Nerds. Nerds EVERYWHERE...

[Pitchguest]

Trigga, trigga, trigga, trigga, trigga, trigga, trigga...

Trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga, I'm 100% trigga.

Trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga, I'm 200% trigga!

You can fill in the rest yourself.

Trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga, SHITLORD, SHITLORD!

Trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga trigga, SHITLORD, SHITLORD!

MAN! MAN! It's a man! It's a ...

Trigga trigga trigga ...

[CuntajusRationality]

Apropos of nothing:
[youtube]D1vQ_cB0f4w[/youtube]

[fuzzy]

Trigger warning:








http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... Nelson.jpg

[Skep tickle]

In other news, I have finally conquered shortcrust pastry. I own it. Better than my mother's. :banana-dance:

Carry on.

Samples or it isn't true. :snooty: :drool:

[Shatterface as Guest]

Apropos of nothing:
[youtube]D1vQ_cB0f4w[/youtube]

Conducting conversations over high definition monitors? Access to all knowledge through a keyboard? The end of printed newspapers?

This guy's a loon!

Shatterface

[fuzzy]

http://i.imgur.com/YfIy6Jl.png

[Guest]

One good thing about male depression and high suicide rates is it gives social justice feminists lots of whiny man boy rapist tears to drink.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bt41LdxIUAEuiJn.jpg

Those depressed men and boys who offed themselves were probably MRAs anyway.

[Tribble]

Article on male depression:

Depression and the fragility of the strong, silent male

According to the charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (Calm), men account for more than three-quarters of all suicides in England and Wales, 4,590 deaths – the single biggest cause of death among males under 50. Three out of four had no contact with mental health professionals.

I can believe it.

Funny how this society which supposedly services male needs in every way and allows totes male dominance over females has the vast majority of suicides and depression as men, and for a bonus: women doing something like 80-85% of all spending. In a capitalist society.

http://th09.deviantart.net/fs70/200H/f/ ... 4ns6ix.jpg

They also control the bulk of the wealth and the bulk of college degrees, too. And, if they don't go mommy track, they make more then men (at least in urban environments). And the biggest kick in the ass is that mommy-track women make more than daddy-track men (men are actually punished more for giving up a career than women). Oh, better health care. Better out-comes in the judicial system (civil and criminal).

And, of course, society itself is built on protecting women and children while men are disposable.

Yeah. Patriarchy. It works so well for men.

[Cliché Guevara]

"Politically Correct": A History (part 1)

[Skep tickle]

FWIW, my recent comment on one of HJ Hornbeck’s posts on M.A. Melby’s blog [Sinmantyx]; he’s deleted it (as he kind of said he would do) as it – horror of horrors – actually questioned his highly questionable “hypothesis” [being charitable] that, essentialy, the existence of rape myths justifies the assertion that rape culture is prevalent:

<snip>

HJ Hornbeck may know all of the foundational work on rape culture, including definition(s), and simply didn't include that (or, not clearly) in his talk. But in case it might be useful for him or anyone preparing a presentation on rape culture to go back to the basics, I searched Google Scholar and found these 3 seminal works in "rape culture":

First use of "rape culture" outside of agriculture was in 1974-5 & referred to the 1975 documentary Rape Culture.

Also seminal & early, it seems, was Dianne Herman's 1984 essay "The Rape Culture"; here's a copy of it:
http://homepage.smc.edu/delpiccolo_guid ... _final.pdf

PZ & pharyngulites might be interested in seeing that on the first page Herman comments that "'Fuck you' is meant as a brutal attack in verbal terms" - thus, they are perpetuating rape culture in continuing to use "fuck" freely in their attacks on others. (Oh, who am I kidding - it's okay when they do it.)

Herman relates a bunch of statistics & observations; the reader is (IMO) left to decide whether or not she succesfully makes the case that the US is a rape culture (the claim she made on the first page). From the last page (the conclusion):

As long as sex in our society is construed as a dirty, low, and violent act involving domination of a male over a female, rape will remain a common occurrence. The erotization of male dominance means that whenever women are in a subordinate position to men, the likelihood of sexual assault is great. ... Rape is the logical outcome if men act according to the "masculine mystique" and women act according to the "feminine mystique." But rape does not have to occur. Its presence is an indication of how widely held are traditional views of appropriate male and female behavior, and of how strongly enforced these views are. Our society is a rape culture because it fosters and encourages rape by teaching males and females that it is natural and normal for sexual relations to involve aggressive behavior on the part of the males. To end rape, people must be able to envision a relationship between the sexes that involves sharing, warmth, and equality, and to bring about a social system in which those values are fostered.

Later but also apparently influential was the 1993 book Transforming a Rape Culture by Emilie Buchwald. I'm not finding the text of the book available online, but this site says it is quoting the book in saying the author defines rape culture as:

"a complex set of beliefs that encourage male sexual aggression and supports violence against women. It is a society where violence is seen as sexy and sexuality as violent. In a rape culture, women perceive a continuum of threatened violence that ranges from sexual remarks to sexual touching to rape itself. A rape culture condones physical and emotional terrorism against women as the norm . . . In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is a fact of life, inevitable . . . However . . . much of what we accept as inevitable is in fact the expression of values and attitudes that can change."

[free thoughtpolice]

At 2:53, how not make a threat video:
[youtube]QPJVF-w0We8[/youtube]

[ReneeHendricks]

Regarding trigger warnings, my husband pointed out there are over 7 billion people in ths world and odds are something you say or write will "trigger" someone. So, he suggests we all shut the fuck up :)

[Tribble]

At 2:53, how not make a threat video:
[youtube]QPJVF-w0We8[/youtube]

First guy up -- Glock Leg. Which is what happens when you grab a loaded pistol with a chambered round that doesn't have a fucking safety but does have a hair trigger. Got a laugh out of it.

[Shatterface as Guest]

Regarding trigger warnings, my husband pointed out there are over 7 billion people in ths world and odds are something you say or write will "trigger" someone. So, he suggests we all shut the fuck up :)

The word 'trigger' must be triggering to a large number of people. More people have lost family members to shooting incidents than to dog penises, even here in the UK where dog penises no longer require a licence.

Shatterface

[James Caruthers]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B9VxsgXIEAA1gHv.jpg:large

Jonathan McIntosh, Writer of a series of Youtube videos that has been given Humanist Awards in 2014 from Harvard.

Also the reincarnation of Mary Whitehouse.

Fucking Jack Thompson has been reincarnated again.

Fuck this moralizing shit. If I want to glory in fake, virtual gore, I will. I want him to expand this logic to include literature, film and television so everyone can see how full of shit he is.

"How dare you enjoy the violence in Warhammer 40k!"

"How dare you enjoy the blood and guts in Game of Thrones!"

"How dare you enjoy the butchery in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings!"

In fact, he even says "in any other media" so he opened the door himself. I wonder if the wanker gets pissed off when he meets Goya fans? Ooh, and what about Dante's Inferno? Full of gleeful obscenity, violence and gore! :naughty:

How DARE those immoral catholics allow that kind of filth!

Seriously, fuck this guy and everyone who thinks like this guy. In my own personal life, people like this guy made my growing-up years an absolute hell.

