RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive139

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, (new)(back)

A wee bit of javascript syntax help required

I'm completely new to javacript, so the best I can do is often to nick code from the web and play around with it, same way I learned VBA. I'm in a bit of a pickle and the situation is rather specific, so I've had trouble googling for a solution. Here's the javacript function, which toggles the display of a div between "block" and "none":

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">
function togglePannelStatus(content)
{
var expand = (content.style.display=="none");
content.style.display = (expand ? "block" : "none");
var chevron = content.parentNode
	.firstChild.childNodes[1].childNodes[0];
chevron.src = chevron.src
	.split(expand ? "expand.gif" : "collapse.gif")
	.join(expand ? "collapse.gif" : "expand.gif");
}
</script>

and here's where the function is called:

<div class="squareboxgradientcaption" onclick="togglePannelStatus(this.nextSibling)">
 </div><div class="squareboxcontent" style="display:none;"><div>

Now, it only works when there is no whitespace or linebreak between the two divs, presumably because the "this.nextSibling" only accepts the very next div when there's no gap. What I want to do is give the second div an ID, and then have the function refer to that ID instead of "this.nextSibling". I've tried a few things, like this:

<div class="squareboxgradientcaption" style="height:20px; cursor: pointer;" onclick="togglePannelStatus('idtest')">
 <div name="idtest" id="idtest" class="squareboxcontent" style="display:none;">

(with variations on the quote marks), but to no avail. Where am I going wrong? ^{ONE / TALK} 10:41, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

You are going wrong in not using a debugger. --145.94.77.43 (talk) 13:59, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't have access to one where I'm working from... so I'm using you lot as my debugger ;) ^{ONE / TALK} 14:38, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

You're passing the name of the element to the function as a string there, so your function would need to call "document.getElementById(name)" to get a reference to the actual element. --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 15:33, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Your 2nd div tag is not closed, it is opening a third div. I also am gonna post to your talk page a quick script I made with jquery. Jquery expands on javascript and makes it oh so fun, not to mention you can get cool addons for it for free. TheCheat^{I run on alcohol} 15:44, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Jeeves, that did the trick (well, it did after i put the id of the div in single quotemarks ;)). My second div was closed but I somehow managed to not paste it in here... but thanks for the jquery stuff, that could turn out really useful in the coming weeks :D ^{ONE / TALK} 16:07, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

50 Greatest Magic tricks

Just watched the BBC (?) special. Sometimes you just need to watch something for the sheer joy of it, and honestly I don't know if I'd want to know how they do it. Things like Penn & Teller's "Miser's Dream", the shoe trick, the guy walking on the Thames. Yes, it's all an illusion, but damn they do it well. --PsyGremlinSnakk! 12:40, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

With Fool Us and a few other shows, I'm wondering if stage magic is making a comeback - or possibly has made a big comeback. The last big stage magic spree on TV was in the mid-late 90s, then it's been street magic and the likes of Derren Brown that's been fashionable. ^pathetic 12:49, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

On the subject of Fool Us this trick was pretty damn impressive. Especially when he played P&T at the end. --PsyGremlinHable! 13:10, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

That was on the 50 Greatest list, wasn't it? ^theist 13:49, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Yup. The one thing I liked about the show is that it seems as if the days of Copperfield & Blain are behind us, and there are some very good young turks coming to the fore. --PsyGremlinSpeak! 14:05, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

My father has a close friend who is a - oh what's the technical term for "slight of hand". anyhow, he showed us how some basic "common" tricks are done, and I think knowing how its done made it even more impressive cause you still could not see what he is doing - and you knew exactly what to look for. GodotDear god, fucking grow up 17:21, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Legerdemain? I was at an industry conference in New Orleans a few years ago and one of the exhibitors had a magician on their stand; I visited one of their evening buffet dinners and as the only 'client' around at the end of the evening they took me down Bourbon Street for some drinks. We spent about 3 hours in a bar with the magician keeping us entertained with tricks and teaching card handling techniques. Great fun. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 17:29, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Prestidigitation! I love that word! (ʞlɐʇ) ɹǝɯɯɐHʍoƆ 17:34, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Hey Psy, have you seen this routine? Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 17:35, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I had to turn the family filter off... do I want to watch this? ^{d hominem} 18:20, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd ask why you're referring me to the seksie, nekkid videos, but I'm scared of the answer. Methinks the question to ask is how do you of these things? --PsyGremlinTala! 18:24, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

OH DEAR GOD SHE DIDN'T JUST!!!! ^bomination 18:26, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Spoiler. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 18:38, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, that would explain the stupid hand dancing to stop people being able to focus on it. ^sshole 18:45, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

IANAM but I have been interested in magic and magician's props for a quite while and know that this is one area where quality definitely counts. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 19:01, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

The internet V. the Government

So with the news that [|the US government shut down megaupload] and some retaliation against the government by online groups, it just makes me wonder how far those groups think they can go. Because its pretty obvious a fight between the Internet and the Government is a impossible win for the former group. --il'Dictator Mikal (talk) 14:01, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

You mean the latter group. ^postate 14:03, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Surely Kim Dotcom is a pseudonym. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?}<

(ec) Yes, I saw his full name in an article. He's Korean. Also, Megaupload is back up and running. Just has an IP address, no domain name at the moment. --PsyGremlinSprich! 14:15, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

The internet exists in the world controlled by the government; as does it's public warriors. They arent like the mafia who actually has the power to wage a war on the Italian government--il'Dictator Mikal (talk) 14:11, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Good one! Oh, wait... you are serious? Uhh, boy… Ok, first of all the internet is world wide and there isnt one world government no matter how many treaties you sign. The only thing one country/state can do is isolate itself from the rest of the world. And as our modern societies go the government doesn't tolerate it's people anymore, it's people tolerate the government. "The internet" may not have the power to wage actual war against the government (mainly because "the internet" is not an organization, but a technology), but the internet is made out of computers with people behind them. And as written above (and seen for over a year now) if the people are pissed enough and want the government gone, pure speech can turn into violence rather quickly. So from a few protestors on the internet, you go to major demonstrations, to single attacks, then to a "terrorist organization" to a revolution and the government that fought so hard doesn't exist anymore. In this context the term "people" would serve better to see "the internet" as, not just something that exists in some other place. And for the reason of such a thing it doesn't matter if the protestors are justified to do so or not, the only thing that matters is that they feel justified and are many. --★uːʤɱ secularist 14:53, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

You think that only nasty smelly furriners can use the internet to organise anti-government revolts? ^theist 14:32, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I seem to recall that the backbone of the internet (which is well beyond my understanding, it involves a lot of acronyms), routes through the US, so the US government could shut down the entire internet if it wanted (i.e. if its very existence was under immediate threat), but it would be a very pyrrhic victory - it would cripple the global economy like nothing else. ^{ONE / TALK} 14:36, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

(EC) I think he means that in a battle between protesters using the internet and the government, the government has the ultimate winning hand because they can simply shut the internet down. Whether they would actually do that for something this trivial (comparatively) is doubtful. Ajkgordon (talk) 14:39, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

That mistake was made by Mubarak during the revolution, people just went out into the streets to look what's going on. Not really a good idea. --★uːʤɱ heretic 14:56, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

When did I say the fighting back would stop simply because they shut down the part of the internet they could get to? However... I do wish groups would stop hacking websites and stealing peoples personal stuff, it doesn't do us a lot of favors.--il'Dictator Mikal (talk) 16:04, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Unless the government is going to wipe out encryption or the capability to halfway freely transfer information it doesn't stand a chance. They can seek out the things most know about but that will just make the web of piracy will be more fragmented, not unconnected. --145.94.77.43 (talk) 14:38, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

There are multiple internet backbones in the world, a backbone is just a collection of high capacity datacenters and ultra wide bandwidth connections. If the US government shutdown all the stuff within its reach it may mess up some DNS services and some stuff may have trouble finding a route but there will still be internet in the rest of the world. The 'internet' is virtual, the people that use it are not. The argument should be people vs government, and history has shown to go either way on that. TheCheat^{I run on alcohol} 14:51, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Short of bombing the physical servers and disconnecting the entire telecommunications infrastructure (like that would go down well) and turning the US into the next North Korea, at least. ^theist 15:17, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

They could just type Google into Google. Ajkgordon (talk) 17:05, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Uh...

...hi. What should I talk about? The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 17:09, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Stop asking us, we shouldn't have to do the hard work for you--il'Dictator Mikal (talk) 17:11, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I just find icebreakers hard. The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 17:18, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

It's easy, you're chatting about what to chat about. It's so meta, man. ^pathetic 17:19, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

You've been here since 'September; ice breaking is a long time over and people know you already. --il'Dictator Mikal (talk) 17:20, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

As this allready sounds like we're on a bad date and just discovered we have nothing in common and it still seems like you want to edit RW dirty all night, just take the bill, ok? --★uːʤɱ sinner 17:22, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

If we talk within this thread, about talking about talking, are we ubermeta?GodotDear god, fucking grow up 17:27, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I think at that point you're back to regular ol' talkin', but me commenting about you asking whether or not you're being ubermeta by talking instead of being meta counts as metametameta, or whatever. My brain hurts. (ʞlɐʇ) ɹǝɯɯɐHʍoƆ 17:32, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

If we meta any more we might break something. we should stop.--il'Dictator Mikal (talk) 17:34, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Wait, what? I like RW and I agree with it on a lot of things. The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 18:35, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

My advice is: don't start a discussion unless you've already got something to talk about. & Don't always make it all about you. There are already thirty-odd threads on this page. Surely some of them must be about things you are interested in. Share your opinions. Or if not, think about what you are interested in, & start a discussion about it. Ŵêâŝêîôîď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 18:25, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Posh on your advice. Being self centered is the ONLY way to have a conversation! GodotDear god, fucking grow up 18:45, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Is this good? The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 18:35, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Salsa

So I have been on a quest now for about a year to make a home made salsa that I love as much as the kind at Pappacitos or the medium tomatillo salsa from Chipotle. Here are my ingredients: 4 Roma tomatoes, 4 tomatillos (green tomatoes), poblano pepper, 4 serrano peppers, 1 red onion, cilantro and various seasonings (pepper, salt, habanero powder, garlic salt, little bit of sugar). I grill the tomatoes and the peppers over a charcoal grill with some mesquite wood to give it an extra smokey flavor until the skin on the tomatoes is peeling. Then I pretty much put the tomatoes in a frying pan and cook and add everything then put it into a food processor. The end result is very spicy, but the kick is slow building which I like. It may be slightly too sweet. The smoke flavor is dead on with what I like from pappacitos. It is still missing a certain... how do you say... I don't fucking know. Some co-workers suggested more lime. Any salsa masters have any tips about what I may be missing? I am thinking on cutting out a few green tomatoes, more cilantro, more lime and adding a little water to make it less chunky. A coworker also suggested to put in some mango or strawberry instead of sugar which sounds interesting... TheCheat^{I run on alcohol} 20:31, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Adding fruits is tasty, but it's (to me) a totally different dish. it's "mango salsa", not just salsa. http://www.great-salsa.com/salsa-recipes.html is a great site to try new salsas. I'm not creative, so i only follow what's there, but it might help you figure what you are missing. GodotDear god, fucking grow up 22:03, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me, it really is a question of individual taste. I can't say what you aren't getting out of it. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 22:08, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

How you handle the chiles make a big difference. If you get that part right, you can throw away most of the other seasonings. Instead of just grilling them and cooking with everything else, I'd try roasting and then pureeing/straining them separately, then adding toward the end. Are you starting out with fresh or dried chiles? That also has a big effect on the character. Junggai (talk) 22:41, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposal: New "Reference:" namespace

Prior discussion: Category talk:Source namespace candidates & Forum:Source namespace

8

Straw poll

As you may-or-may-not be aware, there is an idea floating around for the creation of a separate namespace for source material hosted on this site. Originally envisioned as having the prefix Source:, the proposed namespace would have held material such as that in Category:Source namespace candidates. For those that can't be bothered to click that link, we're talking the Chickenhawk stuff, the Lenski correspondence (though not the Lenski affair page itself, though that has somehow landed up in the category) and a number of other things. The rationale behind this included the fact that many of these pages are subpages of main articles, but there are no subpages in mainspace. (See here for an explaination as to why that is). We have, for example, an article on Kent Hovind's doctoral dissertation - we also have the text under Kent Hovind's doctoral dissertation/OCR. Under this proposal, that would be moved to [[Source:Kent Hovind's doctoral dissertation]].

