them to dissuade conversation but also to drown out the random mutterings of the crazy, wild eyed, fork and spoon operator that sits near me. This woman cannot help herself and is continually muttering and giving herself a running commentary of everything she does or thinks. It all flies from the dripping hole in the centre of her face and woe to anyone that catches her eye as then she'll assume that she is allowed to speak to you. My annoyance with this woman turned to horror late yesterday afternoon. My I-Pod was charging yet I had my headphones on still with the cord leading into my pocket so no one would speak to me. She turned to me and started speaking, I pretended not to hear her and she said goes "You probably can't hear me because of your music" yet then she continued to hold a conversation with me. If that wasn't weird anough she then trailed off and started muttering before turning her head toward the ceiling. She pointed at the fluroescent tube, laughed at it and then held a long and convoluted discussion with the ceiling fan. I got one hell of a fright and now I hold my letter opener close and keep it in my pocket when I leave my desk. Seriously, if government services are hiring this calibre of staff its no wonder the economy is fucked. End rant. Ace McWickedNecron99 21:43, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * That's actually a great strategy for ignoring people. I think I'm going to ask my boss about that tomorrow. We're not allowed to listen to music at work, but hopefully he'll let me wear headphones to drown out the bayou inbreds I work with. I'd probably get more done. --PitchBlackMind (talk) 21:51, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I knew a guy who became a welder for similar reasons: "When you have a blinding light right in front of you, people can't walk up and say stupid shit to you." 01:29, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Sounds like OCD, but that's just my experience. I've gotten in the habit of wearing my headphones on only one ear, so I can keep up enough to make vague responses ("are you listening?"). ~ Kupochama[1] 02:27, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

She's probably just tricking you into, ironically, bothering somebody else when you need something. I would, then again, I'd talk to ceiling fans too... 02:51, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I need her for nothing. Ace McWickedNecron99 02:59, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

ROTFL!!! Once in a while it's actually worth it to read stuff. Thanks! Tarantallegra (talk) 07:32, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Unbelievable
Man's (and woman's) inhumanity to ... 07:22, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * As is the entire list of prior cases. 07:36, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll see your weirdo unlicensed c-section, and raise you a woman ate her child's brain. 'Tis the season, apparently, the woman in the house behind mine also killed her baby a couple of weeks back. Its so unremarkable it only made a couple of inches in the local paper. -- 08:44, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Don't think it reads like death from C section more like murder for gain. 08:58, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Space Cheese
Not to get too patriotic, but Britain have got back their space cheese they fired into the atmosphere last week... now we're just waiting for the Chinese to conduct their own astronaughtical-fromage related experiments to try and outdo us... 18:51, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Hang on, a third of a tonne of cheese was attached to a balloon to celebrate the moon landings and then it just dropped... 19:11, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, I found the video. I assume it's a typo they picked up from the local news (it happens a lot) and it's meant to be 300g, not kg. 19:14, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Firefox 3.5
Does anyone know how to fix the annoying behaviour in Ubuntu that stops it from using the default font? 19:04, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * No. But I've been having trouble getting Firefox to do anything on the linux machines I've been using recently. 19:09, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Strangely they (Mozilla) seem to be concentrating on Windows - FFx 4 preview is only out for windoze. Best suggestion try to revert to 3.(<5).  19:30, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Does anyone else use X-Marks (formerly Foxmarks) I haven't been able to synch my favorites and passwords for weeks. 20:33, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Pffft. Bookmarks. Mine are just full of crap I needed to remember for one day and then never deleted. I still have this recipe I tried out like three years ago, and it was a total disaster. Too much yeast, the dough rose too much and spooged out the filling. Like dried out cheese rolls. Crappy BBC recipes. Real men use wide area service discovery for important sites. -- 20:53, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Zee Schnozola
How many do you know? --Kels (talk) 21:23, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * The last two, making me a typical Liberal Shut-In. Know I've heard of Harper somewhere, but I refuse Google. ~ Kupochama[1][2] 21:31, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm pretty proud of the Obama one, really. The Ahmadinejad would make part of a good caricature, now that I look at it a little more.  Wish I had more of an idea of what the CP cast actually look like, it's kinda boring just drawing Andy. --Kels (talk) 21:35, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I know them all except for Abousfian Abdelrazik. 21:57, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * He's the Canadian that got stranded in Sudan after he was arrested on false terrorism charges. Spent a long time living at the Canadian embassy while the Conservative government here unaccountably did everything they can (despite a court order) to prevent him from returning.  --Kels (talk) 22:01, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Kels, re the CP crowd, there's the CBC video, and Ed Smeg posted a photo of his idiot grin. Think that's about it for resources on that, though.  Andy needs to drag his class on to TV again...  02:04, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Still, the kids aren't really the point here. It's the CP personalities, such as Andy, Koward, TK and the like.  --Kels (talk) 17:09, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * True... too bad they don't put together a group admin photo for their yearbook... That's what CP needs! A yearbook for each class Andy runs, with the kids all signing each others', and Ed scribbling "email me" in the margins!  18:54, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