[ConcentratedH2O, OM]

Meyers's teaching style explained by the man himself: aim for mediocrity. Fuck those who are intelligent and want to learn. Focus instead on the people who have come to the University of Minnesota at Morris with fuck all intelligence and fuck all ambition.

Nice one, Meyers, you fucking intellectual dwarf.

http://i.imgur.com/ko17w50.png

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ent-911016

[free thoughtpolice]

Tribble wrote:

First guy up -- Glock Leg. Which is what happens when you grab a loaded pistol with a chambered round that doesn't have a fucking safety but does have a hair trigger. Got a laugh out of it.

What's it called when you do that with the pistol in the front waistband of your pants?

[JackSkeptic]

Meyers's teaching style explained by the man himself: aim for mediocrity. Fuck those who are intelligent and want to learn. Focus instead on the people who have come to the University of Minnesota at Morris with fuck all intelligence and fuck all ambition.

Nice one, Meyers, you fucking intellectual dwarf.

http://i.imgur.com/ko17w50.png

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ent-911016

I totally agree with him. Universities rely too much on stats and not enough on educating people as best they can. So I agree with him 100%.

[Suet Cardigan]

Tribble wrote:

First guy up -- Glock Leg. Which is what happens when you grab a loaded pistol with a chambered round that doesn't have a fucking safety but does have a hair trigger. Got a laugh out of it.

What's it called when you do that with the pistol in the front waistband of your pants?

Glock cock?

[free thoughtpolice]

Glock cock?

:lol:

[Steersman]

FWIW, my recent comment on one of HJ Hornbeck’s posts on M.A. Melby’s blog [Sinmantyx]; he’s deleted it (as he kind of said he would do) as it – horror of horrors – actually questioned his highly questionable “hypothesis” [being charitable] that, essentialy, the existence of rape myths justifies the assertion that rape culture is prevalent:

<snip>

HJ Hornbeck may know all of the foundational work on rape culture, including definition(s), and simply didn't include that (or, not clearly) in his talk. But in case it might be useful for him or anyone preparing a presentation on rape culture to go back to the basics, I searched Google Scholar and found these 3 seminal works in "rape culture":

First use of "rape culture" outside of agriculture was in 1974-5 & referred to the 1975 documentary Rape Culture.

Also seminal & early, it seems, was Dianne Herman's 1984 essay "The Rape Culture"; here's a copy of it:
http://homepage.smc.edu/delpiccolo_guid ... _final.pdf
....

Interesting – thanks for the links and quotes; the one on the documentary led to a broader discussion and article in Wikipedia which included these criticisms of the concept:

Criticisms

RAINN, one of North America's leading anti-sexual violence organizations, in a report detailing recommendations to the White House on combating rape on college campuses, decries an overemphasis on the concept of rape culture as a means of preventing rape and as a cause for rape, saying, "In the last few years, there has been an unfortunate trend towards blaming 'rape culture' for the extensive problem of sexual violence on campuses. While it is helpful to point out the systemic barriers to addressing the problem, it is important to not lose sight of a simple fact: Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime. ….

Caroline Kitchens, in a 2014 article in Time Magazine titled "It’s Time to End ‘Rape Culture’ Hysteria" suggested that "Though rape is certainly a serious problem, there’s no evidence that it’s considered a cultural norm.” ….

The UN conducted its ‘Multi-country Study on Men and Violence in Asia and the Pacific’ in 2008 in six countries across Asia. Its conclusions, published in 2013, seemed to indicate a substantial number of men in Asian countries admit to committing some form of rape.[82] …. A closer look at the study’s methodology reveals questions about cultural definitions of rape, the study’s sample size, survey design, and linguistic accuracy, all of which highlights ongoing challenges in trying to quantify the prevalence of rape.

But, as mentioned and as that comment on the UN study seems to support, I think “rape myths” are a tenable argument, but that the supposed causal connection between those and a monolithic or country-wide “rape culture” seems highly suspect. And I think that inability to justify or document a causal connection is what seems to characterize many in the social-studies field – in contradistinction to those fields based, directly or indirectly, on physics where the chains of cause and effect tend to be more stark, more incontrovertible, and less open to dispute. And as a case in point, there’s this post by Hornbeck where he’s questioning Sommers’ YouTube video attempt to refute the concept:

Sommers could take a similar approach to sexual assault, not so much arguing that rape myths are a net benefit but instead riding the “correlation is not causation” line and arguing the myths don’t excuse perpetrators or harm victims. This approach has problems too, as correlation can be evidence for causation when there’s a plausible mechanism, and past a point this approach also becomes science denialism.

Yes, HJ, “plausible mechanism” is an important criterion – but you’re a long ways away from putting the one supposedly connecting rape myths with rape culture on the same footing as, for example, gravity or electromagnetism. Seems to me that HJ’s argument, his “thesis” and that of Dianne Herman, are not much better than cargo-cult scientism, than “philosophick romances”, than a pile of “just-so-stories” – at best.

But while I can sort of sympathize with Herman to the extent of accepting that rape is probably more prevalent than it should be, particularly among some sub-cultures – the “pickup-artist” one for example, it also seems that she may have some overly romantic or narrow biases, and questionable premises herself.

[CaptainFluffyBunny]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B9VxsgXIEAA1gHv.jpg:large

Jonathan McIntosh, Writer of a series of Youtube videos that has been given Humanist Awards in 2014 from Harvard.

Also the reincarnation of Mary Whitehouse.

Fucking Jack Thompson has been reincarnated again.

Fuck this moralizing shit. If I want to glory in fake, virtual gore, I will. I want him to expand this logic to include literature, film and television so everyone can see how full of shit he is.

"How dare you enjoy the violence in Warhammer 40k!"

"How dare you enjoy the blood and guts in Game of Thrones!"

"How dare you enjoy the butchery in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings!"

In fact, he even says "in any other media" so he opened the door himself. I wonder if the wanker gets pissed off when he meets Goya fans? Ooh, and what about Dante's Inferno? Full of gleeful obscenity, violence and gore! :naughty:

How DARE those immoral catholics allow that kind of filth!

Seriously, fuck this guy and everyone who thinks like this guy. In my own personal life, people like this guy made my growing-up years an absolute hell.

For what it's worth, I doubt he believes a word of it. He seems to sit around all day thinking of moralizing outrage tweets to inflict on the world. He can't let Anita have all the credit. Lest she drop him like the dog turd he is. So he lets people know who is the brains of the outfit, while not stealing too much of the spotlight from Ms. Oppressed.

[JackSkeptic]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B9VxsgXIEAA1gHv.jpg:large

Jonathan McIntosh, Writer of a series of Youtube videos that has been given Humanist Awards in 2014 from Harvard.

Also the reincarnation of Mary Whitehouse.

Fucking Jack Thompson has been reincarnated again.

Fuck this moralizing shit. If I want to glory in fake, virtual gore, I will. I want him to expand this logic to include literature, film and television so everyone can see how full of shit he is.

"How dare you enjoy the violence in Warhammer 40k!"

"How dare you enjoy the blood and guts in Game of Thrones!"

"How dare you enjoy the butchery in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings!"

