Lightfoote, by your definition I've never worshipped anything or anyone. The gods I worship demand no such subjugation, nor do they receive any.

It's interesting to see that definition, though. I've been thinking a lot lately about exactly what I mean when I say 'worship', and having a hard time putting together the words to describe what I mean.

Airshowfan, as a Radical Pantheist, I disagree. You're buying into the idea, which I think comes mainly from Christianity, that what you "believe" or "believe in" is what defines your religion.

Even if atheists and pantheists believe the same things, they make profoundly different choices. The choice to worship, for example, is one I've never heard of an atheist making. The deliberate choice to personify and simplify the universe to make it a comprehensible Him or Her (or Them or even It) in order to worship is not a step atheists are generally comfortable with.

I reject all the following assumptions, which most Christians and atheists share: one must (or should) have the same beliefs all the time; what one believes IS one's religion; sentience is a prerequisite for being worthy of worship.

Natura, as I've said before, sola sufficit.

Lauren 107: "And now, ladies and gentlemen, for the fulfillment of all your thoughtful and critical blog-commenting needs, I present to you...the Lauren 100!"

*wild applause*

Well, that's what I do.

I agree with Lauren 100.

Nelson 91: I was in Houston in October, and the air conditioning was blasting everywhere. Living without AC in Houston...does not happen. Dying without AC in Houston, that's what it is. You can be sure that the hotel was air conditioned.

CrunchBird 92: Yeah, that's about what I figured.

LB, did you even read the comments here? What does "offer to cover up" mean? I can't watch the video, so if you can throw any light on exactly what she offered to do, we can discuss whether it made a credible difference, but AFAIK that information is not available.

Lauren O 76: But the girls wouldn't. They'd be trying to get their boys to stop ogling. Which is part of why dressing like that (when you KNOW all the other girls will not be) is rude as all get-out.

Lauren O 70: OK, I stand corrected on the White Party. Standards are falling everywhere! :-) The ballet, me too. The ballet is like a restaurant in my opinion; no one has a reasonable expectation of partying with similarly-dressed people.

______ 73: The fact that they contrast "athletic shorts" with "long shorts" is what led me to the conclusion that they're thinking of the short kind of athletic shorts. They don't want anything to show above, below, or between the students' clothing. Let me tell you, a guy's ass sticking out the top of his pants, covered only by a thin layer of cotton...or without the underwear, even showing a little bit of bun cleavage...is DAMNED distracting. I couldn't possibly learn anything in the presence of such a thing, and I bet most teenage girls couldn't either!

Arkizzle, yeah, I forgot that Hispanics are POC too. Same racist assumptions, same Concerned Parents Trying To Make Their Lives Better while actually buying into the racism themselves.

99% POC at that school. I can just guess at the undercurrents that led to this event. I have increasing sympathy for her, but I still think it's rude to the other students to show up at prom dressed like that.

Gloria 66: Heh. As a gay man, I must say that I'm rather fond of sausage parties!

Good thing I didn't wager, huh? :-)

Nelson 58: Well, I would react the same way, but I can't answer your question overall. After reading the dress code I would almost wager that her school is at least 80% African-American, and trying to push their students away from "urban" (read: stereotypically "black") ways of dressing. Probably it comes from a misguided effort to improve their respectability/employability or something.

I'm about as white as white people get, and as a consequence I never go outside in summer daylight without wearing a cap. At that school I'd have to (because "HEAD COVERING unacceptable," not "head covering may not be worn in the classroom" and some school admin would tell me I couldn't come in).

Lauren O 56: In broad terms I agree with you about the dress code. That said, however: She's spoiling everyone's fun by showing up in inappropriate clothes. The dress code aside, if she showed up in holey jeans and a t-shirt, I don't think she should get in either.

If they had a "Tight Pants and Titty Tops" dance, I think someone who showed up in the usual kind of prom dress should be turned away too. You don't get into a leather bar in NYC wearing sneakers, at the White Party wearing black or at the Black Party wearing white. And so on. It's the ambience that makes the event.

As for the athletic shorts...you've clearly never seen a guy's junk topple out of his athletic shorts, which doesn't happen with long shorts.

BardFinn 45: Hear, hear. You said it better and shorter than I did.

I didn't mention, but do agree, that had she been able to meet the requirements of the distributed dress code, she should have been admitted. The article doesn't say (of course) what "additional cover" she offered to provide. If it was something easily removable, I wouldn't have let her in either (since she'd just take it off right away.

If she'd been trying to get away with it, she'd've worn a sari or something over the whole thing, and unwrapped when she got inside. But she wanted to poke the school administration in the eye (and after reading their summer dress code I can't say I entirely blame her).

Antinous 50: No, of course not. But a restaurant is not a high school prom, either.

Wow. No shorts for girls, but boys can wear them? At a summer program? In TEXAS? And they ban CAPS?

OK, my comments stand, but now I understand why she was rebelling. Her high school administration are a bunch of sexist, fascist asshats.

Arki': Wow Xoph', that's a pretty hard-liner approach you are taking there.

Not at all. A HARD line position would be that she should have been held overnight on a Solicitation charge. (No, I don't actually think that should have been done. Dressing in hooker drag is not the same as being a hooker.)

As has now been confirmed (I can't watch videos at work), she knew perfectly well that dressing that way would violate the dress code. If she was trying to make some kind of half-assed political point, she got her way, and should have no complaints.

If she made a fuss when told she wasn't going to be admitted, that would justify the management of the hotel asking her to leave. If she refused, that justifies calling the police. If she refused to leave when the police asked her to, that justifies cuffing her. Note it does NOT say she was arrested or charged.

As for "go to jail or go home," what other options COULD she have been offered? And at what point? If she had accepted their decision (not that it was one; they had to enforce the distributed dress code) from the outset, she certainly would have had the option to go to a restaurant with her date.

And she was NOT "handcuffed for wearing [a] skimpy prom dress." That wasn't a dress, for one thing, but more importantly there's no way that was why she was handcuffed.

In addition to all that: at a formal event, part of the fun is being among a whole lot of people who are all dressed formally. She was insisting not only on her right to ignore the rules, but to spoil everyone else's good time. She was being a "clothing troll."

Anyplace in red on that map is one I'll be avoiding. I burn like a lobster, and bright light hurts my eyes. Not surprisingly, I grew up in the light tan places.

I think the dress was clearly inappropriate. I think she either knew or should have known it would be considered inappropriate, and shouldn't get her money back.

I don't know what got her arrested. I doubt if just standing there quietly saying "I want my money back" would have done it.

I also notice that the article says "even after offering to provide more cover." What does that mean? It makes a difference if she said "OK, I'll go put on the waist-length jacket and floor-length skirt, which I left in the car in case of just such a reaction" or if she said "I'll stuff a hanky in my cleavage, OK bitch?!"

Teresa 16: You can add the Pagan community's "gatherings" to your list of customs with fannish DNA. Some of the protocols are different, because Pagan gatherings are generally held at a camp (or just a campground) rather than at a hotel, so some of the things hotels normally take care of have to be arranged. But the connection is clear: Judy Harrow (for decades the partner of Brian Burley, and HPS of a coven that has always had a high percentage of SF fans), was a strong influence on the very early days of Pagan gatherings in the US.

Long ago, she also loaned a brooch to her then-boyfriend to wear on his SCA garb. It was in the form of a stylized letter 'H' for Harrow, and had the appearance of a pair of knives.

Takuan 23: It's clearly better than Babbit. Fairly horrendous, but at least it has patterns.

Just thought of this: Babbit's music: Dodecacophony.

Wow, Tenn, that borders on abuse. "You can't sing" has to be the most common lie people tell children, and one of the most damaging.

TheGiantSnail 4: I was about to say that, but you beat me to it. Constructing a good tone row is WORK. And, in my own opinion, it's the mountains in labor to bring forth a mouse.