After some discussion, however, the proposal changed to broaden the scope of the proposed new namespace. What is now being proposed would be something more like this:

The namespace would instead be called Reference:, and would be designed to include background and source material that is related to the mission, but may not be directly part of it. This will include the following:

1. Said source material, including things like the stuff in the category already found. But this should also include unannotated versions of things like the 15 Questions and the Dembski papers. The reason for the inclusion of these is that we would include on this reference page the license (Fair use, public domain etc) that we have these things. Also, if a person wishes to make a new side-by-side of a full text they would first place it and format it in the reference namespace, again including justification of why they have it. Having this namespace would also make it easier for us to get even more of these things, and to find things we already have. Take a look at that category - how much of that did you know about?
2. Quotes. Considering how much people like to put quotes in articles we could make a whole namespace full of quotes alone. I'm talking Behe on common descent, what Darwin actually said in On the Origin of Species on this or that topic, the complete list of 2012 presidential election gaffes, and so on. This blends in with the above, actually. You can only have so many quotes in an articles, but being able to give a link to a compendium of guaranteed mission related quotes maintained by us can only be a plus, no? As an example of such a quote page, I give you Reference:William Dembski quotes.
3. Finally, some "more general reference material" that Blue mentioned in the forum discussion. I'm not overly keen on moving existing articles into refspace for this - we have enough missionality arguments as it is - but there is a lot of relevant stuff that can be imported from EvoWiki. I'm talking the Flagella article here, along with many, many others that are important background info to main, mission articles, but include facts that we really shouldn't be cluttering those articles up with. And we can make more. Why here and not elseware? If we link a person to wikipedia, say, they will have to wade through a load of irrelevant information, and we won't get the reader back as easily. And we have outline articles as it is. As far as EvoWiki ports go, I give you Reference:Anaximander & Reference:Flagella.
   But they don't just have to be evowiki articles. Consider Astrology#Precession and constellations - that section begins "Due to the precession of the equinoxes, the constellations have shifted backward..." But there is no link for an explanation as to what precession is. A short article explaining what it is and how it is relevant is all very well, but it's hardly mainspace material, is it? "We are not a general science encyclopaedia" and all that. And yet, the science outline articles have their place - but as reference material.

Objections:

A number of objections have already been raised, so to avoid having to retrace out steps here they are, along with my counter:

• What would it do that wikisource [and wikiquote] can't? As evidenced by the existence of a category full of them, we already have a number of these things - I would argue that that is not without good reason. Two of these, to reiterate, are that if we direct readers offsite, they will have to wade through a load of irrelevant information (especially viz quotes) and we wont get them back very easily while they're hunting. If we control the collection of source material we link to, we can also ask people specially to use their stuff. It also provides, again, a licensing page for stuff we already use. And in cases like the Lenski stuff, that page is transcluded into the main article - we can't do that if it was on wikisource. And there are other advantages to having things locally hosted, including the threat of dead links and unavailable pages.
• The small number of things that would go into the space: That was to the original proposal above - with the expansion this is nolonger an issue.
• The dissasociation between source and article: Considering, again, the lack of subpages in namespace, "Kent Hovind's doctoral dissertation" would be as well associated with "Reference:Kent Hovind's doctoral dissertation" as it is to "Kent Hovind's doctoral dissertation/OCR". Additionally, some kind of linkage in the style of the {{fun}} template could be used, though not necessarily the same style. More like hatnote things, saying "We have a whole page of Mitt Romney making a fool of himself," "See the full list of quotes from Darwin on speciation," and all that.
• Why bother? I do think that this will have more advantages than the trouble it will cause. I don't think a category will work very well, and it would be best if they were not hidden in weird places, but were instead organised in one namespace. I don't get the impression that it will be all that difficult to do.

That's what has come up so far. I bring it to the bar as nobody seems to be noticing the forum page, while more people will see it here.

Note that this isn't originally my idea, and that I am open to persuasion out of it - but right now, I and others think that this new namespace would be quite helpful. Now, what do you think? Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 21:43, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Edit point

Putting quotes in a reference namespace is a little too Ed-like for my taste, but the rest sounds good. ListenerX^TalkerX 22:04, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

I think what is meant is a collection of quotes, Wikiquote-style so to speak. --★uːʤɱ anti-communist 22:07, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

They're not meant to be substitutes for the articles themselves (or Edstubs) - again, see User:PeterL/Reference:William Dembski quotes. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 22:09, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah. I thought you meant the kind of quotes you put in a separate page for transclusion. I withdraw my objection. ListenerX^TalkerX 22:13, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll replicate my +π here. Blue (is useful) 22:24, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

My own ten cents (but a ten cents I don't really care about) is that this isn't really necessary, and will just be lots of stuff someone decided to through in there without really thinking about its relevance. I don't think we really NEED such a thing, as there is wikisource out there, and we can link to it. I would vote no, but a goatish no. I would suggest, though, that we be very careful - few people realize how exactly copyright works. I'm not even convinced we can legally put up our copy of Hovinid's dissertation, as it 's NOT open source - and saying "let's put up a source page, not just link to one" opens up whole new issues of "fair use". GodotDear god, fucking grow up 22:51, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

I've discussed my problems with this before, but I'll add one more: If I am using this as more for a source of information, why would I expect to write "Reference: Evolution" instead of just "Evolution." I guess I just don't see the need. If something is really that off-mission, than delete it, and I think having some flexibility in Main isn't necessarily a bad thing. And I honestly don't see what this does what a category doesn't. I think we spend to much time re-partitioning what already exists in categories as it is, to then do it again in a year. To me, it's just wiki-creep. (And I agree that Kent Hovind's thesis really ought to be deleted.) sterile^talk 22:59, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Because it wouldn't be for Reference:Evolution, it'd be for something like Referene:kenh hamquotes. ^sshole 23:36, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

(EC)There is an issue as to some things that we should simply get rid of - do we really need an Obama speech? But as GC has said, we could be offered a few things to host, which, it should be added, wouldn't be anywhere else. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 23:01, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

@sterile: Redirects, possibly. And I'm not proposing moving evolution anywhere - though you might want to ask Blue about that (if it comes down to it, it would be nice if she expanded on her idea there). A better comparison is between writing {{w|Precession}} vs say {{ref|Precession}}. And if you take a look at that page you'll note that directing a reader there wouldn't be very helpful. But its inclusion here, in mainspace, would really require a bit of flexibility in what is to go there. I'm a bit borderline on #3 myself, though. And I really don't know how you would organise categories for this in a way that would be usable. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 23:23, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

If we are smart about implementing it, I think the reference namespace will open a lot of doors for what we can have here. We'd need to tread carefully around copyright, true, but that's a doable thing. We'd also need some guidelines on relevance and notability, so it doesn't end up like an essayspace or userspace clone, and to prevent it from becoming a place to chuck anything we wanted.

I don't entirely understand the category concern - categories would work the same way they do on any page. Blue (pester) 23:58, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Maybe, and again, i'm not a big "policy" person here, I just toss out ideas and work with what is decided, you need to "just do it" first, so people can see what it would be/could be. or is that REALLY BAD idea? does "just doing it" make it extremely hard to "undo"? GodotDear god, fucking grow up 00:03, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

(EC)I believe that virile would, instead of a whole new namespace, just mark the stuff with an 'original material' category. I don't know what that would gain, however. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 00:04, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

@WfG: See here. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 00:04, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

A bit tl;dr for me (the main post) but I really don't see the point. Is there an executive summary somewhere? ħuman 03:35, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Also a bit too much bolding to concentrate on. ħuman 03:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

tl;dr: Do we want a new namespace for non-article reference material?--^talk 03:39, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Let's vote!--^talk 03:31, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Why not discuss? !Voting is lame until all the ideas are in and fully developed. ħuman 03:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Folks have been chatting about this in the Forum for a while.--^talk 03:39, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

@Peter: Categories have pages, not unlike tags for blogposts. That is, you can find everything that's an original source by looking up that category (and without dpl). (And evolution strictly speaking isn't a part of our mission; creationism is, as it's anti-science, but the science of evolution doesn't fit into the numbered points on the front page.) sterile^talk 03:43, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Had another think, and I'd like to drop point three of the above - we would not include things even like evolution into this namespace. If Blue want's to make her case in favour of it, she may, but you all raise good points against it and so as far as I am concerned it gets a no from me.

As for the "clear reason" Human wanted consider this:

• Do you think it would benefit the wiki to have a much larger stockpile of things like the the Lenski correspondence, like my Dembski quote compilation etc. I asked this at the forum, but got no responce - and I'm fine with a no.
• If you say yes, however, where would you put them and how would you make them easily findable?

Yes or no - I'll take either for either (though I can't speak for anyone else who may have a more dogmatic opinion).

(I'll remove the bolding in a sec, if that helps anyone) Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 03:57, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, let's make a reference namespace

1. --^talk 03:32, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
2. ListenerX^TalkerX 03:40, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
3. --★uːʤɱ soviet 09:59, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
4. Reminds me of my "offmissionspace", so we could keep off-mission articles on the site. The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 03:25, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
5. --Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 16:48, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
6. (In order to deadlock vote - should probably start over with the proposal) Peter ^{Monomorium antarcticum} 08:13, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

No, we don't need it

1. I think if we really need a particular source (Lenski's letters, for example) we will find a place for them. This just begs problems.GodotDear god, fucking grow up 03:34, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
2. I haven't seen a clear reason how this would benefit the wiki presented, so, no. ħuman 03:37, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
3. Does evolution go into ref space or main space? Hell if I know. Categories were made for a reason. (And ECx2) sterile^talk 03:41, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
4. Scream!! (talk) 05:00, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
5. I'm sort of leaning toward a category instead of a namespace. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 05:05, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
6. Do not support the proposal in its current form; category would indeed suffice. Also, PeterL changed what was being voted on after the vote had begun, so I have to cry foul as our resident wiki-voting advocate. Blue (pester) 05:13, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Goat

• Meh. Ty^{Bother me} 03:35, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• Feh. P-Foster Talk "a cheetos-eating, Mountain-Dew drinking vlogger living in someone's basement." 03:39, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• Peh. Sam ^Tally-ho! 03:41, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• I'm so apathetic about this I can't even Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 05:15, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
• Meh, leaning towards no, though I admit to having followed very little of this discussion. ΨΣΔξΣΓΩΙÐ^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 19:27, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

"Mutilation is NEVER an acceptable treatment for a mental illness."

It is probable that there is no common comment that froths me into a rage more than this. I hope we can understand the multiple levels of wrongness involved. However, if anyone here is wrongheaded enough to put any stock into this bullshit, please say so, that you might be corrected. (And for those of you who remain blissfully unaware of the meaning or context here, trust me that ignorance is bliss, but I'll give you a hint: the "mutilation" referenced is SRS.) Blue (is useful) 01:41, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

What the hell? You have no right to assume that what is good for you, right for you, is right for others. (unless you are talking kidsl ie, parents with kids - then I'm mostly in agreement, though not totally, cause every case is different).GodotDear god, fucking grow up 01:57, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Are you saying that SRS is not "mutilation"? If so, I definitely agree. But I'm confused as to who/what is being addressed here. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 01:59, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Fair point. I'm not sure what is being addressed here either. But I took from the cryptic message that Blue has issues with people choosing SRS, as it's "mutilation". I'm very sure it's not mutilation to those who feel it is the way to address their problems. And like everything else, I'm sure that the multitude of 2ndary issues that arise from being born with any level of Gender issues, do not just "go away" no matter what treatment you choose. But again, maybe i misunderstand her point. and if so, I appologize. GodotDear god, fucking grow up 02:07, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Blue has issues with people choosing SRS I meant the exact opposite. Blue (pester) 02:11, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

(EC)I do not understand WaitingforGodot's comment at all. I am talking about people who dismiss the entirety of transsexualism because "THEY'RE MUTILATING PERFECTLY HEALTHY BODIES!!!!!!!" Which is not only untrue completely, it ignores the huge amount of trans people who opt not to have SRS.

@ Nebby: I am still kind of in my frothy rage, but essentially people who say that have no idea what they're talking about, for one, SRS is the most successful surgery in terms of improvement of conditions in the world for people who opt to have it, it is livesaving in many situations, it is decidedly not mutilation but reconstruction, and I am in agreement with the NHS as not classifying transsexualism as a mental illness. Blue (is useful) 02:09, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I"m sorry, Blue. I totally mis read you. People who say shit like that don't know anything. What I'm reading about brain studies is that gender idenity issues are so complex, they involve the brain, the genes, the internal sexual organs and the appearance of sexual organs. there are people with XXY, an XYY, and probably YYYYYYYYY for all I know. But anyone saying "it's a mental illness" is full of it. tell them so. GodotDear god, fucking grow up 02:13, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, okay, the first post was a bit cryptic. Obviously, you won't find any disagreement from me. I think all of the sexuality-related "mental illnesses" concerning consensual activity need to be trashed. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 02:31, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Pretty sure that all-Y is non-viable Godot. The Y chromosome isn't necessary (of course, otherwise women would be impossible) but the X chromosome is as far as I know. So, as well as XX and XY, X0, XYY and XXY result in live births in large numbers, but Y0, YY etc. do not occur.

