Now sponsored by [spoiler]my dick[/spoiler]

[Submariner]

Has the Seven Days War ended?

*ducks*

[KiwiInOz]

I think Kurds are fucking troublemakers.

A most beautiful Shite Kurdish woman has recently joined my boxing gym. She is a natural mover (in boxing terms), wears lycra, and is an anaesthetist. Have I mentioned that she is beautiful? Definitely trouble.

Bolding mine. Is this racist or sexist?

It's definitely not typist.

Fucking keyboards. how do they work.

[KiwiInOz]

Has the Seven Days War ended?

*ducks*

About the time 7/11 went 24 hours.

[Altair]

Just got back from the doctor's office. Turns out I've got a rather nasty case of diabetes to add to my collection.

Fucking hell. What type is it mate if you don't mind me asking?

Type II, Tony. Apparently I've had it for a while...

Al, I'm not a doctor and I don't know if this applies to your particular situation, but I read this article on Discover Magazine today and it sounds interesting: http://discovermagazine.com/2012/dec/29 ... QhvCPL4aC8

The Roux-en-Y gastric bypass—named for the 19th-century Swiss surgeon César Roux, who first performed surgery to reroute the small intestine—is known to be physically effective. The modern version of the Roux-en-Y (pronounced roo-en-why) involves reducing the stomach to a little pouch, to curb eating and appetite, and then connecting that pouch to a lower section of the intestine. By using less of the intestine, fewer nutrients are absorbed, and the patient loses weight.

The procedure will almost surely cause Rubio to shed weight rapidly. But now it is clear that the effects of gastric bypass can reach much deeper. That one, fairly routine surgery will probably also banish Rubio’s diabetes.

In March of last year, the International Diabetes Federation endorsed bariatric surgery as a type 2 diabetes treatment for obese patients, citing studies indicating that it triggers remission in about 85 percent of patients.

[Submariner]

More from that youtube Submarine guy. I gotta ask what ship he was on.

[Submariner]

Has the Seven Days War ended?

*ducks*

About the time 7/11 went 24 hours.

Read pages 17-20 of this thread.

[16bitheretic]

I'm just gonna sidestep the israel/Palestine conversation, because I think both are terrorists and don't see a point to debating which is a more or less justified terrorist outfit.

Catching up, I took that eye test thing and scored a 32, which is apparently pretty good, though I never put much faith in online tests.

Rebecca should boycott DragonCon. The people go there for their fandom of fantasy fiction, comics and other pop culture, not to hear the drivel that eminates from her vapid and pointless corner of the internet. I feel sorry for DragonCon attendees who have to put up with her bullshit. Actually, this brings up a question: why is Skepchick so popular? Their articles are generally pointless and/or devoid of interesting content. It's like the TMZ of skeptic publications.

[Lurkion]

I don't know about the rest of you but I don't think there is much of an ethical dilemma here. If you go to DragonCon you are financially supporting this guy's evasion of justice and putting children at risk.

I don't see it that way at all, because from the comments over on Skepchick critical of Watson, it looks like DragonCon is being legally forced to pay him, on technicalities, and they're trying to resolve it. It's a shitty situation, but I don't see it the same as I would someone donating money directly to him.

Plus, if spending money at DragonCon is a tacit approval of the pedophile just because a percentage of your money goes to him, it's also a tacit approval of those who currently run it - the people who are against him. Do those people deserve our money? I'd say yes (if you're a fan of the Con itself, and related products). They're not at any fault at all.

Actually, from what people have been saying, it doesn't sound like they can resolve it. It appears to be a dividend of some sorts and they can't force him to sell his shares. (Indeed, if it is a shareholding in a corporation - and they wind up the corporation - he'll probably be entitled to a pay out!)

You can't just void your obligations to someone because they're a kiddy-fiddler, which on my understanding is not an allegation that he has been found guilty of. This sounds to me like another reversal of the presumption of innocence case.

Watson has no understanding of legal structures (or the law, or science, or ...). She's just a sensationalist moron.

I wish DragonCon would sue her. She loves outright defaming people just because she's a fucking bitch.

[Altair]

By request:

http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/2010/final00003141.jpg

Awesome! Just. Fucking. Awesome!.

[Karmakin]

Jesus, Git! Who took the jam out of your doughnut?

The Palestinians, apparently.

Fucking Blizzard deciding that their Authenicator App needs a GSM connection to work and not on whatever connectivity (i.e. WiFi) is available (like every other fucking app out there). Makes changing your mobile phone and keeping a mobile authenticator a fucking pain.

Well there's your problem.

Blizzard is a shadow of their former self.