ScottFree 5: Come now, Partch's music may not be to your taste, but it's anything but random. And the 42-tone octaves are only for fixed-pitch instruments, because he used microtones; no one piece uses all 42, like some kind of serial music with a thyroid condition. His tunings were subtle, so the handmade fixed-pitch instruments had to have lots of options.

Emic 6: I used to like Luigi Dallapiccola quite a lot (but couldn't listen to it any more after years of Reich and Reilly and Glass and Adams). And Milton Babbit's work is like music in that it's written on a page with notes and staves and dynamics, and played by people who also work as musicians, but there the resemblance ends. Serializing all aspects of a composition doesn't give you music, it gives you cacophony. Babbit proved that, but that doesn't make the result worth listening to.

Tenn 12 (Fourteenn 16?), I'd be curious too. What I have heard is that more of us have the potential for perfect pitch than had previously been thought. Did you know that over 80% of native speakers of Chinese (a tone language) have perfect pitch? I'd like to see what happens when a child of European descent is raised speaking Chinese, but I doubt there are enough of those cases for a meaningful study—and a study which would only serve to disprove what I personally believe, which is that nearly everyone could have excellent (if not perfect) pitch if they were taught properly.

Takuan 14 (after writing the above and refreshing): That's absolutely fascinating. And it supports my theory.

FPB 62: Point of information: While innocent people were killed in IRA bombings, they did not target innocent people. Their targets were political. One can argue whether their targets were "legitimate" "combatants" in a "war" or not, but random suicide bombings that took out whomever was on the bus? No.

If you think the word 'terrorist' should apply to people who kill civilians (however defined) while targeting "legitimate" "combatants" in a "war," then the armed forces of every nation that has ever had a war are terrorists, ours especially. So I'd avoid that definition if I were you. Thatcher and her detestable ilk were eager to make that connection, of course, but that doesn't exactly make it true.

And there aren't any open threads on here either. There's really no place to ask a question, is there? That's kind of odd.

I have a polite request: Could someone tell me how to get a picture to upload? I keep getting an error ("Oops, something went wrong: Invalid value "DES.GIF" for profile field: photo") when I try. I've tried .JPGs too, without success. What file format(s) is(are) acceptable? Is there a size limit (in pixels or bytes or physical dimensions), and if so what is it?

The Profile Edit page doesn't have any information about this on it, and BB has no Help page (yet). I'll take help from anyone who knows.

Kennric 29: I agree. What it brings to mind is the case of the kid who was tried as an adult for selling pictures of his underaged self on the internet. You could say he was a victim, but if you say he's a perp, who's the victim?

Anonymous 58: Thanks for that. I was annoyed by that comment too, but I didn't have the background or the personal experience to draw on. Why don't you create an account and comment more often? You are clearly able to write in complete sentences and disagree violently without flaming (well, as long as one doesn't expand STFU, but hey). Join the BoingBoing Commentariat!

Rabican 59: It was only a decade ago that I realized, in a forehead-smacking moment, that Eastern Europeans look remarkably like Western Asians, duhh! I had a coworker with a Japanese name, and figured his mother was a "white" European, because he looked like he might be half Japanese. It turned out that his Japanese name was an affectation; he was actually a Turk.

Now the guy at another job who I thought was of Mexican origin (Spanish last name, what I took for classic Mexican mixed-blood features)—HE was half Japanese, father Spanish-from-Spain.

Now, maybe I'm unusually bad at identifying people's races—if so I'd consider it a mark of pride—but it points out one of the truly stupid things about racism: you have to identify the race of the person you're looking at before you can get your prejudices in line. Wouldn't that be a flag for a rational person? But racism is a form of irrationality, so I guess that's pretty moot.

Nope. Same prob. It's time for me to go to bed anyway...I'll try all this tomorrow.

I get an install message, and the install fails. This is because I'm not logged on as an Admin.

Hmm, my answer to 141 and 143 is the same: the technology defeated me. I wasn't able to get a picture to post, and I've never been able to figure out IRC.

Wow, looks like I missed all the fun fnord. I wonder if I can join the local committee?

I believe that France should get out of Brittany, and that England should set Scotland and Wales free.

I believe that the world would be a better place tomorrow if Robert Mugabe died tonight. I feel the same way about Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Vladimir Putin.

None of that makes me a terrorist. I don't blow things up; I don't kill innocent people, or even frighten innocent people (not on purpose; some kids at the grocery store were a little scared of me this week, but that's it). I'm not even an assassin; if any of those people were standing in front of me now, I would not kill them even if I had a gun and the skill to use it.

Osama bin Laden? Well...him I might shoot. But probably not, if I had control of my wits. He's more valuable alive.

The difference between a terrorist and a person with radical political beliefs is unsubtle: the one carries out attacks, the other does not.

The FBI did do the right thing. Eventually. They did it only because the gentlemen in question were more concerned than they should have had to be, and went out of their way to be convincing to the FBI. The FBI then did what I think they're at minimum obliged to do, which is publish the fact that these men were entirely innocent. The newspaper also apparently did the right thing by printing the picture again with "NOT TERRORISTS" under it (effectively), after doing the wrong thing by printing it in the first place.

It would be better if the FBI had done the right thing earlier, and said "OK, is there anything that would make real terrorists want to blow up a car ferry?" I think that if anyone had thought about that for five minutes, they'd've said "Naah" and gone back to looking for actual criminals.

If a little car ferry in the Northwest was judged to be a probable terrorist target by some poor sleep-deprived and coffee-addled FBI analyst, they should have reality-checked by posing the same picture with two blond guys in business suits, and telling some other analysts "Hey, these guys were taking pictures on a car ferry. Should we investigate?" And after being laughed at, they should say "OK, so I was being racist when I suspected these brown people of being terrorists" and dropped the whole thing at that point.

Tim McVeigh was a blond guy from Michigan. Blond guys from Michigan did not come under general suspicion after the Oklahoma City bombing. I know this because I am a blond guy from Michigan. Once I started shaving my head, THEN I started being "randomly" pulled out of line for an extra check at the airport.

If you defend the FBI's action in this case, either you think racism is an appropriate mode of reasoning for crime-prevention (in which case I have no time for you) or you think they really WOULD have investigated two blond guys doing the same thing (which would make you appallingly naive, but not outright evil).

Fairies? I know all about fairies! And some of them are *gasp* Radical Fairies! Does that make me a terrorist? (No, because I am not brown.)

I'm not sure what a vehicle fairy is, unless it's a guy who's seriously into car cruising.

What? But I did spell it righ--oh.

Never mind.

I like the ad for a "message chair" on that same page. I guess you sit in it and it tells you what you need to know.

Sister Y,

I have to say that my idea of a good party will henceforth include "one where no one was burned with boiling water and cayenne by his alleged friends who are criminals who should all be in prison."

Thanks,
Brother X

Unless 'rescuer' has some specialized meaning I'm not aware of.

Antinous, yes, and a former severe dickhead, to be honest. I don't think NS is going to be my next project, but I'm hoping I can elicit a response from him that won't need to be disemvoweled, thus showing him that it's a characteristic of the post, not the poster.

I don't think you're stupid, or a liar. As for a dickhead, much depends on definition.

You've been acting like a dick in this thread. That's not the same as being a dick. I wish you'd stop behaving that way, not that you'd go away.

And no, I didn't disemvowel your post. I have no such power. I was predicting, not threatening.

The sheer level of fire isn't the ONLY important characteristic of a hot sauce. For example, when I make my habanero flavoring oil, I put orange peel and rosemary in it, which enhances the whole experience well beyond the sheer hotness.

The tabasco chile has its own distinct flavor, as does the chipotle. Neither is at the Scotch bonnet or habanero level in terms of Scovilles, but they are fine peppers and should not be summarily dismissed.

New internet shorthand: CATFOTFIC - Complain(er) About The Flavor Of The Free Ice Cream.

Don't CATFOTFIC. It's jerky.

Don't be a CATFOTFIC. They are all jerks.

