Slyme Pit Orgy, Sponsored by Vicky's Bewbs

[Jan Steen]

It seems I have become a target of Richard Carrier.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/3085/

Don't worry about it. Richard Carrier always shoots himself in the foot, whatever the intended target is.

[Tony Parsehole]

I love how the A+ plonkers have gone from absolutely denying the existence of a secret forum to patting themselves on the back for having a secret forum , within a day.

[cunt]

I used to be able to read through lots of A+ before it completely pissed me off. Bunch of insufferably smug, brick headed, humourless bell-ends.

I'm going to build a snow-cock.

[VickyCaramel]

It seems I have become a target of Richard Carrier.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/3085/

Don't worry about it. Richard Carrier always shoots himself in the foot, whatever the intended target is.

That petition nonsense... doesn't it remind you of the 100 scientists against evolution nonsense? (Sorry if I'm a month too late on this).

[surreptitious57]

Something is going to have to give, and someone is going to have to leave the room

Yes, I agree, but that is not going to happen for a long time, if ever. And the reason for that is because leaving the room is not an option for either side. And that is because it is seen as a sign of weakness. So until the testosterone levels drop significantly, any talk of room leaving is entirely rhetorical now. This is going to run until no one has any more energy. And talk of Atheism Plus dying is irrelevant because Paul Zachary Myers has over a hundred thousand followers and he probably will have more, as more Americans become openly atheist which is fresh blood for the struggle. But some day, some one with clout is going to have to call a truce to all the nonsense. And whoever that individual is now, deserves a gold medal and a place in history. Nothing less will suffice. But I just will not be holding my breath now, waiting for said individual to make themseleves known unfortunately. They may not even have been bom yet . . .

[Tony Parsehole]

Something is going to have to give, and someone is going to have to leave the room

Yes, I agree, but that is not going to happen for a long time, if ever. And the reason for that is because leaving the room is not an option for either side. And that is because it is seen as a sign of weakness. So until the testosterone levels drop significantly, any talk of room leaving is entirely rhetorical now. This is going to run until no one has any more energy. And talk of Atheism Plus dying is irrelevant because Paul Zachary Myers has over a hundred thousand followers and he probably will have more, as more Americans become openly atheist which is fresh blood for the struggle. But some day, some one with clout is going to have to call a truce to all the nonsense. And whoever that individual is now, deserves a gold medal and a place in history. Nothing less will suffice. But I just will not be holding my breath now, waiting for said individual to make themseleves known unfortunately. They may not even have been bom yet . . .

The baboons are their own worst enemy.
As the FTB/A+ side move more and more away from the pretense of being sceptics (constant claims of hyperskepticism, accustions of JAQing off and Greg laden saying scepticism is inappropriate) and atheists (HaifischGewint experiencing visions of Red Indian ancestors) the sceptic community as a whole will abandon them and allow their eventual fade into total irrelevance.

[AnonymousCowherd]

Can anyone who is old enough to remember the 70s and early 80s corroborate this article?

Wikipedia only seems to mention it in passing. Which is unusual. I can find lots of references to the cases mentioned on Google Scholar, but I'd think Wikipedia would cover something on this scale, but it only mentions it in passing on the False Memory Syndrome page. If true, it would provide a good precedent on the importance of scepticism in the social sciences.

I can't corroborate every single detail, but overall, it's not a bad summary of the madness that went on in the so-called theraputic world. A lot of the practicioners were untrained in anything but scamming and there was a lot of a huge demand for "therapy" and a lot of people willing to indulge that demand. Very little of it was informed by social *cough* science, but then "therapy" rarely is, much.

You could argue about the level of input that the particular meeting or speech had, but Susan "Against our will" Brownmiller's book certainly did the rounds, although most people didn't seen to read more than the cover. After that, the feminst perspective on counselling (can't really say psychiatry), went into batshit crazy overdrive with the Firestone's and Irigaray's. Fortunately, they became increasingly incomprehensible post-modernist, and people eventually got bored and drifted away.

There had been a sort of Freud revival in the mid-70s/early eighties and the feminists absorbed some of what they thought was the Freudian ethos that supported their ideas, and the big idea was about infant/child rape. Freud did initially think it was a cause of many problems for women, because that's what his patients were telling him. Later, he decided that maybe he couldn't assume everything they said was a fact, and the feminists went about trying to throw all the "bad' bits of Freud out but keep the bit they kinda wanted. Much blood was shed over this. They got Freud wrong in any case. He didn't say "don't believe the women", he said (I paraphrase) "psychoanalysis cannot tell if the events the patient relates are true or not" but "for the purposes of a psychoanalysis, it doesn't matter, because phantasy and reality may produce exacly the same results." You could certainly take that to mean that "phantasy" should be treated as seriously as the fact but, of course, what you do about it is different. That is outside of the bounds of analysis though - as one analyst put it "psychoanalysis does not work for the Police". Anyway, people got bored with Freud too after a while (if they hadn't outright rejected him) and the prevailing ethos drifted into other things.

All "science" needs skepticism, though I don't think the social sciences deserve that title, in part because of chronic failures of not just skepticism but rationality in generally (see above).

[BarnOwl]

"Misogynist terrorism"? :roll:

Ophelia and her commentors are really unraveling, trying to pain Justin as some vicious mass murderer or something. I would say it's unbelievable, except it's happening. She's going to pop a gasket or something, at this rate.

