If thou gazest long into the Pit, the Pit will also gaze into thee

Wow. I've been a bad boy. My comments on WEIT go to moderation now.

"Trust but verify" is a hell of a lot better than "Listen and believe." We should give them that. The latter makes no mention of collecting any data.

http://pioneersofbearddom.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/052812-opinions-history-sanders-ozersky-1-ss-662w-at-1x.jpg [/quote] Harland David "Colonel" Sanders never actual fought for his country (or any other). He also did no public service and treated his wife in a manner later emulated by Dr. Rich...

screwtape wrote:'Stressing your member in the bathroom' - there's a new phrase for it every day!

Compression relieves tension.

Also: :clap:

"Trust but verify" is close to an oxymoron to me. I could see following something like "act as if true with regard to your interactions with the person claiming to be a victim while you check their story," but not something as simple as "trust but verify." The reason I say this is that "trust by ver...

Peezus linked to the article from here: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/04/20/spare-me-these-poseurs/ He writes: Why do we pay a woman who has a Masterâ€™s degree in sociology far less than a man who has an engineering degree, when both have invested the same amount in their education a...

Building bridges is more difficult than burning bridges. Pays better too. I spent two hours teaching statics to my daughter last night (after sneaking off to the bathroom with her textbook to make sure that I was remembering how to calculate stresses on members correctly). When we finished, we watc...

Look who just joined 'Slymepit Ireland'... https://twitter.com/micknugent/status/590330473810919425 Please note that, just because Atheist Ireland has invited Aron Ra to come give a talk (and probably spent quit a bit of money to make this happen), posted about this on blogs, and tweeted pictures o...

I once played Cock, Paper, Scissors. It was my cock, mom's and dad's signatures on the paper, and a mohel with the scissors.

Oh, well. No skin off my ...

... fuck.

Give him time. Without his wife's support and with dwindling conferences, he'll need both money and a fresh source of de wimmyns. He will make some excuse about the underprivileged and teach history 101 at Podunk Community College and Barber Academy. Likely in a tiny Midwest town. As surprising as ...

Gefan wrote:If anyone hasn't seen "The Grey" starring Liam Neeson, watch it. It's fucking incredible.

It's Liam Neeson, so could you clarify whether you mean "fucking incredible" in a good way?

Sulman wrote:I'll be closing this thread after some Bayesian action

Why is Carrier's Bayesian argument against the existence of Jesus like a person being sent to prison forever under a "three strikes" law?

Because both are totally fucked by their priors.

Obviously you didn't read jazz mags as a kid. I was raised in a one-room shack on the edge of the field that my share-cropper single-parent worked on. The only time that I saw any kind of magazine was when the overweight white sheriff would remove one from the handle of his .45 to prove that it was...

Shatterface as Guest wrote:We don't have any objective evidence Carrier even exists - just the unreliable testimony of his followers.

Bayesian proof or Flooosh!

I first met Godfrey at a Fair-Trade Tapioca Tasting Evening. That was before he was famous of course. Sad to say, but from that point he just got deeper and deeper into organic grains and pulses. By the time his friends realised he was an addict he was already on 250g of quinoa a day. He was sellin...

It's not just the known problems with heuristics that I worry about, Shatterface; it's the reliance on affirming the consequent. Bad sexists act in such a manner. You act that way. Therefore, you are bad sexist.

jet_lagg wrote:BTW does Godfrey actually post here?

Yes, but not as Godfrey.

To say more than this would be like saying "damion" three times to a mirror, as he would immediately appear and accuse me of doxxing.

It can be useful to include behavior in the definition, even if it's not strictly appropriate. As you say, beliefs drive actions. So, we can say someone who acts as if women aren't people isn't a feminist. Just like we could say someone who joined ISIS for the virigins is not an atheist, even if th...

As to Milo vs Anita ... I will be putting up a Kickstarter later today to develop and construct headsets that look exactly like large, hoop earrings. I expect you all to contribute.

This may be a stupid question, but how seriously do you (plural) take the "ism" part of word such as "sexism" and "racism"? By my understanding of the suffix, sexism and racism are beliefs; the belief that there is an inherent difference between the sexes and ethnic groups, respectively. Yes, both s...

