In 2017 Idiocracy is a Documentary

[Cnutella]

http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/imag ... itchie.jpg

[free thoughtpolice]

I'm pretty sure that nappy hair double cancels blue eyes, but I never could understand this intersectionality stuff. :drool:

[Cnutella]

Andrea uses "lesbian enby!" It's super-effective!

[Ape+lust]

http://imgur.com/aI0KkN6.gif

[Matt Cavanaugh]

I rather like the idea of a country being governed by laws written in the form of poetry.

Maybe haiku?

When detained for cause
One must provide a full name
As well as birthdate

Or possibly limerick?

When driving at night on a street
Dim you high-beams when others you meet
If you don't, that's a crime
Not a big one, no time
But it's part of good driving complete

This could be fun.

I see a car looks like an suv or a van
muthafucka, muthafucka, will you turn off your brights?
Distracting and blinding
about to crash into me.
here we go, here we go
here we go, here we go
steering veering
oh nooooo!

[Really?]

http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/imag ... itchie.jpg

I can't be the only person who is sick of super hot women who are apparently African-American or mixed-race complaining that white male America hates them.

Sure. Males of any race totally hate you, lady. It's not like they've deferred to you every time over the course of your life and in your field because you are hot. Okay.

http://imgur.com/aI0KkN6.gif

Wonderful work, as always. I love that PZ agreed to an after-hours interview with a woo-loving woman because he's no longer an atheist or a skeptic. Should give you lots of new images and facial expressions.

If only Gefan were here...those creepy sighs would add gravitas to the descriptions of his totally false accusation.

[Guest_936d3dec]

Does she play the ukelele?

Tiptoe through the window
By the window, that is where I'll be
Come tiptoe through the tulips with me

[CaptainFluffyBunny]

http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/imag ... itchie.jpg

Rachel Dolezal's sister?

[Cnutella]

I can't be the only person who is sick of super hot women who are apparently African-American or mixed-race complaining that white male America hates them.

Sure. Males of any race totally hate you, lady. It's not like they've deferred to you every time over the course of your life and in your field because you are hot. Okay.

It does tend to grate a bit. But inevitably they tend to be crazy-insecure and are therefore prone to trashing themselves harder while lacking either the awareness or the courage to make the small changes necessary to just plump the pillows and settle back into an easy life with just a hint of gratitude.

[Steersman]

Move over Dan Arel, Nazi Hunter -- Pat Green of TransParentExpress is out to get the transphobes:
<snip>

My comment thereat, at least as of now. Not sure how long it will stay up, although I have to commend Patrick for letting my other comments stand on a previous post of his.

However, that said, I think you're being a bit unfair to him. What he said was:

I have anger. This is the one I have the hardest time dealing with. I am pretty much angry all the time. There’s people who want to hurt transgender children and adults simply because they exist. Some want to call my child an abomination. When I see his hurt from that accusation, I wanna throat punch people.

Many reasons to throw stones at transactivists - particularly those who insist that trans women are female, and that Bruce Jenner is not just a woman, but "Woman of the Year!" too - but "wanting to hurt transgender children", and calling children "abominations"? GMAB, Matt. And you might want to give Pat a bit of a break too.

Lots of dicks - and "crazy assholes" - on all sides. Don't think it helps much to tar all for the sins of the few, although there may be some justification for getting the many to rein-in those few.

Sorry, but Pat Green is furious at everyone. He's angry at "allies" who won't shut up and listen (and apparently sees the world as either docile allies or bigots). He's angry at Laci Green for bolloxing a few points. Dumped a girlfriend for questioning a point of dogma. Enraged at an apologetic Applebee's manager. Resentful of his former church and his former fellow supplicants. Sure, there are hateful, potentially violent transphobes out there. But not all of them are lurking under your kid's bed.

As for the kid, xe's clearly histrionic, crying wolf at every opportunity to see how high and how fast daddy will jump to rescue zir. OMG, some kids at the prom are making fun of me -- hurry, daddy, and fetch me before they murder me! OMG, I have some strange rumblings in my tummy -- drive 90 miles an hour across town and take me to the ER before I die! Daddy, there are people out there who don't like me!!! Make them go away.