On trashing mental illnesses, the standard should always be about individual patients, and the question "does it cause a problem? (for the patient or other people)". If my casual sexual encounters with consenting adult women cause a problem for me, that's real for me and I need help, refusing to classify it is not helpful. If your enthusiastic daily sex with a teddy bear is working out OK for you, then that's not a problem and diagnosing you with an illness is stupid. Sex isn't (shouldn't be) special in this regard. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 07:53, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I think people need to remember that the line between physiological defect and mental illness is very, very blurred. It's very much a "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that" moment to describe transgender as purely either. ^narchist 10:38, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Let people mutilate their genitals by all means, but please don't expect me to pay for it (as a taxpayer) or 'respect' them for it. DeltaStar_{Senior Sysop}^{Speciationspeed!} 14:01, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Tough shit. People who think like you have no grasp on the realities of transsexualism, which is characteristic of people who trivialize and explain away huge, complex issues that sprawl across moral, medical, social and economic domains in a single sentence. Reality can be hard to acknowledge sometimes, I know, but I have no sympathy for LGBT denialists. It's thinking like yours that leads people to say things like "Depression? Walk it off! Smoker? Just will yourself to stop! Anorexic? Just force some food down your throat!" Honestly, SRS is one of the most successful surgeries in the history of medicine - it saves some lives and vsstly improves nearly all of them. I doubt you've ever known a transsexual person. Try it. Getting to know people usually helps relieve bigotry. (Though don't open any conversation with "Pleased to meet you. I think you're all dangerous self-mutilators who deserve nothing but contempt.") Blue (is useful) 17:39, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Amen. Not to make gays or trans a "danger" (i'm sure someone would mis read this without my caveat), but if science could find true help for murders, child abusers, alcholics etc., we SHOULD PAY FOR IT. If a person feels as if they are not healthy (and i leave it to them to decide that), it is our obligation as a country to help them. You pay for the psycologists, the meds or the surgery if that's what helps a transgender. You pay to set bones, or give vaccinations if that's what helps kids grow up healthy. as for you "respecting" them, grow the fuck up and realize it's not your views that define other people's lives. GodotDear god, fucking grow up 18:12, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I disrespect and lack respect people all the ducking time, but usually for a reason. Those reasons don't tend to be things that they have little to no control over. In fact, out of the trans people I know I have a massive amount of respect for them just for how well they handled it. ^{d hominem} 18:31, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Our bodies as a whole, including genitalia, are mapped onto the sensory and motor cortices. VS Ramachandran, who has done pioneering work on phantom limbs, has argued for a very plausible hypothesis: Some cases of transgenderism may be explained by a mismatch between the body and its cortical mapping creating phantom sexual features. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 00:19, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

There's a certain amount of what you say that boils it all down to being about genitals, and while it's true that's a big part of it I have to question if that's the whole thing. Certainly in my case, it feels a lot like there's more to it. For instance, I find living in the world as the gender that I identify as is more important than getting SRS, although that's something I definitely want. It might be my bias, but from this side of the tracks it seems there's an identity aspect that isn't covered by sensory mapping. --95.154.230.253 (talk) 20:19, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Obviously, it's a lot more complicated than a case of phantom limbs, but this would seem to account for the feeling of being "in the wrong body," so to speak, for many cases. It's also a hypothesis that is much easier to test and less likely to get bogged down in ideological/stereotypical baggage. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 20:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Gun control

This has probably been discussed a thousand times, but I'm bringing it up to make conversation, something hard for me to do. Forgive me if you are annoyed. What do you all think should be done regarding gun control and the Second Amendment.

Personally, I think gun control in the sense of forbidding anyone but the State (i.e., military, police, etc.) to have guns is a bad idea. My mind was convinced by this very interesting article, pointing out responsible citizens won't use guns for "evil" and that malicious ones won't really care about the law and ignore them and use them to wreak havoc anyway. The problem with gun control is that it would mean the government is able to attack the defenseless, and, as the article points out, the death toll resulting from such attacks rises into the tens of millions. Even when the government doesn't abuse its monopoly on legalized firearms, violent crime increases as "independent" criminals are able to attack the defenseless, as we have seen in Australia.

Although the article descends into a bit of batshittery in the last few paragraphs, blaming proper science and proper health classes and that there is no absolute unchanging morality for Columbine. But the great Newton was an alchemist and YEC, yet that didn't undermine his contributions of calculus, optics, gravity, et cetera, starting the Enlightenment. One piece of stupidity doesn't undermine the whole thing, least not in this case. Also, in health class a few months ago, the teacher (at a public school, mind you) explicitly stated actions have consequences and wanted us to learn that one thing if not anything else in his room. But regardless: gun control in the sense described above is bad. I don't think guns should just be handed out to everybody: background checks, licenses, etc. are necessary to at least try to avoid the malicious getting guns, but without making the benevolent defenseless. Don't confuse my views on gun control with those of some people on CP.

What do you think? The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 18:50, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I think the first thing you should reject is defining Newton's beliefs in YEC and alchemy as stupidity. Those were the prevalent views of the time. YEC wasn't even called YEC then. It was simply ubiquitous.

Secondly, you should avoid comparing the legal status of arms in the US with other countries. You can find any number of examples of gun control or the lack thereof in other countries that can be used to either support it or undermine it. The US, like all countries, has a unique history and culture which puts different pressures on the gun control argument. While many of us foreigners find it obscene how many guns there seem to be and how often they are used in anger, we can't make a judgment on US gun control using our countries as examples.

Many of us would take the view that guns are dangerous and should be regulated and restricted just like any other dangerous object - cars, aircraft, high voltage electrical installations, poisons..... Ajkgordon (talk) 19:06, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Kid, I can only assume you don't watch the news. The whole armed populous preventing tyranny thing went away with the 19th century. If you weren't convinced of this before last year, watching the events in Libya should have convinced you this argument isn't worth squat these days. The rebels had assault rifles and the occasional mortar. The government mowed them down with machine guns, howitzers, helicopter gunships, bombers and even the occasional missile destroyer. And that's just the armed forces available to a tinpot African dictator. Imagine what a first world military could do to its "armed citizenry." You'd be better off without the weapons, since you still have to persuade the soldiers to pull the trigger. That's harder when you're facing peaceful protesters than it is an armed uprising. --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 19:12, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

The more that people are armed, the greater the stakes for any oppressor. The authorities will therefore just up the ante with tasers, tear gas and stun grenades. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 19:35, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

PS You don't need to post stuff just to make conversation, do it because it engages you. And don't tell us that you're doing it just to make conversation, you don't need to provide a reason for your post. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 19:46, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

"Since we should learn from the mistakes of history, the next time someone talks in favor of gun control find out which group of citizens they wish to have exterminated." Oh my Godwin.

Anyhoo, there are several reasons why people in the immediate post-colonial era when the Constitution was drawn up would have needed guns, what with large areas of the country being unexplored, dangerous wild animals, trouble with the natives, and the possible threat of reinvasion by the British or other imperial powers. Coupla hundred years later, these threats really don't exist anymore (although there are still wolves, bears, etc. in some parts; one of the reasons why rural dwellers at least might still need guns). I don't really understand the idea that bearing arms is an ideological right rather than a pragmatic one. As for the idea that guns & militias should be there for citizens to defend themselves against their own government (implied by all those genocide examples), that doesn't really seem to be in keeping with the constitution: the wording of the Second Amendment is about the militia serving the security of the state, not the individual/family/community/whatever. Weaseloid^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 19:38, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Also, rarely do those rural dwellers need hi-tech assault weapons. Depending on location a single-barrel shotgun is probably sufficient. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 19:55, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

"Hitler banned guns!" is an old canard anyway. If you read some actual research done by the National Academies, you'll find that most people are just talking out their asses on gun control. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 19:57, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Is gun control even an issue outside of the US? Its certainly not here in the UK, but I guess we don't have FEMA concentration camps to deal with AMassiveGay (talk) 20:03, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Maybe Bowling for Columbine provides better answers. -- Seth Peck (talk) 20:10, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Big issue in Canada. Google the "gun registry." P-Foster Talk "a cheetos-eating, Mountain-Dew drinking vlogger living in someone's basement." 22:00, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

In Europe, it (marginally) is an issue in Finland, because of the country's old (neighbour) and recent (school shootings) history. Editor at CP^{mały książe} 20:30, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I grew up in a home of hunters. Hunting guns are second nature to me. I don't really mind the right to hand guns, I guess. What really torks me is why we should have a right to automatic, assult and semi-assult weapons. you aren't hunting with those, and they aren't for your day to day "someone just broke in" safety. They are for gang wars, period.GodotGrow a vagina 22:21, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I have guns. I hunt. I eat it. You don't get a fully automatic weapon, or a clip >20. Ty^{Bother me} 22:24, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

You eat guns?! Are you, in fact, Chuck Norris? ΨΣΔξΣΓΩΙÐ^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 22:36, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Ha, no, I eat deer, squirrels, ducks, geese, and rabbits. Ty^{Bother me} 23:22, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

What would fathers clean on porches to scare the the boy next door into bringing his daughter back by nine, if not a good ol' shotgun? CoyoteSans (talk) 00:34, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Humph. Cannibals. Secret Squirrel (talk) 03:16, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Ooh, I've never had squirrel. We eat rabbit, duck, goose and venison regularly but not squirrel. What's it like? Ajkgordon (talk) 09:02, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Strictly speaking Ty is not a cannibal, only SS could be a cannibal if we're talking bout eating the litte varmints. I can' imagine there being a lot of meat on a squirrel. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 09:21, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Squirel isn't that good and really isn't worth it. Dove is good but again, not much meat. Ty^{Bother me} 18:39, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I once ot mugged by a group of surrels and then chased round a park by them. True story. AMassiveGay (talk) 11:59, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I used the wrong word. I think "understandably naive batshittery" would be more accurate. I recognize that alchemy was still a science then, and the theory of evolution was centuries in the future. Don't put words in my mouth. I'm giving Paul the benefit of the doubt that he's simply naive, not creating an intentional strawman, much like Newton was naive to the future discoveries of evolutionary biology and the inaccuracy of alchemy. If Paul were to learn more on the relevant things, then he would realize the error of his previous claims.

Secondly, I did state guns need to be regulated to some extent. "I don't think guns should just be handed out to everybody: background checks, licenses, etc. are necessary to at least try to avoid the malicious getting guns, but without making the benevolent defenseless. Don't confuse my views on gun control with those of some people on CP." Also, with the whole "gun control through history can both be used for or against present gun control", here is an analogy. There is a man, who has a habit of killing innocent people for sport: almost like hunting humans, however not eating what you shoot. The man also donates ridiculous sums of money to charity. The virtues do not compensate for the vices. Analogy, although initially for criticizing use of the Bible as a morality guide, taken from YouTuber QualiaSoup. Even if Paul was selectively reporting, the fact that these incidents led to a death toll in the millions is akin to the vices in the analogy.

