Bleeding from the Bunghole

[Dick Strawkins]

In the same vein, being an atheist is also not a great achievement and fawning over Dawkin's God Delusion as if great intelligent was needed to figure it out is ridiculous. It's not Dawkin's greatest intellectual achievement.

Is there much fawning over 'The God Delusion'?
To me it seems a competently written book that lays out the arguments against religion in a simple manner but it is hardly without flaw. It is, I guess, effective in that it seems to be a great target for apologists, and as such probably attracts quite a few religious people who 'want to know one's enemy' and instead find themselves unable to answer its points and thus questioning their faith.
I've never really seen atheists revering the book as some sort of masterpiece - I've seen far more praise for 'The Selfish Gene' and 'The Ancestors Tale'.

[Sunder]

I completely agree. Debunking creationism is not that hard. Once you rise above the retarded level of science education of the general public, everyone accepts evolution and laughs at the creationists. People enjoy Aronra's videos because he spends a lot of time making them, he's eloquent in them, and digs up the facts. In the same vein, being an atheist is also not a great achievement and fawning over Dawkin's God Delusion as if great intelligent was needed to figure it out is ridiculous. It's not Dawkin's greatest intellectual achievement.

The value is that they're short and digestable with minimal filler. You can get someone to watch a video or read Dawkins' book and plant the seed of doubt, and it's much easier than trying to go through the litany of arguments yourself. "Watch this." "Read this." And you're done and can go spend your time more productively.

And of course The God Delusion isn't some great intellectual treatise. It's written to be simple and accessible to everyone. And this is why it's been one of the most effective books in its class at actually reaching and converting theists.

[Dick Strawkins]

https://medium.com/rationally-speaking/a00df9c422af

Guess who Massimo Pigliucci is talking about here:

The guy writes too much, is too long winded, far too obnoxious for me to be able to withstand reading him for more than a few minutes at a time, and frankly my interest in the subject matter just isn’t strong enough to overcome all of the above.

[Ape+lust]

https://medium.com/rationally-speaking/a00df9c422af

Guess who Massimo Pigliucci is talking about here:

The guy writes too much, is too long winded, far too obnoxious for me to be able to withstand reading him for more than a few minutes at a time, and frankly my interest in the subject matter just isn’t strong enough to overcome all of the above.

Without looking, I'd guess Carrier. This is from one of the backchannel emails cited in Thunderf00t's video:

I concur with all that Natalie says. If he is coming on board, at the very least a requirement of that should be his apologizing to Laci with a real self-knowledge mea culpa to her reflecting the empathy and insight Natalie is expecting from a fellow blogger. Imagine the backchannel being joined by someone whose values look to align with ERV more than us. Run some predictive metrics on that.

Who writes such ungainly pomp in email? Run some predictive metrics -- WTF?

[Gumby]

https://medium.com/rationally-speaking/a00df9c422af

Guess who Massimo Pigliucci is talking about here:

The guy writes too much, is too long winded, far too obnoxious for me to be able to withstand reading him for more than a few minutes at a time, and frankly my interest in the subject matter just isn’t strong enough to overcome all of the above.

I guessed correctly.

[Tribble]

Several interesting talks at CFI Summit today, including one by Leonard Mlodinow on unconscious processing in the brain.

Interesting stuff. I'd heard much of the content before but it was particularly interesting to have a bunch of info on ways our brains trick us in one hour-long talk. He opened with having the audience participate in two demonstrations, that turned out (at the end) to be about anchoring and the foibles of even short-term memory.

One part was about how even brief touching can influence a person's immediately subsequent decisions & actions. Several (3 as I recall) examples were given of situations that have been studied; the first was done in France, of a young adult man going up to young adult women on the street, telling them they're pretty, & he doesn't have time now but could he get their phone number to call them later about getting together (for dinner, I think).

My wife and I used to go out for coffee near Vanderbilt when we were still in Nashville. I used to, when we were out, point out who was going to be 'successful' (ie, they were likely going to 'do it') on a date and who wasn't )going home alone) by watching them interact at the table.

Hand touching over the table was the key. And it's an interesting dance.

At least one blogger has posted about that example, expressing puzzlement, and also that it's interesting to be puzzled: http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels

Several respondents to that blog post have expressed their opinions, including a couple who express the opinion that touching without express permission is not okay and/or that it's counter-intuitive that touch should increase the likelihood the woman would agree to give her phone number; two who say they'd like to see the paper (actually, one would like to see the paper & the other would like to see "the peer reviews"); then eventually a couple of people who say it makes sense to them. Then finally (currently) the discussion turns to to how con men & similar people will use this to their advantage - or already are.

If anyone from that blog happens to stumble across this post and is still wondering about that topic, they might find it interesting that there's more information available about the study in question, and about cultural differences in expectations about touch between people in different countries. All bolding below was added by me.

1) Googled the phrase "French study on reaction to touch" (without quote marks); there are a bunch of similar phrases that turn up similar results. My top and third search results are linked below.

2) The top search hit (for me at least, I know Google tailors the results) is this: http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article ... n_research

...some Western cultures are pretty touch-deprived, and this is especially true of the United States.