Those of us who've been eagerly awaiting the next bit of Little Brother news are especially annoyed by you CATFOTFICs. And for those "threatening" to "leave" over this, I have another shorthand for you: DLTDHYITA.

Cory, I'm hoping for NYC dates. I'd cross my fingers, but it's awfully hard to type that way.

I can see Manhattan from where I'm sitting. (Well, OK, I have to stand up.) So maybe you're right. In NYC everything is legal except in the presence of the police.

Nobody 75: Clearly, I'm not wanted here so I'll leave you people to your circle jerk/finger...

Oh, for heaven's sake, stop whining. It's really very unappealing.

I love the fact that when talking about how nice he's been to Cory and for how long...he spelled Cory's name wrong.

Now THAT'S funny.

Unfortunately, I suspect it will soon be impossible to tell the difference in that comment, since the extra letter was a vowel.

Pepper spray is one thing. Pepper spritz is another. I wouldn't worry about it.

Red, the number and name are ABOVE the post they refer to here. That was me who "corrected" your comment. I didn't think it was a typo. I was consciously trying to reframe.

Cory, you spelled Tabasco wrong in the main post.

I keep expecting someone to dive in and accuse Cory of hypocrisy, because while the tabasco chile is a generic name, the people who make Tabasco™ sauce have successfully defended their trademark, to the point where no one else is allowed to make a hot sauce that says 'tabasco' anywhere on the label—including the ingredient list. (Please note I would think that it was stupid to accuse Cory of hypocrisy for liking the product; I'm just surprised the idiocracy hasn't jumped on this yet.)

Our beloved moderator once posted a recipe for the making of habanero oil on her own blog. I've made it and it was damn tasty.

I understand that the Red Cross rules come from the CDC, and the reasons they haven't changed even though ALL blood is now tested for HIV are entirely political.

Maybe this will change after January 2009.

Added the free download link to my review on LiveJournal.

Brian 10: The first couple of chapters are, yes. The rest isn't very comforting, but it's not as horrific (there are a couple of horrible scenes further along, but not as depressing). I struggled with it too, but got through, and I'm very glad I did. Well worth it.

Red 16:

I've never gotten 'the call', and since my parents are a holy hybrid of two very different ethnic groups, it's unlikely that I ever will.

FTFY

Hmm, as a gay man I always assumed that the same stupid reasoning applied to bone marrow donation as to blood donation. I can't give blood because I react badly to the process (my blood pressure crashes), but I wonder if I can donate bone marrow?

Well, if EvilRooster is right, looks like I lose. Damn. Pride goeth.

Tenn 684: I'm printing them out and sticking them on my wall.
Maybe I should make it as a poster. :-)

Seriously, I'm awed by the compliments I've been getting for that. Those ideas have been bouncing around in my head for a long time, but that's the first time I've put them all in one place.

Reflecting on it since, I've realized that a good argument to use against Bible-literal Creationists is "Which is more important, something God inspired men to write, or something God wrote with His own hand?" Then you explain that nature was (in their view) written by God's own hand, and thus more His word than the Bible could ever be. And only science can read that word.

Hey, if you like that post of mine, you could nominate it for that "Good Comment" thing.

Unless he spills it all over his face.

Why no, Antinous, I haven't. I know that makes me less attractive in your eyes, since you date NJ club dopes exclusively, but...

What? I wasn't supposed to tell?

Oops.

Wow. Thank you Arkizzle. I'm blushing here! I think I will save that bit.

By the way, the Christians I know personally don't believe ANY of the stuff about God that drove me away from Christianity back in my teens. Missouri Synod Lutherans (which is what I knew back then) are not known for their tolerance.

Oh, I also didn't know about coprophagic animals. If I ever have a guinea pig I'll know to be careful how I clean its cage!

And I didn't know the word 'gerah' either. This helped hone MY skills, even if it didn't influence Evidence in any way.

Antinous 51:

You can immobilize her jaw fashionably with C. botulinum toxin.

Just hold still for a moment, Miss Coulter...oops.

Did that go into a vein? Sorry about that! I appear to have accidentally increased the recommended dose by 400% as well. These things happen.

I learned about an enormous database that has all the answers to Creationist claims, and wrote a really good description of why I don't believe in the Bible, and a pretty straightforward description of how evolution works.

Not worth it overall, but not entirely wasted.

Yes. That's why I've been using them interchangeably.

Takuan, we could try to get Ann Coulter to lead the fashion. Not only might she die, she would shut the fuck up for a while!

Belac: True enough. The designer just came up with a new way to suck money out of the stupor-rich; more power to 'im.

I suppose it might be considered hurting the designer if all his customers die of lockjaw, except that not even a stupor-rich person is going to be a repeat customer for this crap. And by the time the first buyers start getting tetanus, the fad will be over anyway: "Googie dahling, Do Hit chairs are so terribly passé, didn't you know? Might as well buy your furniture at a store."

There are people who have more money than you'll ever dream of owning and they can afford things you will never be able to in multiple lifetimes at your current salary.

Yes. Yes, there are.

And I hope they all get tetanus and die.

I believe the old formula is that 2% of the population will buy any luxury item, no matter how absurd.

People WILL buy this, just to show how ridiculously rich they are. Angry as that makes me (think how many people the cost of this "chair" could feed...stand up for Judas!), I must admit that the idea of a bunch of the stupor-rich getting cuts on their asses from something this stupid is pleasant.

Or tetanus. Dare I hope for tetanus?

Antinous 638: You're right, of course. I should have thrown up my hands a long time ago. But I don't like to throw up my hands, because it hurts when the thumbs get stuck in my throat, you know?

However, Evidence's post at 653 demonstrates that he's no longer taking this even remotely seriously, if he ever was, but is insisting on pounding on biogenesis, even quoting from the very comment where I said biogenesis was a red herring and has nothing to do with evolution. That's a direct slap in the face, and an outright admission that his position, which he refuses to coherently defend, is made of lose, as the kids (people under 40) say nowadays.

Penis thieves and whorehouses with stuffed polar bears have GOT to be more fun than this.

Thanks for the kind words on my oration.

Evidence, you keep going back to biogenesis. We're not talking about that. Could be God, could be Martians, could be random chance: we don't know and don't care (well, not for this discussion).

Life, once present, evolves. That's the truth. Biogenesis is a red herring.

Evidence: If my tone has changed, it's because I'm getting exasperated with your unwillingness to answer direct questions.

Which book exactly? What is the title, author or authors, publisher, date of publication? All that information should be in the front of the book. If it isn't, it's almost certainly self-published by a group with an agenda (such as creationism).

If it's a creationist publication, it's irrelevant here, and once again you've tried to win the argument by declaring yourself to be right. If it really does qualify as an objective standard, then a) as I said, it shows that the translation as "chewing the cud" was wrong, because that isn't what "chewing the cud" means in English, and b) I can't imagine why you didn't name it when asked.

If you're going to appeal to authority, you have to appeal to an authority that WE accept. If it's Stein, Benjamin, The Creationist's Concordance, Discovery Institute Publications, 2008, then quoting it has no more force than just declaring it yourself.

Please give the exact information on the book, or expect that "translation" to be entirely ignored.

Evidence, first of all, what book did that come from? And second, if that's an accurate representation of the Hebrew, all it proves is that "chewing the cud" was an inaccurate translation, because that's not what "chewing the cud" means in English.

You misquote. It's "the evening and the morning were the first day." This is why the Jewish day begins at sunset, because they take that passage at face value.

And what about that passage that says a thousand years is like a day to God?

That is why evolution is rejected and it is illogical, meaning nothing gets better by itself.

You must be kidding. You canNOT be calling evolution "illogical," or using logic as a justification for anything. Scripture is profoundly illogical; by being willing to overlook that, you forego the right to criticise the logic of others.

In other words, there's a beam in your eye. Stop trying to get the speck out of ours.

Evidence: Or just "Most people are pretty ignorant about science."