In fact, he even says "in any other media" so he opened the door himself. I wonder if the wanker gets pissed off when he meets Goya fans? Ooh, and what about Dante's Inferno? Full of gleeful obscenity, violence and gore! :naughty:

How DARE those immoral catholics allow that kind of filth!

Seriously, fuck this guy and everyone who thinks like this guy. In my own personal life, people like this guy made my growing-up years an absolute hell.

For what it's worth, I doubt he believes a word of it. He seems to sit around all day thinking of moralizing outrage tweets to inflict on the world. He can't let Anita have all the credit. Lest she drop him like the dog turd he is. So he lets people know who is the brains of the outfit, while not stealing too much of the spotlight from Ms. Oppressed.

He said he made stuff up recently, I don't remember if I saw he link here. The whole thing is a scam although people who support Sarkeesian don't care. People like Myers are willfully gullible fools.

[Lsuoma]

Meyers's teaching style explained by the man himself: aim for mediocrity. Fuck those who are intelligent and want to learn. Focus instead on the people who have come to the University of Minnesota at Morris with fuck all intelligence and fuck all ambition.

Nice one, Meyers, you fucking intellectual dwarf.

http://i.imgur.com/ko17w50.png

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ent-911016

Now be fair, Conc.H2O - the tops students probably know a lot more than he does, or are at least more intellectually agile. You can't expect Professor Poopiehead to be able to teach them anything.

[Skep tickle]

Countdown to a big A/S celebrity weekend for those in/near LA:

First, on Friday February 13th: Watson at LAWAAG then Quiz-o-tron, oops that's Quiz-o-tron. Announcements about that Quiz-o-tron performance from January, including that 2nd link, say "Special guests will include Jennifer Ouellete, Joseph Scrimshaw, Hal Lublin, and many more to be announced soon" but I'm not finding other names, including at the ticket sales page. Tickets are $10 advance, $15 at the door; theater rental is $600 or more, and who knows what expenses there might be to bring these (local) guests on stage. AFAICT, this is the first time it's being offered as a stand-alone show, rather than part of a larger event.

Bit of a conflict with the CFI-affiliated Drinking Skeptically meetup in Burbank but one imagines people will make their decision which to attend w/o too much difficulty.

Then, on Sunday February 15th: Fresh from his Darwin Day dialogue on "Is [Biological] There Evidence of a Creator or Not?" with Fuz Rana at the Ramada Inn in Fargo ND, Myers will speak on "Bad Biology" at CFI LA at 11am and CFI of Orange County in Costa Mesa at 4:30pm.

[Skep tickle]

Interesting – thanks for the links and quotes; the one on the documentary led to a broader discussion and article in Wikipedia which included these criticisms of the concept:

Criticisms

RAINN, one of North America's leading anti-sexual violence organizations, in a report detailing recommendations to the White House on combating rape on college campuses, decries an overemphasis on the concept of rape culture as a means of preventing rape and as a cause for rape, saying, "In the last few years, there has been an unfortunate trend towards blaming 'rape culture' for the extensive problem of sexual violence on campuses. While it is helpful to point out the systemic barriers to addressing the problem, it is important to not lose sight of a simple fact: Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime. ….

Caroline Kitchens, in a 2014 article in Time Magazine titled "It’s Time to End ‘Rape Culture’ Hysteria" suggested that "Though rape is certainly a serious problem, there’s no evidence that it’s considered a cultural norm.” ….

The UN conducted its ‘Multi-country Study on Men and Violence in Asia and the Pacific’ in 2008 in six countries across Asia. Its conclusions, published in 2013, seemed to indicate a substantial number of men in Asian countries admit to committing some form of rape.[82] …. A closer look at the study’s methodology reveals questions about cultural definitions of rape, the study’s sample size, survey design, and linguistic accuracy, all of which highlights ongoing challenges in trying to quantify the prevalence of rape.

But, as mentioned and as that comment on the UN study seems to support, I think “rape myths” are a tenable argument, but that the supposed causal connection between those and a monolithic or country-wide “rape culture” seems highly suspect. <snip>

HJ talked about, and presented 1 or more graphs from, either that multi-country UN study or one from the WHO (I'm forgetting & haven't gone to check, but I had previously read the one he cited), showing how prevalent certain reported sexually aggressive behaviors were in those cultures...without going into the methodology...and then - as far as I heard & read - without making the transition obvious to his audience, he leapt back to the culture in UK/US/Canada, which is where he seemed to be thinking he was proving rape culture exists.

[James Caruthers]

McIntosh probably doesn't believe in his message, but I doubt he can comprehend the depth of pain he would inflict on the next generation of western children if his New Puritanism became the dominant religion in society.

Humans are animals. Boys play competitive games from childhood. Humans want to hunt, to fight, to run, to jump. Humans want to see human prowess in relation to both other animals and humans. Epic poetry is one of our oldest types of storytelling, and it's usually violent, bloody and full of death. Medieval art during the plague years is probably a fair bit bleaker than anything in Mortal Kombat.

I won't apologize for being an animal. Better to acknowledge the dark heart of the animal than to forever pretend we're civilized and separated angels living lives above Christian/SJW moral reproach. Or that the violence and death which is a part of life is somehow sinful and wrong. These moralizing fuckers only attempt to shame people as a means of control.

[youtube]tNnHrCtWsDs[/youtube]

^My childhood, incidentally. What this song is saying is not far removed from what McIntosh is saying, except for the addition of an omnipotent, thought-policing agent who watches you all the time to make sure you're not consuming verboten media.

:hankey:

[ConcentratedH2O, OM]

Meyers's teaching style explained by the man himself: aim for mediocrity. Fuck those who are intelligent and want to learn. Focus instead on the people who have come to the University of Minnesota at Morris with fuck all intelligence and fuck all ambition.

Nice one, Meyers, you fucking intellectual dwarf.

http://i.imgur.com/ko17w50.png

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ent-911016

I totally agree with him. Universities rely too much on stats and not enough on educating people as best they can. So I agree with him 100%.

Fuck that. Universities are (or should) not be there to cuddle idiots into getting degrees. They are (or should) be there to provide intelligent people with a certificate that says "I am intelligent and have specialised my intellect in...[insert area of study here]...".

Fuck morons. Fuck idiots. Fuck universal access to University education. Until they open up the football teams to wheelchair users and the fucking blind, why the fuck should intelligent people be left to drift downwards while stupid fucking people who shouldn't be there get special attention and remedial classes?

Fuck you, go and make yourself a perfectly fucking respectable career elsewhere, why would we want resources drained from the high achievers just to make everyone else feel all gooey and warm inside because they got some fucking worthless certificate?

"Here you go, you fucking moron, have this piece of paper that will make you spend the rest of your life resenting your utalitarian job because it falsely offers you the idea that you could have spent your life being a fucking intellectual."

[free thoughtpolice]

From the Drinking Skeptically folks:

And as you might expect, drinkers are strongly encouraged to drink responsibly. Center for Inquiry-Los Angeles is co-sponsor of the Los Angeles chapter of Drinking Skeptically.

They should warn people not to have sex after drinking too, because of rape.

[ConcentratedH2O, OM]

Meyers's teaching style explained by the man himself: aim for mediocrity. Fuck those who are intelligent and want to learn. Focus instead on the people who have come to the University of Minnesota at Morris with fuck all intelligence and fuck all ambition.