Ethologists who live in different parts world quickly recognize this. Nonhuman primates spend about 10 to 20 percent of their waking day grooming each other. If you go to various other countries, people spend a lot of time in direct physical contact with one another—much more than we (in the US) do.

This has been well-documented. One of my favorite examples is a study from the 1960s by pioneering psychologist Sidney Jourard, who studied the conversations of friends in different parts of the world as they sat in a café together. He observed these conversations for the same amount of time in each of the different countries.

What did he find? In England, the two friends touched each other zero times. In the United States, in bursts of enthusiasm, we touched each other twice.

But in France, the number shot up to 110 times per hour. And in Puerto Rico, those friends touched each other 180 times! ...

3) The 3rd search result (when I do the search) is this: http://www.spring.org.uk/2011/04/10-psy ... -touch.php
which mentions & links several studies, including one on waiters, also referred to by Mlodinow. The French PUA study is there:

7. Touch for a date

You won’t be surprised to hear that men show more interest in a woman who has lightly touched them. But here’s the research anyway: Gueguen (2010) found men easily misinterpreted a light nonsexual touch on the arm as a show of sexual interest.

Perhaps more surprisingly women also responded well to a light touch on the arm when being asked for their phone number by a man in the street (Gueguen, 2007). This may be because women associated a light 1 or 2-second touch with greater dominance. (Bear in mind, though, that this research was in France again!)

4) The link to that 2007 paper gives access to the abstract (the paper is behind a pay wall); the abstract says, in part:

Previous research has shown that light tactile contact increases compliance to a wide variety of requests. However, the effect of touch on compliance to a courtship request has never been studied. In this paper, three experiments were conducted in a courtship context. ... In the second experiment, a 20‐year‐old confederate approached a young woman in the street and asked her for her phone number. The request was again accompanied by a light touch (or not) on the young woman's forearm. In both experiments, it was found that touch increased compliance to the man's request. A replication of the second experiment accompanied with a survey administered to the female showed that high score of dominance was associated with tactile contact. The link between touch and the dominant position of the male was used to explain these results theoretically.

5) Note also the comment about "men easily misinterpret[ing] a light nonsexual touch on the arm as a show of sexual interest" - that was by the same researcher, & while that paper is also behind a paywall at the link above, the pdf is readily available online. Yes, that research was also done in France; either of those French studies might have a different outcome if replicated in the US (in the dominant culture in the US, at least). But one wonders whether there might be some nugget there that might suggest an explanation for at least some instances of apparent misunderstandings between men & women about interest level in hooking up or whatever. (Also, that paper available as pdf is full of references to other studies showing behavioral effects of brief touching.)

So, anyway, with a pretty quick search it was possible to find out more about this French he-touch-she-give-phone-number study, in the case of the respondents perhaps leaving less to guesswork & opinion, and in the case of the blogger perhaps less puzzlement. Including the researcher's guess as to why some women might respond more positively after a light touch.

As for me, I'm a bit puzzled as to how a physicist like Mlodinow got into cognitive neuroscience, but I'm not complaining at all - he's good at explaining it (the behavioral observations at least, we didn't get into the wiring).

SJWs don't like the biological part of being human. They don't understand grooming behaviors, touching behaviors and most forms of non-verbal sexual communication. In the end, those behaviors don't seem to work for them and they, in turn, try to make sure that we can't engage in them.

We're apes, though we like to forget it. And as we know from decades of science, if you isolate an ape from touch and it'll go nuts to one degree or another.

[Lsuoma]

https://medium.com/rationally-speaking/a00df9c422af

Guess who Massimo Pigliucci is talking about here:

The guy writes too much, is too long winded, far too obnoxious for me to be able to withstand reading him for more than a few minutes at a time, and frankly my interest in the subject matter just isn’t strong enough to overcome all of the above.

Got to be Carrier Bag.

[BarnOwl]

Well done, Service Dog! :clap:

Speaking of Lou Reed, I was listening to the BBC radio program Newsday last night, and they chose to play the Candy Darling verse from Walk on the Wild Side.

But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head ....

Just wondering about the usage of "giving head" outside the US?

[Tribble]

Remember the earlier chart I quoted from Service Dog. Here's real-life demonstrating that the 'made up' chart may not be so 'made up.' And that it certainly doesn't fit the SJW desired outcome. This is how people act, even if the SJWs don't like it:

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/fi ... 0/02/8.png

And the eight-year brain-maturity gap and dating preferences:

Women at most ages state a preference to date men who are about eight years older or younger:

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/fi ... 0/02/2.png

It's almost as if thousands upon thousands of years of evolution/observation/environmental influences/whatever-the-reason have primed women in some way... And it seems that priming means women don't need any 'help' from our SJW friends. Nor do they seem to care about those silly SJW theories.

They want what they want, and it's date older guys.

The author of the charts: Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. http://www.oxy.edu/faculty/lisa-wade Whose bio includes this tidbit: Prof. Wade is also a regular contributor to Ms., Jezebel, and GlobalPolicyTV. So she's almost certainly not some SlymePit Sister-Punisher.

[Guest]

You have to watch this patronising Larry David lookalike in action. He's Michael Burawoy, a key figure in the 'Public Sociology' movement:
[youtube]d29t2Tshc9M[/youtube]
Be interesting to hear what VaxHerd has to say on this bloke, because to me, he's turning sociology into a joke. The bit where they go round (at around 12mins) and talk about the 'publics' with which they 'identify' is excruciating.