Oh well, Green's not the first guilty-feeling single parent to overcompensate with pampering for 'wrecking' the child's family.

Maybe you're right - you certainly seem to have followed Green's peregrinations, and those of his kid, fairly closely, far more than I have done.

And I agree about the "overcompensation" - maybe that's why he seems so reluctant to actually face facts, to even try to understand the arguments against the transgender position. I reposted my earlier comment under another name [Tillerman] as my previous handle had been blocked. Somewhat surprisingly he allowed it to stand, and even responded:

Unpack that a little for me. Because I do not see stating trans women are women as an extremist position. My son is a young man regardless his assigned sex at birth.

I see where you are going on extremism, I do. I am not sure we agree on what an extremist position may be.

Not quite sure what the kid's circumstances are - intersex with enough attributes common to the stereotype for male to justify the attempt to lay claim to the term "man"? If so then that's kind of a rough break, but sure don't think Green is doing his kid any favours by sugar-coating the facts.

In any case, I responded (below) which briefly saw the light of day - long enough for our good buddy John Pieret to see it and post a largely incoherent response - before being deleted. Pieret called it "dismissive and denigrating of trans people", though that seems predicated more on feelings than on logic. My response to Patrick (deleted):

Pray tell then, what is your definition for "woman"? How about:

wom•an (wo͝om′ən)
n. pl. wom•en (wĭm′ĭn)
1. A person who is weak in math, has an inordinate fondness for shoes, and turns on the waterworks at the drop of a hat (preferably with lace & feathers and a fetching yellow ribbon) ….

My point is that that is a fairly common - if a bit extreme or sarcastic - stereotype for "woman". But defining a term based on an attribute that only some of the class share is a mug's game, i.e, "a profitless or futile activity". If words can mean virtually anything then they mean literally nothing, and should be put on the dust heap of history - along with words such as "phlogiston".

Words and their definitions are like rules of the road, and insisting - as too many transactivists apparently do - that "woman" means anything and everything they want is virtually the same as insisting that all people, regardless of their competence or age, can drive on any side of the road they want, and whenever they want. Refusing to accept that fact, that bedrock premise of civilization, seems remarkably anti-intellectual and anti-scientific, the hallmark of many if not most in the "SJW"/postmodernist crowd.

So then, what is a rational definition for "woman"? For starters, you might note the results from a Google search of "woman definition", most of which yield "woman: an adult human female". And a further search of "female" yields:

female: denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) that can be fertilized by male gametes

You really think that Bruce Jenner can reasonably be called either "female" or "woman"? Rank insanity for people to be arguing that he is either.

I geddit that some transactivists want to decouple "man" and "woman" from the gametes produced - i.e., sperm and ova, respectively. Although some like Zinnia Jones reject the scientific correlation or linkage between sex and gametes [entirely]. But trying to impose an idiosycratic and unscientific and non-lexocological definition gets people's backs up, and gets everyone riding madly off in all directions. Not to mention causing an endless amount of unnecessary animosity.

While I do sympathize with the difficulties some of the foregoing may produce for you and your son, I don't think it helps matters in the least to evade or try to deny those facts - you may wish to read up on Lysenkoism for an illustration of the problematic consequences of doing so.

And while I don't wish to pry or get too specific about your son, you might consider that man-male, and woman-female are more or less joined at the hip for some very good reasons. And that there is virtually an infinitude of other attributes that correlate to a greater or lesser extent with those primary or defining ones that in no way repudiates that linkage. For examples, that a man ("produces sperm") likes shoes and hats (with fetching yellow ribbons ...) doesn't make him less of a man, and that a woman ("produces ova") likes monster trucks doesn't make her less of a woman; they just make them people who exhibit non-stereotypical attributes.

Maybe he didn't like the allusion to insanity ...