In case you haven't seen it
Mitchell and Webbs Homeopathic A&E:. Taytopacket (talk) 22:29, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Homeopathic lager? I think I'd prefer a bit of Glucozade Port. 14:10, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Shatner reads Palin's tweets
This is wonderful. Corry (talk) 00:09, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Pure genius. Though he has toned down his approach a bit over the years, hasn't he?  02:10, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Well, it might have been a bit much if the masturbating bear came on stage. Corry (talk) 02:58, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Only if the ex-governor swung by on a wire, (simulated helicopter?) and shot the creature, (da bear, NOT Shatner) dead with an rifle.17:02, 31 July 2009 (UTC) CЯacke ®

Dumbest scaremongering ever?
Croped up via an Arsebook status update, always a great place for spreading urban legends and hoaxes. please be aware jason michel white, jason white, james ryan white, phil gibson, shelley white, daniel white, micheal white, hayley amalley and hayley white. They are adding people on facebook to steal your childrens photos to sell to perverts. DO NOT ADD THEM !! This is no joke. The police know about it. Plz copy and paste to show everyone. So, I did the obvious and did a few searches. Most of these names produce over 500 results, so the info isn't exactly helpful. At worst, the people with these names who aren't fake or misnamed accounts may recieve abusive messages - which is why the "better safe than sorry" attitude of a lot of the people who forward this shit is just plain wrong, and spreading this stuff - like with fake virus warnings - is just counterproductive and possibly dangerous. Secondly, why would anyone need pictures of children that are tiny low-res, compressed to hell and back and obviously non-sexual when your average Pampers or Huggies advert contains all the kiddie-porn you'll ever need? 18:50, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Creationism stuff, need some sources
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wr6uvUNJLww

Watching this thing my obnoxious creationist friend sent me. Does anyone have sources on the weird claims about the Grand Canyon (our geology articles don't specifically address this) and the Earth's magnetic field melting everything everywhere (lolwut?).WilhelmJunker (talk) 17:17, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Look through Why Do People Laugh At Creationists on Youtube. There's some Grand Canyon stuff on there, atlhough I can't remember where exactly, TF is quite fond of the place. Basically, the entire series is pretty good material for going at creatard claims one by one. 19:17, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'd say try the Talk.Origins Archive. They have literally heard every single argument any Creationist dingbat has made on the Internet _ever_. --Gulik (talk) 19:20, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * This video is a really interesting bit of support for evolution - easy to understand too for an idiot like me who only did advanced biology for a year. What's interesting about it also is the professor giving the lecture says at the end he's a Roman Catholic theist but he doesn't believe in a deceptive designer i.e. one that fuses chromosomes to test faith. 19:34, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * (EC) The Grand Canyon, as I recall, was an old favourite of Andy back in his talk.origins days, although his defense of the Devil's Tower being evidence of a worldwide flood is way funnier. --Kels (talk) 19:35, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * His Devil's Tower defence is here, in case you need a laugh. --Kels (talk) 19:37, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh dear... It's sometimes said by flood skeptics that if the Grand Canyon is evidence of a flood then creationists may as well also say the Sahara Dessert is also evidence of the flood for not forming a canyon. With that Devil's Tower thing, I can see where they're coming from. It's all "this has x feature therefore it's the flood but that doesn't have x feature because of the same flood". And Assfly wonders why we all think he's genuinely medically retarded. 19:41, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Wait... Why didn't we include Andy's portfolio of stupidity on Usenet in any of our articles?  21:51, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