[Service Dog]

Because sometimes while you can have a basic premise that's very correct, your exposition and reasoning could be hilariously wrong, as it was the case with the lad PZ was mocking mercilessly.
....
At this particular instance, PZ was right. The methodology was hilarious. Seriously, the weight the guy assigns to age is a factor of ten larger than 90% of other weights he considers in his survey. Of course, the result is going to confirm his hypothesis...

I think PZ has fooled some of us into thinking there's "a guy" PZ is refuting: a strawman.

My understanding is that one guy created the SMV chart-- Rollo Tomassi.

PZ found out about the chart from a second guy-- Vox Day-- and Vox Day then refuted PZ's original post.


And then a third guy-- Heartiste-- tweeted a "What's your Social Market Value quiz" to PZ, which was the subject of PZ's follow-up post.


I don't think the SMV quiz is the methodology behind the SMV chart.

I think the Rollo Tomassi chart is like a lecturer drawing a couple of overlapping bell-curves freehand-- on a chalkboard or the back of a napkin-- to loosely illustrate a point. 'Not to scale'.
Tomassi said, "I’ve restated this repeatedly, but this graph was never the result of some scientific analysis..."

In the course of defending his chart against other critics- (not PZ), Tomassi did start to connect it to quasi-rigorous analysis, such as the OkCupid dating site's analysis of their users' data: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-c ... der-woman/ But PZ ignored the most-compelling, most-scientific basis for the SMV chart, in favor of fabricating a least-compelling strawman to mock.

PZ also ignored Vox Day's reasonable-sounding refutation of PZ's original post. Vox Day treated the SMV chart like a stock chart, comparing the ups and downs of a hypothetical Male and Female company's "stock" value over a lifetime, in a purely-figurative stock-market.
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2013/10/pz-w ... loses.html

Instead, PZ seized on Heartiste's quiz, MISREPRESENTING IT as 'survey data' methodology behind the chart.

I've not looked at Arora's map in detail but if it's not based on statistics such as "rape per capita" then it's also bullshit and I'll be very surprised and disappointed in Aronra if that was the case. Nonetheless, that is very different than some dude assigning some random numerical value to highly subjective traits.

I don't think reliable "rape per capita" data exists across 174 nations, and so WomanStats is justified in trying to construct a back-of-the-envelope Best Guess, from available data.

But the map AronRa presented wasn't even the map WomanStats offers as their 'best guess' about rape frequency. It was a map which incorporated all sorts of voodoo.... such as China's strict ban on pornography being cited by WomanStats as evidence that China is strongly anti-rape, compared to France which WomanStats faults for allowing porn to be sold at newsstands.

[Dick Strawkins]

Well done, Service Dog! :clap:

Speaking of Lou Reed, I was listening to the BBC radio program Newsday last night, and they chose to play the Candy Darling verse from Walk on the Wild Side.

But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head ....

Just wondering about the usage of "giving head" outside the US?

I think it means the same thing; at least in the UK and Ireland.

[Tribble]

I love this!

Nerd shows his true side. I bet that fucker beats the shit out of his wife if his potatoes are underdone.

http://i.imgur.com/0BY7Ak3.png

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ent-711229

http://i.imgur.com/hUfZn0v.jpg

Holy shit, that's funny.

[debaser71]

https://medium.com/rationally-speaking/a00df9c422af

Guess who Massimo Pigliucci is talking about here:

The guy writes too much, is too long winded, far too obnoxious for me to be able to withstand reading him for more than a few minutes at a time, and frankly my interest in the subject matter just isn’t strong enough to overcome all of the above.

Without looking, I'd guess Carrier. This is from one of the backchannel emails cited in Thunderf00t's video:

I concur with all that Natalie says. If he is coming on board, at the very least a requirement of that should be his apologizing to Laci with a real self-knowledge mea culpa to her reflecting the empathy and insight Natalie is expecting from a fellow blogger. Imagine the backchannel being joined by someone whose values look to align with ERV more than us. Run some predictive metrics on that.

Who writes such ungainly pomp in email? Run some predictive metrics -- WTF?

Someone who is on one of the various forms of speed.

[Tribble]

Wasn't that what happened with the Occupy movement? People were protesting against corruption on Wall Street, and SJW morons came in and shat it up with Progressive Stacks and whining about Smashing Patriarchy and other nonsense?

That's exactly what happened. The fucking SJWs co-opted the movement and turned it into an unfocused mess. People just drifted away as the message became hopelessly muddled.

[katamari Damassi]

Wasn't that what happened with the Occupy movement? People were protesting against corruption on Wall Street, and SJW morons came in and shat it up with Progressive Stacks and whining about Smashing Patriarchy and other nonsense?

That's exactly what happened. The fucking SJWs co-opted the movement and turned it into an unfocused mess. People just drifted away as the message became hopelessly muddled.

That always happens. Years ago when I participated in anti-war marches somehow I'd always end up next to the "free Mumia" people. There were all sorts of "progressives" with their own agendas stealing focus from the march. I hated them.