GTMoogle, thanks. Shorter me: "I trusted You more than I trusted the liars you sent to tell me to trust You."

Evidence 605:

I don't know her but I do know that good people who do good things don't go to Heaven.

I'm going to assume you mean "don't necessarily go to heaven" and not "don't ever go to heaven"! What does get a person into heaven? Accepting Jesus Christ in your heart as your personal Savior? (That's what the Missouri Synod Lutherans I knew in high school believed.)

Do you want to stand before a Holy God and say to Him I thought you were lying?

No, not at all. I would say

"I didn't trust the men who told me this book was Your Word, because I found them to be unreliable in other ways: greedy and selfish and hungry for power in many cases, and narrow and foolish in others.

"I did not trust them, because they defended the oppression of women.

"I did not trust them, because they defended the supremacy of the so-called White Race, while claiming that Your Word and Your love was for everyone.

"I did not trust them because they told me that you made me just as I am, and yet that the way I was made was evil because my desire is for men rather than for women. I did not trust them because they told me that I was made by a Loving God who nevertheless wants me to suffer torment and loneliness all my life, and I would not believe that You would do such a thing as to make me for that purpose.

"I did not trust that the text was Your Word when it came to the facts of Creation, because before it existed you gave us a truer Word, which is Nature itself, and the text contradicts what we can observe.

"I did not believe that this text was Your Word as to matters of fact, because it contradicts itself, and that would make You a liar.

"I did not trust that this text was Your Word, because as plainly read in the text You lied to Adam and Eve, while the Serpent told the truth, and You would not declare Yourself to be a liar.

"I did not trust that this text was Your Word, because You made us humans with minds and senses and logic and other great gifts, and not to use them would be shameful; yet those who defend the text as Your Word (as to matters of fact) claim that You created all the physical evidence we've found, from the stratified fossils, yea even to the Cosmic Background Radiation, as devices to fool and deceive us, and I would not believe You were such a Deceiver.

"If I should have trusted these dishonest and wicked men (and some women); if I should have denied my own senses in favor of scripture; if I should have trusted translations that I knew to be false; if You are indeed so cruel as to make me to suffer, and deny me partnership and love my whole life long; if You are such a Deceiver as to demand that we humans forego the use of our minds and senses which you gave us—then do with me what you will, false and evil god, for I would rather spend eternity in Hell with other good people than one minute in Heaven with you."

That's what I'd say, in the unlikely event such a thing happened. And btw my capitalization is exactly as I intended it to be.

Ministry 8: It was a deliberate device all right...to get paid four times for the same writing! (OK, which of us has not turned in the same paper for two classes, right? I turned in my computational linguistics paper for both linguistics and computer science, for example.)

And I agree that it was the whole point of the Eternal Champion, but in the sense that the EC was an excuse to write the same book over and over with slightly different details. FOR ME (and I cannot stress enough that if you like Moorcock, I don't think less of you or anything, and many of my friends disagree with me) once you've read one EC book you've read them all, and I read many of them before coming to this conclusion. I gave up after one book of Jerry Cornelius, a character I found entirely repulsive (unlike, say, Elric, who was a Tortured Soul, Jerry appears to have no conscience whatsoever, at least in the book I read).

As for the writing itself (use of language, narrative voice, dialogue), I found it uniformly cheesy with the single exception of Gloriana, which though gloomy seemed more a labor of love than the others, and is actually lyrical in places. But my enjoyment even of Gloriana was dramatically lessened when I detected the EC pattern in it. By then I was sick to death of the (often literally) gods damned Eternal frakking Champion!

I managed to mostly enjoy Gloriana anyway, but it also convinced me that I should never read another Moorcock novel, and I never have. I know that even if he writes one that isn't about the E frakking C, I'll be distracted from whatever story he IS telling by looking for that pattern.

Again, YMMV. MY mileage is all "why am I driving this same road over and over? Where's the next exit to Babylon?"

Oh. My. Gods. American or otherwise.

I love Neil Gaiman's work. I do. He's an excellent writer of fiction. Yes.

As for the critical sense exhibited here...he's a great writer of fiction. Really great.

The most remarkable thing about Moorcock is that he managed to build an entire career with only one plot. This is the guy who literally put the same chapter—word for word—in four different books.

I know other people, people I also respect, who love Moorcock. I've never really understood why. De gustibus non disputendem est, I guess.

Terry, the line in the Bible says that the rabbit is unclean because while it chews the cud (which it doesn't), it doesn't divide the hoof. They at least LOOKED at rabbits.

Yes, I know Jack, but now that you've spraypainted my trap in dayglo orange, I doubt he'll fall into it.

By the way, Evidence: Do you really think my friend Marjorie, whom I mentioned earlier, will have trouble on Judgement Day? There's a devout Christian woman who does justice, loves kindness, and walks humbly with God. She goes to church every Sunday, and afterwards spends a couple of hours with a small group who work to strengthen their own faith and help others; they worked hard to help the Katrina evacuees, for example.

So she spends her time working to bring about the Kingdom of God on Earth. Do you really think that when she comes before the throne, God is going to say to her "So, didn't buy my creation story, eh? To Hell with you!"?

Jack 579: Horses don't have split hooves.

But see, Jack, that's OK. Because if that's the answer, then maybe God wrote the Creation story for ignorant Bronze Age sheepherders, too. After all, what hope would they have of understanding relativity and spatial expansion? He simplified it for them.

Evidence 575: You're free to say and think that. However, it's not what "chewing cud" means, no matter what. So you're going with the translation being wrong, then?

Evidence: Actually, you didn't answer my question. Let me pose it a different way: the fact is, rabbits do not chew the cud. The versions of the Bible I've seen all say they do. How do you resolve that conflict? Are you saying that our definition of 'chew the cud' is wrong? In that case, the translation was incorrect (because to us to chew the cud emphatically does NOT include eating feces). Otherwise the men who wrote the Bible were incorrect about rabbits.

Either some of the people who wrote the Bible mistook the lapine behavior they observed for proper cud-chewing OR it was incorrect to translate the Hebrew word as "cud." Can you see that one of these must be so?

I didn't say I rejected God. I said I rejected salvation.

I didn't say I believe Christ is still Christ. I said modern Christians (the ones I know personally) just don't care that much about the literal truth of the creation story, and THEY say Christ is still is Christ.

If you're saying that part isn't important, then you're in line with more modern Christian thought on the whole Creation myth; that is, "it doesn't tell what really happened at the beginning of the Earth, but so what? Christ is still Christ."

Evidence, that's irrelevant. What makes you think I would reject salvation on such grounds? (I reject it on quite different grounds, as it happens.)

But "rabbits chew their cud" is at variance with observable fact. Are you saying that observable fact is wrong? They don't match. Please answer the question.

Evidence, I'm sorry I a) misread you and b) lost my temper.

It IS frustrating that you don't seem to want to answer questions, and are totally unwilling to even notice the flaws and contradictions in your book. If you won't answer the questions about translations that contradict each other, and places where a deliberate mistranslation was done for political purposes, I don't see much point in continuing.

Either the Bible is wrong in saying that rabbits chew the cud, or the translation is wrong in saying "chew the cud," and scholars can determine which, but you can't have BOTH an infallible Bible AND infallible translations. That is just plain checkmate. Which do you choose?

Gratuitous comment solely for the purpose of belying the "Last!" in the previous comment.

A rabbit eats its droppings, this is eating food that it has already been partially digested i.e.. chewing its cud.

OK, now I no longer believe in your sincerity. You could not possibly believe that eating its own droppings counts as chewing the cud. You are just trying to win by denying you've lost, at every point.

I'm sorry I spent so much time explaining things to you. Others told me I was wasting my time, but I ignored them because I thought you were sincere. My apologies to them. Your mind is not only closed, it's hermetically sealed and buried under 2000 years of intellectual detritus.

Correction to erudite yet utterly pointless comment.

