.
Snarkmaster Roy Edroso rises to the challenge of the young Talibangelicals bemoaning the vile encroachment of human dignity upon their feudalist phantasies:
How goes the rear-guard, dead-ender attack on gay marriage? Hilariously! Have a look at this symposium at Opus Dei strokebook First Things featuring the Douthats of Tomorrow. Say what you will about snake-handlers and desert mystics, there’s no crazier Christian than than Christian intellectual; they dress like Chesterton and talk like the Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne. All the symposiasts want to see overturned (or, in Scaliaese, o’erturned) not only Obergefell but also America’s sexual freedoms in general. Some have interesting ideas as to how to achieve this. Hadley Arkes, who like many of his compatriots compares Obergefell to the Dred Scott decision (because having to live in a world with married gays is the same as slavery), suggests this:
…it must start with the voice that rings out the depth of the wrong and summons the resistance—that “this shall not stand.” We will learn here right away, from the reactions springing from our political class, just who among our political figures may be up the task and adequate to the moment. But it may not be a man in office, or someone running for anything. Rick Santelli, emitting a cri de coeur on CNBC, triggered the coming of the Tea Party movement. A Robert George, with the attention properly focused, might accomplish the same thing.
A Tea Party, only anti-gay! Presumably instead of tricorners and knee-breeches, they’ll all dress in Eldridge Cleaver codpiece pants and other affectations of extreme butchness…
Some of them reach back to root causes, none further than Ephraim Radner, who has half decided that democracy itself is inconsistent with his religion:
Second, the vitality and moral usefulness of the liberal state is increasingly in question: has this form of rule by procedural decision-making served its purpose and collapsed under the weight of its own outsized reach? We are perhaps about to enter times of political revolution and re-inventing government analogous to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Maybe he can mob up with ISIS; really, what’s for them to wrangle over except the name of God? …
The comments are also extremely enjoyable, for instance Shakezulu:
Are people going to look up one day, years after the tribes of the Fischerites, the Cruzites and the Duggarites and all the other Shitites have fled into the wilderness, and say “Gee it sure is lonesome now that we don’t have any violent, squinty-eyed fascist puds screaming like stuck pigs every time they can’t oppress someone. Let’s go round up some of those sullen, resentful, morally inferior human-shaped pus pockets and keep them as house pets. Maybe they’ll murder a few of us from time to time, like in the good old days.”?
MBouffant flags the latest grifting inspiration of Erick Erickson, as reported in Salon:
On his radio show Monday, conservative commentator Erick Erickson argued that the Supreme Court made a grave mistake with its decision to legalize same-sex marriage in all 50 states because “it’s not really true” that most of the people who identify as LGBT are “born gay” — they’re made gay by “parental issues” and “abuse.”
By legalizing same-sex marriage, Erickson reasoned, the Supreme Court is going to increase the size of the homosexual population — because the “collapse” of the traditional, Christian family is “directly inverse proportional or inversely related to the rise in people who identify as gay.” The more non-traditional, non-Christian families out there, the more gay people who will be “created” via abuse or parents with “issues.”…
“You’re going to have to get out of there,” Erickson said, “you’re going to have quit your job” because federal nondiscrimination statutes will require Christians to treat members of the LGBT community as human beings. Christians will have to form “church communities,” in which “parents are more careful who their friends are, and who their children play with.”
“You’ll have to go” where “the postmodern secular humanists…can’t get you,” but “they’re going to try to get you.”
“The further out you go,” he assured listeners, “the safer you’ll be. I think you’re going to see a lot of Christians go back into the handcrafting industry, go back into laboring, go back into farming — because there is something to do in the bible about farming.”…
They’ll have to do it without him, however, as he said that he will remain behind to act as a “cultural bridge” between these pockets of Luddite fancy and the secular world from which these good Christians fled.
You go on ahead, guys, and I’ll man the concessions counter! Might as well leave me to guard your luxury goods, you won’t need them in Canaan!… There’s audio at the link, if you can stand it.
***********
Apart from the healthful exercise of rolling our eyes (fiercely!), what’s on the agenda for the day?
