Pharyngula

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | March 8, 2010 1:02 PM

Spending your birthday painfully contorted into an economy class airplane seat doesn't sound terribly celebratory, PZ.

Posted by: aratina cage | March 8, 2010 1:03 PM

In that case,

A Merry Merry Unbirthday tooOOOO YOU!

Posted by: Ol'Greg | March 8, 2010 1:04 PM

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear tentacled overlord, happy birth day to you...

Posted by: Carlie | March 8, 2010 1:06 PM

That was my fault for bringing it up, because I can't distinguish between the words "Today" and "Tuesday". I say we just make it birthday party WEEK.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | March 8, 2010 1:09 PM

You mean the Trophy Wife^TM isn't baking/buying you a cake for tonight?

Posted by: kiyaroru | March 8, 2010 1:10 PM

Happy BDPZ.

If the spasms are back muscle cramps, I recommend medication containing methocarbamol. Robaxiwhatever. But buy the store-brand, same drugs for half the price. Fuck Big Pharma!
(store-brand generic meds are made by elves)

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | March 8, 2010 1:19 PM

SC: I am not following you at all, maybe because I haven't been involved in a year long conversation...just picked up in Episode XXXIII. If you could summarize, what is your central contention here?

Posted by: SC OM | March 8, 2010 1:24 PM

This may be particularly problematic in forensic anthropology. Ancestry determination is an integral part of individuation in forensic anthro, and people have been discussing using DNA to do it for some time and with much enthusiasm. The discordant phenotype is a big problem, though, since the goal (of the forensic anthropologist) is to identify which social race people would identify an individual as belonging to.

Hmm. I was thinking about this. I'm just guessing, but it seems like it would only really be useful in a situation in which you had like a mass grave or with people from all different places and were trying to trace where the victims were from. Or other kinds of historical work.

Which reminds me that I started reading Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost back in 2006 and never finished it...

Posted by: Maslab | March 8, 2010 1:28 PM

Last time I flew the Pacific it was 14 hours from LA to Auckland. PZ has a bit further to fly both ends.

Posted by: AdamK | March 8, 2010 1:32 PM

I hope those Aussie spasms greet you with a cake when you get of the plane.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 8, 2010 1:32 PM

They seemed impressed.

Hell, I'm impressed.

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | March 8, 2010 1:33 PM

SC,

I'm just guessing, but it seems like it would only really be useful in a situation in which you had like a mass grave or with people from all different places and were trying to trace where the victims were from. Or other kinds of historical work.

Not necessarily. Many cases that reach the point where forensic anthropologists are called in have very little identifying information with the remains. Individuation is the process of narrowing down the list of missing persons that the remains could be. In the USA, ancestry is important because we have a huge cross-section of human variation represented in our population. Being able to say this set of remains is an African-American female allows the forensic anthropologist to focus on traits that vary among missing African-American females, while ignoring males and females from other populations. Also, an accurate determination of ancestry allows for more accurate assessment of stature and, if necessary, more accurate tissue depths for facial reconstruction.

For interesting arguments, ask a forensic graduate student how to identify "Hispanic" ancestry in skeletonized remains. It's fun to watch them squirm :)

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ | March 8, 2010 1:35 PM

Walton, I want to start with the outright falsehood, just to get it out of the way.

When an American talks about "states' rights" or "giving power back to the states", you tend immediately to label that person a white supremacist.

This is false. I understand you're not deliberately constructing this falsehood to slander me, but you're once again being careless in summarizing what I actually say. Somehow I wonder how you manage it.

First of all, I never accuse someone of being a white supremacist for talking about "giving power back to the states" unless the specific power in question concerns racial discrimination. I have spoken approvingly of decentralization, localization, devolution, whathaveyou, and I do not suggest that there is something inherently wrong with these tactics no matter the circumstance.

I do take issue with the very specific phrase "states' rights," because it is a white supremacist slogan -- one which libertarians of all people ought to condemn, since the concept was invented to steal rights from individuals and transfer them to states.

Even so, I do not accuse people of being white supremacists simply for using those words. What their use does indicate is that the speaker has been learning from white supremacists. And I do offer this specific criticism -- "you have been learning from white supremacists, and you are willing to promote white supremacist talking points" -- quite liberally, in the hope of embarrassing those people into ceasing to use the phrase. Because it is an illiberal phrase serving only illiberal ends, and would be even if American chattel slavery had never occurred. The sooner we are freed from the distortions of such ominous Orwellian language, the better.

But by seeking to embarrass, I rely on the assumption that the speaker actually has some decency, and would be troubled to realize that they have been influenced by white supremacists. Of course this is not always the case. Fucko the president of the Canadian chapter of the David Duke fan club has no shame or decency. But mfd512 might, and has made no subsequent attempt to justify the use of that phrase. That's all I'm asking for.

By assuming the speaker has such decency, even if only privately expressed or implied by subsequent silence, I am not at all assuming the worst of them. Rather I am assuming that they do not want to cause harm, and that they can grow.

Posted by: madbull | March 8, 2010 1:41 PM

Its March 9th in India now,
so Happy Bday PZ !!

Posted by: dinogami | March 8, 2010 1:46 PM

Happy B-day, PZ -- here's a little present!

http://chronicle.com/article/What-Darwins-Doubters-Get/64457/?sid=at&utm;_source=at&utm;_medium=en

Posted by: Ol'Greg | March 8, 2010 1:53 PM

Badgersdaughter from previous thread:

I can't accept the "hairdresser" analogy.

I can't either. I get my hair done because other people make me passively by the fact that not getting my hair cut could cause me to be perceived as too much of an outlier and cost me.

My hairdresser trained for that profession and could enter another profession if they wish. They are a part of a system to maintain socially accepted appearances.

A prostitute answers to a private need not a public one demand enforced on others. I really can't imagine a situation where people might complain about my unprofessional appearance because I don't regularly visit a prostitute.

I don't *need* my hair cut, and I don't even care whether my hair gets cut. Maybe I would feel differently if I had my hair cut for pleasure, but I don't. If I had my way I'd just keep it shaved as hair has no use to me except maybe in winter or under direct sun.

Now, I am not the same as other people about my hair but that is that.

I am also not the same about sex as other people. Is there any "same" anyway?

I would never have a need for sex that would drive me to engage in a professional sexual relationship to get it.

Now perhaps I am the sort of person that might have become a prostitute. Not because I like sex but because I am largely indifferent to it and yet willing to do whatever floats the other person's boat short of cutting myself or breaking my bones.

I suppose if enough money was involved and the completely shattering consequences were removed I could do it. Disassociating myself from my body and from the people I have to have contact with and seeing myself as a sort of pleasure room people come in and out of and myself as living some where adjacent to it and perhaps tending bar there on the weekends. Remember my own sexual needs would never enter into it. It's all about the client.

And then picking a price point at which that amount of personal sacrifice would be worthwhile... not to mention the fact that every encounter has the potential to end my life or infect me with dangerous diseases.

Personally I like or love some of the people I've had sex with, but sex was never the objective. It's just something I enjoy doing for extra special people or that I liked to do just then for some reason.

Otherwise it has happened because of a sense of obligation or because I perceived myself as having little choice in the matter and it is easier to have sex with some one and then slink away than to face the consequences of not having sex with them if those consequences seem immediate and pressing.

So the analogy really only works if you already have a specific view and need for sex.

Besides sex has a lot of real risk that the analogy completely ignores.

Sex may be like getting your hair cut to PaulW but it is not like that to me.

Rather to me it is more like donating blood in a place that may re-use needles.

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | March 8, 2010 1:56 PM

Do you have a response to the video or to the Graves piece I linked to above?

No. I have been kind of busy with work and reading scientific papers on human population genetics. Maybe I'll get to reading those tonight. Is it your contention that phenotypic traits that have been used historically to diagnose "race" (the social construct) have no correlation with geography?

Posted by: Brian | March 8, 2010 2:05 PM

Hear the engines roll now
Hear the engines roll now
Hear the engines roll now
Hear the engines roll now

Hear the engines roll
Wheels on fire
Burning rubber tires

Posted by: Orson Zedd | March 8, 2010 2:09 PM

@#34 PZ Myers, Clearly the cars insides had alchemically converted to thermite for no other reason than because it was awesome.

Posted by: Paul W., OM | March 8, 2010 2:11 PM

Re: burning cars. I've seen it happen once.

I heard a neighbor's car down the block being blown up by a car bomb once---a "car bomb" in the US sense, of a small bomb to blow up the car and the person inside, not a big bomb in a car, used blow up surrounding people---with him inside.

My neighbor survived---astonishingly, without massive injuries---but the car sure burned good.

By the time I got there, a few minutes later, the guy was sitting in a lawn chair and had been covered with a blanket, having divested himself of his burning clothes.

The car was gutted and smoldering, and the smoldering was apparently emitting explosive gases, but slowly.

About every 10 minutes the gases would build up to a sufficient concentration and ignite, making a FOOM noise, and sending people scurrying away. Then they'd get closer and closer over the next ten minutes, only to have it happen again. I watched that three or four times, and then went to school.

Posted by: SC OM | March 8, 2010 2:15 PM

http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Goodman/

Test 2: Explaining Human Variation

Statistically explaining “a little bit” about something may actually end up doing more harm than good if one begins to forget the "lack of precision" of the concept. This is the first problem when one substitutes race for human variation: one tends to forget about the 94% of variation that race fails to statistically explain. The test I now put to race-as-genetics is not statistically, but conceptually. Is race merely a poor correlate of human genetic variation or does it help to explain the underlying processes by which variation comes about? Consider the following.

- Racial definitions and boundaries change over time and place. Thus, race is an inherently unstable and unreliable concept. That is fine for local realities but not so for a scientific concept. The importance of this point is that a bio-racial generalization that appears true at one time and place is not necessarily as true in another time and place. We just don’t know. One of the first lessons of science is to not base a generalization on a shifting concept, which is exactly what race is.

- The idea of race can only divide human diversity into a small number of divisions. That is the limit. This might have been all that one could do before the advent of parametric statistics, multivariable analyses, and computers. But, now we can do so much more.

- Because race is used in medicine and other fields as a way to categorize both genetics and lived experience, what passes as the result of genetic difference may actually be due to interactions or some aspect of lived experience. Using race tends to conflate genetics and lived experience (Goodman, 2001).

- I am pessimistic about how the subtle reuses of race in genetics will eventually merge with virulent racists. This does not mean that I want to hide anything about human variation. Rather, it means that we need to study human variation precisely.

***

No. I have been kind of busy with work and reading scientific papers on human population genetics. Maybe I'll get to reading those tonight. Is it your contention that phenotypic traits that have been used historically to diagnose "race" (the social construct) have no correlation with geography?

No.

Posted by: bart.mitchell | March 8, 2010 2:18 PM

Too bad you arn't flying back to the US on your birthday, instead of flying there.

My wife and I returned from Aus on her birthday. Chasing the timezones on the return flight meant that her birthday lasted 37 hours. Flying to Aus, your entire birthday should only last 12 hours total.

At least you will get it all over with quicker this way.

Posted by: Randomfactor | March 8, 2010 2:22 PM

PZ, I hope your fellow passengers have been suitably informed of the risk they take flying with you.

Why, passengers on a completely different airline flying to Brazil might be smited in an effort to eliminate your blasphemy. (The divine aim isn't so good as it was in the Olden Days...)

Posted by: Sili | March 8, 2010 2:23 PM

Behold!

I have seen the anti-Walton and he is us.

Posted by: David Marjanović | March 8, 2010 2:30 PM

I watched that three or four times, and then went to school.

How late were you, if I may ask…?

Posted by: Sili | March 8, 2010 2:32 PM

(store-brand generic meds are made by elves)

Down with Big Elf!!

--o--

Anyone have an opinion on www.linkedin.com ? (space added to avoid smushing) Would any Pharyngulistas speak kindly of me, should I advertise myself there? Or would I now like that kinda praise?

Posted by: Ol'Greg | March 8, 2010 2:35 PM

Problem is, I won't be here in May anymore.

How unfortunate for me :(

Oh how empty Paris will seem knowing you are no longer in it!!!!

lol

Posted by: SC OM | March 8, 2010 2:40 PM

SC: Nothing novel there...of course "race" as a social construct is often a poor descriptor of the underlying genetics of human populations. Has anyone here suggested otherwise?

You're joking, right?

Hopefully the links that you keep pointing out are more insightful.

I think I'm done interacting with you, arrogant ass. I don't care how insightful you find any links. You haven't made any points at all about race or variation that I can see. You haven't responded meaningfully to anything I've provided, just said that you don't grasp the relevance to a conversation that you jumped into. Either stop telling me what the argument is and address the substance or stop addressing your comments to me.

Don't worry. I don't think virulent racists are reading Heredity or Evolution as a matter of course.

You're stunningly naïve.

Posted by: Grewgills | March 8, 2010 2:44 PM

And then spending a week and a half in Australia with spasms.

Posted by: blf | March 8, 2010 2:48 PM

Anyone have an opinion on www.linkedin.com ?

I've never figured out what the point is. I (mostly) ignore my account there, which was started only on the recommendation of a trusted colleague. I don't recall now what argument was used to convince me to start one, but it was in a pub, which may be sufficient explanation…? I did once get a job interview via contacts made there, but other than that, I cannot think of anything it's helped with—no wait, that's not quite correct, one or two old friends/colleagues that I lost contact with have contacted me via it, so I suppose that's something. Unfortunately, so have lots of other people who I was happy to lose contact with, plus a few scammers; fortunately, it's easy to ignore the bozos.

Posted by: Becca | March 8, 2010 2:52 PM

I know being boring is one of the cardinal sins here (the other is fuzzy thinking, I suspect), but please, please, please go over to Making Light and check out our own Cuttlefish's contributions. Or if you don't want to go there, read them at Cuttlefish's own site - they're truly charming.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 8, 2010 2:54 PM

Oooh-er. I've also never met an oyster I didn't like. :D

Me either.

Posted by: triskelethecat | March 8, 2010 2:59 PM

I'm not so good at roman numerals...but how did we lose so many sections of endless thread? I remember seeing XXXV, now we are down to XXVII?

Or did I miss a comment about renumbering somewhere? On vacation, finding a new apt for my daughter so not constantly auditing the endless thread.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | March 8, 2010 3:04 PM

Cloudless day again! And frozen. Even the soil is frozen. Really not the kind of weather I expect for early March in Paris. ~:-|

Instead you said "And they don't want to deal with a lot of women's hangups about sex and particular sex acts."

Which says to me that you are making an obnoxious judgment about women and accepting it. Women have hangups about sex acts, ALL OF THEM, and yet it is these casual sex encounters with women who do not have these hang ups that you are defending. You make no fucking sense!

Paul W, you cannot make a honest argument when you're using gender essentialism and shifting blame for lack of casual sex on women's hangups (regardless whether you meant that as "lots of hangups women have", or "lots of women have hangups", especially considering that these hangups don't just magically spring from having an uterus. they come from the consequences that sex, and casual sex especially, can have for women, thus rendering it significantly less appealing to them, even if they might not have problems with it in principle.
Like I said, the more testosterone poisoning a scene suffers, the less likely you are to find women who like casual sex. This is not caused by women somehow inherently being less likely to want it.

Incidentally, early in my current relationship I had to explain this "women have hangups" idiocy to the boyfriend, too. He kept on making nasty comments about women in general, based on his experience with certain women from around here (who are indeed not the people you want filling your entire dating pool), and then when I'd ask him if he feels that way about me too, he'd say "but you're diffrent". Took me a while to explain that I'm not more different than all other women are different, and that it's not surprising the women he dislikes so much have developed the personalities they have, considering the environment they've grown up in; using his brother and our former roommate as examples of this environment made my point beautifully.

------

*it's thawing here, with large puddles of snowmelt everywhere

Posted by: Dust | March 8, 2010 3:06 PM

Prostitution is legal and regulated in some counties in the state of Nevada in the USA.

In fact, new to the legal brothels, is Nevada's first male prostitute.

FWIW

Posted by: blf | March 8, 2010 3:13 PM

[P]assengers on a completely different airline flying to Brazil might be smited in an effort to eliminate [poopyhead's] blasphemy. (The divine aim isn't so good as it was in the Olden Days...)

Mythical Magicman also seems to have problems in his temporal control. He's just as likely to sink a trireme in the 5th century BCE.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | March 8, 2010 3:18 PM

on a different note, we did end up making one key lime pie with the original recipe (because my boyfriend is an even bigger nut for traditional cooking, and because I don't think it's humanly possible to resist a well-executed "sad puppy" face). On the one hand, I'd forgotten how utterly vile condensed milk is. On the other, I'm very pleasantly surprised that key lime pie made with it doesn't taste like condensed milk at all, for some reason :-)

Posted by: Aunt Benjy | March 8, 2010 3:24 PM

Bloody Ray Comfort is at it again...

http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/books/3421162/Creationists-views-to-be-distributed-after-liaison

I guess it might be significant that this is listed under entertainment news?

P.S. Happy Birthday :)

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 8, 2010 3:32 PM

as opposed to what butter

Thank goodness they offer that in tubs

Posted by: Bunkie | March 8, 2010 3:42 PM

A car in front of me on I-66 near downtown DC had a tire pop and immediately catch fire. I stopped to help the little old lady who was driving. Myself and another gentleman emptied our tiny fire extinguishers on the tire to no avail. In my opinion, she had probably been driving with the parking brake on for some distance and the heat buildup on the brake drum was the cause of the fire and also the reason it wouldn't go out easily. The entire car went up before the FD got there. The amazing part to me was how quickly traffic backed up for as far as the eye could see. We don't get them thare kinda jams in Alabama.

Anyway, back up at #18: your circumstances sound much like the accident that brought down the Concorde. You are to be commended for bringing her down without a loss of life.

Posted by: Rorschach | March 8, 2010 3:46 PM

Re: burning cars. I've seen it happen once.

Me too.
To my own, unfortunately.
Add to that that it was a VW van with 7 teenagers in the back, at a petrol station in Yugoslavia, and you will see it was no picknick...:-)

Filled her up, then turned ignition, and immediately flames came through the air vent thingie,whole engine(in the back of the car)was in flames.
There was just time to evacuate the car before it blew up.
Burned out completely.
I suspect to this day someone manipulated the engine, but who knows !

PZ Myers :

And then spending a week and a half in Australia with spasms.

Nothing a little Valium can't fix, maybe not quite 10mg, we want you awake at the Convention Pharyngufest...:-)

Posted by: Sili | March 8, 2010 3:48 PM

Dairy butter, as opposed to what butter?

Posted by: blf | March 8, 2010 3:52 PM

[H]ow did we lose so many sections of endless thread? I remember seeing XXXV, now we are down to XXVII?

TimeNumber dilation. The internets are being sucked into Teh Thread. This motion in an intense commentary field is causing observers to see other numbers as being in error. You see XXVII, whilst from Teh Thread's point-of-view (PoV) its numbering is Ok—it's your numbering which is off.

Or someone turned on the Infinite Improbability Drive.

Posted by: Sili | March 8, 2010 3:54 PM

I see the Thread has found its theme for the next 500 posts. I'm looking forward to seeing what video PeeZed finds for burning cars - if need be we'll have to send David to the 'burbs for some original footage.

