RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive108

Random facts that I feel the need to point out after overhearing a conversation between 2 men in their early twenties.
Adult human females typically have hair on their legs, under their arms, and around their reproductive organs. There is nothing unnatural, unusual, or disgusting about this. Some women choose to remove some or all of that hair. Others do not. Choosing not to remove body hair is not a sign of poor hygiene, nor is there any correlation between a woman's decison to remove body hair or not and her sexual orientation. A woman's body hair is a topic that is not really worth commenting about in public, as it is a personal choice and has nothing to do with anyone else. Thanks for your time.P-Foster (talk) 22:55, 16 June 2011 (UTC)


 * No, thank you for the public comment about women's body hair noting that women's body hair is a topic that is not really worth commenting about in public. Doctor Dark (talk) 00:29, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm speaking about practices in general, not about a specific woman present in person, as were these two gentlemen. I hope you can discern a difference. P-Foster (talk) 00:32, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It was a joke, son, a joke. Doctor Dark (talk) 00:50, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I know, man. I know. . P-Foster (talk) 00:55, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Any woman who dresses to enhance her sexuality is a slut, any who doesn't is a lezzie. Ask any young man - and quite a few older ones as well. That whirring sound you hear coming from the east midlands (if I remember correctly) is our toasted friend spinning in her grave. I can just imagine the comment she would have left. Jack Hughes (talk) 09:32, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Please don't use the term "lezzie", it is quite offensive. The accept term is "lezza". 15:42, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm back
Hello! I've been in Timbuktu for a few months. How have things been going around here?--CPalmer (talk) 15:03, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * War, havoc, LANCB and the ultimate return of several prominent RW entities. You know, the usual.   15:41, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Ah, good. That objectionable Eira character hasn't gone by any chance, has he?--CPalmer (talk) 16:02, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Nay, she remains.  16:31, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * TBT? Seriously? Tell us more. And yes, the wench still lurks here. -- PsyGremlin  16:44, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Although Armondikov has gone as a result of HCM, that's why we are moving to a new admin system.  19:22, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I believe Armondikov's back. Pippa (talk) 19:24, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yup! Pippa (talk) 19:26, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * To be honest, I would not recommend Timbuktu. Very inconvenient to get to - the place is miles from anywhere.--CPalmer (talk) 21:44, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Abortion and the risks dr. take.
So I've been working on a page on Dr. Hern, after adding detail to the other two murdered abortionists, and I'm sitting here thinking "thank god these few men and women are still at it", cause i gotta say, if i received death threats, bombs at my office, etc., I'd go into skin care or something. Just needed to say that, cause reading this stuff is a bit hard to take as a woman who is active in the legal side of abortion. never really thought about the much harder, on the lines guys and gals. sighs... thanks for letting me ventEn attendant Godot 15:27, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Wow, "there ain't no body here but us chickens"
Bawk, bawk - hellloooo.... Dead on a Friday morning. does this prove i have no life?En attendant Godot 15:36, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I haven't heard that phrase since viewing various Looney Tunes cartoons. As for having no life, well, I dunno.  Probably means the same for me as it does for you.   15:45, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Unless there's wiki drama, the Yurpeans' (and African's) weekends start around 11 EST, when they knock off work and go get drunk and wear their knees out having aggressive sex with strangers anywhere they find them. Hope this helps. [[file:Nuttysexpistols.png|60px|link=User:Nutty Roux|Nutty Roux]][[file:Nuttytalk.png|35px|link=User_talk:Nutty_Roux|never mind]] 15:50, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Wachoo mean dis 11 eest, mon? Dis be Effricen time, we be knockin' off at de lunchtime. Den we goes to dem strip club til de womens make de supper, den we wear our knees out having aggressive sex with strangers anywhere. What wrong wichoo man? -- PsyGremlin  16:38, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

The Triumph of New-Age Medicine.
Flame away. P-Foster (talk) 16:32, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The thing is, there is real benefit to new age medicine - if you understand the proper context and expectations. Most illnesses, especially long term ones, have a significant mental aspect to them.  Stress caused by the illness (and in the US, lack of money to pay for the illness) can make pain worse.  Chronic pain, even though it isn't "in the head", is still effected by the head.  And when you are getting constantly poked, given meds that leave you nasueus, have bruises from iv's all over, etc., you have a general malaise that can really strap your energy.  Most holistic med techniques (acupuncture, massage, yoga, meditation, tea & herbal relaxers) and even those totally bogus (crystals, magnets, etc) can help the mind-based side of long term illness.  They are not cures, they are ways to deal with the more "every day ickies" that come with any illness.  most every hospital i've seen in Colorado, now employs Yoga teachers, meditation classes, and massage therapists (along with painting rooms in bright colors, piping music into some rooms, and even testing aromatherapy where it does not interact with the meds) to help patients deal mentally.  No one is claiming this cures, and i think that's the difference.  they are saying it HELPS. [[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]En attendant Godot  16:40, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

. Well put. P-Foster (talk) 16:41, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Most new-age therapies are just designed to soothe the worried well. Very little harm other than to your bank balance.  Lily Inspirate me. 17:44, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * If someone find some new age thing cures a cold, great, but what if they convince a friend to try it for their cancer?? Ancient Greek Pegasus icon.png 18:02, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I have a rather cut and dry view of this. If you are stupid enough to not see a doctor and go to a guru instead, that's your issue.  If you do not send your child to a medical doctor for medical treatment, regardless of your religion or new-age medicine, you should be charged with child abuse, and the state should step in.  But if while you or your child is in the hospital, you decide to pray every day, or put crystals up, or bring in an accupunctureist... excellent for you and doctors and hospitals should and must make allowances for it where it does not disturb your neighbors or risk your health or theirs. [[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]En attendant Godot  18:07, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

A family friend was diagnosed a few months ago with Stage 3 lung cancer. She was told that even with aggressive treatment she has at most a 30% chance of survival. Instead, she has chosen the "natural" route. She has no real illusions that the natural stuff will cure her but thinks it might put her in a better mood. Her reasoning is that so far she has no major symptoms and feels OK, and she'd rather spend as much time as possible with a good quality of life rather than immediately feel like crud from side effects of aggressive treatment that is unlikely to work anyway. I'm as anti-woo as anyone here, but I find it hard to argue with that logic. Doctor Dark (talk) 18:22, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I think that I would also be preparing for a trip to Switzerland, because even opting for the non-intervention route will not be a painless trip. 19:16, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Switzerland? (I've been there a few times, and its a nice place and all, but...?) Doctor Dark (talk) 00:58, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland. Can't remember if late stage lung cancer is one of them, but a medic friend informed me that there are a bunch of cancers where it's well known inside medicine that oncologists will self-diagnose, then go and "have an accident" immediately because they know they've no chance to beat it and don't want to wait and risk being incapable. Once you're incapable of doing for yourself, a trip to Switzerland is the only way out. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 02:24, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * See Terry Pratchett above. 02:30, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Formatting help.
So i've written my first article from scratch and something is very wrong with the image placement - and i'm just not skilled enough to tell what's up. Can anyone good at formatting, see if i've done something obviously wrong, or just laugh and say somethign like "dude, you used the wrong type of bracket"... Warren HernEn attendant Godot 16:42, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * ow's that? Pippa (talk) 16:47, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Danka very kindly! :-)  [[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]En attendant Godot  19:54, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Laaalalalalala~ Katamari Damacyyy~♪
http://kathack.com/ For those who play---Enjoy. Katamari everything! BWAHAHAHA! I find this amusing, especially to do on this talk page. --Dumpling (talk) 17:02, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

The Physics of Atheism
This week's eSkeptic has a review of The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning by Victor Stenger (author of God: The Failed Hypothesis). There is a quote in there which seemed to encapsulate the middle-aged, mean-spirited attitude of CP sysops and others of their ilk:


 * Since I left full-time work, I’ve spent time with many well-off elders who listen only to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, and get a distorted, religion-based view of political reality. They also are tremendously self-centred and lacking in compassion for the needy and lower classes in society.

04:44, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Zombies
Why did Human Revert this?

If you follow the link it shows why believing in zombies is silly, and it’s funny. Proxima Centauri (talk) 09:40, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Possibly because historically Human doesn't appear to like your contributions very much; he also tends to revert Nx a lot nowadays. However, I'm sure he can provide a substantive reason.  Lily Inspirate me. 11:06, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Because it didn't stand up to Human's standards for what should be in a mainspace article, and he can't be arsed to fix it, he just clicks rollback, that's much easier. -- Nx  / talk 12:37, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * IMHO, that edit was kinda pointless and stupid. Especially, it was not really appropriate for where it had been placed in the article. 12:40, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The proper response to such an edit would be to fix it, not blindly revert it. Be productive and proactive.  Human could have moved it to external links or something.  That said, if you're going to complain about the revert, PC, I suggest you do it in a single place, human's talk page being the preferred place.  Otherwise it may make you seem "whiny."--  13:23, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Copyediting PC's contributions is a pain in the ass, so I kinda understand why Human doesn't bother and just rolls back. -- Nx  / talk 13:33, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks Nx. I cut my teeth on the Magdalene Laundries article.  Your comment is appreciated in the fulness of its genuineness.  04:41, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd rather not take everything to Human's talk page because Human needs time to get over any drinks he's taken and any hangover he's suffering before he reads it. Proxima Centauri (talk) 15:32, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The proper place to discuss edits to a single article is on the articles talkpage', not on a user's.  20:29, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The mustelid is correct. And please cast your aspersions elsewhere, PC. 09:22, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Magdalene laundry is a good article, if anoyne can improve it still more that will be great. Proxima Centauri (talk) 06:58, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I spent four hours fixing the diaper contents you dropped there a few years ago. I hope you didn't make it worse by adding to it.  Seriously, sometimes you make nice little edits, but mostly, your writing is incomprehensible and repetitive as hell.  09:22, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I know my English is OK, I've been to university and the lecturers were satisfied with the English in my essays. If you damage confidence in contributors' ability to write you risk damaging the wiki.  Certainly other users frequently improve what I write in wikis and I improve what other users write.  That's the whole point of wikis, wikis are a collaborative effort and become better than what any one user could write alone. Proxima Centauri (talk) 10:22, 15 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Why did Human call this unreadble, poorly formatted crap? Here’s a link to The War Upon Galileo so RationalWikians can judge for themselves. Proxima Centauri (talk) 17:12, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