Nice one, Meyers, you fucking intellectual dwarf.

http://i.imgur.com/ko17w50.png

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ent-911016

Now be fair, Conc.H2O - the tops students probably know a lot more than he does, or are at least more intellectually agile. You can't expect Professor Poopiehead to be able to teach them anything.

Christ, imagine being an intelligent student at UMM and finding yourself in one of his classes.

"Okay, humans and otherkin, next Monday we will be dicussing evolution from a Dworkinsian perspective. Please all read chapters one through three of "The Origins of Personkind" by Lesley T. Dickcutter, paying special attention to how xir work may be an allegory that helps us realize the duality of testicles as life givers and warmongers. See you next week, oh, and Mandi, please come see me in Squid Room One for some remedial instruction."

[JackSkeptic]

Meyers's teaching style explained by the man himself: aim for mediocrity. Fuck those who are intelligent and want to learn. Focus instead on the people who have come to the University of Minnesota at Morris with fuck all intelligence and fuck all ambition.

Nice one, Meyers, you fucking intellectual dwarf.

http://i.imgur.com/ko17w50.png

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ent-911016

I totally agree with him. Universities rely too much on stats and not enough on educating people as best they can. So I agree with him 100%.

Fuck that. Universities are (or should) not be there to cuddle idiots into getting degrees. They are (or should) be there to provide intelligent people with a certificate that says "I am intelligent and have specialised my intellect in...[insert area of study here]...".

Fuck morons. Fuck idiots. Fuck universal access to University education. Until they open up the football teams to wheelchair users and the fucking blind, why the fuck should intelligent people be left to drift downwards while stupid fucking people who shouldn't be there get special attention and remedial classes?

Fuck you, go and make yourself a perfectly fucking respectable career elsewhere, why would we want resources drained from the high achievers just to make everyone else feel all gooey and warm inside because they got some fucking worthless certificate?

"Here you go, you fucking moron, have this piece of paper that will make you spend the rest of your life resenting your utalitarian job because it falsely offers you the idea that you could have spent your life being a fucking intellectual."

Nothing he says will affect an intelligent student. He is talking about the bad and lazy habit of examiners setting and adjusting pass rates based on a normal distribution curve irrespective of actual potential ability. When I took my professional exams I did not give a toss how hard or easy a paper was. They were all hard, that was a given. I cared about who in the room looked nervous or were using worry beads of had soft toys on their desk. I loved empty chairs. I was required to beat them and my personal ability had nothing to do with it. It was an easy system to game and it sucked as a reliable way to evaluate ability.

[Billie from Ockham]

My $.02 on the issue of teaching philosophy is a bit different from both PZ Myers' and Conc.H20's. As long as the students were accepted to the school and meet your course's pre-reqs, you're responsible for teaching them (all). This is harder when the class is heterogeneous (and especially difficult when the course is core to a popular major), but not at all impossible.

The real mistake I see is looking at the distribution of grades and inferring that a change in teaching method is needed. In my experience, you can often get a bimodal distribution when you're doing it correctly. If you really want to know if you're doing your job - i.e., are you teaching the entire class? - then run a pre-test "final" at the start of the semester. It's easy and could well show you that absolutely nothing is objectively wrong with your course.

[Lsuoma]

Meyers's teaching style explained by the man himself: aim for mediocrity. Fuck those who are intelligent and want to learn. Focus instead on the people who have come to the University of Minnesota at Morris with fuck all intelligence and fuck all ambition.

Nice one, Meyers, you fucking intellectual dwarf.

http://i.imgur.com/ko17w50.png

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ent-911016

I totally agree with him. Universities rely too much on stats and not enough on educating people as best they can. So I agree with him 100%.

Fuck that. Universities are (or should) not be there to cuddle idiots into getting degrees. They are (or should) be there to provide intelligent people with a certificate that says "I am intelligent and have specialised my intellect in...[insert area of study here]...".

Fuck morons. Fuck idiots. Fuck universal access to University education. Until they open up the football teams to wheelchair users and the fucking blind, why the fuck should intelligent people be left to drift downwards while stupid fucking people who shouldn't be there get special attention and remedial classes?

Fuck you, go and make yourself a perfectly fucking respectable career elsewhere, why would we want resources drained from the high achievers just to make everyone else feel all gooey and warm inside because they got some fucking worthless certificate?

"Here you go, you fucking moron, have this piece of paper that will make you spend the rest of your life resenting your utalitarian job because it falsely offers you the idea that you could have spent your life being a fucking intellectual."

I agree wiz heem!

[Skep tickle]

<snip stuff I agree with>

[youtube]tNnHrCtWsDs[/youtube]

^My childhood, incidentally. What this song is saying is not far removed from what McIntosh is saying, except for the addition of an omnipotent, thought-policing agent who watches you all the time to make sure you're not consuming verboten media.

:.hankey:

Blecch.

But it did seem like it ended too early. Shouldn't there have been a few more verses?
"oh be careful, bare skin, not to show"
"oh be careful, genitalia, who you touch"
"oh be careful, little mind, not to think"

[Guestus Aurelius]

Meyers's teaching style explained by the man himself: aim for mediocrity. Fuck those who are intelligent and want to learn. Focus instead on the people who have come to the University of Minnesota at Morris with fuck all intelligence and fuck all ambition.

Nice one, Meyers, you fucking intellectual dwarf.

http://i.imgur.com/ko17w50.png

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ent-911016

I totally agree with him. Universities rely too much on stats and not enough on educating people as best they can. So I agree with him 100%.

Fuck that. Universities are (or should) not be there to cuddle idiots into getting degrees. They are (or should) be there to provide intelligent people with a certificate that says "I am intelligent and have specialised my intellect in...[insert area of study here]...".

Amen.

[Steersman]

<snip>
Humans are animals. Boys play competitive games from childhood. Humans want to hunt, to fight, to run, to jump.

I won't apologize for being an animal. Better to acknowledge the dark heart of the animal than to forever pretend we're civilized and separated angels living lives above Christian/SJW moral reproach. Or that the violence and death which is a part of life is somehow sinful and wrong. These moralizing fuckers only attempt to shame people as a means of control. ….

“Nature: red in tooth and claw”. However, it’s one thing to acknowledge that that is part of our inheritance, and quite another to indulge in or glorify it – as you seem to be suggesting. Philip Wylie [Generation of Vipers, Essay on Morals, and some 80 other novels, essays, and films] said something on the question that I’ve always thought quite cogent: “We aspire to the discipline of the instinct by the heart and mind”; seems like you’re tending to give our instincts free rein.

But a somewhat amusing take on nature from The Onion, quoted in one of Jerry Coyne’s recent posts:

EARTH—In a seemingly unstoppable cycle of carnage that has become tragically commonplace throughout the biosphere, sources confirmed this morning that natural selection has killed an estimated 38 quadrillion organisms in its bloodiest day yet.

Numerous reports from biomes on all seven continents revealed that over the past 24 hours, the ruthless biological phenomenon had ended the lives of a record 360 trillion animals and 908 trillion plants, along with 36.7 quadrillion fungi, protists, and bacteria.