Does this mean we need to light 53 cars on fire tomorrow for the CEO to blow out?

Posted by: blf | March 8, 2010 4:09 PM

Arrggghhhh!!!1! Up at @68 I typo'ed: Me also neithereither. Me too, fecking feck it, me too either—I've also never met an oyster I didn't like.

(And I typo'ed so much in writing the above methinks it's time I went to bed…)

Posted by: Caine, Fleur du mal | March 8, 2010 4:20 PM

Happy Birthday, PZ! Years ago, I saw a car burn up. A man pulled over on the freeway, his 2 day old caddy had stalled out. The engine caught fire, and it wasn't long before it was bye-bye new car. The owner was livid, I remember that much.

Has anyone else read The Swarm by Frank Schatzing? I've started it and I'm enjoying, but I'm wondering how sound the science is - it's not an area I have much knowledge in.

Posted by: Bobber | March 8, 2010 4:27 PM

All this talk about burning cars. When I lived in MA I would listen to the evening rush hour reports on a Rhode Island rock station. Every couple of weeks there would be a car on fire, which the DJs referred to as a "car-B-Q". I still use that term...

Posted by: blf | March 8, 2010 4:33 PM

iambilly @484 (previous subthread):

So not only are tax dollars going to support jet-setting atheist professors and their Trophy Wives™, the few remaining tax dollars are then being spent to pay federal employees to prop up pinko european political gays discussing their facist welfare states.

No. […rants…] The lesson? Sometimes cutting funding can lead to less effeciency. Remember that next time you are at the DMV.

Um, I think you should consider adjusting your humour meter slightly. I was making a joke!

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | March 8, 2010 4:43 PM

I will echo the public service announcement to wear seat belts though.

Oh, I can personally attest to that. Had I not been wearing my seatbelt, I would not have survived this.

Posted by: Rorschach | March 8, 2010 4:48 PM

Even though I know that is absolutely meaningless and the chances of you having the same birthday as one of your readers is extraordinarily high, I still think it's cool.

Not that high, actually the chance that 2 commenters here have the same birthday is over 50% for just 23 people.

Birthday Paradox

Posted by: Lynna, OM | March 8, 2010 4:51 PM

Sarah Palin has explained the writing of notes on her hand by comparing herself to God. And she continues to write notes on her palm to remind her of her topics.

When the media first challenged her on the need to write her core beliefs on her hand to remember them, "I didn't really had a good answer, as so often -- is me," Palin quipped at an Ohio Right to Life fundraiser Friday. "But then somebody sent me the other day, Isaiah 49:16, and you need to go home and look it up. Before you look it up, I'll tell you what it says though. It says, hey, if it was good enough for God, scribbling on the palm of his hand, it's good enough for me, for us. He says, in that passage, 'I wrote your name on the palm of my hand to remember you...
     "What I scribbled on the palm of my hand tonight too -- it was the dollar sign, and I'm -- we're going to talk about the practical needs too for this cause, and this will remind me to -- because I didn't write it in my speech, I have to ad lib that part, so to remind me," she said

Posted by: badgersdaughter | March 8, 2010 4:56 PM

Dairy butter, as opposed to what butter?

Sorry, the reflex to specify what kind of butter is a relic of my mother's cooking. She used margarine wherever she thought she could get away with it, which was everywhere once the price of butter consistently rose above the price of congealed hydrogenated artificially flavored and colored vegetable oil. You do well to shudder, my dear. I no longer allow the toxic waste in my house.

Posted by: SteveM | March 8, 2010 5:00 PM

re 99;

Not that high, actually the chance that 2 commenters here have the same birthday is over 50% for just 23 people.

But the comment was not about any two people having the same birthday, but the odds of members of a group having a specific birthday (i.e. PZ's birthday).

Posted by: Brownian, OM | March 8, 2010 5:04 PM

Not that high, actually the chance that 2 commenters here have the same birthday is over 50% for just 23 people.

Yes, Rorschach, but DanielR specified the chances that some commenter had the same birthday as PZ.

Ummm... more accurately, when deciding to play "chicken", it's important to remember that the trees always win.

More accurately, the trees never lose. Am I correct in assuming you're relatively unhurt/healed? I hope so.

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | March 8, 2010 5:07 PM

More accurately, the trees never lose. Am I correct in assuming you're relatively unhurt/healed? I hope so.

Broken sternum and ribs, badly mangled left arm and leg... I'm on the mend now (it was early Feb) but I missed nearly all of February's endless threads, so that was the real issue.

Posted by: cicely | March 8, 2010 5:10 PM

Bunkie @ 79:

Anyway, back up at #18: your circumstances sound much like the accident that brought down the Concorde. You are to be commended for bringing her down without a loss of life.

All the credit has to go to my husband; he was driving, I was drowsing (until the tire went off), and when we stopped, I had no idea we were aflame. He saw it in the rear-view mirror, and told me, "We're on fire; bail!" as he killed the engine. He has the most awesome emergency reflexes; I usually lose a moment to being stunned/impressed by the gravity of the situation/stupidity on display.

The best thing about the whole incident is that our son had opted to give the funeral a miss, and therefore wasn't asleep in the back.

(The engine burned with lovely blue and green flames. It was aesthetically pleasing, set as it was against a backdrop of the more conventional red and yellow flames from the rest of the van.)

(Oh---and we laughed, perhaps a trifle hysterically, when the fire extinguisher under the front seat exploded. Poor thing; it never had a chance!)

Posted by: AJ Milne | March 8, 2010 5:12 PM

In today's odd episode of 'life imitates the web'...

So I'm at this local Mexican place I like. Run by this guy outta California. Great stuff, there... good rellenos. I love rellenos...

I'm there because the meeting from hell that just went by has left me vaguely homicidal and distinctly hungry. The former because, as previously mentioned somewhere in one of these threads, I really hate explaining the same thing more than like about, oh, say, once... And there's this gent present who's just really not getting why the architecture I'm doing does what it does the way it does... Ah, screw it, it's a lot to explain... But suffice to say, I had to explain some things more than twice, more than three times, more than ten, on account of him actually making decisions, and having to understand things, and it was getting to the point where I wished I could somehow physically squeeze my body through the phone line down to Phoenix to strangle said dude...

... Anyway, and the latter--the hungry thing--because said meeting kept getting extended while I tried to explain, and went well past lunch...

So anyway, I'm in there, having a beer and some flautas, breathing deeply, decompressing, coming up with novel ways of finishing the day without adding a criminal charge to my personal history. And I'm reading Pharyngula on the phone, 'cos this, too, generally helps...

And this conversation starts up at the bar (myself not precisely there, and in no way involved) about some sports character or other who's some nutbar Christian--and it being the middle of the day, everyone's had a few, and the prevailing attitude is this wonderful 'What the fuck is wrong with those fucking morons, anyway... What, do they really believe this shit?...'

Validating, I tells ya. Because you don't always hear that in meatspace, even here. I felt a little saner, just hearing it. Got to thinking: yes, there are places in this world where being a stupid dick does, in fact, get roundly and publicly mocked, and one of them is right here. And I get to thinking: this world isn't completely cracked, anyway...

... and then at the next table, there's this odd young couple, the female of the pair extensively tatooed...

And they're talking about Aspergers... and whether they, technically, might have it...

And I got to thinking: Pharyngula has crawled out of this phone, into this restaurant. And I'm really okay with that.

(/End anecdote. Update: so far, no new criminal charges this diurnal cycle... Which, I guess, is good.)

Posted by: David Marjanović | March 8, 2010 5:27 PM

Behold!

I have seen the anti-Walton and he is us.

tl;dr

Does living in the general area count?

If you come to town. I'll come by train, so I can't move out.

Down with Big Elf!!

B-)

On the other, I'm very pleasantly surprised that key lime pie made with it doesn't taste like condensed milk at all, for some reason :-)

Once it's heated enough, all milk is identical. I found out last winter and spring when I lived elsewhere and didn't have a fridge.

If I recall correctly, Ronnie Soak carries alligator butter.

And what is that?

My reading of Sven's point and several of the papers that he has linked is that human phenotype variation is distributed as a function of geography.

He goes on to state that the variation of different genes is correlated in a statistically significant way. That's... less clear.

Posted by: Rorschach | March 8, 2010 5:30 PM

Pedants.....;)

Posted by: cicely | March 8, 2010 5:38 PM

David M.:

If I recall correctly, Ronnie Soak carries alligator butter.

And what is that?

Ronnie Soak is one of Terry Prachett's characters, from Thief of Time, one of his Discworld books. He's the Ultimate Dairyman; because he has to use up the cold somehow.

/deliberately quasi-cryptic

Posted by: SC OM | March 8, 2010 5:40 PM

Nothing like a walk on the beach to lift your mood! Aaaaah.

My reading of Sven's point and several of the papers that he has linked is that human phenotype variation is distributed as a function of geography.

This is so general as to be useless. Does that variation fall out into race-like groupings? Is any race concept useful for understanding genetic variation? If so, what is it?

Or what? You'll call me names?

I'll ignore you. I asked if you had anything to contribute to a discussion about race and human genetic variation beyond a general "variation exists" (and specifically a concept of race or its equivalent that is scientifically valid and useful), and evidently you don't.

Ignoring you now.

Posted by: Louis | March 8, 2010 5:56 PM

Ok, I haven't had a chance to read the other thread or even all of this but someone mentioned that prostitution and racial definitions were hot topics.*

Let me guess the conclusions thus far: prostiution is good, all other races than mine (where "mine" = the poster's race) are bad and were all off to a brothel for a multi-ethnic gangbang?**

What better way to celebrate International Women's Day, right? Right?

Hey, why are you hitting me? Owwww! I was only kidding! Owwww! NOT THE FACE!!!! NOT THE FACE!!!

Louis

*Although my reasons are much less important than Celtic Evolution's. Damn! I am glad to hear you are on the mend.

**Anyone who thinks that I think this is a genuine Pharynguloid Conclusion, or that I would endorse such, needs their fucking head read. Just a standard humour disclaimer for the challenged on the web.

Posted by: Caine, Fleur du mal | March 8, 2010 5:58 PM

David, don't cry, just read more Discworld books. :) Thief of Time is a fabulous read.

Posted by: Paul W., OM | March 8, 2010 6:02 PM

Speaking of things burning and blowing up, I just got back from walking my dog past my terrorist neighbor's burned-out house.

He was the tax protester loon who went into the local IRS office in his airplane.

Posted by: Caine, Fleur du mal | March 8, 2010 6:04 PM

Interesting neighbors you have there, Paul W.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | March 8, 2010 6:07 PM

condensed milk has only passing resemblance with milk to begin with. and the taste changes even before baking (and technically, really really original key lime pie doesn't need the filling to even be baked)

Condensed milk is only nice if you put the tin in a pan of simmering water and keep it there for about 4 hours. It turns into a wonderfully fudgy goo.

Do make sure you do not let the water boil dry, else you might need a new kitchen.

Posted by: Rorschach | March 8, 2010 6:10 PM

He was the tax protester loon who went into the local IRS office in his airplane.

Why is his house burnt out ?
And yes, interesting neighborhood you have there...:-)

Posted by: Rorschach | March 8, 2010 6:17 PM

Oh, and here is the link to last night's episode of Q&A; on the ABC, where Richard Dawkins wiped the floor with some of Australia's dumbo politicians.

Q&A; March 8

Posted by: Stephen Wells | March 8, 2010 6:21 PM

"Alligator butter?"

-"I didn't say it was easy."

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ | March 8, 2010 6:28 PM

Paul W., your #671 is so full of strawmen and cliched assumptions about your opponents that I'm tempted to make a Bingo card.

I want prostitution to be legalized.

I have no problem with casual sex, no-strings-attached sex, random sex, sex with friends, sex with acquaintances, sex with coworkers, sex with strangers.

I have made zero judgments about any man's sexual desire for particular sexual acts, nor any woman's, and neither did Amanda Marcotte in the Pandagon article I linked.

The best part was this:

There's a reason why I brought up the behavior of gay males. If people are going to express simple condemnation for men who want casual, no-strings sex, just for wanting it, I'd like to hear their opinion of the fairly large contingent of gay men who want casual sex, and get it

I have a rather high opinion of myself, thanks for asking.

I don't see anything in your comment that isn't reliant on these simplistic and false assumptions.

Posted by: Paul W., OM | March 8, 2010 6:29 PM

Rorschach:

He was the tax protester loon who went into the local IRS office in his airplane.

Why is his house burnt out ?

He set it on fire before he went to the airport.

Gotta feel really sorry for his wife and kids. He was tens of thousands of dollars in debt to the IRS, then he burned the house down. (And insurance doesn't generally pay in case of arson, especially by the owner.)

Posted by: Mu | March 8, 2010 6:31 PM

The one car fire I saw wasn't impressive for it's volume but it length. Driving through a very arid area of Arizona we noticed little smoldering fires along the highway, a bush here, a bit of grass there. Now, we'd passed large burned areas before, but we just couldn't explain the frequency of all these tiny fires. Until a good three miles later we came to a car pulling a small trailer with one of it's tires on fire. It had been throwing little pieces of burning rubber for miles without anyone noticing. Luckily he'd been pulled over by a cop (who also had a decent size fire extinguisher) since it was pre-universal cell phone coverage and we'd had no way to actually report on the "long" fire.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/eJREANl71tBZaeOyZkJr9VcGGg4h#2f844 | March 8, 2010 6:32 PM

What butter?

Ron Sullivan

Posted by: Lynna, OM | March 8, 2010 6:37 PM

The female Rabbi on the panel: "If you grapple with the God, you are automatically limiting God." I think she was bringing up the old ineffable argument, and adding a hidden warning which equals Don't Question.
Link repeat

Posted by: Lynna, OM | March 8, 2010 6:40 PM

Julie Bishop (woman in white suit at the right end of the panel), is dangerous. She's a well-spoken politician and she sounds reasonable at first glance, but she's scientifically illiterate.

Posted by: WowbaggerOM | March 8, 2010 6:50 PM

I watched Q&A; last night and, as I noted on the previous thread, I'm very embarrassed by the people who've somehow managed to get elected in this country despite being demonstrably poor thinkers.

Poor Richard. He did look pained, didn't he? I think maybe he expected that it would be different from appearing with American politicians; sadly, while ours might be a little less obviously woo-soaked, there's still enough Jesus in them to turn their brains to mush.

In a way it's a good sign. Now atheists in Australia are starting to stand up and oppose the Christian free-riding on public policy, it's going to be easy to make their representatives look like fools in front of the voters.

What that panel needed was an Aboriginal rep who stood up to Fielding and said that by claiming the earth is only 10,000 years old he was being strident and offensive and intolerant regarding their religion and culture.

Then we'd have seen uncomfortable.

Posted by: SC OM | March 8, 2010 6:58 PM

25 minutes in.

Jacqueline Ninio is the embodiment of what Sastra often talks about.

Steve Fielding. Whoa.

Dawkins is great.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | March 8, 2010 6:59 PM

llewelly #126

Sailing is flying sideways.

Sometimes sailing is sailing sideways.

Posted by: Cowcakes | March 8, 2010 7:00 PM

In NSW, VIC and Tas its currently 11:00 am on Tuesday 9th March. So are far as we are concerned it is your Birthday, unless you wish to submit that you were born on Wednesday the 10th ;-)

SO Happy Birthday

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | March 8, 2010 7:05 PM

I know I posted the picture in #155 recently but I couldn't resist using it again.

Posted by: Ol'Greg | March 8, 2010 7:11 PM

Do you think I'm brain-dead enough not to notice that that contradicts any generalization about all women or men along those lines?

Well you might consider I only have your words to go by.

So for all I know you may be that dumb because you certainly have made some terrible arguments, and yes you really do sound that dumb.

No, it's not my job to read whatever you say in the best possible light if you aren't capable of saying what you mean clearly. Being verbose isn't helping you.

You still wrote a giant strawman and supported it with basically nothing and defended it with classic male privileged bullshit. You have not answered anything specific or even tried to clarify. And now you're mad at me. Boo hoo.

You can fuck right off too.

Posted by: SC OM | March 8, 2010 7:14 PM

Ah, some OT bashing from Julie "People Should Respect Others' Views" Bishop. Nice. Will the rabbi respond?

Posted by: WowbaggerOM | March 8, 2010 7:16 PM

That Steve Fielding guy is a moron.

Indeed. But Australians who don't agree with his religious idiocy aren't as critical of it as, say, the equivalents in the US; over there it's far more strongly polarised than it is here, even though we've got a much lower rate of religiosity.

Here it's covert rather than overt. So, a lot of people, even though they aren't religious in the slightest, don't realise that there is a problem that needs to be addressed - and they think anyone pointing it out is whining about nothing.

That's something we need to change - and I'd like to think the GAC is a place where the seeds of such change can be planted. Australian atheists need to be shown exactly how much Jesus-freaks are determining public policy; if they become aware of it maybe they'll do more about it.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | March 8, 2010 7:22 PM

Julie was a self-righteous twit when it came to the discussion about morality.

I was glad to see the creationist guy next to Dawkins squirm. He basically refused to answer most questions. In one case he even claimed that it was not right to ask him the very questions he was there to answer. And why? Because he does not do that to other people, that is, he does not go up to another politician, pull a bible out of his pocket and start lecturing. Yet he thinks it's perfectly okay to run a school (Waverly, I think) that injects god and biblical creationism into children's brains. I guess it's just not okay to ask questions about religion in public forums because religion is personal and private. Hogwash.

Posted by: Carlie | March 8, 2010 7:23 PM

I've read way, way, way too few Terry Pratchett books. I'll try to go to bed soon so I can cry myself to sleep.

Thief of Time was the first Discworld book I read, and it's still my favorite.

Oh, that's the least of it.[...] Dodged a faux pas there.

*boggles*

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | March 8, 2010 7:25 PM

Links in #168 are dead.
geographically correlated = www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.0010070

lactose intolerance = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance

sickle-cell resistance to malaria = http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1683923/pdf/ajhg00144-0083.pdf

Posted by: Ol'Greg | March 8, 2010 7:29 PM

If you can't give me a little benefit of the doubt, and ask nicely what I do actually mean before labeling it sexist bullshit, you can just fuck off.

By the way... If I can't "ask you nicely" what you mean?

I called an argument idiotic and you called me an idiot, but you deserve to be *asked nicely* for all the ways you're really right and I'm just to dumb to see it through your long winded crap laden diatribe?

Whatever.

Go to the intersection if you want your ass kissed. I'm not the only one who takes issue with your argument.

Posted by: Walton, Janine's Hero | March 8, 2010 7:32 PM

I like you too, Walton, independently of how pissed I am about the Iain Dale nonsense.

Meh. I've just been out to dinner with some friends, am mildly drunk and am now listening to Pachelbel's Canon, so I feel like being a little more candid than usual.

My best justification for supporting the Conservatives is that the UK has essentially a two-party political system - that is to say, only two parties have any prospect of forming a majority government. (The Lib Dems might hope, at best, to be the minority party in a coalition.) For the reasons I have repeatedly outlined, the New Labour government is authoritarian, incompetent and thoroughly discredited. The only other party with a prospect of forming a majority government is the Conservatives. The Conservatives are less authoritarian, and, on balance, probably less incompetent.