I think Ophelia blew a gasket long ago. Anyone who lives in such a privileged, protected bubble, where she rarely (if ever) has to deal with the daily developed world challenges* of commuting, work, family, maintaining a household on a budget, and community involvement, and who is nevertheless practically immobilized by fear and imagined threats of actual physical harm, can't be operating with resilient cognitive and limbic functions.

* Which, of course, are not even comparable to the more grueling challenges faced by people in the developing world

[Spence]

That petition nonsense... doesn't it remind you of the 100 scientists against evolution nonsense? (Sorry if I'm a month too late on this).

Yep, it's a popular tactic though, there was a famous "100 Authors against Albert Einstein" as well. Einstein's famous rebuttal was that if his worked contained an error, it required just one fact, not the opinions of 100 scientists.

All of the petitions are nonsense, including the one against Justin V, Lee's one, and including the one about Watson and the SGU. The petitions are simply one-sided appeals to popularity with loaded and leading questions. This one tells us more about Adam Lee's reasoning skills than it does anything else.

[BarnOwl]

Has Conlon posted here since the acid tweet?
Someone on B and W says he did but I can't find anything here.

Jafafa Hots
January 20, 2013 at 12:22 am (UTC -8)
Oh, no I’m sorry, I didn’t mean he said that explicitly, and I don’t visit the slymepit to dig for crap.
I meant that that is the vibe I got from the message of his which has already been discussed where he complimented them and wished them farewell, etc. That’s just how it struck me, is all.
“Celebratory parting message” is my characterization, just how I felt about that message, what the tone felt like to me – remorseless. He didn’t actually say “hooray, I did it!” or anything like that.

You mean you pulled it out of your arse, Jafafa Hots?

You have learned well from your teachers PZ and Ophelia, young Dung Beetle. Time to go.

[Karmakin]

Something is going to have to give, and someone is going to have to leave the room

Yes, I agree, but that is not going to happen for a long time, if ever. And the reason for that is because leaving the room is not an option for either side. And that is because it is seen as a sign of weakness. So until the testosterone levels drop significantly, any talk of room leaving is entirely rhetorical now. This is going to run until no one has any more energy. And talk of Atheism Plus dying is irrelevant because Paul Zachary Myers has over a hundred thousand followers and he probably will have more, as more Americans become openly atheist which is fresh blood for the struggle. But some day, some one with clout is going to have to call a truce to all the nonsense. And whoever that individual is now, deserves a gold medal and a place in history. Nothing less will suffice. But I just will not be holding my breath now, waiting for said individual to make themseleves known unfortunately. They may not even have been bom yet . . .

The endgame is actually going to come from an entirely different vector, actually.

The truth is that this is one small part of a much larger conflict, between egalitarians/equality feminists and "gender feminists"/neofeminists. I think this will resolve itself as the differences become more public and obvious to most people. I think what will happen is that the more idealistic in these movements will realize that the neofeminists are not fighting for equality at all, but for their own entitlement and privilege, and break away. This will severely undermine their power, both socially and politically, and that will be the end of this whole thing, as they're basically isolated.

That's how I see it ending.

[AbsurdWalls]

So someone drops in from Pharyngulag...

I think his experience of this place will have suffered from coming in to an environment where he was liable to both be outnumbered and be treated suspiciously by the members. That's a shame because if things had been a bit more chilled I reckon he would have got a better impression.

[Jan Steen]

http://i.imgur.com/Yy0jXOR.jpg

[AbsurdWalls]

What's PoC?

Fuck knows.

Person of Colour?

Yep. It's a rearrangement of "Coloured Person", an appellation which is now considered racist.

It means "people who are not white". The term "non-white" was rejected for labeling people in a negative sense (by what they are not). Which is stupid, because "coloured person" still means exactly the same thing (i.e. it defines people by what they are not), it's just not honest about it.

[Metalogic42]

how about you stop for a second and think of the implications of telling people to show a little class.

you are, right now, being very classist. what you are doing, is saying that so-called "vulgar" or "rude" behaviour is not acceptable because it does not display "class" i.e. those who engage in it are of lower class status than you and thus less worthy of consideration on the basis of their class status. you are also by virtue of this slurring the poor, aka "working class", and perpetuating the long-held myth that the poor deserve to be poor because they are simply stupider than the rich.

you want to change your perspective on your discussion, why don't you start there. change your outlook on the poor. then we can talk. because I'm fucking poor and I don't want to talk to someone who thinks that makes me stupid, because that's going to get me nowhere fast.

Setar really can twist anything into a giant clusterfuck of stupid.

[Al Stefanelli]

@justinvacula:

What is the SIN crowd? A new name for us or something?

ScepticINk

SIN.

Actually, it's Skeptic Ink Network

[Metalogic42]

What's PoC?

Fuck knows.

Person of Colour?

Yep. It's a rearrangement of "Coloured Person", an appellation which is now considered racist.

It means "people who are not white". The term "non-white" was rejected for labeling people in a negative sense (by what they are not). Which is stupid, because "coloured person" still means exactly the same thing (i.e. it defines people by what they are not), it's just not honest about it.

They do this on A+ a lot, and it's one of the things that grinds my gears the most. Their (shitty) reasoning is that "Person of X" is better than "X person", because "X person" puts the X first instead of the person. Yeah...fucking word order matters now. Don't worry about parsing a sentence, just line up those words in the right order, and no cutsies.