[Cnutella]

http://imgur.com/aI0KkN6.gif

OMG, a shit-gnome! Nice one, App.

[dogen]

This must be the case for America - or they would not be making reference to the Statue of Liberty and the poem engraved on the tablet it holds.

Probably belaboring the obvious, but to any non yankees who don't know,

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore"

may not be law, but is a huge point of pride and demarcation for how the US is different from Europe and the rest of the world. It would be reasonable for Acosta to reference that poem in a statement questioning if the new policy is "un-American".

I'm not wading in the topic at hand, but the part in bold is what I've always found either irritating or amusing (depending on my mood) about Americans. You seem to really believe that your country is "exceptional" and different from any other country in the world. It's such a common cultural trope in the US that even critics of US policies like Noam Chomsky have their own warped version of exceptionalism, only instead of the US being exceptionally good (the "shining city upon the hill") they're exceptionally evil.

Look, I love American culture, and I think that the inspiration of the American Revolution was a crucial step in the development of liberal democracy, but the United States aren't "exceptional". You suffer from the same problems of other advanced countries, you act in the same way of other powerful countries, you have the same good and bad features of other liberal democracies, with some specific positive and negative points of course, but you're not "an exception". You're not the Good Guys or the Ultimate Evil. You're not "different" and immune from the laws of geopolitics, or from social dynamics which affect all countries.

Your idea that somehow you're different from the rest of the world and special is a myth, and one that is actually hindering rational self-reflection and approaches to policies. The sooner you stop believing in your American special snowflakedness, the better.

Sounds like Switzerland is jonesing for a good dose of nucular bombs! Yee-haw!

[dogen]

I'm not wading in the topic at hand, but the part in bold is what I've always found either irritating or amusing (depending on my mood) about Americans. You seem to really believe that your country is "exceptional" and different from any other country in the world. It's such a common cultural trope in the US that even critics of US policies like Noam Chomsky have their own warped version of exceptionalism, only instead of the US being exceptionally good (the "shining city upon the hill") they're exceptionally evil.

Look, I love American culture, and I think that the inspiration of the American Revolution was a crucial step in the development of liberal democracy, but the United States aren't "exceptional". You suffer from the same problems of other advanced countries, you act in the same way of other powerful countries, you have the same good and bad features of other liberal democracies, with some specific positive and negative points of course, but you're not "an exception". You're not the Good Guys or the Ultimate Evil. You're not "different" and immune from the laws of geopolitics, or from social dynamics which affect all countries.

Your idea that somehow you're different from the rest of the world and special is a myth, and one that is actually hindering rational self-reflection and approaches to policies. The sooner you stop believing in your American special snowflakedness, the better.

Sounds like Switzerland is jonesing for a good dose of nucular bombs! Yee-haw!

Forgot to add:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVCtkzIXYzQ[/youtbe]

...but on the other hand,

[dogen]

Oh, fucking bollocks.

I'm not wading in the topic at hand, but the part in bold is what I've always found either irritating or amusing (depending on my mood) about Americans. You seem to really believe that your country is "exceptional" and different from any other country in the world. It's such a common cultural trope in the US that even critics of US policies like Noam Chomsky have their own warped version of exceptionalism, only instead of the US being exceptionally good (the "shining city upon the hill") they're exceptionally evil.

Look, I love American culture, and I think that the inspiration of the American Revolution was a crucial step in the development of liberal democracy, but the United States aren't "exceptional". You suffer from the same problems of other advanced countries, you act in the same way of other powerful countries, you have the same good and bad features of other liberal democracies, with some specific positive and negative points of course, but you're not "an exception". You're not the Good Guys or the Ultimate Evil. You're not "different" and immune from the laws of geopolitics, or from social dynamics which affect all countries.

Your idea that somehow you're different from the rest of the world and special is a myth, and one that is actually hindering rational self-reflection and approaches to policies. The sooner you stop believing in your American special snowflakedness, the better.

Sounds like Switzerland is jonesing for a good dose of nucular bombs! Yee-haw!

