RationalWiki:Saloon bar/Archive170

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, (new)(back)

That damn liberal mainstream media...

...may not be so liberal after all. Sam ^Tally-ho! 00:02, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

A nice link to plop on the liberal media article. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 00:49, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

RFID/EOD batshit craziness

Left on the windshield of my car. -- Seth Peck (talk) 22:39, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

Also. -- Seth Peck (talk) 23:06, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

"obey an agenda that appears to be in the beast interest of its people" - That's a rather Ken-like typo. Генгис^marauding 07:36, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I read this aloud to my friends at brunch on Sunday. Grammatical/spelling errors become very apparent when text is narrated. It was funnier after several bloody marys. -- Seth Peck (talk) 15:38, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

"Ugly Americans"

Probably a bunch of douches like this on every other national team, but c'mon. Might not be that shocking since these Olympics are being referred to as a gigantic sex orgy. 99.235.129.26 (talk) 01:03, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

All I read was "WHAAAHHHHH!" myself. --142.179.61.214 (talk) 01:19, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

The fact that Olympians are having sex is irrelevant. Some of the stuff in that article is irritating though, including the baseless attacks on Ye. Osaka Sun (talk) 01:32, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

It's a good juxtaposition with John Carlos and Willie Green from the '68 Olympics. Not that America was some sort of shining beacon of sportsmanship, but at least the negatives were overshadowed by the athletes who had a sense of purpose that went beyond personal glory and entitlement. Q0 (talk) 01:46, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I found all the carrying on before and after the mens 100m final insufferable too. I can't stand athletes who make a big song and dance of themselves. --Damo^Hi 03:36, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

If you're looking for ugly Americans, look no further than the 1999 Ryder Cup at Brookline. As Sam Torrance said, "It was the most disgraceful and disgusting day in the history of professional golf. The spectators behaved like animals and some of the American players, most notably Tom Lehman, acted like madmen." --Psygremlin (talk) 12:29, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Was it that long ago or am I remembering a more recent US hosting that was just as nauseating? I don't really have an axe to grind on this topic but I was reading in Saturday's Grauniad that the jingoistic display at Atlanta probably put off the IOC from awarding the games to the US again for many decades.  Lily ^{Inspirate me.} 22:10, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Irrelevant yet not quite off topic: If you're looking for Ugly Americans, check out the Comedy Central Show, Ugly Americans. The absurdity's charming.

Fuck you, global warming!!

It's snowing in Jo'burg today.

4th time in 30 years. --Psygremlin (talk) 09:56, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

But it's summer! *trollface* ^{d hominem} 10:12, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

You Poms have double glazing and central heating. We have ceiling fans. Our houses aren't designed for your crap northern weather. It's freezing!! Pity me!! --Psygremlin (talk) 10:28, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Not snowing here (Sydney), but it's freaking cold as well. I blame Al Gore. VOX^HUMANA 10:29, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Now I can just imagine Al Gore sat in a Bond Villain Lair, stroking a cat and laughing at his weather control machine... ^pathetic 10:37, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Is he the head of HAARP, then? Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 10:38, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

My commie Russian friend said this isn't snow, it's rain. And Rudolf the Red knows rain, dear. --Psygremlin (talk) 10:59, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Ow! What did RationalWiki do to you that we deserve such punishment? 82.69.171.94 (talk) 11:22, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

My husband used to tell a joke with this punch line. He always had a loooooong intro. Thanks for the memory - made me smile RagTop^{Gone sailing} 13:55, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

He's already going to hell for other reasons, so may as well go balls-to-the-wall about it. ^pathetic 11:46, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

I was listening to NPR yesterday and they actually explained statistics (standard deviation, etc.) before they explained the stats about the current heat wave/weird weather around the world. Seems that for the past few years, the weather has been 3 standard deviations away from the norm. All over the world, albeit in moving 'hot spots'. 3 standard deviations. If 1 standard deviation is throwing snake-eyes 3 times in a row... BUT GLOBAL WARMING IS A GUVMINT LIE!!!one!11 ±KnightOfTL;DR^{garrulous en guerre} 11:47, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

? Snake eyes = (1/36)³ = 2.1 x 10^-5. Excel says 1 - NORMSDIST(3) = 1.4 x 10^-3. Even if it's 3 SD on both sides .... sterile^{sporadic heavy hitter} 12:19, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Not with my dice, it isn't. Bad Faith (talk) 12:23, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

He probably meant 4SD: NORMSINV(1-(1/36)^3) = 4.09. NPR story here based on PNAS article here. sterile^{sporadic heavy hitter} 13:59, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

The death of Fox News comments.

Earlier this summer, I noticed that the comments section on Fox News stories was no more. From what I can tell, NewsCorp killed it with no statement or fanfare. Did anyone come across anything from the company explaining the move? I can sort of see the logic--say what you will about the company, and the end of the day it's still run by rational human beings who understand that it might be hard to maximize shareholder value with a website that hosted gigs and gigs of anti-black, anti-Jewish, and anti-Muslim, hate speech. Theory of Practice "Trampoline" is an Olympic sport now? 14:04, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm guessing that's the case. It's one thing to cater to idiots and bigots, but quite another to have them running wild in your shop. Doesn't explain though why YouTube still allow comments. The general idiocy there is one of the things that soured me on YouTube. Concernedresident ^{omg!!! ponies!!!} 14:13, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

YouTube runs on a near-monopoly of effortless video hosting, so no matter how stupid the comments everyone will still flock to it.

That Fox has banned comments is new to me - I avoid the site just as much as I do msnbc.com. That doesn't give them any credit though. If NewsCorp didn't want to attract the nutters, they should have never framed their content for them in the first place. An implicit admission that they're beginning to regret Fair and Balanced, maybe? Osaka Sun (talk) 14:30, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Regret "fair and Balanced"? NEVER! Remember Newscorp went to court (and won!) for the right for "fair and Balanced" to ≠ "truth". C®ackeЯ 22:07, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

True. Osaka Sun (talk) 10:55, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm not trying to give them credit for seeing the light and doing the right thing for humanity's sake--they probably just saw it in terms of cost/benefit analysis. Theory of Practice "Trampoline" is an Olympic sport now? 14:57, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I didn't know that they banned comments entirely -- I mostly stay away from the bottom of the internet -- but I have noticed a pattern of them disabling comments and shoving them down the memory hole on stories with racial or immigration angles. Also, obligatory. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 20:29, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Thankfully, if it concentrates in one place, we can hit it with one precise tactical strike ^gnostic 20:51, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Wow, an app that makes YT comments intelligible -- I didn't think it was possible! Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 20:55, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Didn't they effectively just move their comment sections to The Fox Nation? MDB ^{(the MD is for Maryland, the B is for Bear)} 17:55, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

New Antichrist Named (Mein Gott...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Hassan_bin_Talal

This is Satan's Man of the Hour, named by xenophobic crackpot Danny Nalliah via Jimmy Swaggart's telecast. Ignoring all of the biblical warnings that "no man knows the day, nor the hour" the good Prince is apparently going to have our asses all microchipped by 2017. He's a member of a lot of organizations with titles including words like "Religious Freedom" and "tolerance", so obviously he's Evil Incarnate.

Now, this may seem like just another inconsequential fundy, but Jimmy Swaggart (and by extension, his buddies) is the stealth face of American Evangelism. He's absorbed the power that Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson once had. He's the old zealotry with a good measure of the new paranoia seeping in. His liasions with prostitutes have been forgotten. In some ways, he's got more power than he ever has had in the past with his media empire. And he's kicking up the End Times movement like never before. The ministry declares the end will most likely be this decade. He calls his viewers to drastic action, because in his words, Christians are about to be thrown in jail.

I'm a scurred. :( 108.236.162.166 (talk) 03:10, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

And the traffic his damn church/college/bookstore/school/radio station causes makes Bluebonnet impassable. Тy^{Not updated with a witty slogan this week} 03:33, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

HEARRRD THAAAAT. I'm a Deep East Texan, I can drive to Baton Rouge in about 8 hours. I love that city. A damn shame it's a cult compound.108.236.162.166 (talk) 03:36, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Goddamn the Bethany people are creepy. "Come join our church and we'll give you pizza!" Then there is the anti-woman-wearing-pants people. And the people wearing signs. Hell, these guys are set up 2 blocks from me. Тy^{Not updated with a witty slogan this week} 03:42, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

But it's got a hell of a nightlife. And oh my Science, you can't beat the food. And that Wal-Mart is just abundant with liquor.108.236.162.166 (talk) 03:47, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Enh, the one on College got hit by lightning the other day and everything spoiled so the place is almost empty. Creepy as hell. The food is good, yes indeed.Тy^{Not updated with a witty slogan this week} 03:50, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

1. 8 hour drive to Texas is awesome for me. 'Cause I stock up on Korean food whenever I go.

2. I blame Jimmy for the bad traffic in Baton Rouge...or maybe BR is just full of 'tards that just can' drive.

3. The food is to die for. Literally. >> So much artery clogging...BUT IT TASTES SO GOOD.

4. Party Hardy we are. For we are the party state. Yay? --Dumpling (talk) 03:59, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

DAMN IT I CAME HERE TO HAVE A SERIOUS DISCUSSION ABOUT SERIOUS THINGS AND NOW I JUST WANT TO GO TO BATON ROUGE AND EAT UNTIL I DIE. I haven't been in a while. Is that little Indian place still there? D:108.236.162.166 (talk) 04:08, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

India's? Тy^{Not updated with a witty slogan this week} 04:10, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Ohhhh Goddddd. Yes. Orgasmic. 108.236.162.166 (talk) 04:20, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

There's a rather new Indian restaurant now, called 'Bayleaf'.--Dumpling (talk) 04:21, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

(EC) India's is very, very good. I was in Orchestra for a while with the owner's son, and the owner goes to my gym. Great place, if a little hard to get in and out off. Тy^{Not updated with a witty slogan this week} 04:24, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

SCREW THE FUNDIES. I want more India's and I want to try Bayleaf and I mean the food's good in my town butkfghfhgfhkd it isn't like Baton Rouge gaaaaaaahhhhhhhh :( 108.236.162.166 (talk) 04:28, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

HAHAHA! Let's switch! I can get my Korean food, and you can have the Baton Rouge food. --Dumpling (talk) 04:43, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

"For example, Ray Comfort eats bananas."

Are we sure he's not a parodist? Theory of Practice "Trampoline" is an Olympic sport now? 04:04, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I won't speak as to whether or not he is, but I must say that, just from an English-retentive stance, that article is poorly written. Reckless Noise Symphony (talk) 12:40, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

So if FtB wanted to hire YouTubers...

...why didn't they get this guy? Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 05:27, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Or why not QualiaSoup? Maybe a bit too "quality over quantity", though. Q0 (talk) 07:14, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

It probably only happened because he became close chums with PZ prior to the Super-Fail-Spat (which I think is a better name than anything ending in "-gate"). Otherwise, why would you look to recruit for a mostly written medium in a place where people make videos? We already know from his existing blog and video description that while he's a fantastic orator, he can't write for shit. You know, there has to be a reason some people will prefer to sit down at a webcam and make vague motions with their jaw rather than go to a keyboard. Personally, I'd prefer Scott Clifton to join (okay, okay, here's a slightly more serious example). ^sshole 11:10, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

FOURCHAN!

Oh God. Osaka Sun (talk) 09:50, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Online vote gets trolled. Been happening since the nineties. Rennie McGreet (talk) 10:38, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

By now, the discussion should be going like this:

"Hey, how about we crowdsource this new ad campaign in order to save money and promote brand awareness?"

"4chan. Reddit."

"Right, we'll do it the normal way."

Q0 (talk) 10:39, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

"b3ta." - David Gerard (talk) 10:47, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Atlantis found?

So maybe Plato wasn't talking bollocks. --PsyGremlin^Siarad! 11:36, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I was thinking "oh no, not again" but then realised I've read this one before. The Google Earth one is funnier. ^gnostic 11:39, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

"One of the largest was a reported 10-story tidal wave that slammed Lisbon in November 1755." That would be quite a volume. Генгис^{Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.} 11:43, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

What would Sigmund Freud have made of that image? 212.85.6.26 (talk) 17:20, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Nobody reads books anymore! Except...