[Michael K Gray]

Actually, this brings up a question: why is Skepchick so popular? Their articles are generally pointless and/or devoid of interesting content. It's like the TMZ of skeptic publications.

It is great for intellectual sluggards, who actively dislike any form of thinking, and wish to just wallow in tribal fluff and to catch the latest drip-feed about what their opinions should be.

[bhoytony]

By request:

http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/2010/final00003141.jpg

Yes that certainly seems apt.

[youtube]IjTzXu0Y4lM[/youtube]

[Submariner]

By request:

http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/2010/final00003141.jpg

Awesome! Just. Fucking. Awesome!.

Hey, there's no submarine in that drawing!

Seriously, though, nice art work!

[Hemisphere]

On the subject of that eye test thing I think it's important to recognize the inherent sexism in the design.

From the original research paper (Baron-Cohen, 2001): "In the present study, among the general population and student group, there was a trend towards a sex difference (female superiority)(p = .07)".

We all know there's no such thing as gender differences. Obvs Baron-Cohen is a raging sexist. Probably some sly ploy by the patriarchy.

[Michael J]

I'll catch up with the thread later. This is gold and I need to share it.

Steven Novella has distanced himself from Peezus and Twatson in his customary classy and soft-spoken way. If you read between the lines, there's also a pretty harsh condemnation ("let's not pretend...ect.").

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/inde ... um=twitter

Atypically, he utilised the SGU account to tweet the link far and wide.

PZ will no doubt quote mine it out of reality. This will be hard for Watson. When I listen to SGU I always think that she has been told what to say about the sciencey subjects and they treat her like a precocious 4 year old niece.

That's why I disagree with people who think that she has has ulterior motives. I think that she is (sorry to be abelist) dumb. She unfortunately has friends who keep try to translate her frothings into wisdom. She isn't worrying about Dragon-Con now because of her age - it is because she has only just heard about the issue. I think her ElevatorGate talk was just some semi-conscious rant until her friends turned it into an important message about conference safety and the patriarchy.

[bhoytony]

[youtube]5wg3qkoB6Ko[/youtube]

[Al Stefanelli]

http://www.alstefanelli.com/AtheistGull.jpg

[nippletwister]

I see you never bothered to give any of my previous questions about the cartoon any thought at all. Your attempts to call "blood libel" were idiotic dogshit, as were your claims of outrageous stereotyping.

"Blatantly Anti-Semitic".....yeah, that's complete bullshit, unless maybe you are looking at all times to take exaggerated offence, and hold that Jews are an elevated people who can never be criticized the same way everyone else in the world is. The Arabic-looking "victims" in the cartoon were more caricatured than Netanyahu was, probably just to cut short stupid complaints like yours. But you can't deny a willing victim their oppression, I guess I should know that by now.

The cartoon clearly evoked anti-semitic and judeophobic tropes, and it was published on Holocaust Memorial Day day:

http://blog.thecst.org.uk/?p=4082

Unfortunately for Jews – and for satirists - antisemites and antisemitism also have ‘a thing’ about blood; and especially about the allegation that Jews murder others (children in particular) in order to use their blood or organs for heinous purpose. It is a harsh fact that blood has long played a profoundly disturbing part in the history of antisemitism, and this has obvious consequences for Jews and antisemites today. The actual intentions of Gerald Scarfe and the Sunday Times count for very little within this broader context of history, and its contemporary emotional and racist impacts.
So, the cartoon, regardless of the wishes of Scarfe and the Sunday Times, regardless of it specifically being anti-Netahyahu rather than anti-Jew, will seriously distress many Jews and will give pleasure to many antisemites. (Indeed, CST has already received many calls and emails on this cartoon from upset and angry members of the public.) This is, after all, how antisemitism actually works, for its victims and its proponents. For those practical reasons, this cartoon will (like the Dave Brown / Independent cartoon of Ariel Sharon eating babies) be perceived as part of the canon of contemporary antisemitic imagery, as are the many other cartoons that associate Israeli leaders with blood in hideous ways.
And, with the cartoon having been published on Holocaust Memorial Day, its power to offend and upset the emotions of Jews is greatly worsened.

In short, if you use language which is closely associated with racism, then you cannot complain when people infer that you are a racist. If you make comments which are offensively stereotypical of homosexuals, you cannot take issue when you are branded a homophobe. If you invoke imagery and language consistent with antisemites, WTF do you expect?