Forgot to add:



...but on the other hand,

[MarcusAu]

I rather like the idea of a country being governed by laws written in the form of poetry.

This must be the case for America - or they would not be making reference to the Statue of Liberty and the poem engraved on the tablet it holds.

Pedantic mode on, The tablet she holds reads "1776" in Roman numerals. The poem "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus is on the base. Pedantic mode off.

My comment is covered under the terms of poetic license.

Which is a new legal precedent.

[AndrewV69]

In other news:

A pirating service for academic journal articles could bring down the whole establishment

But regardless of where Harvard researchers have published their work since then, it’s likely that all of it is currently available for free on Sci-Hub, a rogue pirating service for academic research.

...

They argue, among other things, that a substantial portion of the research that publishers attempt to lock behind paywalls was funded with grants paid for by taxpayers, and that the public should therefore have unfettered access to it.

A url for Sci-Hub is : http://sci-hub.cc/ Also for those interested there is a preprint server for biology - bioRxIV http://www.biorxiv.org/

[Brive1987]

Whoever this mysterious commenter is on Meyers's video with tubgirl, they need to read a medical dictionary. The idiot put an unnecessary "d" in the word after "express his".

http://i.imgur.com/iyuoBmX.png

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HMYyXX8WDck/ ... devito.gif

[dogen]

In other news:

A pirating service for academic journal articles could bring down the whole establishment

But regardless of where Harvard researchers have published their work since then, it’s likely that all of it is currently available for free on Sci-Hub, a rogue pirating service for academic research.

...

They argue, among other things, that a substantial portion of the research that publishers attempt to lock behind paywalls was funded with grants paid for by taxpayers, and that the public should therefore have unfettered access to it.

A url for Sci-Hub is : http://sci-hub.cc/ Also for those interested there is a preprint server for biology - bioRxIV http://www.biorxiv.org/

I partly agree with Sci-Hub's motivations. Most stages in the production of a scientific paper -- from the research itself, through to the typesetting, submission management and reviewing -- are done either at no cost to the publisher, or in fact at a profit (authors pay page charges to the publisher). Why then should the publisher rake in the profits, when almost all the costs are borne by the (often publicly funded) scientists?

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

Because the scientists should have made better life decisions and gone to publishing school instead?

[MarcusAu]

Does anyone think that recently there has been something about Justicar that seems a little off?

[dogen]

Because the scientists should have made better life decisions and gone to publishing school instead?

As a scientist, the way things are currently done is no skin of my nose. It's as a taxpayer that I get pissed.

[Barbie's Boyfriend]

Because the scientists should have made better life decisions and gone to publishing school instead?

As a scientist, the way things are currently done is no skin of my nose. It's as a taxpayer that I get pissed.

Don't you mean no skin off your noses?

[MarcusAu]

For no particular reason...

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

Because the scientists should have made better life decisions and gone to publishing school instead?

As a scientist, the way things are currently done is no skin of my nose. It's as a taxpayer that I get pissed.

Don't you mean no skin off your noses?

He should have gone to publishing school...

[MarcusAu]

There's no publication without taxation.

[InfraRedBucket]

http://imgur.com/aI0KkN6.gif

I'm not very good at remembering names but I never forget faeces.

[rayshul]

That woman looks real white. If the racism was such a problem, why didn't she just get her hair straightened?

[MarcusAu]

http://www.scaryforkids.com/pics/brain- ... -venus.jpg

[Cnutella]

Don't you mean no skin off your noses?

My dogen has no noses.

[MarcusAu]

My dogen has no noses.

Ok...Alright then....

How does he smell?

[Cnutella]

Sincerely pursue that inquiry without ceasing through night and day, making it the first thought of the Dawn and the last thing on your mind at night. Make that question as natural to you as breathing and you will surely achieve kensho. You will storm the nine heavens and pull the Buddha from his exalted perch in each of them.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

I got dust or some other shit in my right eye while driving on the highway. Like, one hour ago and the little piece of shit is still in there, hurting like fuck.