We should start demanding that they call us "Persons of Slyme" :lol: :lol: :lol:

[Karmakin]

how about you stop for a second and think of the implications of telling people to show a little class.

you are, right now, being very classist. what you are doing, is saying that so-called "vulgar" or "rude" behaviour is not acceptable because it does not display "class" i.e. those who engage in it are of lower class status than you and thus less worthy of consideration on the basis of their class status. you are also by virtue of this slurring the poor, aka "working class", and perpetuating the long-held myth that the poor deserve to be poor because they are simply stupider than the rich.

you want to change your perspective on your discussion, why don't you start there. change your outlook on the poor. then we can talk. because I'm fucking poor and I don't want to talk to someone who thinks that makes me stupid, because that's going to get me nowhere fast.

Setar really can twist anything into a giant clusterfuck of stupid.

Truth be told, Setar really does have a point there.

It's just a shame he's hanging out with the wrong crowd. In the whole A+/SJW thing, often issues of class are entirely ignored. That's not an oversight. Working As Intended. The reality is that in most cases, economic class pretty much trumps everything else in terms of the personal power that we have.

But remember. A+ is a movement to ensure that the conventions they can spend thousands of dollars on and fly halfway around the plant to are perfect little bubbles for them. That's the origin of all of this. Of-fucking-course they're going to be blind to class issues.

[Lurkion]

From PZ's Trumped! post:
Most posts here are not of the silly pictures. But he only acknowledges the pictures, or threats (which wasn't from here, and which wasn't by a regular)

I wish that picture hadn't been made. (Sorry, Mykeru. I love you but you're a prick)

[Apples]

So someone drops in from Pharyngulag...

I think his experience of this place will have suffered from coming in to an environment where he was liable to both be outnumbered and be treated suspiciously by the members. That's a shame because if things had been a bit more chilled I reckon he would have got a better impression.

I felt a bit bad about contributing to the Louis pile-on, as I know from lurking that he is one of the few Pharyngulag :) regulars who is both smart and has a sense of humor/irony. But he didn't have to come here and wave his sword around before falling on it. He apparently thought he could show up with his rapier wit, his intimidating scientific sarcasm, and his rarefied fence-sitter's perspective and wow everyone into agreement and admiring submission with long, hand-waving posts. A little humility and restraint might have been in order, if he actually cared about his reception or the impression he was going to leave. As busy bridge-burner Julian just said in his flounce from Butterflies & Wheels -- "check your hubris, please."

http://www.freezepage.com/1358691815JJCRLOBVPG

wow. So the commentors here are now the arbiters of what a good person is and how worthwhile someone is as a person?

Check your paranoia and your hubris, please.

Sorry I wasted so many hours on here. A big heartfelt fuck you to Joe, A Noyd and Ptyrexx. Hopefully we’ll never run across each other again.

[Metalogic42]

how about you stop for a second and think of the implications of telling people to show a little class.

you are, right now, being very classist. what you are doing, is saying that so-called "vulgar" or "rude" behaviour is not acceptable because it does not display "class" i.e. those who engage in it are of lower class status than you and thus less worthy of consideration on the basis of their class status. you are also by virtue of this slurring the poor, aka "working class", and perpetuating the long-held myth that the poor deserve to be poor because they are simply stupider than the rich.

you want to change your perspective on your discussion, why don't you start there. change your outlook on the poor. then we can talk. because I'm fucking poor and I don't want to talk to someone who thinks that makes me stupid, because that's going to get me nowhere fast.

Setar really can twist anything into a giant clusterfuck of stupid.

Truth be told, Setar really does have a point there.

It's just a shame he's hanging out with the wrong crowd. In the whole A+/SJW thing, often issues of class are entirely ignored. That's not an oversight. Working As Intended. The reality is that in most cases, economic class pretty much trumps everything else in terms of the personal power that we have.

But remember. A+ is a movement to ensure that the conventions they can spend thousands of dollars on and fly halfway around the plant to are perfect little bubbles for them. That's the origin of all of this. Of-fucking-course they're going to be blind to class issues.

If by "point", you mean "classism is bad" - yeah, I agree. But the phrase "show some class" doesn't mean "act more like the upper class", it means "show some decorum". He (zhxieeee?) just saw the word "class" and decided to jump on it in the name of social justice douchebag bullshit. I wouldn't be surprised if he did the same thing to someone talking about their character class in an RPG. He's a cunt, and A+ is the perfect place for him.

[Plonk]

I was doing a bit of searching through the Pharyngula archives**, prompted by PZ Myers saying this:

I’d once thought that atheism was a good first step on the path to living a rational, tolerant life. Clearly it’s not.

PZ's biggest publicity stunts were neither rational nor particularly tolerant. He was deliberately offensive. First there was Crackergate, and then there was Bury-A-Koran-In-The-Dirt-Gate. What sort of role-model of tolerance was he?

[youtube]AQtQE8CsM-E[/youtube](this is a video of PZ burying a koran and a bible)

And he wanted people to follow in his footsteps. This is what he wrote during Crackergate in 2008:

I’m going to need lots and lots of people to rise up and follow suit, subjecting old, dishonest institutions of hardened dogma to our chief weapon of ridicule and deris…our two weapons of ridicule, derision and laughter…no, three weapons of ridicule, derision, laughter, and skeptici…oh, never mind. You know what I mean. Get to work.