Wow. That crap blog you linked to managed to make all the same idiotic exaggerations and special pleads that you do! Well done. The biggest load of professional victim dogshit I've read lately outside of Freethought Blogs. Sorry to burst your self-righteous bubble, but only a handful of professional whiners are seeing "anti-semitic and judeophobic tropes". Oooooh, "judeophobic"....nice, I guess you have to keep up with the "Jihadi Joneses", right? We can't have the Islamists copping their own victimization lingo, can we?

So, because of the blood libel, a fairly specific piece of anti-semitism (that has also been used to libel many other groups throughout history, including early christians by the romans) any association of jews with blood is, no matter the context or intention, no matter if jews are causing bloodshed, an attempt to stoke the flames of ancient hatred against jews. Even if it's a political cartoon about a specific jew and his specific policies which are causing specific bloodshed.

Sorry, but that's utter dogshit. The fact that a handful of whiny assholes like you call a newspaper to complain about your mental problems is not anti-semitism. You can't claim that any portrayal of a jew, plus use of blood, is automatically blood libel baiting. Don't link another shit blog or wikipedia page, I already knew about the goddamned blood libel. It's not only to do with jews(although they're the only ones who currently try to claim it as purely their own for political purposes), and it is not valid to call any use of blood a blood libel, it has a specific line of myths and imagery involved. By the standards you're trying to claim, a jewish person could murder 20 people with a machete, but a picture of it would invoke the blood libel and be anti-semitic. Nope, that's idiot dogshit. By any realistic standard, if this is an attempt at blood libel, it's pathetic, since only a few obsessed wankers got the message.

Second, the caricature of Netanyahu is hardly a good example of stereotypical jewishness or anti-semite propaganda. He doesn't look particularly evil, scheming, or hook-nosed. He is portrayed in the style of a sober, modern western leader. His features are only very slightly exaggerated, less than in most political cartoon caricatures, and less than the "victims" in the cartoon as well. The arab "victims" look more evil and more stereotyped. Netanyahu looks powerful and determined and a bit pissed off, if anything.

And third, fuck the claim that criticizing a jew on a magical day makes it bigotry. If the cartoon was about the holocaust, or was denying it, or making light of it, or was actually about jews in general, you might have a stronger claim. Even if the publisher timed it that way to get greater exposure, it might be crass, but it would not validate your claims of anti-semitism, and the lack of other anti-semitic content makes the day moot.

An American analogy.... If a cartoonist were to portray black people in general as grossly stereotyped ape-like creatures raping white women, or robbing stores, or committing welfare fraud, on MLK day, it would be a politically timed racist attack on blacks....but mildly caricaturing Obama or Al Sharpton, and criticizing real policies or positions on MLK day, would not be(except to professional victims). You're trying to turn one into the other here, and it's pathetically obvious. The only thing that makes it possible is the exaggeration that people are willing to do in order to take righteous offense.


Feel free to show me where I'm wrong, but your previous comments haven't even come close. All you do is parrot other people's drama-queening, and expect others to accept it, fuck that shit.

"judeophobia".......oh, the lulz that professional victims bring.....can't wait until the "judeo-christian" Americans steal that from you for their own purposes.

[DW Adams]

Isreal/Palestine discussions always descend into an undending clusterfuck.

Any chance it can be moved to its own thread?

Please fucking please.

[mikelf]

I don't know about the rest of you but I don't think there is much of an ethical dilemma here. If you go to DragonCon you are financially supporting this guy's evasion of justice and putting children at risk.

I don't see it that way at all, because from the comments over on Skepchick critical of Watson, it looks like DragonCon is being legally forced to pay him, on technicalities, and they're trying to resolve it. It's a shitty situation, but I don't see it the same as I would someone donating money directly to him.

Plus, if spending money at DragonCon is a tacit approval of the pedophile just because a percentage of your money goes to him, it's also a tacit approval of those who currently run it - the people who are against him. Do those people deserve our money? I'd say yes (if you're a fan of the Con itself, and related products). They're not at any fault at all.

Actually, from what people have been saying, it doesn't sound like they can resolve it. It appears to be a dividend of some sorts and they can't force him to sell his shares. (Indeed, if it is a shareholding in a corporation - and they wind up the corporation - he'll probably be entitled to a pay out!)

I am glad you weighed in on this, since I seem to recall you are a lawyer. This was a point I was going to make. Another thought that occurred to me is that any particular buyout could be based on the assets held by the corporation, which might include intellectual property. If Dragon-Con is all that it seems to be (wouldn't know, not my scene), I would think it's value could be mostly derived from the IP. And if that is the case, buying Kramer out could quite literally consume all of the liquid assets.

You can't just void your obligations to someone because they're a kiddy-fiddler, which on my understanding is not an allegation that he has been found guilty of. This sounds to me like another reversal of the presumption of innocence case.