Thought I should share.

[deLurch]

Back on the topic of if Paul Watson is a conspiracy nut or not, I did another search on a simple popular topic. "Vaccine"

I found these two videos.

In this video he makes a defensible (by libertarian standards, though not sure if I agree) argument that the state should not mandate that parents vaccinate their children.



In this 2nd video, he argues based on an unnamed source, that:
1. Vaccines in the first year of a babies life are ineffective and are only used to train parents to bring their babies to the doctor.
(I am open to the idea that the vaccines might not be effective, but personally I think he needs a hell of a lot better proof than an unnamed source).

2. Since the US has a higher infant mortality & many more vaccines than other 1st world countries, then he suggests there must be a problem with the number of vaccines and the vaccines are causing them. Even if his sources are true, correlation does not equal causation.

[Hunt]

I got dust or some other shit in my right eye while driving on the highway. Like, one hour ago and the little piece of shit is still in there, hurting like fuck.

Thought I should share.

That used to happen to me a lot when I worked on cars. Dirt would fall into my eyes. The most effective thing more me was to take a shower and flush it out, moving eyeball in all directions. Wait, you're French. You can also use your bidet.

[screwtape]

Sincerely pursue that inquiry without ceasing through night and day, making it the first thought of the Dawn and the last thing on your mind at night. Make that question as natural to you as breathing and you will surely achieve kensho. You will storm the nine heavens and pull the Buddha from his exalted perch in each of them.

That was Tomb Raider 4, right?

[John D]

Dan Arel has protected his Twitter account.

Turns out the guy who thinks he is on the barricades leading the resistance, has gone to find his safe space.

Dipshit did the same thing last time he got attention outside of his bubble. He'll be back.

This is pretty funny. CNN's Jim Acosta had a go at White House advisor Stephen Miller today. Acosta did what reporters are supposed to do: lecture a White House advisor about the meaning of the Statue of Liberty.

So around 3:20, Acosta starts in against the requirement that immigrants speak English. (Acosta doesn't seem to know there is already a long-standing requirement that immigrants speak English.)

The English Test to Become a Naturalized U.S. Citizen

One of the most important requirements for becoming a U.S. citizen is that you are able to show U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that you can read, speak, and write basic English. You'll do this during an in-person review of your application for naturalization, which usually takes place some months after you have submitted your Form N-400.

You will have to read one to three English sentences out loud to a USCIS examiner. You will also have to write down one to three English sentences after the USCIS officer reads them aloud to you. And, you will need to follow the examiner's instructions, and speak with him or her about the information you provided in your application for U.S. citizenship.

http://immigration.lawyers.com/citizens ... ation.html

Acosta says of the English requirement: "Are we just gonna bring in people from Britain and Australia?"

Judo fucking troll master Miller huffs and puffs: "Jim, I am SHOCKED at your statement, that only people from England and Australia know English..." And he does the reverso troll spinabout on him. I love it.

Steve Miller is one of my new heroes. Acosta is such a fucking hack.

The left actually don't care about current American working class people. Wages have been flat for decades, often not even keeping up with the low level of inflation. The reason for this is that there are too many unskilled workers entering the US (both legally and illegally). Most legal immigrants to the US come in under sponsorship of families already in the US, and most of these immigrants have no work skills. There are a limited number of low skilled jobs out there.

If the left really cared about working class wages they would limit the number of unskilled workers under a new immigration policy. One way to correct for the wage gap is to restrict the supply of unskilled labor and increase the supply of skilled labor. Minimum wage laws often hurt workers. The only way to increase wages for working people is to either grow the economy or limit the supply of low skilled workers.