[windy]

I don't think reliable "rape per capita" data exists across 174 nations, and so WomanStats is justified in trying to construct a back-of-the-envelope Best Guess, from available data.

But the map AronRa presented wasn't even the map WomanStats offers as their 'best guess' about rape frequency. It was a map which incorporated all sorts of voodoo.... such as China's strict ban on pornography being cited by WomanStats as evidence that China is strongly anti-rape, compared to France which WomanStats faults for allowing porn to be sold at newsstands.

And they still managed to score China as two steps more "rapey" than France, along with Japan. Doesn't Japan have very low rates of violent crime in general?

[Suet Cardigan]

I don't think reliable "rape per capita" data exists across 174 nations, and so WomanStats is justified in trying to construct a back-of-the-envelope Best Guess, from available data.

But the map AronRa presented wasn't even the map WomanStats offers as their 'best guess' about rape frequency. It was a map which incorporated all sorts of voodoo.... such as China's strict ban on pornography being cited by WomanStats as evidence that China is strongly anti-rape, compared to France which WomanStats faults for allowing porn to be sold at newsstands.

And they still managed to score China as two steps more "rapey" than France, along with Japan. Doesn't Japan have very low rates of violent crime in general?

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

The US rape rate for 2010 is 27.3 per 100,000 people. For Japan, the figure is 1.

That map seems to be more a measure of feminist approval of various countries than any sort of measure of the prevalence of rape.

[Trophy]

Remember the earlier chart I quoted from Service Dog. Here's real-life demonstrating that the 'made up' chart may not be so 'made up.' And that it certainly doesn't fit the SJW desired outcome. This is how people act, even if the SJWs don't like it:

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/fi ... 0/02/8.png

And the eight-year brain-maturity gap and dating preferences:

Women at most ages state a preference to date men who are about eight years older or younger:

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/fi ... 0/02/2.png

It's almost as if thousands upon thousands of years of evolution/observation/environmental influences/whatever-the-reason have primed women in some way... And it seems that priming means women don't need any 'help' from our SJW friends. Nor do they seem to care about those silly SJW theories.

They want what they want, and it's date older guys.

The author of the charts: Lisa Wade is a professor of sociology at Occidental College. http://www.oxy.edu/faculty/lisa-wade Whose bio includes this tidbit: Prof. Wade is also a regular contributor to Ms., Jezebel, and GlobalPolicyTV. So she's almost certainly not some SlymePit Sister-Punisher.

Hmm, those charts are from OkCupid blog, including the following ones:

http://cdn.okcimg.com/blog/older_lover/ ... -Prefs.png

http://cdn.okcimg.com/blog/older_lover/ ... -Prefs.png

http://cdn.okcimg.com/blog/older_lover/ ... -Prefs.png

[Trophy]

My understanding is that one guy created the SMV chart-- Rollo Tomassi.

PZ found out about the chart from a second guy-- Vox Day-- and Vox Day then refuted PZ's original post.

And then a third guy-- Heartiste-- tweeted a "What's your Social Market Value quiz" to PZ, which was the subject of PZ's follow-up post.


I don't think the SMV quiz is the methodology behind the SMV chart.

I think the Rollo Tomassi chart is like a lecturer drawing a couple of overlapping bell-curves freehand-- on a chalkboard or the back of a napkin-- to loosely illustrate a point. 'Not to scale'.
Tomassi said, "I’ve restated this repeatedly, but this graph was never the result of some scientific analysis..."

In the course of defending his chart against other critics- (not PZ), Tomassi did start to connect it to quasi-rigorous analysis, such as the OkCupid dating site's analysis of their users' data: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-c ... der-woman/ But PZ ignored the most-compelling, most-scientific basis for the SMV chart, in favor of fabricating a least-compelling strawman to mock.

PZ also ignored Vox Day's reasonable-sounding refutation of PZ's original post. Vox Day treated the SMV chart like a stock chart, comparing the ups and downs of a hypothetical Male and Female company's "stock" value over a lifetime, in a purely-figurative stock-market.
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2013/10/pz-w ... loses.html

Instead, PZ seized on Heartiste's quiz, MISREPRESENTING IT as 'survey data' methodology behind the chart.

Hmm, interesting. Are you saying PZ misinterpreted people? *gasp*
And also it seems I was ninjaed for that okcupid link.

[Dick Strawkins]

Doesn't Japan have very low rates of violent crime in general?

Yes, very low rates compared to the rest of the western world.
But things are different when you look at the crime of rape.
Yes, normal 'people rape' is uncommon in Japan.

But that's not the only kind of rape.
Just ask PZ...

http://i.imgur.com/1hKSxZm.jpg

[Service Dog]

I'm enjoying reading PUA commenters with names like "Scoobius Dubious", who accept PZ's SMV testimonial at face-value, concluding that PZ is equally attracted to Scarlett Johansson, "an infant, or an 85 year-old woman." And...

SMV (PZ Myers version) is defined as what the individual determines is attractive. Therefore, because Danish-Ashkenazi Scarlett Johansson is unattractive to PZ, and Danish-Snarfing PZ is highly sexually appealing to his wife...PZ Myers has higher SMV than Scarlett Johansson. QED
There! He wins! Easy!

you don't have to sleep with a gal to figure out if you'd want to.