What if someone were to follow his lead, and do the following: print out an image of the Atheism Plus logo, and then film themselves digging a hole, throwing the A+ symbol in the hole, throwing rubbish on top of it, then some dirt, and then pissing on it while singing "ashes to ashes"

I wonder how that would be welcomed by the Atheism Plus forum and the Freethought bloggers of 2013. Forever a pariah? :whistle:

**It turns out I've been a Pharyngula reader since ... 2006. :shock:

[Dick Strawkins]

Carrier, hoist by his own petard.

http://i.imgur.com/j8JHYSL.jpg

Carrier is flying two seperate flags. One for the sex positive feminists - women are people, sex work is empowering expressions of an independent woman, and the other is that of his current ideological bedfellows, the likes of Ophelia and Taslima who would retch at the thought of the work that Sacha Grey does. If you don't know, (and I didn't until Carrier promoted her on his blog) she is a specialist in a particular kind of porn that involves a rather vigorous/violent type of throat fucking.
That she, of all porn stars, is the example he chose to use as an empowered woman tells you a hell of a lot about him and his own feelings towards women.

[codelette]

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

Strange Sally Strange...

So, since I actually mentioned that Timbledoo looks are not the greates; does that make a "feminist" or something akin to whatever a liberated-woman is to those fuckers?

[mikelf]

So someone drops in from Pharyngulag...

I think his experience of this place will have suffered from coming in to an environment where he was liable to both be outnumbered and be treated suspiciously by the members. That's a shame because if things had been a bit more chilled I reckon he would have got a better impression.

I doubt it. Don't let his pose of above-it-all equanimity fool you. Once he wrote "I'm picking the side which doesn't think dehumanisation of women is okay" the jig was up. He may very well be every bit as smart as Phil thinks he is. But, like a lot of the FTB/A+ crew, the problem is that they aren't smart. The problem is that they thinks they are smarter than he really is. I've seen many people like that throughout my business career. Very intelligent, but so enamored of their own intellect, that they don't ever really consider that they might be wrong and, therefore, don't plan for the various contingencies.

[Karmakin]

how about you stop for a second and think of the implications of telling people to show a little class.

you are, right now, being very classist. what you are doing, is saying that so-called "vulgar" or "rude" behaviour is not acceptable because it does not display "class" i.e. those who engage in it are of lower class status than you and thus less worthy of consideration on the basis of their class status. you are also by virtue of this slurring the poor, aka "working class", and perpetuating the long-held myth that the poor deserve to be poor because they are simply stupider than the rich.

you want to change your perspective on your discussion, why don't you start there. change your outlook on the poor. then we can talk. because I'm fucking poor and I don't want to talk to someone who thinks that makes me stupid, because that's going to get me nowhere fast.

Setar really can twist anything into a giant clusterfuck of stupid.

Truth be told, Setar really does have a point there.

It's just a shame he's hanging out with the wrong crowd. In the whole A+/SJW thing, often issues of class are entirely ignored. That's not an oversight. Working As Intended. The reality is that in most cases, economic class pretty much trumps everything else in terms of the personal power that we have.

But remember. A+ is a movement to ensure that the conventions they can spend thousands of dollars on and fly halfway around the plant to are perfect little bubbles for them. That's the origin of all of this. Of-fucking-course they're going to be blind to class issues.

If by "point", you mean "classism is bad" - yeah, I agree. But the phrase "show some class" doesn't mean "act more like the upper class", it means "show some decorum". He (zhxieeee?) just saw the word "class" and decided to jump on it in the name of social justice douchebag bullshit. I wouldn't be surprised if he did the same thing to someone talking about their character class in an RPG. He's a cunt, and A+ is the perfect place for him.

Eh, I think all these things are linked together, to be honest. "Show some class"=="Talk in educated terms" which goes into the whole academic/class elitism thing.

I'll be honest, I think there are two types of people in SJW movements. Predators and prey. Personally, I think Setar is one of the latter, so I do have a little bit of sympathy and empathy (but not much, as they REALLY should know better).

[acathode]

They do this on A+ a lot, and it's one of the things that grinds my gears the most. Their (shitty) reasoning is that "Person of X" is better than "X person", because "X person" puts the X first instead of the person. Yeah...fucking word order matters now. Don't worry about parsing a sentence, just line up those words in the right order, and no cutsies.

I guess you missed that time when they were arguing about what order to write LGBTQ? GLBTQ put the gays before the lesbians and was patriarchy, and so on. Someone even suggested using QUILTBAG instead... pure fucking comedy! Sadly I can't seem to find the original thread.

In any case though, yeah, there is a huge emphasis on language in the SJW circles. It's almost given mythological powers, not at all that far removed from how various religions have viewed and treated language. If you ask for their reasoning behind this, it's almost as if they took a page out of Orwells 1984 and decided try it out, but "it's ok because we are good people!" or something.

From the outside though, it mostly seem to serve as
1) A easy way to pretend to be doing something important, while in reality all you're doing is sitting on your ass quibbling about meaningless stuff.
2) A way to quickly tell the ingroup from the outgroup based on who uses the right lingo.
3) A easy way to shit on the outgroup and get a upper hand in any discussion by screaming racism/sexism/abelism/whatever when someone use words your little ingroup have decided are taboo.

[Metalogic42]

Hahaha, QUILTBAG, seriously? I guess they didn't get the memo about -bag words being insulting. Douchebag, cockbag, etc.

[Gumby]

From the "No, we don't not have no secret threads" discussion:

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd24 ... 7ca699.jpg
http://atheismplus.com/forums/viewtopic ... 916#p64916

Yeah, come on over Wind! We'd love to have an ex-A+ member here!

[AbsurdWalls]

Eh, I think all these things are linked together, to be honest. "Show some class"=="Talk in educated terms" which goes into the whole academic/class elitism thing.