Fuck... I am starting to hate the Democrats. If the Republicans would drop their opposition to abortion and support gay rights I would join the Republican party immediately. The Democrats are out of ideas.... completely out of ideas.

and... some fucking cry-baby from the construction industry was complaining that they don't have enough workers... FUCKING LIAR! Look Mr. Construction Boss - There are plenty of workers... but you don't want to pay the wages required to get them to work construction jobs. Increase your pay and you will find plenty of workers. You will have to pass the increased cost on to the customer. If customers want a construction project then they will have to pay you more. This isn't complicated. It is not the fault of immigration policy that you underbid a bunch of jobs and now you are losing money.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

I got dust or some other shit in my right eye while driving on the highway. Like, one hour ago and the little piece of shit is still in there, hurting like fuck.

Thought I should share.

That used to happen to me a lot when I worked on cars. Dirt would fall into my eyes. The most effective thing more me was to take a shower and flush it out, moving eyeball in all directions. Wait, you're French. You can also use your bidet.

There, all clear.

[Hunt]

I got dust or some other shit in my right eye while driving on the highway. Like, one hour ago and the little piece of shit is still in there, hurting like fuck.

Thought I should share.

That used to happen to me a lot when I worked on cars. Dirt would fall into my eyes. The most effective thing more me was to take a shower and flush it out, moving eyeball in all directions. Wait, you're French. You can also use your bidet.

There, all clear.

I don't get it.

[Hunt]

PZ has a new post about a bogus male contraceptive, a piece of tape placed over the penis.

Nude bath interview. Bogus male contraceptive he can rage about.

I...I think this is PZ's way of telling use that he's...horny.

:cdc:

[Hunt]

Mary, do your duty.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

That used to happen to me a lot when I worked on cars. Dirt would fall into my eyes. The most effective thing more me was to take a shower and flush it out, moving eyeball in all directions. Wait, you're French. You can also use your bidet.

There, all clear.

I don't get it.[/quote]

The French are notoriously avert to showers, yes?

[Hunt]

That used to happen to me a lot when I worked on cars. Dirt would fall into my eyes. The most effective thing more me was to take a shower and flush it out, moving eyeball in all directions. Wait, you're French. You can also use your bidet.

There, all clear.

I don't get it.

The French are notoriously avert to showers, yes?[/quote]

I thought that was the Germans.

[Hunt]

What about all those French sounding bath products? I thought that's all you do.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

What about all those French sounding bath products? I thought that's all you do.

Propaganda.

[MarcusAu]

Well what's sauce for the proper goose is sauce for the...

[screwtape]

That used to happen to me a lot when I worked on cars. Dirt would fall into my eyes. The most effective thing more me was to take a shower and flush it out, moving eyeball in all directions. Wait, you're French. You can also use your bidet.

There, all clear.

I don't get it.

The French are notoriously avert to showers, yes?

You'd like a shower more if you didn't call it a douche.

[Phil_Giordana_FCD]

First time in Florida, 13 years old (or some such), asked my foster mom where was the douche. I never got an answer.

[CommanderTuvok]

Steve Miller?

Sounds like a Joker, to me.

[yeah, I know, probably been done a million times]

[John D]

First time in Florida, 13 years old (or some such), asked my foster mom where was the douche. I never got an answer.

Haha - two useless stories:

1) When I bought a home in the 1990s the previous owner must have been studying French. There were stickers on some of the objects in the house with the French word for the object. This is how I learned the French word for shower is douche. Haha... "La Douche"

2) Charles Darwin had some health problems and one of his health rituals was to take a cold out door shower. He had a huge barrel of water suspended in the air in his yard. Every morning he would dump the bucket of water on himself. He called it a douche.

8-3-2017 10-05-42 AM.jpg

(109.06 KiB) Downloaded 113 times

[Hunt]

So is a shower cap a douchebag?

[John D]

Pit killed by a douchebag?!

[feathers]

Probably belaboring the obvious, but to any non yankees who don't know,

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore"

may not be law, but is a huge point of pride and demarcation for how the US is different from Europe and the rest of the world.