...Brazil. Hot, hot and ever more educated. --Rutherford (talk) 11:52, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Good on them! I, for one, welcome our new well-toned overlords. --TheLateGatsby (talk) 14:08, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Copying oneself- Is it plagiarism??

Paragraphs 2 through 5 of John Preston's review of Paul Feyerabend's "The Tyranny of Science" in Notre Dame Philosophical Review ( [1] ) are verbatim identical to paragraphs 2 through 5 in the next to last section of the same authors summary of the book in his article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ( [2] )--WickerGuy (talk) 22:51, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I would say no, though it's usually considered good etiquette to put some note somewhere that says "This work adapted from x." Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 23:01, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Chemists say yes. sterile^{sporadic heavy hitter} 23:19, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Authors should not engage in self-plagiarism (also known as duplicate publication) - unacceptably close replication of the author’s own previously published text or results without acknowledgement of the source. ACS applies a “reasonable person” standard when deciding whether a submission constitutes self-plagiarism/duplicate publication. If one or two identical sentences previously published by an author appear in a subsequent work by the same author, this is unlikely to be regarded as duplicate publication. Material quoted verbatim from the author’s previously published work must be placed in quotation marks. In contrast, it is unacceptable for an author to include significant verbatim or near-verbatim portions of his/her own work, or to depict his/her previously published results or methodology as new, without acknowledging the source. (Modeled with permission from Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics: Authorial Integrity in Scientific Publication http://www.siam.org/books/plagiarism.php)[3] —

Depends if it was passed off as an original work. The ACS example is for submissions of research papers, which are by definition supposed to be novel, every reader of the journal would be rightly pissed off to see duplication. But I can well imagine Stanford's Encyclopedia readers for example not caring if the contribution is original. It's an encyclopedia after all, better to have a hundred and fifty great words copied and pasted than a thousand mediocre words written fresh. If the Stanford entry was written or published later, I wouldn't stress about it. If its the supposed review that was written later then that's definitely a bit weird and maybe worth asking Notre Dame about. If they seem to have been written simultaneously then probably it was intended this way from the outset, both institutions may even know about the arrangement and approve of it. Again, re-use for an encyclopedia seems harmless. If Preston starts recycling for another review with different editors, or something like that then it's worth a second glance. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 00:38, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

My very first paid job after graduating was looking at barytes deposits in Scotland for a mineral grinding company (barytes is used in drilling muds). I obtained a booklet for £2 from the Institute of Geological Sciences in Inverness which covered a whole range of various minerals in Scotland and gave it to the company on my return. The relevant text in the booklet was identical to a study they had commissioned for several hundred pounds from a consultant geologist who just happened to be the author of the topic in the booklet. Генгис^{Gum disease} 07:29, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

FFS not again?

Генгис^{You have the right to be offended; and I have the right to offend you.} 22:53, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Vaguebooking? Wëäŝëïöïď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 23:22, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Context Bot: Has experienced premature ejaculation for the 17th time running. ^sshole 00:00, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Still remember the first time I caught myself saying "Eff Eff Ess" out loud. Vaguebooking sucks, as did its real world predecessors like loudly sighing and then insisting nothing is wrong. But probably GK just fucked up on the whole "actually typing/ pasting what is referred to" thing. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 00:13, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I imagine he's referring to this week's multiple-death shooting in US-America. Theory of Practice "Trampoline" is an Olympic sport now? 00:35, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh yeah, right. Are shootings which result in multiple deaths rare enough in the US to justify this level of coverage? I guess I assumed not and that this was like the London "knife crime epidemic" (no unusual variation in actual knife crime, but newspapers got really excited over one story and then gave generic gang-related violence front page treatment for a while). 82.69.171.94 (talk)

Opinion from journalism major: Shootings could be superficially more common at the moment, but I am more certain that what has happened is that right now they are getting more exposure: shootings that would capture attention from only a few states around are now capturing more attention from the entire country. The Batman shooting started it off, but this happens pretty frequently. Columbine set off a chain of shooting-related article trends, and so did the Gabby Giffords shooting. The way many news outlets find relevant stories is that they follow what's trending in the news at the moment and then they pick up and give more coverage to things they think people want to see and hear. So AP articles that would normally carry for only a few states are now being picked up across the country. If I could give any advice: go to the source paper or the closest major paper to the shooting if you really want to know more about it. They will be able to get real interviews and additional material there because they actually have guys in the field investigating it as the story gets more tie-ins and additional ledes. Other newspapers across the country will be getting the recycled content once they pick it up. ±KnightOfTL;DR^{longissimus non legeri} 01:01, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Mises loves us!

'Cos when you're talking about all wikis in general, of course you're going to start with several paragraphs on RW. (Hi guys!) - David Gerard (talk) 08:16, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

It's not the Misesians. It's exclusively Nathan Larson, a.k.a. User:Tisane. Who apparently is butthurt because people refused to engage him over the NAMBLAisation of the child sexual abuse article (see the page history and the talk page), and because of the treatment of the Austrian school and libertarianism in general on the wiki.--ZooGuard (talk) 08:32, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Though it is on their official wiki, which is nice - David Gerard (talk) 09:48, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh the temptation to do some tit-for-tat that suggests Mises endorses NAMbLA... ^gnostic 10:02, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I did enjoy the parade of buzzwords in Larson's ranting. I really appreciate how so-called skeptics never have to make any substantive arguments any more, all they have to do is name a fallacy. — Unsigned, by: ORavenhurst / talk^{Do You Believe That?} 13:13, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

We used to have an article on that point, but since no one really liked it much for whatever reason, I stole it for an essay. ^theist 14:06, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

(EC) I've just read the same point about FtB at Why Evolution Is True.  Lily ^{Inspirate me.} 14:09, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

At least we're self-critical... -- Seth Peck (talk) 16:45, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Protect yourself from Dirty Electricity!

Ah yes, electricity is the scourge of the modern world. But you can buy some of these expensive yokes to sort you out. DogP (talk) 09:26, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Just get some dudes with sledgehammers, pounding on electricity cables. That'll sort it out. X Stickman (talk) 10:10, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I was once watching a demonstration of a violet wand and the guy started banging on about "dirty electricity" and so to make it safe you need to buy a special adapter. Of course, I was sat next to a guy with a Masters in electronic engineering who was constantly mumbling "what a crock of shit" under his breath. ^gnostic 10:28, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Reminds me of fat electrons and quantum bogodynamics. rpeh •T•C•E• 11:35, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I think we really should have an article on this. People are going to be suckered into this and there seems to be a lot of it out there but not much in the way of rebuttal. I'd be happy to do it, but I don't have any real knowledge of the genuine science to explain why it's BS. -- 12:22, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

As the webshite points out, stray noise has been appearing on the power distribution system for a long time. Fluorescent lights, SCR dimmers, worn-out commutator brushes on electric motors, and any high-frequency gadget with poor Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) shielding will do the dirty trick. In WWII, when amateur radio operators were shut down, some of them serviced their Morse-key jones by playing with "carrier current" rigs. By coupling a low- or medium-frequency signal to the grid, one could have low-bandwidth conversations with guys all over town. It didn't pass through pole transformers very well, and didn't bounce off the ionosphere at all, so range was extremely limited. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 12:49, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Would anyone object...

...if I changed {{sciencenav}} to the version found at the top here? ^moral 10:57, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Go for it. Reckless Noise Symphony (talk) 11:06, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Don't like the rounded corner.</bikeshed> Apart from that, it's great - David Gerard (talk) 11:09, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

UR BREAKING MAH WIKI!!!! But seriously, go for it. It's easier to apologise than to ask permission. --PsyGremlin^{Поговорите!} 11:15, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Bloody hell Mondy, are you stupid or what? Of course someone will object. But as Psy said, go for it otherwise things will never change. Also, if you're ever bored you can come and help design my astronomy wiki. Генгис^{Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.} 11:33, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

This isn't boredom, it's waiting for some fly spray to start working and some transition state optimisations to complete. Once all that's done, it's back to the day job again. ^sshole 11:37, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I object. Icon is too glossy, I really don't like the metallic rim. the 3d effect is confusing and inconsistent (I don't know how to describe it, the rim looks flat and thin in the upper left, and the whole effect looks broken). Also, replacing this one template creates an inconsistency, either change everything to the new style, or don't. Nitpick: v-t-e links are blue on blue. The subtle shadow effect on the white pictograms is very nice. I'm indifferent about the gradient, but maybe a vertical one would be better. -- Nx / talk 11:50, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

The gradient should be vertical. I'd be happy to change everything to this style, but small steps. As for the rim, I'll re-render it as now you've pointed it out I can see it. ^narchist 11:53, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

it's horizontal (left-to-right) on chrome 21. The draft and final spec for gradients interpret percentages differently [4] -- Nx / talk 11:59, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Replace them all. Тy^{Not updated with a witty slogan this week} 16:34, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

There are too many! ^pathetic 11:31, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

(Reset) The classic response is 'Round objects.' ^{— Unsigned, by: 212.85.6.26 / talk / contribs}

New Facebook, er, RationalWiki sucks! Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 18:21, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Brainwarp

Everybody knows what it is - when you read an article that is more than wrong/slightly loopy etc and can feel your brain leaking away. Can there be a RW Dicdefs in which it appears? 212.85.6.26 (talk) 17:27, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Silly BoN, that's not how you spell Fox news. Ochotonaprinceps^{not a pokémon} 10¹³ points 19:00, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Fox News is a subcategory; other examples include literary theory (of the kind 'the author did not understand what they were writing - I did and they are negative sterotypes to boot' 212.85.6.26 (talk) 15:40, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Extended exercises in missing the point (Rant warning)

So I came across this post at SciAm (via WEIT) which starts out criticizing physics envy in the humanities/social sciences and then degenerates into an incoherent diatribe against quantitative methods. Coyne aptly dismantles the cartoonish view of scientific methodologies in the original piece, but then flies off the rails himself with some real howlers:

"I’m not sure what Konnikova means by “qualitative approaches”—I hope it’s not just storytelling—for she gives no examples." Does Coyne really not know what is meant by "qualitative approaches"? His own example given above (Origin of the Species) of science that doesn't rely on statistical/mathematical modeling is itself a great example of none other than...a qualitative approach! (This is also deliciously ironic coming from an evolutionary biologist considering that evolutionary theory has spawned quite a bit of its own storytelling.)

"...although read Steve Pinker’s Better Angels of our Nature to see how he deploys fancy statistics to argue that societies are getting better..." Heh, this is exactly the kind of thing Konnikova's post is warning against, albeit doing a fairly poor job at it. Just dress up bogus history with some "fancy statistics" to lend it instant credibility. And then, as a bonus, you get high-profile scientists endorsing your pseudoscholarship!

"In the end, I’m not quite sure why Konnikova goes off on the incursion of “hard-science” methods into social science and the humanities." I dunno, maybe because of their tendency to be faddish and for their (mis-)application to produce research that is far more sciencey than scientific. In fact, Coyne would agree with me that a good deal of evolutionary psychology, for example, suffers heavily from this problem. Ironically, this brand of nonsense is often fostered by the mindset of people like Konnikova who equate science with math-y, number-y stuff.

"There is only one way of finding out what is true, and that doesn’t involve revelation or making up stories." Ah, right, it all comes down to everything being science or just "making shit up." Why didn't you say so in the first place?