I will, however, certainly cease to support the Conservatives if the next Conservative government repeals the Human Rights Act and replaces it with some toothless alternative.

Posted by: Walton, Janine's Hero | March 8, 2010 7:35 PM

An amusing take on gender stereotypes in advertising.

I pledge to post at least one Mitchell and Webb video a day from now on, and spend less time blithering aimlessly about my rapidly-mutating political views. :-)

Posted by: Caine, Fleur du mal | March 8, 2010 7:40 PM

Carlie @ 169:

Thief of Time was the first Discworld book I read, and it's still my favorite

Reaper Man is my absolute favourite. I like so many of them though, lots of favourite characters. Death, Vetinari, Angua, Sam Vimes...and on and on and on. On various forums, my sig line is from Reaper Man: "OH. DRAMA." - Death

Posted by: Cowcakes | March 8, 2010 7:41 PM

Has anyone seen this yet about the reigning Queen of hypocrisy http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/08/palin-crossed-border-for_n_490080.html

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | March 8, 2010 7:46 PM

I feel like being a little more candid than usual.

Jesus. Just how candid are we aiming for?

Posted by: foxfire | March 8, 2010 7:48 PM

Happy Birthday *tomorrow* PZ!

I turned 59 in February, you hot, young snapperwhipper....snipperwhapper....uh....whatever (I forget).

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | March 8, 2010 7:49 PM

Antiochus Epiphanes,

The objection that SC has to the arguments being made wrt human biological diversity is that race is not the way to describe it. I said before that the term race has a specific meaning in biology, sub-species. Human genetic diversity isn't great enough to warrant the use of the term race.

No one is arguing that people do not vary. That would be patently false. The argument is that race is a poor explanatory tool for the pattern of human genetic diversity. Here Relethford relates human genetic diversity to an isolation by distance model. That is, human populations that are most genetically distant are also the most geographically distant. The patterning of genetic difference is gradual though. For race to be a proper framework to discuss the pattern of human genetic variation, we would have to see clearly defined clusters of traits with rather sharp edges demarcating the "races." This simply isn't the situation.

Yes, the genetic differences follow geographic patterns, though often these patterns are conflicting (skin color clines and blood group clines are not the same), but that doesn't mean the pattern is racial in the biological sense of the word.

Posted by: SC OM | March 8, 2010 7:53 PM

Who the fuck is using 'race' as a predictor of [I assume you mean useful concept in understanding and describing] genetic variation here? Sven didn't. I didn't. Who did?

gxp (Sven's and your link), first sentence:

There has been surprisingly little outrage in the internets over Steve Hsu's argument that the concept of "race" has a biological basis.

It goes on, of course, to argue that it does.

Did you notice what the SSRC discussion was about? Did you notice that Sven argued that the critiques of Leroi, in a discussion explicitly about race, in which Leroi was explicitly promoting race, were unconvincing?

Why do you have such a hard-on for this particular result?

*eyeroll*

Does genetic variation have to fall into "race-like" groupings for it to be useful*?

How utterly confused you are.

See, this is where you're not understanding the discussion you're entering into, which has been, for a year or more, about race.

If one can guess something about a persons geographical ancestry with accuracy that is better than random,

There was a test of this.

If a scientist should find that neutral markers indicate 6 main human population clusters that are geographically correlated,

Watch the fucking video.

Or what if its phenotypic-geographic correlation such as lactose intolerance, or that sickle cell resistance to malaria evolved independently in Asia and Africa? What if someone identified genes responsible for differences in melanin deposition across a latitudinal gradient? Does that somehow support racism?

How do you possibly not see the relevance of Morning here?

From your post above (#55) I get the impression that you either believe that a cabal of human geneticists is expressly intent on promoting a racist ideology by selectively reporting findings of human genetic differences, or that they are unwittingly providing fuel for those intent on the same nefarious goal. I don’t think either is true. If I am wrong, I am naïve. If this is what you actually think (and I admit that I am having a tough time parsing your thinking), and you are wrong, you are a kook.

Look, it is very clear what people like Leroi and Razib (and Sven, though I can't say how strongly at this point) are arguing about race, from their own writings. Either you agree with them about race, in which case I'm asking that you put forth the concept of race that is scientifically valid and useful, or you don't, in which case you agree with me.

Do you honestly think that "race science" is somehow outside politics? You're the kook.

As Morning says:

Dr. Leroi suggests that race is “merely a shorthand that enables us to speak sensibly, though with no great precision, about genetic rather than cultural or political differences.” This is astonishing for someone who, according to armandleroi.com, grew up partly in South Africa and did graduate work in the United States. Since its emergence in the imperial age of the 16th and 17th centuries, race has been first and foremost a way of talking about political, social, and economic differences, rights, and membership. Race differences distinguished the citizen from the alien, the slave from the free, the property owner from the owned. Today, race is hardly the stuff of dispassionate technical jargon. Race is a daily newspaper topic not because of DNA configurations but because of social configurations. Enduring beliefs in the characteristics of different races make race a way for us to talk about crime and innocence, worth and worthlessness, the monied and the disadvantaged.

Even to scientists, race has clearly meant more than just biology. In his early human taxonomy, Linnaeus described Homo sapiens Afer (African Homo sapiens) as “crafty, indolent, negligent; anoints himself with grease; governed by caprice,” and Homo sapiens Europeaeus as “gentle, acute, inventive; …governed by laws”; race was a guide not just to physical difference but to the valuation of temperament, ability, and behavior. Moreover, social and biological scientists have long been active participants in the development of race-related public policies. Their evidence of black inferiority helped justify slavery in the face of abolitionist protest; their conclusion that the unfit American Indian race was doomed to perish in the presence of the superior white race made the results of a concerted public campaign of extermination seem like a “natural” Darwinian outcome; and their early-20th-century discoveries of important differences between the crania of native and immigrant groups fueled the eventual shutdown of immigration from eastern and southern Europe. From these examples, it seems clear that the cultural context of the time had a hand not just in the research results that scientists obtained, but even in the questions they asked in the first place. In the same way, we have to ask how the contemporary debate on the nature of race relates to the cultural outlook and the policy dilemmas of our times.

Posted by: Caine, Fleur du mal | March 8, 2010 7:56 PM

Louis @ 184:

Nightwatch is Terry's finest. Anyone who says different should be shot. Hard. Until it hurts.

Schism?

No schism here. Reaper Man is still my favourite, then Hogfather, then Nightwatch, then Witches Abroad, then Feet of Clay. And on it goes. :D

Nightwatch is a great piece of work though, I've read it more than once.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | March 8, 2010 8:02 PM

Looking at the picture in #155 I can tell that boat is sponsored by a magazine because of the boat's name. Sailors like to name their boats. Sometimes the names are really clever like "DILLIGAFF" (Do I Look Like I Give a Flying Fuck) and "Runs With Scissors". But more often the names are really stupid: "Breaking Wind", "Bow Movement", "Dixie Normous" (they wish), "Ahoy Vey" or "Aquaholic". I used to race against an E-Scow with "HELP!" painted upside down on the transom.

The boats I've owned have had names like "Vintage" (this was a 60 year old wooden boat), "Xenophon" (my E-Scow back in the 1960s) and "Moondance". Sorry, I have no imagination.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 8, 2010 8:11 PM

That's something we need to change - and I'd like to think the GAC is a place where the seeds of such change can be planted. Australian atheists need to be shown exactly how much Jesus-freaks are determining public policy; if they become aware of it maybe they'll do more about it.

I think you hit it spot on there.

and, as a head's up, Brian Tamaki and half the Destiny Church appear to be headed your way:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/religion-and-beliefs/news/article.cfm?c_id=301&objectid;=10629377

stomp them out before they get too much of a foothold!

Posted by: SC OM | March 8, 2010 8:16 PM

That's one of the things that makes Daniel Dennett a great speaker against woo - he's so pleasantly avuncular and gentle that it's almost impossible to play the disrespect card against him.

Same was true of Kropotkin in his later years. Someone should graph "looking like Santa" with "how radical you can be and not be hated/killed" (I'm sure there's an equivalent for women - maybe substitute Sastra for Santa :)).

Wowbagger, is it OK if I ask you a question about an earlier comment you made? I've been curious about it, but if you're not in the mood I can leave it alone.

Posted by: Bobber | March 8, 2010 8:21 PM

Not that I'm suggestion Dawkins should change his style, mind you - he certainly gets the job done, at least in the mind of any intelligent audience.

Of course, Dawkins was perfectly respectful - but his incredulity regarding the particulars of religious belief is something he simply cannot hide, and those others on the stage just don't like it. No one likes to be told, even politely, that they believe impossible (or even horrible) things; but Dawkins (and others) need to keep it up.

And what was really good was when Dawkins - the 'miserable atheist with nothing to live for' as the woo-soaked like to paint us as - pointed out that our world is a great place; why do we need a heaven as the carrot on a stick? Why not enjoy life now?

Exactly. Don't we get tired of people thinking that atheism destroys appreciation of beauty, or wonder of the universe? And I have pointed out to people, on the contrary, the universe is all the more wondrous to me for having not been created by a supposedly all-powerful entity. Believing in supernatural explanations removes all mystery, because you stop asking why and how. Reality is so much more fascinating.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 8, 2010 8:21 PM

It is with trepidation that I return to the Thread here…I did a stupid burnout troll-thing, like an idiot, in a shit mood, and now it’s been a long time and it’s clear just from peeking that of course there is shit to be read. And I can’t commit to a lot of time, and I am completely uninterested in arguing and so of course that means I should have just shut up in the first place, I know that. So but here and now, even though I acknowledge writing the check, I am afraid that I may not cash it.

OK so looking only now at SC’s Ep36#628, which was in response to my dumbshit #583.

"race" has a meaning and "genetic variation" has a meaning and they're not the same.

sez you. The truth is that the term has been used with many different meanings in different contexts by different people talking about different concepts altogether. One example: the title page of Darwin’s Origin. Another: those guys over at Gene Expression; they are not using the word to mean what you insist it must mean. OK? They’re really not. (I am not certain, actually, exactly how they are using it, but that’s tangential. Because I’m trying not to use it.) A third: Pygmy Loris (PL, 'race' and 'subspecies' have not always been synonymous in various subfields of zoology). This is precisely why I have already said explicitly that I am not defending a typological ‘race’ concept, and in fact I don’t even have to use the term ‘race’ in any sense to talk about what I am, or was, trying to talk about--which is in fact genetic variation (which term also has several slightly different possible technical meanings).

Anyway, what conception are you defending? How many races are there? How are they defined?

Not only did I already say explicitly that I was “not defending” a concept, but the specific type of concept that I explicitly said I was “not defending” was “typological”.

they were based on easily visible phenotypic traits that were geographically clustered

Which traits? Why those?

You know. Easily visible traits. Why? Because they are easily visible. Seriously. And also geographically clustered. I was not attempting to categorize people with any formal and, y’know, typological lists of features. I was talking about my brain’s face-recognition center’s ability to recognize similarities and differences that correlate with geographic ancestry—you’re not arguing with that, right? I mean, you're kidding about the PBS 'quiz', right?—and then I was speculating about the genetic patterns that must-must-underlie those easily visible and apparently geographically clustered phenotypic patterns, and then I was sort of wondering aloud—because I honestly don’t know much about it—how much geographic structure there really is to human genetic variability. And I kind of looked into a little bit and found some information.

And I was kind of a dick about it, and snarked an extra snark or two that I didn’t have to, as for example at the SSRC and so I apologize for that.

[3-screen quote] What is your response to this?

tl;dr

no, just kidding. I just gave my response. All that is irrelevant to what I was talking about.
That said, I did read it and I thought it was very well written and made a lot of sense.

This is not a meaningful engagement with those articles.

I didn’t say I engaged with those articles meaningfully. I think I said I read some of them. I gave my reaction. I was looking for information on a specific topic (not social-construction theory) and found some (Graves) and also some contradictory assertion-fests (Leroi, Lewontin, Marks) and then some rhetoric and some of that north-campus discourse of the kind that’s just not my cup o meat.

These ad homs aren't helping your case.

No, no, those weren’t arguments, therefore not
ad-homs, and they weren't intended to make a case—I just thought they were funny. But yeah, again, I’m sorry about the attitude.

So I can see that there’s a lot more to go and a lot of it looks like more talking-past so I’m going to stop responding and just read the rest of the Thread…

OK, acknowledging stuff from windy and PL and AE, thanks…AE is grokking me @#676; no halibut-beating necessary. PL nobody is arguing with the concept of socially constructed ‘races’.

gah but it’s hard not to start responding here. SC, I find you most frustrating at times.

*subThread turnover*

[much skipped, some dramatic]

(skin color clines and blood group clines are not the same)

I swear my eyeballs are aching from rolling so hard. It’s freaking 1972 over here.

OK, caught up. Caught up and walking away, from this discussion and from the topic in general from here on out. It’s some kind of CP Snow and/or bizarro Baby-Bear-level failure-to-communicate zone and I’m not playing any more. I'm going to edit this, post and be done, and happy last words to all.

Yes! I am flouncing! From teh fucking Thread! Watch me flounce!

Posted by: Paul W., OM | March 8, 2010 8:26 PM

Ol' Greg:

I called an argument idiotic and you called me an idiot,

Yeah, I believe I did that, and I apologize for that escalation.

but you deserve to be *asked nicely* for all the ways you're really right and I'm just to dumb to see it through your long winded crap laden diatribe?

All I meant by "ask nicely" is that you apply the "principle of charity"---if there are multiple ways of interpreting something, don't guess that the stupidest and morally worst one is the one that's meant.

But if you're going to dismiss what I write as not just long-winded---which I'll cop to---but crap laden, without asking for clarifications to see if it really is that crappy, well, there's not much I can do about that.

I think it's a complicated subject, with several novel distinctions worth making, and I don't know how to do that briefly and punchily, without greatly increasing the chance of being misunderstood. (And vilified.)

If you think my writing is long-winded and crap-laden, suitable for quick and easy dismissal as sexist bullshit, I can only say that I'm trying to do what I just got a Molly for, which some people think is a bit better than that.

I may be failing, this time, but I'm honestly trying. And I may in fact be a sexist asshole in the final analysis, but I try not to be, and I honestly don't see how yet. You're not going to be able to raise my consciousness by jumping on me the way you have.

Posted by: Paul W., OM | March 8, 2010 8:31 PM

Carlie:

Paul W, have you considered moving? ;p

Oh, I've tried. The events I described happened in four different areas of three different cities.

I'm starting to get hinky.

Posted by: Kel, OM | March 8, 2010 8:33 PM

and, as a head's up, Brian Tamaki and half the Destiny Church appear to be headed your way

Posted by: Xplodyncow | March 8, 2010 8:35 PM

On a plane for 19 hours? What the hell am I going to do without new content on Pharyngula for a whole 19 hours?

Posted by: Xenithrys | March 8, 2010 8:45 PM

And more New Zealand surprises here:

http://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/newsdetail1.asp?storyID=172122

For background, see e.g., http://www.nzherald.co.nz/science/news/article.cfm?c_id=82&objectid;=10616394&pnum;=2

Posted by: Ol'Greg | March 8, 2010 8:52 PM

I may be failing, this time, but I'm honestly trying. And I may in fact be a sexist asshole in the final analysis, but I try not to be, and I honestly don't see how yet. You're not going to be able to raise my consciousness by jumping on me the way you have.

I have no interest in labeling you as a sexist asshole as the whole of your identity.

Originally I only had a problem with the logic and content of the things you said which I quoted

When I said I think both of these statements are sexist I meant I agree with you that both statements are sexist by the way. However I had problems with other things you said. For instance your dismissal of women entirely as if males are the standard sexuality and women can be better understood if they are removed from the equation entirely.

Try to distinguish between "I believe that argument to be sexist" and "you are a worthless sexist pig" because they are light years apart.

Lastly, when you quote some one and then place a long block of text which goes off into a territory that person never said it.

Lets go over some things. Back to one of the quotes I harped on originally.

"And they don't want to deal with a lot of women's hangups about sex and particular sex acts."

What are these hang ups anyway?

In this kind of conversation, it seems that many people think it is legitimate to blame the problem on men, who are lazy selfish horndogs, and say they "should" be more like women.

See, no one is saying this. When you quote some one and then put something like this beneath it it is a bit shady to back up and say... well *some* people do.

It would be as if I quoted Sven from above and then went on a rampage about eugenics. It's not what he said, but *some people* have said it. All right, so why bring it up beneath some ones quote with nothing else that addresses that quote in that space unless you are implying that person *is* saying that. Shady shady shady, molly or no.

I'm particularly disturbed by this "be more like women" statement.

Tell me sir, what are women like?

Posted by: windy | March 8, 2010 8:52 PM

How does that contradict anything I said? Biology may have abandoned the use of the term (and category of) race, but that doesn't mean it's any more useful to use the term for human variation.

You said that there's a scientific definition of race and humans don't conform to that definition. This contradicts the statement that there is no accepted scientific definition of race and that's why it's useless for humans as well. Both arguments are OK but they can't both be true at the same time.

Posted by: WowbaggerOM | March 8, 2010 8:59 PM

SC,

You're obviously in the middle of discussing something else but I did respond (at #204) - with a 'yes, feel free'.

Posted by: otrame | March 8, 2010 9:02 PM

I thought Nightwatch was his finest until Thud. Thud made me cry. Literally. More than once.

It also made me laugh my ass off. Not an easy task, given the size of my ass.

Oh, and for those who wonder: The reason Ronnie Soak has so much cold to deal with can be better understood if you consider that he was once one of the five horsemen of the apocalypse (yeah, there used to be five, but there were creative differences...). That's right. Death, War, Famine, Pestilence, and Soak (which is his real name backwards).

For those who think they have no time to read these books, consider that there are excellent audio books which can be listened to while stuck in traffic.

Posted by: cicely | March 8, 2010 9:10 PM

David Marjanović:

David, don't cry, just read more Discworld books. :)

But wheeeeeeen...

I already can't keep up! I'm only in the first quarter of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology from December, even though I (obviously) only read the interesting parts! The January issue has come out, and the March one will soon!

(This is the first year with 6 instead of 4 issues per year. The thickness of each issue didn't change.)

Well, then, it looks like you're going to just have to get your priorities in order, aren't you! ;D

--

Paul W., don't take this the wrong way, but...please don't move into my neighborhood. You seem to attract scarey acquaintances, and the local nut-jobs are quite enough for me, thanks!

--

I'd be hard put to it to pick a favorite Discworld book, but my favorite character is Lord Vetinari. He is definitely The Man*. Tassssty brainssss....

*And he has The Vote.

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/eJREANl71tBZaeOyZkJr9VcGGg4h#2f844 | March 8, 2010 9:14 PM

To answer a question from the last threadination: The slides the Lord of the Pies showed me were, IIRC, mostly of wild places in California. I hadn't seen any yet, really, not even what you can see from I-80, because I came in at night.

What really turned me on, though, was the way he handled his cat. She was a sarcastic bitch, too; we had a lot in common. Long gone, of course, and I still miss her. She was a tuxedo-tortie named Bernadette Devlin.