Watson has no understanding of legal structures (or the law, or science, or ...). She's just a sensationalist moron.

Now, now. She is just talking about *pop* corporate law.

:rimshot:

[Submariner]

Oh, no. It was just a cease fire. Probably for dinner.

[nippletwister]

And, for one, to assert, apparently, that all criticism of Israel constitutes “anti-Israel hatred [as] a religion” doesn’t seem particularly charitable or creditable.

I never said that.

Criticising Israel to a similar standard as other countries is fine. Hell, I'll do it myself: the lack of civil marriage in Israel (marriages must fall into one of three religious Abrahamic categories) is utterly ridiculous and completely wrong, for example.

The problem arises whenever, and I've made this bloody clear, when Israel is held up as some sort of unique evil. That is when it becomes a religion.

Israel may not be uniquely "evil" - it is however fairly uniquely fucked up.

As indeed are most countries.

Yet somehow it is always Israel that attracts the majority of opprobrium from a certain category of people.

Yes. In this case, "those people" are people who have criticisms of Israeli policies, and who don't agree that Israel should get a pass on criticisms that every other country faces. They may be wrong, they may be misinformed. But you are insinuating nefarious purpose and hatred, and possibly genocidal intentions, because they disagree with you. By claiming that they ONLY do this to poor old Israel, and that all other countries get a pass, you are lying, and engaging in what I call professional victimhood.
You are the one who is obsessed, and are simply projecting your irrational fears outward. The worst sentiment I've seen here is some who are tired of having to give Israel special "victim cred" before any discussion is allowed.

Fuck you, you slimy piece of lying idiot dogshit.

[Guest]

Isreal/Palestine discussions always descend into an undending clusterfuck.

Any chance it can be moved to its own thread?

Please fucking please.

Title it: middle-east clusterfuck

[Metalogic42]

Isreal/Palestine discussions always descend into an undending clusterfuck.

Any chance it can be moved to its own thread?

Please fucking please.

I third this.

[Submariner]

Isreal/Palestine discussions always descend into an undending clusterfuck.

Any chance it can be moved to its own thread?

Please fucking please.

I third this.

Submariner says: "This thing needs it's own watertight compartment."

[Zenspace]

By request:

http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/2010/final00003141.jpg

Awesome! Just. Fucking. Awesome!.

Oh, YES! This definitely gets my vote. It even has Baaaaaammmmmbiiii! :D

[Metalogic42]

It’s also distressing that, even if he weren’t a child abuser, the organization is carrying along a parasite and not making an effort to shed it. They are flushing away $150K every year for a person who apparently does not contribute in any way to the quality of the con.

-PZ Myers, on Skepchick's DragonCon article (bold mine)

Fucking blatant making shit up. It's second nature to him now.

[Apples]

This Scarfe cartoon thing is an interesting litmus-test. It seems clear that a plurality of Slymepit commenters thinks Israel is scum. Fine - I do too. I'm a fan of Norman Finkelstein.

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

But I find it inconceivable that any accomplished visual artist with the slightest acquaintance with 20c. history (Scarfe is in his mid 70s) could have drawn that cartoon without realizing many would immediately find it reminiscent of blood libel and jew-hating propaganda from the Nazi era.

Does that make Scarfe anti-semitic? Nope.

Does that mean the cartoon is "anti-semitic in effect if not in intent?"

Now we're in sticky Rebecca Watson territory -- she claims Dear Muslima made her inbox explode with rape-threats. How careful should you be to avoid "inciting hatred" (from your target and its allies or from those who hate your target) when speaking truth to power, or simply when calling out bullshit? ... to draw the muhammad cartoon .... or not to draw the muhammad cartoon ...

If Scarfe harmed anyone, it was his own damned self. The question it raises for me is whether he really was oblivious to the potential blowback. If so, he's senile. If not, he's a peculiar martyr to free speech who is apparently really intent on provoking an angry reaction from jews and willing (eager?) to appear anti-semitic in criticizing Israel's policies. Bravely offensive, stupid, insensitive, ignorant? Hard to parse.

Anyway - I love women, but Rebecca Watson is constantly acting like a bitch. I love Natalie Portman (Hershlag), but Israel is constantly acting like an asshole. Git deserves credit for hanging in here under heavy attack, and I hope he sticks around.

"Defamation" is a great little film. Here's a clip featuring Finkelstein:
[youtube]qcWIaYJGlOQ [/youtube]

[Lsuoma]

I got an 86% on the humanist test, but only because the animals question didn't have a "I eat them whenever hungry" option.