Erudite let utterly pointless comment that goes on for two full screens.

OK, one more. Era 486:

I too heard from one doctor (whom I do trust) that a man should have approximately one orgasm every day to maintain prostate health. Maybe that explains wet dreams: involuntary bodily functions kick in to save us when we don't use our bodies as nature (god?) intended--including masturbation!

When I was discussing this issue with MY urologist, he said that wet dreams take care of the surplus—when you're fifteen. Adults need to masturbate. I live in a majority-Catholic town, to put it mildly, and he told me that his patients who are priests really don't like hearing that, but he tells them anyway.

Evidence 472:

You must all agree we can not breed dogs to become nondogs can we?

Um. Of course we could. We bred wolves to be non-wolves. That was simpler than the dog example, because you just keep taking the most docile and obedient wolves and eventually you get wolves that never grow out of being cubs, i.e. dogs. This would take a long time, but you could breed dogs to some other purpose until they became a separate species, absolutely. Humans have done this again and again; it's called domestication.

479:

"The Bible cannot be used to prove itself." Thats like saying we can't look in the White House to prove the president lives there. Silly.

No, it's like saying you can't ask the White House for an opinion on whether a White House press release is full of lies. You could, but it's a meaningless exercise. Nothing can corroborate itself. If you trust the Bible you do so on faith, not evidence, because there IS no evidence.

This is the exceptionalism of Bibliolatry. Even if the original words were handed down by God, it's been knocking around a lot since then, and human (i.e. fallible) committees decided what was in and what was out. They argued over the two incompatible creation stories in Genesis and finally just put them both in and hoped no one would notice. They put in some Gospels but not others, and still managed to leave in two versions of Jesus' ancestry (is he descended from David through Joseph, or is he not descended from Joseph at all?). Were they stupid? Incompetent? Did they not READ these texts and see that they didn't match?

No. None of the above. They knew, as you do not, that these texts are not to be taken literally. "All of scripture is valid for instruction and enlightenment" or some such, but not "all of scripture tells accurate, specific historical and scientific facts."

And THEN came the translations. Short of learning Biblical Hebrew, and studying the culture and the times extensively, you're relying on another set of fallible humans, the translators, to tell you what the text says. The line translated in KJV as "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" is translated in a Greek version as something more like "don't patronize apothecaries." The KJV translators were trying to please their patron, King James, who had a wacky paranoid horror of witches. Same reason they added that 'in spirit' bit to the Beatitudes. Jesus was talking about the real, actual poor, and King James would NOT have qualified. They deliberately falsified the translation to keep themselves out of trouble.

Jesus would have spoken Hebrew only in the Temple; to get a sense of his words, you'd have to study Aramaic—but wait, there's nothing in the Bible actually written by anyone who ever met him, so that's a waste of time. Learn the Greek the Gospels were written in, more than half a century later by people who not only never met Jesus, but had no language in common with him or anyone who ever did meet him (except maybe Pilate, who as an educated Roman might have had some Greek).

The Bible is just a book. To think otherwise is Bibliolatry. I can write you a book that says that the Earth was created out of the dung that falls through the grate of the Heavenly Stable, and put in a line that says "everything this book says is true," and will you believe it? No, of course not, but 6000 years from now someone will!

And now I think I'm finally exhausted.

Tenn: Rehab?

No, no, no.

Btw, Tenn, I haven't forgotten your request at 379. Just got caught up in other things.

Takuan, I gave up trying to understand everything you post a while back (not that that's a bad thing in any way), but I have to say 417 has me really stumped. I'm not sure what I'm looking at there. Looks like some elderly clergymen holding pillows with crowns on them. Whiskey tango foxtrot?

Takuan 413: I know what the Dive Reflex is, but haven't discussed it here; I had to look up Raynaud's, and though it sounds similar, it's not quite the same. The AV shunt doesn't last long enough for the fingers to turn blue, though they do hurt and get chilled, and the description of Raynaud's I just read doesn't suggest that blood is being dumped from an artery into a vein, but just that bloodflow to the fingers is constricted.

Also, there's nothing in the Raynaud's description to suggest that onset is accompanied by a sudden sharp stabbing pain in the center of the palm, or that the pain is repeated at intervals of about ten minutes, as happens when the AV shunt activates.

Tenn: I think when Evidence says he reads the Bible "plainly" he means literally where it seems to be telling history, and figuratively where it seems to be illustrating a point. If you want to challenge him on this, try pointing out that one of the Gospels says that Jesus was descended from David through Joseph, and another that he wasn't even descended from Joseph. But: as you yourself suggest above, attacking the inconsistencies in the Bible isn't really talking about evolution.

Evidence 406: You flatter me, sir! No, I'm not a teacher except by nature. I probably would have been, but at the time I was choosing a career path it was impossible for an openly gay man to be a teacher in America (I wanted to teach high school English), so my life went another way.

The thing about good (and I'm assuming you mean beneficial here, not just a good example?) mutations is that we stop thinking of them as mutations. For example, one (or more) of my far-distant ancestors had a mutation that causes iris pigment to be minimal, just enough to refract light going into it without blocking it. Result: blue eyes. Sensitivity to light; ability to see in dimmer light than people with dark eyes; really painful effects in bright sunlight.

This mutation may have happened everywhere from time to time, but in northern Europe it had a survival advantage and became widespread. I had blue eyes as a child, but in adolescence another gene I have, for yellow iris pigment, was expressed and my eyes turned green.

Another, subtler European mutation is the arterio-venous shunt. In extreme cold the body can conserve heat by dumping blood in the extremities directly from an artery into a vein, the strategy being to sacrifice the fingers and toes to save your life. ONLY people with European ancestors have this, and it doesn't show up unless you're very chilled for a long time.

I've experienced it, and let me tell you, it HURTS. It honestly feels like your palms and feet are being pierced with a sharp object, which has led me to give it the somewhat irreverent name of 'cryostigmata'. (That's a joke, but honestly the first time it happened I was pretty weirded out..."wait, I'm not even a Christian!" I thought. But hypothermia was dimming my thoughts by then anyway.)

Dogs are a complex case. Domestication is a process of UNnatural selection, or to be clearer, of a very complex environmental pressure called human culture. Humans bred dogs from wolves; they're essentially infantilized wolves. Even the oldest dog will play in a way that wolves stop doing in adolescence. And while we (last I looked) distinguish canis lupus from canis familiaris, they can sometimes interbreed (one reason I said we don't have good firm criteria for when we say two species are separate).

As for all the different breeds of dog, those are just humans imposing their ideas on another creature, sometimes according to needs, and other times indulging vanity (tell me a practical use for a pocket toy poodle, I dare you). I don't know why they aren't considered separate species, except for a) the old criterion of interfertility producing fertile offspring, but that would apply to dogs and wolves; or b) convention.

If you could get specific about the flags that go up for you, I could try to address them. Mind you, I'm trying to give you a clear idea of what we believe, not trying to convince you that it's true, though a lot of it seems obvious to me. To accept it, you would have to give up the idea that the Bible tells the history of the world and of humans and animals—but not, in my opinion at least, in a true and loving God.

You know what my Christian friend Marjorie says? She says "the stories in the Bible are God's parables. You read them for the lesson they teach, not as history."

Speaking of history, did you know that the keeping of history was a pretty rare thing in the ancient world? Almost no one did it but the Egyptians, and the Ancient Hebrews certainly did not. The idea of writing down events just to have a record of what happened was entirely alien to them (they may have borrowed it from the Egyptians, but since they were specifically admonished not to do as they do in Egypt this seems doubtful).

Evidence: Please read my post at 397 for a basic understanding of evolution. Please ask me any questions you may have.

Evidence, your explanation of evolution isn't quite correct. "Put new information there" implies conscious deliberate action, and also raises the question of where the new information came from.