The fundamental misunderstanding of the subject at hand here in both pieces is mind-blowing, though I guess not all too uncharacteristic of what passes for "science" commentary. (/Rant) Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 18:01, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I have great respect for the depth of your understanding and the wide-ranging nature of your capabilities, so I will assume that "Origin of the Species" was simply a transient brain spasm. By way of atonement for my being the asshole who pointed that out, I will propose a definition of no-nonsense science as "something you could explain to Richard Feynman without having him laugh in your face." Now all we need is a board-certified medium capable of channelling the worthy Professor... Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 18:38, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

You are reading a post on Scientific American here, it's like New Scientist but, well, American. ^{d hominem} 11:30, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Also, we all know that real science is indicated by the presence of a reference section. ^sshole 11:33, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Timothy Mousseau

This guy is in the news again. This time it's about butterflies which purportedly showed hereditary abnormalities due to Fukushima radiation. I have serious suspicions that he has, at the very least, severely misrepresented his results. Previously he found some minor abnormalities in barn swallows in Chernobyl and said it proved a large negative impact on the area's fauna, even though practically nobody replicated his results and more reliable indicators of ecosystem health, such as the population sizes of apex predators, indicate that nature is doing very well there. I also know that:

• He collaborated on the Chernobyl studies with Anders Pape Møller, who has a track record of falsifying data and has been found guilty of academic fraud; Mousseau defended Møller against these accusations [5]
• He collaborated with anti-nuclear activist Ian Fairlie on the Green-sponsored TORCH report
• He gave an interview to Helen Caldicott, whose dishonesty was recently demonstrated by former anti-nuke George Monbiot, and to Janette Sherman, who edited the English translation of this turd (link)
• He also directly participated in Fukushima scaremongering: [6]

Does anyone have more information about him? --Tweenk (talk) 20:34, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

If you look hard enough for evidence to support your hypothesis, you will find it. -- Seth Peck (talk) 20:50, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Japanese mutant ninja butterflies. Cool. --2.34.113.53 (talk) 21:08, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

The radiation around Fukushima isn't that high above background levels and is similar to high background radiation areas, so I simply think his results are surprising. Similarly, his conclusions about Chernobyl are not shared by other researchers. I just don't have any good evidence to make up my mind on whether he is a crank or not. The associations I mentioned may be a sign of crank magnetism, but ultimately do not prove anything. To me this guy is fairly similar to Gilles-Eric Serralini, who publishes anti-GMO studies - can't make up my mind about him either. --Tweenk (talk) 21:14, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I read that on WIGO and was a bit skeptical. Even if the radiation released from Fukushima was significantly above background levels, it would still have to be even higher to equal or beat countless other environmental factors that cause genetic mutations - just contrast cancer rates in Japan vs Australia for a quick indication of what it would have to achieve to be as monumentally catastrophic as claimed. ^pathetic 22:02, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I'd already seen this on the BBC website but Mousseau was only commenting on the research by Japanese scientists. Генгис^{Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.} 22:58, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I actually am very dissapointed in those that reported this story but omitted the larger picture. They know people will read about radiation mutating things. That's something out of a comic book. They know people will read it. Bad media outlet, be more responsible with your interesting topic! ±KnightOfTL;DR^{free guybrush threepwood! no new taxes! down with porcelain!} 11:50, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

This Japanese study has 7 references to phenotypic aberrations in Chernobyl animals and insects, and all but one of them are to works by Mousseau and Møller - not really a consensus view of the subject. I see 2 more potential problems: 1. Malformed individuals would be unlikely to reproduce in nature, so the actual impact of these mutations on the population could be negligible - the study does not address this at all; 2. There is no information on whether the identification of malformations was blinded. There's only this sentence: "All abnormalities were searched for by two persons, A.H. and C.N., to avoid possible inter-personal discrepancies in the assessment of morphological abnormalities. Disagreement often arose from overlooking apparent abnormalities. Thus, when two persons disagreed, they discussed discrepancies together and reached agreement on those issues." --Tweenk (talk) 02:09, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Who here puts latin in their reports?

I would like to ask, when is it more appropriate to use ex ante instead of a priori? [[User:K61824|]][[User_talk:K61824|]] 05:21, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

"Ex ante" would refer to the planned/expected outcome - usually in commercial rather than scientific usage. "A priori" would refer to something reasoned rather than measured before the event. So if you were looking at a financial portfolio you might make a priori assumptions (e.g. interest rates) for an ex ante return. Генгис^{RationalWiki GOLD member} 07:00, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur. MDB ^{(the MD is for Maryland, the B is for Bear)} 12:14, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Stercus pro cerebro habes. Podex perfectus es. For the unschooled, that means, "That is food for thought. You did a terrific job." __Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 23:44, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

100 law profs can't be wrong

Especially when they tell the US Conference of Catholic Bishops where to shove it. Maybe we can get them to pull a Sinead O'Connor next. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 07:29, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Watching some US politics you'd think this whole "freedom of religion" thing was complicated, yet that first paragraph may as well have ended with "seriously, what the fuck is it about this concept that you don't get?!?!". ^bomination 11:25, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

They don't get the part where it applies to everyone. --TheLateGatsby (talk) 13:15, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Of course it applies to everyone! It applies to Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Mormons, Evangelicals... ^pathetic 17:14, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

They don't get the part where it applies to everyone - exellent! :-) Ther eis a meme going around facebook, about the fact that MY religion (usually a pagan one) accepts gay marriage, therefore your desire to regulate gay marriage, infringes on my right to practice my religion. That's what bugs me so much about the "religious" position. It's not THE religious position, it's one of a huge many. Even within the christian faith for that matter. My boss's church (she's the pastor) has married 10 gay couples. and they are pretty middle of the road, here in colorado. They just think that god is fine with gay marriage.--GodotIz a sekret Kristian 17:28, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I've actually had that thought myself -- there are plenty of churches that would happily solemnize legally recognized same sex weddings -- isn't their religious freedom being violated?

That's what convinced me the solution is to get government out of the marriage business altogether. The government would recognize civil unions, which would be a contract, nothing more. If you want to be married, you find someone to give you that social/religious status. Heck, I suppose a couple could be married but not "unioned", though I'm not sure why they'd want that. MDB ^{(the MD is for Maryland, the B is for Bear)} 18:07, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

The only problem with that is that there's a specific term, "marriage", which has a history and a wide range of connotations and inferences to join in with it. Marriage is a big-ass ceremony, it's important, it has pomp and it has circumstances, it means a big white dress and a lot of drunk uncles. Civil union means signing a contract in an office somewhere, just because you fancied it. Marriage is grandiose and romantic. Civil unions are boring and sterile. Legal parity isn't necessarily social parity, which is where that entire idea falls down. ^theist 19:47, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

NO one would be taking "marriage" away, they would just be saying that the gvt recognizes CUs ONLY, nothing else. That's how France (and i think many/most(?) european countries) do it. You get your legal union at the city hall, and then you do what you want in your church, your home, etc. I want the legal protections that come with a "marriage", but as a buddhist-atheists, and an atheist atheist, husband and I just got married by a judge. GodotIz a sekret Kristian 20:05, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I take a stronger stance. For a moment, let's grant them the premise that marriage is some sort of contract thingy between exactly 2 people, one man and one woman. We can thus conclude that the government granting any special privilege based on marriage is unconstitutional. It discriminates on the basis of sex/gender! Voila, the good guys win. LiberalOfAnUnknownVariant (talk) 01:38, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

By the way, isn't our own President a Constitutional Law scholar/specialist? So that's like 101 Law Professors ;-)--GodotIz a sekret Kristian 17:38, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Ah, but Andy Schlafly is both a Constitutional Law expert and the Best of the Public, so he trumps them all, and I think I know where he stands on this issue. DickTurpis (talk) 18:42, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the professor values, the liberal bias, ... [[User:K61824|]][[User_talk:K61824|]] 05:32, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

RIP Harry Harrison,

Creator Of The Stainless Steel Rat Scream!! (talk) 11:37, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

:( Sophie^Wilder 11:47, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Double :( SSR was awesome. --PsyGremlin^Tala! 11:55, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Leader of anti-semitic party has Jewish roots

Words cannot express my joy at reading this. --StacyB (talk) 12:03, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I see someone already mentioned it on WIGO:World. Probably should have checked, but I'll leave it here anyway. --StacyB (talk) 12:05, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Is it bragging to point out the most recommended comment on the story is from a certain Bear in Maryland? (Yeah, I know, "bottom of the internet" and all that. But NPR comments seem to be above the usual level.) MDB ^{(the MD is for Maryland, the B is for Bear)} 12:12, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

It's the Jewish Clayton Bigsby! Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 14:59, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

10 Things The Romney Campaign Doesn't Want You To Know About Paul Ryan

Yup, he's a douchebag. --PsyGremlin^Khuluma! 12:06, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

A Flash game with relativity

So my daughter asked me to look for dinosaur games for us to play, and I found Velocity Raptor. It's a simple physics game, buuut the physics is Special Relativity. That means you have to cope with Lorenz contraction, time dilation, red shift, visual distortions ... infuriating. Most people don't make it past level 30, though I know at least one person who got to level 34 before throwing the computer across the room. It's one thing to read the equations, it's quite another to need to get a feel for them - I strongly recommend this to everyone - David Gerard (talk) 13:10, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

AAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ^{d hominem} 19:32, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Nonsense. Dinosaurs didn't have relativity back then, it was invented when they were already extinct. --2.34.113.53 (talk) 21:48, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Trivially false and only serves to show how unsophisticated your theology is. Raptors had feathers, therefore they were birds and tasted like chicken. And birds exist, therefore Einstein was a chicken. Ergo, Raptor Jesus - David Gerard (talk) 22:20, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

That may all be true, but where's the flash game of that? --2.34.113.53 (talk) 22:52, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

The release date for that is...one day after the rupture Rapture, so that only heathens will be able to play it. C®ackeЯ 23:38, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Just finished level 31. I might be going slightly insane, however. DickTurpis (talk) 02:37, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Romney ineligible to run for president

...for accepting foreign donations, which would not only render him ineligible for candidacy, but is a criminal offense. Where is the AG on this one? Must be okay if you're a White Republican though. -- Seth Peck (talk) 14:16, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Actually, I'm fine with not discussing this one unless someone wants to, there are some pretty fair points on reddit about it. -- Seth Peck (talk) 14:22, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Stargate SG-1

Has anyone watched the whole series? I'm slowly making my way through it (about halfway through season 3 right now) and I'm getting pretty bored by it. Maybe I've just been spoiled by highly serialized Sci-fi shows like Babylon 5 and BSG, but I'm losing the motivation to continue watching it. It's not that I find it bad; I just find it really mediocre. It doesn't help that it's 200+ episodes long and there's almost never any movement of the overarching plot.

So anyway, does it get better? I'm probably going to have to watch the whole thing anyway, but I'm wondering how bored I'll be through it. Cow...Hammer^time! 15:38, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Later in the show they do get some overarching plot, but that's not the main focus. It remains very episodic throughout. In later seasons, they do get season-arc plots, with maybe half(?) of the episodes of that season. The last 2 seasons are more season-arc plot heavy, but still with one-off episodes. It does get better, but if you aren't enjoying it by season 3, it may be time to stop. LiberalOfAnUnknownVariant (talk) 02:00, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

It's one of those things that I stopped watching about that time because they keep having to up the ante to increasingly dangerous enemies and it starts getting beyond silly (not to mention characters dying and coming back and dying and coming back and dying...). That said, providing a particular episode isn't bollocks deep in that season's plot arc, they're still pretty entertaining to watch. It's like a very tongue-surgically-lodged-in-cheek roast of your generic sci-fi series, especially later on when the humans start getting their own star ships and they just lay into Star Trek. And episode 200 is worth a watch because it's hilarious and ramps the piss-taking up a notch or two, if you're up to series 3 you've probably got the gist enough to be able to watch it and not end up scratching your head. ^pathetic 17:10, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree. I tried hard to like this show, but it just kept falling flat. the stories were largely the same with new/better/boogieier aliens. --GodotIz a sekret Kristian 17:22, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I've watched all of SG-1, Atlantis and most of Universe. SG-1 does get better and better, in my opinion. The last couple of seasons with O'Neill are fantastic. Then when Richard Dean Anderson leaves, you wonder how they can continue - but they do, very well! I think Atlantis is better than SG-1, but Universe sucked. ^EXTERMINATE 19:42, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Which one's the one with that dark helmet guy? That one's kinda fun. --2.34.113.53 (talk) 20:46, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

That would be Dixon of Dock Green. Генгис^unbelieving 23:43, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

It's hard to produce anything as good as Babylon 5 or the re-envisioned BattleStar Galactica. Both gold standard IMO.--WickerGuy (talk) 23:08, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