“What we’re seeing here is the work of a hardened, practiced killer,” said Yale University evolutionary biologist Richard Prum, describing the brutal process through which a massive number of victims —among them thousands of starfish, countless patches of moss, and entire colonies of intestinal protozoa — were massacred with little to no warning. ….

[Old_ones]

Meyers's teaching style explained by the man himself: aim for mediocrity. Fuck those who are intelligent and want to learn. Focus instead on the people who have come to the University of Minnesota at Morris with fuck all intelligence and fuck all ambition.

Nice one, Meyers, you fucking intellectual dwarf.

http://i.imgur.com/ko17w50.png

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ent-911016

I totally agree with him. Universities rely too much on stats and not enough on educating people as best they can. So I agree with him 100%.

Fuck that. Universities are (or should) not be there to cuddle idiots into getting degrees. They are (or should) be there to provide intelligent people with a certificate that says "I am intelligent and have specialised my intellect in...[insert area of study here]...".

Fuck morons. Fuck idiots. Fuck universal access to University education. Until they open up the football teams to wheelchair users and the fucking blind, why the fuck should intelligent people be left to drift downwards while stupid fucking people who shouldn't be there get special attention and remedial classes?

Fuck you, go and make yourself a perfectly fucking respectable career elsewhere, why would we want resources drained from the high achievers just to make everyone else feel all gooey and warm inside because they got some fucking worthless certificate?

"Here you go, you fucking moron, have this piece of paper that will make you spend the rest of your life resenting your utalitarian job because it falsely offers you the idea that you could have spent your life being a fucking intellectual."

I really think this is a false dichotomy. Not everyone who struggles in any given class is an idiot. Some of these people are in fact idiots, while others are capable students who don't give a shit about studying, and finally there are people who are smart, but got a shitty prof along the line, or weren't motivated students until recently, and are consequently missing some of the background concepts necessary to do well. Of these categories of struggling students, the only ones who will be helped by remediation will be that third class of people who are deficient in background for one reason or another. If those people are capable of being high achievers, then I see no reason to hang them out to dry. In my experience, the idiots and the indifferent party animals tend to take care of themselves. Most of them eventually realize that their classes are hard, and that they are failing. At that point they drop out of their science major, in order to go study something easy, like sociology or business. Furthermore, even if they do half-ass their way to their degree, they aren't going to be the ones who make it into and through the graduate and professional programs* that they would need in order to spend their lives being fucking intellectuals.

So basically I don't see anything wrong with what PZ is doing. I can guarantee that his efforts are never going to completely get rid of the bimodal distribution, but if he helps a few smart kids who had a crappy high school bio class then so much the better.

*which generally forgo cuddling in favor of weeping and gnashing of teeth.

[Skep tickle]

<snip>
Humans are animals. Boys play competitive games from childhood. Humans want to hunt, to fight, to run, to jump.

I won't apologize for being an animal. Better to acknowledge the dark heart of the animal than to forever pretend we're civilized and separated angels living lives above Christian/SJW moral reproach. Or that the violence and death which is a part of life is somehow sinful and wrong. These moralizing fuckers only attempt to shame people as a means of control. ….

“Nature: red in tooth and claw”. However, it’s one thing to acknowledge that that is part of our inheritance, and quite another to indulge in or glorify it – as you seem to be suggesting. Philip Wylie [Generation of Vipers, Essay on Morals, and some 80 other novels, essays, and films] said something on the question that I’ve always thought quite cogent: “We aspire to the discipline of the instinct by the heart and mind”; seems like you’re tending to give our instincts free rein.

Acknowledging that humans are animals isn't the same thing as "giv[ing] our instincts free rein." James Caruthers wrote that he'd favor "acknowledg[ing] the dark heart of the animal" over "forever pretend[ing] we're civilized and separated angels living lives above Christian/SJW moral reproach" - meaning if those are presented as a dichotomy.

I don't see reason to fault him there. "We're" or "he's" or "you're" only human after all is a more common saying, in my experience, than "Nature: red in tooth and claw", and so often refers to fallibility that seems like it could be explained by evo psych.

The line "Or that the violence and death which is a part of life is somehow sinful and wrong" might benefit from clarification, thought. The portion of human-initiated violence and death that's seen as righteous or at least acceptable probably varies from culture to culture and over time - but it's hard to imagine a society doing away with every shred of activity that might cross someone's threshold of "too violent", even if it's "just" competitions such as sports.

And of course death is going to keep occurring, no matter how beautifully civilized humans start behaving. It would be nice if we didn't cause it in each other, but it will exist no matter what. (Even the most die-hard transhumanists must admit that humans and whatever sentient life-ish forms might come after are going to die out at some point. Heat death of the universe, if not sooner.)

Re cancer, which made an appearance in a post of mine within the past 12 hrs or so: I find the observation fascinating that cancer cells have essentially regressed to a more primitive form, having lost the evolved, civilized controls on their growth that allowed them to play well with others (stay put & form organs if they were supposed to, perform whatever menial tasks they had been assigned for the good of the whole organism-community, etc). Not only are we animals, we are made up of cells which "pass" as well-behaved, but sometimes lose that facade - to the detriment of the rest of the organism.

But a somewhat amusing take on nature from The Onion, quoted in one of Jerry Coyne’s recent posts:

EARTH—In a seemingly unstoppable cycle of carnage that has become tragically commonplace throughout the biosphere, sources confirmed this morning that natural selection has killed an estimated 38 quadrillion organisms in its bloodiest day yet.

Numerous reports from biomes on all seven continents revealed that over the past 24 hours, the ruthless biological phenomenon had ended the lives of a record 360 trillion animals and 908 trillion plants, along with 36.7 quadrillion fungi, protists, and bacteria.

“What we’re seeing here is the work of a hardened, practiced killer,” said Yale University evolutionary biologist Richard Prum, describing the brutal process through which a massive number of victims —among them thousands of starfish, countless patches of moss, and entire colonies of intestinal protozoa — were massacred with little to no warning. ….

:lol:

[JackSkeptic]

Regarding trigger warnings, my husband pointed out there are over 7 billion people in ths world and odds are something you say or write will "trigger" someone. So, he suggests we all shut the fuck up :)

It's another control mechanism by SJW's to tell people what they are allowed to thing and say. Of course it won't apply to them.

Looking at the A+ forums is like reading animal farm all over again. Only this time a lot of horses were sent to the knackers yard. I still find it amusing anyone thought it would turn out anything different. The whole concept is dogmatic and authoritarian. It only attracts those who want a dystopian society with them in charge and the submissive who enjoy being abused.

[JackSkeptic]

thing=think...FT HAS BEEN MESSING WITH MY ACCOUNT OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[dog puke]

Meyers's teaching style explained by the man himself: aim for mediocrity. Fuck those who are intelligent and want to learn. Focus instead on the people who have come to the University of Minnesota at Morris with fuck all intelligence and fuck all ambition.

Nice one, Meyers, you fucking intellectual dwarf.

http://i.imgur.com/ko17w50.png

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ent-911016

PZ is the epitome of 'bottom hump'.

[JackSkeptic]

Meyers's teaching style explained by the man himself: aim for mediocrity. Fuck those who are intelligent and want to learn. Focus instead on the people who have come to the University of Minnesota at Morris with fuck all intelligence and fuck all ambition.