Eric Nny
It’s just so ridiculously over the top. It must be exhausting being them.
JPL
Here’s Erick, goat fucker, Erickson, following the words of Christ.
“You’re going to have to get out of there,” Erickson said, “you’re going to have quit your job” because federal nondiscrimination statutes will require Christians to treat members of the LGBT community as human beings. Christians will have to form “church communities,” in which “parents are more careful who their friends are, and who their children play with.”
ThresherK
Just fascinating.
I’m waiting for the Christian Science EMT brigade to refuse to do their jobs next.
OzarkHillbilly
Eric, were you made stupid by “parental issues” and “abuse”, or were you born that way?
MattF
@OzarkHillbilly:
Love the quote-marks. What’s really happening can’t be said out loud. And what about
or
You think?
OzarkHillbilly
Obama continues to troll the right:
The White House declined to say whether the first lady would trade her second-floor bedroom for a tent too.
At one point the scouts squealed upon realising that the president was approaching their singing circle, accompanied by the first lady.
“What are you guys doing in my yard?” he said, before taking a seat on a haybale. “When did you guys show up here?”
ThresherK
@OzarkHillbilly: Hard not to imagine McCain actually meaning it when he yells at the scouts to “Get off my lawn!”
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: First my house and now my yard; troll away Mr. President.
OzarkHillbilly
@ThresherK: Once again Obama has shown that he has no respect for the office of the Presidency something you never saw President Bush or Reagan do. Girl Scouts, camping on the White House lawn! What’s next? Gays having sexy time in the bushes?
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: The local news had a nice segment on the girl scout camp out.
Mustang Bobby
These screechers have more projection going on than a Power Point convention.
As for the “parental abuse,” when I came out my mom looked at my dad and said, “Ha! You owe me five bucks,” and when the SCOTUS ruling came down they both got on the phone and begged me to find a husband while they’re still around to enjoy him.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Now that the treasonous SCOTUS has mandated Gay Marriage For All, The Gays are required to do it out in the open!
SFAW
@Mustang Bobby:
As I said to you last week (I think): Don’t give in! Next they’ll be demanding you get pregnant, and it’s a slippery slope, etc.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mustang Bobby:
I really like your parents.
SFAW
I truly wish all the Neanderthal RWTMs (apologies to Neanderthals everywhere) would just f’ing move to Somalia, set up their own little theocracy, and be done with it. The rest of us have to get back to work, trying to fix all the myriad things that the RWTMs have fucked up (including America).
Don’t let the door hit you in your collective ass on your way out.
Mustang Bobby
@SFAW: If they go, then we’ll be rid of their sniveling bigotry and we can sell their crap on E-bay. Win-win.
SFAW
@Mustang Bobby:
It’s not clear that there would be a big market on eBay for “I hates fags!” memorabilia, nor their “Darkies wanna be treated like real people? Who knew?” crap, nor their “Hitler should have finished the job!” stuff, because the only persons who would be interested would be others just like them, or curators for the various Museum(s) of Racist/Sexist/Homophobic/Anti-Semitic/Anti-Everyone-Not-Like-Me Crap that might appear.
Amir Khalid
@SFAW:
Unless one is of pure African stock, one is almost certainly part Neanderthal. As I understand, it’s suspected that Neanderthal people didn’t actually die out, they just intermarried with the humans who migrated out of Africa.
Zinsky
It is historical moments like these when it becomes clear what sort of people are drawn to conservatism. These are infantile, immature people who throw tantrums when they don’t get their own way and who have such diminished ability to empathize that people with views other than their own are perceived to be “alien” or somehow “subhuman”. That is dangerous, regressive and counterproductive in a global, complex world. Conservatives really are poorly suited for the world we now live in. I feel more sympathy than anger towards these deeply flawed people.
germy shoemangler
today’s nytimes:
Waldo
To farms! To farms! The secular humanists are coming!
The Thin Black Duke
@Zinsky: No offense, but it’s hard to feel sympathetic towards people who are trying to kill me.