Instead, think of it as a species (as a whole) "learning" to live in the world (this is a possibly-helpful metaphor, not what's actually going on). Any given individual in the species is just a set of biological strategies for survival. The species throws away the strategies that don't work (or rather the ones that don't work get taken out by the world: they die), and develops the ones that do (they breed).

When two groups of a species are in different environments, two things happen: one, different environments cause different strategies to be effective, and two, even in similar environments different groups of individuals may develop different strategies to cope with the same issues.

But where, I'm sure you're wondering, do these different strategies come from? I know it's just a metaphor, but species can't actually think. Especially ours! :-)

Actually that's a good question, and the learning analogy ceases to be useful here. The fact is, various things cause genes to change randomly. This can result from cosmic rays, transcription error (when the DNA strand is just miscopied), even exposure to chemicals. Most of these mutations make no difference whatsoever; they happen in genes that aren't expressed (that is, they are "switched off"), or they code for something that has no effect for good nor ill on the survival ability of the organism.

The next biggest group of mutations are the ones that are lethal. They're important, all right, and they kill the critter before it's even born.

Then there are lots of different levels of harmful a mutation can be. All of them make it less likely the critter will survive, or less likely it will breed. Whether they die or simply fail to reproduce, that tends to take the genes out of the "strategy book" for the species. (I hedged that with that 'tends' there. I have a reason for that, which I'll get to in a moment.)

Last and most rarely, there are the mutations that are actually beneficial in the particular environment in which the species finds itself. They confer a survival and/or breeding advantage, and the individuals who have it outbreed or outsurvive those who don't...eventually. Those genes tend to spread through a population. Slowly.

See, all these unlikely and slow events have to happen a lot for a species to change much. That's why the article at the top of the thread here is so fascinating. This lizard species changed in an astonishingly short period of time in evolutionary terms. Ordinarily it takes a long time.

When two groups of a species diverge enough, they become separate species (and no, we really don't have a sharp dividing line for when that happens). That's what Darwin was talking about in On the Origin of Species—that process. NOT specifically about where humans come from, but about the process by which different species arise.

Now, I promised to tell you why I hedged. Recessive genes (meaning genes that aren't expressed unless the critter has them from both parents...it's more complicated than that, but bear with me) aren't eliminated as fast as dominant ones (always expressed if the critter has even one copy). This is because those individuals with only one copy aren't disadvantaged enough to keep them from living and breeding, and even if they breed with another "carrier" only a quarter of their children (on average) will have the undesirable trait.

Also, a recessive trait can have advantages if the environment changes. Among species of elephants where the bulls have tusks, there are always a certain small number of tuskless bulls. This is a profound breeding disadvantage, since bulls compete violently for mates. So the numbers stay small, but never drop to zero.

Recently a new environmental factor has changed that: Poachers.

Poachers kill all tusked bulls they can find, because they want the ivory. Being a tuskless bull is still a breeding disadvantage, but that disadvantage is offset by the survival advantage of not being a target for the ivory poachers. Result: More and more tuskless bull elephants are appearing. If we somehow manage to stop ivory poaching, the numbers will return to what they were before; if not, the tusked genes, though dominant, may be entirely removed from the population—if elephants don't go extinct first.

Does all that make sense?

Ugh, I kind of got tangled in my sentence there. "...the connection between belief and worship is not, and should not be, automatically assumed" should be "the connection between belief and worship is not automatic, and should not be assumed."

Please correct your copies. This WILL be on the exam. Thank you.

Evidence 382: You cut off my quote. I said "Believing in the existence of something is determined by your upbringing, your nature, your knowledge." Those three taken together, not any one alone. For example, I was raised to believe in nothing except science, and to be cynical about absolutely everything. But I am by nature a spiritual person, and I've learned (acquired knowledge) that cynicism is not a good way to live.

I'm unsurprised to learn you share my attitude toward the Westboro Baptist Church. Any decent person would be appalled by them, and you seem a decent sort.

I think, however, that you missed the point of that paragraph, which was that the connection between belief and worship is not, and should not be, automatically assumed. I know lots of people who believe but don't do anything that could be called worship, even in private, and others who worship regularly even though they've told me they no longer believe any of it.

Sorry, Evidence. The junior high remark was mine, and I apologize for it. It seemed you were saying one thing in one set of circumstances and contradicting yourself in another. I was confused about what you were saying.

You are incorrect in thinking that the only thing you've ever done that would interest me is find a rock. I think being the pastor of a small church is MUCH more interesting than that, and the graphic arts industry is right up there too!

Evidence...your last post was completely incoherent. You seem to be saying that the lack of fossils all over the world means evolution can't be true, but that the presence of them proves there was a global flood. This is just plain wacky.

Or you're being disingenuous. Or you're a junior high school kid, in which case you need to look up 'disingenuous'.

Tenn 355:

If there is a God that would smite me for the sin of not believing in him, (or not worshipping,) than I do believe I am damned. But I am reasonably sure such a creature does not exist, and I don't even believe I could worship him if he did.

BINGO.

Believing in the existence of something is determined by your upbringing, your nature, your knowledge. But to worship or not to worship is a choice, always. I'd like to think that even if I knew for certain fact that the Lovecraftian horror worshipped as "God" by the Westboro Baptist Church were the one true and only God, I would not worship it.

Of course, by differentiating between these things we also must realize that belief is not a prerequisite for worship, either, and that's where I have a useful contribution to make. Buy my book when it comes out (don't hold your breath though, the sucker ain't writ yet).

Era 364:

heart-disease and cancer cannot be genetically inherited diseases because their rates of increase have been far greater than the speed of genetic evolution. Both heart disease and cancer were virtually unknown before the 20th century.

Now you're being silly. By that argument an allergy to potatoes can't be genetic in Europe, because no one got symptoms of a potato allergy there before 1492 (when potatoes were introduced). New environmental hazards are introduced all the time, and some people are more susceptible to them than others. Things just aren't single-cause deterministic. If you have an oncogene, you need to watch out for the type of cancer it codes for; that doesn't mean you'll get it, and of course taking your antioxidants and whatever might help prevent it.

I fear that science has become the new religion and that the vehemence with which the evos fight the creos is misdirected. Each can learn from the other. In particular, the evos might learn that the god of nature still knows better than our scientists what we should eat--and that our scientists are out to destroy the nature on which our health depends, out of a predisposition for atheism and profit.

The "evos" have nothing at all to learn from the creos. And blaming the "scientists" for the destruction of nature is so backward as to be laughable: "dominion over the Earth," a serious mistranlation, has meant that Christians, primarily, have trashed Nature. They believe Nature is to be subdued, even that it's evil. After all, doesn't it say so in the Bible?

I have been completely unable to upload any profile pic.

But not a wall lizard, unless it was a real hole-in-the-wall kind of lounge!

*crickets chirp*

Thanks everyone, I'm here all week, tip your waitress.

No. And neither were any of the lizards on the island, Charles Darwin, or Tom Cruise.

Antinous, now that I've been cut loose by my boyfriend, it's possible that a look at my tool may be available to you under the right circumstances. Just sayin'.

Evidence, I'd really like to know what you have to say about my fork. (No, it's not a spork.)

I have what I'll call Xopher's Fork. Here it is.

Do you believe that shared genes are evidence of shared ancestry?

IF NOT: You don't believe that DNA testing can determine the paternity of a child, for example. Do you really deny that?

IF SO: Then you believe that chimpanzees and humans have common ancestry, because their genomes are largely identical. In fact, on average a human male shares more genes with a chimpanzee male than with a human female.

I suppose it's possible to believe that God just used similar genes to build humans and chimpanzees, but then you still have the problem...God could have used similar genes to make the baby your wife just had as to make the postman, who is not the same race as you or your wife. So she hasn't been unfaithful! God is just testing you.

The basic problem creos* have is logic. They don't understand either deduction (as above) or induction (anything that happens a little bit over a short period of time probably happens a lot over a very long period of time). Believing in "microevolution" but not "macroevolution" is not only silly, it's prideful (that's Christian talk for 'hubristic', for those of you following along at home). They think God can only do things on a scale that's easy for THEM to grasp, or within the narrow framework of their lives.