Nice one, Meyers, you fucking intellectual dwarf.

http://i.imgur.com/ko17w50.png

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ent-911016

PZ is the epitome of 'bottom hump'.

From the little I have seen I would not be surprised if Myers was a very good teacher. Everyone he teaches matters no matter if they are bottom or top.

[Skep tickle]

<snip>

http://i.imgur.com/ko17w50.png

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ent-911016

Understanding that Myers knows genetics and that the comments below might not apply to his situation, here are some of the possible reasons an undergraduate student might perform poorly on a genetics question like this:

(a) The student didn't encounter genetics in high school, and the college-level genetics class he or she is taking has not covered the basics. This student would seem to need "remedial instruction".

(b) The student didn't encounter genetics in high school, and the college-level genetics class he or she is taking was supposed to cover the basics but has not done so in a fashion understandable to this student (and at least some of the others in the lower cluster of test scores). A professor might consider these students to need "remedial instruction", but the fault could lie (or, could in part lie) in the professor's assessment of the baseline knowledge level in the students in the class, the professor's educational methods, the material the professor chose to focus upon, etc.

(c) The student knows perfectly well what the genotype ratios would be in the question given in that comment, but also understands the genotype/phenotype distinction and realizes that there is not enough information given (in that short off-the-cuff example, at least) to answer the question for all cases, because of penetrance & expressivity, environmental factors, etc. (Okay, that seems least likely. But it's not impossible, based on the limited information given.)

[Skep tickle]

Ah. Three new entries from end of last semester (quarter, whatever) at Rate My Professor, & tests were among the features of the course felt to be negative by this small subset of students (who call them random, say some questions seemed unrelated to the course material, and that grading was inconsistent even for multiple choice exams):
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRat ... tid=123513

[twocunts]

Meyers's teaching style explained by the man himself: aim for mediocrity. Fuck those who are intelligent and want to learn. Focus instead on the people who have come to the University of Minnesota at Morris with fuck all intelligence and fuck all ambition.

Nice one, Meyers, you fucking intellectual dwarf.

http://i.imgur.com/ko17w50.png

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/ ... ent-911016

Seriously weak sauce, CH20. A professor sees a bunch of people not doing well in his course and wants to figure out how to help them do better? Oh noes! Can't have that. Kick 'em to the curb! And how is he fucking those who are intelligent and want to learn? Are they no longer capable of doing so for some reason?

Meh, other people have already said it better than me. There's nothing objectionable in that post of PZ's, it expresses a perfectly laudable goal. Even though it's by PZ Myers. These things can happen you know.

[paddybrown]

Epic poetry is one of our oldest types of storytelling, and it's usually violent, bloody and full of death. Medieval art during the plague years is probably a fair bit bleaker than anything in Mortal Kombat.

We also need to consider what art and storytelling is for. I believe it evolved so we could vicariously experience, and thereby learn about and be prepared for, things that we don't want our first encounter with to be the real thing. First and foremost of these things being death. Sooner or later someone you know is going to die. You don't want the death of someone you know to be your introduction to the concept of death. Stories in which characters die prepare you for that.

It's also a safety valve. Evolutionarily speaking, we need to be capable of violence to ensure our and our kin's survival in extreme situations. But we're a social species, so that capability needs to restrained, also to ensure our and our kin's survival. Violent stories vicariously satisfy our violent tendencies, while allowing us to think about the rights and wrongs and utility or otherwise of violence so we'll have some idea what to do if we're ever in a violent situation for real.

[James Caruthers]

<snip stuff I agree with>

[youtube]tNnHrCtWsDs[/youtube]

^My childhood, incidentally. What this song is saying is not far removed from what McIntosh is saying, except for the addition of an omnipotent, thought-policing agent who watches you all the time to make sure you're not consuming verboten media.

:.hankey:

Blecch.

But it did seem like it ended too early. Shouldn't there have been a few more verses?
"oh be careful, bare skin, not to show"
"oh be careful, genitalia, who you touch"
"oh be careful, little mind, not to think"

Oh, the oft-repeated mantra of christian fundamentalism takes care of that:

"Get 'em while they're young."

Sometimes translated into the Jesuit "give me the child for the first seven years, and I'll give you the man."

Although I doubt the veracity of this method for manufacturing anything other than sociopaths, hypocrites and violent psychopaths. When you teach a child that who they are (their instincts and natural drives) is evil and sinful, you create a monster.

I firmly believe that.

People want to be good (cooperative.) Children want to be accepted and loved. If you tell a child that they must kill their sexuality to be loved and accepted, they may do it and succeed. If you tell a child they must condemn a friend because he or she has two mothers, they may do it and succeed. And on and on.

Nothing convinces me so much that there is no god as the fact no correcting omnipotent force steps in to prevent the child abuse rampant within Christianity.

Christopher Hitchens once wrote "How Religion Poisons Everything." The title must have seemed insulting to the religious, but I think he meant it quite literally. Every aspect of someone's life is tainted when they see with religious lenses. Interactions which should be harmonious become violent as a result of religious conflict. Children who should be cared for are abused under the guise of religious teaching or instruction. I don't mean sexually, either, although there's enough of that. Psychological and emotional abuse is rampant within (fundamentalist and more hardline Protestant, at least) Christianity. I think it comes with the territory of being a Christian. Many psychologists would probably agree with me.

http://www.advocate.com/politics/religi ... ristianity

“After hearing so many staff members at the school proclaim that God had called them there and that God’s hand was at work through the school, and then seeing them verbally and physically abuse children, I simply could no longer believe that I myself was capable of hearing from God. If these people could be so wrong, how could I have faith that I could hear God and not also be so wrong? That was really the beginning of the erosion of my Christian faith.”

The only point I'd add to this is that it's not just the children in this center. It's not just the children at home. It's every child. Every child who grew up. Every child who grew up and had children. Their warped ideas live on and propagate generation after generation and they spread the twisted seed to their own beloved children who do the same. They carry the damage into adulthood and beyond. If they're lucky, maybe they'll realize how they were abused later in life. Emotionally. Psychologically. If not physically or sexually. Christianity, much like Islam, is about submission. Submission to who? Not to God because he doesn't exist. Submission to the earthly agents of God put in authority over you. For a child, this means parents, even abusive parents. And of course, the church, which acts as a third parent for the child.

http://www.pikerpress.com/images/priest_08.jpg

I've long forgiven many problems related to my upbringing. But when I think about the church, sometimes I feel like old Ivan Isaacs up there.

I'll leave it for responders to point out all the positives of organized religion, as some here (who were not raised religious) will no doubt feel compelled to do. I have the most lovely older nun who frequents my place of employment regularly. Somehow, I think she'd still be a beautiful soul if she had never heard the Good News of Holy Jeebus.

[Snapfingers]

Personally, I'm beginning to wonder what Nugent's end game is. Its good that he's held Peezus' feet to the fire, but IMO this has to end sooner or later, and I'm pretty certain it won't end with Peezus apologizing. Eventually that old saying about doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome becomes applicable. Will he actually pursue a legal solution at some point? If he isn't thinking about escalating in that direction, its hard for me to think further posts on the matter are going to be useful.