PC, the article on the Laundries that you wrote was painfully horrible and it took me hours to turn it into English. As far as the GG link, "On this new champion, Galileo, the whole war was at last concentrated. His discoveries had clearly taken the Copernican theory out of the list of hypotheses, and had placed it before the world as a truth." is not very good writing. But you wouldn't know, since, face it: your writing sucks ass, to quote Cartmann. Seriously. You do nice work here sometimes with wikilinking and stuff, but most of your major edits have been fucking disasterflocks. I don't which Uni you went to or for how many hours you were there, but your writing here has been the bane of my existence. 07:37, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Also wait, what? Galileo is the one insisting that planets move in circles, even as the evidence is trickling in that they don't. Kepler is the one who finally figures out something that resembles the picture in a halfway decent modern children's book about the solar system. Galileo deserves his stature as a great man of science, but it's surely an error to present him as the one who first to really figure out what's going on, circular orbits are a really gross error. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 09:32, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Human is trolling again and he removed useful material. Proxima Centauri (talk) 06:51, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Non Seq:
but that damn kim-chi kicked my tush this time. hot hot hot.En attendant Godot 00:01, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * If it was that hot it *will be* "kicking your tush" in a few hours. P-Foster (talk) 00:02, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * oh thanks, just what i needed to remember as my mouth is burning off...[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]En attendant Godot 00:05, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * ooooooh... kim chi is food!  man, talk about a double-entendre!--  00:33, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Who let the pervs out...doop, doop doop....--[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot 00:51, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The red pepper in kimchi will help prevent colon cancer, though! Unfortunately, if you eat a lot of it the fermented nature of the dish will cause stomach cancer... but hey, everything's a tradeoff.-- 01:08, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't believe anything any more.;-) back when i was still considering having kids, i was reading about what pregger women can and can't eat. With all the risk of cancer, risk for abortion, risks to your blood pressure, risks to development - you can pretty much eat white rice and figs.  ;-)[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  01:34, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * White rice should be avoided because of its high glycemic index. Figs can interfere with control of blood sugar (as in diabetics, and in some cases in preparation for surgery). Doctor Dark (talk) 01:49, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Dry crackers are said to be helpful in some cases of morning sickness. Good kimchi should be avoided, though, since I've been told that you can tell the really good stuff by the cigarette butt in the bottom of the jar. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 02:20, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * O_____O''...But...I eat Kimchi everyday. Eff.--Dumpling (talk) 15:15, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I"d never had it till Husband and I went to a Vietnamese place that turned out to be owned by Koreans (go figure, it's America and we only like particular Asians, i guess...) and they had this strange cucumber salad thing that was blazing hot. I tried it, and have been addicted since.  I tried to make my own, but it just lacked something.[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  15:24, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I have to ask, Dumpling - have you ever had Hongeo - the fermented skate? If so, what's it like? -- PsyGremlin  15:39, 17 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Haha. There arn't many Korean restaurants where I live, if any, but the Korean community here is pretty close-knit, so I eat Korean food everyday. Rice. Rice. Rice. Rice. Kimchi. Haha. But usually there's a lot of Korean restaurants in bigger cities in New Jersey, Texas, California, and Georgia. HM~ Well, what do you use to make your kimchi? Unless you're talking about...the cucumber salad, because do have those too(오이 무침Oi muuchim). I figure this website is pretty helpful.:D
 * And to answer your question Psy {If you don't mind me referring to you as just that, or would you prefer me to address you differently? I always feel a bit awkward when saying someone's name---or in this case, username, without a respective. I figure this is an Asian thing}---I have tried Hongyeo before. The first time I tried it, I was relatively young, so I don't remember much---but I did know I didn't like it. But as I went back a couple years ago, I tried it again. It's...an acquired taste, and takes some time getting used to. Since skates release uric acid through their skin, it has this...ammonia smell to it. BUT, there is a trick to it---My grandfather taught me. You breathe the smell in through your mouth...and out your nose. {Usually only the older men eat this...I know why now. They can get drunk of this. XD} It's pretty chewy, but eat it with kkochu-jang (red pepper paste) and drink it down with soju. It's pretty good. {Also how you eat live octopus. Nom Nom Nom}
 * live octopus?! *shudder* oh no... I don't think I could... and I've eaten Mopani worms before. (oh, and psy is just fine - I answer to most things though, including "hey you!" "idiot!" and "what the hell are doing with my daughter") Thanks for the info on the Hongyeo, Dumpling! It sounds... interesting :) -- PsyGremlin  16:43, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I do love octopus, but... live??? euuuu things that squirm don't go down well for Tanya. ;-)  I had only heard of Kim-Chi from MASH, and it was always described as some kind of fermented (and to my mind, stinky) cabbage.  So when the waitress brought out cucumbers in a pickling sauce (that was hot, but so tasty), i was surprised.  I later learned that you can make many types of kimchee with different vegs.  I've never had any but the cucumber. [[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  16:47, 17 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Heh. Asia is a place of...strange noms. But yes. Live octopus. You can eat them with just the minced tentacles into tiny pieces and eat those...or, you have a plate of golfball sized baby octipi, basically drowned in alcohol {they're drunk!} and your wrap them around your chopsticks, dip them in the red pepper paste(or soy sauce), and nom away and make sure to drink it down with soju...and chew carefully. -nodnod- The only reason I've probably eaten all these strange things are because I used to live with my grandpa...and...He's just a tad bit too adventurous. It's okay though. Haha. AND YES! There's lots of different kimchi. Personally, I love the kkakdugi Kimchi (Daikon Radish), it's so crunchy! Haha. Well, Kimchi is kinda smelly. So we have a separate fridge for them. Psy it is then! :D So what DO Mopani worms taste like? --Dumpling (talk) 16:57, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Honestly, the dried ones taste like crunchy dust :) a good sauce or marinade helps wonders! The fresh ones are like a rich buttery taste. And you have to eat them whole, because they squish rather nastily! Wriggly too! -- PsyGremlin  17:39, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Woaaah. Sounds interesting. I wish to try them one day! :3 Squishy Squishy.--Dumpling (talk) 17:43, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Live octopus is one of the most delicious things I ever ate. I had some of them on a trip to Busan, and while I felt terrible for them, they were still amazing.  You have to chew very carefully, otherwise they can grab the inside of your throat and you will choke.  Everyone stared at me while I ate.  Delicious.-- 05:41, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Isn't it!? I really love live octopus, but yes I do feel bad when eating them. D: They're so cute...and dangerous. But it's usually fun to go out and eat weird food with friends. If you don't mind me asking AD, why were you in Korea?--Dumpling (talk) 06:18, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I lived there for a couple of years between undergrad and grad school. First in Yeosu in Jeollanam-do, then on Jeju-do.-- 07:07, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Uwaaa~ Cool. You lived in Jeju-do!? :D Ah~ How nice. I haven't been there in ages. D: So many awesome museums and such.--Dumpling (talk) 07:25, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * There's a ton to do on Jeju, and it was a blast (I even wrote up a guide) Probably my favorite thing was not the museums, though (which aren't so much fun if you have kindergarten-level 한국어 like me) but a templestay I did.  How long did you live in Korea?-- 07:45, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * WOAH! I'll have to read through your blog and look at the pictures. Nostaligiaaa~ Haha. I've always heard about the temple-stays and the interesting experiences. Anyways, Complicated childhood I had. I lived in Korea with my grandfather for 4 years, moving around constantly from Seoul to Taegu and Jeju. Eventually, I went to Japan and China (respectively), both for half a year and started going to to International Schools. Then about 2 years in England in an International school (to learn English---little did I know that it would vary so much to American English), eventually coming to the States to join my parents. But I visit Korea when I can. Last time I went...was...5 years ago? D; So much has changed, or so I've heard.--Dumpling (talk) 08:05, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

I heard it was supposed to be June.
Where's the summer I was promised? I want my money back. -- 07:51, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

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Install delayed....please wait.

Installation failed. Please try again. 404 error: Season not found. Season "Summer" cannot be located. The season you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later... Pippa (talk) 08:08, 18 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Summer was three weeks ago at around four o'clock in the afternoon. Didn't you get the memo? Ajkgordon (talk) 08:10, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I can do without summer. It serves no purpose except turning me a nice shade of salmon pink. Or it would if I ventured out in the day light hours. AMassiveGay (talk) 10:05, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Funny, Pippa. However, you might have added "Do you want to search for Summer in a different location?"  Lily Inspirate me. 10:06, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Not my composition: link was included. Pippa (talk) 15:09, 18 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Haha. Summer practically reigns where I live. Take it. (╬ ಠ益ಠ) I can live without. Ugh.--Dumpling (talk) 10:08, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * As I read this it has just started chucking it down where I live, less than an hour after waking up with glorious sunshine. I had the small hatch-like window across the room open and it still managed to spit all over my laptop. 11:08, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Well, that's what happens when you live on a submarine&hellip; *bdush*-- 11:33, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm always amused when I hear the Poms talking about "summer" when what they mean is "ooh, the rain's a bit warmer." -- PsyGremlin  11:43, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * We can all make cheap jibes about the English weather but for some parts of the UK it's been the second driest spring for a century and for others the worst for 30 years.  Lily Inspirate me. 12:03, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * We here are also in a horrid drought, the lake near my house now has islands in it. With grass on them. Тy  [[User talk:Ty| Yes?

]] 12:05, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I had it for a week and now its gone. I think its officially autum now. Ancient Greek Pegasus icon.png 14:09, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

In related news, why do wet cats always feel the need to share the love with your expensive laptop? -- 17:34, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Because blah blah evolution. Or goddidit. Same thing really. --87.5.101.196 (talk) 17:38, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Site down sunday afternoon (eastern)
There is stuff I want to do that will require disabiling the site for a few hours or so. I am planning sunday afternoon. Tmtoulouse (talk) 06:37, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * What is it that you are planning on doing? 06:51, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I guess I'm going to have to explore this "outside" thing people talk of. <font color="#777777">Crundy <font color="#00F0A20">Talk nerdy to me 08:23, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Here. -  <font face=times color=black>π    10:53, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Here. [[file:Nuttysexpistols.png|60px|link=User:Nutty Roux|Nutty Roux]][[file:Nuttytalk.png|35px|link=User_talk:Nutty_Roux|never mind]] 02:28, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Here <font color="#777777">Crundy <font color="#00F0A20">Talk nerdy to me 20:55, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

For those who have missed it&hellip;
&hellip;You can take the Tories out of the 18th century,but you can't take the 18th century out of the Tories. Comments immediately disowned by the party but still fucking disgusting.-- 19:26, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Nonsense, it builds character. Just like child labor. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 23:53, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I disagree. I think that there is something to be said for it.  Certainly there is a logic to what Davies said.  At the very least the issue should be able to be discussed without the use of words such as "disgusting" (I don't mind the use of the word "fucking" though).  --Horace (talk) 00:44, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Where to put this?
Found this good article on creationism and global warming denial. Dunno where to put it, though. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 19:19, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I think that the topic has been discussed a few times. My take has been that it's because the creationists have a 'human's have a special relationship with God' viewpoint - we are created in 'his' image and we have been given dominion over the planet to do with as we like.  01:49, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * All these tropes are probably most apparent in the propaganda put out by E. Calvin Beisner. I think there's probably enough connections to fill a "creationism and climate denial" page. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 01:59, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Crank magnetism. -  <font face=times color=black>π    02:23, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Good idea. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 22:12, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Lies and Slander!
...The heat must be getting to us...--Dumpling (talk) 02:27, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * LIES. Тy  [[User talk:Ty| Yes?

]] 02:30, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I mean seriously, our economy's tanking, downtown is a shambles, The universities are pleading for money, is the prospect of tax elimination really getting people that effing worked up? Did everyone but me get their free ecstasy sample with the Advocate this month? Тy  [[User talk:Ty| rannosaurs

]] 02:34, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Exactly. Baton Rouge is also on the top list for crime rates and AIDs---including Hot and Humid weather. You know this more than I do, obviously. Still. I bite my thumb at this. 'Cause they certainly didn't take MY vote or my ecstasy sample.--Dumpling (talk) 02:36, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * And Holden and friends are going to spin this for all its worth. Tyfacepalm.jpg gah, what number police chief are we on now? Тy  [[User talk:Ty| Ahoy!

]] 02:41, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Now come on guys. "The internet-based service conducted an online survey of 1,000 adults based on the number of pictures they take because people supposedly take more pictures when they are happy." How can you argue with that logic? Doctor Dark (talk) 03:45, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * -headshot- Some logic. And...good question Ty. What number police chief ARE we one now? I've kinda...lost track...and gave up.--Dumpling (talk) 03:48, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I gave up when they couldn't find someone to take the position for a while.

North Korea also happens to be the second happiest nation in the world. If you are not happy, Dear Leader will make you "happy." Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 22:02, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