Amir Khalid
For some reason, Buzzfeed has shot a video of Ted Cruz doing bad vocal impressions of his favourite Simpsons characters. It doesn’t make him even a little bit more endearing.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: When you get right down to it, we are all of pure African stock. Just don’t tell any of the ‘young earth’ers.
Zinsky
@The Thin Black Duke: Fair point, but liberals need to rise above petty hatred. Whether you are Christian or not, one of the most beautiful aspects of Jesus’ teaching is his admonition to “love those who would do you harm”.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
We’re drying out after another soaking rain in NoVA overnight. Our local total may be 50% more than the airport[‘]s (lots of strong isolated storms recently). (sigh).
We’re also hopeful about our dog Sophie. You may recall that she’s been a little “off”, had a slightly elevated ALT liver enzyme level, and a 3 cm spot was found on her liver via an ultrasound exam.
We talked with a surgeon yesterday morning. It was a good talk. He said that cancers of the liver are usually slow growing, and hemangiosarcoma usually is first visible via problems with the spleen (and her spleen looked fine in the ultrasound), and the 3 cm spot on her liver is on the right side near the gallbladder and difficult to get to and might not be possible to remove (due to proximity to other important things) – he can’t tell until he’s got her opened up. She’s not in any distress – it’s not an emergency. Usually all the liver enzyme numbers increase a lot when the liver is having trouble – not just a relatively small increase in one number. And we don’t even know if the symptoms she’s having are due to the thing they see in the ultrasound image.
Given all that, and the risks of surgery, we’re going to keep her on the antibiotics for a month then do another ultrasound. It might get better on its own, or might not change, or might get much worse. If it’s fast growing, then there isn’t much they can do anyway…
She was a little more playful yesterday evening, so maybe… :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: LOD played that yesterday on his show, his vocal impressions of the Simpsons was as bad as his Churchill impression.
JPL
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Hopefully, the medication helps Sophie.
OzarkHillbilly
@Zinsky:
Sorry, screw that. I’m not Jesus. I may let them live because they aren’t worth the trouble of killing, but no, I am not that good a person.
The Thin Black Duke
@Zinsky: “Petty hatred”?
Jesus.
You have no idea how patronizing you sound, do you?
SiubhanDuinne
Happy Canada Day!
Southern Beale
Christians are always boycotting stuff. It’s worked so well for them.
Not.
danielx
I’ve always wondered what the Thirty Years War was really like. Clearly Brother Radner regards that era as the good old days.
ThresherK
@SiubhanDuinne: I thought about Canada Day while watching the WWC game last night, played in front of a month’s worth of Jeffrey-Loria-era Expos crowds.
Good luck, Miami: You won him fair and square!
SFAW
@Zinsky:
Yeah, I once felt what you might characterize as “petty hatred” toward Nazis and their latter-day idolaters. But I realized that was very un-Jesus-like of me.
And now I love the Nazis, the KKK, and the various other hate-filled eliminationist groups that seem to be home(s) for the various RWTMs. [After all, the Jews and the Coloreds had it coming anyway, right?] Because if I can’t love the people and groups who are actively trying to destroy all that’s good in America and the world, who CAN I love?
ETA: I feel so much less petty now, by the way.
SFAW
@ThresherK:
I thought there were more than 500 people in the stands last night?
OzarkHillbilly
Donald Trump is suing Univision for $500 million worth of butt hurt. Says they are trying to suppress his free speech, proving once again that conservatives are very confused about the meanings of the words “free” and “speech”, and are absolutely without a clue when it comes to “free speech”.
Amir Khalid
@Zinsky:
Loving those who would do you harm is all well and good, but Jesus surely didn’t mean to suggest you shouldn’t defend yourself.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Then what does “turn the other cheek” mean?
Splitting Image
Erick Erickson is Cirdan, faithfully guarding the havens until the last Elven ship sails into the West.
ThresherK
@SFAW: Ergo, “a month’s worth” of fans, from the times when Loria (and Bud Selig, and then MLB) had to destroy the team in order to save, something, apparently.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Waiting for the RWTMs to jump to his defense, citing “religious freedom” or some such. (The “free speech” thing is for amateurs. Yes, I know that’s what he’s claiming.)
