I don't know if you can see this show or if there's a netflixx equivalent for the DVDs, but Penn & Teller have a show called Bullshit that takes on, well, bullshit like alien abductions, survivalists, etc. Penn had an appropriate line, that if God actually intends the end of the world as these nutjobs proclaim then it would be blasphemous to do anything about it. Same here. If God made the world down to the last detail, then the method by which God made it is evolution.
My thoughts exactly. I think I'm going to have to write something about the stupidity event horizon. Once within that horizon, even humour can't escape. It's held in by the intense crushing stupidity field. (Who knows? Maybe I'll discover a parallel between Hawking radiation and irony.)
An Aussie I am, living in pleasant and tolerant Melbourne. We have some fundamentalist groups here but, for the most part, they are ignored in the education system.
The political/religious/academic situation in the US depresses and amuses me in alternation. I doubt it would ever be a source of amusement if I had to live in it.
Seriously, what's notable about Turkey is their attempts to be modern given their location, burgeoning Islamist movement and the shallow roots of Ataturk modernism. That they're giving up means only that they've joined the rest in their sphere. We can only hope the gleaming possibility of the EU keeps modernism a force.
I don't know where you reside (Australia? Austria? not likely Afganistan) but Kansas is having a full out cultural war. Maybe it's residue from their pre-Civil War "bloody Kansas" fixation that everything must become war. Their Attorney General wants to sniff through abortion records to discover potential past criminal acts. Evolution has been coming up every few years - the movement first started to teach Creationism only, then to label evolution as a "theory" (whatever that means), etc. A mutating virus of stupidity.
A strain of intolerance runs deep in American protestantism. IMHO, it's mostly nativist and not spiritual. These morons come from the same strain that produced the Know Nothings in the 19th C (when asked what they stood for, they said . . . you guessed it). The intolerance is largely defensive. The old saying "Everything's up to date in Kansas City" - which of course refers to the KC in Missouri - is balanced by the backwardness of the social climate. The more change, the more refuge is necessary. The reasons don't make sense to an outsider, but they feel besieged - used to be by immigrants (those Irish and eastern Europeans with their dirty, ignorant ways) - and now by learning.
Then again, my youngest was taught about "punctuated evolution" today. What garbage. They're being told the idea is that things remain stable for a while then lots of change happens fast. That of course is what Darwin said, though he illustrated change with a diagram that looked like a steady, slow course. What Gould and (forget his name) said is that punctuated equilibrium dispensed with intermediate forms - a nice explanation of gaps in the fossil record but something which could only be proven if an exhaustive fossil record demonstrated the absence of intermediate forms. The more they backed off this silly idea, the more like Darwin it sounded and the more publicity it got as something bright and useful, which it certainly was not unless you believe in the pathetic straw man of evolution as a lock-step through time.
When I read that comment, I just KNEW it had to be connected to Ursula Vernon in some way. You should check out her site (www.metalandmagic.com)--it has the nekkid mole rat in the surreal turnip landscape.
And even more off-topic (but almost related to the WRONG theme) I saw the sentence "I admit, I have a thang for nekkid mole rats in surreal turnip landscapes," included in a Pharyngula comment.
Being small of brain, I didn't bother reading the rest of the post. Gods, one eye far sighted and the other near. Now that is odd, like one eye sticking out while the other pulls back, leading to the gruesome image of your head twisting about on the axis of your nose as the eye sticking out chases after the one withdrawing, becoming a death spiral up to the event horizon when you just go 'poof' and disappear into yourself.
I must admit, I did feel a certain sense of tremulous anticipation as I peeked under the fold. And I'm not even an accountant, chartered or otherwise.
However, I recommend some startling percussion next time. Not for before unfolding, but for after, when one is just settling in with one's coffee, all cozy in the expectation of a good read. You know: sip, sip, BOOM! Augh! Eeeeaaaagh! Curse yooooooooooou!
One would enjoy something like this, as long as one did not forget about it, and get caught, oneself. One...two, three, four, five....
One felt the whole entry was lacking in excitement. Did hiding content under the fold not imbue the story with an air of mystery? Would it not set the heart of any chartered accountant aflutter with anticipation?
If it did not, then one shall have to attempt more potent means for the setting of a sinister mood, such as injection of an augmented chord, or dare one countenance, a series of several diminished sevenths rising by ominous semitones.
One dislikes this whole "Read more..." link thing. One finds it onerous and irritating. (One is too posh to refer to oneself as "I", today.)
I feel your pain on the specs, almost. I've lost mine at the moment, and am stumbling about semi-blindly. I keep bumping into stuff. Then again, I do that even with 'em on, so it's not much of a change.
No real risks, but if your eyes are not really an inconvenience. . . My eyes were bad (not morally). Being able to see well has changed my attitudes toward life - literally seeing it differently means I think about it differently. I learned today the theoretical maximum eyesight is 20/8.
To tell the truth, I hadn't thought much about getting them surgically adjusted. (My eyesight has always been just good enough that I don't legally need glasses for driving.)