I do thoroughly enjoy my B5. I just rewatched seasons 1-4 with a friend (his first time). I have to say though, that the show is hampered by low production values, bad choreography, spotty acting, and occasional pisspoor plot. Having said that, G'kar and Londo made the show, and they are the best things ever. (The elevator scene(s) remain my favorites.) As an example of pisspoor plot, I dare you to disagree with me when I say the conclusion scene of the shadow war was anything but comically lame. ("Can we come too?") As for Baltarstar Galactica, it was definitely one of the best shows ever, but only for about 1.5 seasons. "And they have a plan!", except they didn't. The last good part of the show was the initial Pegasus episodes. SPOILER!! Oh, and special kudos goes to the atmosphere jump at the beginning of season 3. I couldn't bring myself to finish it, and dropped it in season 4. I'm glad - the synopsis of the last episode in particular annoys the crap out of me. LiberalOfAnUnknownVariant (talk) 01:51, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I loved B5 and BSG. One of my all time favorite TV scenes is Vir's response to Mr. Morden's offer to give him whatever he wants. And a second favorite is when Vir finally gets what he wanted. MDB ^{(the MD is for Maryland, the B is for Bear)} 12:09, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh yes B5 and BSG have their (sometimes major) problems. Both of them have a knack for dumb storylines, like most of the standalone B5 eps and the endless love polygons on BSG, but at least they had some forward momentum with their plots. SG-1 just keeps returning to the status quo at the end of every episode. It feels like I'm watching a bad sitcom sometimes. Don't get me wrong; occasionally there are some excellent episodes, but it feels like most of the time they just keep recycling plots with minor tweaks. I dunno. Maybe episodic stuff isn't my cup o' tea. Cow...Hammer^time! 14:35, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

You all fail. SG-1 is the best television show ever made. Having said that, the first season is largely atrocious, it picks up and gets particularly good around season 3-5 (I can't remember), and stays good throughout. Of course it has its occasional spotty episodes throughout, but what series doesn't? A slight drop-off when it becomes SG-1 part 2 with the Farscape guy and gal taking over, but it's still enjoyable even then. I do recognize that it might not be your thing, but in terms of good "campy" scifi, nothing beats it. LiberalOfAnUnknownVariant (talk) 01:51, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

What's this? A discussion about Stargate SG-1? Awesome! wait, let me just go slam my nuts into a hay baler. Ace^{The Rep Grows Bigger} 02:06, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

(I can't resist:) Ace, kree! LiberalOfAnUnknownVariant (talk) 02:11, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I honestly can't remember watching much of SG-1, maybe the first few seasons. That said, I really enjoyed SG-U. SG Atlantis, however, stank like the black stuff between dead people's toes. --PsyGremlin^{話しなさい} 14:52, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

International Travel

I have a dumb question that I'm failing to google, and many of you are well traveled. I have a chance to take a trip to Nates, Tunisia from France. The ad stating the offer says "dar HI • Nefta Tunisia, France" (dar hi is the hotel), but I don't get why Nefta Tunisie is listed as "France". The reason it matters is Visas. If i leave from Paris to a protectorate of France, I don't think I'd need a special Visa. But if it's independent, I assume I'd need a US Visa to visit there. (I've never been outside of the EU, so don't really knwo much about visas, cept you usually need them). living social ad. Husband knows he can travel on an EU passport without problem, but neither of us knwos about a US passport. --GodotIz a sekret Kristian 16:05, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, you've just confuddled my understanding of everything. I was under the assumption that providing you did it for "pleasure" (whatever you may mean by that) you just needed the passport and visas were only for working, which was more about letting you back in than it was about letting you out of the country. ^narchist 17:04, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Doesn't the US equivilent of the foreign office have such information? Or Tunisia's tourist board? AMassiveGay (talk) 17:18, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

That is the case with the eu, and for a limited time. (I think it's 3 months, but I've not looked into it, since as a spouse, i don't have that issue). But many countries require you get a special Visa, no matter how long you go. I'm not sure which countries, other than Russia, cause like i said, I havn't traveled outside of the EU before. So, following Massive's advice, I guess an internet "trip" to the State Dept is in order. --GodotIz a sekret Kristian 17:21, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

OK, quickly because I have to go out. You should check with the country of destination under what circumstances you will be allowed to enter and what paperwork you need (might include a visa, but people also get caught out by requirements for e.g. at least six months left on a passport or by the need for a letter of invitation or a printed hotel reservation and by proof of vaccination). Make sure to think about exactly what you will be doing. A "tourist visit" in which you also have a job interview, or appear on stage as a "special guest" or make a deal to buy something for your company can get you imprisoned for violating immigration rules and your own country will not bust you out. It is much better to ask, get turned down and not go, than to not ask, get arrested and spend months or years in a foreign jail where you have few rights (remember you're not a citizen).

You should also check with your country of origin, and with any country where you're a citizen or permanently resident in case there's a problem with visiting the country or specific area you're thinking of. That's also the point where somebody might warn you that e.g. the cheap foozles everybody will try to sell you are illegal to bring back and you'll go to jail if you're caught, or that your health insurance probably excludes that country for whatever crazy reason.

As evidenced above, people from the UK and US in particular get used to being treated as special, breezing through immigration checks because their rich and powerful nations have negotiated special deals for tourists and sometimes business people. But those deals can go sour at any time, they don't apply everywhere in the world and they're often narrowly drafted. So please, on behalf of your poor representatives abroad, check before you set out. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 17:41, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

The U.S. State Department has this info readily online for all countries. Tunisia link here. The important bits are:

"ENTRY/EXIT REQUIREMENTS: A passport is required. For U.S. passport holders, a visa is not necessary for stays of up to four months; however, a residence permit is needed for longer stays. The residence permit can be obtained from the central police station of the district of residence. U.S. citizens born in the Middle East or with Arabic names have experienced delays in clearing immigration upon arrival. U.S. citizens of Tunisian origin are expected to enter and exit Tunisia on their Tunisian passports. If a Tunisian-American succeeds in entering using a U.S. passport, he or she will still have to present a Tunisian passport to exit the country."

I gather the stuff about having an Arabic name or Tunisian passport likely doesn't apply in your case, but include it here for completeness. HTH, HAND, TTFN. Doctor Dark (talk) 17:51, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ OK. I've got a bit of knowledge of visas and whatnot, but I'm utterly confused by the OP, so I need some clarification:

• What citizenship do you and your partner hold?
• Do you normally reside in France, or are you visiting there? If you are visiting, where do you normally reside?
• How long will you be in Tunisia, and will you be returning to France, or traveling on a third country?
• Why are you visiting and for how long? (tourism/social visit, work, study?) -- 12:32, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

We have legal residence in both countries, because he maintains a home there for his mother, and by French law, that makes him a legal resident for tax reasons, even though he is a legal resident in the US as far as time spent in country. We live in France for 3-5 months to care for her, and will be leaving from and returning to France. he's French and US citizen, I hold a US passport only (I've filed for my citizenship, but it takes a while). the trip is just for a weekend, at a hotel in a package set up by the hotel itself, targeted at Frenchies. But I googled thanks to Massive's suggestion, and found that as long as I'm only going for a short stay, I do not need any special dispensation - other than the approval of my husband to leave the country. ;-) GodotIz a sekret Kristian 15:04, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Yep, no visa required for either of you. Enjoy Tunisia, beautiful place :) -- 11:03, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Objectivism

Following Ryan's nomination there's likely to be more people looking for information on objectivism. RW's article comes up 24th on a Google search I did, which is off the first page but still fairly high. The article is OK but not stellar so it might be a good idea to polish it up.

Our article on Ayn Rand comes in much lower on a search but people who come to our objectivism article might follow the link there, so cleaning up that one could also be worthwhile. Doctor Dark (talk) 00:04, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Have you seen this?

http://www.facebook.com/AtheistGamer

Inquisitor Sasha Ehrenstein des Sturmkrieg Sector 01:56, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Facebook? Yeah, I've heard of that dump. --2.34.113.53 (talk) 06:50, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Isn't that where all the MySpace users flocked too after realising MySpace was shit? ^{d hominem} 10:37, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

That reminded me to have a look at what was going on on my Diaspora profile... nothing was. --PsyGremlin^Sprich! 11:08, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Nuclear security, top of the line, completely impenetrable, except by 82 y.o. nuns

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mia-steinle/nuclear-weapons-activist_b_1720691.html I have nothing else to say. I hope that the article is a mischaracterization, and that the nuns didn't actually bypass any significant portion of the security. I hope. I post this to make you all as "depressed" and "frightened" as I am.

They just cut the fences and put up a banner. They didn't enter any of the buildings. --Tweenk (talk) 02:17, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

As I said, I don't know much of their "security" was bypassed. Perhaps it's all back loaded in heavily fortified bunkers? Perhaps. At this point, doesn't seem to be much stopping someone pulling up a truck, planting an explosive charge to gain entry, and potentially make off with WEAPONS GRADE URANIUM. Then again, as you implied, perhaps most of the security had not been violated. LiberalOfAnUnknownVariant (talk) 02:34, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

The protesters probably did manage to get pretty close to the actual storage facilities. It was a serious breach of security. But actually stealing uranium would be a bit more difficult. First of all, these protesters got through, but many get arrested at the perimeter of nuclear facilities. For a protester, being caught trying to get in is still a win, particularly if accompanied by photos of an 82 year old nun being handcuffed. For someone actually trying to steal uranium, being caught at the perimeter would be disastrous, not just for them, but for their backers. Protesters can just keep trying until they eventually succeed. A Goldfinger-type criminal doesn't have that option. Second, despite what you may see in the movies, breaching a wall with explosives without blowing up a) yourself or b) the stuff on the other side of the wall you want to get isn't actually all that easy. Third, while lax guards might miss nuns clipping a fence and spray-painting a wall, they aren't likely to miss an armed assault. The thieves wouldn't just have to get in they'd need to get back out. And that means fighting their way past not just the guys in security guard outfits with pistols, but Quick Reaction Teams with body armor, automatic weapons, specialized training, and homefield advantage. Fourth, after the alarm sounds and a guard calls in a report of an armed assault and attempted theft of uranium, you'd probably get every cop and armed federal agent in a 100-mile radius converging on the site. And BTW, the Posse Comitatus Act forbids the U.S. military from engaging in law enforcement activities on U.S. soil - except in cases where nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons are involved. I think stealing weapons grade uranium would make the cut. There's a reason you never see this sort of attempted theft in real life. A somewhat more realistic concern would be terrorists breaching the facility not to steal the uranium, but to blow it up on site, creating a make-shift dirty bomb. Even that would be pretty unlikely - but not impossible.209.188.39.67 (talk) 03:29, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Journalists do like to big up security breaches. There's a story from ages ago where one managed to "smuggle" a slice of cake into various places like the houses of parliament and on board an aeroplane "But this cake could have been a bomb!!". Yeah yeah yeah. Let me know when you've managed to smuggle an actual explosive device into those places, or gone collecting materials for explosives. You know, the things that flag up suspicion. Violating outer security of anywhere is a piece of piss. Physically, the boundaries are too big to make into a fortress and a) be cost effective and b) being unobtrusive to legitimate visitors and workers. But breaking through the tighter and more secure areas where it actually matters? Different story. Flag it up as a "serious breach" when someone manages that. ^{d hominem} 11:04, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm still waiting for a journalist trying to smuggle a fake bomb onto a plane to be shot dead by airport security. That'll learn em AMassiveGay (talk) 16:58, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

"A somewhat more realistic concern would be terrorists breaching the facility not to steal the uranium, but to blow it up on site, creating a make-shift dirty bomb" - U.S. does not have any HEU bombs anymore, all have been downblended to nuclear fuel a long time ago. The remaining weapons are all plutonium-based. Pure plutonium, just like weapons-grade uranium, is weakly radioactive and basically useless for a dirty bomb. Blowing up a plutonium warehouse wouldn't kill anybody through radiation poisoning, and the long term effect would be equivalent to localized heavy metal contamination. --Tweenk (talk) 00:16, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Happy days for chelation therapists, though. ^sshole 00:18, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

It's Sexy A-Levels time

The "official" tumblr isn't continuing any more, for various reasons. But the Daily Mail is there with plenty of pretty white girls jumping in the air holding their results, for all your pretty white girls jumping in the air holding their results needs. ^moral 11:07, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Why did you have to make me click on that link? Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 11:50, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Because you're a sucker for a bit of Aryan HOPA? ^pathetic 12:20, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Hey now. there were 2 indian girls and one asian girl in those pics! So it's not *all* white! --GodotIz a sekret Kristian 14:58, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

But they were the twins, so they only count as 1. ^theist 18:16, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

That Tumblr "bye bye" is all over the place, maybe the concept was too. As observable phenomenon this works. It's true, this happens and (like many things in newspapers) it looks ridiculous if you stare at it too long. But the analysis kind of falls apart. Most of what's initially striking about the subject matter is a demographic inevitability. White teenagers. Yep, that's demographically your typical A-level student. So that leaves the fact that they're predominantly girls rather than boys, and the jumping.