I'll be honest, I think there are two types of people in SJW movements. Predators and prey. Personally, I think Setar is one of the latter, so I do have a little bit of sympathy and empathy (but not much, as they REALLY should know better).

That's not what Setar was objecting to. Setar didn't like tying "show some class" with "don't be rude" because it implies people of the lower classes are rude, which is not the case. Whether references to "classy" behaviour still carry that elitist notion rather than "don't act disgracefully" is up for debate.

I would wager, however, that every member of that forum at least went to high school and probably went to university as well. So claiming they are unable to talk in educated terms is ridiculous.

[Gumby]

@justinvacula:

What is the SIN crowd? A new name for us or something?

ScepticINk

SIN.

:lol:

Pitchguest wins post 50,000 with THIS?!?!?

:lol:

[Tony Parsehole]

What's PoC?

Fuck knows.

Person of Colour?

Yep. It's a rearrangement of "Coloured Person", an appellation which is now considered racist.

It means "people who are not white". The term "non-white" was rejected for labeling people in a negative sense (by what they are not). Which is stupid, because "coloured person" still means exactly the same thing (i.e. it defines people by what they are not), it's just not honest about it.

I've mentioned this before. "Coloured person" is considered racist (and rightly so) but somehow "person of colour" isn't? It makes my toes curl when I hear it.

[surreptitious57]

They do this on A+ a lot and it is one of the things that grinds my gears the most. Their ( shitty ) reasoning is that Person of X is better than X person, because X person puts the X first instead of the person. fFucking word order matters now. Do not worry about parsing a sentence, just line up those words in the right order, and no cutsies

I was once taken to task by SubMor for referring to a black as such and and not as a black person because the omission of person was dehumanising. It might be more appropriate to describe them as such but I think it is stretching it beyond reason to label it as he did however. But language is very important over at Atheism Plus now. I have seen a poster been taken to task for referring to hookers as prostitutes even though there is a thread title with that very word in it now. Even hookers as a term has been questioned too. Apparently you can only use it if either you are one yourself or if you have been given permission by hookers themselves. I am all for challenging derogatory and inflammatory language, but some take it way too far. I was also once told that I do not get to define words I write, but if I do not have responsibility for them then who does ? This is why I no longer post there. Too much emphasis on being politically correct and not enough on just debating issues - though I must add that it is not actually a debate forum as such but a safe space for the marginalised - but even so

[AbsurdWalls]

They do this on A+ a lot and it is one of the things that grinds my gears the most. Their ( shitty ) reasoning is that Person of X is better than X person, because X person puts the X first instead of the person. fFucking word order matters now. Do not worry about parsing a sentence, just line up those words in the right order, and no cutsies

I was once taken to task by SubMor for referring to a black as such and and not as a black person because the omission of person was dehumanising. It might be more appropriate to describe them as such but I think it is stretching it beyond reason to label it as he did however. But language is very important over at Atheism Plus now. I have seen a poster been taken to task for referring to hookers as prostitutes even though there is a thread title with that very word in it now. Even hookers as a term has been questioned too. Apparently you can only use it if either you are one yourself or if you have been given permission by hookers themselves. I am all for challenging derogatory and inflammatory language, but some take it way too far. I was also once told that I do not get to define words I write, but if I do not have responsibility for them then who does ? This is why I no longer post there. Too much emphasis on being politically correct and not enough on just debating issues - though I must add that it is not actually a debate forum as such but a safe space for the marginalised - but even so

Yeah, referring to "blacks" as opposed to "black people" sounds racist to me too. It might be because usually people who talk about "blacks" do so as part of the exposition of an idea that is racist, rather than it actually being an offensive term in itself, but I think I should FYI you that it would get my attention.

Not trying to police your language or anything, just saying that other non-SJW people will also judge you for using "blacks".

[Apples]

Ceepolk has got to be one of the most arrogant, manipulative, and toxic folks I have ever seen on the internet. In the Biased Mods thread, she continued her gaslighting of Wind: "I just feel bad for you because you're being USED!" And then:

Xenologer, I think I know why no one wanted to say it - because the forum was private because it was set up specifically to avoid publically talking about things that would be joyfully used by the literally hundreds of people who use this forum to stalk and harass its members. people knew about the private forum with looser criteria and when it was opened the efforts to *get in* jumped up high and hard. and frankly after seeing the lengths people go to so they can gain access to it, I have zero problem with the amount of gatekeeping that goes into holding a high security space in privacy.

but the first rule about fight club was that you don't talk about fight club, and when wind trotted in here to make these ridiculous accusations it wasn't immediately clear what to do, because no one had ever laid down just what should happen if somebody did talk about fight club.

http://atheismplus.com/forums/viewtopic ... start=1500

"the literally hundreds of people who use this forum to stalk and harass its members" Riiiiight. Because if you don't avert your eyes from a deliciously self-imposed slow-motion public train-wreck on the internet you are .... stalking. And harassing.... the helpless passengers. I guess.

Orwellian Flewellyn has prudently made himself scarce, having repeatedly punched himself in the nuts with his quixotic attempt to defend the existence of Fight or Flight Club while in alternating posts claiming that it never existed.

[Richard Dworkins]

Person of colour is one of the most derisory parochial and patronising definitions for varied ethnicities I've ever heard. However I find it par for the course. The majority of what I have read from these people sounds like neurotic teachers. "Stop that! Pay attention, you don't get to... don't double down, apologise."