Current prices here seem to be about A$2500-A$3500 per eye. The cost is not a big factor. It's more weighing the risk vs the marginal increase in convenience. Even a very low failure rate is too high for me when wearing glasses is no real burden. I do admit, the last time I looked at eye surgery was years ago. No doubt the risks are much lower now.
Have eye surgery. I wish it were available years ago. The modern kind of super-lasik is ultra cool. They bounce a light off the retina and map the distortion pattern as it reflects through the cornea. The laser then carves the cornea so the light reflects near perfectly. Took maybe 40 minutes total and I could see as I got off the table. I now see nearly 20/10 in my right eye - turns out quality of vision if the cornea is perfectly shaped is related to the # of cells in the retina.
Don't know where you live; this surgery in Canada is half US cost and has been approved for much, much longer so they have lots of experience.
We do end up putting a significant effort into having fun. Last year's fun was a huge undertaking, which was one of the things that convinced a lot of people that it couldn't have been a hoax.
This year's little jaunt was good for me because it provided inspirations to work from, and some timing constraints to focus my efforts. I find it difficult working from a completely blank slate: inspiration hits; I'll start writing something; then the next day I'll wonder how it could ever have been worth starting.
ParentsInLawOfVirge. Glad to see you capitalized the Of. Like making a new German word.
I enjoyed your prank. It reminded me of a Tom Swift story about a homework machine intended to save time but whose making meant the gang did more work than the rest of the class.
An abortion thread has been running through my college class listserv. It is impossibe to explain that people can genuinely disagree about the meaning of a fetus. In their view, it will be a human being from conception and thus killing it is murder. That other cultures and other religions don't agree is unfathomable to them. We are wrong. They are right. And therefore we must lose.
It's that last bit which troubles. All traditions of course believe in at least a degree of their superiority. What matters is how you act toward people not in your group. My tradition says essentially, "We're better. Leave us alone and do your own thing." Their tradition says, "We're better. You go away."
I don't know if you can see this show or if there's a netflixx equivalent for the DVDs, but Penn & Teller have a show called Bullshit that takes on, well, bullshit like alien abductions, survivalists, etc. Penn had an appropriate line, that if God actually intends the end of the world as these nutjobs proclaim then it would be blasphemous to do anything about it. Same here. If God made the world down to the last detail, then the method by which God made it is evolution.
My thoughts exactly. I think I'm going to have to write something about the stupidity event horizon. Once within that horizon, even humour can't escape. It's held in by the intense crushing stupidity field. (Who knows? Maybe I'll discover a parallel between Hawking radiation and irony.)
This post makes my brain hurt. Are you sure this isn't some kind of joke? It's becoming harder and harder to distinguish between reality and parody.
An Aussie I am, living in pleasant and tolerant Melbourne. We have some fundamentalist groups here but, for the most part, they are ignored in the education system.
The political/religious/academic situation in the US depresses and amuses me in alternation. I doubt it would ever be a source of amusement if I had to live in it.
Seriously, what's notable about Turkey is their attempts to be modern given their location, burgeoning Islamist movement and the shallow roots of Ataturk modernism. That they're giving up means only that they've joined the rest in their sphere. We can only hope the gleaming possibility of the EU keeps modernism a force.
I don't know where you reside (Australia? Austria? not likely Afganistan) but Kansas is having a full out cultural war. Maybe it's residue from their pre-Civil War "bloody Kansas" fixation that everything must become war. Their Attorney General wants to sniff through abortion records to discover potential past criminal acts. Evolution has been coming up every few years - the movement first started to teach Creationism only, then to label evolution as a "theory" (whatever that means), etc. A mutating virus of stupidity.
A strain of intolerance runs deep in American protestantism. IMHO, it's mostly nativist and not spiritual. These morons come from the same strain that produced the Know Nothings in the 19th C (when asked what they stood for, they said . . . you guessed it). The intolerance is largely defensive. The old saying "Everything's up to date in Kansas City" - which of course refers to the KC in Missouri - is balanced by the backwardness of the social climate. The more change, the more refuge is necessary. The reasons don't make sense to an outsider, but they feel besieged - used to be by immigrants (those Irish and eastern Europeans with their dirty, ignorant ways) - and now by learning.
Then again, my youngest was taught about "punctuated evolution" today. What garbage. They're being told the idea is that things remain stable for a while then lots of change happens fast. That of course is what Darwin said, though he illustrated change with a diagram that looked like a steady, slow course. What Gould and (forget his name) said is that punctuated equilibrium dispensed with intermediate forms - a nice explanation of gaps in the fossil record but something which could only be proven if an exhaustive fossil record demonstrated the absence of intermediate forms. The more they backed off this silly idea, the more like Darwin it sounded and the more publicity it got as something bright and useful, which it certainly was not unless you believe in the pathetic straw man of evolution as a lock-step through time.
Sorry for the babbling.
When I read that comment, I just KNEW it had to be connected to Ursula Vernon in some way. You should check out her site (www.metalandmagic.com)--it has the nekkid mole rat in the surreal turnip landscape.