Phil_Giordana_FCD wrote:Anyway, with the Balrog's mass, it shouldn't be able to fly. Or it would need a wingspan that would prevent it from flying in enclosed spaces, and even then the energy needed to sustain flight would be impossible.

Are we talking about an African Balrog or a European Balrog?

Skep tickle wrote:relatively independent: http://www.secularwoman.org/where-we-st ... riorities/

"Comments closed" - i.e., shut up and listen (while we make false claims)

This new star wars trailer - something's been bugging me. http://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.2331098.1429219047!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_960/image.jpg And then it struck me... http://orlandocon.secularhumanism.org/uploads/speakers/benson-ophelia_0f864295-199f-41aa-871f-65fc2e...

I don't know why but I always perceived Carrier as being a little different from the rest of the clown car clique, and it seemed to me that he at least an academic with a veneer of respectability... I have a theory on why you had that perception: you never checked his links to see if he was a schol...

Anyway, Beccy has described the Pit as a forum dedicated to hating her and other feminists: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:L1f4kCKDlwEJ:skepchick.org/2015/04/the-friendly-atheist-endorses-a-hate-forum/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk Good point. Write my comment off as my attempt to...

Have you seen Michael Shermer's fingernails? If anyone is a victim, it is me, and Ashley Miller was the root cause of my victimization.

- Michael Shermer's left testicle

subbie1957 wrote:I used to think Beccy was a narcissist. Then I looked up 'narcissist' in my picture dictionary, and it had a picture of Carrier in a toga.

Scroll down in the picture. Ms Watson was passed out on the floor when it was taken.

https://twitter.com/dubarmy/status/589529226304360448 No, Beccy isn't a narcissist. She thinks that the pit is all about her, but she's definitely not a narcissist. To be fair, that tweet only said that her favorite posts were those about her ... calling her a narcissist. There's enough irony in th...

Ninja'd and shown to be wrong in the same. Time to go back to gardening.

Shatterface as Guest wrote:Surprised she didn't play the 'why are you answering a man first?' card.

Maybe because it was Richard Carrier. :rimshot:

An open letter to Michael Nugent http://freethoughtblogs.com/ashleymiller/2015/04/18/an-open-letter-to-michael-nugent/ I recognize that you donâ€™t owe me a response, and I feel like you are almost certainly working on one, but I would like to discuss the fact that you saw fit to respond to Richard...

The fun just keeps coming. It was the Honey Badgers who were tossed from the Calgary Expo. That was probably a tactical error, to say the least.

Curiously, Prof Ceiling Cat had a guest post up yesterday about the problems with Bayes' Theorem ( Why I am Not a Bayesian ) and his intro to it read: JAC: Today Greg contributes his opinion on the use of Bayesian inference in statistics. I know that manyâ€”perhaps mostâ€”readers arenâ€™t familiar ...

Pitchguest - In the Ashley Miller thread (into which I dare not tread, but I see you still there), please remind people that P Z Myers made no attempt to confirm or rule out what he heard (second-hand?) from Alison Smith. Go back and read the critical paragraphs from the Grenade post (stopping at "B...

CaptainFluffyBunny wrote:Tony, that was trolling in a class by itself. Now, where do you go from here? You've summited Everest. Is this ne plus ultra?

i.e., as you looked down from the apex of your BBC interview, what did the shark look like?

Tony Parsehole wrote:I'm from Middlesbrough, mate. We're too scruffy to be classed as Yorkshire.

Apologies. I'm lousy at geography and thought Teesside was in Yorkshire.

Tony Parsehole wrote:Awwww....Cheers everybody. Can't believe you could understand a true smoggy speaking with the accent of his natural habitat.

When Hitchens admitted to a bias against Yorkshiremen, was that you, too?

Someone needs to rip it before the BBC gets a clue.

It's up: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02ntq64#auto

The part you want starts at 0:44:45

The podcast will be here http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice later today.

"Little Mermaid was a feminist film!" I want to have Godfrey's children. Like, right now.

Holy crap. He's on. Well done!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/bbc_world_service#

If we're not being trolled, it's next.

Anyone else stop and think after reading this from Nerd of Redhead on P Z Myers' "Compliance" (with the subpoena) thread: Reading between the lines of PZâ€™s posts, he has had a plan if a subpoena happened he drew up with a lawyer a while back, and had carefully trimmed his files to reveal no names...