OK, I'll give some auntie-ish advice to the guys here who are talking about Not Getting Any.

First, seriously, stop talking about fucking as something you "get," and lose the economic model. See if you can't quit thinking that way. It's an interesting exercise and you'll avoid stepping on some corns.

Second: Get good at it. You don't start with practice practice practice unless you know someone else who wants to do the same and you're both (all) outspoken enough to say what's working and what isn't even before you figure out why. I'm trying to think about whom to suggest and coming up empty, but I bet others could suggest some writers, books, video producers. Come on, we're all geeks here; we all know to read up on a subject.

There is such a thing as a good reputation, and it has nothing to do with keeping purity on your balls. Or whatever that was about.

Ya know, I really don't know whether it's harder to get laid now that it was in the early '70s. Sex has been getting more pornified, I think, and that edges it toward performance. Speaking of words that don't help matters. Skill is not the same as stage- acting.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 8, 2010 9:23 PM

And today we've got the comfortites on campus handing out the origin of species by Ray Comfort & Charles Darwin.

was that at Vic?

I had no idea those guys actually made it down here!

Posted by: badgersdaughter | March 8, 2010 9:25 PM

#223, I respectfully submit that learning to be a good lover is a little like engineering, or the study of music composition. You combine one part imagination, one part trying and failing, one part building on the knowledge of others who are successful and who do things you like, and one part building on things you find out by yourself.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | March 8, 2010 9:42 PM

Since David has been neglecting his duty of linking to teeth-related articles, I'll have to do it myself: pig lobotomizes self with tooth

Posted by: SC OM | March 8, 2010 10:03 PM

AE, I appreciate that you acknowledge and appreciate the clarification.

2. The use of the word "race" here may be biologically inappropriate

Yes.

but clearly doesn't refer to any social construct.

That's what they're trying to refer to. Quite explicitly.

Regarding the test: It's not really a test...its a demonstration that racial preconceptions are often wrong.

Showing that the idea that "races" are easily visually identifiable is silly and wrong. Sven's claim told you what about race, exactly?

Posted by: SC OM | March 8, 2010 10:18 PM

Showing that the idea that "races" are easily visually identifiable is silly and wrong.

To be clear: not that visible traits, even if they were identifiable, would provide the basis for biological "races."

Posted by: SC OM | March 8, 2010 11:05 PM

Yes and no. I knew she didn't miss me (the person) because all she needed to do to spend time with me is reach out and make contact; I'd made that clear after our falling out. But that was at least something - or, in fact, two things: a) that I was an writer of emails interesting enough to be worth missing and b) that by denying her this I was gaining some small (and very petty; I don't deny it) revenge.

Hm.

Not really. She wasn't much of a writer.

Ah. OK.

The ratio of my words to hers was probably 10:1 - but I love writing while she doesn't so the comparison shouldn't be that shocking. I just missed her, because we used to do stuff together before it became almost entirely limited to writing.

Oh, I hadn't realized that this was the sequence of events.

Hmm, I'm not sure what you're getting at. If you mean 'was I using my writing to woo her' then yes, that would be true - does that count as 'using writing to advance other aims'? But I can say straight out that the content certainly wasn't of the wooing kind - I don't go in for rapturous flattery - but was much along the lines of what I write here, i.e. snarky social commentary. Oh, and a lot about films and music, since that was something we had in common.

So, a very oblique kind of wooing. But yes, wooing nonetheless.

I think I may be trying to draw boundaries where there aren't any. I mean, how do you distinguish between "hee," "check this out," "here's this amusing story," "look at this turn of phrase" as wooing, showing off, sheer pleasure, sharing knowledge, play,...?

Well, I don't know if I've come up with very good answers; maybe I'll just explain it from my perspective.

I like writing, and from all accounts I'm quite good at it. I used to think that it might be a way to help me in forming a relationship with women I'm attracted to, but the episode we're discussing - plus several others - made me realise that it didn't work and I was left with women I really liked who'd be reluctant to be anywhere near me in person but who eagerly awaited my emails.

I think those women were just not the right ones for you.

Now, when (or, more accurately, if) I meet someone I'm attracted to, I won't be doing any cyber-wooing. Apparently, there's just too much of a fundamental disconnect between Wowbagger's words and Wowbagger -

Oh, no! Your writing is wonderful. You just need to find the right person! The woman for you will love your words, and your joy in words. (And will probably write, though maybe not.)

This has nothing to do with anything (and I'm a hypocrite because I'm a terrible correspondent even with those I love), but I await emails anxiously. Opening them is a little thrill. If someone's a writer,...well... I don't speak for womankind, but I highly recommend cyber-wooing.

And I'm sorry your relationship didn't work out.

:(

Posted by: https://me.yahoo.com/a/eJREANl71tBZaeOyZkJr9VcGGg4h#2f844 | March 8, 2010 11:18 PM

badgersdaughter: #223, I respectfully submit that learning to be a good lover is a little like engineering, or the study of music composition. You combine one part imagination, one part trying and failing, one part building on the knowledge of others who are successful and who do things you like, and one part building on things you find out by yourself.

Absolutely. What I'm saying it that it's good—considerate!—to start with the most of all those as you can, and if that's to be had from print or pixels, that's where to start.

And for the Meeting Her part, well, guys, how do you meet friends in general? Aren't any of them female?

That said, Wowbagger, I feel for you. I myself, happily shacked up for over 36 years now etc. etc., have long periods when I really really don't want to interact with people other than LotP. It gets in the way of work because we do phone and face-to-face interviews and pretty much have to show up at certain public events. It extends even to email. I know there are people who feel I'm shunning them, and I don't want that; they don't deserve it and I know getting that from friends is painful.

FWIW, the couple times I've met anyone via Pharyngula have been pretty damned relaxing.

Even though last time PZ was in town I didn't manage to shove through the admiring crowd to say Hi. I was kinda worn out physically at that point, which has a strong and nasty effect on my social muscles.

I did get to eat pizza with the young 'uns and act the Elder and kwok on about having gone to highschool with Behe and having his photo in one of my yearbooks.

Picked out in cuneiform, of course.

Posted by: MrFire | March 8, 2010 11:23 PM

SC, I appreciate that you are spending a good deal of time writing serious, thoughtful, and lucid comments, and I am learning a great deal from reading those conversations. However, I wanted to point out that cicely @18 left you some low-hanging fruit:

We bailed out

You may possess sufficient self-respect to refrain from beating that dead horse, but I do not.

Posted by: SC OM | March 8, 2010 11:30 PM

Err...I'm giving way here a little.

w00t!

I don't know if it is explicit, but a fourth and fifth reading (especially of the awfully written [the whole thing is awfully written; this is because it's garbage] endnote) leaves me in doubt.

Do you think Razib and friends are promoting a "classical," "traditional" concept of race, or not? If not, what is the concept of race they're talking about, how is it defined, and how is it scientifically valid and useful?

A note on race being a societal construct. To some extent, of course it is--some people that would be called "black" in the US might not be called "black" in France, for example (and not because of the language difference, for all you smartasses. The word "black" in French specifically refers to racial classification). I have enough faith in human intelligence to think that the first person who called race a societal construct did not mean that it had no biological component as well--note that the Wikipedia entry on adolesence refers to it as a "cultural and social phenomenon" but also "the transitional stage of human development in which a juvenile matures into an adult". [Stupid.] People seem to somehow be able to keep the cultural and biological aspects of adolescence in their heads at the same time, as I imagine the first sociologists to study race were able to do (I may, of course, be wrong), yet somehow the fact that biological differences are interpreted through a cultural lens has somehow morphed into the idea that the biological differences don't exist to begin with (see, e.g. the ASA statement on race). Weird.

Blah blah blah. No one has argued that biological differences don't exist. This is a ridiculous strawman. Ask them to define race and defend their concept's scientific validity and usefulness.

Also, I saw the last 15 minutes of the video you posted (spent 3 hours lecturing today and another three reading papers while pretending to proctor an exam), and read the Bolnick chapter Individual ancestry inference and the reification of race as a biological phenomenon (available on Google Books) that criticizes Rosenberg et al. (2002). I haven't used STRUCTURE in the past, but this weird prior choice regarding the number of populations in which to bin individuals (K) seems suspect to me. I had always assumed that this was parameterized like any other distribution to be estimated in a Bayesian analysis. Will read more about this.

OK.

But don't you think that phenotypic traits can improve the probability of guessing right...not race (social construct) but geographical origin (biological concept related to clines, etc.?)

What concept?

Thoughts on this: a) A few weeks ago, I picked up a visiting scholar from the airport. I know that he is from New Delhi, but I hadn't seen a picture of him. I got stuck in traffic, ran late, and arranged by phone to meet him in an airport Starbucks. There were seven-ten people there when I arrived, and only one looked like an Indian man. I walked up and introduced myself...right guy.

b) People complain constantly about depictions of Jesus as a blond-haired blue-eyed man. Its not impossible that a man living in Galilee at the time would have had these traits. It is just unlikely.

c) I work with one undergraduate researcher who self-identifies as African American. I have another who self identifies as Philippino. Neither fact would come as a surprise to anyone.

d) My wife is Sicilian, with very dark eyes and hair, and olive skin. Everyone gets her wrong, but not randomly. Mexicans identify her as Mexican (and will speak to her in Spanish, ignoring my blue-eyed pale ass entirely). Indian students think she's Indian. Middle-Eastern students think that she's Middle Eastern. No one has ever presumed that she was from Northern Europe.

?

For the PBS test to be a fair test of geographical recognition,

Which would be evidence of what, exactly?

1) the pictures would have to be larger, 2) the categories would have to be geographical (Latino/Hispanic? Jesus...the US Census doesn't even recognize that as a racial category), 3) the photos should be chosen randomly from a large diverse pool, and 4) one wouldn't have to do well...just significantly better than random.

This would demonstrate what? Someone's personal "observations" about distinctions are worth what, exactly?

Posted by: MrFire | March 8, 2010 11:40 PM

Evolution in action!

GOATS ON FIRE
|
|
CARS ON FIRE
|
|
EXPLODING SHEEP

Posted by: WowbaggerOM | March 8, 2010 11:50 PM

SC,

If it were just the one time then I'd chalk it up to 'statistically insignificant aberration', but - as noted - it's not the only time it's happened. For whatever reason I, in person, don't seem to be able to live up to my words on paper (or a screen); I suspect it's because people value boldness and I'm a lot bolder with my words than I am with my actions - depending on how I'm feeling at the GAC I could be an enthusiastic babbler - or I could be sheltering amongst the wallflowers and saying very little at all.

But my antisocial tendencies stem mostly from the belief that, most of the time, I'm not facing an audience likely to be appreciative of me. It's certainly not from shyness; after all, I'm a stage actor who over the last 7 years has performed in front of hundreds at a time on numerous occasions.

So, the way I'm looking at it at the moment is an opportunity to go amongst a bunch of people who don't know 'meatspace me' - and who, by virtue of the fact they're at the GAC, aren't going to be put-off by outspokenness or snarkiness - hopefully, quite the opposite.

My kind of people, I guess. I can actually be like I am here, which is closer to the 'real' me than most people I interact with in person.

SC wrote:

Oh, no! Your writing is wonderful.

Thanks. It's nice to hear that :)

Kel wrote:

Never forget the words of Homer Simpson: "To alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."

Oh, that's an integral part of my plan. I don't drink very often so my tolerance is low; it'll happen quickly enough...

Posted by: SC OM | March 8, 2010 11:52 PM

...and kwok on...

Yes, this needs to be a verb. I support the initiative.

Posted by: WowbaggerOM | March 9, 2010 12:06 AM

badgersdaughter wrote:

That said, I think there's a little of the Roxane in most women, responsive to being swept off their feet by someone who, by demonstrating brilliance in thought and pen, hints at brilliance in other... aspects of the relationship.

Therein lies the problem. I know how to write - other aspects, not so much. Which is fine if you're nineteen; not so great if you're...older than that.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 9, 2010 12:24 AM

Yep. But they're all over apparently.

hmm, I wish I had caught that earlier. been looking to grab a copy of that.

probably could contact the "ministry" directly; they might still have copies.

Are you going to see Dawkins speak in CC or Welly this month?

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 9, 2010 12:39 AM

here is Ray's "Ministry" in NZ:

http://www.livingwatersnz.co.nz/

I wrote them and asked for copies of Ray's "special" version of Origin.

since they supposedly have 10K copies, anyone in OZ or NZ who wanted one might try contacting them directly.

oh, and do check out the site...

it's rather obvious that Ray's "ministry" is more like a store for junk good sales

:P

but then, that's always been rather obvious about Ray; he's clearly been in it for the cash from the very start.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 9, 2010 12:47 AM

btw, not for nothing, this discussion of the definitions and usages of race, sociology vs biology, has been the best one I have seen here... ever.

Posted by: Josh, Official SpokesGay | March 9, 2010 12:50 AM

@Ichthyic:

not for nothing

Ah:) You have no idea how oddly comforting it is to see that phrase! It reminds me of the places I grew up (upstate New York, and the suburbs of New York City). Sounds like home to me. Where are you from, Ich?

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 9, 2010 12:51 AM

... well, next month, anyway. I'm currently still fighting some bizarre liver ailment that's laid me away for almost 2 months now.

:P

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 9, 2010 12:55 AM

Where are you from, Ich?

CA, but NY phraseology made its way westward as I was growing up :)

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 9, 2010 12:57 AM

Actually I live here, but need to be away on field work a bit this month, hence my comment.

ah!

just shoot me an email so we can keep in touch then:

fisheyephotosAThotmailDOTcom

Posted by: Rorschach | March 9, 2010 1:05 AM

SC "Larsen B" OM @ 250,

you had damned well better not let Wowbagger feel like a wallflower. I mean that. Be alert.

I think if he can manage to get you to be jovial, he will do just fine at the GAC...:-)

I've left a couple comments at the Age's comment section where Barney Zwartz has been spouting his usual prejudices once more, comparing the GAC with the PWR(parliament of world religions that was on here in December).
I wonder how many discussion panels at the PWR had the topic "Islam, Christianity, or Leprechaunism, which one is right?"

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | March 9, 2010 1:19 AM

To add to my post at #266, I don't agree with the entirety of Cavalli-Sforza et al, particularly their interpretations of the genetic maps in the monograph, but it is a very large global study, so it's easy to reference.

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | March 9, 2010 1:32 AM

So, I have seen several burning cars, but never actually been there when the fire started. Traffic does tend to back up for miles when a car catches on fire. Hell, I've seen traffic back up for miles because people are gazing at the remains of a burned up vehicle!

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 9, 2010 2:03 AM

Well, um not fer nuthin' but [chonks gum], at least you're not all like, dooood.

like, gnarly!

Posted by: Bride of Shrek OM | March 9, 2010 2:12 AM

Patricia, Most Awesome Slut Queen @ #268

Have no fear, Wowbagger is all set to get at least one message from a slut

..and I've been growing my fingernails, extra special long, just for that extra "oomph" factor.I was never one of those kids in the playground who teased other kids so in one mighty swoop I'm going to let loose 40 years of repressed bully factor on the poor Wowbagger.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 9, 2010 2:20 AM

..and I've been growing my fingernails, extra special long, just for that extra "oomph" factor

This is YOU?

grrrrowwwlll.

:)

Posted by: llewelly | March 9, 2010 2:25 AM

Josh, Official SpokesGay | March 9, 2010 12:50 AM:

@Ichthyic:

not for nothing

Ah:) You have no idea how oddly comforting it is to see that phrase! It reminds me of the places I grew up (upstate New York, and the suburbs of New York City). Sounds like home to me. Where are you from, Ich?

Posted by: Rorschach | March 9, 2010 2:31 AM

This is YOU?

How did you know???
I especially dream about the dangly bit, then the claws...:-)
Oh what a great "convention" we will have !!

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 9, 2010 2:42 AM

One great-grand parent who was Ashkenazi could have passed on the allele for Tay-Sachs to you.

right.

so what would you classify the term "ashkenazi" as?

Posted by: Bride of Shrek OM | March 9, 2010 2:49 AM

Ichthy

This is YOU?

..apart from the weird codpiece thingy and talons it kind of has a passing resemblance. My eyebrows aren't quite that spock-like though.

Posted by: Janine, Mistress Of Foul Mouth Abuse, OM | March 9, 2010 2:53 AM

I am grateful that I am not the only one who thought she was wearing a codpiece.

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | March 9, 2010 2:55 AM

so what would you classify the term "ashkenazi" as?

How many times do I have to repeat it, population! This is actually exactly how the Ashkenazi are discussed in papers about their genetic origins. Race is entirely inappropriate.

Seriously, what's the obsession with "If we can't use the term race, how do we discuss genetic differences in humans?" Race is no longer used in biology, but they talk about populations all the time. There's a whole field called population biology that covers this stuff.

Posted by: Gyeong Hwa Pak, Tai Dam lum Pun | March 9, 2010 2:59 AM

I am grateful that I am not the only one who thought she was wearing a codpiece.

What? Where? I don't see it? *squint eyes*

Posted by: Janine, Mistress Of Foul Mouth Abuse, OM | March 9, 2010 3:01 AM

That large dangling thing!

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | March 9, 2010 3:05 AM

GHP,

You should talk about the distribution of lactast retention (lactose tolerance). Approximately 75% of living humans are lactose intolerant. Lactose intolerance is the ancestral condition, but lactase retention is the derived (and interesting) condition. It's also only present in populations that both had access to dairy products and reasons to consume them. Interestingly, lactase retention exhibits a clinal distribution in Europe.

A quick primer on lactose intolerance.

The system that I've used for categorizing people is through ethno-lingual families.

Yep. Linguistic patterns often (but not always!) reflect the distribution of interbreeding human populations. It's easier to marry someone who speaks your language :)

Posted by: Gyeong Hwa Pak, Tai Dam lum Pun | March 9, 2010 3:16 AM

...I wonder if it would be worth discussing applying finer descriptive terminologies to animal populations as well?

And you've hit the spot. Very descriptive terminologies of human populations, through such means as ethno-lingual groups, is valuable in identifying different cultural patterns amongst people of the a large group. However, it's a charged issue with many anthropologist supporting it and opposing it. Some feels that it's dangerous in that mirrors some of the classification processes of scientific racism and colonialism, others fell such classification are appropriate to distinguish groups especially if one group does not agree with a seemingly related group. Not to mention the great deal of politics involved. Example: the classification of Khmer Surin, a distinct cultural group speaking a distinct dialect of Khmer, would be problematic because many Khmer living in Cambodia believes that they are cultural similar to Khmer in Cambodia wish to absorb them into mainstream Khmer culture. OTOH, some Thais believe that the fine and detail classification is appropriate because it would add to the uniqueness of the Khmer Surin. Under both argument lies a great deal of nationalism and racism. Sorry, for the anthropological rant, I'm just throwing things out there because I'm brainstorming for a paper. I'm not targeting you for anything here, Ichthyic.

Seriously, what's the obsession with "If we can't use the term race, how do we discuss genetic differences in humans?"

See the above rant.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 9, 2010 3:22 AM

I'm also working on coming up 2 months with no more than 3 or 4 hours of sleep on any given day.

my mind is working... slowly...

if you've ever been jaundiced for any reason, you well know the horrors of the infernal, endless, unceasing itching.