I feel you are creating a straw-man with your final paragraph. I explicitly stated some limitations are necessary, and I explicitly stated not to confuse my views on gun control with those of some Conservapedians who believe guns should have no limits. Your latter half of your text is an indication of either deceit or tl;dr. The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 15:52, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

How can you claim that the author is not creating a strawman when he suggests that all gun control advocates are potential genocide advocates? Wèàšèìòìď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 17:18, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

He is creating strawmen in some cases. Allow me to pull out an analogy. Imagine the intellectual world as being a vast apple orchard owned by the sum of humanity throughout the past and present. People design and refine apple trees (create thoughts) and plant them (plant and publicize them). Some of their fruits taste good to the theoretical perfect PEARList, (they are logically sound, valid, supported by evidence when applicable, etc.), while others taste bad (are straw-men, have logical fallacies, are not supported by evidence, etc.). The tree which Paul's plants bore both some fruits which taste well to me, and some which taste poor. Examples of the latter include the strawman created with the claim all those who support "absolute" gun control (i.e., all guns are owned by military and police) want the genocide of some group, and the false claim of Hitler and gun control. Just as peoples' tastes change, my opinions on the article change as you point out some parts are flawed. Our bullshit detectors evolve with time. Mine is evolving, and yours is, and everyone who is willing has theirs evolve. I don't accept it all uncritically: I recognized, for instance, from the start that we can't blame the teaching of evolution or proper sex ed for Columbine. I recognize now that the argument with Hitler and gun control is flawed, as well. Make sense? The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 19:23, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't find your analogies very explanatory or useful, & I don't see anything in that article that isn't flawed. The first half is just a list of despotic regimes which (supposedly) imposed gun control before exterminating millions of people, culminating in the punchline as quoted above that all gun control advocates promote genocide. Clearly these regimes had completely different reasons for control from those who promote gun control in democratic nations such as the USA & European countries. The article also does not appear to make the distinction between "absolute" & partial gun control you are suggesting it does. The second half is just generic right-wing dross riding on the back of the Columbine incident to promote reactionary "family values" & criticise contraception, working mothers, video games, etc. If you don't want people to confuse your views with those of some people on CP, you should be a bit more selective & critical in your reading. Having looked around that site a bit, it appears to lie somewhat to the right of Conservapedia, or at least pretty close to it in outlook. Weaseloid^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 19:49, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry: I was kind of led into it by their showing of The Dragon in my Garage, kind of like milk before meat. I kind of saw the website as being libertarian, but now I'm just getting confused by the whole false dichotomy of the American political spectrum. I knew they were flawed in the whole thing on global warming, but now I see they're flawed on more than that and should use the website for little more than a reference to the works of George Orwell (I pull it up a lot when discussing Animal Farm due to their explanation of the analogy). I'm terribly sorry, but I was kind of led into it by the inclusion of blue links, which, as xkcd points out, people are led to believe anything with what looks like a citation. I didn't ever bother to click on the links, but just roll over, see one is ".org", and assume it's legit. Oops on my part: I take full fault on that one and not investigating enough to find the links have disappeared. I realize now that it is pretty flawed, the whole argument. Heh heh... right now I feel like a deconverted fundie not sure what to believe. Now I'm not sure what I think about gun control. The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 20:29, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I think, crooks and nutters will have guns whether they are legal or not. And they'll use those guns to do bad things. But, the difference gun control can make, is whether the average person has guns. And think of domestic violence, "crimes of passion", suicides, accidents, etc. I think all these things are more likely to involve guns if guns are in the house. So, if a policy makes guns in the house less likely, it will reduce these (or at least the gun-involved ones). Now, you might say, knives can do the same. No denying that knives kill people; but I think, on the whole, gun violence is more likely to be fatal than knife violence. Sarah Parker (talk) 12:06, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Criminal types may have guns but the 'nutters' you speak of generally do their killing legally obtained and licensed firearms. I am refering to likes of hungerford, dunblane and the more recent one in Cumbria. AMassiveGay (talk) 18:40, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, knives tend to be considerably less lethal. ^moral 19:20, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

On the Godwinning, compare to Weimar Germany. On Australia, check the homicide rate, and in Canada, it's really just a big deal about the cost. It's simply an American issue overhyped by the ignorant (and it doesn't help that the most armed country in the developed world has the highest crime rate). If you really want to prevent dictatorship, it's the civil liberties that's first and foremost important. Osaka Sun (talk) 20:03, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

"Christianity is not known as a violent religon where Islam is "

Always feels weird when I have to argue against my religion. --il'Dictator Mikal (talk) 00:06, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

How many sides does a religon have? -- Seth Peck (talk) 00:09, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

That is always a lovely statement I hear sometimes. Yup. Christianity is all about that peace and love. No murdering at all nope. What abortion doctors? I'm believing that the only real reason that Christianity doesn't have so much violence done in its name right now is because lots of people have relatively good lives. They don't get suckered into those 'death is the only way' things because their lives aren't absolute shit, of course there are lots of other factors in it too. Hollow (talk) 00:26, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Lolwut? Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 00:29, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Interestingly, the guy who said it had just finished a long rant about how we have to kill all the muslims because the Quran orders all non muslims to be converted or killed. Apparently he never read any of the old testament where living on a piece of nice land was grounds for genocide (Actually, he hasn't, i had to TELL him where to find it)--il'Dictator Mikal (talk) 00:33, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Christianity has the luxury of being associated with power, money, and so-called "human rights/humanism/morality" discussions that happened independent of Xianity in teh 1700's through now. Xianity likes to hang its hat on the works done by men and women who may have been xian, but were first and foremost, philosophiers. Islam is still associated with despots, and oppression, and poverty. think xianity in teh 1200's. it will get its day in the sun, too. but as much as it feels wierd to say it, in a side by side, xianity is (right now) far more peaceful. GodotGrow a vagina 01:31, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Islam had its day in the sun. This trope that "Islam is stuck in the Middle Ages" is an invention of ignorance. The political Islamist movement as we know it today is a modern phenomenon springing up in the wake of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the decolonization of the Middle East. And let's not forget who played a key role in the rise of some of the worst Middle Eastern klepto-theocracies. Lumping all Muslims under one umbrella, from Wahhabi to Sufi, makes about as much sense as calling a Unitarian the same as a member of Christian Identity. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 02:29, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

this picture comes to mind, took a while to figure which podcast it was--il'Dictator Mikal (talk) 02:41, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Any and all religion can lead to violence in the right circumstances. The real difference between Christianity and Islam, is not the religions themselves, but the political and economic situations the majority of their followers have ended up in today. If the tables had been turned, if Islamic countries had risen to the heights of global power that Europe and its colonies did, then people today might have been attacking Christianity as the violent one. But one thing they both have in common, they are both a load of patriarchal misogynist homophobic bullshit. Sarah Parker (talk) 01:36, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

"Patriarchal misogynist homophobic bullshit." My dear Miss Parker...I believe I'm in love. GayGator (talk) 06:26, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Pleased to make the acquaintance, GayGator. Sarah Parker (talk) 06:59, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Christianity and Islam have very different doctrines when it comes to politics. Islam, unlike Christianity, provides an entire body of law and ideas for political organization (fiqh). As to imperialism, the Islamic caliphates did have their day-in-the-sun, as far as global power is concerned, and they were very imperial right from the get-go. Christianity had to be twisted a great deal before it could be made to justify any imperial escapades at all. ListenerX^TalkerX 07:04, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

From a European Free marketeer to the Republican party

Westerwelle to the Republican Party: Fuck you. We're not socialists because we provide people with health care, benefits and pensions. Stop lying!

If even those who are the closest to what you have as an allie in a country tell you to stop lying about it, you should really start to think were the fuck you have gone the last decades. Oh yeah, btw, Westerwelles party seems to be to laissez-fair for Germans. Imagine what the other parties would tell Republicans… --★uːʤɱ pervert 12:25, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Bizarre pro-BNP website

Anyone seen this... thing before? I mean, seriously, what is this? Whoever's running it must be the BNP's answer to David Mabus. Balaam (talk) 16:00, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

“”Yes that cesspit mixture of contrived and lying bullshit supported by all three parties 'the LIBLABCON' pact and edited by the unwashed, unemployed, layabout studying Marxism and Jobseekers allowance benefits Ketlan Ossowski has bit the dust ! Lancaster Unity or rather Ketlans dirty sweat stained, half eaten food on the floor,shit-stained pants under the bed, fag ends in cups bedroom has finally disappeared from the Internet airwaves. Why ? Because as Katlan puts it ' I can't be arsed anymore...........and whats the point anyway?' 'The BNP are so clever these days we dont know who they are and whatever we do they just carry ...

You know, as these tend to be the people who most heartily complain about people not speaking English, they can't quite grasp the language themselves. ^theist 17:43, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Seriously, can somebody translate this for me into half-way understandable English? --★uːʤɱ constructivist 18:02, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

No, it's like a British Nationalist version of Time Cube. Wěǎšěǐǒǐď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 18:42, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Though face-to-face they tend to speak like this ^theist 18:45, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I've done my best to translate it:

“”Yes, that factually innaccurate blog Lancaster Unity, supported by the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties and run by an unemployed Marxist named Ketlan Ossowski, has closed. Lancaster Unity - which, in some ways, could be said to resemble its owner's dirty bedroom - is no longer being updated. Why? Because Ossowski can't be bothered to run it anymore.

Balaam (talk) 19:02, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Article-a-Week Club

Seem like it's been inactive for half a year, contrary to its intended purpose. I'm reviving it. See my new article on axioms. The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 20:13, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

RW is littered with stuff that went on for a while and fizzled out. The article-a-week club was intended to focus minds on the task at hand instead of arguing about some crap or other. Still if you want to dig up old stuff, how about this? Or perhaps this? Rennie McGreet (talk) 21:13, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Okay, so can we come up with some new project to improve the wiki somehow? The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 21:50, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Article-a-week is still on going if anyone would like to put it back up. ^pathetic 21:55, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Put the Weeping Lion back up! Rennie McGreet (talk) 22:16, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Bill Maher supports SOPA?

YouTube. Osaka Sun (talk) 21:49, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

A link would be nice. Rennie McGreet (talk) 22:17, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Come on, even I'm not lazy enough to not provide a link. F_arter^{talk to me :D|see my shit} 22:19, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

So did Al Franken. They're in the content biz, so I don't really find it surprising. P-Foster Talk "Watched Mad Men thinking it was supposed to be a sit-com. Found it disappointing." 22:20, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

It's right on the home page, jeez. Osaka Sun (talk) 22:28, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Videos promoted on the homepage depend on who you are and what your viewing history is. I can't see anything to do with Maher logged in or logged out. ^postate 22:40, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Saying he supports it is stretching it a bit. He definitely doesn't like piracy, but he admitted he hadn't read the bill or considered its implications. He also didn't contradict his guests when they argued against it. Damo^Hi 22:58, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Not on the homepage where I am. Fuck Americentrism, jeez. ΨΣΔξΣΓΩΙÐ^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 01:09, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I support SOPA. Ron Paul opposes it. Does that mean Ron Paul is a liberal and I'm not? Mr. Anon (talk) 01:29, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Wait, what? Osaka Sun (talk) 02:00, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Newt Gingrich wins it.

They've called it for Newt in South Carolina. Starting to get the feeling that this might go down to the wire. P-Foster Talk "Watched Mad Men thinking it was supposed to be a sit-com. Found it disappointing." 00:53, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Damn, I was hoping Herman Cain would do well... Sam ^Tally-ho! 01:01, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Another designated not-Romney of the week wins a primary. Film at 11. --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 01:16, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Seeing as the "designated not-Romneys of the week" are now 2 for 3, this might matter a bit. P-Foster Talk "Watched Mad Men thinking it was supposed to be a sit-com. Found it disappointing." 01:47, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Romney is still heavily favored in most subsequent contests. For Gingrich to win, he's going to have to use this victory to label himself the serious alternative. A lot depends on Santorum, as well. He's splitting the Not Romney vote at the moment, but seems unlikely to quit. We'll see if he has any money to keep going.--^talk 05:05, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Groundhog Day: Starring Mohammed

The atheist society at London School of Economics has got in trouble with the student union for putting pictures of Mohammed on its Facebook page. Hmm, are we seeing "everybody draw Mohammed day" reconfigured as some kind of student movement? Balaam (talk) 21:54, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Really, how the hell does anyone know what Mohammed, or Jesus, or Mary looked like? Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 22:02, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Probably a high school yearbook lying around somewhere. Balaam (talk) 22:07, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Clearly Jesus was white. It was decided at the Council of Nicea. -- Seth Peck (talk) 22:09, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Muhammed is easily recognised on account of having a bomb on his head. Same with Jesus & the old crown o' thorns. ΨΣΔξΣΓΩΙÐ^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 22:16, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

I may or may not have also been uploading Jesus and Mo to my local atheist club too. But we've had good lively discussions about whether depicting Mohammad counts as intentional provocation, so "fair use". ^theist 15:05, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I have no problems with its use for intentional provocation. X Stickman (talk) 16:08, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

If you upload one of those authntic Islamic depictions, then you can always argue you're presenting it for educational purposes. Balaam (talk) 17:24, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh the irony... ^bomination 17:30, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

This prompted me to look at WP:Muhammad...the "belligerent minority will not stop taking this to court" vibe kinda reminded me of TK and Rob on the Conservapedia article. 99.50.96.218 (talk) 18:51, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

SVG help

Not what I intended. Fixed

I'm trying to convert File:Glaciations over Earths existence.jpg into the svg format. I made an image using inkscape (where it looks fine), and uploaded it here. As you can see, it's not what I thought it was going to look like. Oddly, exporting the image as a bitmap works fine. What am I doing wrong? Peter ^{Monomorium antarcticum} 02:26, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Inkscape is trying to pretend the text flow family of tags are valid SVG 1.1. They're not. I have no idea whose braindead idea it was to make inkscape output broken SVG, but that's not going to work in any standards compliant renderer. Granted SVG doesn't actually have a good way of dealing with text and font metrics, but you can't pretend entire schemes in to existence. The only thing I can think of doing, short of buying Adobe Illustrator, is going through and ripping out all the flowRoot declarations and replacing them with text tags. Then of course you'll discover how crap every SVG renderer renders text. That's probably why Adobe just threw their hands up and started rendering text as exceptionally complicated paths. --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 03:05, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I managed to fix it... eventually. Turns out there is a button that says "convert to text" that does it, though there were a few other things aswell. What's the point in doing it by default in a way that can only be viewed in your program? Very strange... Peter ^{Monomorium antarcticum} 03:10, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Stubbornness by programmers is probably responsible for more problems than most people realise. For example, the reason why various things don't work in XML is because one very stubborn person got themselves onto the XML 1.0 committee and kept arguing for their nonsensical rule forbidding control characters in text until the other members gave up in frustration and let them have it. Then that same person ensured key XML parsers never implement XML 1.1, so the inevitable fix is useless.