Baud
@Zinsky:
The best thing we can do for them is defeat them.
It’s also the best thing we can do for us.
Mustang Bobby
@SFAW:
Jesus was a bottom?
Amir Khalid
@SFAW:
A correction, then:
Loving those who would do you harm is all well and good, but Jesus surely didn’t mean to suggest you
shouldn’tmustn’t defend yourself.SFAW
@ThresherK:
The point I was trying (“inartfully,” as Fat Nino might say) to make was that the stands held more than a year’s worth of Expos fans. A month? That was what you saw in one close-up of China supporters last night.
Baud
I for one am looking forward to V-J-J Day.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
My earlier comment still applies, I think.
But for what it’s worth, I think the whole “turn the other cheek” thing is bullshit as a way of going through this world, except in some circumstances.
SFAW
@Mustang Bobby:
It’s a good thing Justice Kennedy didn’t see that comment before he wrote his opinion.
ThresherK
@SFAW: Oh, okay. In that case it’s pretty funny, and I’m sure if teh Internet didn’t scrub off vocal inflection and body languange, it’d come across as intended.
I’d quibble with your numbers, except we’d just be “arguing over price”.
(But my seething hatred for Jeffrey Loria continues unabated. You can’t take that away from me.)
Iowa Old Lady
It’s interesting to me that most of the freak out is over the marriage decision rather than the ACA, when the first won’t affect many of them, while the stability of the health insurance market affects everyone. I don’t know what that means.
@SiubhanDuinne: When we lived in Detroit, the proximity of Canada Day and July 4 meant big joint fireworks over the Detroit River.
Bobby Thomson
I, for one, welcome our new Amish no-longer-overlords.
Baud
@SFAW:
I’m no theologian, but I always read it to mean don’t harm yourself by being consumed with hate for people who have done you injustice.
satby
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Best wishes to you and Sophie! Hoping for her recovery soon!
Baud
I suggest Somalia.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Trump is a fighter. Republican voters would do well to nominate him.
Germy Shoemangler
“God made the world in six days and was arrested on the seventh.”
– Ambrose Bierce
TheMightyTrowel
@Amir Khalid: neanderthals definitely died out. Inter breeding happened but it probably only happened sporadically and towards the very beginning of the H sap diaspora. You’re right though: the purest Homo sapiens are sub Saharan Africans.
satby
@Baud: Isn’t there a mission to Mars planned? Christians like missions.
satby
@TheMightyTrowel: ironic, isn’t it?
SFAW
@ThresherK:
Why would I want to do that? I have my own for Fred Wilpon. Well, it’s not “seething,” but still …
SFAW
@Iowa Old Lady:
Better there than the Cuyahoga.
Germy Shoemangler
@Amir Khalid: I’ve been watching the First Peoples documentary on PBS
http://www.pbs.org/first-peoples/home/
It’s a fascinating show.
Botsplainer
I’m kind of saddened by all the purging and shrieking the fundamentalists have done to Christianity. I really like my church and the people in it – it was immigrant created, my great grandparents on my dad’s side were among the first members, lots of cousins go there and despite the best efforts of converts from Western traditions, it retained that “old country” Mediterranean “live and let live” sense of life. Plus, the festivals and food rocked. Mom brought me up Southern Baptist (Dad never really gave a damn one way or another, he was always going to do whatever pleased him, being of Eastern Med heritage); I came into Orthodoxy later, as an adult. The priest when I first went there was a nice guy for a number of years, but came under the thrall of a convert bishop during a period when convert families from purely Western traditions were basically trying to take over and go candyassed demanding asceticism and crushing all ethnic festivals. Our VERY traditional old country Metropolitan flexed muscle finally and shoved out the nasty puritanical trendsetters. The new priest is a kind, great guy.
For me, though, I’ve heard so much nastiness and dourness from the loudest Christians in the world, I can’t go back save for big events like weddings and funerals, just out of respect for the participants. The ludicrous non-sacrifice of Christ (if you take the theology seriously) is the thing at the center, the thing that gets me the most, and why I can’t go and participate in liturgy.