I scored the same as PeeZuss Christ ... 90%.

Try this one:

Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (Revised, Adult)
http://www.questionwritertracker.com/qu ... K3TKB.html
My results were:

Your Score 20
Total Possible 36
An average score for this test is 26.2, or 21.9 for an adult with Asperger Syndrome or High-Functioning Autism

Not that it told me anything I did not know before. It also did not test for some things I believe I am good at spotting.

I got a 25.

Thanks for the link. That was kind of fun.

I just got a 30. But I can see why people who have trouble with visual clues have it hard more so now. So many of those eyes look similar to each other.

I got 100% (36/36). Anyone for poker?

[Lurkion]

Hey, guys. Just quickly:

Israel has a right to exist as an independent nation. There were communities of Jews there before the nation was founded. Palestinians often left willingly and largely because of hatred of Jews and the concept of a Jewish nation being formed. Israel has been surrounded for decades by Arab nations that have had a stated intent to drive it into the sea. You can see why they enforce the blockade and there is some good rationale for it. Palestinians have been using women and children as human shields and Hamas continually aggravates the situation with firing rockets over the border.

The negotiations run by Clinton when Arafat was around were torpedoed by Arafat with ridiculous notions like "the right of return" which is essentially that anyone claiming to be Palestinian can waltz back into Israel and take citizenship (turning Israel into a majority Arab country). This dropped the opportunity for a two-state solution.

It does seem a lot of Palestinian negotiation is not really in good faith when Hamas expressly wish to get rid of Israel.

That said, Israel has started to have a bit of a habit of stoking the fire that it shouldn't be. For example, the settlements in the West Bank are appalling. They can also be fairly accused from time to time of overreacting to provocation.

There is also a lot of a disinformation out there because various people have strong political motivations - on both sides of the debate.

Essentially, a two-state solution is a pipe dream. Unless - perhaps - you can moderate the Palestinian and Israeli populations and wipe clean their memories of the past 50-odd years.

[ERV]

I did something very fucking cool in the lab today. Very. Fucking. Cool. I cannot believe this shit is working, much less working as well as it is. I didnt want to go to work today because I *KNEW* that this experiment wasnt going to work... and then it did. This has been happening a lot lately-- glad science doesnt always turn out the way you hypothesize...

:dance: :dance: :dance: :dance: :dance: :dance: :dance:

So lets see what the fearless leader of all women in skepticism did today:

<snip rant against YET ANOTHER organization that has done nothing but support Watson>

...

:?

This whole fiasco in a nutshell: Leaders vs Losers

[free thoughtpolice]

Postby Angry_Drunk » Tue Jan 29, 2013 4:49 pm • [Post 1463]

Tony Parsehole wrote:Jesus, Git! Who took the jam out of your doughnut?


The Palestinians, apparently.

Angry_Drunk

I blame the Kurds.
Do you know who else was a Kurd?That's right; the demon Saladin that drove the saintly Christian Crusaders from the Holy Land!
The bastards!

[Submariner]

I got an 86% on the humanist test, but only because the animals question didn't have a "I eat them whenever hungry" option.

I scored the same as PeeZuss Christ ... 90%.

Try this one:

Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (Revised, Adult)
http://www.questionwritertracker.com/qu ... K3TKB.html
My results were:

Your Score 20
Total Possible 36
An average score for this test is 26.2, or 21.9 for an adult with Asperger Syndrome or High-Functioning Autism

Not that it told me anything I did not know before. It also did not test for some things I believe I am good at spotting.

I got a 25.

Thanks for the link. That was kind of fun.

I just got a 30. But I can see why people who have trouble with visual clues have it hard more so now. So many of those eyes look similar to each other.

I got 100% (36/36). Anyone for poker?

"The one thing I've learned in my time in the pit is : if you play poker with lsuoma, you wind up inseminated"

[Zenspace]

I'll catch up with the thread later. This is gold and I need to share it.

Steven Novella has distanced himself from Peezus and Twatson in his customary classy and soft-spoken way. If you read between the lines, there's also a pretty harsh condemnation ("let's not pretend...ect.").

http://theness.com/neurologicablog/inde ... um=twitter

Atypically, he utilised the SGU account to tweet the link far and wide.

PZ will no doubt quote mine it out of reality. This will be hard for Watson. When I listen to SGU I always think that she has been told what to say about the sciencey subjects and they treat her like a precocious 4 year old niece.

That's why I disagree with people who think that she has has ulterior motives. I think that she is (sorry to be abelist) dumb. She unfortunately has friends who keep try to translate her frothings into wisdom. She isn't worrying about Dragon-Con now because of her age - it is because she has only just heard about the issue. I think her ElevatorGate talk was just some semi-conscious rant until her friends turned it into an important message about conference safety and the patriarchy.