reggie brown
is this guy in blackface? I've heard nothing about him before and haven't seen any other pics of him. He's the guy that made the race-obsessed jokes at the republican dinner-- 22:35, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * No. google-it's an amazing tool   --[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  00:11, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I did google it. All I got was a bunch of football players.  There are four football players named Reggie Brown.  His TOW article is a crappy stub made just yesterday.  I only found one picture of the guy, and he was impersonating Barack Obama.--  01:49, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Nods. I googled comedian reggie brown, and after the pics of "obama", you'll find many of his pics onstage.  he does actually look a bit like obama, i suppose.  http://www.birthplacemag.com/2011/02/barack-obama-parody-video/.
 * Yeah, it probably wasn't blackface. Just prosthetic makeup.  thanks--  03:25, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Separated at Birth?
Eric S. Raymond and Hector Hammond from the new Green Lantern movie? MDB (talk) 23:12, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Name that fallacy
What do you call it when someone does something and only afterwards do they try and justify it? For some reason, I used to think it was the Post hoc fallacy, and then I though it might be the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, but none of those fit. It is a fallacy, right? You can't do some dumb shit and only justify yourself once all the smoke is settled. Thank you-- 02:00, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not a logical fallacy, as far as I can tell. 02:06, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I always thought Texas sharpshooter was working backwards from the conclusion, though I guess that could be shoehorning as well. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 02:09, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Fallacies apply to arguments (or justifications) not to actions. What Brxbrx describes is a common behavior pattern, which may serve useful purposes, may lead to self-defeat, or may just be a subject of reflection. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 02:13, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Well it's definitely poor reasoning. If I punch someone to take his money, and later find out he's a child molester, that doesn't mean I was in the right (assuming violence is proper with regards to child molesters, as opposed to jail and therapy). No name for it?--  02:15, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Rationalization? Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 02:18, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes! We should totally have an article about that.  And on that page, there's an uncited statement saying it's an informal fallacy of reasoning.--  02:21, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure in my Cognitive Science classes we covered the idea that doing something and justifying it afterwards is just how people actually work. Some cognitive science experiments suggest that in the very short term (the time it takes to press a button, say) free will is an illusion. The button gets pushed by fast acting parts of the brain, and then the slower to react rational parts notice and begin coming up with an excuse for why that was their idea. Memory of the event is constructed to support this false history. We can't prove that's how it happens without a very detailed explanation of the functioning of the brain, but the evidence is at least suggestive. It's possible all apparent free will is an illusion like this - but of course that's not very palatable. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 11:19, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * This is a relevant quote. Anyway, if you claim your motives were other than what they were, you are lying, which factually rather than logically fallacious.   12:10, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the technical name for that behavior is "Invading Iraq".--BobSpring is sprung! 10:36, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * One of the examples I had in mind, I just didn't feel like stirring things up-- 10:45, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I think I may now officially be too old for video games.
Since the weather is appalling, I decided to waste a Sunday by buying Starcraft 2. Jesus Christ am I ever bad at this game. All the kids now are totally kicking my arse. I'm not in the bronze league with the people who presumably can't identify a mouse, but neither am I doing at all well. I used to be pretty damn good at Warcraft 3 back in the day, and I kicked all sorts of arse at Myth even further back. Considering how disappointing my last two games purchases were of Fallout 3 and New Vegas, I think it may be time to give up the pretence that I can still be good at these things. *sigh* -- 11:03, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * you should try the starcraft 2 campaign. that's where I got my money's worth--  11:15, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not even out of college and I can't beat anyone in RTS games anymore. Don't worry too much. (Also, try playing Wc3 again. The enthusiastic players usually switch to new versions.) 12:13, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Im not that good at it either. Kinda gave up the online play after getting pwned so hard by insane nutters who seem to play it 18 hours a day. Single player is fun and totally worth it though. Ancient Greek Pegasus icon.png 19:37, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It's okay~ I play SC2, just the campaign though. Since a lot of the rules and stuff changed from the original, I just...suck now. I'm a much better at the original. Not quite the best...or even a competition for the other SC players in Korea. D; -sigh- But decent. :3 Seriously though~ Korea and their Starcraft. Serious Business.--Dumpling (talk) 20:07, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * If it's any consolation, my 9 year old beats me regulary at the Halo games on multiplayer. I suspect it's because his suspension of disbelief is stronger; he just finds guns and shoots me, I take too long thinking about cool ways to use the terrain and so on, my attachment to this reality is too great.Natman (talk) 10:54, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Day9's advice applies all the way up into Masters at least: Watch replays of your games, identify the earliest thing that goes wrong, figure out what caused it, come up with a small change which should fix that, play another game. Do not worry about how you ultimately won or lost, focus on the first thing that went wrong and try to improve. Every game you play will have an opening, so improvements to your opening will apply more often than changes that begin "At 200/200 food..." 82.69.171.94 (talk) 11:08, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Try something turn-based, like Civilization V. MDB (talk) 11:16, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Alternatively: get a life!. Pippa (talk) 11:21, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I've never been a big gamer and don't own a console now. Did enjoy things like Duke Nukem 3D & Warcraft III & Alice, but can't really be arsed about all the Wii & XBox stuff. That said, friends host a once-a-month retro gaming evening, with all the old arcade emulators, like Gyruss and Bubble Bobble, etc. And that totally rocks. -- PsyGremlin  11:45, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm only 20 years old, and I daren't try and play RTS games against real people. I don't play RTS much, but when I do my standard strategy is 'build massive army -> CHARGE' which I don't think will translate well to the harass-style games online. As far as I can tell it's all about how much time you're willing to invest getting good. EddyP Great King! Disaster! 11:53, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Hah! So young, so very young! I remember the day I realised that playing pinball in public was embarassing. I'd feel really proud about racking up what I thought was a decent score and then some kid who wasn't even deaf, dumb, or blind, got double what I got and hadn't even lost a ball. Such is... Jack Hughes (talk) 12:06, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * If you want embarrassment, try being beaten in pinball by your mother. I know this from experience. My Mom has an amazing knack with old-style pinball machines. MDB (talk) 14:22, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
It's 20 minutes long, but I really enjoyed it and felt like sharing.--Dumpling (talk) 07:52, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Very good, TED has some excellent stuff presented in accessible ways. He raises many good points but it's not really schools that are the problem, it's how society views education. Many homeschooling parents are probably trying to achieve the same ends as public (state) schools. As far as I know the Montessori schools are probably closer to the model he's suggesting; certainly the one near my flat in the Hague featured a lot of music and dance. It's also true that many advances or breakthroughs come about because of interdisciplinary mingling, despite Andy Schlafly's quibbling that many British mathematicians were not proper mathematicians but physicists or computer scientists it sometimes takes the eyes of an outsider to break a logjam. I believe that many of society's current problems are the result of having the wrong attitude to work which don't fit with the exponential rate of change that has occurred since the industrial revolution. Just one example; when I was a kid I remember my parents getting one of the early televisions with a tiny black and white screen and costing several months wages, now I am sitting in the middle of the Russian steppe have a similar sized screen on a pad no bigger than a school exercise book which plays high-definition programmes in colour that have been transmitted half-way round the world, but can also store over a month's worth of music, several hundred copies of Encyclopaedia Britannica as well as telling me where I am on the globe with an accuracy of a metre. Who could have forecast that fifty-odd years ago? 10:08, 20 June 2011 (UTC)


 * This one is more fun to watch. --Danfly (talk) 10:39, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Atheist raises money for church
An atheist helped raise $3,000 for churches to help them clean-up vandalism by atheists. Although we all know atheists are uncharitable. "I just figured the church, even though they are wrong and even though I disagree with their beliefs, they didn't deserve this." --Phil Leotardo da Vinci (talk) 17:58, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * And they put him on Faux. I'll be danged. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 18:08, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Actually a close reading of the text suggests it was vandalized by Pastafarians but it was blamed on athiests.--BobSpring is sprung! 18:22, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Is there really a difference? --Phil Leotardo da Vinci (talk) 18:36, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Reverse Salem Hypothesis?
Reading the engineers and woo related material made me think of professions that seem to gravitate toward skepticism. The top ones seem to me to be professional magicians, psychologists, and biologists (for obvious reasons). Any research on this like there is for engineers and woo? Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 19:49, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The Salem hypothesis has no "research", it is based off of anecdotes. As skeptics are so fond of saying, the plural of anecdote is not data, and they would be wise to recognize that this can be applied to them as well as creationists.  BTW, engineers most empathetically do not gravitate towards creationism, and there's certainly no indoctrination in engineering education programs towards creationist/ID teachings.  -- 20:07, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Why so much butthurt? Seriously, WTF, creationist indoctrination camps? I don't think anyone takes the Salem hypothesis much more seriously than just idle speculation anyway. However, some fields seem to attract woo slightly more than others. Skeptical Science recently had a post on why geologists are more likely to be climate deniers, for example. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 20:19, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Theemperor, it's the other way around: creationist "authorities" are often engineers, not engineers are often creationists-- 21:18, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * My apologies for misinterpreting you, but based on your original post, which stated that the reverse of the Salem hypothesis was "professions that seem to gravitate toward skepticism", which would imply that you interpreted the Salem Hypothesis as meaning the strong SH, which, as taken from our article, is "An education in the Engineering disciplines forms a predisposition to Creation/ID viewpoints", as opposed to the weak version, "In any Evolution vs. Creation debate, A person who claims scientific credentials and sides with Creation will most likely have an Engineering degree". This would also seem logical as the reverse weak SH would be that "Persons arguing for evolution would come from x profession, not x profession gravitates towards evolution.  While I do sometimes concur with the weak version, the strong hypothesis is utter bullshit, and I have a tendency to go off on people who promote it as fact.  That said, I may have misinterpreted your comment as supporting it, but that's certainly what it seemed like to me.  -- 21:30, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, the original post could have been better worded. As an example, my parents are engineers, and they are atheists.  The salem hypothesis I don't believe implies that engineers gravitate to BS, but that BS is often supported by engineers (who are unqualified in the field)--  21:43, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yeah, what Brxbrx said. I'm going to use the "lack of sleep" defense for the poor wording. In the geologist-climate denial case, though, the connection is easier to see as many of them have a financial stake in the idea. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 21:50, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I see it the other way around: engineers are more like the overall population, while (we) scientists are the weirdos. Doctor Dark (talk) 00:53, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm inclined to think the engineer-woo connection is largely an artifact of the fact that there are more engineering degrees awarded and so there are simply more crackpot engineers floating around to be found to support your preferred crank idea. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 01:04, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Quantitative Easing
I hear Bernanke is going to end quantitative easing in the US. The media isn't that concerned with the issue here at present, but what do the US-based RWers think of this move? --Danfly (talk) 20:57, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Much ado about nothing, really. Most of the squawking over QE has been from idiots and/or fear-mongerers who have no idea what they're talking about. It's, as Cullen Roche called it, "the greatest monetary non-event." Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 22:42, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Geeky help needed
I know this is the wrong place but... I'm really stuck on this on and I've been Googling for hours and someone here might well know where to look, or even the answer.

OK, so I'm a Unix techie and we need to get files to a window server. Getting ssh up and running is a nightmare - "Ooh, no! we can't have nasty Cygwin on our Windows boxes! Horrors!!" - so someone suggested that we export a Samba share, map it as a network drive on the Windows server, and then tell the app on the server that the files are on that drive.

And then the security guys and gals stepped in. "Ah!", they said, "we need the data encrypted over the network."

"But it's just the same as Windows server-to-server copying," I replied.

"Prove it."

If anyone has any ideas, suggestion, links, or anything about the level of obfuscation when copying between a Samba share and a Windows server please, please help. Jack Hughes (talk) 14:16, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It's not encrypted at all, except in as far as passwords are sent hashed. While the same applies to Windows-to-Windows file sharing, that probably isn't going to help you get it past the jobsworths in IT. My advice would be to use webdav instead over SSL. You can use Apache and mod_dav on the server side, and use Window's built in webclient service on the client side, no additional software required. That ought to make the IT nazis reasonably happy. -- 14:36, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, and tell them if they're so concerned that things ought to be encrypted, why aren't they using ipsec? That'll piss 'em off. -- 14:38, 20 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks, you're a gent! Jack Hughes (talk) 14:40, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Jack, this really is the place. 15:20, 20 June 2011 (UTC)