I would absolutely never buy a Honda Ridgeline. So even though it is a fairly popular truck, to me it is worthless. Therefore, the idea of putting a monetary value on automobiles is meaningless.

Astute coments one and all. I'll keep it simple though. PZ is STUPID

Mrs. Myers October 25, 2013 6:31 PM
PZ: "My sexual appeal to my wife is huge"

Thank god for double-A batteries. And alcohol. Lots of alcohol.

I was watching Big Bang Theory and found out that rabbits scrotums are located in front of their penis. I checked it out on the interwebs and it seems to be true.

I am not sure how this all relates here, but it must have some relevant meaning.

I think this falls under the category of Things Liberals Know But Can Never Admit To.

No units -- kind of like evolutionary fitness.

And, let's not forget Skepticon 5, "Evolution: I do the kinky stuff", timecode 6:33, PZ Myers...

“There’s Wolverine. He’s got the superpowers. He’s got the hot rockin’ sexy bod. He looks like whatshisname— the actor who plays him— Hugh Jackman. He’s marvelous. What you’d expect is he’s going to have a thousand children, hardly even trying. And what you’d expect is if this is such a superpowerful mutation is that, is that at some point every human being on the planet is going to be descended from Wolverine— also known as Hugh Jackman— and is going to be just as good looking and have the same superpowers. That’s our dream right? Some of us are already there. But the rest of you, you can work on it.”

[Skeptic_Duh]

For amusement:

Cancellation of Afrobeat band Shokazoba at Hampshire College's Hampshire Halloween creates controversy

Shokazoba's cancellation from the Hampshire Halloween event Friday night at Hampshire College, after one band member said they were criticized of being "too white" to play Afrobeat music, is reverberating on social media.

...

Moses said the band had to sign a performance contract with the Hype Committee that stated it would not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, physical ability, or sexual orientation.

--- http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/ ... _band.html

Seems they were discriminated against.

[windy]

And I should think a 'scientist' who is a 'biologist' might, before he fucking pontificates on some chart that goes against his Holy Church of Feminist Doctrine, familiarize himself with research that's now (a) well-established and (b) (some of it) now decades old.

Maybe PZ just had the wrong species?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17113387

Curr Biol. 2006 Nov 21;16(22):2234-8.
Male chimpanzees prefer mating with old females.
Muller MN, Thompson ME, Wrangham RW.

Cross-cultural studies indicate that women's sexual attractiveness generally peaks before motherhood and declines with age. Cues of female youth are thought to be attractive because humans maintain long-term pair bonds, making reproductive value (i.e. future reproductive potential) particularly important to males. Menopause is believed to exaggerate this preference for youth by limiting women's future fertility. This theory predicts that in species lacking long-term pair bonds and menopause, males should not exhibit a preference for young mates. We tested this prediction by studying male preferences in our closest living relative, the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). We show that despite their promiscuous mating system, chimpanzee males, like humans, prefer some females over others. However, in contrast to humans, chimpanzee males prefer older, not younger, females. These data robustly discriminate patterns of male mate choice between humans and chimpanzees. Given that the human lineage evolved from a chimpanzee-like ancestor, they indicate that male preference for youth is a derived human feature, likely adapted from a tendency to form unusually long term mating bonds.

I tried to find some data on baboons, but the results seem inconclusive.

[feathers]

And they still managed to score China as two steps more "rapey" than France, along with Japan. Doesn't Japan have very low rates of violent crime in general?

Not if taking pictures of ladies' underpants with your mobile counts as 'rape'.

[Guestus Aurelius]

Jan Steen: MVP[itter].


Something I've noticed with great amusement about Carrier is that for all his pompous loquaciousness, he's not a particularly good writer. In his refusal to strive for brevity and edit accordingly, he ends up with impenetrable, awkward prose that nobody wants to read, undercutting any decent points he might make. Massimo Pigliucci nailed it.

And it's not just his style that's problematic. Here is an excerpt from the Pigliucci link:

Premise 2. By its own intrinsic nature, the most overriding value any conscious agent will have is for maximizing its own well-being and reducing its own suffering.

The possessive pronoun its at the beginning promises to correlate with the sentence's subject that will follow ("the most overriding value"), but it turns out to stand for any conscious agent instead. Also, he mixes future tense ("will have") with present tense ("is").

Better:

Premise 2. People care most about maximizing their own well-being and reducing their own suffering.

Okay, I'm being a picky douche, but dammit, if he's going to parade his degree and claim to be "intellectual artillery," then a picky douche I will be.

[James Caruthers]

I don't think reliable "rape per capita" data exists across 174 nations, and so WomanStats is justified in trying to construct a back-of-the-envelope Best Guess, from available data.

But the map AronRa presented wasn't even the map WomanStats offers as their 'best guess' about rape frequency. It was a map which incorporated all sorts of voodoo.... such as China's strict ban on pornography being cited by WomanStats as evidence that China is strongly anti-rape, compared to France which WomanStats faults for allowing porn to be sold at newsstands.

Didn't you know? Letting people (men, because women neeeever look at porn) look at skin mags and jerk off causes rape.