My geological background doesn't stretch to knowledge of the strata in the Grand Canyon and it's decades since I studied this stuff in detail, but in principle there is no reason why there shouldn't be enormous gaps between different epochs. First of all most rocks start out as sedimentary (to be pedantic all rocks have probably had an igneous source but erosion and weathering has converted them in to particles or salts which are later converted to sedimentary rocks). Now sedimentary rocks are usually deposited in water so geologically stable areas above sea level will not have much deposition and in fact will suffer from erosion. Over the course of the Earth's history continents have wandered and been exposed to different erosion mechanisms. Now the lower levels of the Grand Canyon do exhibit a great unconformity where tilted rocks have been eroded to an approximately flat layer and sedimentary rocks then deposited on top of them with a gap of about 250m years of geology. Since then the area has remained a plateau despite some orogenic (mountain -building) periods but it has moved up and down. The rock sequences of the Grand Canyon were formed in different geological conditions - which does not correlate with creationist flood geology where it all happened pretty much at the same time. In the different layers are fossils which are indicative of specific conditions so they would have had to be there for quite a while. The creationists seem to claim that the flood laid down all the sediments but then cut the canyon when the water drained away. Well I think everyone knows how mud and sand collapse when they have water cutting through them yet the GC is cut through hard sediments. The GC of course is a favorite of creationists, probably because it's in the nutters' back yard. Modern geology really started in Britain and there is a very good reason why it is such a special place. If you look at a geological map of GB there is an enormous cross section of almost all geological periods starting from London you cross increasingly older rocks as you head into north-west Scotland. I don't know of anywhere else where such an array of geological time-periods are exposed at the surface.

As for the Earth's magnetic field then we do know that it changes and indeed periodically flips direction. This was discovered through geophysical measurements across the Atlantic where volcanic rocks created along the mid-Atlantic ridge have crystallised and aligned with the magnetic field. There are hundreds of magnetic reversals recorded in the sea-floor of the Atlantic which match up on either side of the oceanic ridge. So the magnetic field oscillates and like a sine-wave the rate of change varies depending where you are on the curve. It's certainly not linear. The whole conjecture about the earth having so much magnetic field that it would melt is just bullshit. 19:48, 30 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I didn't get very far in to the video, I watched a few minutes before noticing it was an hour long and that I didn't have enough time to watch this nitwit babble. However, the very first grand canyon thing that comes out of his mouth, the answer is UPLIFT! Or possibly, UPLIFT, YOU FUCKING MORON! Sedimentary rock is only laid down when the fucking place is under water. -- 20:12, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Not 100% true, you can get rocks made from dry deposits like wind-blown sand. 20:40, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
 * "The whole conjecture about the earth having so much magnetic field that it would melt is just bullshit." Hehe, I thought the earth was mostly molten, except a bit of frozen scum floating on the surface?  01:46, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

More specifically at talk origins here Sterile 03:10, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The outer core is believed to be molten while the inner core is solid. The creationist on the video was making the claim that the entire globe would be melted because of the strength of the magnetic field. 05:56, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I did say "hehe"... but as far as we can tell, just a few miles down is nasty hot liquid. Of course, it's mostly light elements, whereas the core is solid gold!  Oops, mostly heavy metal irons and nickels. Just don't take no wooden ones.  06:00, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * There are very few places where there is molten rock just a few miles down. The mantle is generally not molten but there are hotspots where molten rock from the core has broken through. These hot spots provide further evidence for an old Earth. Oceanic island chains like the Galapagos or Hawaii have been formed by periodic volcanic activity where magma erupts through the overlying tectonic plates. As the plates move so the islands are displaced from their position over the hot spot and a new island is formed. Without further volcanic activity the islands succumb to the forces of erosion and become smaller and lower leaving a geologic equivalent of the "mouse trails" on a computer screen. The super-caldera in Yellowstone shows that the remnants of previous eruptions are displaced away from the hot spot. Also melting of the core is a result of radioactive decay not magnetism. 06:57, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Further on the issue of magnetism causing heating/melting. As far as I am aware the only mechanism which would create heat through magnetism is induction heating which requires an AC current. Commercial induction heating uses a frequency of the order of many kilohertz. Not really a feasible scenario for the Earth. 00:16, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

I discovered another great resource - Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith - for countering YEC arguments, in particular this article Flood geology and the Grand Canyon: a critique. 14:58, 1 August 2009 (UTC)