Authoritarians. Little Eichmann's the lot of them.

[AbsurdWalls]

http://gawker.com/5977130/could-you-be- ... 0000-years

Are you an adventurous human woman? Adventurous enough to be a surrogate mother for the first Neanderthal baby to be born in 30,000 years?

Harvard geneticist George Church recently told Der Spiegel he's close to developing the necessary technology to clone a Neanderthal, at which point all he'd need is an "adventurous human woman" — einen abenteuerlustigen weiblichen Menschen — to act as a surrogate mother.

It's not out of the question at all. As MIT Technology Review's Susan Young points out, scientists cloned an extinct subspecies of ibex in 2009. It died immediately, sure. But they still cloned it...

This raises a whole host of interesting ethical issues. It would be fascinating to do it, but I still think it would be very cruel towards the almost-human creature it creates (on the off-chance that the neanderthal baby even survives birth).

[d4m10n]

Looks like Justin won't be the only male blogger in attendance at WiS2 — http://freethoughtblogs.com/lousycanuck ... ecularism/

[Pitchguest]

@justinvacula:

What is the SIN crowd? A new name for us or something?

ScepticINk

SIN.

DING DING DING DING - I think ^this^ was the 50,000th post

Calling it for the night. (It's actually in the early hours of the morning and I should have gone to bed hours ago.) Catch you all later (looking forward to see who got the 50,000th post - not going to be me, obviously)!

okay we were at 5666 at the beginning of the second thread and it ended at 5619. 5666-5619= 47 if someone wants to correct me..

I get the same thing:
44333 replies in PToS = 44334 posts
5618 replies in PToS-YSS = 5619 posts
44334 + 5619 = 49,953
50,000 - 49.953 = 47

Why must the 50,000th post be where I'm being an idiot? :doh:

[Metalogic42]

http://gawker.com/5977130/could-you-be- ... 0000-years

Are you an adventurous human woman? Adventurous enough to be a surrogate mother for the first Neanderthal baby to be born in 30,000 years?

Harvard geneticist George Church recently told Der Spiegel he's close to developing the necessary technology to clone a Neanderthal, at which point all he'd need is an "adventurous human woman" — einen abenteuerlustigen weiblichen Menschen — to act as a surrogate mother.

It's not out of the question at all. As MIT Technology Review's Susan Young points out, scientists cloned an extinct subspecies of ibex in 2009. It died immediately, sure. But they still cloned it...

This raises a whole host of interesting ethical issues. It would be fascinating to do it, but I still think it would be very cruel towards the almost-human creature it creates (on the off-chance that the neanderthal baby even survives birth).

Is this even possible? I'm no expert, but wouldn't the genome and prenatal environment be different enough to cause problems? Also, where are they getting the DNA? I wasn't aware we had any.

[AbsurdWalls]

http://gawker.com/5977130/could-you-be- ... 0000-years

Are you an adventurous human woman? Adventurous enough to be a surrogate mother for the first Neanderthal baby to be born in 30,000 years?

Harvard geneticist George Church recently told Der Spiegel he's close to developing the necessary technology to clone a Neanderthal, at which point all he'd need is an "adventurous human woman" — einen abenteuerlustigen weiblichen Menschen — to act as a surrogate mother.

It's not out of the question at all. As MIT Technology Review's Susan Young points out, scientists cloned an extinct subspecies of ibex in 2009. It died immediately, sure. But they still cloned it...

This raises a whole host of interesting ethical issues. It would be fascinating to do it, but I still think it would be very cruel towards the almost-human creature it creates (on the off-chance that the neanderthal baby even survives birth).

Is this even possible? I'm no expert, but wouldn't the genome and prenatal environment be different enough to cause problems? Also, where are they getting the DNA? I wasn't aware we had any.

There will definitely be some effect from having the child carried by a human rather than by a neanderthal. In the past we are supposed to have interbred however so it can't be completely impossible. I still see how it might cause problems. I mean, pregnancies where humans are being carried by humans can go horribly wrong because of incompatibilities between the mother and the foetus.

[Cunning Punt]

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

Oh fuck me, somebody give this a dramatic reading please. Something with a bit of Beethoven in the background.

[AbsurdWalls]

(Of course by "human" I mean "Homo sapiens sapiens".)

[Lurkion]

What's PoC?

Fuck knows.

Person of Colour?

Yep. It's a rearrangement of "Coloured Person", an appellation which is now considered racist.

It means "people who are not white". The term "non-white" was rejected for labeling people in a negative sense (by what they are not). Which is stupid, because "coloured person" still means exactly the same thing (i.e. it defines people by what they are not), it's just not honest about it.

I've mentioned this before. "Coloured person" is considered racist (and rightly so) but somehow "person of colour" isn't? It makes my toes curl when I hear it.

That's because you're an elf. The shoes don't curl; it's the toes.

On point though, I think person of colour is the kind of thing that your racist grandad would say realising that he's among the young'ns and they're all progressive. It is awkward and feels like barely repressed racism.

(Off point again, a secretary at my office was talking to me about The View, looked at me thoughtfully for a moment and referred to Sherri Shepherd as "the Chocolate Woman", trying to avoid hurting my progressive sensibilities. It doesn't seem to factor in when she talks about the drain on our society that the handful of Sudanese refugees are.)

[Lurkion]

Why must the 50,000th post be where I'm being an idiot? :doh:

Well, if the 50,000th post was you, the probability is that the post was idiotic. It's math. And science. Mathscience.