Just to be clear, I spend next to zero time on anything Watson, there just never seemed to be any 'there' there, if you know what I mean. That said, I never could figure out why/how she bacame popular in the first place. This explanation does seem to offer a real answer.

And yes, Steven Novella's post was brilliant. One of the best rational, level headed and intelligent posts I've seen on the subject. So, who exactly is Steven Novella. He seems like someone I should have been following.

[Metalogic42]

I did something very fucking cool in the lab today.

Can you tell us about it?

[Altair]

I did something very fucking cool in the lab today. Very. Fucking. Cool. I cannot believe this shit is working, much less working as well as it is. I didnt want to go to work today because I *KNEW* that this experiment wasnt going to work... and then it did. This has been happening a lot lately-- glad science doesnt always turn out the way you hypothesize...

:dance: :dance: :dance: :dance: :dance: :dance: :dance:

So lets see what the fearless leader of all women in skepticism did today:

<snip rant against YET ANOTHER organization that has done nothing but support Watson>

...

:?

This whole fiasco in a nutshell: Leaders vs Losers

http://i.qkme.me/3543c5.jpg

Congratulations!

[somedumbguy]

Blogger, biology professor, Bora Zivkovic at Scientific American describing patterns of blogging moderation.

And all in all, it doesn't seem like a bad article, probably actually a good one, until you realize he describes Pharyngula as "rich with vibrant commenting communities" and he never discussed their toxic environment, and since he never mentions that, nor does he mention how often PZ gets it wrong, then you could be left thinking that PZ's moderation policies end up leaving Pharyngula a better place on the web.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/a-b ... ot-at-all/

[Gumby]

Blogger, biology professor, Bora Zivkovic at Scientific American describing patterns of blogging moderation.

And all in all, it doesn't seem like a bad article, probably actually a good one, until you realize he describes Pharyngula as "rich with vibrant commenting communities" and he never discussed their toxic environment, and since he never mentions that, nor does he mention how often PZ gets it wrong, then you could be left thinking that PZ's moderation policies end up leaving Pharyngula a better place on the web.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/a-b ... ot-at-all/

And of course, Greg Laden shows up to make the first comment.

[ConcentratedH2O, OM]

From Becky Whatnot's story about a DragonCon investor, a commenter says:

[quote]I get a very positive feeling when I read an article like this. It’s a touchy subject, and there’s no easy answer. I feel positive because, based on your statement, you are taking it seriously and not just giving a knee-jerk response. There’s far more to consider than I can know, not being a part of your organization. I’m glad to know, however, that a lot of thought is being put into the decision, and that it will be given the serious thought and discussion that it needs.
I also hope that your decision is supported by your readers and fellow skeptics, whatever it is. We all need to remember that we do not know better than you what is best for you.[/quote]

http://i.imgur.com/6U3uOYp.png

[Metalogic42]

Batshit Benson wrote something about her dropping out of Reap's show:

http://www.freezepage.com/1359513592ZJVSBAAWFE
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterflies ... -cat-food/

[ConcentratedH2O, OM]

Again from the DragonCon thread, PZ Meyers (yes, the PZ Meyers who has repeatedly said (paraphrase) "I don't write this blog for the money", "the money from this blog is insignificant to me") reveals the truth about his rampant bitterness towards others:

So starting a big-time convention and then abandoning it to rape children can net you $150,000 per year? I swear, every since my children moved out and got jobs paying more than mine, I’ve been feeling like it was a major economic mistake to become a biology professor…but now you’re telling me that there’s more money in being a child molesting con non-organizer, and I’m feeling even worse.

[ConcentratedH2O, OM]

Blogger, biology professor, Bora Zivkovic at Scientific American describing patterns of blogging moderation.

And all in all, it doesn't seem like a bad article, probably actually a good one, until you realize he describes Pharyngula as "rich with vibrant commenting communities" and he never discussed their toxic environment, and since he never mentions that, nor does he mention how often PZ gets it wrong, then you could be left thinking that PZ's moderation policies end up leaving Pharyngula a better place on the web.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/a-b ... ot-at-all/

And of course, Greg Laden shows up to make the first comment.

The cartoon at the top of that post is a very nasty little piece mocking the disabled. Seriously, check it out; that is not showing a mommy's basement-type troll commenter, it is clearly a mentally and/or physically disabled person.