In the case of Inkscape, somebody really, really liked textFlow and the fact that it didn't make it out of committee drafts into the final standard wasn't going to stop them using it years later. People like this are poisonous, but most projects don't have a sensible way to get rid of them. Those of you with serious Wikipedia experience have probably seem their ilk in that sphere too. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 10:36, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

In this case, I can really sympathise with the programmers. SVG is fundamentally broken when it comes to text layout. There's just no way to say "here's a path and a string of text. Make sure this text never overflows the path in any renderer" or "here's a bounding box and a paragraph of text. Lay the text out in such a manner that it fits the bounding box." People who are creating images need reasonable guarantees about where their text is going to end up. It's a common problem with things that come out of the W3C, they never seem to have a clue when it comes to solving real world problems. --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 14:56, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

There's info about what doesn't render properly at Wikipedia. It's sorta frustrating. sterile^talk 16:29, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm one of Inkscape developers. The reason for flowed text being non-SVG compliant is because it was supposed to match a draft SVG 1.2 specification. Unfortunately the specification changed, but there were already lots of people who depended on the flowed text features for things like doing scientific posters where PDF output is the only thing that matters. Removing that feature altogether was not an option, especially since the code for regular non-flowed text was changed to internally use the code for flowed text layout. Fixing this problem involves far reaching changes to how flowed text is represented in the XML document, and this is non-trivial because there is no document versioning scheme in place. Either people won't be able to open their existing files, or their new files will open incorrectly in old versions of Inkscape. I think we will eventually go for the latter solution, but it will take time - several of our core developers left for greener pastures and there is a constant shortage of manpower. --Tweenk (talk) 21:44, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Rape by government

Absolutely disgusting Sarah Parker (talk) 08:45, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I wouldn't call it "rape" per say, but it's terrible and cruel nonetheless. The Symphony of Punk ^{Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!} 08:51, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Would it be any better if psychopaths had children off-duty? --145.94.77.43 (talk) 09:28, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Without informed consent, sex is rape. I don't think informed consent requires you to be totally honest with your partner, but there are some facts about who you are which are so fundamental that if you mislead about them informed consent cannot exist. An example I heard of once, was a woman married to a man who had an identical twin brother. His brother pretended to be him, and on that basis she slept with him, deceived by him into believing him to be her husband his brother. This was found to be rape - a decision I believe is correct. But, if this is rape, then so is having sex with someone having assumed a false identity as an undercover police officer. Sarah Parker (talk) 11:58, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think so. The false identity is just that, the officer did not assume someone else's identity (e.g. pretending to be the husband of the woman) as happened in the twin case. Your argument seems to mean that if women sleep with my friend "Jake" they're being raped, because Jake isn't his real name. But I don't think either Jake or his current girlfriend would agree with you about this, although Jake would not be happy if I told her his real name, she wouldn't suddenly start thinking their sex was non-consensual.

Legally the courts don't buy this line of argument either, although I've never seen it brought up in a rape case it comes up in deception a lot. e.g. sometimes people have tried to argue to a court that if a person A deceived someone into believing that they were instead non-existent person B, they are guilty of a bunch of crimes committed by doing things person B was authorised to do but (by their theory) person A was not. Courts throw these claim out routinely, pointing out that it was not person B who was authorised (to e.g. borrow a truck, live in a house, sell a car) but person A, the person who bodily presented themselves. The lie about being person B may be fraud, which is a crime, but the other crimes were never committed. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 12:36, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

If you don't agree that sex by fraud is rape, would you agree at least that it is fraud? Sarah Parker (talk) 12:42, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

People find out that their sexual partners aren't all they say they are all the time. That it's undercover police officers breaking their moral standards doesn't change this into a particularly novel category. Certainly, it would be dangerous to start classifying this as rape, simply because it's questionable how can you retroactively withdraw consent. You can claim new information has come to light, but that simply updates the level of "informed" you have in order to reassess whether you still give "consent". This is simply how relationships work. If you were to classify this as rape, then you would have to (reductio ad absurdum, here) arrest and charge any divorced couple as rapists because, being now split up, they don't give consent to sex any more. You simply cannot alter the past, and if you gave consent based on information you had at the time then you simply gave consent at the time. You cannot retroactively withdraw it. It's like the old joke "When did you realise you were raped?" - "Yesterday afternoon when the cheque bounced".

But that isn't the only issue with post hoc rape. We use this word and generate a category of crimes that has certain connotations developed around it. We associate a lack of consent at the time, and violence, coercion, and so on. If you use the label, you're adding such connotations. The worst here is that these people were being very unprofessional in what they were doing - all of the connotations of "rape" simply aren't there in reality, but would be if you chose to label it as such for arbitrary post hoc reasons. ^{d hominem} 15:01, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Maybe. I think you'd want a lot more specific details to understand whether this was fraud. I also don't know what (if anything) case law says about treating sex, or consent to sex, as something gained through deceit. Not every possible thing you might achieve by lying is a "gain". Hoaxes, for example, are not fraud, tricking someone into making a fool of themselves may mean you're a jerk, but it doesn't usually make you a criminal. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 03:51, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

So we've muddied the "rape" idea enough. What about the "by government" bit? Unless you can prove that somewhere in the chain of command, someone told these cops that part of the mission was to have sex with their investigatory targets, those cops were acting of their own accord. This doesn't seem like a Rwanda-esque situation, where the state actually organized the deliberate rape of a targeted group. So, no. P-Foster Talk "a cheetos-eating, Mountain-Dew drinking vlogger living in someone's basement." 15:06, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

On the one hand, they are "officers of the law" so you should hold them to a higher standard due to their official position... on the other hand, their chiefs have said that they were in the wrong. Now, I'm as cynical about the police as the next person, but I just can't see a police chief saying "f**k this girl, get her pregnant, it's your job" happening here. Not only would it be utterly pointless, but it would, rightly so, be one of the worst stories that could possibly leak out. ^postate 15:17, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Even if there were no orders it's a statistic the police must have been aware of. It should be asked if the harm was properly weighed against the gains. --145.94.77.43 (talk) 16:16, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to toss out the "offended" line. grins. "i'm offende" (not really, but) that you would compare real rape to something some officers did with women who were fully consensual to the act. I don't even think it's "disgusting" or "wrong" or anything. Officers doing a long term under cover job found sexual gratification with women who hopefully equally enjoyed it. that they were undercover doesn't make it 'disgusting".GodotGrow a vagina 21:04, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

By the way, when did it become morally wrong to have sex or even build relationships that include lies - big or little. Isn't that rather an issue regarding what the lie is, and who the participants are? I have many friends who have had sex either as a married person or with a married person and it was never disclosed. I've had friends who have told their partners they were more successful than they were. Lying is not amoral, in and of itself. --GodotGrow a vagina 21:09, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Don't you find it at least a little bit morally questionable for a married person to have sex with someone who they're not married to while lying to both parties? Wëäŝëïöïď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 00:57, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Only if the implication is that this is emphatically not allowed, making it deceitful. ^theist 16:08, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I really don't. If you are willing to have sex, I don't think the fact that they are married or not is going to change anything. If you are getting in to a long term love affiar, and after 2 years find out there was a wife and kids all along, that really sucks, and it hurts, and the guy is a jerk. But I've no reason to say it's "morally wrong". Raping a kid is morally wrong. There are no circumstances that would ever justify it. (Well, there are, but by the time you are facing that kind of horror, any sense of morals is the last thing on your mind). Killing someone who's done nothing to you, morally wrong, virtually 100% of the time. But lying? About who you are? or why you are in this relationship? There's just too many aspects that are unknown to me to every say it's morally wrong. I would say it's unethical... stupid... mean... GodotGrow a vagina 17:07, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

What's the difference between immoral & unethical in this context? Щєазєюіδ^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 17:31, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Have you ever met a neo-Nazi before?

One of my neighbors has recently begun shouting "sieg heil!" every night, and it is becoming disturbing. While he may just be having rough sex with a girl, it could also mean he is a white supremacist neo-Nazi. So, do you have any experience with neo-Nazis? I might need to get used to having one live next door. Christianity is a disease (talk) 12:02, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

The only true defense against Nazis (neo- or otherwise) is camouflage. If the French had built the Maginot Line to blend in a bit more, with a little bit more feng shui, the Nazis would never have invaded France, and the world would be a happier place. The best thing you can do, is blend in, be inconspicuous. So shave your head, gets lots of tattoos - even if they just say "I love Mum" make sure they're in a suitable Gothic font and practice goose-stepping whilst mowing the lawn. --PsyGremlinFale! 13:49, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes I have, an entire nation states region of them --il'Dictator Mikal (talk) 14:42, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Neighbours with a Nazi? Sounds like a good idea for a sitcom.

Thank you for that link Mikalos, I must now burn my laptop which is contaminated with that dirty website. Hope you don't mind but I'm slapping NSFW next to the link. Garçon^coffee! 15:37, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

...?--il'Dictator Mikal (talk) 15:56, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

It's a Nazi website isn't it? Or is it parody? Poe's Law? Garçon^coffee! 16:09, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Looks like a game to me, if you go to the homepage. "NationStates is a nation simulation game. Create a nation according to your political ideals and care for its people. Or deliberately oppress them. It's up to you." X Stickman (talk) 16:16, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, right. My apologies Mik, I should learn to read more in the future. Garçon^coffee! 16:27, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Tis ok, let me tell you though; running a oppressive dictatorship in that games impossible if you also want to join the World Assembly (the games version of the UN, as a few years back the real UN told the guy running the site to stop using they're name and logo in a C&D letter) --il'Dictator Mikal (talk) 16:34, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I used to play Nation States a while back, I figure that anyone who sticks at it for more than a month is probably quite "special".

^narchist 17:52, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I mostly use it to chat with people. I got bored of all the politics stuff around year 2 =3 (i joined way back in 2007/8

Do what a friend of mine does: raise your left hand in the air and say "Mein Hund springt dieser hoch!" -- Seth Peck (talk) 17:20, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Instead of "dieser" it should be "so", but otherwise: --★uːʤɱ libertarian 18:07, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

No, what you do, is run towards him, yelling: "Wenn ist das Nunstrück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! ... Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!" --PsyGremlinTala! 21:19, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Good job, now all the German-speaking people on this site are going to die. Are you pleased with yourself?! Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 21:25, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I have had a few run-ins with local Neo-Nazi skinheads before. Usually, I've found they creep out of one of two suburbs here (Eden Prarie and Lakeville) and into Minneapolis and St. Paul just to stir up trouble. I had a run in a few years ago when a house show I was at got disrupted by a group of Aryan Nation morons who thought it's be cool to fuck with the local punk scene. Of course, since they have no brains, only 12 or so showed up and tried to fuck with a crowd of about 100 punks, skins, and crusties who wanted none of their crap and they were forced to leave in a showdown with everyone else (and as a side note, it was in a majority "black" neighborhood, so they weren't welcome with the neighbors, either). There was some physical confrontations and fights, but the crowd "mutually" decided that no cops were needed given the vast outnumbering of them and the fact nobody got seriously hurt before they were forced to flee. The Symphony of Punk ^{Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!} 11:55, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Something I think we need.