The loudest Christians stole all that from me, and I hate them for it.
MattF
@Amir Khalid: You should read Orwell’s essay “Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool’. It’s about Tolstoy’s (negative) view of Shakespeare. Orwell specifically notes that ‘turning the other cheek’ means that you do so in the expectation that you will be hit again, and harder. It’s not an easy way out– or, to be on topic, a way of expressing your prejudices.
SFAW
@Baud:
Not sure I agree, but it’s a reasonable interpretation.
TheMightyTrowel
@satby: deliciously so.
I have to be careful how i teach this in Oz because se Asians and australo-pacific populations actually appear even more mixed. There seem to have been inter breeding events with Denisovans as well and perhaps other Homo species in this branch of the human tree.
H sap motto: all apes look grey after dark.
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady:
What it means is they don’t like the fact that they are no longer better than a bunch of sodomites. It is the government’s job to reenforce their feelings of superiority. After all, they aren’t really better than you, but they are saved.
Baud
@SFAW:
Well, then, die heretic! #Emo
SFAW
@Baud:
I forget which branch of Baptist I am.
Oh wait! I’m not; I’m an atheist.
But a devout one.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I know it’s just another day at the office for these dudes but watching them frame is pretty cool.
Botsplainer
@satby:
When my daughter was on her dig in Belize earlier in the summer and I was telling a colleague about it and her upcoming dig in Greece, an eavesdropping lawyer in the next row brightly chirped “Mission trips?”
I guess my angry glare was obvious (along with ignoring her), because she quickly turned away.
Iowa Old Lady
@OzarkHillbilly: Also anything to do with sex takes priority.
SRW1
The horror, the neverending horror!
Another Holocene Human
May I suggest French-style naked shirt protests (young traditional conservatives only, please)? That would be very butch.
I’d like to see wailing and weeping, too. Teeth-gnashing optional.
Another Holocene Human
Remembering surfing the internet in 1996 and stumbling across a frothing website that stated that the morals of America suffered a mortal blow with the invention of the automobile.
No, not a complete streets activist, a nut with page after page about how 1950’s automobile backseats had brought about The End.
TheMightyTrowel
@Botsplainer: Aside: i have a colleague who digs up 19th century missions in the Pacific. Super interesting stuff.
satby
@Botsplainer: I’ve done a couple of humanitarian missions and disaster relief missions and it always annoys me when people assume I was with church groups. Both because of the implied “otherwise why would anyone do that?” and because some of the church groups in the areas were more hindrance than help.
But to be fair, some were invaluable and truer examples of Christianity than Eric the stupid will ever be.
nastybrutishntall
@TheMightyTrowel: See? Gay marriage = all kinds of Homo inside us.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: On a good crew, it’s fun too.
Another Holocene Human
@Botsplainer: Mission trips are the best scam ever. At least in the Southeast, boss gives you time off even if you have no vacation time, people in your church just fork over cash, people who stay home rather than be envious or suspicious just kiss your fucking ass constantly, AND you get to be half-assed and condescending to the locals when you’re over there, after all, nobody at home is there to see your horrible construction skills except for other people on the mission, ie other made people like yourself.
Churches here maintain ties with Haiti, which I think on some level is legit, but I’m suspicious. Long history of Americans being douchey in Haiti. Also long history of Baptist contempt for Catholics. (Plus I’m sure at church these are being sold as evangelizing runs, play up the vestiges of African religion going on on the island to open those wallets.) The last time we had a big clothing drive there were people who genuinely wanted to help and people who genuinely didn’t. The racism against West Indians and especially Haitians is disgusting. (One of my West Indian coworkers came to me later and told me more that I didn’t know about and yeah, she took it personally!)
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
The boy is moving four hours north today to work for the summer prior to college. I’m following along with a car full of furniture. Ms. Hayduke is staying home with the aging dog.
Kind of blue, but excited for him at the same time.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I shot the shit with them for a minute this morning and were have all kinds of mutual friends. I guess it’s not a surprise since I’ve lived here for 30 years but I like the connections.