 * You can use smbmount to mount a share from the Windows-server onto the Linux box. From memory, it is something like smbmount //servername/sharename /mnt/mount-point -o username=jhughes,password=secret although I might be conflating that with mount -t smb ... CS Miller (talk) 17:53, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * That second one should be "-t smbfs" rather than "-t smb". Also, it many distros the samba commands have been deprecated in favour of "mount -t cifs". Anyway, I think the question was asking for the access to be the other way around (accessing a Linux fileserver from Windows). alt (talk) 18:21, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks everyone. Jack Hughes (talk) 10:29, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Dilbert creator thinks rape is natural for men
So...does Scott Adams increasingly disgusting thinking and bombast make anyone else like Dilbert less? --Phil Leotardo da Vinci (talk) 18:39, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Rape is natural for men. it is society that shields women from being raped, not men's nature.  Throughout the animal kingdom, and significantly in most of the apes (bonobos are exceptions, by the way) the man wants, he takes.  the women deals with it, gets preggers and deals with that.   There is no indication that this isn't what life was like for humans until we actually began to see the role women played in our societies.  Now we have a huge part of the brain that over rules the "animal" part of the brain.  but the natural state for a male of most species is to take when they want.  --[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  19:10, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * And while i do typically like SALON, this is a bit of a hack job on his actual letter. he is not EXCUSING it, he is giving an explanation of it (be it a correct or incorrect one).  he is not saying that men shouldn't behave better, but that we need to understand the drive, to help them deal with it.  Same way i, as an Over Eater, need to understand where that desire comes from to truly address it.  [[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  19:14, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * This pigfucker is making Dilbert really hard to enjoy. Luckily, I've never payed for a single dilbert strip.  I pirated a collection of them instead.  If you guise want, I'll point you to the torrent--  19:18, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I prefer PZ Myers take on this than yours: "'Raping, cheating, and being offensive' are 'natural' to men. You know, I have never in my life felt even the slightest urge to rape anyone; I'd go so far as to say that I'd have to be forced to rape, would probably find myself physically incapable of the act, and would find violent assault to be incredibly unnatural.... And what's with this 'natural' nonsense anyway? It's meaningless. What he's really doing is trying to justify bad behavior with the 'well, everyone else is doing it' excuse. It's a logical fallacy. It doesn't work. It especially doesn't work when everyone else isn't doing it." --Phil Leotardo da Vinci (talk) 19:19, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * EC Hey, Godot. Funny you should mention bonobos. I just finished an interesting read called Sex at Dawn that uses bonobos to make pretty much exactly the opposite argument to the one you just made. P-Foster (talk) 19:21, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Miles Davis is one of my favorite musicians. Miles Davis used to beat the crap out of women and even pimped girls out to pay for his drug habit. I still listen to Miles Davis every day. I think you can separate horrific people from the good stuff they produce. P-Foster (talk) 19:25, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * That's why I said there are serious exception, P-Forster. But Goodall has seen rape in her studies, especially when it's time to be the Alpha Male.  maybe pz myers is not an alpha male.  ;-)  I have no desire to have babies, but it is part of my genetic heratige.  My husband has no desire to prove he would make a good leader of a tribe, but genetically he is either a leader who gets to fuck, or a follower who might not... --[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  19:34, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * So you're saying that PZ Myers lacks machismo, WFG? I wonder what Ken would say...  Theemperor
 * P Zed Myers has said PZ lacks machismo. and he's proud of it.  Hubby is proud of it too.  Hubby thinks brains get women, now.  or at least the type of women he wants to hang with.  ;-)  I've never been attracted to muscles.  it's your types, around here, who think for a living that turn me on! :-)  --[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  19:39, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Godot, many animals, including chimpanzees (which are the most closely related primates to humans), also eat their own feces. Do you have difficulty fighting this 'natural' instinct?  --Phil Leotardo da Vinci (talk) 19:42, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * You don't defend people when they say crap like this, Godot. Scott Adams brought it upon himself.--  19:47, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I do not, but i have a strong Cerebrum and pre frontal cortex reminding me that acting like my animals self is rather stupid. I suspect those republicans who drool over Palin do not have as strong a Pre Frontal Cortex, and therefore are more likely to stray.  MOre importantly, anyone in power -- anyone striving for power is necessarily working on a more base level, i think, than others.  they might be brilliant, but their goal is to be "number one".  Office Politics, Stuping the most women you can, and "being told that you are still hot and young" is something that is more base. But denying it's part of our genetic make up seems silly to me.  we are what we were.  we do not have to act on it.  --[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  19:51, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * There's a big difference between finding women attractive and wanting to have sex with many of them, and raping them. Taking cues from the animal world as to what is "natural" (a meaningless term) is problematic because there are many species in the animal kingdom for whom rape is not common.  Animal rights activists say it's not natural for man to drink milk beyond infancy, and say it doesn't happen anywhere else in the animal world, but that's more likely due to their inability to produce it.  Eating feces is anathema to humans, and not some instinct our Cerebrum shoved deep inside our psyches.  I think your "men are natural rapists" defense isn't so hot.  --Phil Leotardo da Vinci (talk) 20:12, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * (EC) I"m not defending him. I'm defending MY point of view, Brxbrx.  and why shouldn't I defend him? He has a right to his opinion, especially when it is at least partially valid.  we are animals, we do have those instincts.  we do not have to act on them.--[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  19:51, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Many species involve the males' competition for acceptance by a female, what some anthropomorphizing folks are pleased to call "courtship." Any claim that "rape is common among animals" needs to be given a sniff test, since it is likely to have been freshly pulled out of the lower intestine of the one making the claim. I am guessing that the only animals whose behavior Adams has seriously studied are cubicle rats. In fairness, much of that ostensibly primate behavior stems from primitive parts of the brain that we share with dinosaurs.  Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 21:15, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * One thing is what our selfish genes would have us do to make more genes, and another is the morality and social constraints which our wonderfully evolved brains are able to create. At times these may be at odds. That is why we have things like laws.--BobSpring is sprung! 21:31, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Add to that that if we accept rape as "natural", then we must also talk about murder, cannibalism and incest in the same terms, regardless that these are things most of us do not want to do.  21:35, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I guess i come from a different background, Weaseloid, cause i'd say those ARE natural things (if we find them in our near relatives, anyhow). Natural does not mean good or bad.  Natural is NOT a defense of an illegal or immoral action.  It is simply something that is "natural". What is found in nature, what is in our nearest relatives, and what we would be if we did not have the complex interaction of the human brain's ability to value different things.  I don't agree that this argument is pulled out of anyone's "behind", since Goodall herself reports that at the height of male interactions for supremacy, rape is common.   Maybe we disagree about what rape is in the "animal kingdom" but being chased down, biting at the male, and then surrendering is not, in my mind, "consensual".  The male must generally subdue the woman to have sex. And I fully admit it is not in all species, but it is in many, and it is in our near relatives of the great apes.  (I cannot speak on chimps, and I do know it's NOT true for bonobos).  Sadly, most of the stories women read when they are teens (or at least up until and including when I was a teen) have this same sense of "he must come at you -- you wil say no, no no, then you will give in to his overwhelming strength and charm".  But again, we are an evolved species, and we have a moral / ethical brain that says "you want to kill him, you are angry and would love to just slap her, but those actions are wrong, put them down".  I dare anyone here to say they have not truly wanted to just beat the crap out of someone for an instant, before they shook it off.  --[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  21:45, 20 June 2011 (UTC) (oh, it's 4. chow all!! )
 * The central question Godot is dancing around is whether rape is a learned or natural behavior. A good Darwinian takedown of Adams' and Godot's "natural" proposition is at the NY Times. (Even common behavior, like smoking or masturbation, isn't necessarily adaptive -- let alone uncommon behavior....Let me call this the dilemma of the rarely exercised option: a Darwinian account for an atypical behavioral choice is incomplete without an equally good account for the typical choice.)   Barbara Ehrenreich's "learned" takedown is here at Time. (As for the girls, Thornhill and Palmer want them to realize that since rape is really "about sex," it very much matters how they dress.)  It's an uncompelling belief from pretty much every angle.  --Phil Leotardo da Vinci (talk) 23:45, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * While you might like to debate the genetics of rape the assertion that most men are potential rapists has been a common theme of the feminist movement for the last thirty/forty years so it seems a bit harsh to vilify Adams for agreeing with this. There is also a big difference between what might be regarded as "natural" and what is acceptable or ethical. Just because a behaviour is innate does not justify doing it. Being civilised is all about controlling one's basic instincts. Furthermore, we are often at the mercies of our brain chemistry which can become unbalanced by many factors. We may like to think that we can always make fully rational choices but neuroscience seems to indicate otherwise (see David Eagleman's Incognito for instance). For example what are we to make of a normal guy who became interested in paedophile pornography because of a brain tumour? When the tumour was surgically removed he returned to normal but later returned to the paedophilia as the tumour regrew. I've no idea how old you guys are but I'm getting on a bit and nowadays tend to see most things in shades of grey rather than just black and white.  Lily Inspirate me. 04:38, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * "the assertion that most men are potential rapists has been a common theme of the feminist movement for the last thirty/forty years" - yes at the far fringe of the movement, but Ehrenreich represents the mainstream and finds that a bunch of hooey, an excuse for men to rape and a way to tell women to button up their blouse or they're asking for it. It is not only bullshit (thinly-evidenced and evolutionarily-problematic) it's also offensive and sexist. --Phil Leotardo da Vinci (talk) 13:21, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

"shades of grey rather than just black and white." Thank you. It's complicated. To recap a few obvious assertions (which I believe are true): The claim that "all men are potential rapists" needs to be given the sniff test. All men may be dick-heads (some smoother, some cruder than others about it, but it does come with the plumbing) but not all of us need to extend our personal space over other people with brutal tactics. Haul down my trou and point and laugh if I'm wrong, but Scott Adams is no ethologist (and neither are very many of us, I suspect) and so has no grounds for any grand pronouncements about what we are built to do.
 * Sex can be about procreation, but it can also be about pair-bonding, an adaptation to form a more robust system of raising the young, among other things.
 * Rape is generally not about sex, but about dominance, i.e. the rapist has the personal power over the victim to force vic to participate in an unwanted situation, whether on a "date" in the park, in a shady stairwell, or playing "who's your daddy" in a noisome cell block.

I don't know about bonobos or other non-human apes, but a man who can't cope with "it's the woman who chooses" has a few things left to learn, and society correctly chastises guys like that whenever they can be caught. Useful appropriate social behavior comes more naturally to most of us who don't get our names in the news. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 13:28, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm certainly not going to defend dickish comments about rape coming naturally to men, in the first place because whatever the hell "natural" is supposed to mean has not really been nailed down. Beginning with an observation: if the thesis is that men are hard-wired to sexually dominate women by force if necessary, then it's not exactly a strong counter-argument to say "society correctly chastises guys like that." To put it in the most flattering light, the kind of argument Scott Adams is proposing is that society tends to suppress certain natural urges for reasons of ethics and societal harmony. In the abstract, this would be for most people a totally uncontentious assertion, but it's the reality of where this argument could be taken (again that dreaded ambiguity around "natural") that makes it reprehensible. One could also argue that it's "natural" to gather in clans and boot everyone out who doesn't belong; between that lazy armchair sociological observation and ethnic cleansing is not such a huge leap. But it's our definitions that are suspect, not the idea itself. Junggai (talk) 18:56, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Good ol' naturalistic/is-ought fallacy. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 19:19, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It is natural for a large population to exhibit variation. Nobody is "hard-wired" to do anything, if one subscribes to the empirically testable notion that we are driven by vast and mutable complex arrangements of neurologic excitation and inhibition, enabled by an inconstant soup of biochemistry. The counter-argument might be better stated as "if rape is such a natural, essential part of a man's being, why do so many societies treat it as deviance?"
 * An even better argument would be to tell pampered armchair cavemen such as Scott Adams to quit their whining and find adult ways to deal with all that nasty old suppression, as so many have had to do before them. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 19:45, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Right - Sprocket is giving the evolutionist critique. Frankly, I'm surprised so many seemingly rational people are predisposed to thinking men can't help raping because 'boys will be boys', when there is no little-to-no evidence, just suppositions and pointing to other species, ignoring others.  --Phil Leotardo da Vinci (talk) 19:54, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Wow - I thought I was just telling Scott to get his candy ass off my lawn. In addition to the naturalistic is/ought confusion, some spotlight fallacy seems to be going on. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 20:10, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes - never mind we are looking at one species of primates where coercive sex has been "observed" and ignoring other--more closely related--species where it is not. The people who originally came up with this theory, Thornhill and Palmer, used only American rape statistics in their analysis ("I would have preferred cross-cultural information, because even if rape statistics are notoriously unreliable, the authors are wrong in assuming that the United States is typical. This country is considered one of the most rape-prone among industrialized nations. It is also arguably the most prudish, which raises some interesting questions -- not biological questions but cultural ones.")  That's just one of the many problems with the "men are natural rapists" silliness.  --Phil Leotardo da Vinci (talk) 20:30, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I've kinda bugged back out of this for a while - for a host of reasons, but can i ask you to consider something? World wide, over 1/4 of women are raped in their life. That's a hell of a lot of rape going on, for something that isn't "natural". Women having the right to say "no", has only been addressed in the last 100 years. prior to that, it was just accepted that a woman should lie back and take it. Again, to me personally, that seems like rape is a built in part of our societies (all of them), that stems from who we are as animals. In the US 1 in 4 women will be molested 1 in 10, raped. Most will be from peopel they know, who decide that "no" doesn't matter. --<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot 20:42, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * You're welcome to your belief, but by your logic it is also natural that women are subordinate to men, since that was the order of the day for centuries. We see it in animals, too - so it's natural, biological and not a social construct.  Women have hormones that make them emotional, less logical and more conducive to raising children (which their bodies are made for) and keeping house.  If you are going to defend offensive, sexist ideas, will you please sort them out beyond, "Lots of rape happens, it's natural".  "Natural" is a meaningless term and you don't seem to have sorted out what the biological motivation is that would make rape an evolutionary aspect of man.   --Phil Leotardo da Vinci (talk) 20:57, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I do think it's biologically natural for women to be subordinate to men, since generally control has come via strength. Again, i think our minds have been shown to have two competing desires.  those of so-called "nature", to be like we were 100,000 years ago, and that which has evolved to be socially and intellectually more advantageous.  I truly believe that until we address what we are, who we are, what we were, and understand ourselves as (at our core) the animals we were, we cannot understand why things like rape are so common, and why tribalism has such a profound effect on our bodies and our instincts to react.  To me, to deny that we are, at our core, violent beings, is to not give us the tools to change that.[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  21:01, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * But you're confusing behavior with evolutionary biology; you haven't made a case that we adapted the behavior of distant species; you haven't explained why the vast majority of men in all societies find the idea of rape unnatural; nor explained what possible biological necessity would make rape a natural instinct for men. But it's interesting to note that you feel it is unnatural for men and women to be equal because men have dominated women for centuries. --Phil Leotardo da Vinci (talk) 21:05, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The breakup of my first marriage had a lot to do with the sequelae of sexual assault. PTSD can be a bitch. Simplistic analyses will not help with stuff like that, but I'd like to suggest that societal correction and suppression are natural mechanisms as well. If many rapists are repeat offenders, that pushes their numbers further into the tail of the distribution. (Put more clearly, that says that if 25% of women in a population have a history of being raped, it does not follow that one man in four is a rapist.)
 * Theft is even more prevalent than rape. It must also be a natural urge, and so must be set free from unjust oppression! No, Scott Adams is a douchebag, and his comic depicts the problems of first-world weenies. What was the question, again?
 * I will call citation needed on the idea that women are historically subordinate to men. In large part, it was Spartan mothers who made Spartan men the unyielding assholes that they were, for just one example. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 21:12, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