*scratch scratch scratch*

I'm going to take a break until tomorrow morning...

unless I can't sleep again, in which case I'll probably gibber something even less useful in a few hours.

*cries for lack of sleep*

Posted by: Rorschach | March 9, 2010 3:24 AM

Ichty,

why are you still itchy if plumbing has been fixed?? That shouldnt be the case.....

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 9, 2010 3:27 AM

why are you still itchy if plumbing has been fixed?? That shouldnt be the case.....

indeed.

*sigh*

the plumbing has been "fixed" not once, but twice, btw, and still....

next step: liver biopsy.

fun times.

Posted by: Thebear | March 9, 2010 3:32 AM

Just popping my head in to blow up a rabbit, pull a ballon out of my hat and say "Happy birthday PZ"

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | March 9, 2010 3:36 AM

it is now 2:36am CST.

Happy Birthday, PZ.

Posted by: Rorschach | March 9, 2010 3:40 AM

the plumbing has been "fixed" not once, but twice, btw, and still....

next step: liver biopsy.

I dont like the sound of that.Had a CT yet ? It's not hard to tell intra- from extrahepatic cholestasis based on blood tests, and unless you have hepatitis or something awful, this should have cleared by now.
Well, good luck man....

Posted by: Josh, Official SpokesGay | March 9, 2010 3:47 AM

I'm eating a cheeseburger. Just sayin'.

Posted by: Josh, Official SpokesGay | March 9, 2010 3:53 AM

. .you're a dirty sinner. Cheeseburgers are not kosher:)

Why, yes, I am. And, no, they're not! But they, and I, are delicious. I have serious doubts concerning whether you're ready for this jelly. And with that, it's time for SpokesGay to go "poof" into his crisp, luscious cotton sheets. Night-night!

Posted by: Gyeong Hwa Pak, Tai Dam lum Pun | March 9, 2010 3:56 AM

Which reminds me Pygmy Loris; never ever work on abdominal after drinking a glass of milk. Especially if you're intolerant to it. (Even slightly, as I am)

What's even more culturally adaptive is schizophrenia. We joke about schizo nowadays but there are still some cultures that regard people with it as being close to divine. Hell, I'm willing to bet that many saints and prophets had schizo. (Or were high as was with the case of pre-Incan societies.)

(sigh. I want to work on my essay, but I'm toggling between Pharyngula and. . . uh. . .never mind.)

Posted by: Leigh Williams, Queen of Cognitive Dissonance, OM | March 9, 2010 4:15 AM

Ichthyic, how awful. Cholestasis is horrible; I had it when I was pregnant with the twins. Had my gallbladder out three months after they were born, too. I had never been that miserable (and exhausted from sleeplessness) before. I do hope you can find out what's going on very soon.

I've scanned the thread so quickly I didn't notice if anyone answered this question, but that sorry sumbitch terrorist Joseph Stack burned down his house before he murdered Vernon Hunter by crashing his plane into the IRS building in Austin. Sheryl Stack, his wife, spoke at a benefit concert given for her on Sunday. She and her daughter (Stack's stepdaughter) lost everything in the fire.

I have to get some sleep; I'm driving to East Texas tomorrow in a car with a tire problem. I've SO enjoyed all the car fire stories tonight, especially the ones dealing with blowouts. ;(

Reminds me of my car in college, a Volkswagen with fuel injection that tended to blow sparkplugs out of its aluminum head, so that I went down the road trailing fire. Or at least I thought that would happen; it was so long ago I don't remember if it really did. It's a wonder I didn't crash into something since I always drove looking in the rearview mirrors. Good times.

Happy birthday, Tentacled Overlord. I hope you're walking around on the plane at least once an hour; at our advanced age, deep vein thrombosis is a real possibility. On that cheerful note, I bid you Many Happy Returns!

Posted by: Rorschach | March 9, 2010 4:19 AM

at our advanced age, deep vein thrombosis is a real possibility

Aspirine, and walking round the plane and doing calf muscle exercises, is your friend.

Posted by: Walton, Janine's Hero | March 9, 2010 4:24 AM

Re Discworld books, my favourites are probably Men-at-Arms, Feet of Clay, Going Postal and Making Money. Thud! was also very good, though a little bit darker and more complex.

Discworld has definitely got much, much better as time has gone on. The early ones (Colour of Magic, Equal Rites and so on) were much less sophisticated, and more focused on parodying fantasy genre tropes.

Posted by: llewelly | March 9, 2010 4:31 AM

hebear | March 9, 2010 3:32 AM:

Just popping my head in to blow up a rabbit ...

Posted by: Feynmaniac | March 9, 2010 4:54 AM

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PZ!

I hope those Australians get you some good gifts. However, I don't think anyone could top this present.

Posted by: scooterKPFT | March 9, 2010 5:37 AM

#327

Whyever did you massacre an innocent rabbit?

Aren't we supposed to start crucifying rabbits pretty soon ?

Posted by: WowbaggerOM | March 9, 2010 7:26 AM

..and I've been growing my fingernails, extra special long, just for that extra "oomph" factor.I was never one of those kids in the playground who teased other kids so in one mighty swoop I'm going to let loose 40 years of repressed bully factor on the poor Wowbagger.

Why is it when I get home from seeing a show (or shows in this case) and decide to check in rather than go straight to bed I always end up reading about one of the women doing awful things to me?

Gah. No wonder I'm single!

Posted by: Carlie | March 9, 2010 7:54 AM

Then a bunny will hop by and lay a few chocolate eggs in your basket.

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if it's oval, brown, and came out of a bunny's butt, it probably isn't a chocolate egg.

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | March 9, 2010 8:25 AM

Fuck me...human population genetics is fraught with peril--who would have guessed for such a lame species. Nonetheless, muchas gracias SC, Sven, Pygmy Loris and others for the enlightening* discussion.

*For me, anyway.

Posted by: Antiochus Epiphanes | March 9, 2010 8:27 AM

Oh...and happy birthmas, PZ.

Posted by: KOPD | March 9, 2010 9:06 AM

Anybody else watch the Daily Show last night. Jason Jones interviewed Dan Barker. I didn't see the whole thing, but it's hard watching them make fun of somebody you like.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 9, 2010 9:08 AM

and my resolve to stfu is sorely tested already

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | March 9, 2010 9:20 AM

Can we archive this entire thread for the next time somebody pulls the "Pharyngula commentators just agree with each other in lockstep" card?

The clearest sign that a commenter only reads the most obviously anti-religious / anti-woo threads and doesn't even bother with any others is when they make the "echo-chamber" claim. You will find hearty debate and disagreement between the regulars here in a thread at least weekly...

...or whenever Walton shows up.

*ducks*

Posted by: Carlie | March 9, 2010 9:44 AM

Now she tells me.

The fact that the bunnies themselves sometimes eat them does lead to confusion.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 9, 2010 9:50 AM

Anybody else watch the Daily Show last night. Jason Jones interviewed Dan Barker. I didn't see the whole thing, but it's hard watching them make fun of somebody you like.

Yeah I watched it. It was ok. They were totally making fun of him for going after a Mother Teressa stamp.

Never could really make a good case against her because of the taunting.

And this is the daily show.

Mildly funny.

Posted by: SC OM | March 9, 2010 10:19 AM

Hearing the audience giggle anytime he suggested she was less than perfect got a bit grating, too.

Yes. Yes, it did. I wish someone had referred to Hitchens' work on her.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | March 9, 2010 10:28 AM

This news is from a Catholic news outlet, so I guess not all Catholics are onboard when it comes to the new rapprochement with the LDS Church.

Glenn Beck said last week on his eponymous radio and television shows that Christians should leave churches that preach “social justice.” Mr. Beck equated the desire for a just society with—wait for it—Nazism and Communism.

I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes.

Posted by: Paul W., OM | March 9, 2010 10:56 AM

strange gods before me ?:

About the Pandagon article...

(for reference here's the link:
http://pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/well_then_maybe_it_isnt_so_cute/)

I haven't read the original Levitt and Dubner article, and I'm not defending that---it may be as bad as Amanda says.

There are some things Amanda says that I disagree with.

One is that she's apparently arguing---badly IMHO---that men's positive motivations in going to prostitutes is not just to alleviate a shortage of sex, from their point of view, but to get a woman to submit. She's arguing that it's about female submission.

I do think that's important for some men, who are straightforwardly misogynistic; they enjoy making a woman do something sexual that she doesn't want to do precisely she doesn't want to do it, rather than in spite of her not wanting to do it.

I suspect that most customers are not in fact motivated by that, and I'm pretty sure most are not least not mainly motivated by that. (I could be wrong.)

Amanda's arguments about men's motivations are, IMHO, invalid, and come to (AFAICT) false conclusions.

I'm not saying that actual prostitution isn't exploitative, or even that the customers are not mostly somewhat misogynistic in a weaker sense.

Some men know but don't care that they're exploiting women sexually. That is a kind of misogyny, but not the blatant kind that Amanda seems to want to attribute things to. They're not actively out to hurt women, but they're willing to exploit women selfishly.

That's very bad, but it's not all I took Amanda to be saying.

There are other men who pay for sex who do not realize how much the woman doesn't want to do it, and how desperate she likely must be to do it anyway.

That too, is bad, but not as personally, morally bad as knowingly exploiting a woman to the extent some men are willing to do, much less the blatant misogynists who do it because they enjoy that kind of misogynistic power/submission/degradation thing for its own sake.

I'm not saying those guys aren't all morally in the wrong. If they're ignorant of the realities, that may well be largely their own fault. They should be aware of patriarchy and misogyny, and not assume (like some simplistic libertarians) that anybody who voluntarily engages in a financial transaction is by definition not being exploited, given the way the world actually works.

---

Imagine somebody whose political/economic views are roughly similar to Walton's a year or two ago, but whose sexual views are more like mine, such that he'd consider going to a prostitute for sex, in principle.

That kind of person might think for ideological reasons that he's not hurting anybody by actually patronizing a prostitute---he's paying her, and it must be worth it to her, and he can't be in the wrong. That may in fact be reprehensible and sexist in a certain sense---it's morally negligent to be so oblivious to the realities, and use goofy ideology to justify behavior with bad consequences for others, even if you're entirely sincere.

That may have similar practical consequences to being an outright woman-hating john who enjoys demeaning women mostly for the sheer joy of it. It keeps the fucked-up system going, unchanged, and that's A Bad Thing.

I do know that, and it seems to me I have to spell that out, because some people don't seem to acknowledge the distinctions I'm making, and maybe assume that if I say johns are not mostly outright woman-haters, I'm justifying the whole system, as is, and letting johns off the hook for any moral culpability. I am not.

---

One thing I disagree with Amanda about is the significance of the anecdote about a woman who got more responses on to a personal ad when she said she was an "escort." That does not necessarily imply that men would prefer paid for sex to free sex, or any of the further conclusions she derives from that. It may only mean---and I suspect that it mostly does---that they figure that their chances of success are higher with a woman if it's a simple financial transaction than if it's a normal dating situation. That may be ultimately a bad thing in some sense, too, but not the simplistic sense of outright misogyny that Amanda seems to cast it as.

She casts it as wanting to pay for a "subservient sexbot," which in some sense maybe it is, but I don't think it's a fair way of putting it.

That's one reason I came up with the hairdresser analogy. Are hairdressers' clients just looking for "subservient hairdresserbots"? In some weak sense, I guess they are, but it's just not clear to me that's necessarily a bad thing, up to a point.

(Consider women who like to be pampered at spas, getting their hair done, getting a massage, etc., rather than developing friendships in which friends do that sort of thing for each other. Are they just looking to pay people to be their slaves? In a very weak sense, I might say yes. In a very bad sense? No, not usually---not unless they're real assholes to underpaid help who put up with being treated badly because they're economically desperate. I do think there is typically a degree of exploitation involved, because too much money is concentrated in the hands of too few people, who get to treat others like slaves to some extent. But in most cases, that's not the kind of thing you should simplistically describe in loaded terms about dominating hairdressers and masseurs and using them as subservient X-bots because you feel entitled to slaves who you're out to degrade for the sheer malicious joy of it. Maybe you just like the way a massage feels, and think it's reasonable to pay somebody to do it.)

My wife could have a friend do her hair, if she made it worthwhile for that friend to do it, and mabye picked her friends on that basis. And she would likely enjoy it, if the friend did. She likes being pampered. Her hair is easy to do, given the kind of hair she has and the way she does it, and she doesn't need a pro to do it. (It mostly consists of separating little bunches of hair into locks, then twisting pairs of locks together into braid-like things. No problem. Anybody could do it. Easy as pie, but tedious.)

But she is not willing to do what it takes for a friend in order to get a friend to do it. She's not going to take on the more difficult task of doing some other women's hair, or put a lot of effort into finding the right "compatible person" to have a mutually satisfactory relationship that involves doing each other's hair.

It's not worth the trouble to her, or arranging her life around to that extent. So she'll either hair-wank (do her own hair) or hire a hair whore (hairdresser) to do it for her for money.

And I think that's okay. It doesn't mean you should scorn her for being selfish and unwilling to treat other people as human in order to get them to want to cooperate with her and give her what she wants. That would be ridiculous.

That's the kind of thing some people have been saying about men who want more sex, but don't want it to be a great big deal, and especially men who would be willing to pay for it.

Maybe hairdressing is a bad analogy for prostitution, and I'm sure it is for many people. Many people have attitudes about sex---or hairdressing, in Ol' Greg's case!---that make it a qualitatively different kind of thing, and I'm not saying they shouldn't. (Although I would like them to think about it, and especially avoid projecting that qualitative distinction onto others who do not feel the same way about sex, or sometimes don't.)

If it's a bad analogy in a strong sense, so that nobody should see it as a reasonable transaction for some people to engage in, or even many people to engage in under some circumstances, it'd be good to make clear exactly why.

(I don't know if that's anybody here; most people speaking up do seem to acknowledge that prostitution is not intrinsically an evil thing, in principle, if the people engaged in it can see it as similar to the hairdressing thing, and are treated and paid appropriately. I did get that kind of message from Amanda's posting---she was directly attacking typical johns' motivations for paying for sex in way I thought was simplistic, invalid, and fairly condemnatory.)

I think that's worth making explicit, even if nobody here's disagreeing, for a couple of reasons. One is that many people in the larger world do see prostitution as a Bad Thing even under those circumstances, and that's one thing that's wrong with public discourse about it---the problems are often misdiagnosed. The other is that even for people who agree on that special case, it serves as a useful reference point for discussing what really is and isn't wrong with how prostitution actually works, and what should or shouldn't be done about it.

For example, if Amanda's right about men's horrible motivations for paying for sex, then making it legal (and safer, much less abusive, better paid, and less stigmatized) wouldn't make as much difference as I think it would, because that would take the fun out of it for typical johns.

They'd avoid legal prostitution, because they not only want dirt-cheap sex, they want to degrade and abuse women, and that wouldn't be allowed in legal brothels. There'd be a small market for legal prostitution, and still a big one for the fucked-up illegal kind we have now.

If she's right, that's very interesting and very important. I don't think she is right, at present; I'd need a much better argument to be convinced.

It'd be interesting to see some good statistics about the effects of legal prostitution on illegal prostitution. (Ideally statistics that could discriminate between illegal prostitution because it's cheap black-market sex vs. because it's degrading to women, and the johns want that.)

Posted by: Lynna, OM | March 9, 2010 11:00 AM

Gay folks sing in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. This story comes to us from a former security guard who worked in Temple Square.

In the mid-1980s there were a substantial number of men in the Mo Tab Choir who were Gay. One of my duties as guard of the West Gate was to let the choir members into the Snappertackle for rehearsals on Thursday nights. One of the men in particular started flirting with me outrageously. Since I was coming out at the time, I welcomed his flirting and shot some back at him. He let the other Gay men in the choir know that I was "family" (Gay-speak for "member of the Phi Alpha Gamma [FAG] fraternity") and they agreed to invite me to one of their after-hours "parties" (read orgies)!
     When W. invited me, I politely thanked him but declined - I was just a tender morsel of chicken (Gay-speak for a young gay man) and wasn't into boinking any chicken-hawks (older gay men) at the time. But I did find it hysterically funny and deliciously subversive that the Lard's Choir had quite the Lavendar Section (including 2 or 3 Lesbyterians).

The mormon tabernacle choir continues to be associated with the gay community. Though the LDS Church manages to hide the connection, gay mormons themselves take a more appreciative and ironic approach.

In the background, the music of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing the greatest hits of all-time musicals, provided the ideal scene for Gay Mormons to discuss current Mormon issues, being gay and LDS and the quite accepting attitude towards Gay Saints from the London members. In the spiritual part, we talked about the Word of Wisdom and its personal meaning to each individual.

Posted by: Ol'Greg | March 9, 2010 11:09 AM

That too, is bad, but not as personally, morally bad as knowingly exploiting a woman to the extent some men are willing to do, much less the blatant misogynists who do it because they enjoy that kind of misogynistic power/submission/degradation thing for its own sake.

Oh hey again. You see this is I think part of why we seem to have an impasse. I really don't subscribe so much to Kantian intent. The end means more to me than the means. Whether you intentionally participate or not it is still a contribution to the problem.

It really only matters a small bit to me that it was out of privileged ignorance than intent.

So yes, perhaps neglectful homicide is less bad than intentional murder, but in terms of affect on society I don't really think it is.

A habitual suspended-license-defying drunk driver that hits a pedestrian on accident is really no less a social danger to me than a person who willingly walks out looking for a victim to kill. Provided that they each only have one death attributed to them, but each have a high probability of repeating the behavior that cost a life... I don't see that much difference between them in terms of what threat they pose.

Lots of people are nice people but do terrible things.

Posted by: Paul W., OM | March 9, 2010 11:40 AM

whoever that is @ 223:

I'll give some auntie-ish advice to the guys here who are talking about Not Getting Any.

Am I among the people that's directed at? I've gotten several comments that seem to indicate that some people think I'm soliciting dating advice, can't get a date, can't get laid, don't know how to talk to women, don't know how to treat a woman as human, etc., and maybe even that I'm fishing for a sympathy fuck.

For the record, none of that is true. I do okay, and I think I understand a lot of things people assume I don't. I clean up pretty good, and can be a charming and nice guy and considerate guy in meatspace, and (I think) in bed.

(In case anybody was wondering don't pay for sex, either, BTW, for a number of reasons, not least among them being in a committed, monogamous relationship with a woman I love, who wouldn't like that, and serious moral concerns about whether it would be wrong, given the way prostitution actually works in the U.S., even if I was single. And of course the health risks, etc. are important, but those issues don't come up for me personally because of the prior reasons. I'm not just ignoring those things when I make different points.)

First, seriously, stop talking about fucking as something you "get," and lose the economic model. See if you can't quit thinking that way. It's an interesting exercise and you'll avoid stepping on some corns.

Sorry, no can do. It's just a fact that many people, both women and men, do wish they got more sex. Many also do wish they got more other relationship goodies, and I think it's good to be clear on when and why those things do go together, and why maybe they sometimes don't have to.

And there are economics-like issues that are important with regard to sex. (And many other aspects of relationships.)

There are supply/demand problems about what people want, and what they have to offer, and they're very important.