Another Holocene Human
If those assholes on missions actually wanted to help people they’d do a mission right in the fucking South, like HKonHSt!!!
ThresherK
@SFAW: Oops. I meant the proverbial “you”, not the particular “you”.
The particular you may well outlive Wilpon’s ownership of the Mets. I will be glad for that.
@Another Holocene Human: If someone wants to go on about the automobile destroying America, they’d best back up a few decades before the 50s and read “Middletown”!
JPL
@Botsplainer: How is your daughter doing?
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady: They do have an obsession with sex, don’t they? I think it’s all the (failed) abstinence that does it to them.
Another Holocene Human
@satby: Low, scummy, unimaginative people imagine that everyone is the same way.
Let me mention I work for a union and aside from my family (who proudly told me about some great great cousin-uncle who was a steward in Ohio) I’ll immediately get the graft comments and the mafia jokes. (My union was never mobbed up, seriously not enough free cash flow for easy money laundering and no remote job sites that union members controlled.)
SFAW
@ThresherK:
Thanks for the clarification, although I wasn’t offended/bothered by the un-clarified version.
From your keyboard to FSM’s orechiette.
Another Holocene Human
@ThresherK: I think the car destroyed a lot of our sense of community (among other things) but this was definitely not a thoughtful investigation of the cost of car culture. I swear there was something about a particular model being best for destroying virtue.
I always remember that website when modern conservatives act like the 1950s were the promised land. Millennialist conservatives are NEVER happy!!
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
It’s ALWAYS about the sex. Well, as regards abortion, birth control, “my religion prevents me from doing the job that I get fucking paid to do,” and so forth.
raven
@Another Holocene Human: My friend’s brother was killed while on a mission in Central America. They were riding in the back of an old deuce-and-a-half that plunged down a ravine. From my vast experience in the 3rd world you don’t want to be getting hurt there.
SFAW
@Another Holocene Human:
1949 Nash Ambassador, probably.
Svensker
@Amir Khalid:
Actually, some Christian sects DO believe in non-violence, even to the point of not defending yourself. The Quakers are one. Believe it or not, the Baptists used to be the same. The more primitive anabaptist sects such as the Mennonites and Amish still believe in non-violence.
They take “thou shalt not kill,” “turn the cheek” and “love thine enemy” literally and believe that fighting and war are morally wrong and un-Christian. And that is why there is such a discussion of “just war” in the early church — trying to figure out how to square even defensive war with God’s words.
White Trash Liberal
The thing about turning the other cheek is that it had to be understood in perspective with his overall teachings. Jesus believed that heaven and the afterlife was the true life, and that our human earthly existence was meant to bring that kingdom of Heaven closer to earth. And Jesus’ method was to point out that in order to do so, we must cultivate a personal and private relationship with God, and to set the example that earthly existence was transitory… And not to hold on to anything but God and love. So turning the other cheek is not holding on to anger, retaliation, and recognizing that whatever your enemies do to you, they cannot take away heaven–only you can do that by clinging to earthly desires and making your soul a perpetual torment.
It’s a very desert metaphysic and ethic, for sure, and not applicable as an every day lifestyle unless one is committed wholly to it’s foundation. And Jesus’ teachings were quickly reinterpreted by Peter in Acts to be more palatable to Gentiles, and by Paul as a political missionary exercise. And has now changed so much that a substantial portion of Christ’s followers would be on the negative side of just about all his ethical parables. Instead, the ticket to the evangelical carnival is believing in the miracle of resurrection and the salvation of his blood. So, you have to believe in the patently absurd stuff, and all the admonitions regarding acts over faith are conveniently ignored in favor of old tribal bigotries. And yet they pretend to be the orthodox, the keepers of the keys.
The funniest part is that in Acts, all the early Christisns reached an agreement that the Torah was too big a burden to bear and would prevent the conversion of Gentiles. So they only kept the commandments against the mixing of bloods in food and adultery. Which means all those other rules, from homosexuality to shaving your beard to properly breeding your slaves, was discarded by the first pope. These modern bigots are holding on to shit that was settled on day one of their own church.