These are the "sex-positive" people. :lol:

[Tony Parsehole]

A bit late to the Nerd bashing party but:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7413/1054 ... a268_o.jpg

[Jimmy Russel]

If this hasn't already been posted. Trouble in paradise between Ophelia and A+

Comments section gets nasty, concludes with

Jesus h fucking Christ. No wonder people hate Atheism plus if that’s a representative sample.

http://t.co/oJ4slj7lti

[Service Dog]

Cancellation of Afrobeat band Shokazoba at Hampshire College's Hampshire Halloween creates controversy

I propose a race war battle of the bands between Shokazoba and the 30 SJWs who blocked the band from playing.

[youtube]QEOAH4D7_OI[/youtube]

VS.

https://scontent-b-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hph ... 0128_n.jpg


FURTHERMORE, on behalf of the Slymepit, I accuse the Hampshire College 'Hype Committee' of culturally-appropriating the Pit's graphic design sensibility for their 'Gin & Tonics Hampshire Halloween' event flyer.

[Pitchguest]

Like Jan Steen, I am just flabbergasted at the post Yemisi (poetess of our age) has up on FtB. She admits that even her very close ('white') friends have experienced racism from quote unquote 'black people', and she's received accounts where quote unquote 'black people' are being racist against other black people -- in fact, and yet she writes that 'reverse racism' (e.g. 'blacks' being racist against 'whites') and 'black on black' racism are nothing but myths?

How does that work?

Oh, right. Because Yemisi and a 'fellow Nigerian' argues that racism is institutional and that 'black people' does not have that kind of power.

Does the actual definition of 'racism' state that racism has to, necessarily, be institutional in order for it to count as racism? Nope.

Is it an actual requirement that you have to have a certain 'power' in order for the statement 'I don't want a black person to handle my case' to count as racist or racially discriminatory, even if the statement was said by another black person? Nope.

rac·ism noun \ˈrā-ˌsi-zəm also -ˌshi-\
: poor treatment of or violence against people because of their race

: the belief that some races of people are better than others

Then again, it's from a dictionary.

However, she got one thing right: there is no such thing as 'reverse racism.' It's just called racism.

[Tony Parsehole]

For amusement:

Cancellation of Afrobeat band Shokazoba at Hampshire College's Hampshire Halloween creates controversy

Shokazoba's cancellation from the Hampshire Halloween event Friday night at Hampshire College, after one band member said they were criticized of being "too white" to play Afrobeat music, is reverberating on social media.

...

Moses said the band had to sign a performance contract with the Hype Committee that stated it would not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, physical ability, or sexual orientation.

--- http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/ ... _band.html

Seems they were discriminated against.

...some students "questioned the selection of one band, asking whether it was a predominantly white Afrobeat band, and expressing their concerns about cultural appropriation and the need to respect marginalized cultures."

I bet "some students" where white, middle class and British.

[James Caruthers]

Jan Steen: MVP[itter].


Something I've noticed with great amusement about Carrier is that for all his pompous loquaciousness, he's not a particularly good writer. In his refusal to strive for brevity and edit accordingly, he ends up with impenetrable, awkward prose that nobody wants to read, undercutting any decent points he might make. Massimo Pigliucci nailed it.

And it's not just his style that's problematic. Here is an excerpt from the Pigliucci link:

Premise 2. By its own intrinsic nature, the most overriding value any conscious agent will have is for maximizing its own well-being and reducing its own suffering.

The possessive pronoun its at the beginning promises to correlate with the sentence's subject that will follow ("the most overriding value"), but it turns out to stand for any conscious agent instead. Also, he mixes future tense ("will have") with present tense ("is").

Better:

Premise 2. People care most about maximizing their own well-being and reducing their own suffering.

Okay, I'm being a picky douche, but dammit, if he's going to parade his degree and claim to be "intellectual artillery," then a picky douche I will be.

... Yeah, don't bother trying to rewrite FTBlogs. You could spend all day with the hip waders and cutting shears and still never get Carrier's writing into a readable form. I've given up. I have to accept that every time someone links to a FTB article, I'm going to have trouble understanding what the hell the writer is trying to say. They're all terrible. I mean, it's kind of brilliant in a way that so many completely shit writers have been gathered in one place. PZ's probably the best, and Carrier is definitely the worst. You could write a program to delete every other sentence from his articles and I suspect it would greatly improve his flow and readability.

"Pseudo-intellectual" gets tossed around a lot, but I think it's an especially apt description of Carrier and many of the other FTB writers. Maybe the Pitt should gift Carrier a copy of Writing for Dummies. Even though the fans of FTB obviously have no problems with shitty writing (being themselves a bunch of shitty hack writers), I think they would be shocked at how much the quality of the blog would be improved by hiring a managing editor to approve each article before publication. Such a move would also reduce the legal liability of the FTB staff, since an editor could go to PZ and say things like, "do you really want to make these criminal accusations without providing specific details?"

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

"cultural appropriation"

Ah, I bet Half-Fish knows all about this, wanker that he is.

[Tony Parsehole]

"cultural appropriation"

Ah, I bet Half-Fish knows all about this, wanker that he is.