[Lurkion]

[spoiler]http://gawker.com/5977130/could-you-be- ... 0000-years

Are you an adventurous human woman? Adventurous enough to be a surrogate mother for the first Neanderthal baby to be born in 30,000 years?

Harvard geneticist George Church recently told Der Spiegel he's close to developing the necessary technology to clone a Neanderthal, at which point all he'd need is an "adventurous human woman" — einen abenteuerlustigen weiblichen Menschen — to act as a surrogate mother.

It's not out of the question at all. As MIT Technology Review's Susan Young points out, scientists cloned an extinct subspecies of ibex in 2009. It died immediately, sure. But they still cloned it...

[/spoiler]

This raises a whole host of interesting ethical issues. It would be fascinating to do it, but I still think it would be very cruel towards the almost-human creature it creates (on the off-chance that the neanderthal baby even survives birth).

That post was 40 years old. They ended up having enough to populate all of FtB and Skepchick.

[ThreeFlangedJavis]

Something is going to have to give, and someone is going to have to leave the room

Yes, I agree, but that is not going to happen for a long time, if ever. And the reason for that is because leaving the room is not an option for either side. And that is because it is seen as a sign of weakness. So until the testosterone levels drop significantly, any talk of room leaving is entirely rhetorical now. This is going to run until no one has any more energy. And talk of Atheism Plus dying is irrelevant because Paul Zachary Myers has over a hundred thousand followers and he probably will have more, as more Americans become openly atheist which is fresh blood for the struggle. But some day, some one with clout is going to have to call a truce to all the nonsense. And whoever that individual is now, deserves a gold medal and a place in history. Nothing less will suffice. But I just will not be holding my breath now, waiting for said individual to make themseleves known unfortunately. They may not even have been bom yet . . .

More clout than Dawkins, Shermer and Harris, Jillette,Kirby etc? Hell, Harris even called Myers a troll. Nobody is exempt from the spray.

[Tony Parsehole]

[spoiler]

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

[/spoiler]

Oh fuck me, somebody give this a dramatic reading please. Something with a bit of Beethoven in the background.

[youtube]C6ZDsUGiGqM[/youtube]
Courtesy of Bhoytony.

[ThreeFlangedJavis]

Has Conlon posted here since the acid tweet?
Someone on B and W says he did but I can't find anything here.

Jafafa Hots
January 20, 2013 at 12:22 am (UTC -8)
Oh, no I’m sorry, I didn’t mean he said that explicitly, and I don’t visit the slymepit to dig for crap.
I meant that that is the vibe I got from the message of his which has already been discussed where he complimented them and wished them farewell, etc. That’s just how it struck me, is all.
“Celebratory parting message” is my characterization, just how I felt about that message, what the tone felt like to me – remorseless. He didn’t actually say “hooray, I did it!” or anything like that.

You mean you pulled it out of your arse, Jafafa Hots?

You have learned well from your teachers PZ and Ophelia, young Dung Beetle. Time to go.

Something must have struck you Jaffy, hard, in the head.

They've come over all "Reefer Madness". I'm actually quite disturbed at how unhinged they are. They needn't worry though. If things got hairy their army of swivel-eyes down at Assylum+ could break out the box cutters and steak knives. On a serious note, if anybody is winding up the mentally deranged it's Benson. It's a feeding frenzy of delusion over that way.

[Cunning Punt]

[spoiler]

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

[/spoiler]

Oh fuck me, somebody give this a dramatic reading please. Something with a bit of Beethoven in the background.

[youtube]C6ZDsUGiGqM[/youtube]
Courtesy of Bhoytony.

I may have to learn this shit myself. I'm not sure how you would mix background music with a voice recording without some fancy software. Any suggestions anyone?

[Al Stefanelli]

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

http://wcoa.info/michelleobamawtf.jpg

[Dick Strawkins]

Is this even possible? I'm no expert, but wouldn't the genome and prenatal environment be different enough to cause problems? Also, where are they getting the DNA? I wasn't aware we had any.

There will definitely be some effect from having the child carried by a human rather than by a neanderthal. In the past we are supposed to have interbred however so it can't be completely impossible. I still see how it might cause problems. I mean, pregnancies where humans are being carried by humans can go horribly wrong because of incompatibilities between the mother and the foetus.

I've worked in genomics so here's my take.

We have neanderthal DNA extracted from bones found in limestone caves in a couple of locations in Europe.
It has been used to generate the complete sequence of the neanderthal genome and I guess the idea, from George Church, would be to artificially recreate the genome and reconstitute a living fertilized egg cell with it.

I wouldn't say we are close to getting this done.
Even "normal" cloning - taking an already living cell and turning it into a fertilized egg and implanting it into a host mother - has never been carried out to completion. We haven't worked out the epigenetics to make such a procedure ethical with humans.
In other words we might be able to clone a cell and turn it into a viable pregnancy resulting in the birth of the resulting child, however the epigenetic reprogramming of egg and sperm cells is complex and getting it not completely correct can lead to disastrous consequences (cancer, early death, developmental problems etc.)
So that is one problem.
The other is recreating a complete mammalian genome. That is far beyond anything that has been done so far.

Now, considering we do manage to overcome both these hurdles - we solve the technical problem of making an artifical DNA strand of several hundred megabases in size and figure out how to overcome the epigenetic programming dilemma (perhaps by using second generation germ cells - again, an ethical problem if it comes to human subjects) then is there any problem with a modern female being the host mother?