I've been wondering the same thing. Since Myers is lacking in the conscience department, there is no way he is ever going to apologize voluntarily. That might destroy enough of his own credibility with the SJWs to make them turn on him (although they are remarkably accepting of the privileged old-ish white male).

Any lawyers here willing to speculate on the outcome if Nugent sued for libel in Ireland?

Yes, I've done it before a few months ago. Here is how it would go if it were a movie script (I make my money from the law - but transitioning into screenwriting):

FADE IN

INTERIOR - LAW OFFICE - AFTERNOON
The messy office is scattered with papers and old computer sits on the table. A dirty teacup resting on the monitor.
The grey bearded laywer swivels his chair and looks into the bleek irish rain as Michael Nugent, wearing a bright red polo shirt hands him a pile of printouts in his lap.

NUGENT
..so that is about it. I hope you can do somthin' about this whole mess. I've been nothing but nice and polite to him. But he just ignores me. Make him pay please.

LAWYER
O' Aye He does really sound like a proper cunt this Myers. But I'm tellin' ye' Libel suits are notoriously slow, costly and uncertain.
PZ lives in USA and you live here in Eire, lass'?

NUGENT
Aye'

LAWYER
Wud ye' be makin a trip to America for this? Ya wudna. Yad wanna do it here in Dublin.

NUGENT
Aye'

LAWYER
The remarks were made on the internets ye' say'?

NUGENT
Aye'

LAWYER
This Myers fella. Got a lot of money, has he?

NUGENT
Nae

LAWYER
Are you very rich, Mikey? have a lot of time on your hands?

Nugent shifts uncomfortably in his seat.
He looks down on his hands.

NUGENT
Nae.

LAWYER
Look, Mikey. Iva noon yer Mae' a long while. I wus a yer Chistinin'. Yeah, I noo yer' not big our lord anymore. But fer Christs sake, Mikey -
I know I'm about as useful to ya as a Kerry man with a hurly - but ya gonna let this one go. Choose yer battles and all that.

NUGENT
Are you sayin' yer won't do it?

LAWYER
Nae. I'm saying it's not worth spending two years of your earnings on. So you can get a nullification and 20K euros out of it.
I wudna charge for this conversation, but next time I wud.

NUGENT
Let me just ask ya...

Lawyer slams table

LAWYER
Don't be a fuckin' sea lion with me. Fur heavens sake, Mikey - let it go.

[Snapfingers]

Fucking hell Snapfingers. That was brilliant.
We americans only know about law from movies and TV so I love the way you made it clear for us.
Simply love the way you wrote it out in authentic irish dialect and slang. The red polo was a nice touch.

You are my favourite poster from now on.

Wait...fuck ... I forgot to log out for this comment didn't I?

[James Caruthers]

Epic poetry is one of our oldest types of storytelling, and it's usually violent, bloody and full of death. Medieval art during the plague years is probably a fair bit bleaker than anything in Mortal Kombat.

We also need to consider what art and storytelling is for. I believe it evolved so we could vicariously experience, and thereby learn about and be prepared for, things that we don't want our first encounter with to be the real thing. First and foremost of these things being death. Sooner or later someone you know is going to die. You don't want the death of someone you know to be your introduction to the concept of death. Stories in which characters die prepare you for that.

It's also a safety valve. Evolutionarily speaking, we need to be capable of violence to ensure our and our kin's survival in extreme situations. But we're a social species, so that capability needs to restrained, also to ensure our and our kin's survival. Violent stories vicariously satisfy our violent tendencies, while allowing us to think about the rights and wrongs and utility or otherwise of violence so we'll have some idea what to do if we're ever in a violent situation for real.

There was also a religious and cultural component to these stories, but yes. I agree.

We want to experience violence, death, tragedy and we take these emotions into ourselves. For a while, we feel these emotions. This goes back to the tragedy in plays in ancient Athens. We experience the loss and the rage and violence through other characters, and then we go home and live our lives and we carry those memories with us. Fiction is a relatively recent concept. When the Greek fisherman hears the tale of Achilles spearing a guy through the throat, he is there living that moment. Everyone in the room lives that moment and it brings them together. Characters like Achilles and Odysseus were thought of as real, and I suppose that even if they were not, they were real in a sense. Odysseus taught Greeks to be clever and outwit their opponents. Achilles taught them to be brave in battle.

How many Greeks would ever fight? Probably not many, and probably not much. Not too many people walked away from battles in the ancient world. But to have those stories gave a shared culture, shared community and some codes for how one should behave if one was ever in that bad situation. So you take an animal instinct like the urge to kill to survive, and wrap it in tribal meaning and present it in a group setting and it becomes a tool to strengthen group dynamics and shared culture rather than harming them.

Quite clever.

[James Caruthers]

<snip>
Humans are animals. Boys play competitive games from childhood. Humans want to hunt, to fight, to run, to jump.

I won't apologize for being an animal. Better to acknowledge the dark heart of the animal than to forever pretend we're civilized and separated angels living lives above Christian/SJW moral reproach. Or that the violence and death which is a part of life is somehow sinful and wrong. These moralizing fuckers only attempt to shame people as a means of control. ….

“Nature: red in tooth and claw”. However, it’s one thing to acknowledge that that is part of our inheritance, and quite another to indulge in or glorify it – as you seem to be suggesting. Philip Wylie [Generation of Vipers, Essay on Morals, and some 80 other novels, essays, and films] said something on the question that I’ve always thought quite cogent: “We aspire to the discipline of the instinct by the heart and mind”; seems like you’re tending to give our instincts free rein.

Oh god, why am I responding to a Steersquote? Robots don't have humanity in any case...

We have, I think, fundamentally different perspectives on humanity. Many people on the Slymepit seem philosophically closer to Kant and his elevation of Reason, Reasoned Discourse (of course, his idea of reasoned discourse left out the uneducated plebs and was limited to religious scholars and the wealthy, IIRC) and so on.

I don't see the human mind and human body as a separate thing at all. I do not "have" a body. I *am* a body. I do not inhabit the space behind the eyes and control my body via a series of string-pulls a la Pinocchio. I don't have a soul, I won't live forever and worms will eat me when I'm in the ground. My philosophy on man's relationship with nature is closer to Nietzsche than Kant. Live naturally. Eat when you are hungry. Sleep when you are tired. Fuck when you are horny. Some of the most enjoyable experiences you will have in your life will be the result of chemical manipulation of your brain by your body.

As your Onion article points out, Life (natural selection) is the cruelest murderer. Most morality which is innate to us is a product of mammalian cooperative group dynamics which increase the spread of the species. Let us be under no illusions about the ignoble origins of our morality.

It is because we are animals that we must reason a higher morality at all. If we think of ourselves as brains encased in flesh (a separate order from animals, perhaps even semi-divine or fallen from grace), we may find the conflict between reasoning mind and yearning flesh difficult to resolve... Even going so far as to label the one "virtue" and the other "sin," as we can see so many throughout history have done. I have been... Bemused to note the supposedly atheistic modern feminists undergoing a similar Puritanical Revolution where they purge all nonfeminist or antifeminist animal desires from their ranks. :lol:

The part of the animal that wants to kill (to survive) is the part that would have kept us alive if we were on the plains and needed to eat. Do not be so quick to cast aside that savage aspect. I am thankful I do not have to kill animals every day so that I may eat meat. I'm glad I don't have to fight to kill another tribe so that I may live through the winter. But you can thank your ancestors' brutal, savage animal history for the fact you're here today. Also, someone killed that cow so you could eat it. Killing and death everywhere you look.