I think almost everybody realizes that in some respects---e.g., that there's a problem with so many preferring people who are "good looking," nice, interesting, charming, not fat, etc. than the available supply can satisfy. Not everybody is going to get what they want, and some people aren't going to come close.

I also think it's important to spell out the market-like issues, because they're real and important in understanding how problems actually arise. In particular, relatively small differences in supply and demand can have big effects.

Realizing that makes it easier to avoid simplistic, greedily reductionistic blaming, because you can see that fairly big problems can be due to comparatively small differences---e.g., in statistical distributions of attitudes among men and women. People can be mostly similar human-type people, and still the differences can have major effects. Market-like supply/demand situations often "blow things out of proportion," and it's important to know that even if the effects are real and problematic, it's not because the other people are so hugely different.

It's a real problem, and it's worth talking about here---but certainly, it's often the wrong thing to talk about on a date, or when fishing for a date. It's way too fraught.

One reason this is a good place to talk about such things, for many of us, is that we don't live anywhere near most of the people we're talking to, so we can talk about stuff we auntie might advise us not to if we were looking for dating advice.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | March 9, 2010 11:53 AM

BYU Management Society to award NOM [National Organization for Marriage] director Orson Scott Card

The Washington, D.C. Chapter of the BYU Management Society (BYUMS-DC) announced today that it would honor best-selling author and columnist Orson Scott Card at its annual Gala Dinner on April 24, 2010. Card will receive the chapter's Distinguished Public Service Award and will deliver keynote remarks about his views on ethical leadership today and his experiences as a prominent member of the literary and academic communities.
     "We are proud to be honoring Orson Scott Card during this year's Gala Dinner," said Sen. Gordon Smith, Chairman of the Advisory Board. "His words and his example have reached millions of people, and his spirit of mentorship and service have much to offer our community."

Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books...to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens. -- Orson Scott Card

How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn.
     Biological imperatives trump laws. American government cannot fight against marriage and hope to endure. If the Constitution is defined in such a way as to destroy the privileged position of marriage, it is that insane Constitution, not marriage, that will die. -- Orson Scott Card

"We’re extremely honored that Orson Scott Card has joined with NOM in our shared mission to protect marriage and the faith communities that sustain it," said Maggie Gallagher, president of NOM, "He is one of the great science fiction writers of our time and a real voice of courage and intellect on behalf of marriage." -- Margaret Srivastav

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 9, 2010 12:01 PM

Exotic Antimatter Detected at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

WE'RE

ALL

GONNA

DIE!!!!!!

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 9, 2010 12:12 PM

Question for clarification:
When Pygmy Loris (@#23) writes this:

Many cases that reach the point where forensic anthropologists are called in have very little identifying information with the remains. Individuation is the process of narrowing down the list of missing persons that the remains could be. In the USA, ancestry is important because we have a huge cross-section of human variation represented in our population. Being able to say this set of remains is an African-American female allows the forensic anthropologist to focus on traits that vary among missing African-American females, while ignoring males and females from other populations. Also, an accurate determination of ancestry allows for more accurate assessment of stature and, if necessary, more accurate tissue depths for facial reconstruction.

...is (s)he using typological categories of 'race' (under cover of 'ancestry' and one of two different usages of 'population'), or not; and if not, why not?

Assuming the answer is 'not', then why am I, in asking about exactly this kind of geographic-ancestry-informative genetic variation, repeatedly accused of defending typological 'race' concepts even while explicitly denying that I am doing so?

I would really like to know the answers to these questions even though I do not intend to participate further in discussion of the general topic.

Posted by: Sili | March 9, 2010 12:19 PM

I give up.

I've come up with two replies to two threads in five minutes. And both had already been posted!

Posted by: Paul W., OM | March 9, 2010 12:22 PM

Hmmm... thinking about what I wrote:

I'm not very Kantian. I'm a pretty Utilitarian kind of guy, who worries about social justice and outcomes.

The main reason I care about motivations is instrumental---I don't think we can solve problems, and get better outcomes, if we're mistaken about what the problems actually are that lead to those outcomes.

I gotta confess that overstates my motivation for social justice somewhat, and understates my evident motivation to geek out trying to Figure Things Out and express them.

I don't want to make myself sound like Mr. Righteous, as though all I care about it the social justice bottom line. Obviously, I'm also an intellectual wanker, though I don't think it's mostly an either/or thing.

Posted by: cicely | March 9, 2010 12:31 PM

I'm not sure where that blockquote went wrong.

Test:

WE'RE

ALL

GONNA

DIE!!!!!!

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 9, 2010 12:38 PM

What an appalling waste of bacon. Lettuce? Tomato? American "bread"? Urgh.

But

but

look how big it is

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 9, 2010 12:49 PM

They cheat. It's a long row of sandwiches next to each other. And some of the bread is burnt in some places.

Yeah I know. I don't have the energy to continue my faux amazement.

Posted by: Gyeong Hwa Pak, Tai Dam lum Pun | March 9, 2010 1:02 PM

That only works some of the time, because languages aren't inherited the same way as genes.

I didn't say it was perfect David, only that it's the best one I can think of (since people tend to marry within the same language).

And in some cases it may help to understand population drift, such as distinguishing Ryukyuan from Japanese.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | March 9, 2010 1:13 PM

PZ, Many Happy ones. Born in the year of Sputnik! Back when Americans actually thought science mattered and called on Nazi scientists to reach the moon. Now that's good ol' Murkin ingenuity.

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | March 9, 2010 1:28 PM

You know, the talk of race got me thinking. Back when I was in the Peace Corps in Africa, I can remember being shocked by the varied physical appearances of the Africans. My experience with African Americans (who mostly came from around the Bight of Benin) and National Geographic had simply not prepared me for how different one tribe looked from another.

If you discount skin color, two people living in villages 50 km apart could look as different from each other as they looked from people of other races. There were some villages where I could go on Market Day and just sit and watch a veritable United Nations of Africa in front of me.

That was when I started to question whether race was a distinction without a difference--not because there aren't different races, but rather because there is so much diversity, a simple categorization cannot accommodate it.

Posted by: Gyeong Hwa Pak, Tai Dam lum Pun | March 9, 2010 1:52 PM

They've stole my idea!!!

Posted by: Caine, Fleur du mal | March 9, 2010 2:33 PM

David Marjanović @ 364:

Is that one so old that Death still talked in quotation marks back then? In most books he doesn't.

Death talks in capital letters. Yep, that's still going on.

Posted by: SteveV | March 9, 2010 3:02 PM

‘I have a standing joke that it's all pheromones.’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHp_Y7wCRaw
and I couldn’t resist – god, devil, OT, food etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ev8KtBoHrs&feature;=related

Posted by: Sili | March 9, 2010 3:06 PM

Do you guys mind if I rant about cancer here?

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | March 9, 2010 3:29 PM

two birds with one stone.

And I'm greatly amused that he picked Costa Rica, which hasuniversal, nationalized healthcare :-p

Posted by: Qwerty | March 9, 2010 3:37 PM

Rev BDC @ 342: Your tongue must be getting in the way of your typing again as your link to the world's largest BLT actually linked to the world's longest BLT.

And did you have to mop up your keyboard after salivating on it while reading said article?

Posted by: jenbphillips | March 9, 2010 3:43 PM

Jadehawk @ 387:

Ha! Truly, you can't make this shit up. The Lulz at Limbaugh's expense are somewhat tempered by the presence of the rampant wackaloonery at HuffPo, however. Just today there's another antivax rant by Jenny McCarthy and a 9/11 Truther spew by Jesse Ventura. *sigh*.

Posted by: Gyeong Hwa Pak, Tai Dam lum Pun | March 9, 2010 3:45 PM

Okay here it goes,
ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE IS NOT BETTER THAN CONVENTIONAL.
The people in my cultural perspective of cancer class seem to think that altmed is okay just because it makes people happier, it avoids "death", and it’s cheaper (which it ain't). They think it's more affective because of that. NO IT'S NOT. Whether or not it makes makes one happy is completely irrelevant to whether it's affective. It doesn't fit internationally accepted scientific standards, it's not affective. I understand that hope can be good for the individual as a promoter and enabler. But god damn it, I dare anyone to show me proof that hope kill cancer cells. There are much better ways of having hope without deluding oneself and wasting one's money on altmed. Furthermore, it's not the point of the class to say altmed is better; the point of the class is to understand the narratives, the cultural implications, the economic factors of cancer and its various treatments. But just because people turn to altmed due being economically disadvantaged, doesn't make it affective.

Posted by: Knockgoats | March 9, 2010 3:53 PM

I have been grading all fucking day and I am going to have to keep going all fucking night. - Sven DiMilo

I suggest that to even things out, you make sure you fuck all grading day, and keep going all grading night :-p

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 9, 2010 3:54 PM

Rev BDC @ 342: Your tongue must be getting in the way of your typing again as your link to the world's largest BLT actually linked to the world's longest BLT.

Longest / largest. WHATEVER

DID YOU SEE HOW FREAKIN' BIG IT WAS

Posted by: Alan B | March 9, 2010 4:00 PM

#390 blf / #392 Caine

My wife has collected all the Terry Pratchett books as they have come out in the UK which makes them all (worthless?) first editions.

As far as I can make out, Death always speaks in small capitals and without quotation marks. Other characters use single quote marks.

I can't speak for any other countries.

Posted by: jenbphillips | March 9, 2010 4:05 PM

Considering how many preventable deaths are caused by adherence to 'alternative medicine', that's probably not too far off, Paul W.

Posted by: blf | March 9, 2010 4:11 PM

blf, in the U.S. editions, Death always speaks in capital letters.

Excuse me, where did I say or imply he didn't? I was speculating only on whether or not what he said was ever quoted, and if it ever was, whether or not that was one of the edits for the N.Manic editions (like the reversal of the single and double quotes; in the Britoon editions, Britoon quotemarking convention is used; in the N.Manic editions I've seen/have, N.Manic quotemarking convention is used).

Posted by: KOPD | March 9, 2010 4:18 PM

...think that altmed is okay just because it makes people happier, it avoids "death", and it’s cheaper

That's why I like the site whatstheharm.net . It's a collection of stories of people injuried, disfigured, sued, or killed by everything from feng shui to cults to ear candling.

Posted by: blf | March 9, 2010 4:28 PM

[Death] actually speaks? In CAPS?

Not exactly, and not exactly. It's made clear in several of the books Death's words just seem to show up as-if they were spoken, but without all that messy business of being vocalised and vibrating air and so on. Besides, how would Death speak? What does he have to make the air vibrate et al.? Hence the surprise that, maybe in some versions (presumably only in the older books), what he communicates is in quotemarks.

And it's (always?) typeset as small caps, not full-sized caps.

Posted by: David Marjanović | March 9, 2010 4:33 PM

and stop using "whore" as an insult.

Ouch. Half of Europe says "whore!" when they have a hammer-thumb encounter. :o)

Though the same languages have a tendency to use it as an expression of surprise... so maybe it has already started shifting. It definitely has in French.

Is that one so old that Death still talked in quotation marks back then? In most books he doesn't.

Death talks in capital letters. Yep, that's still going on.

Death talks in capital letters without quotation marks around them, except in the oldest few books.

Or were the quotation marks stupidly added in the German translation? Of the few Discworld books I've read, at least half weren't in the original... :-(

two birds with one stone.

And I'm greatly amused that he picked Costa Rica

<high-five> :-D

He'll have to go to China to find the current American system (only a bit worse... yes, worse).

Posted by: Owlmirror | March 9, 2010 4:36 PM

And it's (always?) typeset as small caps, not full-sized caps.

Some early editions of some books do have full caps. They are wrong.

Posted by: jenbphillips | March 9, 2010 4:45 PM

@ Owlmirror:

Yes, I saw the Science paper this week--seems pretty settled to me.

As a related aside, my family and I recently watched a BBC program(me) entitled "What really killed the Dinosaurs?" which presented Keller's alternative hypothesis, among others. My husband was quite enthralled with the presentation of Geology/Paleontology in this piece, and at one point turned to the rest of us and gushed "Wow, wouldn't it be fun to be a scientist?!!"
(For those of you who don't know, I am, in fact a full time, PhD-havin' scientist--in molecular genetics)
I cocked my eyebrow at him and he qualified, slightly less gushily:
"Um, I mean, that kind of scientist"

Yeah, right, sweetheart. The "fun" kind. Jackass.

Posted by: Caine, Fleur du mal | March 9, 2010 4:58 PM

Janine, I'm glad your niece is okay. That had to be frightening.

Posted by: David Marjanović | March 9, 2010 5:01 PM

Yeah, right, sweetheart. The "fun" kind. Jackass.

:-D

Posted by: Janine, Mistress Of Foul Mouth Abuse, OM | March 9, 2010 5:14 PM

Thank you. Cannot say she is completely recovered but she is off the oxygen and allowed to go home.

Ol'Greg, two months? Good luck with that. I hope it has not been too bad of a financial drag.

Posted by: Owlmirror | March 9, 2010 5:16 PM

Could you send the pdf my way?

My mysterious psychic ninja powers tell me that [first].[last] AT gmx.at will soon be present at a PDF-falling-from-back-of-truck incident.

Which, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with my mysterious psychic ninja self. What can you do? These things happen.

Posted by: Ol'Greg | March 9, 2010 5:22 PM

That's why I like the site whatstheharm.net . It's a collection of stories of people injuried, disfigured, sued, or killed by everything from feng shui to cults to ear candling

That site is great!

When I was young I worked for a while selling vitamins in one of those sports nutrition type stores that shall remain unamed. There is some shady stuff in there, but after a while I found myself more often than not talking people out of doing really really really stupid things like drinking creatine to "boost" their kidneys, or drinking weird concoctions because they need gall bladder surgery and don't want to get it, or ear candles. I remember one woman just arguing with me forever about ear candles. We didn't carry them.

But the saddest were the travelers and the truly disadvantaged. We were by an airport in a ghetto part of town. People would stop by as they flew back to visit relatives in far flung places, some times trying to bring something back to help them.

We would get people coming in who had family in very poor places wanting vitamins to cure things like typhoid.

We would also get very sick locals who couldn't afford a doctor all the time. It was really sad to tell some one that they really probably need like flagil or something and should really see a doctor even if they have to pawn their tv or something to do it.

Posted by: Ol'Greg | March 9, 2010 5:28 PM

Ol'Greg, two months? Good luck with that. I hope it has not been too bad of a financial drag.

I know. It's crazy. Yeah it sucks as far as money goes but the bills haven't hit yet, just the copays and scripts so we'll see how I fare later.

Posted by: blf | March 9, 2010 5:30 PM

I remember one woman just arguing with me forever about ear candles. We didn't carry them.

I admit that, until just now when I looked it up with Generalissimo Google and on Wikipedia, I always thought ear candles and ear candling was satire.

Posted by: Rorschach | March 9, 2010 5:49 PM

Lynna @ 384,

thanks for that link, great article by Hitchens, if only politicians would listen.Maybe this is something that can and should be brought up at the GAC this weekend.

I'm off to claim ownership to my new rental place, notably by train, because my car is going to be in service for 2 weeks after the rear-ending the other day, great fun !
I might not mention the fact that I have an empty beachside house during the GAC to too many people haha...It's in the burbs tho.

Posted by: WowbaggerOM | March 9, 2010 5:53 PM

I might not mention the fact that I have an empty beachside house during the GAC to too many people haha...It's in the burbs tho.

I don't think you have to worry too much; there's no time to do much else other than go to the convention - unless you're talking about Sunday afternoon/evening after RD finishes up. Then we might be inquiring...

Posted by: Rorschach | March 9, 2010 5:58 PM

unless you're talking about Sunday afternoon/evening after RD finishes up

I have an 8am start Monday, and given lack of car that means getting up at 6 and taking the train to work...:-(
But that's not saying that one can not have a few Absacker on Sunday evening...:-)

Posted by: Carlie | March 9, 2010 6:08 PM

Antiochus - did you have to use castor oil in your ear first to help soften it all? That's the really gross-feeling part.

Posted by: blf | March 9, 2010 6:21 PM

I always used just a hollow tube. One end in the ear, one in my mouth, and a really good blow. The wax, dead mice, live bats, and occasional hedgehog would, with enough huffing and puffing, be dislodged and blown into the internal hollowness. They rarely come out the other side, however, as they were captured by the really dense bit at the centre, spiralled inwards, and eventually vanished beyond the event horizon.

Disposing of the used tube was really easy. Just shove it further into the ear. It sides nicely down the now-cleaned channel until one end is attracted to the dense bit in the centre. Then it starts getting pulled in, deeper and deeper, and disappears inside with a WHOOSH!

Posted by: David Marjanović | March 9, 2010 6:43 PM

if the universe is deterministic

*cough* *cough*

My mysterious psychic ninja powers tell me that [first].[last] AT gmx.at will soon be present at a PDF-falling-from-back-of-truck incident.

The pdf hurled itself successfully in my general direction. :-)

I always used just a hollow tube. One end in the ear, one in my mouth, and a really good blow.

...???

But anyway. I knew about ear candles (saw an ad maybe 10 years ago), and I raise you young French royalists. I found out about them when I saw a sticker in the métro a few days ago (100% jeunes – 100% royalistes, no, duh!) and wanted to post the link right away, but it's just so surreal that I kept forgetting!

Posted by: Lynna, OM | March 9, 2010 7:07 PM

Owlmirror, thank you for that marvelous post. Can you send the PDF to me as well? If so, send to lynna[at]artmeetsadventure[dot]com.

Rorschach, glad you enjoyed the justified rant from Hitchens. I didn't include in my post the excerpts from the offensive letter. I was, however, glad to see that Hitchens gave us a good sampling of the outrageous, lawyerly idiocy of the threatened "litigation".

Posted by: Bride of Shrek OM | March 9, 2010 7:15 PM

My dad's an ENT and he reckons that between cleaning up the messy outcomes of earcandling and doing myringoplasties to patch eardrums that some idiot's pushed a hole through by using cotton buds, he's paid for weddings for 3 daughters.

Posted by: Kel, OM | March 9, 2010 7:26 PM

I have an 8am start Monday, and given lack of car that means getting up at 6 and taking the train to work...:-(

Posted by: Owlmirror | March 9, 2010 7:38 PM

Can you send the PDF to me as well?

I cannot confirm or deny any PDFs being put onto trucks in precarious positions.

However, my mysterious psychic ninja powers tell me that by a remarkable coïncidence, a carrier pigeon winging its way from a secret military base to Area 51 will accidentally drop a PDF right over your e-mail inbox.

Fancy that.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | March 9, 2010 7:50 PM

Area 51 is one of my favorite places. There's so much desert, so many long vistas ... and a surprising number of unexplained PDFs arriving from who knows where -- PDFs that contain sexy stuff like "bedding planes" and "impact-ejecta-rich red clay layers" and "ballistically ejected shocked quartz grains". Bliss.

Posted by: Becca | March 9, 2010 8:45 PM

apparently it's now illegal to have a miscarriage in Utah - or so the law could be interpreted to read.

http://current.com/12udc4c

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | March 9, 2010 8:52 PM

David Marjanović #448

I've just read La réforme des institutions politiques (reformation of political institutions) of Les Jeunes Royalistes. They're apparently Orleanists supporting le Comte de Paris.