Of course, lots and lots of "microevolution" adds up to "macroevolution," and whether you believe God is doing that or, as I do, that natura sola sufficit, there's no logical leap involved.

*I got this nickname from a commenter on Making Light. I like it.

Ben 273: Remember the story of the guy whose penis saved his soul? He was masquerading as a Nazi, and the only thing that saved him was the fact that he was circumcised, so that if any of the real Nazis saw his dick he would be revealed as a Jew and killed. That kept him from entirely becoming what he was pretending to be.

Ill Lich: the reasoning isn't as circular as you think. The marvel is that the size and distance from Earth of the Moon is such that it matches the apparent size of the Sun so closely. From time to time this allows us to see the corona of the Sun clearly. It really is a fantastic coincidence, especially since our Moon isn't really a moon (it's the junior member of a dual-planet system; true if it were a true moon it would be much closer to Earth, and life as we know it would be impossible).

Evidence, Nelson has it right. Half the Moon is always lit by the sun (except during a Lunar eclipse). As the Moon orbits the Earth, the side that's always turned toward us goes from lit, to partially lit, to all dark, to partially lit, etc. The part that isn't lit isn't because it's in Lunar night (which is also a Lunar month). So, just as night on Earth is caused by the Earth's own shadow, the darkness on the unlit side of the Moon is caused by the Moon's own shadow.

The Moon is, in fact, the perfect size to fit in front of the Sun given their respective distances from the Earth. However, the Earth's shadow is much, much bigger than the Moon; that's why totality of a Solar eclipse is always brief, whereas totality of a Lunar eclipse can last quite a while.

RossInDetroit 248: Thanks! (I don't think I'm patient and restrained overall, actually, though I strive to be.)

I think Iva really believes what s/he is posting. Parody would be funny, and one thing Iva utterly lacks is humor, even of the laugh-at kind. Also, a parodist wouldn't (probably) mix homophobia and anti-Catholic bigotry into the posts.

I suppose Iva could be a hoax, but that's not the same thing as parody. But it doesn't really matter; on the internet, someone who does a perfect imitation of a troll IS a troll, and what the person hirself actually believes on the topic under discussion is irrelevant to that analysis.

But I don't think Iva's a hoax either. I think s/he's a deadly serious wacko, homeschooled by wackos in wackoness.

Evidence 243: No, it isn't. When the Earth's shadow is cast on the Moon, that's a Lunar eclipse, not the Moon changing phases.

A Lunar eclipse can happen only at the full Moon, because that's the only time the Sun and Moon are on opposite sides of the Earth. For a related reason, a Solar eclipse can only happen at the dark ("new") Moon, because that's the only time the Moon gets between the Earth and the Sun.

All other phases have the Moon's bright and dark parts showing partially. Note that the side toward the Sun is always lit.

The Moon doesn't orbit the Earth in the plane of the ecliptic (which is called that for a reason) or every full Moon would have a Lunar eclipse, and every dark Moon would have a Solar eclipse.

Hope this helps.

Thebes: I'm sure I'm not the first to encourage you to bake your own bread. It's really not difficult, and while it's a bit time-consuming most of the time is waiting (i.e. you can do something else), and the bread that results (once you've baked the requisite number of doorstops) will be the best you've ever tasted!

Particularly nice bread results from the "brown bowl, white board" principle: all the flour you add in the bowl should be whole wheat, and all the flour you knead in should be white. Fabulous bread.

Jamblichus 14: THERE we go! That's the concept I was looking for. This makes me angry because...well, as if we don't maltreat teenagers ENOUGH in our warped culture. But it's collective punishment, and that stinks out loud, and you're absolutely right.

Shorter: Hear, hear.

Gods damn them all. I really want to kill these people. You might be allowed to make teenagers go away from your property, but you don't have the right to hurt them when they're just walking past.

Fuck these people with a big thorny stick.

Kyle 4: I'm not Buddhist or Asian, and I saw it the same way you did. The single hand, edge on, held upright at the bottom of the chest, yes? Took me a few seconds to see the wankery inherent in the system ("help! I'm bein' repressed!").

WatchfulBabbler 21: You probably know, but did not mention, that ascorbic acid is also known as "vitamin C" and that some of the tocopherols are "vitamin E."

The word 'laboratory' is misspelled in the headline.

Sister, yes, in fact the news coverage surrounding that case was the reason I found out about the present state of the law. Prior to that I had believed the gun lobby's lies that it was already an individual right that we gun control fascists were trying to take away.

I'm not sanguine about this right-wing Court keeping the present interpretation intact.

I don't go to a lot of movies. I consider it a thing to do with company, and I'm alone.

I don't even RENT horror movies, or movies with graphic violence in them, even if they're serious dramas rather than trash like all horror movies. I have too much empathy, and knowing that it's only a movie doesn't help.

I think the trailers for Saw and The Hostel should not have been shown* on TV unless the program was graphically violent horror. Those trailers gave me nightmares, and they didn't even show anything graphic—just people pleading in vain for their lives, or not to be permanently maimed. The actors were good enough that I was forced to feel what the characters felt. I have a right not to feel that way, in my opinion.

When it comes to drowning, I don't even have to imagine: I can remember what it feels like to be underwater and unable to breathe. It's happened to me twice, once due to a boating accident (that was blessedly brief, as it turned out, but I had no way of knowing it would be when the boat was slamming over me with the force of the rapids behind it), and once due to the malice of a big guy who thought it was funny to hold me underwater and watch me struggle, and who certainly did NOT have the judgement to let me go in time; I think I kicked him in the balls or something. He was quite resentful: "I was only playing!" Yeah, fuck you. I was only playing when I kicked you in the balls, motherfucker.

So I know exactly what that feels like. No, I don't know what it feels like in a US torture chamber, bound with the torturers' balls out of kicking range, and no one with the sense or conscience to stop it around for miles. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the guy in the AI movie. I know what that feels like. I don't need those memories reinvoked, fuck you very much, Amnesty.

It's too late, actually. They're back. That one about the guy in the pool was pretty much gone until today. I had pushed it under and held it until I thought it had drowned, but it just kicked me in the balls and resurfaced. Goddam it.

I understand Amnesty's point here. I do. It's their tactics I'm censuring. And it won't be very effective if they only show it with the kind of movies I'd never see (horror, graphic violence, etc.), because the people who go to those movies go expecting to see horrors, and even if they're told this is real, they're unlikely to be much affected or change their opinions much because of it.

Bottom line: It saddens me to see Amnesty International, an organization I respect and have contributed money to, resorting to PETA-style in-your-face shock tactics. I understand that they feel it's necessary. I think they've stepped over the line.

_______
*That is, I think it would have been a better (more appropriate, more ethical) choice not to show them, NOT that I think some external agent should have intervened to prevent them. Freedom of expression is still a critical value to me.

Not mine, Mordion. The Supreme Court's. Therefore the only one that matters (in terms of present law).

I'd just like to point out that since 1939 the state of the law on the right to bear arms is that it's a collective, not an individual, right. That is, the people as a group (as distinct from the state) have a right to keep and bear arms, but no one individual does. That means that things like background checks and waiting periods and exclusions for felons etc. are perfectly legal under the current rulings of the SCOTUS, because they don't prevent the people as a demos from keeping and bearing arms.

The gun lobby wants to make it an individual right, and keep claiming (falsely) that it is. The SCOTUS has the ultimate right to read the Constitution and decide what its application is, and they've spoken on this topic.

It's perfectly legitimate to try to get the Court to overturn that 1939 decision. I would oppose such efforts, because I believe in gun control, and because the mention of the militia in the amendment makes it clear (IMO) that the interpretation as a collective right is the correct one.

You know, I'm already convinced that waterboarding is torture and must be stopped, and I really, really don't need to see it done to anyone.