SFAW
@Another Holocene Human:
Well, they were, before 1954. After that, the darkies started getting uppity, thinking they should get a edumacation.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: That can be a help. Nobody ever goes out of their way to screw some one by doing a shitty job, but having that connection makes it a little easier to give that stud an extra rap with the hammer to knock it in line. “Good enough for this neighborhood” won’t be good enough, and “Can’t see it from my house” can turn to “I can see it at the BBQ”.
SFAW
@Svensker:
The Dominionists fixed that
Another Holocene Human
@Botsplainer: Sounds like what is going on with the Catholic Church, I mean aside from the Great Quittening draining the churches of liberals and centrists you have these former evangelical thumpers converting and then loudly trying to shape the church in their image. The clergy kind of walled themselves into a corner where they have to go along with the wingers. We’ve always had those folks that were more Catholic than the Pope but the freakout over Francis has been amusing to watch from a safe distance. Seriously would not just walk into a suburban church these days.
I think Vatican II killed a lot of our ethnic festivals, though. No more hilariously pagan May Days. I’ve seen the photos. May Day Izreal.
Snarki, child of Loki
@Another Holocene Human: the 1950’s automobile back-seat as the destroyer of civilization?
I think you have to go back further than that, to the 1920s “rumble seat”. The name gives it away.
The 1950s innovation that destroyed the USA was “going steady”. It was clearly a plot by Stalin and Obama to pollute precious bodily fluids, or something.
JPL
@SFAW: When I receive those sentimental 50’s emails, I reply that living in an age where you can forward the email, instantly, ain’t so bad.
J R in WV
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Scott:
Best of luck with yer dawg, Sophie sounds like a great companion and friend!
My physical therapist tells me that very many people, when they get imagery of some internal part for one reason or another, see that they have had some unrelated abnormality for some time – without any symptoms at all.
So Sophie’s ultrasound spot may just that, a completely asymptomatic spot unconnected to any actual disease with long term implications.
Your dawg will be OK too, all the odds are with you here. If not, well, she will have good care and you will have the best advice. That’s all anyone could do.
Best wishes for her speedy recovery and happy slow old age, preferably on someone’s lap.
JR
Another Holocene Human
@White Trash Liberal: Gnostic Christianity was anything but Orthodox. Orthodoxy fought its own version of Mafia Wars to get control of the various urban franchises. If a few notable non-Christian heretics got bumped off while they were at it, all the better. Yes, the Church was bought in blood … just not the blood of Christ.
ThresherK
@Another Holocene Human: I swear there was something about a particular model being best for destroying virtue.
Nash seats?
(And if you’re handy enough, many a front bench seat seatback–from the bench seat era–could be easily lowered backwards to be flush with the rear seat’s bottom. Um, I heard someone say that once.)
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Yea, the main guy mentioned another high end builder and I said, “Ah he was our third baseman”! Dude said “and here I thought I liked you”. When they are comfortable fucking with you you’re on the right track!
Gimlet
Does Jesus say whether it should be “concealed carry” or “open carry”?
Another Holocene Human
@Snarki, child of Loki: Ha, going steady. It was a bit of culture shock when I found out that my grandmother had had dozens of boyfriends in the 1940s. A good church-going Catholic, too!
Germy Shoemangler
@Snarki, child of Loki: Yes, the 1920s rumble seat was considered the work of the devil.
Peter Arno had this cartoon in the New Yorker magazine in the 1920s.
It caused quite a scandal, because the young couple reporting their stolen car were too busy in the back seat to notice it was being stolen!