Since when did cultural appropriation become a bad thing and why is it a bad thing? Isn't Britain just one big appropriated culture? Isn't the U.S.A?
Have these white middle class arseholes got nothing better to do than moan about non-blacks in England eating jerk chicken and playing steel drums?

[AndrewV69]

Amazing story from Mother Jones reporter Stephanie Mencimer about Jamie Leigh Jones. She takes responsibility for doing some credulous reporting on the case before really digging into it herself. Justicar appears in the comments.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazi ... p?page=all

Picked it up from today's "On the Media" on NPR:

http://www.onthemedia.org/story/re-eval ... narrative/

I saw that when it first came out but there is a limit as to how often I bring up stuff like this here. I do not want to keep bringing up the same shit over and over and over and over.

Anyway, it has parallels with the Pitt Meadows "rape" and the Retha Parsons "gang rape" bullshit in that it fits a narrative. In this case the narrative was:

As told in the media, Jones’s story neatly fit the feminist rape scenario. Brushed off by law enforcement, she sought justice with a civil case, only to be victimized again by defense lawyers using her sexual history to try to discredit her. Her story was both haunting and familiar.

I do not believe that all the stories in the media are all complete bullshit. For example the Stubenville story and the other one (forget the name) where one of the apparent victims had her home burnt down do appear to be more closely based on what really happened than what I am accustomed to seeing but that is not saying much.

In the end, my experience is you can not really trust the media to get any of the facts correct. One metric I apply is to look for what is not being said. Believe unconditionally what is fed to you at your own peril.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

I've known plenty of people appropriating culture. Mostly white guys and gals, sporting dreadlocks, and moaning about cultural appropriation.

Fucking SJWs, in short.

[Dick Strawkins]

Shocking development... :shock:

http://i.imgur.com/OTpTirV.jpg

[Dick Strawkins]

Damn uppity pitters! :evil:

[Gefan]

Shocking development... :shock:

http://i.imgur.com/OTpTirV.jpg

Isn't it amazing how they always "get word" of what's happening here and never actually see it for themselves?
Somewhere, there is a solitary, extremely over-worked baboon monitoring our every move and then notifying each and every one of the rest of the commentariat.

[spiffigt]

...some students "questioned the selection of one band, asking whether it was a predominantly white Afrobeat band, and expressing their concerns about cultural appropriation and the need to respect marginalized cultures."

I bet "some students" where white, middle class and British.

This is just stupid. There are tons of all-white jazz bands. Tons of white rappers too. Both are/were "black music". Would they cancel those too? :think:
Get of your middle class PC high horses and act like grownups (but you never will).

[CaptainFluffyBunny]

Anybody that believes "people of color" cannot be racist need only visit certain neighborhoods and they will be disabused of that notion very quickly. If they survive. Dumbfucks. There's also a huge Korean community where I live, and a large black community. Their prevailing views of one another are often "colorful." How would one describe that? Racism seems to fit the bill just fine..

[James Caruthers]

Damn uppity pitters! :evil:

They totally need to check their privilege and go sit in the back of the bus with the rest of the evil patriarchal white cisgendered males! Not like us white cisgendered males over at FTB, oh no. We're the good ones. People I don't like are making photoshops? That just makes me so upset!
[youtube]ztE3E18Ek8g[/youtube]

[CaptainFluffyBunny]

Shocking development... :shock:

http://i.imgur.com/OTpTirV.jpg

Isn't it amazing how they always "get word" of what's happening here and never actually see it for themselves?
Somewhere, there is a solitary, extremely over-worked baboon monitoring our every move and then notifying each and every one of the rest of the commentariat.

I've always imagined them working in a darkened basement, huddled over a computer and a empty box of Kleenex on their desk. A huge mound of tear and snot-stained tissues mounded next to them. Busily documenting the atrocities of the 'pit, and counting down the hours until their merciful de-briefing and mandatory roofie.

[Gefan]

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 5949_n.jpg

Remind me again.

The Tea Party are the nuts on the right and the RadFems are the nuts on the left, correct?

It's easy to get confused.

[Service Dog]

http://i.imgur.com/OTpTirV.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... stard.jpeg

[Ericb]

Damn uppity pitters! :evil:

They totally need to check their privilege and go sit in the back of the bus with the rest of the evil patriarchal white cisgendered males! Not like us white cisgendered males over at FTB, oh no. We're the good ones. People I don't like are making photoshops? That just makes me so upset!
[youtube]ztE3E18Ek8g[/youtube]

http://www.wfu.edu/uac/veWebsite/exhibi ... 30005b.jpg

[katamari Damassi]

"cultural appropriation"

Ah, I bet Half-Fish knows all about this, wanker that he is.

Since when did cultural appropriation become a bad thing and why is it a bad thing? Isn't Britain just one big appropriated culture? Isn't the U.S.A?
Have these white middle class arseholes got nothing better to do than moan about non-blacks in England eating jerk chicken and playing steel drums?

Yeah the cultural appropriation thing makes no sense, but SJW's cling to it. Once at Shakesville a commenter asked if it was ok for her- as a white woman- to take an Indian dance class. The responses were mostly of the "just be careful/respectful" type. They couldn't really articulate it because they don't know the rules yet.

[welch]

Shocking development... :shock:

http://i.imgur.com/OTpTirV.jpg

OH LOAHD, I GOTS THE VAYPAHS!!!