Anyone else stop and think after reading this from Nerd of Redhead on P Z Myers' "Compliance" (with the subpoena) thread: Reading between the lines of PZâ€™s posts, he has had a plan if a subpoena happened he drew up with a lawyer a while back, and had carefully trimmed his files to reveal no names,...

Could you cite a case where a person clearly quoted someone else, adding no endorsement, but was still successfully sued for libel? No link or pdf needed. Just the name of the case will do. Thanks. No, i don't have a citation. (So what? FLOOSH? [emoji1]) Any first year law school Torts textbook wil...

I would like to express my appreciation for this post by Jan Steen (yesterday on Michael Nugent's blog): M.A. Melby wrote: Iâ€™m pretty sure almost everyone, including PZ Myers, understands that he has a caustic style and that he is not some sinless innocent that has never said something unfair. Cla...

Wow. M A Melby is a bit of cunt, eh?

In short, because you are publishing a defamatory statement, and wrapping it within "somebody else said ..." (even if somebody else said it) is not an ultimate defense against libel. You will be held to a standard of care in publishing that statement that will depend on who you are and who the plai...

I wrote the following as a comment on Michael Nugent's blog, but then deleted it, instead of hitting Submit . But I'll put it here, anyway, for your amusement (and because I don't want the spoons wasted). At the risk of encouraging discussion of irrelevant issues, here's a fun fact, buried in a hyp...

There is a third axis. In addition to left/right and libertarian/authoritarian, there's what Johnathan Haidt describes as the difference between individualistic cultures and sociocentric cultures. Yes! Which is why I recently asked Michael Nugent how or why Atheist Ireland decided to stress individ...

In a recent comment, Ashley Miller says this: Anyone who repeats the claims now is protected because theyâ€™re commenting on something newsworthy... To anyone listening, please keep in mind that, if you make a potentially libelous assertion, such as "P Z Myers is a rapist," the defense that "other ...

Don't real journalists want two verifiable reliable sources to back up facts, especially when it comes to serious accusations before they print a story? Muck raking tabloid trash is a different matter entirely. Yes, but that's just standard practice in journalism and, as far as I can tell, not dire...

In a recent comment, Ashley Miller says this: Anyone who repeats the claims now is protected because theyâ€™re commenting on something newsworthy... To anyone listening, please keep in mind that, if you make a potentially libelous assertion, such as "P Z Myers is a rapist," the defense that "other p...

Cunt of Personality wrote:I've been having an ongoing battle with it over the past week, ever since working out why it had been shitting itself and refusing to learn for months. I'm not sure it's an improvement.

Siri is obviously a woman. Telling her to "shut and listen" is ... I ...just ... can't

Billie from Ockham wrote:In other non-news, M A Melby is a jerk.

While, in contrast, OnionHead is majorly cool.

I suspect the legal letters sent out to pz and crowd forcing them to reconsider what they can really say legally without getting their asses handed to them was about as much of a win as Shermer could reasonably get without spending a boat load of dollars. That's not only plausible but has a bunch m...

a hermit April 16, 2015 at 12:18 am Actually I did hang around the pit as a â€œguestâ€ when it first started. Probably posted more there I ever have at pharyngula. It was the most unpleasant online experience I think Iâ€™ve ever had. On the other hand when I posted to object to Myers Robin William...

So Tethys is pretty fucking stupid: Tethys 15 April 2015 at 6:17 pm Screechymonkey Please donâ€™t be insulted, No worries! I am not at all insulted by your attempts at educating me on the finer points of civil law. I did realize that PZ has merely been subpoenaed as part of radfords defamation laws...

In general, screechymonkey was saying quite sensible things until this (which is in P Z Myers' "compliance" thread): Iâ€™m not sure if this is an example of the Streisand Effect as much as it is the Cosby Effect: viciously going after one accuser may backfire and spur your other victims to come forw...

Unless he changes his ways, Little Paul Myers is going to run afoul of a libel victim of his doing that won't roll over and show his belly (goddamn did Shermer dissapoint ). If it turns out that Michael Shermer backed off out of respect for Alison Smith I will be - to put it mildly - somewhat outra...

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