YEC declining in the US
Here are the figures from Gallup:- Four in 10 Americans Believe in Strict Creationism, Belief in evolutionary origins of humans slowly rising, however I’m a Brit and I don’t know exactly what’s going on over on your side of the pond, it looks like you’ve got an uphill struggle but you’re slowly winning. Belief in YEC is slowly declining while belief in Theistic evolution and belief in unguided Evolution are both rising. Keep working at it Americans, you can get the figures for YEC down even further. Proxima Centauri (talk) 18:57, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm going to remind you of the one thing i say every time I see these types of polls. Polls like this change depending on the context of the questions.  If you put the questions in a test on "science knowledge", "trust in science" "acceptance of science", the numbers almost always go up by nearly 10% in the US.  If you put the same question on a test with religion and frame it around what one should be doing, vs., what one is doing, they go down slightly.  The conclusion often suggested by pollsters is that people answer in a way they WANT to think, and how they think they should be.  And that by and large, Americans are just poorly ill educated on the sciences, so they do not know what it is you are asking them about, so they are giving an answer to what is essentially a "i have no idea, but my mom says..." question.  Take that for what it's worth.--[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  19:38, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree, overnight I've been thinking and I think if the pollsters asked if humans evolved by their own effort without divine intervention more would reply yes. Still if the questions remained the same over the years the polls accurately reflect changes.  Did the questions change? Proxima Centauri (talk) 06:58, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Interestingly, if i understand the Gallop's methods paper correctly, this questions was isolated from science or religion questions this time, and mixed with a variety of "what is your position/belief on" statements about politics and social issues. [[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot 14:01, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Like trapped rats the YECers will become more and more vicious as they get moved in to their small stupid corner. Meanwhile over here in the UK they're growing in apparent influence with a godbothering party in power allowing more "faith schools" and privately funded "academies". Pippa (talk) 20:14, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The American YEC rats are certainly vicious with their constant demands to get what they want in the school system. Proxima Centauri (talk) 20:20, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Pippa, you must do everything you can to prevent the import of our ugly export! I was thinking of booking a trip to UK during the olypics, to sit next to the Arc, and say "see those barges? this arc can't even float on it's own.  now, how do you think Noah actually did his????"[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  20:30, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It seems to be tracking the slight downtick in religious belief. It also could be due in part to the fact that creationism hasn't been a big political issue the way it was before Dover and the creationists have started tacking the "Question evolution" tack. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 20:31, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Thomas Hobbes and Atheism
Okay, so I've just gotten back from my lovely vacation, and my reading material to keep me entertained was none other than Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. Now that I've finished the book, there's been one question that's been bugging me. In chapter 12, entitled "On Relgion" (one guess what it's about), Hobbes goes ahead and lays out a very strong and logical case for how religions has come to be an important factor in every known human community, namley: As a result of these innate traits, Okay, so that's a pretty damn persuasive argument explaining the origins of religion. Now here's what's really bothering me. After having created such an argument that could obviously apply to Christianity, Hobbes goes ahead and invokes special pleading to explain why this doesn't apply to Christianity- namely, because it was delivered by divine revelation and inspiration. The kicker is, Hobbes has previously argued that cosmic revelation cannot be used as justification for religious behavior outside the person who experienced it, because they could just be lying and said they experienced it. So not only does he try to worm his way around his argument, he actually invalidates his own argument. Why would he do this? Just about every other argument made in the book is very strong, and I have no doubt he could have come up with a strong justification for Christianity had he desired, so why does he hamstring his own arguments against religion by invoking weak special pleading that he himself then refutes? The closest justification I can come up with is that he didn't want to alienate everybody, so he just tossed that is as a bone so he didn't fuck himself over if things went south. Was he actually an atheist, and just included this so he could point to it and say "I'm no atheist!"? I just can't quite wrap my head around it... -- 21:12, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) Humans have a desire to inquire as to the causes of visible events with no obvious cause;
 * 2) Humans try and deduce why the beginning of a chain of events occurred when it did, rather than later;
 * 3) Humans alone are capable of reasoning to determine the consequences of events and actions
 * 1) Humans then fear events to come, as they are able to determine what they are
 * 2) Therefore, humans blame this fear and the consequences on some sort of invisible power or object, suppose it incorproeal, and call it a god.
 * 3) Unable to guess what the god they created wants, they then use cause-and-effect to determine what pleases it, anthropomorphize it, and worship it like they would worship a man.
 * 4) They then attribute all events without immediate cause to it- negative events must come because they displeased it, and positive because they pleased it


 * I have my doubts, along with many many others, that Hobbes was a sincerely believing Christian (as in I doubt he believed literally in many of the scriptures he writes extensively about in that section). Nevertheless, I would think it highly unlikely that he was a fully fledged atheist. I probably wouldn't be an atheist if I lived in a time before Darwin. He may have been of a deistic persuasion, which would still be something worth hiding during that period, since he still would have been lumped with atheists. Even if he was a complete atheist, he would have been insane not to put something into the text to save face. You shouldn't really trust me on this though. My only knowledge of Hobbes is from reading Leviathan and a single history module that featured his work. I would see the possibility of Hobbes being sincerely religious to be (slightly) more likely than say David Hume being sincerely religious though, but that's just my opinion. --Danfly (talk) 22:08, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * There is a place for the cut-and-thrust of religious debate, and it's on top of the next cleansing pyre for heretics - Terry Pratchett Small Gods (paraphrased). CS Miller (talk) 10:10, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

The "Science was wrong before" gambit
Saw this one played for the billionth time today. Worth an article on its own? I guess it's kind of like a combination of the red herring/non-sequitur and Galileo gambit (which is itself a form of red herring/non-sequitur). Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 00:56, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * My favorite is when they claim the science was wrong, but in fact it wasn't. Some guy told me that scientists used to think that computers would never be smaller than a building.  Of course, he was completely unaware of Moore's Law--  01:20, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * "Global cooling" is another good one. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 01:26, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * That's a much better example than mine. If you start the article, I'll see if I can jump in, but I can make no promises as to my usefulness--  01:29, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I find it annoying on the level that it trivializes the process of human learning through the ages. It would be like a Christian Scientist using medieval surgery to argue that today's organ transplants can't be trusted.  --Phil Leotardo da Vinci (talk) 01:49, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * If you do make a page, you must include Azimov's "relitivity of wrong", i think it's called.  single best essay on science I've ever read. yes, we were "wrong" before, but like circlining in on a target, our wrongs make us more right; yesterdays wrongs are more right than the wrongs of 100 years ago, or 4000 years ago.  here[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  01:51, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Of course, see wronger than wrong. :) Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 01:54, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * A good essay on this is Absolute Authority. </LW link spamming> 02:45, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Add moar. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 03:22, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * There was a SciFi book (by Asimov, IIRC) which featured a building-sized supercomputer, located behind the Niagara falls, for powering/cooling it. Of course, it was probably written in the 1950's when transistors weren't very common (invented in 1952, although the ideas behind them were 1920s). CS Miller (talk) 09:16, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The transistor is smaller than a valve, but the thing that really makes a difference is a slightly later invention, the integrated circuit, or "microchip" which allowed this scaling to continue. There's a finite size electronic components have to be if you're not to lose them or suffer accidental mechanical failures. By combining many transistors in a single component microchips sidestep this problem and allowed the first home computers to be items similar in size to a typewriter, rather than a chest freezer, while having the capability to execute a million instructions per second, rather than say a few thousand. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 17:12, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Heat build up is still a problem, you're probably listening to the "whirr" of a cooling fan right now. Pippa (talk) 20:10, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yup. For most of the last decade the major constraint on our university's computing capability was not funding to buy the hardware, or demand for high performance computing, but air conditioning capacity. Absent some very major remodeling work for HVAC there was no place we could put an x-thousand processor cluster where it wouldn't overheat. Doctor Dark (talk) 21:33, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Brian Dunning has been indicted for wire fraud
Yes, this Brian Dunning. News and [some comment. This is going to be interesting.--[[User:ZooGuard|ZooGuard]] (talk) 05:52, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Amazing.--BobSpring is sprung! 16:39, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Jon Stewart's Latest
The link to his pure pwnage of Chris Wallace is in WIGO World. I love this man. It might sound like hyperbole, but I think he's one of the smartest people on the face of the earth today. I don't get his voting for H.W. though. I suppose it's too sagely and beyond me to grasp. But he's really hot when he's pointing out the statistics that show Fox viewers as misinformed, and his teeth are all bared and he's getting all mad.

Don't judge.68.88.123.169 (talk) 07:49, 21 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I actually prefer the uncut version, with all of Stewart's most reasonable analysis left in. It's kind of ironic that Fox just chose the juicier sound bites to air, out of an interview which was basically accusing 24-hour networks of being sound-bite-oriented. Junggai (talk) 12:42, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * As Stewart pointed out on Monday night's episode, Wallace pretty much admits that Fox presents "the other side of the story" rather than presenting partisan talking points in a "fair and balanced" way. I wouldn't say that Stewart is "the smartest" man in the US, but he is very sharp and articulate. In the winter I went to a taping of one of his shows, and before the taping started he cracked jokes and chatted with the audience; it was clear that he's just as clever without a script as he is with one. 01:45, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Professor values
Professor charged with running a prostitution website as a hobby. Pippa (talk) 13:36, 21 June 2011 (UTC)


 * So Pippa, does this post represent moral condemnation of prostitution or simply a distributive justice claim: urging tenured faculty to leave such economic opportunities to the unemployed? Thorvelden (talk) June 21, 2011.
 * Fun hobby... Ancient Greek Pegasus icon.png 13:46, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * No deep motive, Thorvelden, just reporting. Pippa (talk) 20:07, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

At last...
It's three or four years late, but I'm finally going to get my Season of Disco Tents. The Teachers Unions are going on strike, other public sector unions have voted for strike action, and just through the Guardian website, Virgin pilots have jsut voted 97% in favour of strike action. At friggin' last, once more I will get the enjoyment of watching a Tory led administration ordering the police to illegaly beat and batter strikers in a manner truly fitting an eighties revival.-- 15:16, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the politicians have actually done a pretty good positioning job on this. Expect some of those images to be police standing by as protesters beat strikers to a pulp. It's the same miscalculation the truckers made. Somebody said at the bar the other day, on the topic of garbage in the streets - "If I knew where a bin man lived, I'd throw all this stinking crap in his back garden" and not a single person stood up for the bin men. Public sentiment is against them. There are also several industries that, behind closed doors, see this as an opportunity to do a Wapping. Some of the people currently taking the week off in the sunshine on strike will return to find their jobs no longer exist. Because a week's downtime is unthinkable... until the unions force it on you anyway and then you might as well make the most of it. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 16:19, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Lived through the miner's strike: not funny. Pippa (talk) 20:08, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Lived throught the miners' strike: in South Wales. It's why I still spit when I say the word Tory.-- 23:59, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Age of Earth
We don't appear to have an article specifically addressing the age of the Earth. Plenty of stuff in YEC articles but nowhere that can be used as a reference in these articles. Project for someone? Pippa (talk) 21:07, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * To quote my favorite creationists, "you can't know, you weren't there!!!!!!!!". ;-)[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  21:11, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Really? Huh, I thought we had a Counterexamples to a Young Earth page somewhere, to refute CP's Counterexamples to an Old Earth.-- 21:24, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Young earth There's this. but it doesn't seem to actually say "the earth is 4.5 billion years old.  in 2000 this number was adjusted because of a new understanding of the radiometric decay in the electrons" (pulled totally out of my butt.  Maybe this is the kind of page pippi is looking for? one with facts about how old the earth is, why we know it's that old, etc?[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  21:30, 21 June 2011 (UTC)  I lied, this is the article you are looking for Evidence against a recent creation.  maybe there is a way to re-direct to make it more clear?--[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  21:30, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * A page listing (with refs) all the reasons for believing knowing that the earth is billions rather than thousands of years old is what's needed. As far as I can see, there's plenty of poopooing of YEC stuff but nowhere a reasonable page to use as a reference on other pages. At present you need to read the YEC crap to find the old earth stuff. Pippa (talk) 21:35, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Well found WfG. disambig page going in. Pippa (talk) 21:37, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Found this rather lovely site (via Evowiki). The more colours I use the truer I'm talking! Pippa (talk) 23:12, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * EarthAge.org is a YEC site. 74.89.192.173 (talk) 01:01, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * No! It isn't is it? Pippa (talk) 01:05, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * when you turn in your Rationality Card to become a creationist, must you also turn in your taste and become color blind???????[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot 01:12, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I done good?-- 01:16, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Portal/Category for refuting creationist misinformation
When I first found this site, one of my favorite pages was the Atheism FAQ for the newly deconverted, because it laid out so many things in one place, and I had never seen anything like it before. I think it would be a great idea to have a prominently-featured page which did the same for creationist misinformation. We could give it a title like "So you think you've been brainwashed?" or perhaps something milder, and it can also act as a category or portal page for all of our excellent side-by-side refutation articles. Junggai (talk) 05:34, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a good idea.  06:20, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