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 9, 2010 9:00 PM

@lynna 354:

Keep us deformed.

grossly.

;)

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 9, 2010 9:08 PM

godless monster

and proud of it!

;)

as an addendum to the discussion of race/genealogy/populations/phenotypes and genotypes, did anyone catch this article:

http://scienceblogs.com/geneticfuture/2010/03/genetic_ancestry_testing_peopl.php

Posted by: Caine, Fleur du mal | March 9, 2010 9:22 PM

Quackfraud, you aren't talented, witty or interesting. Just a con-man who has zero evidence for all your huckstery claims.

Posted by: Becca | March 9, 2010 9:25 PM

I think Dr. Quack doesn't want to engage in conversation, but just likes being the subject of our discussion. He never seems to add anything to the discussion except to try to stir things up. Best ignore him, I suspect.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | March 9, 2010 9:28 PM

Quack,

After reading that poem I was going to write 'don't quit your day job', but it probably do a lot of good if you did.

Posted by: Caine, Fleur du mal | March 9, 2010 9:31 PM

Feynmaniac, it would be good if Quackster got an actual job.

Posted by: badgersdaughter | March 9, 2010 9:55 PM

Quackalicious @ 458:

My mother trusted altie med
To take care of her ills
Because her friends messed with her head
And sold her lots of pills.

My mother trusted in the Lord
And also quacks like you
And spent more than she could afford
To make her dreams come true.

The cancer got her in the end
But not without a fight.
That's how I lost my dearest friend.
I miss my mom tonight.

I'm writing this, sad, and perplexed
why you are such a quack.
I live in fear I might be next,
and like Mommy, won't come back.

Fuck you, you bastard. How many mothers did you kill this year?

Posted by: Kel, OM | March 9, 2010 10:06 PM

Hey, if he has the evidence then let him present it. After all, that's all people are asking for here. What evidence is there that his work is a) efficacious, and b) that what we call medicine is not. If he can do that by not cherry-picking papers (three positive and fifty negative / neutral papers - if you cite the three and not the other 50 you are cherry picking) and that the studies have a large sample size, double blinded and quality controlled, well then I'm all for him presenting his case.

If he can demonstrate scientifically that his techniques work, then I'll stop calling him a quack and change my mind on those therapies. He says he has the capacity to do this, so unless he's just talking out of his arse let him give the chance to present his case. Though I'm betting its just rhetoric - it always is with quacks.

Posted by: Caine, Fleur du mal | March 9, 2010 10:22 PM

Kel, OM @ 469:

Hey, if he has the evidence then let him present it.

He already has. His idea of evidence is articles from the journal of alternative medicine. Nothing there.

Posted by: windy | March 9, 2010 10:53 PM

That's actually how the vast majority of influence works - not through secret channels, but through the opposite - through messages we are all so heavily bombarded with that we can't possibly ignore the message.

Case in point,

http://www.truthout.org/fiction-marja-city-was-us-information-war57470

For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a "city of 80,000 people" as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marja was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centres in Helmand. [...]
Marja is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers' homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southern Helmand River Valley.

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | March 9, 2010 11:27 PM

Jon Stewart fucking rocks! Why are the some of the best interviews on the freaking comedy channel? What the fuck is wrong with our real news organizations?

Posted by: monado | March 9, 2010 11:40 PM

Good night, all! Happy birthday, PZ!

Posted by: ronsullivan | March 10, 2010 1:27 AM

Badgersdaughter, my hat is off and my heart goes out to you. That's all I can say.

Re: less-toxic woo, I live in Berkeley. Yeah I've seen ear candles. Scared me half to death; all I could see was my hair catching fire. I'm waiting for toenail candles to appear as a treatment for that damned toenail fungus that seems to be everywhere* in the last decade. I walk downtown and, two blocks from my house, I pass a block that's mostly taken up by North Atlantic Books (publisher of the toroidal-tiger guy) and some crystalaurahealing store that advertises ~healinnnnng~ ~readinnnnnngs~ by phone, and a chiropractor.

*OK, mostly on toenails. I'd like to see the epidemiology of that, though.

Other than The Luggage, Death is my favorite Pratchett character, Foul Old Ron notwithstanding. I covet The Luggage. You can keep your minions, your henchpersons, your butlers, even your goons; I want The Luggage.

Anyone here read Terry Bisson?

how can they tell if something was already eaten twice?

I'd imagine it tastes different.

I've seen two cars on fire that I can recall offhand. One was a few blocks from me and I never did see a driver. The other showed up when we were doing a Christmas Bird Count up in Yolo County, not too far from Davis but pretty much middle of nowhere. It was rainy; we were coming down the canyon road, and we heard this odd {whoomp} and came round the bend to see a brand-new sporty-muscle kinda car that we'd noticed on the way up, only this time it was in flames. Just off someone's long dirt driveway on a patch of newly-green grass, a safe distance from the house and any trees.

I'm reaching for the phone but there's a young guy on a cellphone walking down the driveway. We stop; he sputters something about the car just bursting into flame, he dunno, visiting friends, just noticed... He seemed oddly calm though. The four of us muttered, "Insurance fire," more or less in unison.

Pulled off to do more counting around the next bend and kept hearing more {whoomp}s, which I took to be the tires and something volatile, by turns. Took a good ten minutes for the county firetruck to come past us.

I must say it was picturesque, all that mossy damp winter green and deep brown and this thing in flames in the middle of it.

Fr gawdsake, Icthyic, Ol' Greg, everyone, get better! Y'all are scaring me half to death. Virtual hot toddies to all; Icthyic, you can collect yours when you're up to it. Cripes, can you even take sedatives when your liver's acting up? Should I row over there and hit you with a brick?

Posted by: Stephen Wells | March 10, 2010 1:46 AM

As a result of the Daily Show, I now perceive BBC news journalism as satire. In the USA only Stewart will sit politicians down and say "You screwed up completely, how come?", whereas the Today programme does that every morning, to everybody. I once heard them flat-out tell a Lib Dem spokesman that their policies were largely irrelevant as they were never going to form a government. It was true, but it seemed a little harsh.

Posted by: Owlmirror | March 10, 2010 1:51 AM

Oh, hi,

I can has facepalm for bad science "noooz"?

I happened to find the sciencedaily news release about the Chicxulub paper, and noted that it was annoyingly vague on the whole Keller hypothesis:

"The panel was able to discount previous studies that suggested that the Chicxulub impact occurred 300,000 years prior to the KT extinction. The researchers say that these studies had misinterpreted geological data that was gathered close to the Chicxulub impact site. This is because the rocks close to the impact zone underwent complex geological processes after the initial asteroid collision, which made it difficult to interpret the data correctly."

Not helpful for those of us who want details, so I'm even more glad I got the PDF. But that's not the bad science in and of itself.

One of the related stories linked to was about a paper that the K-Pg extinction was not responsible for the diversification of mammals. The actual paper is whatever it is, but there's a line in the news release that is one of the most mind-bogglingly wrong sentences that I've ever read in a science news release, and I only have a layperson's knowledge of the palaeontology of mammals.

These are the clauses of the sentence that fill me with frustrated SIWOTI syndrome:

However, most of these groups have since either died out completely, such as Andrewsarchus (an aggressive wolf-like cow)

Wait... what?

1) Andrewsarchus is not a "group" (or if it is, it's not a particularly large one). I suspect that someone originally said/wrote mesonychids, and offered Andrewsarchus as an example of a mesonychid, and the reporter bollixed up that reference and explanation very badly. Note that the identification of Andrewsarchus as being a mesonychid is now in doubt, and it is tentatively considered to be more likely an artiodactyl.

2) No-one knows if Andrewsarchus was actually "aggressive" or not. This is a minor quibble, I suppose, but the real fuckup is next.

3) Mesonychids were related to artiodactyls, and Andrewsarchus may have been an artiodactyl, and artiodactyla does include cows ... but saying that Andrewsarchus was a cow is as stupid and confused as calling Darwinius ¹ a human. It's just mind-bogglingly dumb.

Did some malevolent creationist edit down a paragraph that actually explained what mesonychids were into that horrible result?

___________________________________________

1: Yes, I've seen the work that emphasizes that Darwinius was almost certainly not even ancestral to humans, which is kinda my point. Andrewsarchus was not even ancestral to cows.

------

+1

Posted by: Caine, Fleur du mal | March 10, 2010 1:54 AM

Ichthyic:

got myself a scrip for some sleeping pills, and hope that will work to put me out at least every other night

I hope that doesn't make the liver situation worse. You've been ongoing with that for way too long already. Sleep is good though. We could always contract the hitting you with a brick out, I'm sure Bride of Shrek wouldn't mind...

Posted by: Ichthyic | March 10, 2010 1:57 AM

We could always contract the hitting you with a brick out

meh, I'm living with another (rare posting) pharyngulite (buffybot), who just saw that post and has now eagerly volunteered herself for the job, since I've been keeping her awake many nights too.

:)

Posted by: Rorschach | March 10, 2010 2:18 AM

Talking about PZ, something for you evo-devo folks out there to chew over :

Sonic Hedgehog found in mice ectoderm

And more GAC in the news :

HeraldSun opinion piece regarding the GAC

Posted by: Janine, Mistress Of Foul Mouth Abuse, OM | March 10, 2010 2:44 AM

Oh dear, now I am slipping back to Python again.

"Nurse! Apply the anesthetic!"

Posted by: Carlie | March 10, 2010 5:35 AM

And a longtime question FINALLY gets answered! (I kept hearing of Ichthyic's having found love amidst the postings, but somehow missed it when it happened and didn't want to ask who it was.) I hope the pills (or brick) brought sleep.

Owlmirror, ScienceDaily continues to be a source of disappointment for me. I was so excited for the site when I found it, until I realized that although it's all science news, it's science news as reported by the person who usually does the Out on the Town segment and is substituting in the science section for the day or something.

Antiochus (from upthread): no idea if oil really helps. It seems like it would, but I never experimented with it. I was quite young and those were the doctor's orders.

Posted by: Sili | March 10, 2010 6:16 AM

The worst I can offer is that a chunk of amalgam filling fell off upper right 5 while I was flossing on Sunday

I knew it!

All that semifascistoid pestering to get us to floss is reallu just a plot be dentists to drum up more business.

/tinfoil

Posted by: Walton, Janine's Hero | March 10, 2010 6:51 AM

You people have all been a terrible influence on me. I seem to be rapidly turning into a hippie leftie commie unsound liberal; I even found myself listening to and enjoying this anti-war song last night. :-)

Posted by: David Marjanović | March 10, 2010 7:08 AM

Psst! Don't let Walton see this.

:-D

Second comment from there:

"Clearly the Tories want power - they always have. The difference this time is that they cannot articulate why! The country is fed up with Brown but his calls on the current economic situation have been largely correct, whereas Cameron is clueless. Even though Brown got us into this mess the electorate is perhaps coming to the uncomfortable conclusions that he may have the best route for getting us out of it."

They're apparently Orleanists supporting le Comte de Paris.

Didn't find that while skimming. Which page is it on?

(What I did find is that they believe a king as supreme judge would guarantee the independence of the judiciary. TSIB.)

I know I've linked to this before, but it's very relevant

...and I should have clicked on it the first time, but didn't!!! A bit of redundancy is a good thing.

pfffft....

Sorry. Here, have some awesomely toothed almost-marsupials.

how can they tell if something was already eaten twice?

Looks and smells different, or so I've read.

nerd-love is awesomely adorable

Can't be said often enough.

too bad I can't read any of that for even the most basic level of comprehension. at least past the "youth is the fire of the world" (?!) part; and something about teeth.

I'll translate the juiciest parts later today and/or tomorrow and/or on the weekend. Some are funny. Perhaps all. :-)

The "fire" part is the one word I saw I didn't know. Dictionary sez... yes, fire, but more poetic: 1. (Kohlen-)Glut; Feuersbrunst; 2. fig. (Liebes-)Glut. Embers; blaze/conflagration; figuratively embers, embers of love. :-} So... it's not only way over-the-top poetic imagery ("when it cools off, the whole world's teeth chatter"), it's also revolutionary imagery. The Revolution sits so deep in the French consciousness that even the royalists are revolutionaries :-Þ :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D

Teeth? I need to check.

I once heard them flat-out tell a Lib Dem spokesman that their policies were largely irrelevant as they were never going to form a government. It was true, but it seemed a little harsh.

And gave the spokesman a welcome opportunity to rant about defeatist attitudes, rally the voters to dare the unimaginable, say "Yes, we can!!!"...

Did he make use of it? I bet he did.

Oh, hi,

I can has facepalm for bad science "noooz"?

Any day of the week, and twice on Sundays! :-)

Did some malevolent creationist edit down a paragraph that actually explained what mesonychids were into that horrible result?

This is such a classic case of Hanlon's Razor that even the truth machine wouldn't argue with me over that.

meh, I'm living with another (rare posting) pharyngulite (buffybot), who just saw that post and has now eagerly volunteered herself for the job, since I've been keeping her awake many nights too.

:)

:-)

Sonic Hedgehog found in mice ectoderm

I didn't even know it's expressed in the mesoderm. <shrink> However... quote from there...

The discovery, to appear online in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that Sonic hedgehog's role in the growth of appendages is far more complex than originally thought. Developmental biologists may have to rethink established theories about how limbs are patterned in vertebrates — an effort that could provide insight into human birth defects.

"We used technology where a viral protein seeks out specific sequences of DNA," said Cortney M. Bouldin, a graduate student in the Interdisciplinary Program in Biomedical Sciences in the department of molecular genetics and microbiology. "We concentrated on disabling a protein essential for Sonic hedgehog signaling. Although it has been removed from the limb before, we wanted to specifically remove it from the ectoderm. When we did that, in the latter stages of development, we saw extra cartilage and the early beginnings of another digit."

Now it gets interesting. Now it gets seriously interesting. The ways digits are patterned and formed is a hot, hot field these days. Major controversies rage over birds, salamanders, Tulerpeton, Ichthyostega, Acanthostega... lungfish even...

Oops. I need to run. Read you all later, best wishes to the way too many ill threadizens.

Posted by: Bobber | March 10, 2010 8:42 AM

Badgersdaughter, #467:

Much sympathy for your grief.

Much admiration for your ability to channel it in such a pointed, and necessary, manner.

Posted by: boygenius | March 10, 2010 8:49 AM

I seem to be rapidly turning into a hippie leftie commie unsound liberal

Walton, you say that like it's a bad thing. ;) Thanks for the link to One Tin Soldier. Man, I haven't heard that song since the '70s when I was too young to grasp the meaning or social context of the lyrics. I just remember it being a catchy tune.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 10, 2010 9:00 AM

Have you seen The Big Lebowski?

Posted by: Walton, Janine's Hero | March 10, 2010 9:14 AM

What's so intrinsically funny about French royalists? I don't know what this particular group stands for (as I understand it, there are a number of different French royalist groups, reflecting the turbulent history of the French monarchy itself), but I firmly believe that a constitutional parliamentary monarchy, such as we have in Britain, would be preferable to the current French system of government.

Constitutional monarchy can genuinely work very well. In Spain, King Juan Carlos I supervised the country's peaceful transition to democracy after the end of the right-wing Franco regime. In Bhutan, the current King, Jigme Sigye Wangchuk (sp?), has recently introduced a new constitution and is gradually moving Bhutan, previously a very traditional hierarchical society, towards a liberal-democratic political system. And some of the most liberal and stable countries in Europe, such as Sweden, Denmark and Luxembourg, are constitutional monarchies.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | March 10, 2010 9:45 AM

oy, way behind. Apologies if this proves redundant, but my pre-coffee dander is raised here by this recurring claim:

If race isn't necessary to describe variation in other areas of biology

I’m not talking about human 'race' any more, as resolved, but I am compelled to point out that the claim that [formal designation of geography-based sub-specific taxonomic units is never done in modern biology] is bullshit.
Despite active philosophical arguments that still go on, other areas of biology do, in fact, still use trinomial subspecific epithets all the time. Nobody calls them ‘races’ of course, for reasons that ought to be obvious from the discussion above. (This converges also on the subject of ‘metapopulation’ dynamics, as hot a topic currently as ecology ever gets.) But do not imagine that there is widespread agreement among biologists that subspecies are not useful for concisely referring to obvious geographic variation. Because they are (with suitable caveats: of course they are not treated as real Platonic typological entities, and there are taxonomists that refuse to use them on such grounds (Deep Rifts!); in any case, nobody imagines bright dividing lines, and in fact the phenotypic and genetic correlates of hybrid zones are well studied in many species…surprise, they’re not always ‘clines’). Among other uses, subspecific designation has useful applications in conservation biology (again, together with ‘metapopulations’). Believe it.
This fact does not have any direct bearing, of course, on the empirical questions I tried to raise in the first place about the geographic distribution of human phenotypes and genetic variation.

Populations can be defined at many different levels (I've said this before) like local, regional and global. It's a useful idea and is how we discuss this stuff in biological anthropology.

You are happy with a fuzzy term that can be applied at will to various levels of hierarchical reality? You are happy to be able to refer to a group of populations as a population and then have to explain every time so that people know what you’re talking about? Because that’s sort of the opposite of the point of all the rest of scientific terminology, i.e. precision and unambiguity. Did it ever occur to you that one of the reasons you are using such a useless technical term—useless because by itself it means nothing--might be because your cultural-anthro colleagues across the hall have made it suicide to approach any concept that even seems vaguely like ‘race’? That what makes it a “useful idea” is specifically that it neatly elides ‘race’ and its cognates from the every-day vocabulary?

fuckfuckfuck I’m stepping in it again
going away to catch up more tacitly later

Posted by: negentropyeater | March 10, 2010 10:14 AM

but I firmly believe that a constitutional parliamentary monarchy, such as we have in Britain, would be preferable to the current French system of government.

And why so ?

And some of the most liberal and stable countries in Europe, such as Sweden, Denmark and Luxembourg, are constitutional monarchies.

And some others aren't, such as France, Germany, Switzerland and Finland.

What is the benefit of a monarch.

And btw, the french monarchists are a majority of far right conservative racist Christian fundie loons. They don't even represent a total of 1% of the electorate, so why do you care about them ?

Posted by: David Marjanović | March 10, 2010 10:22 AM

Pure awesomeness

Too bad I know far too few of these characters…

Wikipedia is True Neutral*, even though it shows in ways completely different from those of the Big Lebowski.

* Seems to have been removed from tvtropes.org. :-(

What's so intrinsically funny about French royalists?

British royalists are merely conservative. Never change a running system, don't change horses in midstream*, and so on.

French ones want to change a running system.

* Unless the one you're flogging is dead (source).

I firmly believe that a constitutional parliamentary monarchy, such as we have in Britain, would be preferable to the current French system of government.

Why?

OK, there are… peculiarities to the French intermediate between presidential and parliamentary democracy, but those can't be what you mean.

Constitutional monarchy can genuinely work very well.

Absolutely*, but that's because of how little power the monarchs have and/or which person happens to be the monarch (and could just as well be an elected politician). Monarchy itself serves as little more than an overexpensive tourist attraction (…oh, yeah, and endless fodder for the yellow press).