[Altair]

Batshit Benson wrote something about her dropping out of Reap's show:

http://www.freezepage.com/1359513592ZJVSBAAWFE
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterflies ... -cat-food/

It bothers me a bit to have to admit it, but the "there is no valid excuse to decline" part was weak. She really doesn't need an excuse to refuse to do something. I think Reap's point was that she shouldn't be worried to have a conversation or debate if she really believes in the words popping out of her keyboard, but the excuse part gave her the out she needed.

This part, however, was spot on:

They can spout off constantly claiming they want the world to be a better place but can’t be bothered to actually talk about it with anyone who doesn’t already subscribe to their thinking

[Metalogic42]

(yesterday, to Reap) In a day or two, odds are she'll claim you tried to trick her into appearing on your podcast in order to further harass her. Or something similar.

Why would I not want to go on his podcast and share a laugh about my passion for eating cat food?

----

In any case I have good reasons to decline his podcast: he talks a lot of vicious shit, and I want nothing to do with him.

----



Oh well you know, I pulled out except not really because no penis but then again I’m so repulsive so maybe sort of penis -

You get the idea.

[ERV]

I did something very fucking cool in the lab today.

Can you tell us about it?

HIV operates as a quasispecies-- Like, if you looked at all of the viruses in an individual patient, you could average the sequence. 'There is normally an A at position 1, a T at position 2, a C at position 3, a G at position 4', etc. But if you looked at any individual sequence it might go ATCC or CTCG. A population of related, but genetically distinct organisms. Millions and millions and millions of them in an individual... times 30 million people infected with HIV.

There are billions and billions of HIV variants, but we only study a handful of them we isolate from patients. Patient HIV populations are the result of an extreme population bottleneck (1-2 genotypes), the resulting founder effects, immune responses, drugs, chance. Theyre isolated by time (we cant get samples from someone in 1972 unless they had tissues banked, we cant get potential sequences from 2072), and space (a virus from a patient in Cameroon doesnt look like a virus from a patient in Indonesia), genetically. If you arent looking at the right time/place, if you dont sample enough, you miss information that can never be regained. We can make generalizations about 'We think HIV does this', but really we are saying 'In this patient, with these samples, with these sequences, HIV does this'. We always have to sample one more virus, one more patient, because we dont know if our observations are an artifact of picking 12 viruses out of BILLIONS.

Our ability to study HIV is restricted by our ability to sample sequences from patients.

I have figured out how to circumvent this problem*.



* **spoiler** LOL I has a Tardis :P

[Metalogic42]

I did something very fucking cool in the lab today.

Can you tell us about it?

HIV operates as a quasispecies-- Like, if you looked at all of the viruses in an individual patient, you could average the sequence. 'There is normally an A at position 1, a T at position 2, a C at position 3, a G at position 4', etc. But if you looked at any individual sequence it might go ATCC or CTCG. A population of related, but genetically distinct organisms. Millions and millions and millions of them in an individual... times 30 million people infected with HIV.

There are billions and billions of HIV variants, but we only study a handful of them we isolate from patients. Patient HIV populations are the result of an extreme population bottleneck (1-2 genotypes), the resulting founder effects, immune responses, drugs, chance. Theyre isolated by time (we cant get samples from someone in 1972 unless they had tissues banked, we cant get potential sequences from 2072), and space (a virus from a patient in Cameroon doesnt look like a virus from a patient in Indonesia), genetically. If you arent looking at the right time/place, if you dont sample enough, you miss information that can never be regained. We can make generalizations about 'We think HIV does this', but really we are saying 'In this patient, with these samples, with these sequences, HIV does this'. We always have to sample one more virus, one more patient, because we dont know if our observations are an artifact of picking 12 viruses out of BILLIONS.

Our ability to study HIV is restricted by our ability to sample sequences from patients.

I have figured out how to circumvent this problem*.



* **spoiler** LOL I has a Tardis :P

:o whoa...is this as big of a discovery as it sounds like? Is it pending further trials, or a sure thing?

[ConcentratedH2O, OM]

Random mutagenesis?

[ERV]

I have been working on this for over 2 years. Over and over and over trying slightly different things. Did yet another little dippidy do trial the past couple weeks 'UGH WHY AM I DOING THIS IT ISNT GOING TO WORK I AM NOT GOING TO PUT MUCH EFFORT INTO THIS PARTICULAR EXPERIMENT THIS IS NEVER GOING TO WORK... WTFF IT WORKED!' Not even trying, it worked beyond my hopes.

I is now trying. Also ordering some parts to make it work even better. Doing the experiments now to show what ca be done with this :)

That being said, there will be a place for real biological samples. They unquestionably exist and are infecting someone. Mine are just test tube babies (related to real-world sequences).