The great creationist garage sale.
This month apparently you can buy both "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" and Hovind's Dinosaur Adventure Land. My hope is that the ark park will be a bridge too far for AiG, and they go the same way, having to flog off the creation museum as well. -- 05:20, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * My god would it be hilarious if someone like Prick-chard Dawkins bought the two, converted the theme park and used the rights to Expelled to make a side by side analysis of the film's horrible deceit. Do we have any rich atheists here?--  05:28, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The best deals since they sold off Bernie Madoff's old crap! I still can't believe that he made a "Dinosaur Adventure Land." When I first heard of it, I thought it was a mocking nickname for the creationist museum. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 05:37, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Tuna Ideas wanted.
my kitty (meow) is on meds that upset her tummy, so she gets tuna (and tuna juice!!!!) ever day. but that leaves us with lots of tuna around. I'm looking for people's favorite ways to eat tuna. I make typical "mayonaise and relish tuna salad", and tuna macaroni salad. would love other suggestions. --<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot 20:20, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Aw~ Poor Kitty. Anyways, besides the typical spicy tuna sandwich and tuna salad...my mom makes tuna 'steaks', Sashimi with the raw tuna, and occasionally Tuna rice piaf. Not...that that's any different, considering, we eat rice everyday (almost), it's just...fancier? My father on the other hand, likes Tuna casserole, and pan-fried tuna with citrus herbs. --Dumpling (talk) 20:31, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Tuna mixed with honey mustard, then scooped with potato chips. Utz, preferably.  Great snack.  Not great as a meal though.  ThunderkatzHo! 20:37, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, and I forgot to mention mayonnaise, because when I say tuna I assume the canned stuff mixed with mayonnaise. ThunderkatzHo! 20:54, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * My favourite way of eating tuna is sashimi, but it has to be fresh as hell. It has a very creamy taste & texture, almost like raw beef.  Not too keen on a lot of the things I've had with cooked tuna, & really hate that rank stench that comes with tinned tuna.   20:42, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Sadly, Weaseloid, it is the rank smell that drives kittahs wild. we use the "juice" that it's packed in to mix with her food -- about the only thing she'll eat, right now.  so it's the canned thing we are doing. TK, honey mustard? cool idea.
 * I have an elderly kitty who is similarly sick and has to take meds. The vet recommended boiled chicken for sick kitties, and it works wonders. Boil up some cheapo skinless chicken fillets for about 40 minutes, and they keep for a few days in the fridge. Also, bits of chicken work great for hiding tablets in. -- 21:40, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks, i'll try that! she does eat yogurt. wierd, but apparently healthy enough since the microbes do some thign to the dairy, so it's not harmful.  I was told to do chicken livers. I did. both of them stared at me like i was poisoning them. ;-)  I worry that if i don't make her eat at least some "cat food", she'll be mal nurished before the antibiotics run their course. ;-)
 * Tuna and grilled cheese is better than it sounds. Doctor Dark (talk) 21:56, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Interesting. Any other good tips for giving pills to cats?--BobSpring is sprung! 10:32, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Crush the pills up and mix them with the tuna. That's what we always do.
 * I wouldn't worry about your cats being malnourished because they're not eating proper "cat food". Fresh chicken (ours love it raw), turkey, rabbit, and even beef is good. Apparently you're supposed to avoid pork - I'm not sure why. Fish but with no bones. The odd bit of liver, kidney and heart. Egg if they'll eat it. Animal fat - left-over juices from the roast, ours love a bit of butter! Plain yoghurt is supposed to be good but only occasionally and in small quantities as they're not good at digesting lactose. Then dry commercial cat food for the teeth and roughage. Vary it and they'll be better off than with standard commercial stuff. Oh, and salt. The need a bit of salt. Ajkgordon (talk) 11:09, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I should add the caveat that you should always read the directions before crushing any tablets given to a pet. Many of them are slow release tablets designed to avoid multiple doses since it can be tough to medicate some animals. I'd always recommend giving them the tablets as they come if you possibly can. For the most part hiding them in meat has always worked for me, except sometimes with my old cat towards the end of his life who was cunning enough to eat the meat and spit out the tablet :D -- 14:16, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Right, I didn't know that. I presume the vet will always tell you first if they can't be crushed. Although I'm not sure what the difference would be between you crushing the tablet and the cat crushing it in its teeth.... Ajkgordon (talk) 16:07, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Cats, unlike dogs, are more "delicate" eaters, so often they just eat right around non crushed pills. I just put her in my lap, and (bye bye fingers) push a finger into the corner of her mouth, which will force her to open on reflex, then put the pill in and (again, by bye fingers) shove it down her throat a bit.  Cats have no gag reflex so it doesn't hurt them.  If you are doing more then 2 days, though, you should make sure your cat's throat is not getting sore from the dry pill.  there are "pill squirters" that send it down with a rush of water, but that's never worked in my home.  [[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  16:19, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Our vet always advised to hide the pill inside a knob of butter when you do that. 16:48, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Good advice, thanks!--[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot 17:03, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that. Recently got a cat we were having difficulty giving him his anti-parasite pills.  With the dog you just open her mouth and put in the back of her throat - but she's pretty relaxed about that stuff. The cat objected strenuously with teeth and claws so I was after ideas. Presumably if you crush the pill then you massively increase the surface area and hence the release rate - which might or might not be important.--BobSpring is sprung! 18:03, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * One other tip in controlling the cat when you do this is to stand behind the cat with your legs together and your feet splayed as the natural reaction of the cat is to back away.  01:47, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The reference book the vet has should warn them if it would be unsafe to crush the pill, so feel free to ask. I have to ask if I can chew pills I'm prescribed, because I have terrible problems swallowing pills (presumably psychological) and it's been fine so far. Sometimes they prescribe me the kids version (a flavoured liquid suspension) instead but if it's not something routinely given to kids they tend to just say "that is going to taste awful" and I nod sadly. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 11:16, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Discworld
I just want to make some people jealous: I just started reading the Discworld series. I'm only 200 pages in but it look at least as good as H2G2... Just saying. Alain (talk) 17:55, 21 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Wow, i used the word 'just' 3 times in two sentences are the 'enrich your vocabulary' pages from old Reader's Digest online somewhere? Alain (talk) 17:57, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I just found myself overusing just that same word recently. I just don't know how to stop. Pippa (talk) 20:06, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Always wanted to get into Discworld but never knew where to start. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 17:59, 21 June 2011 (UTC)


 * I started by the penultimate ( unseen university ) my wife by the other end ( guard guard) ! Alain (talk) 18:00, 21 June 2011 (UTC)


 * The Colour of Magic is technically where you should start, but any of them are good really. I first got into it from the children's book The Amazing Maurice, then moved on to the Thief of Time. It doesn't really matter where you start if you ask me. My favourites would be Night Watch, Pyramids, Thud!, Guards Guards! and Going Postal. --Danfly (talk) 18:18, 21 June 2011 (UTC)


 * 'where should I start was the thing that turned me off from the serie for a long time, until i read comments like your's  it dosen't matter'' Alain (talk) 18:35, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * "Where to start" doesn't matter whole lot. It matters within each of the sub series (The watch, the witches) but mostly not overall.  I'd still suggest reading it in publication order, just because the world does evolve, as does his writing.  My faves are the Guard books, but I also like the Moist von Lipwig books.  And I've been reading it since around Small Gods and Soul Music.  You know, before you could get them here in the states.  (One of my friends from HS imported them from UK, and let me borrow them)   19:02, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I started with Guards, Guards, and it's still my absolute favourite. I'd strongly recommend it as a starting point for new readers.  It has a mystery/film noir kind of vibe to it, as well as a Three Musketeers kind of story about a naive country kid coming to the city & proving himself.  + Sam Vimes is probably Pratchett's greatest character.  Colour of Magic and Light Fantastic are also a good starting point, although very different.  They're like a HHGTTG for fantasy, portraying a world which is chaotic and unpredictable, while later novels show a much more elaborate and ordered world.  A lot of the later ones, from about the mid 90s on, I find too formulaic and predictable.   19:33, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd say do them in chronological order from Colour of Magic so that you can see the development of the "universe".--BobSpring is sprung! 19:40, 21 June 2011 (UTC)


 * EC) Read 'em in publication order: Colour - Light etc. Explains the "universe" well. Read them from about '85 (I think) a friend was reading "Colour ..." to his kids & mentioned it. Rincewind cannot be beaten as a main character although Moist von Lipwig and Granny Weatherwax come close behind. As Weaseloid says he's become a tad formulaic lately. The original cover art was really good too. See also the "science" books. All good fun. Pippa (talk) 19:49, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, I prefer the Josh Kirby covers to the Paul Kidby ones.  19:59, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * You see, I like the Paul Kidby ones to the Josh Kirby ones, but then I grew up with Kirby covers on everything that I read (okay, slight exageration there, mostly Gardener to be fair) and, weirdly given some of the comments above, found Kirby's covers too formulaic. As to places to start, if you're not sure about Pratchett, there are one-off novels that take place in the Discworld, Pyramids or Small Gods, which are good places to start and are well written.  From there it's worth going back to CoM (Colour of Magic as ol' lags tend to refer to it) and then reading in chronological order, as you get a good feel not only for how the Discworld develops narratively, but how Pratchett changes as a writer as well.  A lot of people, including my brother, got put off of the Discworld because they started with CoM, and it's only when they were persuaded to read a later novel that they actually got it and then went back and were able to enjoy CoM/TLF.  In terms of pure darkness, you can't beat Night Watch or Thud.-- 23:56, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I've only read Mort and the Light Fantastic. I've played the games through a few times each and have now installed ScummVM on my Android phone so I can play the first and second ones through again (although it won't run Discworld Noir, sadly). <font color="#777777">Crundy <font color="#00F0A20">Talk nerdy to me 08:11, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

It depends on what your interests are. The earlier works are "just" parodies of the fantasy genre; it's the later books where Pratchett moves into broader satire.

My favorites are the Watch novels, so I'd suggest starting with Guards Guards.

And if you have kids that are of an age where you read to them, go out and buy Where's My Cow?. Now. MDB (talk) 10:29, 22 June 2011 (UTC)


 * From lspace.org, the Discworld Wiki, Reading Order. -- CS Miller (talk) 19:43, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Hit me on the head, now
...but I keep looking for my "like" button. Oh stupid facebook, what have I become because of you?<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot 19:18, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Maybe we can make you a skin with dummy like buttons on every page, just for you. -- 19:28, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * HAHA! So I'm not the only one that feels like that. Oh well~ XDDDD--Dumpling (talk) 19:30, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I am not at all proud of that admittance, you know. ;-)  --[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  19:47, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * While I know naught of this "facebook" you mention, I have caught myself mousing around in search of an upvote arrow. I form habits quickly, so don't think I've spent much time on any time-wasting site with such a feature. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 20:22, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The only thing I have liked in facebook is the "like" button, in order to be ironically meta and everything. Sen (talk) 23:34, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Crundy likes this. <font color="#777777">Crundy <font color="#00F0A20">Talk nerdy to me 08:12, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * There have been times where my mind has instinctively looked for CTRL+Z to undo real-life events. ONE / TALK 09:36, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Facebook

 * http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/06/21/national/a142617D48.DTL&tsp=1
 * For some reason I love this. Sen (talk) 23:27, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Would you say that you..... Like it? ONE / TALK 09:34, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Nope, in fact I went out of my way and double checked in order to ensure I wasnt using the world "like" there. Sen (talk) 18:11, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Why Sarah Palin is pro-life
A baby is the only thing she's ever seen through to full term. #rimshot# MDB (talk) 18:24, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * President Palin "I realize that no one has a job, and that we are now at war with the UK cause i told the queen she needed a face lift, and that France has stoped buying our foods - which is fine cause they are frogs anyhow, hahah hahha wink wink, nudge nudge, and that everyone in the country is dying in the streets.... but really, i'm just in the need for a summer vaction, as alaska is so pretty, even though i've ripped it in two for oil and money.... and, well, I'm not quitting or anything, cause, you know, my nails need done.  sheeesh."  Already told the husband unit that the second she's elected, we are off to Paris.[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  18:33, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Part of me really wants to see Palin as president. I'd just like to see what would happen. X Stickman (talk) 22:17, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Whoa dear
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/20/ipso-2011-ocean-report-mass-extinction_n_880656.html Just... just read it. Whoa. HollowWorld (talk) 19:11, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh yes. My eldest is off to Tahiti next year to study the marine ecology there. He fears his generation will be one of the last to see it in all its glory before it is irrevocably damaged. Ajkgordon (talk) 19:53, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * At the risk of being overly alarmist our children may be the last to see all sorts of things in their current glory before they are irrevocably damaged. Jack Hughes (talk) 20:50, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Religious right and corporations, thanks for letting my generation attempt to clean up your mess. Really. Thanks. (Not to say we don't have some part in this ourselves). HollowWorld (talk) 22:09, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Doesn't surprise me all that much... Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 22:42, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