Well, consider it a deal, and good luck with the lot!
*calls Udlændingestyrelsen*

[feathers]

I'm not wading in the topic at hand, but the part in bold is what I've always found either irritating or amusing (depending on my mood) about Americans. You seem to really believe that your country is "exceptional" and different from any other country in the world. It's such a common cultural trope in the US that even critics of US policies like Noam Chomsky have their own warped version of exceptionalism, only instead of the US being exceptionally good (the "shining city upon the hill") they're exceptionally evil.

Well seriously, it's clear to me you and other pitters have much better understanding of history than I do, but all of this comes out of a long history of people coming to America when their European or Asian countries were literally killing them or otherwise oppressing them on racial, or religious grounds.

I'm not saying it's true today[...]

...or even back then.

[feathers]

A url for Sci-Hub is : http://sci-hub.cc/ Also for those interested there is a preprint server for biology - bioRxIV http://www.biorxiv.org/

I partly agree with Sci-Hub's motivations. Most stages in the production of a scientific paper -- from the research itself, through to the typesetting, submission management and reviewing -- are done either at no cost to the publisher, or in fact at a profit (authors pay page charges to the publisher). Why then should the publisher rake in the profits, when almost all the costs are borne by the (often publicly funded) scientists?

Ever since the early nineties the publishers (most notably Elsevier) started driving up journal subscription prices, proudly sitting on their near-monopoly. Unfortunately for them, that almost coincided with the explosion of internet access and transfer speeds. So now, even governments often mandate their universities to make their scientific output available to all.

On the downside of this Open Access is of course that other predators now see a chance to make a quick buck. And the publisherless peer-review process has not quite crystallised yet.

[Billie from Ockham]

http://imgur.com/aI0KkN6.gif

OMG, a shit-gnome! Nice one, App.

A page back, someone mentioned the economist named Hayek. Now you mention shit-gnomes. I would like to thank both of you for suggesting that I watch Dogma again. Excellent idea.

[feathers]

I got dust or some other shit in my right eye while driving on the highway. Like, one hour ago and the little piece of shit is still in there, hurting like fuck.

Thought I should share.

You should wear contact lenses, the hard type, for a few years. That will drastically increase your threshold of "ow that hurt a lot" to the point where, when you stop wearing them, not even a cordon of flying ants can faze you any more.

[feathers]

I got dust or some other shit in my right eye while driving on the highway. Like, one hour ago and the little piece of shit is still in there, hurting like fuck.

Thought I should share.

That used to happen to me a lot when I worked on cars. Dirt would fall into my eyes. The most effective thing more me was to take a shower and flush it out, moving eyeball in all directions. Wait, you're French. You can also use your bidet.

This is why bicycle mechanics put the bike upside down, or on a stand, and work on it from above. Gravity, how does it work.

[Billie from Ockham]

My comment is covered under the terms of poetic license.

Which is a new legal precedent.

A license you have to opine
And to do so in places on-line
Please feel free to assert
Because words cannot hurt
Even bullshit is totally fine

[Billie from Ockham]

I partly agree with Sci-Hub's motivations. Most stages in the production of a scientific paper -- from the research itself, through to the typesetting, submission management and reviewing -- are done either at no cost to the publisher, or in fact at a profit (authors pay page charges to the publisher). Why then should the publisher rake in the profits, when almost all the costs are borne by the (often publicly funded) scientists?

While I agree with your sentiment, I cannot think of any journal that still charges the author but isn't open-access. With regard to who pays, it is one or the other (author or reader/library), not both.

Note, also, that most people make PDFs of their papers available on their website, even those that didn't appear in an open-access journal, often with a silly pseudo-legalistic "don't download this unless you have the right to do so" blurb on the page or a pop-up, which supposedly would protect the owner of the website. We do this because our salary bumps often depend on number of citations in the previous year, so we want to make our papers as easy to get as possible. Your impact rating also depends on citations.

[Billie from Ockham]

Because the scientists should have made better life decisions and gone to publishing school instead?

As a scientist, the way things are currently done is no skin of my nose. It's as a taxpayer that I get pissed.

Agreed! But it's granting decisions that piss me off most. When I see what shit is getting funded these days....