An article titled Middle America, or "Real" America or Flyover country; especially with primary season/electioneering season upon us, the amount of times that this sort of construction of who counts as a real American might be worth poking at. What title would you go with? P-Foster Talk "Watched Mad Men thinking it was supposed to be a sit-com. Found it disappointing." 18:56, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

"Middle America" is what I've heard most frequently, but redirects for the rest. ^bomination 19:01, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't this kind of fall in line with the same sort of "Jesusland" reductionism? Also, I hate the term "real American" simply because it implies the existence of "fake Americans" or, even worse, "UnAmericans". While I recognize that there are some politicians who clearly don't have the best interests of ALL Americans at heart, they're usually the ones who believe there are fake Americans. I think an article that might examine the spectrum of opinions on "Real America" might be more interesting (You get differing opinions for what a "real American" is, from Bill O'Reilly to Edward Abbey to Al Sharpton, or from people in Boston vs. Chicago vs. Houston vs. Seattle, and none of them are completely wrong), although it does smack of the kind of Americentrism that CP loves to promote and RW generally likes to avoid. It does put together an interesting case against or tangential to the concept of Othering, though.-- Seth Peck (talk) 19:08, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Seth, that's exactly what I had in mind when I said "this sort of construction of who counts as a real American." P-Foster Talk "Watched Mad Men thinking it was supposed to be a sit-com. Found it disappointing." 19:13, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

The problem with Red State/Blue State (One State/Two State?) is that it masks the actual division of urban vs. rural that is at the heart of American politics. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 20:16, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Amen GodotGrow a vagina 20:59, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Kinda like the Heartland? The people who you're not allowed to ever speak poorly of? Sam ^Tally-ho! 21:04, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I should add, if there's any question that large sections of Wingnuttia reside in the "blue" states, You're mad too (Carl)! Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 21:08, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Is there potential for an article on Realness among national groups? (IRIS ALERT) I recall the southern Italians thinking of themselves as the real Italians, unlike those workaholic cold fish up north, and the Bedouins considering themselves the real Arabs. Rennie McGreet (talk) 21:17, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

It would be interesting to do a map overlay of "rural" "urban" vs voting patterns in each state. I know in colorado you have the "Front Range" which is light to very very dark blue, the "western slope" which is mostly red, and spots of purple overlays. Especially when the issues are more social than economic. REligion, gay rights, abortion etc. GodotGrow a vagina 21:19, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

[1][2] Now can somebody overlay that stuff? --★uːʤɱ constructivist 21:28, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

The one I always hear is "Main Street". Apparently that's where to find the real USA. Ace^Moderator 21:39, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Nah, I think "Main Street" is the proletariat are the people that really work, instead of the bourgeoisie the people that "only" shovel money around (Wall Street). --★uːʤɱ secularist 01:23, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

So where is Pigeon Street? Wěǎšěǐǒǐď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 01:39, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

2 streets over from Sesame Street AMassiveGay (talk) 12:39, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Valentine's Day, Jack Chick style

What better way to say "I love you" this Valentine's Day than with a preachy comic book about death, judgement & hell? Available in 'white bread' & 'ethnic' editions. Wéáśéĺóíď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 19:19, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Eating brown whole-wheat means more fiber, less artery plaque, and in Chick tract universe, better illustrations. Still the same amount of bullshit, though.The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 19:39, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Ghuh? Ŵêâŝêîôîď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 19:56, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

...Well...that's a really lame Valentine's Day gift. D< I'd never use it, except maybe to slap people with it, when I'm trying to reach something, or when I need something to feed the fire. Other than that...Nope. I'm not much of a Valentine's person, but hell, I'd accept chocolate and a silly card rather than that.--Dumpling (talk) 05:42, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Do any of Jack Chick's end without everyone going to hell? (I do remember one with a paedaphile who didn't)AMassiveGay (talk) 12:53, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Molybdenum! :D The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 17:14, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

oh for the love of goat

OK Bans consumption of fetuses Can someone just nuke the US so the world will be free of this? GodotGrow a vagina 21:22, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

OP's link is borked. This isn't as ragingly idiotic as it sounds -- it's a work-around to crack down on stem cell research. That said, it's still ragingly idiotic. And the legal implications might cause problems with the judiciary like their previous Sharia law amendment. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 21:33, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

how does this stop stem cell research? i'm confused. you don't eat stem cells... GodotGrow a vagina 21:38, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Emphasis mine: "No person or entity shall manufacture or knowingly sell food or any other product intended for human consumption which contains aborted human fetuses in the ingredients or which used aborted human fetuses in the research or development of any of the ingredients." Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 21:42, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

What food product uses aborted fetuses? Osaka Sun (talk) 21:49, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Who said anything about food? Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 21:54, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

10 second question, if anyone knows. Are stem cells that are taken from aborted fetuses any different from stem cells taken from the umbilicalchord? And, if I miscarry, can I donate my child to science, so those cells can start new lines? GodotGrow a vagina 22:36, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

The foetal stem cells discussed here can make anything needed for a whole human. Cord blood just contains cells that can make blood. They can make every part of blood, which is useful, but they can't make pancreas, stomach, brain etc. Beyond that cells which exactly match your own hold out the long term promise of transplants which aren't rejected by the immune system as foreign, but in practice so far nearly always your own cells are useless for various reasons (e.g. they have the same genetic fault you want to fix). As to donating your miscarriage, in most cases it will be of too poor quality, I found a few articles in pubmed on this topic, none seemed very enthusiastic about the quality of the material from a miscarriage compared to "traditional" sources. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 12:42, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Captain Nate Pick away!

Because the GOP believes in small, unobtrusive government except when they can use it to enforce their arbitrary morality.

All morality is arbitrary, though, from an 'objective' standpoint. F_lucked^{talk to me :D|see my shit} 22:06, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Coming from my immense science knowledge (mostly gleaned from sci-fi), isn't there that vat grown meat idea? Like you can just grow a vat of edible meat rather than having to grow a whole cow then butcher it? I guess that would use stem cells at some point in the research process, which would trigger that "used in the R&D" part above. X Stickman (talk) 00:55, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

From what I've heard, they're actually able to grow artificial meat now, but it's still a long way off from being a viable contender to real meat. (As a vegetarian) I'm real excited about it, at least. F_ucker^{talk to me :D|see my shit} 01:11, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Texture is a big deal. If you grow muscle in a vat, without anything for it to do, you don't get the texture you get from muscle that was running around in a field mooing (or, clucking, or whatever). Even just sitting around scratching yourself for months indoors in a cage or pen gives you a lot more exercise than lying motionless in a nutrient filled vat. Expensive but not very good quality meat is a hard sell. Personally I want to eat vat-grown me clone meat. It's probably not very wise from a health point of view, but I just want to try it anyway.

Strictly I suspect you don't need stem cells, at least not foetal stem cells, to do vat grown meat. You just need the cell line that builds the cells you want in your meat, which are mostly muscle. Cloning a cell line from a specific organ of an adult is really old technology, although most of the famous old cell lines are cancer because ordinary cells are intended to die eventually, whereas cancer tries not to, that's (partly) why it's cancer. The difficult bit is getting the cells to do anything beyond making blobs on a growth medium. In an animal's body there are loads of cues provided which basically say stuff like "Muscle cells, come here and connect in this direction". My understanding is that finding ways to fake those cues or do without them is the goal of a lot of organ cloning R&D. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 03:35, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

We have an article about in vitro meat.--^talk 05:07, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

this will impact Pepsi, which as everyone knows uses aborted fetuses for flavoring. www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2797695/posts&ei=a2EcT-DXF-qtsALenLnCCwusg=AFQjCNE8wPUpFADggFuo3nQK0DlklVmUDg Hamster (talk) 19:22, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Here be libertarian facepalm

I've had enough trying to reason with this crank. I need sleep. Osaka Sun (talk) 04:56, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah, this argument ("leftism is the root of all evil") is so familiar to me. It appears all the time on the site wykop.pl (a Polish equivalent of Digg or Reddit), especially among the supporters of Janusz Korwin-Mikke, a politician who represents the largely unpopular American-style right. It is very hard to argue with this kind of people, as you would first have to persuade them that their perception of the world and their definition of freedom is too simplistic to have any relevance in real life. --Tweenk (talk) 22:49, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

...Something to pass the time.

...More like 30 minutes, but still. I was bored enough to do this and this.... --Dumpling (talk) 06:03, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I love stuff like that, even though I already know the results before I take them. F_litzer^{talk to me :D|see my shit} 06:14, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

These things should really try to include some third-party candidates. (And so should the U.S. electoral system.) Blue (is useful) 06:53, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

10% in and Obama is already a no-brainer. ^moral 11:25, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

For the first one: Obama, Johnston, Roemer. The second: Obama, Paul, Huntsman. Ty^{Bother me} 18:45, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Obama, Johnson, Roemer. Also, is that a cat on Johnson's head or what? Rennie McGreet (talk) 18:55, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

A brand new Conservative Wiki AAAhhh!!!

It's at Conservative Wiki and they think they are, "The headquarters for everything conservative in United States Politics". They're sure Obama will lose, well really experienced political comentators aren't as sure as that.

At least their graphics look cool. Anybody feel like taking them on? Proxima Centauri (talk) 08:46, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, but I can't take anything hosted on Wikia (or any other wiki farm, for that matter) seriously. F_lucked^{talk to me :D|see my shit} 08:48, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I've always wanted to be a well really experienced dfomentator. Blue (is useful) 08:56, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd have to agree with Fallacy, I just can't take it seriously. But still...-siiiiiiigh---Dumpling (talk) 09:05, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

It has all the political analysis of a five-year-old. Really, it's just some right wingers wank fest. Jack Hughes (talk) 10:45, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

"Obama will loose in 2012 because of:" - right, just kids playing. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 11:13, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Hurrr! ^narchist 11:17, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

It looks like a place where Andy's homeschoolers might have fled to. Steven Kavanagh (talk) 12:50, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

For the moment they're active. Proxima Centauri (talk) 12:55, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

How long until Ken and Uncle Ed turn up to lend their expertise? --PsyGremlin話しなさい 13:00, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I earned my first 'Make a Difference Badge' by correcting the spelling of YouTube. So now I've got 20 Achievement Points and I can earn more badges. (talk) 13:03, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

It's still Wikia, which is like the Comic Sans of wiki sites. ^postate 13:07, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

--^talk 20:44, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

It's handy for video games with really low player bases, but not exactly my first choice for hard-hitting political analysis... 99.50.96.218 (talk) 13:13, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh god wikia, every time I wind up there it is more and more difficult to navigate what a cluster fuck of a wiki farm. Tmtoulouse (talk) 14:15, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Hey! Wikia is the site to go to if you ever need to know the name of the wizard sitting at the far end of the Gryffindor table in the first Hogwarts dining scene in Prisoner of Azkaban. Turpis 3:16 (talk) 15:51, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Also, for several weeks I had a tab open on Wikia looking at the page on The Binding of Isaac roguelike indie game to check what the various Major Arcana do (e.g. is Justice which makes a bomb, a key and a heart, and Judgement which spawns a beggar, or the other way around?). 82.69.171.94 (talk) 21:13, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

The word "divorce" does not appear in their Newt Gingrich article. P-Foster Talk "Watched Mad Men thinking it was supposed to be a sit-com. Found it disappointing." 15:48, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Andy should love their Rick Santorum article. Very concise. Turpis 3:16 (talk) 16:06, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I've added a link to their Newt Gingrich article because the Wikia search engine has been playing up recently. Proxima Centauri (talk) 17:43, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Interesting

Seems they might not need SOPA. Apparently after Megaupload's little debacle, Fileserve has now deleted a bunch of accounts and content for "violation of terms and conditions". --PsyGremlinPraat! 13:55, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

DMCA provides takedown notices. --145.94.77.43 (talk) 16:08, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

DMCA also provides safe harbours that ensure a company can't be completely shut down because of the activities of their users, something SOPA/PIPA and even this megaupload thing seem to ignore. X Stickman (talk) 16:28, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

The Megaupload claim is that the company was a conspiracy. That is, the members of the company intended it to be used for copyright infringement, went out of their way to permit and encourage such use, and used it in this way themselves. That's the difference between "A guy made a bomb threat against the President using an AT&T mobile phone" (safe harbour protects AT&T so long as they co-operate in investigating) and "The president of AT&T plotted to blow up the president using the cell network as a trigger" which is certainly not so protected.