[Tigzy]

Shocking development... :shock:

http://i.imgur.com/OTpTirV.jpg

Isn't it amazing how they always "get word" of what's happening here and never actually see it for themselves?
Somewhere, there is a solitary, extremely over-worked baboon monitoring our every move and then notifying each and every one of the rest of the commentariat.

I've always imagined them working in a darkened basement, huddled over a computer and a empty box of Kleenex on their desk. A huge mound of tear and snot-stained tissues mounded next to them. Busily documenting the atrocities of the 'pit, and counting down the hours until their merciful de-briefing and mandatory roofie.

I too have imagined them working in a darkened basement, huddled over a computer and a empty box of Kleenex on their desk. But it's not snot and tears which stain the tissues...

Besides, I'm pretty sure the Pit is a source of guilty pleasure to many an SJW.

[welch]

http://i.imgur.com/OTpTirV.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... stard.jpeg

Dude, you can't just paste in a pic of her. You have to change SOMETHING or else it's not a 'shop.

[AndrewV69]

And I should think a 'scientist' who is a 'biologist' might, before he fucking pontificates on some chart that goes against his Holy Church of Feminist Doctrine, familiarize himself with research that's now (a) well-established and (b) (some of it) now decades old.

Maybe PZ just had the wrong species?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17113387

Curr Biol. 2006 Nov 21;16(22):2234-8.
Male chimpanzees prefer mating with old females.
Muller MN, Thompson ME, Wrangham RW.

Cross-cultural studies indicate that women's sexual attractiveness generally peaks before motherhood and declines with age. Cues of female youth are thought to be attractive because humans maintain long-term pair bonds, making reproductive value (i.e. future reproductive potential) particularly important to males. Menopause is believed to exaggerate this preference for youth by limiting women's future fertility. This theory predicts that in species lacking long-term pair bonds and menopause, males should not exhibit a preference for young mates. We tested this prediction by studying male preferences in our closest living relative, the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). We show that despite their promiscuous mating system, chimpanzee males, like humans, prefer some females over others. However, in contrast to humans, chimpanzee males prefer older, not younger, females. These data robustly discriminate patterns of male mate choice between humans and chimpanzees. Given that the human lineage evolved from a chimpanzee-like ancestor, they indicate that male preference for youth is a derived human feature, likely adapted from a tendency to form unusually long term mating bonds.

I tried to find some data on baboons, but the results seem inconclusive.

Try gorillas. As I recall they do things differently and there are studies out there (sorry no handy links).

Anyway, the bottom line is that the three groups (if you include humans) have different arrangements, so I am not clear how you can get any sort of meaningful extrapolation if all three go their own way in this regard (mate guarding, pairing, parental investment etc. etc. etc.)

As I recall anyway (not an expert and fuzzy memory on primate sexuality).

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

http://i.imgur.com/OTpTirV.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... stard.jpeg

Dude, you can't just paste in a pic of her. You have to change SOMETHING or else it's not a 'shop.

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

[bovarchist]

[AndrewV69]

I don't think reliable "rape per capita" data exists across 174 nations, and so WomanStats is justified in trying to construct a back-of-the-envelope Best Guess, from available data.

But the map AronRa presented wasn't even the map WomanStats offers as their 'best guess' about rape frequency. It was a map which incorporated all sorts of voodoo.... such as China's strict ban on pornography being cited by WomanStats as evidence that China is strongly anti-rape, compared to France which WomanStats faults for allowing porn to be sold at newsstands.

Didn't you know? Letting people (men, because women neeeever look at porn) look at skin mags and jerk off causes rape.

No women just read BDSM porn like "50 shades of Gray" and that is totes OK because reasons.

http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/ ... shades.jpg

These are the "sex-positive" people. :lol:

Whatever man. Fuck (Die Antwoord)

[Tigzy]

Avicenna comes down like a ton of bricks on the SJW crowd who are giving Ophie shit :popcorn: : http://freethoughtblogs.com/amilliongod ... etting-it/

If this is the start of an FTB/A+ schism, then I look forward to Carrier's inevitable tour-de-force of a meltdown owver the whole thing.

[bovarchist]

http://i.imgur.com/OTpTirV.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... stard.jpeg

Dude, you can't just paste in a pic of her. You have to change SOMETHING or else it's not a 'shop.

You obviously didn't notice that he shopped out her fourth nipple.

[Suet Cardigan]

Ah, hubris ...

Steamroller.jpg

(198.01 KiB) Downloaded 286 times

[Cunt of Personality]

http://i.imgur.com/ADXDIkU.jpg

[Dick Strawkins]

:lol: :lol: :lol:
Apparently Richard the tour the force has opened a Cafe Press site to sell Carrier mechandise to his legion of fans.
http://www.cafepress.com/carriersamusements

http://i.imgur.com/K5SMydc.jpg

Unfortunately the shelves are looking a little bare - Richard's only come up with two designs so far, neither of which inspire much hope in his graphic design sensibilities.

I wonder, now that the fun with 'Zvan Interference Services' is dying down, whether we have a new pitshop challenge staring us in the tour de face - creating Richard Carrier merchandise!
:D