And even more off-topic (but almost related to the WRONG theme) I saw the sentence "I admit, I have a thang for nekkid mole rats in surreal turnip landscapes," included in a Pharyngula comment.
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/yet_another_godless_developm...
Slightly off-topic: every time I see WRONG written in capital letters, now, I think of PhaWRONGula.
I'm back. I have new spectacles. They work. :-)
Thus ends a slightly cloudy spell in my teacup.
Well, I have been accused of having a warped view (of almost everything).
I'm just about to head out to pick up my glasses. Correct this time. For sure. Please.
Being small of brain, I didn't bother reading the rest of the post. Gods, one eye far sighted and the other near. Now that is odd, like one eye sticking out while the other pulls back, leading to the gruesome image of your head twisting about on the axis of your nose as the eye sticking out chases after the one withdrawing, becoming a death spiral up to the event horizon when you just go 'poof' and disappear into yourself.
I must admit, I did feel a certain sense of tremulous anticipation as I peeked under the fold. And I'm not even an accountant, chartered or otherwise.
However, I recommend some startling percussion next time. Not for before unfolding, but for after, when one is just settling in with one's coffee, all cozy in the expectation of a good read. You know: sip, sip, BOOM! Augh! Eeeeaaaagh! Curse yooooooooooou!
One would enjoy something like this, as long as one did not forget about it, and get caught, oneself. One...two, three, four, five....
One felt the whole entry was lacking in excitement. Did hiding content under the fold not imbue the story with an air of mystery? Would it not set the heart of any chartered accountant aflutter with anticipation?
If it did not, then one shall have to attempt more potent means for the setting of a sinister mood, such as injection of an augmented chord, or dare one countenance, a series of several diminished sevenths rising by ominous semitones.
One dislikes this whole "Read more..." link thing. One finds it onerous and irritating. (One is too posh to refer to oneself as "I", today.)
I feel your pain on the specs, almost. I've lost mine at the moment, and am stumbling about semi-blindly. I keep bumping into stuff. Then again, I do that even with 'em on, so it's not much of a change.
No real risks, but if your eyes are not really an inconvenience. . . My eyes were bad (not morally). Being able to see well has changed my attitudes toward life - literally seeing it differently means I think about it differently. I learned today the theoretical maximum eyesight is 20/8.
To tell the truth, I hadn't thought much about getting them surgically adjusted. (My eyesight has always been just good enough that I don't legally need glasses for driving.)
Current prices here seem to be about A$2500-A$3500 per eye. The cost is not a big factor. It's more weighing the risk vs the marginal increase in convenience. Even a very low failure rate is too high for me when wearing glasses is no real burden. I do admit, the last time I looked at eye surgery was years ago. No doubt the risks are much lower now.
Can relate.
Have eye surgery. I wish it were available years ago. The modern kind of super-lasik is ultra cool. They bounce a light off the retina and map the distortion pattern as it reflects through the cornea. The laser then carves the cornea so the light reflects near perfectly. Took maybe 40 minutes total and I could see as I got off the table. I now see nearly 20/10 in my right eye - turns out quality of vision if the cornea is perfectly shaped is related to the # of cells in the retina.
Don't know where you live; this surgery in Canada is half US cost and has been approved for much, much longer so they have lots of experience.
I wish I could. You can lead a horse to water but sometimes you need to provide a very long drinking straw as well.
I've printed out some good reading material (a paper straw) to take to them tomorrow.
Maybe you should point ParentsOfVirge to Pharyngula?
Thanks jk.
On my list of things to do is to experiment with some of the other Welsh forms. My first foray into Awdl Gywydd was a paraphrase of a Charles Darwin quote over on PhaWRONGula: http://phawrongula.blogspot.com/2005/03/extinction-of-less-improved-form...
I really like this. Has a chant quality.
We do end up putting a significant effort into having fun. Last year's fun was a huge undertaking, which was one of the things that convinced a lot of people that it couldn't have been a hoax.
This year's little jaunt was good for me because it provided inspirations to work from, and some timing constraints to focus my efforts. I find it difficult working from a completely blank slate: inspiration hits; I'll start writing something; then the next day I'll wonder how it could ever have been worth starting.
ParentsInLawOfVirge. Glad to see you capitalized the Of. Like making a new German word.
I enjoyed your prank. It reminded me of a Tom Swift story about a homework machine intended to save time but whose making meant the gang did more work than the rest of the class.
Very funny and witty and intelligent !
An abortion thread has been running through my college class listserv. It is impossibe to explain that people can genuinely disagree about the meaning of a fetus. In their view, it will be a human being from conception and thus killing it is murder. That other cultures and other religions don't agree is unfathomable to them. We are wrong. They are right. And therefore we must lose.
It's that last bit which troubles. All traditions of course believe in at least a degree of their superiority. What matters is how you act toward people not in your group. My tradition says essentially, "We're better. Leave us alone and do your own thing." Their tradition says, "We're better. You go away."