Now, it might be that in court they have no evidence for any of this, or the evidence is laughable. And in that case there has been a great injustice and we should be banging on the doors in Washington, but what I'm hearing unofficially is that everybody in the business knew the Megaupload guys were dirty. Prosecuting them sends the message that it's not enough to pretend to obey the rules, which is as it should be even if you don't like the rules. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 21:27, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

FileSonic join the rout: "All sharing functionality on FileSonic is now disabled. Our service can only be used to upload and retrieve files that you have uploaded personally." --PsyGremlinHable! 04:15, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Cake

It is Sunday afternoon. It is time for tea and cake. Rennie McGreet (talk) 15:43, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Or in my case, cucumber sarmies, coffee and yoghurt. --PsyGremlinRunāt! 15:50, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Surf and turf burgers, here. Cake later. ^postate 16:02, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Whoever invented cucumbers should be shot. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 16:06, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Tea and lemon cake. Ty^{Bother me} 16:21, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Sunday afternoon? Football in pub with beer, beer, friend giving me his beer that he couldn't finish because he has to leave the pub and pick up his girlfriend, leave after the match, nice cup of tea at home, beer. SJ ^Debaser 16:30, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Writing, on my sixth espresso of the day. P-Foster Talk "Watched Mad Men thinking it was supposed to be a sit-com. Found it disappointing." 16:40, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

@foster -'writing' fun or school? It's morning here. I'm debating a quiche. But tea is definitely called for. GodotGrow a vagina 16:50, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Writing is never "fun" for me. Giant lit review. P-Foster Talk "Watched Mad Men thinking it was supposed to be a sit-com. Found it disappointing." 16:53, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, god. Switch from coffee to scotch. or a fucking big hammer. which ever is more effective. --GodotGrow a vagina 17:00, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Is the quiche a worthy opponent or is it just spewing PRATTs? Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 17:06, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Heh!--GodotGrow a vagina 17:10, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Sunday afternoon? Breakfast for me. Vulpius (talk) 17:41, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

CHRYSANTHEMUM CANDY, MOON CAKES, AND PINE CINNAMON TEAAAAAA! String candy and mochi~ NEW YEARS TOMORROW (for me), and I'm totally excited. But for today...Boredom.--Dumpling (talk) 18:09, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Crap. I really should get some email ready for the family. anyone know how to say "happy new years" in Vietnamese without sounding like a fool. ;-) GodotGrow a vagina 19:26, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

"chúc mừng năm mới" --Happy New Year in Vietnamese. Actually, since you were interesting in the Lunar New Year for Vietnamese, it's called Tết. Read the do's and don'ts if you're having people over. Especially if they're traditional.--Dumpling (talk) 01:55, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh, no. just e-mail. Trying to be the dutiful wife, you know. ;-) If only cause it's the only time of the year I contact some of the 50 or so "family" that live in the US or Canada. He handles those in france, and his mom handles any still in Vietnam. :-) I don't know if it's "asian" or just his family, but there are relatives all the hell over the place. GodotGrow a vagina 02:02, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Ooooh~ I see! Being a dutiful wife is pretty hard, I'm sure. Gotta please everyone in the family. Oh well. Enjoy your Lunar New Year! I'm getting string candy tomorrow and my red envelope! YEAH!--Dumpling (talk) 04:03, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Atheism 2.0

Anyone watched this talk from TED? Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 16:24, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

No. --93.69.5.186 (talk) 16:56, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I was wondering where the intermediate version was. ^narchist 18:17, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I like Alain de Botton and everything, but I think this post is mis-titled. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 20:45, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd rather be rational than intelligent

Keith Stanovich explains. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 17:08, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I'd rather be rational than intelligent... if I define intelligence as being sans rationality. ^{d hominem} 18:14, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

If you'll allow me a Berra-ism, smart people are some of the dumbest people I know. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 18:22, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Intelligence is complicated and poorly defined. I just prefer to call everyone idiots. F_lint^{talk to me :D|see my shit} 18:24, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Weird dream I had last night.

I was Kublai Khan, but I had antennae and a beard that covered my entire body which I kept a TV, cell phone, and other modern goods in. I was in an argument with Hammurabi about pottery. Then Linka (from Captain Planet) came into the room, which oddly enough, had pink wallpaper and could only be accessed by crawling through the cabinet of my indoor outhouse. Then Hacker (from Cyberchase) began juggling. And Hitler blew up some gunpowder. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 17:13, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Idea: continue-the-story/RPG/???

Just a little social idea to do for the lulz. A project page (or maybe two). On the first one, we have a list of stories. This works just like the saloon bar, but instead of using indentations to represent replies, they are represented with new paragraphs, like so:

Story introduction (signed by A) Continuation of story (signed by B) Continuation of story (signed by C)

The introduction should be a paragraph or two long. The continuations can be a little longer, but no more than a few average-sized paragraphs should be used. Everybody can only contribute to a single story once. A story will finish after 10(?) continuations, and the last person to post in that story will wrap it up. The story will then be re-formatted appropriately and moved into an archive, accessible from the project's main page. Aside from the rules on length, the only rules on what you can and can't write are simply nothing homophobic, racist, sexist, insults to users, etc. Other than that, anything goes.

My second idea is to have a sort of RPG. A user begins by creating a starting description of a scenario, others can join in, extend the story, and so on. It'll be pretty open-ended: goals can be set, but unlike the stories, it never comes to a close, and people can participate more than once. The only rules are no homophobia, racism, sexism, OOC insults, etc., and no playing God.

What do you think? The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 17:26, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Been done. Weaseloid^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 17:36, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Haha those were the days, wow! Good memory, W!--^talk 20:42, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Goldbugs, I need your advice.

Mrs Foster just inherited 7.5 ozs of gold in coin form. Keep it or sell it? P-Foster Talk "Watched Mad Men thinking it was supposed to be a sit-com. Found it disappointing." 17:26, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Who's Mrs. Foster? The old lady from that cancelled TV show on Cartoon Network? The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 17:30, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Gold has a fairly stable value whereas money doesn't. Sell it only when you need the money for something specific. Ŵêâŝêîôîď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 17:41, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Depends on when you need the cash. Gold is an emotional investment and could go down in the short-term. However, given the amount of debt and fear sloshing around international markets you may do quite well over a 5-year term. The only other consideration is that you are looking at something worth ~$12K so where are you going to keep it? Although you can stash it in the house under the floorboards most people who advise on these things say you need a safe-deposit box in case of a housefire or criminals threatening to kill you unless you tell. The other thing to consider is does the coin have numismatic value as well? If you fancy a punt you might like to swap it for silver as it is historically undervalued compared to gold at the moment. I speak as temporary investor rather than a long-term ideological goldbug. Of course I realise that many here rail against the yellow metal but Mrs K has made 400% tax-free over the last eight years, because foreseeing the current debt crisis I told her to stick a cash inheritance into a gold mutual fund when gold was $320/oz. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 17:50, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Simple: Just see what Peter Schiff says and do the opposite. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 17:58, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

The actual gold is in a safe at my in-laws. We are waiting to find out what kind of coins they are to see if they have any numismatic value. P-Foster Talk "Watched Mad Men thinking it was supposed to be a sit-com. Found it disappointing." 18:07, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Hang on to them for the time being, as the gold price is likely to rise again this year, unless there's something nice you want to buy. In that case, you might want to check any tax implications. If they are "special" coins, then definitely hang on to them. If, however, they're Krugerrands, then you have stolen the birthright of the South African people and you should send them to me immediately, so I can return them to the people and thus heal your soul. --PsyGremlinПоговорите! 05:26, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Random Question No. 1!

If you were a blood cell, what type would you be (platelets count for this purpose), and why? Personally, I would probably be a helper T cell. I'm an important part of a vital mechanism, while I myself am not in that much danger of dying. I live longer than most other cells, and I get to keep my nucleus. What about you? The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 17:28, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

The below reaction is because you have created a series of discussion topics in the Saloon Bar in a relatively short time, HK. This is seen as mildly annoying for several reasons: (a) it makes it appear that you are trying to control conversation (true or not), (b) it makes you appear needy and in want of attention, and (c) it's goddamn annoying. Since you have made much of your Asperger's, I'll just outright tell you that it is considered politic to only create a new topic of conversation every other day or so, rather than two or three times a day. That is a pace more suitable to RW, which is actually still a rather small community.--^talk 20:37, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Can you please just stop for a while? P-Foster Talk "Watched Mad Men thinking it was supposed to be a sit-com. Found it disappointing." 17:29, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

It seems we've attracted another CUR/Colbert Fan type. Who were the other earlier ones? Turpis 3:16 (talk) 17:42, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I think CUR was the first major pain of that type, before him there were trolls of various flavours but I don't recall people going "LOOK AT ME I AM HELPFUL PLEASE LIKE ME" before cheetahboy. Rennie McGreet (talk) 17:56, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

additional: Fox? or maybe not... Rennie McGreet (talk) 17:57, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Fox? No he was a drunken concern troll who sometimes could debate smart. Not an attention whore, really. Brxbrx struck me as heir to the CUR/Colby throne. P-Foster Talk "Watched Mad Men thinking it was supposed to be a sit-com. Found it disappointing." 17:59, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

There were one or two others who were our residential adolescents we sort of felt like we were babysitting. I'm drawing a blank though. Turpis 3:16 (talk) 18:04, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Adolescent is fine in itself (icewedge was 15 when RW started, RA not much older, and Mei was, of course, useful), In contrast to immaturity. I think Hkid's problem, though, is Asperger's as he said a few days ago, which makes it difficult for him to grasp the social dynamics of RW. Rennie McGreet (talk) 18:08, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

That's the thing, you can't tell our quality editors are adolescents. These ones basically scream out "I'm thirteen!" Turpis 3:16 (talk) 18:10, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Fuck, no one grasps the social dynamics of RW. ^{d hominem} 18:12, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I did once but it felt icky. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 18:20, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

you grasped them in the wrong place. I hope you washed your hands afterwards. Rennie McGreet (talk) 18:26, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Was it squishie? I don't like gasping squishy....GodotGrow a vagina 19:20, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

There are pills you can get to make it less squishy AMassiveGay (talk) 19:52, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Dude, before you destroy, you gotta create. Then people'll chill out a little more. You can't come in here just to delete articles--User:Brxbrx/sig 19:49, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

On the Jewish Times editor advocating the assassination of Obama

Where in the fuck did that come from? Osaka Sun (talk) 22:07, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

He didn't. He was discussing various possible strategies Israel could adopt, and suggested that they might take that tact. It's a subtle difference, but a big one. This is not to say that he wasn't stupid and irresponsible, but please don't say he was "advocating the assassination of Obama."--^talk 22:25, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia moving against Sopa/PIPA

Noticed a banner that actually interests me from WP: they are actually going to get involved in the Anti-SOPA fun. --il'Dictator Mikal (talk) 07:38, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

We have less than a day to prepare. Osaka Sun (talk) 07:41, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

We might have to use Citizendium! Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 07:43, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Quick, import all the articles from Wikipedia to here! Or at least the important ones -- like all the ones on various sex acts. F_lint^{talk to me :D|see my shit} 07:45, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

There are plenty of mirrors around, you know. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 07:50, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Quick now

All in favor of "censoring" the RW logo (not a site blackout) on Jan. 18? (like what Mozilla is doing)

1. Blue (pester) 07:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
2. F_lubber^{talk to me :D|see my shit} 07:48, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
3. Osaka Sun (talk) 07:49, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
4. --Dumpling (talk) 07:55, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
5. --We will change the world.Tielec01 (talk) 08:04, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
6. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 08:20, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
7. Most certainly, and even if only in solidarity. The Symphony of Punk ^{Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!} 08:25, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
8. --PsyGremlinFale! 08:45, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
9. --★uːʤɱ structuralist 09:04, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
10. Crundy^{Talk nerdy to me} 09:27, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
11. Slacktivism, yeah! Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 09:57, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
12. Not so much slacktivism in this case as awareness raising, providing it's done with a clear message about SOPA and, of course, everyone in this discussion now knows a lot more about it. ^narchist 10:19, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
13. I love a themed RW logo. I still want one that looks like a half unwrapped Easter egg. - π 12:39, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
14. MDB (talk) 13:02, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
15. Cool.--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 13:28, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
16. P-Foster Talk "a cheetos-eating, Mountain-Dew drinking vlogger living in someone's basement." 14:11, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
17. Shutter the site! Or this! sterile^talk 14:25, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
18. Agreed (ʞlɐʇ) ɹǝɯɯɐHʍoƆ 14:29, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
19. That'll show 'em! Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 15:47, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
20. Whatevers TheCheat^{I run on alcohol} 16:08, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
21. Because I hate the web. And I've been doing radio interviews for Wikipedia all day. Listen to me on NPR! - David Gerard (talk) 16:38, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
22. Absolutely. They'll really take notice when the web's 48,923rd most popular site tells them what for. Doctor Dark (talk) 18:31, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
23. Sure thing. Rapier (talk) 18:34, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
24. We can change the world with the right combination of pixels! Radioactive afikomen ^{Please ignore all my awful pre-2014 comments.} 20:55, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
25. Why not. Sam ^Tally-ho! 00:39, 18 January 2012 (UTC)
26. Yup. Ace^Moderator 07:52, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Opposed?