I would say that this is the easiest part of the entire issue. Neanderthals don't seem to have structural differences in their genomes between them and us. They are us - just a different 'race' of humans (by which I mean another human population that have lived in genetic isolation from others for a considerable length of time.)
Any slight problems in terms of the mothers body rejecting the neanderthal foetus could probably be easily countered medically (immunosuppressive therapy for example.)

[Pitchguest]

@justinvacula:

What is the SIN crowd? A new name for us or something?

ScepticINk

SIN.

:lol:

Pitchguest wins post 50,000 with THIS?!?!?

:lol:

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3aub ... o1_400.gif

[Apples]

PZ puts on his Iraqi Information Minister "There are no American tanks in Baghdad" hat:

Step away from the smears and assaults and slime and look at the movement as a whole: look at the leading organizations of the godless. You know what you’ll see? None of them support these loons. They’re all progressive and committed to improving the diversity of the atheist community and broadening our engagement with the greater culture.

Really. Look at American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, the Center for Inquiry, Atheist Alliance International and Atheist Alliance America, the Secular Coalition, the Secular Student Alliance, and the Richard Dawkins Foundation. They are not supporting these petty, resentful snipers; they are working towards a future in which those goons are irrelevant.

That’s reassuring. There are loud, obsessive, creepy people who should not be ignored, but it’s always a good idea to step back and look at the bigger picture, and see that their skirmishing is born of desperation — they’re the past, they’re the failures, they’re the ones who have no productive role to play.

Oops - he mentioned Richard Dawkins in a list of allies. Rebecca jumps in to correct him in the first comment:

I guess if you’ve never been called a “feminazi” by Paula Kirby or had your inbox explode with rape threats thanks to Richard Dawkins, RDF wouldn’t look out of place on that list.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... /#comments

http://www.freezepage.com/1358697188TIKLTPJMIV

[acathode]

What's kinda hilarious regarding this super secret A+ forum that they are imploding over even mentioning that it exists to each other, is that it was so damn secret that screenshots of it was posted here on the pit months and months ago.

[Dick Strawkins]

PZ puts on his Iraqi Information Minister "There are no American tanks in Baghdad" hat:

Step away from the smears and assaults and slime and look at the movement as a whole: look at the leading organizations of the godless. You know what you’ll see? None of them support these loons. They’re all progressive and committed to improving the diversity of the atheist community and broadening our engagement with the greater culture.

Really. Look at American Atheists, the American Humanist Association, the Center for Inquiry, Atheist Alliance International and Atheist Alliance America, the Secular Coalition, the Secular Student Alliance, and the Richard Dawkins Foundation. They are not supporting these petty, resentful snipers; they are working towards a future in which those goons are irrelevant.

That’s reassuring. There are loud, obsessive, creepy people who should not be ignored, but it’s always a good idea to step back and look at the bigger picture, and see that their skirmishing is born of desperation — they’re the past, they’re the failures, they’re the ones who have no productive role to play.

Oops - he mentioned Richard Dawkins in a list of allies. Rebecca jumps in to correct him in the first comment:

I guess if you’ve never been called a “feminazi” by Paula Kirby or had your inbox explode with rape threats thanks to Richard Dawkins, RDF wouldn’t look out of place on that list.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... /#comments

http://www.freezepage.com/1358697188TIKLTPJMIV

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

[Apples]

Thank you Strawkins :mrgreen:

[Trophy]

Oops - he mentioned Richard Dawkins in a list of allies. Rebecca jumps in to correct him in the first comment:

I guess if you’ve never been called a “feminazi” by Paula Kirby or had your inbox explode with rape threats thanks to Richard Dawkins, RDF wouldn’t look out of place on that list.

Hahaha, that's priceless. The rest of the comments are a winner too.

The big viper in the overhead locker is JREF. Technically, they’re skeptic rather than atheist, but there’s a huge amount of overlap.

On their website, they list their staff as James Randi, D.J. Grothe, Carrie Poppy, Brian Thompson and Barbara Drescher. Out of those five, Drescher has appeared on Reap Paden’s podcast, where she denounced us as delusional narcissists, and accused us of being the real bullies. Grothe blames the decline of female attendance at TAM as our fault, and is pally on Twitter with many of the haters (as is Drescher). Poppy has resigned in protest. I’m not sure about Thompson and Randi himself.

The overall picture is fairly good, but JREF is a big stain.

I'm waiting for someone to mention Shermer. It shouldn't take long though.

[AbsurdWalls]

I've worked in genomics so here's my take.

We have neanderthal DNA extracted from bones found in limestone caves in a couple of locations in Europe.
It has been used to generate the complete sequence of the neanderthal genome and I guess the idea, from George Church, would be to artificially recreate the genome and reconstitute a living fertilized egg cell with it.

I wouldn't say we are close to getting this done.
Even "normal" cloning - taking an already living cell and turning it into a fertilized egg and implanting it into a host mother - has never been carried out to completion. We haven't worked out the epigenetics to make such a procedure ethical with humans.
In other words we might be able to clone a cell and turn it into a viable pregnancy resulting in the birth of the resulting child, however the epigenetic reprogramming of egg and sperm cells is complex and getting it not completely correct can lead to disastrous consequences (cancer, early death, developmental problems etc.)

I think an implied aspect of that article is that getting a dead neanderthal baby would still be impressive for a first go.

[AbsurdWalls]

It's not out of the question at all. As MIT Technology Review's Susan Young points out, scientists cloned an extinct subspecies of ibex in 2009. It died immediately, sure. But they still cloned it.