Let's address the jumping first. It's a cheap way to portray emotion. Bob, with his $500 camera and no talent can say "Jump!" and get a shot that says "These people are happy that X happened". You might think smiling is easier. Go back and look at your family photos. Is smiling easy? No, it tends to look forced when frozen into a single frame. So best focus on the jumping.

That leaves the fact that they're mostly girls. Two things are going on there that have nothing to do with the media and its consumers. Firstly, the highest achievers usually are girls. That's on top of girls tending (though not this year) to do better overall. Newspapers don't want to show you a class of sixty teenagers who got better-than-average results, that isn't news. Next the best A-level results in the country used to come from a school near the one I went to, a private boarding school with difficult entrance examinations, high fees and high expectations. The photographers would be crazy not to go there for a photo opportunity, and if they go there they absolutely will get a picture of girls because the school has no boys whatsoever. That school isn't an anomaly, it's actually fairly typical for single sex schools to have high achievers, for whatever reason.

And so finally we're down to the potentially "skeezy" bit. Why do girls predominate even more than the above would suggest? And that comes down to the same reason why there are women on the covers of most of the magazines in my local store. "Company" (a magazine roughly aimed at young women) has a woman on the cover because its readers want to look like her. "Nuts" (a magazine aimed at young men) has a woman on the cover because its readers find women sexually attractive. "Modern Railways" magazine features a picture of a train, I guess because it's about railways. If there's something skeevy going on, it's pretty deeply embedded. But I'm not sure that "humans prefer to look at pictures of female humans" is skeevy unless we make it that way.

Overall I think that tumblr page made the right call. It's funny enough to work as a #hashtag but there's just not much really going on there. The Daily Mail are in fact a bunch of a dirty old men, but this just isn't as good an example of that as it first appears. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 09:21, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

The Daily Mash weigh in... rpeh •T•C•E• 09:45, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

ACHIEVEMENT GET!

"Convinced your anti-vaxxer, anti-'Big Pharma' forum groupie wife to get the kids their MMR shots by using reason and sound argumentation." The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 19:21, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

So how many points does that get you? ^narchist 19:30, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Like -250, but the kids are vaccinated, so it's a wash. The Foxhole Atheist (talk) 20:47, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Get your ass to Mars, the reality show

Here you go, complete with FAQ.^{{{WP talk}}} I have a friend who thinks this could be a real deal, promoted by capable credible people. I do not believe he understands the scale of a remotely undertaken planet-sized terraforming project. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 22:51, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I believe this got WIGO:Clogged before. I haven't laughed so hard at such a serious video in a long time.

EDIT: Crap, they cut out the makeshift space suit clip from the beginning and only left it at the end. The original should still be on YouTube though. Osaka Sun (talk) 23:01, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. I missed the WIGO, and couldn't be asked to search for it. The four minute video that's up now is enough for me, I think. My friend mentioned a twenty minute show; not sure I've got the patience for that. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 23:17, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Can't find anything twenty minutes, but just watch the first few seconds. Osaka Sun (talk) 23:23, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Left to die on a desert planet together with a bunch of strangers... yep, sounds exciting. --2.34.113.53 (talk) 23:31, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Every astronaut would need to have the patience and sciencegasms of Carl Sagan while looking out a window for the rest of your existence. Anyone want to go on a one-way trip? Osaka Sun (talk) 00:11, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

So, assume it happens, how long before they start turning on each other and you get the first murder/execution? ^postate 00:39, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Vote time. Osaka Sun (talk) 00:45, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

[ec] Brings a whole new meaning to "the pope's nose." It will be interesting to see how much can be mulcted from the audience before the pitch collapses. I think that's the most we can expect.

People have made one-way trips before, just not to almost airless pebble fields on planets without accessible water. When one of the blivets on your pee recycler reverse osmosis drinking fountain needs replacing, good luck knapping one from local stock. __ Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 01:05, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Who can commit the resources necessary for that? If the GOP threw a fit, the Mars expedition would be left to starve. --TheLateGatsby (talk) 03:28, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

It's all in the FAQ. Private enterprise needs no government involvement; they only need enough viewers for the "media spectacle" to fund rides with SpaceX. For the next twenty years and beyond... who wouldn't jump at a chance to have their continued survival depend on the success of a reality show? Oh, and you get to have your every moment televised back to Earth, so the fans know who to support with their "donations." More humane to sedate the ones pushed out the air lock, but not so much fun to watch... There is also the merchandise; I for one, want to see my grandchildren wearing Mars Colony dribble bibs. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 11:52, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Big Brother on another planet? Only if the producers join them. ^theist 12:27, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Evowiki

So, I'm new here, and I heard that Evowiki belongs to the Rationalwiki foundation and that content was being moved. Is there a to do list or anything that I can do to help? ^{— Unsigned, by: Peasant86 / talk / contribs}

See, now you'll get responses much quicker from the angry drunks. Ace^{The Rep Grows Bigger} 23:41, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

There's no real coherent effort so far because Evowiki's articles are formatted very differently. They're very much claim-counterclaim style will bullet points, which is difficult to copy over directly. This makes converting them to RW articles quite difficult. But the references and points are there, and are useful. So really the way forward is to figure out how to get them in to the "RW style" and then go about making the list of things to do. ^theist 23:53, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I gotcha. I'm guessing that is why I don't see too many side by side refutation articles on here anymore? I know they have a list of creationist arguments. That might be useful, but only if we can move it over properly like you said. Is the content on Evowiki that has been moved deleted or is there a move list? P3A58NT86 00:09, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't think anything on Evowiki has been deleted. I think the format is very good and the information very useful, so I'd be loathed to remove it. But since the impetus to maintain and expand it has ran dry amongst its former editors, it's not really going to do anything apart from sit there as an archive. I really don't know EW's content as well as I do RW's, so I don't know as much about what is there to move. However, what I think you can do if you're keen, is find something on EvoWiki that looks as if it could stand as a full article, and copy it into your userspace, e.g., User:Peasant86/evowiki_article1 and then re-work it. For instance, I just clicked "random page" on EvoWiki and found this, which could either go in its own article or be inserted as a sub-section here. Stuff like this however, should be indicative of the problems we have in porting things across, because that rigid format doesn't work too well, there are only a couple of lines worth taking and I couldn't tell you where to put them without doing some serious thinking. ^{d hominem} 11:42, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'll do a little bit, but I don't exactly have as much time as I would like to have with school starting up so... I'll try my best to work on something. Thanks for the help. P3A58NT86 14:44, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Popular Atlas

Ayn Rand: Why is she so popular? Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 14:42, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

"Atlas Shrugged" is a really great, evocative phrase and title and I'm really pissed off that it is permanently linked to both Ayn Rand and the book she used it for. X Stickman (talk) 17:40, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Because FREEDOM. Why do you hate wealth-creators?! USA!!! USA!!! USA!!! -- 20:06, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, anyone calling the BBC lefty biased should read this. Only a small reference to her love of Social Security at the bottom, no mention of Hickman, and multiple quotes from Randroids repeating "rational self-interest" over and over again. Osaka Sun (talk) 20:15, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

"Why is she so popular?" Because she offers a convenient rationalization for being an asshole couched in snazzy pseudo-intellectual rhetoric? It's not that difficult to figure out, people. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 03:26, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Star Talk: guest Nichelle Nichols

This weeks Star Talk with Degrasse Tyson has Star Trec's Nichelle Nichols as the guest. They talk, among other things, about the lack of "black faces in the control room", and what she did and continues to do about it. Apparently, she personally recruited Charles F. Bolden, Jr., (now head of NASA). great show, lots to think about. nichelle on Star Talk--GodotIz a sekret Kristian 03:34, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

People who have not watched any of the Olympics

The second goal of the women's Gold medal round football doesn't count as I was comparing TVs at cosco, soitenly less than ten minutes. C®ackeЯ 21:56, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

I watched some, it managed to brush aside my usual disinterest in sport almost eradicated my cynicism. Thankfully, the closing ceremony brought it back. ^gnostic 22:46, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Why would anyone want to watch them? Тy^{Not updated with a witty slogan this week} 22:48, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Didn't intentionally watch any, but my new housemate insists on telling me who has won medals (people I've never heard of) & making me watch bits of footage, even though I've told him I have no interest in watching sport. Wéáśéĺóíď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 23:02, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Jeez you people are dense. Look on the bright side of life. Osaka Sun (talk) 23:35, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

But that was three hours of my life I won't get back! I'm so pleased I wasn't playing the "drink every time it's shit" rules. ^sshole 23:46, 12 August 2012 (UTC)

Blast it, my stream cut out just before the Rio preview, and I wasn't able to find another working one until the IOC President was in the middle of his speech. That was the part I wanted to see the most! I mean, it's Rio, if there's one thing they know how to do it's host a party. Now I have to watch it on NBC's time delay. Glorious. --CoyoteSans (talk) 00:04, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

I got up at 4am local time and watched the entire opening ceremony live on Taiwanese TV. Acccording to what I read in the paper afterwards, there were commercial breaks during all the best bits, so I missed them. I went back to bed for two hours when it finished at 8am but still felt woozy for the rest of the day. That was OK though, because it was a Saturday.

I got up at 4am again and saw the first eleven minutes of the closing ceremony, until the first commercial break. I then decided it waould be one thing to spend the wee small hours of a Saturday morning watching the Pet Shop Boys miming and a load of people pratting about with paper bags on their heads, it's quite another thing on Monday when you've got to go to work. So, I went back to bed.--Spud (talk) 12:27, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Commercial breaks? You should live in a civilised country that has socialised TV. Ajkgordon (talk) 18:53, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Romney's tax returns, is this serious?

California GOP pro-lifer believes Mittens is hiding profits made from Bain shares in Stericycle, a medical waste company that includes fetus disposal.

My reaction, but... Osaka Sun (talk) 06:39, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

And Obama is suppose to be worried about the GOP when its fracturing like this? --142.179.61.66 (talk) 07:10, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

It's funny, but it won't matter. They'll vote for him come Fall. Strategic voting and all that.--TheLateGatsby (talk) 14:20, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Thats a big assumption, one that not even Romney's campaign is making. Too many Tea Party nutters to vote for over Mitt. --Revolverman (talk) 01:35, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Normally I would agree with Gatsby on this; the hard right's visceral hatred of Obama will make them turn out for Romney in the end. But the choice of Ryan for VP makes no damn sense whatsoever unless Romney is worried about his right flank. Doctor Dark (talk) 02:15, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

This past Primary season was about the future of the GOP -- with the Christian Right losing it's influence. Ryan, at 42, represents the future of the GOP. There was a time late last year after the GOP went through so many flavor-of-the-month candidates and Romney still lacked support party big wigs tried to talk Ryan into launching a late bid. Even Obama says Ryan is the ideological face of the new GOP. Obama claims his own views are 180 degrees in reverse of Ryan's. All Ryan needs to do is pitch free market capitalism and we will take Obama at his word. nobs^{Corporations are people, too} 19:26, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Daily Heil lives up to its name

Mein Fuhrer, I can Twitter! Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 08:14, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Remember Mike Godwin's reminder that there are certain (limited) windows where you can Hitler bash all you'd like? Thanks Daily Heil, you've just given it to us. Osaka Sun (talk) 09:00, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

A few months ago, the boss at my language school suggested putting an inspirational phrase like "Early to bed, early to rise.." or "Hard work pays off" on the bulletin board each week. I suggested "Work sets you free" and he said, "Yes, that's a good idea." I suppose that means I'm guilty of Godwinism in the off-line world.--Spud (talk) 11:34, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

That's not the problem, really (it's a feel-good quote that got manipulated similar to the swastika). What would be disturbing is to openly acknowledge it became noteworthy due to Auschwitz and say "Oh, I think the Nazis had a point there," which is what the DM just did. Osaka Sun (talk) 11:49, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

As it was hung up there for the irony, the Nazi's had a point - the point of being ironic. (Keep in mind that this is a country were the most spread pig pet's name is "schnitzel") Weirdly though, the original theologians that wrote it in 1849, in the context of work making you independent and otherwise free, now they had a point. --K. (talk) 23:31, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm Sorry

I would like to apologise for everything I have ever done. It was mean and I feel genuine remorse. I've recently converted to Buddhism and I've changed most of my petty and aggressive behaviour. I have found a new inner calm. Please accept my full apologies. I hope that you will forgive me and that we can move on together, in mutual harmony. You are all very special to me, and I'm sorry. MC.