• Hey, word on the street is that opposing is cool now. Look at all those "Support" squares, so lame. ^{ONE / TALK} 16:23, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

I was opposing before it was cool. 8) 23:45, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Goat

• Depends how you do it. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 07:50, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

  How about one of those annoying site-wide intercoms? Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 07:56, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

  Too annoying. Borderline garish. Blue (pester) 08:06, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

  Will this logo link anywhere, or what? Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 08:09, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

  Not without us having to resort to ugly hacks of common.css & .js ... We could always put a link somewhere else without much ado. Blue (pester) 08:17, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

  Ok then. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 08:20, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Moving forward

Someone got a design? - π 14:21, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

File:Rw logo.png Pic if you need it. - π 14:27, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Wait! The vote isn't unamimous! We have one opposed! F_lucked^{talk to me :D|see my shit} 16:33, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Bored at work TheCheat^{I run on alcohol} 18:28, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

In the spirit of SOPA, how about we ban the dissenters for a day :) TheCheat^{I run on alcohol} 18:31, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

How about putting the entire site in Comic Sans for a day? Or green ink? Wēāŝēīōīď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 19:49, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Jegus, that would be worse than a blackout. Blue (is useful) 19:55, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

My computer doesn't display comic sans :) Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 20:06, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

How about something like:

or ? Blue (is useful) 22:57, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Either would be fine. F_lubber^{talk to me :D|see my shit} 23:26, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Good work! I like the latter.--^talk 23:51, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

can I have permission to steal that logo for my facebook? the Rational Wiki one? GodotDear god, fucking grow up 23:59, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

For some reason it doesn't format correctly on Twitter. I'll put it back to the normal one. Osaka Sun (talk) 00:01, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

I like the second one! :D--Dumpling (talk) 00:41, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

ctrl+F5 - π 04:08, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Very nice. Peter^{Quasniki 2012!} 04:09, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Mods...

Ahem. Also tweeting it right now. Osaka Sun (talk) 20:03, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

It's rather too late for us to decide to go on full strike... Blue (pester) 23:33, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

IT'S NEVER TOO LATE -- IF YOU BELIEVE!! F_litzer^{talk to me :D|see my shit} 23:35, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Fuck SOPA. I would love a blackout concurrent with Wikipedia. But I don't think six hours is enough time to do it.--^talk 23:50, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

The main page could be blacked out with an appropriate message perhaps. Wéáśéĺóíď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 07:42, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

I guess that went nowhere. Where are the pros who get things done when you need them? A simple Holydaze message, manually started and ended in sync would have done the job. ħuman 03:24, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

" Where are the pros who get things done when you need them?" Or, as I like to call them, "the Moderators." P-Foster Talk "a cheetos-eating, Mountain-Dew drinking vlogger living in someone's basement." 03:28, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Oh that's right, I keep forgetting I am one. Of both. ħuman 18:58, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

jesus christ the idiots at EN.Wikipedia

So ive read some of the reactions to the blackout, a lot of the people who are against it, (there are some rational arguments) just keep saying WE ARE WIKIPEDIA NOT POLITICS" and "but thats only in america! why didnt you american=-centric bastards protest x action that only effect y country and not the world?!" (the examplke was something australia PM did about tax)--il'Dictator Mikal (talk) 23:57, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Because the servers are in the US. --145.94.77.43 (talk) 00:42, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Because a lot of places have extradition treaties with the US. We can't think in isolationist terms any more. ^pathetic 01:04, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

EC: ::"But wikipedia no have copyright material!"--il'Dictator Mikal (talk) 01:05, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

They often use a considerable amount of "fair use" material. And as we all know fair use is a legal defence in the case of a violation reaching court, not a way to circumvent copyright law. ^postate 01:15, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

And remember, the court does not have to find you guilty -- this happens BEFORE your day in trial. a judge just has to look at the "evidence" (again, this is not an actual court case, so evidence is whatever someone wants to make it - you are not there) to get a court order to shut you down. One 13 year old girl links to a biber (sp?) video, and a court order is issued WITHOUT WARNING, without a chance to explain or remove. that's why they are protesting.GodotDear god, fucking grow up 01:19, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Speaking of Bieber videos, we'd probably lose genius mashups like this because even though Corey Taylor has gone on record saying he loves it, the copyright control is in the hands of the label, not the band. Okay, so technically it is a copy-vio on those grounds, but that then means YouTube is hosting this stuff and so should be shut down and censored and it's DNS yanked. Yeah, great idea morons. I'm thinking of the number of albums I've bought just because I heard the guys first via a technically-illegal upload to PooTube... quite a lot. You do want my money, right, guys? ^sshole 14:08, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

If SOPA or PROTECT IP pass, I'd want to pirate the shit out of everything just to screw with them. It's not like there's no way to get around the censors. Copyright is important, but I'm too poor and pissed to care.Z3100x (talk) 03:27, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Battleground God

Available here.

A really interesting activity which I just found now, which looks at how consistent your thoughts on religion are. To help you follow this, I define "god" as a supernatural entity which had some role in the creation of the universe. This definition is to take into account polytheists and deists, and to the extent of my knowledge all religions. My answers were (T is "true", F is "false"):

1F, 2F, 3F, 4F, 5F, 6T, 7F, 8F, 9T, 10T, 11F, 12F, 13F, 14F, 15F, 16F, 17F.

I emerged with the Medal of Honour, as I had absolutely no direct hits or bullets to bite. I would like some others on here to try this, list their responses to each of the questions, any contradictions or bullet-bites, any medals they got, any explanation as to why a contradiction or bullet-bite wouldn't be so if you explained it fully and did not have to simply choose between "true" or "false", and any background info which would be critical to understanding your choices. Remember you can't keep on replaying this so you get a medal of honor: that's more grounds for a medal of dishonor. Aside from the whole false trichotomy of theism, atheism, or agnosticism (it should be just theism or atheism, or theism, atheism, and deism; both ways with a separate question on agnosticism), this seems pretty good. What did you all get as results? The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 19:35, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Problem in one of the "hits" it told me to take (particularly true because I clicked "God does not exist"); 1) God is free to do as they like because they're God. 2) God must want as little suffering as possible, because God is good. But 3) God can change good into bad and bad into good? False would contradict no.1, as it limits God's omnipotence and reduces them to being a messenger. But according to this, it's telling me to bite a bullet because True contradicts no.2. How? This would make God an absolute standard of morality, and they would be able to swap around "sinful" and "good" without contradiction, because omnipotence allows that. But given that the next question says "it's foolish to believe without certain and irrevocable proof" (which is a stupid false dichotomy of a statement, implying that 100% certainty is even possible) I'm calling BS on the entire quiz. ^postate 19:47, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I got 100%, but I've seen it before. @ADK: The Euthyphro dilemma never dies. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 20:02, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

But asking someone who doesn't believe in God to have consistent beliefs about what God, especially if one of the reasons for such disbelief is these contradictions, is just a bit silly.

^pathetic 20:43, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, it's really only for theists. They probably only included an option for atheists so they wouldn't feel left out.

Read the FAQ. Question 1 states that only 3 of the 25 possible contradictions in the quiz require a theistic belief. The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 23:43, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

F_lubber^{talk to me :D|see my shit} 22:09, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I take it you never read the statement on bullet-bites and direct hits. The people who made it recognize that bullet-bites are subjective, are defined on the geographically and temporally changing definition of normalcy, and that direct hits may be caused by the false dichotomy of true-false questions and could be alleviated if you were answering the questions in person. Please read the disclaimer. The Heidelberg Kid (talk) 20:09, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Yeah me too. I said it is justifiable to belief in god but it is stupid too. If justifiable is synonomous with not stupid now, I didn't get that memo. Example: It is justifiable to jump in front of a bus to save a baby - but it is still damn stupid ('cause you're probably gonna die). And then this stupid rapist question... Somebody should tell these people that there is a difference between several levels of behaviour and belief (private, societal, scientific) — not even to mention that there is a difference between having a belief and acting on it against an established rulebook.

Actually this tests reasoning reminds me of some editors on this site… --★uːʤɱ structuralist 20:11, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Also read the FAQ to the activity. I thought the same things you did: you can do it, but it's stupid.`Well, we dug up this hidden premise, so we'll just not take it personally, like they say in the disclaimer.

Perhaps I should have read the instructions first as I got one bite and one hit. The hit was because of a poorly worded question, or my failure to comprehend how you could have a square circle or make 1+1=72, I don't regard these as good example of god doing impossible things. My bite was for demanding higher proof for the existence of god than the theory of evolution because I do not regard them as of equal importance. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 20:22, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

If your god is all powerful, then he or she can do anything: logic and ration would change with thier say so. That's why when someone tells me "god had to sacrifice his son, it was required", i say "your god is all powerful - he is not limited by logic, by rationality, or by reason. he creates it. if he changes teh world, the world changes and 2+2=7."GodotGrow a vagina 21:15, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

All that says to me is that god can do logically incoherent, and thus meaningless, things. Hey, I can do meaningless things too, I must be all-powerful! Orange + squid = Tokyo! Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 21:19, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Why should a god care about meaning? I mean, imagine that you give god like powers to me, and i just go out and decide to make everything fuzzy. that is meaningless to you, but i think it would be uber cool. Why can't gods have identity crises, or be liek giant internet trolls, fucking with things for fun? :-) --GodotGrow a vagina 21:30, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Most of the gods in Greek, Egyptian, etc. mythology always came off like internet trolls to me. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 21:37, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

This quiz is a set up. The entire thing is based on black and white answers to highly subtle questions. "It is justifiable to base one's belief about the external world on the internal world" - sure it's "justified". but not what I would do. there's no answer, only t or f. GodotGrow a vagina 20:48, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

I was doing swimmingly until I came to these two which I gave true to:

• Evolutionary theory maybe false in some matters of detail, but it is essentially true.
• It is foolish to believe in God without certain, irrevocable proof that God exists.

Apparently I am asking for a different standard of proof in each case. But, as has been pointed out, yes no answers are not really appropriate. Really everything has a belief value rather then a yes/no situation. There is ample evidence for evolution and there is none for God. So logically we would say that evolution is probably correct and that God probably doesn't exist. However, it is barely possible that evolution is wrong and it is barely possible that god exists - but expressing this in yes/no terms is difficult.

After that it is evident that the thing is crap.--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 22:37, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Wait, how is it wrong there? Certainly there's no "certain, irrevocable proof" that evolution is true, yet you believe in its validity, so why would you adopt a different standard for other hypotheses? F_ucker^{talk to me :D|see my shit} 22:44, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Because the size of a hypothesis and the impact it would have matters on how much evidence you need. The theory of evolution covers how life evolved to into it's current form, the god hypothesis postulates a being that essentially goes against all rationality and natural law. --★uːʤɱ kant 23:01, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, yes, but it depends on which one you're talking about. The Deist god, for example, wouldn't need absolute proof for me to consider it justifiable to believe in xem -- even the Judeo-Christian god wouldn't need anything close to absolute proof, just a whole bunch of evidence. F_ucker^{talk to me :D|see my shit} 23:05, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, "certainty" in the way most people would consider it actually requires infinite evidence. Consider converting your % probability into a ratio. 10% probability is obviously 100:10, or 10:1, 50% probability is 50:50, or 1:1 - but what is 100%? First think of what is 99%, then 99.9%, then 99.99% and so on... you're pushing ratios like 999,999,999:1 and then some. 100% certainty, expressed as a ratio is actually infinity:1. Infinite certainty requires infinite evidence to get there. So, questions like "certain, irrecoverably true" played off against "may have some errors but is basically correct" is just plain loaded language. ^pathetic 13:06, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Absolutely correct. If the questions had asked about evolution being "certain, irrecoverably true" then it would invite a different response. I'm not sure that I know of anything that is "certain, irrecoverably true". So it's not a question of a "different standard of proof" but rather a "differently loaded question".--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 14:16, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Somewhere along the line here "irrevocable" has morphed into "irrecoverable". Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 15:59, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

One day, I will learn to communicate in pure mathematics to avoid this clusterfuck we call language. ^{d hominem} 16:05, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Teach me not to cut and paste But hey! The point's still valid!--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 18:24, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

I wonder what the "right" answer would be to the question:

• "It is foolish to believe in Father Christmas without certain, irrevocable proof that Father Christmas exists.

I guess that they would argue that the correct answer is "false".--Bob^{Spring is sprung!} 20:50, 22 January 2012 (UTC) I died of my wounds. Well, according to the graphic during the quiz, but the final score said I got an honourable discharge. I long ago realized certain aspects of my personal beliefs don't make sense. MDB (talk) 13:17, 23 January 2012 (UTC)