The heterosexual agenda exposed!
Old but awesome. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 22:38, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

genomics & ARJ critique help
Who knows about genomes and DNA sequencing? I need some help for our Answers Research Journal page on this article. Mind you, I can tell that statements like "While one would think that the basic technical process of producing a genomic sequence would be free of any philosophical constraints, this is not always the case" and "However, it is very likely that earlier comparative genomic studies constrained by limited resources and propelled primarily by evolutionary dogma, need to be repeated using better tools and less bias" are pure creationists rhetoric. steriletalk 02:14, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Libya (It needs to be said)
So here we are, three months into this thing, and the French haven't surrendered yet. That's something. P-Foster (talk)
 * I was under the impression that Qaddafi was getting his ass kicked because the rebels seized all his oil fields and he's running out of gas to fuel his stuff. Then again, these things change so fast it's difficult to figure out exactly how things stand.  -- 01:08, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * As an American, I am very unhappy with Obama about Libya. He's in clear and direct violation of the War Powers Act - the President can't just unilaterally decide to bomb people whenever he pleases without Congressional approval, regardless of whether or not any American soldiers are in direct danger.-- 01:35, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Hey, if it weren't for the French we might all be speaking Mooslim or something kerr-azy like that. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 01:40, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * @ Tom; I am really interested to see what happens if a US plane gets shot down over the course of this thing, in terms of how the Republicans/Kucinich et. al. will react. P-Foster (talk) 01:44, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I may or may not have said it before, but FUCK the War Powers Act. The President is the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and if he and his advisers decide it's in the best interest of the American people and America's strategic goals to bomb an authoritarian dictator who massacres his own people out of (illegally obtained and held) power, that's his (and the JCOSs', of course) business, and he should be able to do it.  Just about every President since Carter has ignored the War Powers Act anyways, and you didn't see people bitching about Bush violating the shit out of the WPA by deploying hundreds of thousands of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan then, so I see no reason why people should suddenly start complaining when we begin bombing a country with just about zero chance of casualties.  Congress should just repeal it and be done with the whole mess. -- 02:17, 23 June 2011 (UTC)


 * The constitutionality of warmaking is not as black and white as it once seemed, although to the surprise of many, this isn't an artifact of the Cold War and the need for fast response; it goes back to the early days of the Republic. I can give citations, in both directions, on the conflict between the Article I, Section 8 authority of the Congress to make war and raise armies, and the Article II, Section 2, authority of the President as Commander-in-Chief. Ideally, the President and the Congress would work together, and Presidents, such as Lyndon Johnson, would provide Congress with both accurate intelligence and accurate statements of the threat. Afghanistan and Iraq are not at issue under the WPA, because in both cases, there were explicit Congressional resolutions authorizing military force, which are considered equivalent to a declaration of war. Clinton clearly ignored the WPA, but Libya is actually more complex. Is it war if no US aircraft went within the airspace of Libya? I don't know. I do know that the WPA does have a special case for multilateral action under treaty, so NATO involvement makes Libya less clear. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 02:59, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I haven't studied this so I may be wrong here, but it's my understanding that what the US is doing in Libya is not engaging in a "war" as such, but enforcing UN resolution 1973 with what is being called a "military intervention". As I understand it, the US does not need congressional approval to enforce a UN resolution, because the US already gave consent to do so when it signed up to the UN. As for the War Powers Act, I just looked it up on wikipedia and don't understand its relevance here, since it seems to give the President more power to "just bomb wherever he likes". I guess we'll have to take a closer look at the wording of that Act. ONE / TALK 09:39, 23 June 2011 (UTC)


 * The War Powers Act is essentially unenforceable, it is a useless piece of paper. The President can ignore it, what can be done about it? You can't sue in court to enforce the Act; the Supreme Court will knock that down with the "political question doctrine". The only way to enforce the War Powers Act, is to impeach the President, which is not very likely; and if Congress really doesn't like what the President is doing, they don't need any "War Powers Act" to justify impeachment. So in reality, the War Powers Act is just a bit of political posturing, meaningless fluff. Likewise, the Congressional "power to declare war" is meaningless in practice, because the Supreme Court is unwilling to get involved in a dispute between the President and Congress over their respective powers in military affairs.  10:22, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Lawsuit filed by ten Members of Congress against Obama-- 10:32, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * More political posturing. That lawsuit isn't going anywhere. Political question doctrine will be the end of it. 10:34, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Good summary is on Volokh.com, as always. To quote an actual law professor, "It is extremely unlikely this lawsuit will go anywhere. I would be very surprised were it not dismissed on political questions grounds".  10:37, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * For the less informed, what is the "political questions" thing? Is it a piece of legislation? ONE / TALK 11:29, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It is a doctrine of US constitutional law. Basically it says, certain questions are "basically political", and hence the Courts will refuse to get involved with them. In other words, if the President and the Congress get in a fight, the Supreme Court doesn't want to be involved. So if Congress tries to sue the President for violating the "War Powers Act", the Supreme Court (and subordinate courts) will refuse to entertain the suit. Their attitude, this isn't one for the Courts, it's one for the politicians. WP has more details 12:03, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Darwin's Marginalia and Notes
Apparently Darwin's notes and marginalia have been scanned and made available. 208.77.19.4 (talk) 16:59, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

"Were you there"
This just popped up on my facebook. 9 year old child challenges NASA. the challenge? When told that some moon rocks were 3.7 billion years old (though i'm guessing they meant about 4.5, but hey, what do i know), the 9 year old reached into her inner strength and asked the guide "how do you know, were you there?" Fucking god damn and every other word I can use. Believe what you want, but stop forcing your children into your believes so they have no future but to say "were you there"??? (sorry for the rant)--<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot 20:19, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * <1000 words = not a rant. I get these stupid links too from my more Xtian friends, and I simply ignore them.   20:25, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It was more Ken Ham's praise of the child that makes me so mad. I praise kids for thinking.  for being ignorant and saying "I want to understand, cause i don't".  For trying to find their own answers, even if they don't make sense to me.  for saying "wow, let me consider what that means".  I can not imagine praising them for standing up to a person with the most remedial comment "were you there".  "I was not at your birth, but just by looking at you, I can tell you were born about 9 years ago". sighs.  kids are precious, and they have these amazing years between birth and like 10, that they sponge in everything and learn how to interact.  sobs....--[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  20:29, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Here's the perfect summary of the girl's, her parents', Ken's, and all of AIG's approach to the material- "Then the rep asked Emma how she came up with that? Emma answered, 'The Bible. If the earth was made around the same time as the moon, wouldn’t they be the same age?' Emma answered. Then the rep replied, 'Oh, yeah I believe in the Bible too.' But, in the same breath said 'Scientists have proven this…yada, yada, yada, blah, blah….' "


 * Proud ignorance piled on top of the notion that your interpretation, and ONLY your interpretation, can ever possibly be right. Wonderful, healthy, constructive way to raise children. Fuck you Ken, you're crippling these kids and turning them into finely crafted idiots while laughing your mutton chops the the bank. Hope you're proud of yourself, because good money says there ain't gonna be a Jesus or any other god to reward you for this shit. Saladin 20:57, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * PS, isn't kenny boy still in jail?--[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot 20:59, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Aren't you thinking of Kent Hovind? DickTurpis (talk) 21:01, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Shoot. got the two confused.  HOvind is "dr. dino", right? hopefully we have a record on both of these two, so i can get them straight--[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  21:03, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * And . SO MANY KENS!! lol Ancient Greek Pegasus icon.png 23:23, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

"Don't call us Young Earth Creationists....."
Instead, says answers in genesis, call us "biblical creationists!" Like there's a damn difference! But it is a very funny read. 12:25, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * On another linked page.
 * "If the early chapters of Genesis are not true literal history, then faith in the rest of the Bible is undermined, including its teaching about salvation and morality."
 * I tried to make that point to that chap who comes over here from PJR's site from time to time.
 * It didn't work. Ajkgordon (talk) 18:03, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Mr. Ham and gang are flirting with heresy on that point; that is why Mr. Ham was recently barred from that homeschool conference. 05:56, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Frankly, there is a lot vested in a literal truth to the bible for *any* christian, they just have not all thought about it. Jesus died for our sins, and to *redeem* that which was done in the Garden of Eden. Our sins came from their fall. If we evolved, if adom and eve never existed, than what was the point of the Christ, and why was he sacrificed. and if he wasn't sacrificed, then why did he die, and why would he rise. Their whole religion, whether they really contemplate this or not, is bound to adam and eve and God's punishment, and the fall. --<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot 18:27, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * No, no it isn't. Many Christians don't believe in a literal Adam and Eve, think about it very deeply, and have no faith issues at all. Ajkgordon (talk) 18:45, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Needs an article, right? If we want to stay on top of everything creationists do, rebranding has to be one of them. Ancient Greek Pegasus icon.png 23:25, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Many Christians view the Garden of Eden story as an allegory illustrating the disconnect between human nature and Judeo-Christian ideals. The Ages of Man in Greek mythology make a similar point. 06:10, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

I answered Penn Jillette's debate challenge.
Seen here in early draft form: Essay:Sasayaki_answers_Conservapedia%27s_challenge_to_atheist_Penn_Jillette

I know the likelihood of them ever seeing it is quite low, the likelihood of them responding with anything sane and rational is lower than that, and the likelihood of changing anyone's mind over the issue is... well, see the closing statement. Still, at least CP can't say nobody answered.
 * Nice but it will probably go ignored. You think they actually want an answer when they ask that sort of question?? Ancient Greek Pegasus icon.png 20:50, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

The Onion
My love for it has increased exponentially these past few days, as they published their 1000th issue and campaigned to receive a Pulitzer Prize. And I came across the editorial cartoons recently too - brilliant parodies of right-wing cartoons. EddyP Great King! Disaster! 09:53, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

For those who don't keep up with WIGO:World
Peter Falk, the guy in the dirty mac who discovered America, died last night at home, aged 83. And despite rumours to the contrary, the mac he wore in Columbo was kept in his wardrobe/closet.-- 18:41, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The only Columbo's I've ever watched were in French. Good stuff, though--  18:46, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I can only hope his last words were "One last thing... ARGH!" -- 19:35, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Mister Gorbachov, tear down this wall!
Huckabee's History. It's fun, must buy! Pippa (talk) 20:58, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Frightening--[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot 21:11, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It's got to be a poe. Isn't it? Please tell me it's a poe. -- 23:31, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
 * You might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment. Pippa (talk) 23:38, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, I like it
Pippa (talk) 21:18, 24 June 2011 (UTC) Not at all ashamed to say i shared it with my facebook world.--<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot 21:27, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Like. --Horace (talk) 02:37, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
 * OK, so he doesn't quite have Freddie's top octave, but neither does Freddie any more. That video is brilliant in so many ways!!! Thank you!  05:34, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Fair & balanced Fox
Some headlines from Fox compared with the same event from other sources. Via Miss Cellania Pippa (talk) 22:58, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Got a good unintentional laugh out of this: "Malaysia police slammed for cattle branding women" vs. "Christina Aguiliera's all-natural ass." Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 04:21, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I liked the one about "Obama Holds 30th Fundraiser, GWB Had 3." It was no doubt indiscreet of Fox News to make that revelation of precisely where Bush got most of his money. 04:33, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Class, Identity and perception
Ok, I have some things spinning around in my head concerning Class (particularly in the UK), what class you identify with and what people perceive you to be. I have some pretty egocentric reasons for bringing this up, which I may explain a bit later (I'm effectively trying to get things straight in my own head as a kind of therapy). Prepare for muddled arguments/statements.

My first question is: 'Do we in the UK still have a clearly defined class structure? If so, how is it broken down? How much is class defined by the work that you do when compared to your interests and your background?' I ask this partly because I keep seeing Janet Street-Porter and Julie Birchill constantly harping on about how working class they, despite in my opinion not having been working class for years, and because I often wonder what class I should identify with and if that changes depending your definition of class.

That kind of brings me to a broader question concerning identify. How do we come to create the identity we have for ourselves? Is it useful to identify with certain things? What if no one else perceives you to be the things that you identify with, does that make your chosen identity(s) a lie?

And what happens if you are unable to identify with anything, or that you do not 'fit' into an established class. Would this be liberating or limiting?

I ask all this as a trying to pin my own position (as I said, pretty egocentric) as I am having issues with just who is I am. I feel I need resolve this things to be able to move forward in my life. I am uncomfortable in my own skin. In terms of class, I feel conscious of not really identifying at all. I come from a working class family and upbringing. In terms of employment, I have moved between, with great frequency, working class, middle class and under class. In terms of my interests/life style I seem to cut across all three of these levels. Yet I am uncomfortable among working class folk. I don't share the interests or general outlook of this group. I don't feel comfortable among middle class folk - in such company and in such employment, I always feel that I have somehow snuck in via the back door and don't really belong there. The same with underclass type. I don't fit for a variety of reasons. I think what I am trying to get at is that I have always felt that when I view the world, I am kind of on the outside the looking in, and not engaging with it on any level. I would much appreciate how all you folk very the whole class/identity thing, if only to see how well adjusted people see thing.