Theory of Practice "Trampoline" is an Olympic sport now? 20:30, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Buddhism is for fags. Real men worship Shiva. Aceⁱ⁹ 20:49, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

This Shiva? 99.235.129.26 (talk) 21:13, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm still writing that novel though.

You've been working on that novel for quite some time now. Theory of Practice "Trampoline" is an Olympic sport now? 00:31, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

They take time to write, you know? ħuman 04:50, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

If it takes me 50 years, so be it. A great novel is great precisely because it wasn't rushed. MC.

Are you going to win the Novel Price? --2.34.113.53 (talk) 18:47, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Spam/Trolling account attack.

Anything we can do about this? --Revolverman (talk) 03:18, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh, wow... I can just imagine this dude shrieking as he types those names. --TheLateGatsby (talk) 04:18, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Joy. Another lifeless moron. Тy^{Not updated with a witty slogan this week} 04:20, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Is there a way to pick mass-hide troll usernames? Doing this one at a time is quite a chore. --Tweenk (talk) 04:23, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Scrubbed. Lord knows if he'll be back though. --Revolverman (talk) 04:24, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Pretty sure it was JamesWilson from CP. Here's his last edit over there. Ten minutes or so later we get hit. Someone did troll for him, in fairness. It is bad form to poke the mentally disturbed. C®ackeЯ 08:49, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Is there a doctorb (or a pharmacist) in the house?

Hurt my back. Doc put me on ibuprofen, 800 mg/3x a day. Did my first dose this afternoon, got super sleepy. Am wondering if the drowsiness is a possible side effect, or if it was more likely just because I haven't slept much lately, what with the back pain. Theory of Practice "Trampoline" is an Olympic sport now? 01:44, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I know nothing about medicine, but i take 600mg regularly for my knees and never have gotten sleepy. I'm guessing it was more the drain on your body, trying to heal.--GodotIz a sekret Kristian 01:48, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Damned if I know, but looking on the internet I see ibuprofen is associated with "vanishing bile duct syndromd." From this I learned that you should never look at drug side effects. --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 02:03, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Mayo Clinic sez sleepiness is a "rare" side effect of ibuprofen.[7] So maybe you're one of the lucky few. (Oh, and I'm not that kind of doctor in case you were wondering.) Doctor Dark (talk) 02:51, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

ToP, get a doctor to write a script for wp:oxycodone. You'll be a junkie in no time, all regulated by government and at government expense, while helping Big Pharma make obscene profits. That's how science helps treat common ailments in America today. nobs^{Corporations are people, too} 19:13, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Ibuprofen is a stock standard anti-inflammatory and plain killer comparable to aspirin. It should really make you feel anything, least of all sleepy. Aceⁱ⁹ 20:48, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Maybe a little dizzy. But if you haven't slept because of the pain then your body will have jumped at the chance to catch up. Генгис^{RationalWiki GOLD member} 22:49, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

By shocking coincidence, I can confirm this. Wakeful with ankle pain of unknown origin last night, and finally gimped my way to the medicine shelf for the giant jar of ibuprofen, to swallow a 600 mg handful then head back under the covers. Overslept by about four hours in sweet relief. We both gain our daily gruel and whey with repetitive motion, hence the giant jar. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 16:55, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Obama as Grover Cleveland 2.0

The latest wingnut conspiracy theory. Get it while it's hot! Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 03:24, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

So that would also mean Obama would be a libertarian, then. Osaka Sun (talk) 03:26, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Maybe he'll grow a mustache too. That would be kinda badass. But yeah, I think it's Clinton's turn in 2016. Sam ^Tally-ho! 03:33, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Clinton will be 68 in 2016; I don't see that happening. That's Reagan old. Theory of Practice "Trampoline" is an Olympic sport now? 03:51, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

McCain would have been 72. With the ever increasing lifespan (and politicians probably live longer than regular citizens), it wouldn't surprise me if she were up to the task at 68. Sam ^Tally-ho! 03:58, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

McCain lost, so who gives a shit. Yes, lifespan and active years are rapidly increasing. But working an 16-hour-a-day, seven day a week job will not help most people contribute to that trend. She will not run in 2016. Theory of Practice "Trampoline" is an Olympic sport now? 04:19, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Richard Nixon was last person to loose a bid for the U.S. Presidency and stage a comeback. Generally speaking, loosers are dead (not in the literal sense) meat. Oh, and ToP, What would you know about life expectancy in the U.S.? According to the Wikipedia, life expectancy in your third world paradise is 48 years. North Korea has you beat with 67 years. Get your priorities in your own house straight first, and spare us your wisdom on matters you clearly have no understanding of. nobs^{Corporations are people, too} 22:17, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

^{That is interesting, but what does that have to do with the price of fish?} --Mikal ^{Harass Follow} 22:26, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

"The Wikipedia" Rob? --142.179.61.66 (talk) 22:33, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

"The Wikipedia" is a common joke. I'm trying to figure out what Third-World Nation ToP is from.... TheLateGatsby (talk) 00:30, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

It is a nation that counts students as being employed. No wonder it's third world. nobs^{Corporations are people, too} 00:42, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Somalia according to the life expectancy list Rob provided. the conservative wet dreamland of minimal gubmint, 100% belief in god and shitloads of guns. Sophie^Wilder 17:15, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

math meme

This is going around facebook, and I'm shocked how many people cannot answer it. What is the total of (all basic math, by the way) 6 - 1 x 0 + 2 ÷ 2 = _____. GodotIz a sekret Kristian 19:15, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, it's not difficult, but that sort of thing is mostly for computer code which must accept linear structures. If you want to make it more human-readable and remove all ambiguity, you bloody well don't format your expressions like that unless you're an idiot. ^narchist 19:34, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I have to admit that I failed that the first time. I forgot to treat 6-1 as 6+(-1) and so I ended up subtracting 2/2 rather than adding it. Was quite embarrassed when I realized it.Reflections of Memory (talk) 19:38, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I'll accept almost anything as an answer to this. Anyone who disagrees can read this cartoon. rpeh •T•C•E• 19:43, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Didn't your math teachers taught you to 'scan' the term beforehand? I remember doing pages and pages of this crap. --K. (talk) 19:48, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Me too, and if I had ever forgotten, the Professor Layton games quickly reminded me. --CoyoteSans (talk) 20:03, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

If there is one thing a student who doesn't do a mathematics-based degree remembers, it's BEDMAS. Osaka Sun (talk) 19:52, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

There is a special circle in hELL - curiously not mentioned by Dante - which is reserved for coders who use order of precedence rather than brackets. Clever bastards are not clever. Bad Faith (talk) 19:57, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

A friend of mine back in my university days used "a[c++]=c++" as his password as an example of an expression that didn't have a defined result in the C standards at the time. It was back then I realised that people who wrote code like that deserved the death penalty. rpeh •T•C•E• 20:00, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I demand the right to write death penalty worthy code. I want expressions of the form "do() || die" to work. Write a smarter compiler that realises when I say "foo && foo->bar" that this particular and is not commutative. Working around limitations of machines isn't fun. --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 22:03, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

What are you talking about Jeeves? Commutativity being violated by the shortcut rule (in these idiomatic expressions from Perl and C respectively) has nothing to do with precedence. Bad Faith is objecting to people who write complicated expressions which would be (like the troll arithmetic question at the top) clarified by use of parentheses but they've chosen not to write the parentheses because it's always possible to not do so and the compiler doesn't care one way or the other. Their programs are correct but unreadable, which means they are jerks. The shortcut rule is something a competent programmer should know about if it's present in the language they're using, and it will be second nature to apply it so you're not a jerk if you use it idiomatically, in fact it's preferred and the resulting programs should be both correct and readable.

Rpeh's example is technically undefined (sequence point rule), not just difficult to read. In C the compiler is permitted to emit anything for undefined cases, and although deliberately extreme reactions (emitting code that plays Nethack in place of your original program) are no longer seen in the wild the legitimate optimisations permitted by this leniency in the standard can have extraordinary effects. People who write undefined code are playing with fire. Here is a concrete example:

int myfunction(int *pointer)
{
  int x= *pointer;
  if (pointer) {
    /* what this does isn't really important */
    return (x + 10) / 3;
  } else {
    return -1;
  }
}

Many modern compilers will elide the condition in this function. Yes, that will remove the pointer check. If you're not sure why, let that be a reminder to never write undefined code and not to make assumptions about why something isn't defined. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 06:25, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Hmm. You are dereferencing 'pointer' and then checking if it was not-NULL. If 'pointer' was NULL, on most modern operating systems, the program would have caused a segmentation violation from the deference. Unless you are assuming the compiler will move the dereferencing to inside the first branch of the if(). CS Miller (talk) 12:36, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Bzzzt. Dereferencing a null pointer is undefined. Regardless of what your operating system does here the compiler can prove to its satisfaction that by the time you reach the if-statement either the condition is true or else you have performed an undefined operation and it doesn't need to care what happens. This justifies optimising out the condition altogether and so real compilers genuinely will do that. You are correct that you might not see any impact from this in a simple program on a modern operating system (because it will crash instead), but the problem is that not all programs are simple and somebody has to write the operating system too (this is adapted from a real bug in the Linux kernel). 82.69.171.94 (talk) 00:46, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

If you're just not able to get past the idea that a null dereference will segfault and thus it doesn't matter what else happens, try

int add(int a, int b)
{
  if (a < 0) a = 0;
  if (b < 0) b = 0;
  if (a + b >= 0) {
    return a + b;
  } else {
    fprinf(stderr, "Fortunately I have detected the overflow, hooray\n");
    return 0;
  } 
}

No SIGSEGV here, just an integer overflow. If you execute add(INT_MAX, 1) then the result can be a negative integer, and that's with real world optimising C compilers not just in theory. Overflow operations on signed integers are undefined. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 01:19, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

I fear this may be too late

Too late for me, at least. Генгис^{RationalWiki GOLD member} 16:01, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Anti-wrinkle cream there may be, but anti-fat-bastard cream there is not. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 16:44, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Is anyone at all surprised they cracked baldness and erectile dysfunction before AIDS and cancer? I thought not. --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 17:03, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

The invisible hand of the market at work. Q0 (talk) 17:11, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Because baldness and ED are have the exact same rout cause amirite? Get off your high horses people. --Revolverman (talk) 18:03, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Your movie-fu is weak, old man. Also, what? --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 01:23, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Wait... wasn't the premise of Idiocracy the fact that scientists were too busy solving baldness and erectile dysfunction to worry about the declining IQ of the population? Given the tea party, I think that film is coming true. PsyGremlin^Sermā! 18:23, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Fuck Idiocracy! Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 18:27, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Politifact

Anyone ever use Politifact? It seems non partisan. Could be a good resource. Thoughts? P3A58NT86 19:17, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Standard horse-race truthiness. Unwilling to call a "lie" a "lie," bends over backwards to call not-lies that are too angry "lies." Hipocrite (talk) 20:12, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

The pants-on-fire section makes amusing, albeit sad, reading. ^pathetic 20:18, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

What Hip said. Remember something about them and Medicare(aid?) when they called something true a lie. Тy^{Not updated with a witty slogan this week} 20:25, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

They're a mixed bag. The Obameter and pants-on-fire is good, but they get things wrong at times ie. trying to call Jon Stewart false for going at Fox.