Plus, as my dad likes to mention, the British monarchy is a violation of human rights – the Queen doesn't have the right to vote! :-Þ

* Heh. I overlooked the pun.

Posted by: Ol'Greg | March 10, 2010 10:33 AM

And, he will provide references to yet more questionable studies and blatant woo.

What never ceases to bother me about it is how easy it would be to demonstrate real effect.

If something like reiki really helped the immune system fight disease then reiki might show a measurable effect on something like herpes.

Valtrex was able to... although not by boosting the immune system whatever that really means anyway. Look I'm not smart enough or educated enough to know how antiviral drugs actually stop replication, but I do know that they actually have to pass trials to show that they reduce symptoms of the disease, and also to ensure they won't as or more dangerous to health themselves.

(oh and for the record, no I don't have herpes, I just thought it made a good example. But even if I did, why the fuck are people so up in that shit anyway?)

Alt med doesn't have to do this, and that's what scares me. I'm some one who drank colloidal silver when I was young. I didn't know any better. I just couldn't afford a doctor that month and I needed to be able to get to work and back. Now I'm just glad that it was probably just water because I'm not freaking gray. We shouldn't have people out there touting this stuff to the ignorant and desperate.

Hell, when I started taking the silver there was a whole website (no defunct) where the people hawking the stuff were claiming it curing all sorts of ills. They were situated in Mexico (how convenient) and had lots of pictures of the wonderful recoveries, including before shots of giant tumors erupting from the skin. Looking back on it that is very sad. I'm completely certain that almost all of those poor people in the "before" shots are dead, or worse yet that the images were just stolen from some medical database somewhere with no regard to the patients depicted.

I would be irate if I found out that photographs from a surgery or illness had been stolen and used to falsely advertise crap.

If "boosting the immune system" with alt med worked it would be able to do so in a clear measurable way.

but then they'll cry big pharma.

Now I'll be the first to argue about the price and availability of effective drugs and "big pharma's" place in that right along with "big insurance" as well... but no one is keeping the magic of C-Silver or Reiki secret.

Posted by: David Marjanović | March 10, 2010 10:49 AM

Vive le Tréma! Morte au Trait d'union!

<snarl>

Mort et au tréma et au trait d'union !

Despite active philosophical arguments that still go on, other areas of biology do, in fact, still use trinomial subspecific epithets all the time.

Homo sapiens sapiens
Homo sapiens neanderthalensis

I don't think much has become of H. s. idaltu which was named a few years ago. The Crô Magnon man was called H. s. fossilis in the 19^th century, but that was just silly.

Providing a genuinely non-political head of state, who can represent the whole nation rather than a particular political party.

Who can, however, just as easily side with one party against the others. Turned out well in Spain and Bhutan, turned out bloody in Nepal.

I think it's healthy to have a division between the head of state and the head of government,

Absolutely. But then, I can't think of a democracy that unites these functions other than the USA.

and for the head of state to be non-partisan and apolitical.

As far as possible, yes.

A monarchy can also create stability in times of national crisis - as with Juan Carlos I in Spain

Because he was already in nominal power. Like Italy, Spain had been a monarchy throughout the dictature. The difference is that the last king of Italy supported the dictature and was kicked out for that in 1945 (or -6, I forgot). Had there not been a king, a king couldn't have provided continuity and could hardly have created stability.

Also, so far there's no reason to call him the First. Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary was called the First till 1918… then people stopped doing it, and the old monuments look a bit embarrassing now.

Posted by: David Marjanović | March 10, 2010 11:13 AM

nonarchy

Among the best typos ever.

Posted by: Dust | March 10, 2010 11:22 AM

Generalissimo Francisco Franco
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wait for it
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Is still dead!

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | March 10, 2010 11:28 AM

David,

Homo sapiens sapiens Homo sapiens neanderthalensis

Yep, but I think most paleoanthropologists have moved to regarding Neandertals as a unique species. There's always a bunch of posters at the AAPA meetings about it though :)

I don't think much has become of H. s. idaltu which was named a few years ago.

If by not much you mean "has become widely accepted," then yes, not much has happened :) The few papers I've seen on BOU-VP-16/1 support the original publication. The cranium is just outside the range of variation for anatomically modern Homo sapiens.

Posted by: Walton, Janine's Hero | March 10, 2010 11:32 AM

nonarchy

Among the best typos ever.

Nonarchy = the rule of nine? If so, I suppose the US Supreme Court is a nonarchy.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | March 10, 2010 11:58 AM

Pre-coffee thoughts: the monarchy is a medieval relic. It goes against the idea of democracy and equality. Even if the head of state and head of government should be separate having a monarch isn't the only way to go about it, nor do I see why it's even a good way. To me the argument just seems like a rationalization for a silly tradition.

Posted by: Walton, Janine's Hero | March 10, 2010 12:11 PM

Pre-coffee thoughts: the monarchy is a medieval relic. It goes against the idea of democracy and equality.

Yes, constitutional monarchy is non-democratic. But democracy isn't some intrinsic magic good in itself. In evaluating a political system, we should not automatically assume that democratic=good and undemocratic=bad; we should look at the actual outcomes a given system produces.

I don't deny that democracy tends to be preferable to absolutism - if only because it provides us with a means of overthrowing a tyrant without assassination or violent revolution. But democracy isn't good in and of itself. Sometimes democracy produces authoritarian and illiberal outcomes, as with Proposition 8 or the Swiss ban on minarets, or the popular election of judges in many US states leading to demagoguery and miscarriages of justice. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't have a democratic political process - we certainly should - but there is a strong argument for incorporating non-democratic elements into a liberal constitutional system.

So in evaluating whether constitutional monarchy is good or bad, it is not sufficient to point out that it is undemocratic; being undemocratic is not intrinsically a bad thing. The fact is that constitutional monarchy, in present-day Britain, works. The Queen is a competent, hardworking, and sincerely non-partisan and independent head of state. I expect and hope that her successors will be similar. And as they say, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." This also answers your point about monarchy being a "medieval relic". Yes, perhaps it is; but the fact that something is old does not intrinsically make it bad. If constitutional monarchy is working well, why would we need to change it merely because its origins are medieval?

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | March 10, 2010 12:27 PM

The Twelve Steps of AA (though I think these are old and have been slightly modified).

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Posted by: Lynna, OM | March 10, 2010 12:34 PM

An ex-mormon sounds off about the funeral for Marie Osmond's son (typos and spelling errors are in the original):

I went to the funeral of Marie Osmond's son on Monday. A few of my thoughts. First, President Monson shows up. Most if not all missionaries that have died or are killed in the service of the Lord doesn't get a visit from the Prophet. He also hasn't shown up at any military funerals of members of the church. So why go to Marie Osmond's gay son funeral that killed himself???
     Second I have been told over and over that funerals are a missionary tools and are to be about Jesus and the atonement. All the talks by the family were about him.
     Third at my mothers funeral they would not let me play her favoriate song from John Denver because it was not church approved. Well at the Osmond funeral they had a guy play a guitar and one of his sister sang some pop song.
     Forth Monson said no one know what will happen to him and why???? Come on you are a prophet you should have insight on this or at least you could of asked why after all you are a prophet. They said he will be with them in the next life. News flash he was gay and killed himself and probably masturbated I don't think so. He will be with all of us in Hell.
     Fifth, at the grave side they started to sing We Thank Thee Oh God For a Prophet, come on. Plus Monson was smiling and joking around with people shaking hands like a celebrity totally inappropriate for a funeral. All the people could talk about was the Prophet being there not the funeral. People were shaking hands and asking to have pictures taken.
     Anyway just some thoughts of what I saw. Boyd Packer would of been pissed. So the next time a bishop says you can't play a song you want at a funeral or it has to more about Christ you tell him that if Osmonds can do it with the Prophet there we can.

Posted by: Dust | March 10, 2010 12:56 PM

Interesting rant from the ex-morm, Lynna (Mistress of Morridor) OM.

The idea of the Church not allowing a greiving family to select a given piece of music to play at a family members funeral is cruel, in my way of thinking.

Using any funeral as an recriutment tool is really----ick, disgusting!

I find arguing where the alleged soul of a suicide will spend eterenity to be especially foul...and know some families will suffer even more after a family member completes a suicide because of this, its just sick.

Being as I'm an atheist, and person and members of the immediate family of the recent suicide in my family are also non-believers, we aren't suffering more because of such an archacic belief.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | March 10, 2010 1:00 PM

Walton,

But democracy isn't some intrinsic magic good in itself.

There's nothing magical about it.

But democracy isn't good in and of itself.

I disagree. In general it's fair that people have a say in the way their community is governed, especially if it ends up impacting them. It's by no means always going to be produce the best possible results, but you can give that argument for any system. We should try to maximize democracy while at the same time ensuring personal freedoms, minority protection, etc.

Monarchy directly goes against the idea that people are created equal. In practice there's much inequality, but we should try to eliminate it in every instance we can.

The Queen is a competent, hardworking

Competent? I'm sure she waves to the cameras and shakes hands with people very well, but that's hardly a challenge.
Hardworking? Please.
Even if she was the bestest person my beef really isn't with her but with the institution.

The fact is that constitutional monarchy, in present-day Britain, works.

And this rock keeps away tigers. Do you see any tigers around?

At best you can say the monarch doesn't do serious harm. What you can have with a monarch you can have with an elected head of state, without all the extra costs that come with it or the approval of an inherited position*.

Yes, perhaps it is; but the fact that something is old does not intrinsically make it bad.

What I was trying to say is that it's one of those traditions that only survives because it's a tradition. Sort of like the church. Here in Canada I've heard people try to justify the monarch based on "tradition". That to me isn't an argument. Those making other arguments seem to me to also be motivated by a sense of tradition and everything else is just a elaborate rationalization.
___
* Yes, there are already many who benefit tremendously from inheritance in other instances. However, we should to try to minimize this in every case we come across.

Posted by: Ol'Greg | March 10, 2010 1:01 PM

I wrote something and then thought better of posting it. But yeah, it felt good to write.

I'll just put this bit in since it's relevant to what Rev,BDC posted.

I do have that problem with AA. It's based on old protestant born again conversion models. It's been adapted a lot, but I think it goes without saying also that it doesn't work for some. Rather it only works when it's working.

The thing is it doesn't matter anyway, it's not like there's a cure for addiction. AFAIK addicts are still addicts. The best ones just get better at living without their addiction destroying their life.

Posted by: aratina cage | March 10, 2010 1:13 PM

I saw this headline while searching for the Global Atheist Convention in the news:

GAC defeats Blessed Trinity

and thought, "Things must be getting off to a good start down under."

Posted by: El | March 10, 2010 1:19 PM

In Spain the budget of the Royal House is not public. But we know that we pay for the King's House, the Houses of the infantas (the daughters of the king), the family of the king, the family of the Princess. That's why I think it will be less expensive to have a democratic Republic.
Juan Carlos is the heir of a dictactor. And the head of a a nonarchy because he represents Spain, he signatures the laws, he is pictured in the stamps and no much more. He spends the rest of the time hunting drunk bears in Russia, sailing in Mallorca, and practising his Christmas speech.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | March 10, 2010 1:22 PM

I've been to several funerals where the preacher called for people to convert right then and there.

Wow, do they have no sense of shame?
/rhetorical

Posted by: Walton, Janine's Hero | March 10, 2010 1:29 PM

Yes, it is technically true that the same constitutional effect, and the separation of head of state from head of government, can be achieved in non-monarchical parliamentary systems like Germany, Ireland or India.

But to illustrate the difference: Imagine you had a venerable old mahogany table in your dining room that you'd inherited from your great-grandparents. Would you throw it out, merely because it was old and unnecessarily ornate, and replace it with a cheap functional pine table? After all, the pine table would perform exactly the same function: you could still eat your dinner off it. But what would be the point in getting rid of a perfectly good, and aesthetically pleasing, piece of furniture simply because it wasn't strictly necessary?

Posted by: El | March 10, 2010 1:35 PM

Viva la República¡

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | March 10, 2010 1:38 PM

Walton,

I will admit that I have an aesthetic appreciation for the rituals, traditions and titles which surround traditional constitutional monarchy.

One could make the same exact argument for the RCC.

The whole debate about keeping/reinstating a monarchy is hilarious to me. Some of the brainwashing patriotism of elementary school did manage to wear off on me so I think the idea of inherited titles is absolutely something to fight against. Thinking about why I feel that way led me to oppose inherited wealth in general.

Posted by: Walton, Janine's Hero | March 10, 2010 1:45 PM

One could make the same exact argument for the RCC.

Yes, but the difference is that the RCC (along with all organised religions) makes a series of pseudo-factual (but non-empirically-backed) claims about the nature of reality, and uses these to found a series of complex and arbitrary prescriptions about how one should live one's life. Her Majesty the Queen does neither of these things, last time I checked.

Posted by: Paul | March 10, 2010 1:47 PM

One could make the same exact argument for the RCC.

Curiously, Walton also said much the same thing about Church (of England?) after coming out as a nontheist here (I don't mean to sound like a stalker!).

But I don't think he is using said aesthetic appreciation of pomp/ceremony as a serious argument as to why monarchy should be retained. But then, how would that really be different than wanting to "retain one's culture", which most people don't see as an intrinsically bad thing. The problem with the RCC is that their culture specifically fosters cruelty and maltreatment, not merely that it is trying to retain an old-fashioned culture. To really compare it to the monarchy you'd have to show that the culture created by the monarchy has similar detrimental/criminal effects.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ | March 10, 2010 1:51 PM

Shorter Comrade Walton: "The problem isn't the dictatorship of the proletariat. The problem is it's a dictatorship of the proletariat."

Posted by: Ol'Greg | March 10, 2010 1:52 PM

For a couple of people I know, finding religion was effective in helping them overcome their addictions.

Yes. Me too. Although I don't *worry* about them anymore per se. In fact, I really don't care what happens to any of those people so long as I never have to see or hear from them again.

When addicts are a part of *your* destructive cycle it's a whole 'nother game.

Posted by: negentropyeater | March 10, 2010 1:56 PM

are you an adept of goalpoast moving ?

Imagine you had a venerable old mahogany table in your dining room that you'd inherited from your great-grandparents.

We don't have that mahogany table in France anymore. We chopped it into pieces more than 200 years ago.

If in Britain you want to keep that mahogany table because you think it looks good, your choice. I personally think it takes a lot of space and is expensive to maintain, and not that pretty.

But that is not a valid argument to defend the concept of constitutional monarchy.

You wrote :
" I firmly believe that a constitutional parliamentary monarchy, such as we have in Britain, would be preferable to the current French system of government."

The only reasons you have provided so far to support this "firm belief" are that a monarch provides a benefit in times of war (which is ridiculous, it was the fact that Britain is an Island that was a benefit during the war, not the existence of the king) or stability in transition towards democracy (which is false in the case of Spain the king wasn't a benefit, he was just clever enough not to be in the way. Moreover, it is a ridiculous argument when a country is anyhow already a democracy).

Posted by: Walton, Janine's Hero | March 10, 2010 1:57 PM

If that's your argument...what about Prince Charles?

Sorry, couldn't resist. His alt-med and organic woo is so irritating.

Clearly, I don't agree with Prince Charles on the issue of non-evidence-based medicine (I refuse to call it "alternative medicine", since this wrongly implies that it is in some way a valid "alternative" to scientific medicine). But this is a personal opinion of Prince Charles, not an intrinsic part of the institution of the monarchy. Indeed, if and when he becomes King, he will be expected to avoid becoming involved in controversy or forcing his beliefs on others, and will have to be entirely politically neutral when acting in his official capacity. This is completely different from the RCC, which is an organisation whose entire purpose is to promote a particular set of dogmatic beliefs and behavioural prescriptions.

Posted by: strange gods before me ॐ | March 10, 2010 2:00 PM

are you an adept of goalpoast moving ?

Welcome to my hell.

Posted by: Walton, Janine's Hero | March 10, 2010 2:02 PM

OK, negentropyeater, I retract what I said about monarchy in France. I don't seriously suggest that the French should re-establish their monarchy.

But I don't think there is any case whatsoever for abolishing the monarchy in Britain or the Commonwealth.

A correction on one thing, incidentally; the British monarchy is not actually "expensive" to maintain. Although the British treasury does fund the Civil List (that is, the money set aside for the maintenance of the Royal Household), and on indirect expenses such as security protection, the cost of this is offset by the fact that the revenues from the Crown Estate (the lands and holdings attached to the Crown) are paid into the public treasury. So the Queen's net cost to the British taxpayer is near zero - and that isn't even taking into account the tourism revenue that the monarchy brings to the British economy.

Posted by: Ol'Greg | March 10, 2010 2:08 PM

This itself is an AA dogma. Does it also have empirical support, or is it only a secular-sounding translation of "we are all absolutely debased sinners, who will fall again without God"?

Good point. Honestly I don't know. Is there empirical support for methods of curing addiction? Also, what causes addiction? I don't know that any of these questions are even well understood or have something with good supporting evidence to answer them? Honestly, I could simply be ignorant here.

Another one I think maybe is to question other underlying problems. For instance most of the addicts in my life including those related to me have malevolent narcissists to the point of sociopathy in some. AA can't do jack shit for that, and quitting drugs or drinking is kind of lipstick on a pig. Ultimately you are still left with a person who will break your face, steal your credit cards, rape your cat, and light the drapes on fire before showing up the next day saying "Sorry for partying can you pay this warrant off for me?"

Posted by: Walton, Janine's Hero | March 10, 2010 2:11 PM

Jadehawk, I think you're taking my metaphor a bit too literally. :-)

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | March 10, 2010 2:14 PM

The Royal family costs the British taxpayer less than $1.50 per subject. Look at it this way: those sausage-eating Hannoverians are among the cheapest belly laughs on the planet!

Posted by: Walton, Janine's Hero | March 10, 2010 2:20 PM

Speaking as a Canadian I don't see why my head of state should be some unelected old woman living across the ocean.

Well, I could talk about how the shared monarchy provides a symbolic unity between Canada, the UK, and a range of other countries around the world, from Tuvalu (the third smallest country on earth) to Jamaica to Papua New Guinea.

But instead, I'll restrict myself to talking about purely practical considerations. Imagine Canada were to become a republic tomorrow. The actual change to your political life would be minimal; the Governor-General would be replaced with a ceremonial President, who would perform exactly the same functions that the Governor-General currently performs, and would be indistinguishable in all but name. (This is what happened when Ireland, India, Dominica, Mauritius, Malta and other Commonwealth realms severed their links to the monarchy.) The Canadian Parliament, the Cabinet, the courts and your other political institutions would most likely continue in exactly their current form.

But while this change would be completely symbolic and non-substantial, it would also be very expensive in terms of administrative costs. Think of all the rebranding. You have the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary, several "Royal" army regiments, the Royal Military College of Canada, and a whole host of other "Royal" organisations that would have to be re-branded nationwide at taxpayer expense. Your national coat of arms and insignia would have to change. And what would you do with the Lieutenant-Governors of the provinces? So I don't see how you, as a Canadian citizen and taxpayer, would benefit in any way from abolishing the monarchy. You might, of course, feel some bizarre sense of "national pride" in severing your links with Britain, but I would hope you don't hate us that much. :-)