This will help keep me out of movie theatres, and make me slightly resent Amnesty for doing it. I do fine just imagining this kind of crap; I really don't need to see it.

Jesse, Moon isn't listening. Never would have posted that in the first place if s/he had been.

Moon, you're using an online name that is the same as Sun Myung Moon's name. Are you willing to defend the Moonies?

Superficial similarities will not persuade any sensible person to regard the WU and the Unabomber as relevantly similar.

And all I'm saying is that I'll stick with my statement that you used to rape chipmunks.

Moon 61:

No, you're just defending violence. And no, the Weathermen set back the fight against the Viet Nam war. Unless you can show otherwise, I'll stick with that.

This is on the troll bingo card. It's an argument of the form "X is true unless you can prove that it isn't." Actually if you want to establish the truth of anything, you must present evidence for it, and you have not done so.

I would be making an argument of the same form if I said "Moon, while the WU were making bombs, you were sexually molesting chipmunks in your back yard. Unless you can show otherwise, I'll stick with that." Now you may deny sexually molesting chipmunks, but can you PROVE you never did? You were just never caught at it, and if you deny doing it, I can simply proclaim your denial "implausible," that is if I'm willing to be as much of a jackhole as the person who wrote that stupid article.

Brian 70: Yeah, see? They're the fucking scum of the Earth. I hope Dan Mathews chokes to death on a piece of bok choy.

(BTW, Cunanan especially liked to kill people who befriended him.)

ElysianArtist 104: 'micepace' sounds like it's the average speed of a bunch of mice. Just sayin'.

Sister 107: Hmm, I also liked the idea of people who change their behavior being reintegrated into polite society...UNTIL you compared it to Christians renouncing sin and being saved. Now I have icky shivers.

MarkFrei 33:

Quorn tastes great, but never agreed with my system.

I agree with half ot that. It made me really sick, and I thought it tasted disgusting. And I love tempeh, to name another fungusy product.

Gobo 36:

And if you're looking for ways to irritate vegetarians for fun, just stop, folks.

Hear, hear.

MonkeyThumpa 37:

I am curious what will happen to cattle, a human-bred creature that has poor survival skills, once we no longer need them for beef.

Don't worry, we'll still need them for leather.

Ooo, if they start growing vat skin and making it into leather, how will PETA know whom to throw paint on? On second thought, they probably won't care...they throw paint on people wearing fake fur now. And write letters to East Fishkill telling them they should change the name of their town, even though the 'kill' is Dutch and has nothing to do with killing. (Yes, they knew that and told the town it should change its name anyway, because it offended them. As if offending PETA weren't a goal to be lauded!)

Piper 38: I've tasted my own blood, sweat, and tears, as well as the occasional fingernail or bit of loose skin. Also [redacted]. I think that's enough for me, thanks.

Arkizzle 41: Yeah, it was the comment at 40 that really crossed the line though...oh wait. :-)

Belac 43: Yes, I agree. I was trying to tease out some threads from the mass, and it really didn't work.

Rats. Cross-posted, Antinous, with your 23. Yeah, what you said.

Hmm. Of those of you who would eat vat meat but not actual once-walking-around meat, which of you would eat human flesh grown the same way? You know, long pig like in Delany's Stars in My Pockets Like Grains of Sand?

Just curious, because my veggie instincts say "nope, that's still meat."

But then again, if your objection to non-human meat is about the treatment of the animals (as YesNo says at 20), I assume your objection to human meat is not on the same grounds. Otherwise you'd be willing to eat the flesh of little children as long as they were playing happily on the playground before being slaughtered, and I doubt ANYONE holds that position.

And this isn't really consistent with vegan philosophy. Bees don't suffer to make honey, and chickens don't suffer when unfertilized eggs are taken from them. Won't this vat meat be a kind of "exploitation"? Isn't it pretty much effectively just a cow without a brain?

That PETA would encourage this doesn't make sense to me, but then the PETA mindset is so alien to me that I guess I shouldn't try to predict what those wackos will do next.

Actually this is more evidence of what I've been saying about PETA for a long time: they don't so much love animals as hate people.

So! MarkFrei, you're an admitted Seitanist!!!

(So am I, I must say.)

Heh. I suspect AutoMatt was expecting a different response!

KevinK 50: Actually "subversion through literature" is a time-honored leftie tradition. You think we're going to stop now? :-)

I think Steven Seagal is overdeveloped, myself. Also dumb. And icky.

I suppose that doesn't mean he can't be a bodhisattva. Fierce type.

And His Holiness would know better than me. Shaanti, Steven.

Quite.

I'm amused by the fact that BoingBoing's "feature" of capitalizing every thread in your comment stream makes it look like they're launching Cory's little brother (where, into space?) on May 1.

I think he just plain got drunk and out of control, and typed what he was thinking and feeling right then. Probably got rejected by some woman who noticed he was a dork, a drunk, and a Republican, and wrote this as soon as he got home from the bar.

I'm afraid I don't know the DT part of DPDT, and of DVDA I have not even guesses. I know dx/dy. Does that help?

Steven Seagal? Honestly?

Um...doesn't that kind of cheapen it? :-)

Well, when it's done as part of drag it's called tucking. In a sexual context as far as I know it's called just what you'd expect: self-f***ing.

In SITW, Brian Thomson violates himself with his meat and two veg, then Leo Ford violates him at the same time.

Antinous, in all seriousness I would take the bodhisattva vow if I thought there was the remotest possibility of my being within miles of that level of enlightenment!

Antinous, assuming you mean like the famous scene in Sailor In The Wild, I'd like to see it.

April 31 is when all the events that were promised on April 1 take place.

The book's official launch is on April 28, but that's in the US. I'm not sure what Cory meant here.

There's this thing about Ascended Masters—they're all, without exception, ascended. That means they've gone to Heaven or Nirvana. That means they're not among us.

I mean, duhh.

Even claiming to be a bodhisattva makes more sense.

But has no head. Keeping the "per capita" numbers unchanged.

To let you know what a GeekoPagan I am, I've used the Lorenz Attractor as a visualization for psychic shielding, on the theory that it could absorb infinite energy.

Jamaica is said to have more churches per capita than any other nation (over 16,000 when last counted)

Good gods. 16,000 churches per capita sure is a lot of Sunday morning choices! But obviously only one in 16,000 has anyone in it at any given time, which means that the churches in Jamaica are 99.99375% abandoned.

Nancy, right? Not Nanyc? Am I the only one who's noticed?

Tom 6: Creepy. Hands down.

Gods. Is there no one left with a head that isn't bone all the way through? Well, of course they are, but we're not letting them teach our children.

(Actually I know this isn't true either, but I don't want to cite examples, because any teacher with a brain will probably be fired in this social environment! I'll keep their secret.)

Utah-based OnSat should eat shit and die.

DJordan 12: Ever hear "pain is weakness leaving the body"? That bad feeling you got for laughing, that was you becoming a better person.

Antinous 32: I'm sure you see both why they did it, and how stupid it was.

Antinous 26: I've told you people won't stand for that.

Some nights, I just like to relax and watch TV. I had to grow up in a very tense environment, and sometimes I thought I'd never get over it. Sometimes I flip out even though I don't mean to.

If you flame someone with a sharp tongue (or pen), this will probably start a flame war. I've never seen a group think* together so well. The Scarecrow was the straw man in The Wizard of Oz. And the scam victim said "This isn't my money, this is old newspaper!"** The Western rider said to the English rider, "Can you stop posting about? You make me nervous."

Word and phrase bans, not simple to implement. Context-sensitivity is hard to do, and context-free gets bad results.

*Yes, I know, but if you don't ban the spaced version the trollage will just use it in place of the unspaced version, won't they?

**And vice versa.

SamLL: they should also implement an FTL commenting feature. Just my input.

If they DID do as you suggest, I'd put in "This text is wrong" and watch the universe implode when I submitted it.