I believe we source FactCheck more. Osaka Sun (talk) 20:57, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Makes you wonder how this would look if the said stuff outright. --K. (talk) 21:24, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I think they either hold their extreme outrage back or just don't care. I guess you have to take some things they post with a grain of salt, but that is the same with others as well I suppose.P3A58NT86 22:05, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Factcheck is more serious (and boring) and a bit more comprehensive in its analyses. In general I've found that anything a politician says of mostly only half true half of the time and full on lies the other six-tenths of the time. C®ackeЯ 23:20, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Ditto on FactCheck. Sometimes goes into "Both sides do it!" territory. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 16:22, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Dieppe conspiracy

The Raid's 70th anniversary was two days ago. A new documentary on History was on suggesting that Churchill's intention for the raid was bullshit and that finding an Enigma machine for Turing and co. was the primary objective. Wikipedia is arguing on about it.

The worst thing was the host started peddling to veterans that what they did was worthless, making them tear up. Fucking asshole. Osaka Sun (talk) 02:08, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Considering that Code-breaking was one of the great edges the Allies had over the Nazis, I'm not quite sure how he was coming up with how this was useless. --Revolverman (talk) 02:36, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

It's called Dieppe "Uncovered." You can probably find it online. Osaka Sun (talk) 02:54, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Ya, I saw a little of it. Not sure. It least passes the test of not being completely counter to logic and/or reality. The theory anyway. --Revolverman (talk) 03:02, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

If you're going to invoke a secret rationale for something in WWII then Ultra is a really good candidate because we already know Ultra was kept secret successfully. The equivalent for a US raid would be saying it was linked to Manhattan. As with Ultra, decades later a lot has been published about Manhattan, but the secrecy at the time was sufficient that it's perfectly believable for some significant elements never to have been revealed. Overall this Dieppe idea seems unlikely, because it would have been such a gamble, but it's not impossible. We know smaller raids were carried out for intelligence gathering, e.g. attacking a coastal radar site to steal equipment for analysis and capture the operator for interrogation. This one would just have been much larger, and riskier. I guess I should read more about the theory. 82.69.171.94 (talk) 14:06, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

A lot of strange things were done for strategic reasons, like selectively ignoring some intelligence gathered by Ultra so that it wasn't blatantly obvious that Engima and Lorenz were cracked. And it's war on a massive scale, where this sort of thing happens. So indeed the theory isn't beyond implausible - it's certainly a better reason than what appears to be Churchill saying "well, we've got to do something, right?". ^{d hominem} 17:12, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Things, did I break any

Anything blow up during that run of archiving? I checked, but I might have missed something. πίτα (bot) 08:59, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

That cutting question (again)

There's a substantial article on the BBC website about male circumcision and the differences between the US and Europe.  Lily ^{Inspirate me.} 13:06, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

P.S. Names and jobs: "Marvin Wang ... has conducted hundreds of circumcisions".  Lily ^{Inspirate me.} 13:13, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

That's good, but "the anti-circumcision movement ... has 'mushroomed'" is better :) rpeh •T•C•E• 13:50, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Mainpage "revamp"

Would anyone object to an overhaul of the main page? In principle, it will look exactly the same, except responsive. I.e., it will render differently on mobile and tablet browsers. Now, there's nothing I can do, at the moment, about the overall mediawiki look (this does hinge on whether something like Athena gets bundled in with a MW update) to make editing more friendly, but those boxes on the front page can be rearranged based on screen-size and maybe even the WIGO layout can get an overhaul to make it mobile friendly. It'll be a bit of work, but it's something that I think needs to be done, because even if MediaWiki itself gets a mobile skin, so much of our templates are based on rigid table layouts.

Also, switching to a more fluid front-page layout also gives us scope for some more things that we can do with it. Those who see the site on large monitors may think the space goes underused. Those seeing it on handheld devices will clearly see it's practically unreadable. So, any ideas? ^moral 12:42, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I have no wiki-fu, but will happily cheer on anybody willing to make the place look better. I say, go for it and ignore the luddites. --PsyGremlin^{Поговорите!} 13:47, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Rocks and stones and sticks and animal skins are fine shelter. Why need we indoor, (what "door" again?), plumbing!? FIRE bad. C®ackeЯ 14:10, 16 August 2012 (UTC) Grunt.

If you look here you'll see the sort of thing I mean. Either view that page on a phone or in a normal browser, then make the window smaller. ^sshole 15:49, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Obviously, more can be done, but since I'm currently only working on a netbook with an intermediate 1024px resolution (christ-on-a-bike that used to be HIGH-RES!!) it's more difficult to see the flexibility required. ^postate 15:59, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Like so. ^sshole 16:33, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

asdfghjl; DO THIS, please if you can. I used to browse RW from my Kindle in class when I was having to endure Professor Awful and Professor Horrible, and I was unable to post because RW somehow did not agree with the mobile browser I had to use. ±KnightOfTL;DR^{yeah, well you fight like a cow!} 16:40, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Editing will still be a pain in the ass on mobiles. Ditto general posting/discussion unless we implement LQT for discussion pages. That fact isn't going to change any time soon, I believe. ^narchist 16:56, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Any little bit helps. Тy^{Not updated with a witty slogan this week} 17:00, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Anyway, I'm not entirely sure it would be possible to float things about exactly as shown on that illustration, but the principle is there. ^bomination 19:35, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

I support this. I access RW a fair bit from Blackberry and Atari, and both would benefit from a small screen friendly layout. -- 11:08, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I may as well do this properly. If you use RW a fair amount from a mobile device, what do you want to appear at the top? What is most important as a user to see there, and what do you not mind scrolling down for? The best approach to this sort of thing is to do it mobile-first, to get your core order in and then start playing about with bits and pieces and grouping and positioning them for larger displays. So, this is important from a technical perspective. ^gnostic 12:20, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Our most popular pages should be on the first page of a mobile's eye view - WIGO CP, saloon bar, best of RW (maybe random page, it's a fun little toy). Any gimmick that slows down loading time should be removed from the main page. Also, whatever gets done, do it to russianalwiki too. Sophie^Wilder 15:01, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Here is an initial mock-up of the containers responding. ^postate 18:07, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't really want to load this into the global CSS until it works, but it's a draft for resizing the MW sidebar for a mobile device. ^gnostic 19:16, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

The outline is there, but I'm nearly as far as I can go without modifying existing content, which would alter the page as it is now. The next step will be to apply the Twitter and Facebook links properly, probably in the top-right corner. ^postate 18:58, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Looks fine to me at 640x480. I like having the WIGO panel at the top. -- 16:08, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

I'd have to play about with the WIGO panel too, if I can get the icons to resize - not difficult, in principle - as I think on a phone they're still a bit small. But, I'll roll that into a mobile WIGO project for later. I have a few ideas, need to experiment. ^{d hominem} 16:30, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Right, it appears I can't touch the WIGOs themselves as they're held in tables, not divs. So unless I can get into the extension itself and overhaul pretty much everything - something I don't really have the experience to do - the dream of trying to convert WIGO into a responsive feed will have to go on the backburner. ^pathetic 17:06, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

What about the possibility of an app for mobile devices? Mind you, I do not have a technical background at all, so I don't know if that's practical or how hard it is to develop and get a company to buy off on it. That being said, you could charge a little for it which would also help in maintaining the wiki. Just a (possibly stupid) thought. Stick Boy (talk) 17:36, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

User:Π was going to make an app, but not sure whether that will get off the ground. An app would solve the editing issue as editing/posting from a mobile browser is painful, but an app still wouldn't solve the presentation issue that much of the site's content faces. ^{d hominem} 11:36, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Ecuador has some balls

Moved to Forum:Assange and Ecuador because it's fucking huge Sophie^Wilder 13:07, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

"Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan" anagrams into "My Ultimate Ayn Rand Porn."

That's all. Theory of Practice "Trampoline" is an Olympic sport now? 16:09, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

That.Is.Awesome! --PsyGremlin^{話しなさい} 16:20, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Fantastic. Did you come up with it yourself? This deserves to be popularized -- I think David Gerard knows some tricks that could help. Doctor Dark (talk) 16:41, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I did not.I am nowhere near that clever. Stolen from a friend's FB status. Theory of Practice "Trampoline" is an Olympic sport now? 17:04, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I normally recoil in horror when people say "you win 100 internets!" but whoever came up with that wins 100 internets. Sophie^Wilder 19:58, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I got it from some anti-teabag fb page (teabonics?) as an image, and turned it back into text. ħuman 04:51, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

That's awesome! --Andy Franklinson (talk) 14:37, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

ToP, Ken DeMyer's drivel makes more sense than what you spend your time on. nobs^{Corporations are people, too} 19:30, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Actually, Rob, if Ken had discovered something like this about his political opponents, he wouldn't do a simple "here's an amusing coincidence" post, as we have here. No, he'd say that it proves his opponents are terrible people, he would post it on both left and right mainpage, multiple talk pages - it would get its own article (probably 2 or 3) - basically he wouldn't shut up about it for a month. So, yeah, quite a difference. 18:07, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Aww, Rob is mad. Osaka Sun (talk) 19:56, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Not really; but somebody has to say Ken's magnum opus on Gay Bowel Syndrome is better researched and makes more sense than the trolling crap ToP comes with. Yes, that does make me mad. nobs^{Corporations are people, too} 20:00, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Anything that annoys Rob is good by me. Just go with "Mitt Romney Paul Ryan" and you get "I am unpretty or manly". rpeh •T•C•E• 20:13, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Or "A Monetary, Primly Nut", or "A Truly Minor Payment". rpeh •T•C•E• 20:18, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Oldie but goodie. "Ronald Wilson Reagan" is both "insane Anglo-warlord" and "No girls and no ERA law"--WickerGuy (talk) 03:18, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I fear for anyone who doesn't find this at least chuckle worthy. (And yes, Rob is definitely mad) Q0 (talk) 19:24, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

So ridicule and demonetization is the change of tone Americans were promised and voted for in 2008. IMO, you do the candidate a disservice stooping to this level. We'll see what transpires. Especially when a allow someone without a Green Card set the tone of debate. nobs^{Corporations are people, too} 21:41, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Rob seems to be seriously saying that the Candidacy for President is a position which should be exempt from ridicule. Has anyone else noticed that the place-holder presently in the GOP slot is a serial prevaricator, apparently without the ability to articulate the specifics of a consistent narrative?

I am reminded of the time when R. Milhous "Tricky Dicky from Yorba Linda" Nixon claimed the office of the presidency, as an institution, had to be guarded against frivolous demands for evidence. Yes, the same Nixon who soon afterwards resigned in disgrace. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 22:10, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

OK, so a bunch of trolls outside the United States shape U.S. Democratic party voters talking points with nonsense anagrams as above intended to obscure issues and debate, and trivializing the democratic process. Then, Americans who actually hold a vote, call the President by his birth name and are branded racist for doing so by these same outside trolls who know jackshit about American politics. The issue is now clarified. nobs^{Corporations are people, too} 20:48, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Rob's word salad is symptomatic of being alert and oriented times one. Sir, do you know where you are? Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 20:58, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Creationist infighting dispatches

On EN&V we have Why people laugh at Creationists but have a harder time refuting ID-ists, in which one of our articles is quoted (and four of Thunderf00t's videos are embedded). Comments are golden, of course. Peter ^{Rapidly running out of marmite} 03:05, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Spectacular performance from the Bottom Half, there. ^bomination 03:17, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

The first commenter seems to think RationalWiki=Wikipedia. Генгис^mutating 13:45, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Commenter 4 can't be the Bevets, can he? Sophie^Wilder 16:49, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm guessing yes, unless there are two of them. Peter ^{Rapidly running out of marmite} 04:30, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Dan Brown BS

Help! My friends and family are starting to take Dan Brown's work seriously!!! All intelligent discussions have ceased! I need angry drunk advice pronto. P3A58NT86 20:40, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

It depends what bits you're taking srsly. Jesus may have been married but given that the proof for his existence is... zero, the proof for his wife is... also zero. Does that help? rpeh •T•C•E• 20:53, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

The above is bad advice. Go to our Dan Brown article, and send them to Debunking Da Vinci. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 21:24, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Actually, if you accept that Jesus is real, (as a man, not a god; as some dude who taught some things and got his head chopped off for pissing the wrong people off, and thereby cutting their lovely little story off too early) he would HAVE HAD to have been married. by jewish law, a man is nuttin' if he hasn't married. Oh and there are some amazing mazes and such in France that have little or no current explination "ohh" "ahhhh. GodotIz a sekret Kristian 22:17, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Has mam'selle read Bruce Chilton's Rabbi Jesus by any chance? Not sure it would help Peasant's parents, not really counting as angry drunk advice, but it does set a plausible scene where a semi-skilled mamzer construction laborer becomes charismatic enough to find a following in Roman Palestine. I don't remember what it said about his relationship status. The book came recommended by a scholarly Roman Catholic friend, a good-hearted sane gentleman who happens to be the headmaster of a local secular secondary school. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 17:09, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Some things even woomeisters can't swallow

--Kels (talk) 22:13, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

"Legitimate Rape"

I'd like to think that following that moron Akin's latest case of foot-in-mouth disease, that will be the end of his career. Sadly, I doubt this will be the case. However, one has to ask - how can somebody so monumentally stupid as to say "the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down" gets in a position to run for office? Has nobody explained the birds and bees to this guy?