It also seems to me that our world today is rather exceptionally violent, and many people pretend it isn't. That we've somehow moved past violence and barbarism. I'm not... Extolling the virtues of violence. Not exactly. I hope that's not how people take this. I'd rather look at something and try to understand it than to pretend it isn't there. The violence on a feedlot is still violent even if nobody sees it.

Meat, for example, is just the flesh of animals with less intelligence than us. Why do people eat meat? The simple answer is we eat it because we like it and we have more power to give and take life than the animals whose meat we eat. If you rationalize eating meat from the perspective that our animal urges are sinful or evil (from the point of view of an enlightened intellectual who scorns the physical), you may indeed have to cast about for rationalizations to justify eating meat, or cease consuming it.

Well, that post was entirely too fucking long. Sorry about that.

[Badger3k]

McIntosh probably doesn't believe in his message, but I doubt he can comprehend the depth of pain he would inflict on the next generation of western children if his New Puritanism became the dominant religion in society.

The mistake you make is that you think he might care about it. I don't think he has that much empathy for anyone. He's a user and manipulator. Ethics and morality are for other people, along with empathy, kindness, understanding, tolerance....

[twocunts]

Many people on the Slymepit seem philosophically closer to Kant...

YOU CAN'T SAY THAT WORD ANYMORE! :shock:

[James Caruthers]

Many people on the Slymepit seem philosophically closer to Kant...

YOU CAN'T SAY THAT WORD ANYMORE! :shock:

Oh look, it's twokants. :dance:

[JackSkeptic]

Fucking hell Snapfingers. That was brilliant.
We americans only know about law from movies and TV so I love the way you made it clear for us.
Simply love the way you wrote it out in authentic irish dialect and slang. The red polo was a nice touch.

You are my favourite poster from now on.

Wait...fuck ... I forgot to log out for this comment didn't I?

I'd give you loads of thumbs if I could work out how to do it.

[jimthepleb]

Fucking hell Snapfingers. That was brilliant.
We americans only know about law from movies and TV so I love the way you made it clear for us.
Simply love the way you wrote it out in authentic irish dialect and slang. The red polo was a nice touch.

You are my favourite poster from now on.

Wait...fuck ... I forgot to log out for this comment didn't I?

I'd give you loads of thumbs if I could work out how to do it.

That was Irish? I read it as Scottish. Need to work on the dialect there SF.

[twocunts]

YOU CAN'T SAY THAT WORD ANYMORE! :shock:

Oh look, it's twokants. :dance:

You keep your fingers to yourself, mister.

[Steersman]

<snip>
Humans are animals. Boys play competitive games from childhood. Humans want to hunt, to fight, to run, to jump.

I won't apologize for being an animal. Better to acknowledge the dark heart of the animal than to forever pretend we're civilized and separated angels living lives above Christian/SJW moral reproach. Or that the violence and death which is a part of life is somehow sinful and wrong. These moralizing fuckers only attempt to shame people as a means of control. ….

“Nature: red in tooth and claw”. However, it’s one thing to acknowledge that that is part of our inheritance, and quite another to indulge in or glorify it – as you seem to be suggesting. Philip Wylie [Generation of Vipers, Essay on Morals, and some 80 other novels, essays, and films] said something on the question that I’ve always thought quite cogent: “We aspire to the discipline of the instinct by the heart and mind”; seems like you’re tending to give our instincts free rein.

Oh god, why am I responding to a Steersquote? Robots don't have humanity in any case...

Next upgrade, I'm getting the MkVII (actually the HAL 9000) which supposedly has a quantum processor to instantiate humanity - or so I've been told but those jerks at the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation are going to be first up against the wall when the revolution comes ... ;-) [screwtape: note - 3 dots ;-) ]

We have, I think, fundamentally different perspectives on humanity. ....

Possibly.

As your Onion article points out, Life (natural selection) is the cruelest murderer. Most morality which is innate to us is a product of mammalian cooperative group dynamics which increase the spread of the species. Let us be under no illusions about the ignoble origins of our morality.

Big fan of "biting the bullet", although I think far too many tend to dystopian illusions which are frequently just as flawed.

The part of the animal that wants to kill (to survive) is the part that would have kept us alive if we were on the plains and needed to eat. Do not be so quick to cast aside that savage aspect. I am thankful I do not have to kill animals every day so that I may eat meat. I'm glad I don't have to fight to kill another tribe so that I may live through the winter. But you can thank your ancestors' brutal, savage animal history for the fact you're here today. Also, someone killed that cow so you could eat it. Killing and death everywhere you look.

No doubt that was part of it. But that view seems overly cynical - "price of everything and the value of nothing" - and rather egregiously discounts and deprecates the fact that, as the Desiderata put it, "many have striven for high ideals". One might credibly argue that life for many now is substantially less "nasty, brutish, and short" because of that latter fact; maybe you think our "brutal, savage animal history" is the reason we have art, and literature, and science - "civilization" (such as it is) in a word?

It also seems to me that our world today is rather exceptionally violent, and many people pretend it isn't. That we've somehow moved past violence and barbarism. I'm not... Extolling the virtues of violence. Not exactly. I hope that's not how people take this. I'd rather look at something and try to understand it than to pretend it isn't there. The violence on a feedlot is still violent even if nobody sees it.

Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature would at least suggest that things have improved substantially over the last thousand years or so. Acknowledging an aspect of our nature is a good start, but seems rather fatalistic to think that we're incapable of modifying or adjusting it: "accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative".

Well, that post was entirely too fucking long. Sorry about that.

Well, I should hope so; only Aneris, Skep tickle, Matt and I (and a few others), have been adequately trained in long, rambling, convoluted posts with more qualifications in them than you can shake a stick at; it's an art form ... ;-)

[time to call it a day; night all]

[Aneris]

Well, I should hope so; only Aneris, Skep tickle, Matt and I (and a few others), have been adequately trained in long, rambling, convoluted posts with more qualifications in them than you can shake a stick at; it's an art form ...

Thanks for the reminder, I cut back already. I don't get the problem, but I have understood.

[Snapfingers]

That was Irish? I read it as Scottish. Need to work on the dialect there SF.

Thanks for the constructive feedback. I have written in a new scene.

FADE IN

The law office in raining grey Dublin is messy. Guinness bottles everywhere.
From the radio U2's "Sunday, bloody Sunday" is glaring. Outside it is raining. The grey bearded lawyer is finishing his plate of cabbage and boiled potatoes. The secretary pops in her head; her bad teeth showing as she speaks, bit of Guinness-froth in her mustache.

SECRETARY
Top of the morning to you! I have Micheal Nugent, our famous Irish skeptic and your fourth cousin on your mae' side, in the waiting room to see you.

LAWYER
And top of the morning to you, me' flaithiúlach! Send him, will ye'?

[note to self: why are the saying top of the morning in the afternoon? Must work in some kind of time-disturbance in the plot]