I said it would be muddled. AMassiveGay (talk) 07:37, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry about the wall of text, My wiki formatting skills are non existent, and I've had a heavy night. AMassiveGay (talk) 07:38, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Better now?--ZooGuard (talk) 08:27, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Much, thanks. The content is still unintelligable shite though. AMassiveGay (talk) 08:29, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't feel like I need an identity. My interests and tastes overlap with those of my friends but I don't feel they (or I) belong to a stereotype or clique, or class. I do tend to see such categorisations in others though; perhaps it's just my own social circles that seem difficult to classify. I'm not sure if that answers your question. Anyway, I know what you mean about "being on the outside looking in"; I often feel as though I'm just observing the world as it moves toward (what I feel is probably going to be) self-destruction, rather than actually being involved in the world. Sometimes I find it difficult to relate to other peoples' problems, because I have a tendency to see such problems as trivial (this is not limited to the problems of others - I tend to brush off my own problems very easily, and as a result people see me as bewilderingly care-free). People don't like it when I don't show empathy for their problems, though, so I've developed a knack for faking it. ONE / TALK 09:29, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * (EC)I think that the point of AMassiveGay's post is that class definitions are effectively meaningless. What you class yourself as might be different to what somebody else would class you as. Not only that, but your class is not static throughout your life, nor is your outlook on life. If that is the point, then I'd agree entirely.
 * I too come from a working class background, and much of my outlook on life is influenced by that. I am not comfortable in calling myself middle class now, but I'm sure that is what most other people would do, given my employment type (office based, above average income) and residential type (home owner) and so on. But middle class covers a broad church. There is a world of difference between me and someone working in the city for a six-figure income, but who would also be "technically" middle class. I have more in common with mates of mine who are in the building trade than I would with any of them.
 * What is the point of a definition of class any way? Bondurant (talk) 09:38, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I think the point of a definition of class is that is one of the ways that we perceive others, how others perceive us and how we perceive ourselves. I am interested to know how much class is part of this perception and how much other things are a factor. I am well aware that class, however you define it, is a lot more fluid than it used be so is meaningless in that sense. All I can say is that I feel acutely aware class. I can remember a time when I meant the friends of an ex, who were all media types (a class of itself) and felt very out of place, kind feeling like I should be clutching a flat cap in hand. I also know some working class type chaps whom I feel oddly superior to (though I have no reason to feel so). In both cases I felt out of place, it was class that seems the obvious reason. I am aware though that I may be rationalizing class as a cause to gloss over my poor social skills. AMassiveGay (talk) 10:03, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * @One: you say you don't identify your self with any specific thing or class, but you do catagorise others in that manner. Is possible that they may be catagorising in that manner? To what extent do you, or they treat each other on that catagory? AMassiveGay (talk) 10:09, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I think we've all had times where we have struggled to interact with people in a certain social group, especially when you are the outsider and they are all together, probably talking in what seems like a different language. That has nothing to do with class. I've always tried to take the attitude that nobody is superior to me, and nor am I superior to anybody else just because of what they do or where they live.
 * The only class that is easily defined is the upper class - people who come from a priviledged background and who will never feel the pressure of having to stay in some crappy job to provide for their family. The rest is meaningless. A "working class" plumber probably earns more than a "middle class" office worker. Bondurant (talk) 10:23, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Perhaps the source of all my angst: I actually a toff. AMassiveGay (talk) 10:40, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I probably wasn't very clear. What I meant is that I'm able to recognise stereotypes and stereotypical behaviour, even if I can't think of what stereotype I might fit in (though of all the things I've been called, 'emo' and 'geek' crop up most, so that ought to be a hint, but I still don't think i fit into those very neatly). I don't deliberately try to classify people. ONE / TALK 13:30, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Most people where I live are of working and middle class employ. I went to school in the same area and have a lot of friends from both backgrounds, but in general we all have pretty similar values and behaviour - to me, "class" is merely a word that defines if you're a labourer, a desk jockey or a professional. The behaviour and lifestyle that comes with it - if you watch football or cricket, drink beer or brandy, drive a Nissan or a Mercedes - is down to ones own personal taste. Being from a relatively middle class family has never stopped me going out, drinking excessively, and having to leg it when my mates mouth off to the wrong person. You are not defined by your class (cue Fight Club monologue, "you are not the contents of your wallet," etc.) 16:09, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not British, but in the US i've always identified as "middle class". not cause i did or did not have the money to be that class, but 1) it's what i saw on TV, and said "oh, they are like me" (stupid, but normal for people to do), and 2) i identify with the culture of higher ed, which is usually upper middle in the US.--[[Image:sun mowse.png|25px]]<font face="Estrangelo Edessa"><font color="Blue">En attendant Godot  16:59, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm upper class and I think you're all a bunch of fucking oiks. 03:52, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I think people here need to identify where they live for clarity. "Class" in the UK, say, means a far different thing than in the US - in the UK, one can be poor but "upper class", whereas is the US all we have is income distinctions - by which most people over-rate themselves. Personally, I decided years ago (self-employed which equals versions of both rich and poor) that I was part of the "eccentric" class. Gay, A Massive, why do you need to know what "class" you are? Here in merka "regular folk" (ie not the genuinely rich or suffering poor) identify by what music they like and what people they like, rather than by how little money they earn. 09:27, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
 * First off, I should apologise for making such a long rambling post and then essentially abandoning it - my addled thought processes prevent me from adding much more useful posts.

@Human: I am don't need to know what 'class' I am, just interested to see how it viewed. And that is purely due my obsessiveness and insecurities. I kind of over emphasised the class thing (although it seems to have undue concern on my part) over identity more generally. As someone who has always been on the margins of society, I always feel detached from everybody I come in contact with (that includes family and friends) despite efforts to identify (through music, clothing, lifestyle etc), and was just curious how more well adjusted people manage these things, consciously or unconsciously. I suspect my drug use has some effect on all this but I don't want to over emphasis that. I tend to binge rather than take habitually.

My original post was rather self serving as it ties with trying to resolve some of mental health issues, so I apologise for that. AMassiveGay (talk) 20:11, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

The annoying comment from a "philosopher" on identity
While the question is on class you allready constructed an identity by using "I" - and I also did by calling you "you". While I myself identify with certain subcultures (geekdom), I've been amazed for years how hard people search to be part of something, may that be a class, a nation, a religion, an ideology or basically anything. It reminds me of this painting. Desperate to find something to feel save in the fog of reality, only being able to make out slide portions of save land, people try too find the safest path to wherever they are going; clinging to groups, intensifying the feeling of beeing right and therefor safe, we wander through the fogs of uncertainty. And just by making out the "I" we allready make ourselves more than other things. We are "I"s, we know about ourselves, we see that we are an object in existence that is more than objects that do not call themselves such. We are not only matter, we are intelligent. There's your first group: the intelligent beings. Some of the other identities are natural, like sex, haircolor (ok at first) - some we make of our own. To the latter belongs "class", if enough people think they are part of a class and enough of these people that fit the description, that class actually is "realized" (as much as any pure idea out of the world of the mind can be realized in the material world - ironically the first is based in the latter). With class it is like a taste or an ideology, we can more or less control what group we are part of by defining and/or redifining groups by certain individual standards, which may or not be accepted by others. If you don't feel part of any clear cut class, if you feel outside of any of them, make your own if you need one or stay alone and free of others influences (at least in that department). In the end the bigger question is if the "I" even exists or if oneself is a collective of more than one. ("I" excuse "my"self for barely understandable language) --uhm, t! 17:31, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Jesus Christ on a bike. Ajkgordon (talk) 17:59, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * See also: Granfalloon technique. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 18:20, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Beautifully said, UHM. Neb, you took the words right out of my mouth -- I was actually thinking "what's that term Vonnegut used for it in Cat's Cradle." Junggai (talk) 20:26, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I normally despise the pontifications of philosophers (usually because I don't understand them, they use a language that's foreign to me) but that was indeed well-said. ONE / TALK 09:59, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, just me then. Ajkgordon (talk) 11:58, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Care to share the criticism or would you prefer to put Jesus in and on a few more vehicles? @Neb + 1: Never heard of both of those, but sounds interesting. --uhm, t! 23:34, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * @UHM I didn't really want to limit things to just class so your post is well appreciated. Probably too much for my tiny mind to comprehend though AMassiveGay (talk) 20:14, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Computer advice
Hey, so I'm probably going to be getting a new computer soon, and I decided that it'd probably be a good idea to ask around before dropping a thousand bucks on a computer and then finding out it can do precisely jack shit. SO, since quite a few people here seem to be a good deal more tech-savvy than I, I came seeking your advice. I'm looking for a computer with: Any recommendations? -- 23:55, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Windows
 * Over 1 TB storage space
 * Serious 3D and graphics capabilities (needs to be able to run Autodesk products, 3D rendering, games, etc. Dual monitor support a must)
 * Good processing power and RAM (I like to run tons of programs in parallel, and some require some serious processing power)
 * Less than $1000 net cost. Preferably, that doesn't mean like $950, but more like $800-$850. (Negotiable)
 * HP products are preferred. I like HP. (Negotiable)
 * I'd have nothing against buying a part or two separately and switching it out, but I don't want to build the whole thing from component parts for the sake of saving a few hundred bucks.
 * Probably not what you wanted to hear, but your best bet is too check online and see if there are any local computer component places that offer pre-built systems, or build bespoke systems. That way you get some of the savings from a build-you-own-system, get the specs you want, have somebody else build it and, more importantly, get it working for you before shipping it out, you're not going to get crippled components, a problem that can occur if you buy a pre-built system like a Dell or wotnot, and if a component does go, it'll be a lot cheaper to just have the component replaced than get a new system.  Check out this Eclipse Computers page.  Although they only cover the UK it will give you some idea of what I'm talking about.-- 00:31, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * But pre built things like Dells have warranties. Meaning that replacement parts aren't just cheap, they're free. And by the time the warranty runs out its all out of date hardware that you can start upgrading at the same price as a any other system. Ancient Greek Pegasus icon.png 23:29, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Each and every component in a custom build come with their own warranties, as will the system as a whole, which means that replacement or repair will be free if the warranty still applies. And something pre-built like a Dell, well it's potluck whether you'll be able to upgrade it.  Pre-builds are notorious for dodgy, cheap generic PSU's, crippled motherboards, on-board video that can't be upgraded, CPU's attached straight into the board, or really bad, weirdly specific OEM components that only work properly with pre-installed drivers that you won't be given access to and, in likelyhood, won't be able to upgrade either.  Seriously, go for the custom build job every time, it'll save you a fortune in the long-term.  Mine's a custom build job from five years ago, and just by upgrading a component every now and again it's still a top-line gaming machine.  I'm just about to go for the big expense and upgrade the mobo, cpu and memory altogether, but that's still only going to set me back £250, instead of the £800 it would cost to replace the machine, and in a year's time I'll fork out the £150 to jump my GPU back up to top-range.
 * Because you want a gaming PC, you need to ask: Do I buy custom built with known retail parts that have easily accessible drivers on the web, and in two years time I might only need to spend maybe £150-£200 upgrading my GPU to keep my machine up to speck, or do I want a pre-build which runs the risk of having drivers that can't be upgraded and the hardware being non-upgradeable in fairly vital areas, so in two years time I'm looking to fork out exactly the same amount of money I just spent on this machine?  (And if you don't believe me about OEM components have a look at this Creative soundcard).  Because it's OEM the drivers on the Creative website won't run it properly, you need the discs that shipped with the OEM component to get the soundcard fully functional.  However, the component doesn't get sold with those drivers, and you won't find them anywhere on Creative's website, and Creative will refuse to release those drivers to you, pointing out that they don't support OEM versions of their own products.  If you go for a pre-build containing one of those soundcards you are evectively stuck with the drivers that the manufacturer put on the machine.  They won't upgrade and so if a problem is discovered with that particular driver in the future with a game (and that does happen, a lot), well tough.-- 00:04, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The option I'm most seriously considering right now is getting HP to build me a h8t and upgrading the processor to a i7 2600T quad core and then tossing in an extra sticks of RAM to get it up to 8 or 12 GB andswitching out the graphics card for an nvidia 4?? GTX (I'd have to check the PSU to insure it wouldn't draw too much power) on the cheap with all the Best Buy credit I have. Are there any serious flaws in this plan that will blindside me a year down the line, or is this a good decision?  The final cost would come out to around $1,100, which is fine by me, but pretty close to the new hard upper limit I've set at 1,250. -- 04:34, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes. It's ensure not insure.  Okay, enough pedantry.  What you've got there seems workable, but check to see how long their warranty is for.  It's pretty much a guarantee that you won't be allowed to crack open the case yourself without voiding the warranty, so if you want any upgrades you'll either need to have them paid to be put in on the initial build, or you'll have to send your computer back to HP to get it upgraded during the warranty period.  The other thing is, check to see what make of PSU is going into the computer.  If it's going to be a generic PSU from a Chinese company you've never heard of go to the additional expense of having HP install a named PSU of the same wattage (I'd recommend OCZ).  The power output differences between a cheap generic and an OCZ are staggering, especially with things like power spikes, wattage output under temperature,etc.  As to the wattage that you need: PSU calculators can give you a rough idea of what'll you need.  If you're planning to keep your computer for a few years and just keep it maintained with rolling upgrades give serious consideration to adding 100~200W to what is recommended on the calculator, or if that's going to be too expensive on the initial build, just schedule a PSU upgrade for the future.-- 11:06, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Wow, I just get my computers from the dump and reflash the HDD and replace whatever died to make them get thrown away. But then, I'm not a gamer, so all I need is for them to be able to add correctly a few gillion times and work with whatever keyboards I have lying around. But the general advice to build with 'separate' parts as opposed to on-MB features is good, IMO. 09:02, 25 June 2011 (UTC)