And for that matter... WTF is "legitimate rape" - is he essentially saying that if you fall pregnant then you weren't really raped? And his "I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist" is beneath contempt. What kind of punishment dos he think the woman who has to go through carrying an unwanted child to term is getting?

Argh. It's times like this I feel physically ill when confronted with such gross stupidity. --PsyGremlin^Sermā! 11:52, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, exactly! He's saying tha if a woman shows up at an abortion clinic (which under the law he wants to have in place can only do procedures on women who were raped), and says the fetus was the result of rape, then the woman clearly must be lying in order to get the abortion, since (according to Doofus), "legitimate rape" victims do not get pregnant! The upshot of this is he gets to call rape victims liars when they show up at abortion clinics! C®ackeЯ 23:09, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Not defending this argument, mind you, just speculating -- I'm guessing his idea of "legitimate rape" is something like "pull a knife on a complete stranger, drag her into a dark alley, etc" as opposed to "date rape". MDB ^{(the MD is for Maryland, the B is for Bear)} 12:13, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

In other words, "no" sometimes means "yes". Wẽãšẽĩõĩď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 12:23, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

The one good thing about this is that the reaction to his stupid comments has been universally negative. Even Romney has distanced himself from them. I'm sure somebody, somewhere will agree with Akin (let's see if Chuckarse weighs in) but such people are in a very small minority. rpeh •T•C•E• 12:38, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I added a link to Psy's post because I had to Google it. But it's hardly a surprise that the Ayn Rand porn collective had to distance themselves when there's an imminent election. However, I wouldn't be surprised if many hard-line anti-abortionists in the US fully agree that any fertilisation should be forced to carry full term, because, after all, the woman was probably asking for it in the first place. Fucking Jezebel sluts, the lot of them. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 13:19, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

He is a member of the United States House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Figures. larron^{sicut fur in nocte} 14:14, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

--PsyGremlin^{Поговорите!} 14:19, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ The real question is will it expand from "when the facts change, I change my argument," to "when the facts change, I change my position" - IE, will rape/incest abortions finally be taken off the table as something "serious" people are permitted to oppose. I suspect "no," is the answer. Hipocrite (talk) 14:17, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

You have to remember that these positions are mostly being taken by rich white men, who have no actual experience of rape, or its consequences (unless they were the ones doing the raping and family money covered it up). Living in such a fantasy world, it's easy for them to say things like a rape baby is a gift from God, that you WILL carry to term. --PsyGremlin^{말하십시오} 14:23, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

"Legitimate" is clearly referring to anal, as you can't get pregnant that way. Or perhaps rape that ends in murder, as that can't really end in pregnancy - and, after all, it's not like life matters to these people once it's out the birth canal so, go figure. ^theist 14:53, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

he has made the point, at least once, that "we need to insure a rape is really rape, and not just normal marital relations before we agree to an abortion". This very thing is why politics is different for me this year, than virtually any year in my adult life. I've never felt so dismissed as a human being before, in a political runup.GodotIz a sekret Kristian 15:55, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

When I read the article this morning I felt outraged. I was happy to see Psy already added a link and comments about this. Quote: "Asked if he would support abortions for women who have been raped, Akin said: "It seems to me first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." What an idiot. Refugee^{talk page} 16:04, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

It seems the "doctors" Akin was referring to are a bunch of quacks calling themselves "Physicians For Life." PZ has a good take-down of their bullshit. --PsyGremlin^Tal! 16:06, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

You know, despite growing up in a fundie household, in the middle of the bible belt, it never occurred to me until I read the article on Phyllis Schlafly here that people actually believed marital rape isn't rape. That literally sickens me. Q0 (talk) 17:23, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I cycle a lot on the idea that anyone who isn't me, has a right to tell me that I MUST carry to term, the DNA of someone who raped me. You were raped, trust me, it's terrifying, "legitimate" (in his sense) or not. To have to then nurish the man's baby, to the cost of your own sanity????? And the fact that it's men, who are generally never going to face rape (out of prison odds of being raped are quite low) much less get pregnant from being raped... it drives me to drink. GodotIz a sekret Kristian 17:33, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I would imagine you have a hard enough time being a sane and functional human after being raped in the first place. But to then be forced to carry the pregnancy and then raise the child, thinking about it every time you saw them? Such a torturous existance could only be solved through suicide. I'm not even a woman and I can't handle the thought. What has to be going through someone's mind to even suggest it? Q0 (talk) 19:20, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child. Not a single mention about how the woman is being punished. And in the case of rape it's not a "child", it's not even a "baby", it's a freaking zygote.  Lily ^{Inspirate me.} 19:30, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

As much as I'd loath to call for the public ass-raping of a politician, I do believe it may get a point across. ^gnostic 19:59, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

He is now appoligizing, saying among other things "I realize no rape is legitimate", fully missing the point. And I gotta say, you don't just say something that off the wall, in a "misspeak". it clearly is what you believe. the only misspeak is that you think you should have said it differently. I grow more and more of the mind that we need a law stating : "You may not vote on any law that you can never be regulated by". How can you take any law seriously if you immune from the consequences?GodotIz a sekret Kristian 01:13, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

At least with Ron Paul's "genuine" comment we can derive from context that he means rape v false accusations. I can give that sort of thing the benefit of a "misspoken". But when Akin then went out of his way to start stating things that go against biological fact, there's not much else the context can tell us. These single-word prefixes aside (which I think people focus far too much on as, really, they're throwaway remarks that mean nothing) Akin was endorsing some ridiculous quackery to justify his position. You can't really say you stumbled over your words there, the comments were pretty unambiguous. ^sshole 10:27, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Why haven't we created an article on this shitbag?

EDIT: Ok, stub is up. Osaka Sun (talk) 21:06, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

And I know no one is surprised at this, but it seems conservapedia is defending this asshole...seriously, they can't be real. If I click my heels together three times and take some bad acid will they make sense? 76.4.86.141 (talk) 03:34, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Take the acid. Osaka Sun (talk) 03:43, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

I've been listening to BBC Radio 5 Live via the Internet for the past two hours. No doubt they would have been running with this story of a crazy Yank and his pseudo-scientific ideas about women's anatomy, if George Galloway hadn't just said that rape sometimes isn't really rape.--Spud (talk) 10:39, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Secular News Daily gives a good overview of how Akin's views are hardly a lone voice.

"The importance of this view to the anti-choice movement cannot be overstated. If:

The only "legitimate rape" is forcible rape; and

It is virtually impossible to get pregnant from forcible rape due to unspecified "defenses"; then

Any woman who is pregnant was (obviously) not raped. Therefore,

There is no need for a rape exemption, but the forcible rape exemption shouldn’t result in any abortions anyway.

It also flags how this viewpoint actually presents a stumbling block for creationists.  Lily ^{Inspirate me.} 11:36, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Adding in the exceptions stops them looking like complete monsters - even these guys aren't that stupid. But if you add enough caveats and spin it just right, you can have your cake and eat it by not allowing for any actual exceptions, while maintaining the illusion that you're not a complete cuntbollock. Trouble with that plan, of course, is the significant number of people who can see through it. ^moral 13:05, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

There is a different reason to redefine rape. It says to someone who has been raped, "you don't know if you've been raped, till the legal system tells you, you have been". Some other writer put it "trust the system, not the woman". Studies show that by and large, very very few women are lying about being raped, even "date rape". Yet it is the single most common reaction I've seen to discussions of rape: most women will use it to get back at men! "When women stop lying about being raped, we'll take it more seriously". You'd think this was an MRA page. it was huffPo. Same problem (women being seen as a threat to - something), different clothes, over and over again.GodotIz a sekret Kristian 14:20, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

What these arseholes don't understand is that when a woman is raped, it's usually by a man who is much larger and stronger than she is, and/or he has a weapon. Fighting back and tightening up can result in serious and painful injuries especially if unlubricated, and may even be what the rapist wants as it gives him more of an excuse to beat her; so just as tourists are often told not to resist muggers in some countries, some women accept their fate and hope that it's all over PDQ. Then go to the police if they have the guts to see through all the examinations, both intimate and verbal; and if they're not on the pill they can take a 'morning after'. Although rapists can come from any particular political faction it's the general subjugation of women endorsed by these 'conservatives' which actually gives support to the rapist, so that we end up getting doubly fucked.  Lily ^{Inspirate me.} 16:02, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Which one said something along the lines of "you should just lie back and enjoy it"? Kinda sending mixed messages there, too. "Hey, you weren't really raped unless you resisted!" "Hey, why did you resist, you just made it worse?" *HEAD*DESK*HEAD*DESK*HEAD*DESK*HEAD*DESK*HEAD*DESK*HEAD*DESK*HEAD*DESK* ^sshole 17:17, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Oh look, I've managed to find everything that is wrong with everything in just a few sentences. ^theist 17:22, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

That is the most abusive use of statistics I've seen this week - and it's already Tuesday! Hipocrite (talk) 17:25, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

I looked up the quote Armondikov mentioned, it was Clayton Williams, in his 1990 campaign for Governor, who said about rape: "If it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it". So... if the person who was raped was his 6 year old daughter, or his mother, sister, or wife... would his advice still be the same? The reality of rape is not the fantasy of rape that some harbor. Rape is not only a sexual act, but a violent act of exerting power over a victim, and it can and does happen to women of all ages, including the very young (infants) the very old (90 year olds) women of all ages in between, and to men and boys. It is traumatic, painful, a violation both physically and emotionally, and carries a social stigma against the victim that it should not. Refugee^{talk page} 20:39, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Or, as the old ones are still the best:

An escaped convict breaks into a house and ties up the husband and his wife. He jumps on the wife and kisses her ear and neck slowly, then runs to the bathroom. The husband whispers to his wife "satisfy him, do what he wants or he'll kill us. I saw the way he kissed you... just be strong, I love you". The wife replies "he didn't kiss me, he whispered in my ear that he's gay, horny because he hasn't had any in ages, and looking for Vaseline. I told him it's in the bathroom. I love you too, be strong."

^bomination 09:51, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

No, seriously, it's okay

Because Rep Steve King has Never Heard of Anyone Getting Pregnant From Statutory Rape or Incest. So that's okay then. rpeh •T•C•E• 19:45, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

This is funny... then when you realise what they're saying, makes you feel really sad. rpeh •T•C•E• 19:58, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I shouldn't have read those links.. now I'm sooo disgusted by the stupidity. Refugee^{talk page} 20:48, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

Enraged, more like it. --Dumpling (talk) 16:00, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

DUMPLING SMASH! (sorry, we needed a bit of levity around here.) --PsyGremlin^Parlez! 16:09, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

RAWWWWR! (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ ︵ ┻━┻--Dumpling (talk) 03:55, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Hulk Dumpling sounds like a hungry kitten :) --PsyGremlin^Sprich! 12:45, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Damn RINOs!

You see "the writing on the wall"? You must be delusional! Todd Akin 4 Senate!!!!!! (infinite exclamation points to transmit sarcasm) --TheLateGatsby (talk) 12:28, 23 August 2012 (UTC)