[ReneeHendricks]

ERV, you has a Tardis???? Damn. I need to get my guy in gear to make my "Mommy needs quiet time and yes I know it's a big blue box but if you guys watched Dr. Who with us you'd understand now quit asking why I'm taking my bottle of vodka and my lifesized cardboard cutout of David Tennant with me" garden shed :D

[TheMan]

Just sticking it up here:

What happens when an american-Indian decides to become a fake Guru and tries to get followers:

KUMARE

[youtube]X5pYOxVgjH0[/youtube]

Will be watching the whole program this evening....

[ERV]

Random mutagenesis?

Intelligent randomness.

Dont fight the insanity-- embrace it, tame it.

:-D

[Mykeru]

I did something very fucking cool in the lab today. Very. Fucking. Cool. I cannot believe this shit is working, much less working as well as it is. I didnt want to go to work today because I *KNEW* that this experiment wasnt going to work... and then it did. This has been happening a lot lately-- glad science doesnt always turn out the way you hypothesize...

Yup, that's how it usually starts...

[youtube]NtgFKdWcKXY[/youtube]

[Lsuoma]

Batshit Benson wrote something about her dropping out of Reap's show:

http://www.freezepage.com/1359513592ZJVSBAAWFE
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterflies ... -cat-food/

Ophelia words - 805
Notphelia words - 386

Lazy bitch.

[another lurker]

Just sticking it up here:

What happens when an american-Indian decides to become a fake Guru and tries to get followers:

KUMARE

[youtube]X5pYOxVgjH0[/youtube]

Will be watching the whole program this evening....

I've seen that. It was great!

[Submariner]

I did something very fucking cool in the lab today.

Can you tell us about it?

HIV operates as a quasispecies-- Like, if you looked at all of the viruses in an individual patient, you could average the sequence. 'There is normally an A at position 1, a T at position 2, a C at position 3, a G at position 4', etc. But if you looked at any individual sequence it might go ATCC or CTCG. A population of related, but genetically distinct organisms. Millions and millions and millions of them in an individual... times 30 million people infected with HIV.

There are billions and billions of HIV variants, but we only study a handful of them we isolate from patients. Patient HIV populations are the result of an extreme population bottleneck (1-2 genotypes), the resulting founder effects, immune responses, drugs, chance. Theyre isolated by time (we cant get samples from someone in 1972 unless they had tissues banked, we cant get potential sequences from 2072), and space (a virus from a patient in Cameroon doesnt look like a virus from a patient in Indonesia), genetically. If you arent looking at the right time/place, if you dont sample enough, you miss information that can never be regained. We can make generalizations about 'We think HIV does this', but really we are saying 'In this patient, with these samples, with these sequences, HIV does this'. We always have to sample one more virus, one more patient, because we dont know if our observations are an artifact of picking 12 viruses out of BILLIONS.

Our ability to study HIV is restricted by our ability to sample sequences from patients.

I have figured out how to circumvent this problem*.



* **spoiler** LOL I has a Tardis :P

That's fucking awesome!

[Metalogic42]

Batshit Benson wrote something about her dropping out of Reap's show:

http://www.freezepage.com/1359513592ZJVSBAAWFE
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterflies ... -cat-food/

Ophelia words - 805
Notphelia words - 386

Lazy bitch.

I think you got that backwords.

Stupid cunt.

[Lapsang Souchong]

You might want to ask the original poster, who was in a huff that a Jew (Jerry Coyne) dared to find a blatantly anti-semitic cartoon to be more than a wee bit problematic.

I think Jerry is an atheist, not a jew.

He is Jewish, not a follower of Judaism.

If I'm born into a family of cleaners and dockers, I can be called working class.
If I grow up, make millions in business and live life according to my means, I am no longer working class.

If I'm born into a family of jews, and attend synagogue, I can be called jewish.
If I grow up, realize what bullshit religion is and live life according to my new beliefs, I am no longer a jew.

You know, it's a cultural/ethnic thing too. Kind of like being an atheist but a cultural Orange bastard.

[sacha]

half-elfin slave girl:

katarina.png

(118.44 KiB) Downloaded 185 times

never going to catch up. I've been watching Saxondale.

would someone please give me an overview?

[ERV]

That's fucking awesome!

No, youve been brainwashed by the patriarchy. You dont want to go to a con to hear about this-- You WANT to hear quality talks about very important issues, like, this comment Watson got one time on YouTube.

[Zenspace]

Random mutagenesis?

Intelligent randomness.

Dont fight the insanity-- embrace it, tame it.

:-D

Perfect. And very awesome. Congrats!