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Some years back a buddy of mine had an appendicitis somewhere in the Yucutan. There was no hospital, just a clinic with a Dr who came thru once every 3 or 4 days. Lizards on the walls, scorpions under everything and of course, the flies… The nurses were useless (watched soap operas all day) and his 2 traveling partners had to do everything for him including changing his sheets and cleaning him up every time he shit himself. Damn near dead when the Doc finally got there and operated. The Doc knew hardly any English and their Spanish was only marginally better. After the operation the Doc only said “Mooch poos, mooch poos, very grave very grave” He was a butcher at best, but he saved my buddy’s life. His partners decided to get him out of there as quick as possible and the Doc tried very hard to discourage them, thought Edlund was just too sick. And he was. When they put him on the plane to the states, they really weren’t sure they’d ever see him again. But they were even surer he was going to die if he stayed there.
satby
@JPL: most of those sentimental emails are forwarded by people who were young children then, and have a child’s view of how stuff was. I usually respond by nostalgically remembering the children from grade school who disappeared into iron lungs, or were deafened by measles, or remembering the elderly who bought cat food for themselves. That usually gets me off those lists ;)
SFAW
@ThresherK:
The 1949 Ambassador was nine feet of flat surface with the seats down.
Baud
@satby:
I remember earlier this year also.
(Disclosure: I actually don’t know if anyone has been defeaned in the latest outbreak.)
White Trash Liberal
@Another Holocene Human:
Yes, in the events leading to the Nicene Creed and the official Catholic orthodoxy, Gnosticism, Monophysite, and other interpretations of the gospels were large pieces of the puzzle… Only to get stamped out by creed and deed by Pope Leo and his enforcers. The beginnings of Papal Bulls that targeted heretics for death, the seeds of inquisition. Deeply unpleasant stuff. All to eradicate competing interpretations which threatened nothing but the power of the Pointy Hat.
Gnosticism later developed strains of antisemitism, but I think that is a byproduct of the Renaissance, whose small Gnostic awakening ironically owed itself to documents from Jewish and Moorish traders.
Oh, and here’s the chapter of Acts regarding the reformation of the Torah: http://www.biblestudytools.com/msg/acts/15.html
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I had forgotten this but last month my buddies son was badly hurt in a wreck between TJ and Ensanada. They slammed into the back of a truck and the kid broke his back but was not paralyzed. My pal hauled ass down there from Berkeley and got to him in the hospital in TJ. He said the docs and care was pretty good and they offered to do the same kind of stabilization surgery I had 40 years ago when I broke mine. He declined and got him to San Diego where they determined surgery was not needed and they sent him home. The really funny thing is the cost. I was worried about what the bill in Mexico was and he said that, since they were on a toll road, they were insured because they paid and there was no bill!
Another Holocene Human
@Snarki, child of Loki: I always assumed it was a rumble seat due to a tragic lack of shocks + bicycle tires + asphalt roads not invented yet.
Sherparick
@Amir Khalid: And the ancestors of the Neanderthals also migrated out of Africa. With all the gene flow back and forth, particularly over the last 1,000 years, as well as the long population, near extinction event humans experienced after the Toba eruption 70,000 years ago, we really are scientifically one big unhappy family of distant cousins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_bottleneck
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: @raven: Third world transportation is hair-raising. Traveling in both Bolivia and Haiti after the earthquake made me hope that if the bus plunged off the mountain road I would die quickly, and that seemed to be 50/50 odds every time we traveled. In Haiti we at least we’re camped near the Doctor Without Borders; in Bolivia I and one other volunteer were 30 kilometers by jitney bus from any medical care, and there were poison snakes everywhere. Oddly, you get used to it.
SFAW
@Another Holocene Human:
Well, considering that a typical rumble seat (I think) was about the size of the rear seat in a TR3, you’re probably closer to the truth.
Another Holocene Human
In the other kind of sexual liberation news, bicycles were marketed to women as granting independence, and the electric city car was the ultimate women’s car of 1905 with hand-crank free operation.
50s moral panics were so hypocritical … just look at the most accessible media (film) from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s. Now the 40s were dressed down due to rationing and heavily censored, but the subtext is still there.
There’s music, too … hello.
RSA
That’s not reasoning. It’s not even bad reasoning. It’s like saying there’s a positively negative relationship between two things.
Villago Delenda Est
@MattF: It is always projection with these assholes, after all.
MattF
@satby: Some old friends of mine travelled to Bolivia some years ago. They rode a bus up and down a mountain where the driver crossed himself every time he went around a curve. Didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Botsplainer
@JPL:
She’s stressed out. I can tell because she blew a gasket at me yesterday morning by text yesterday when I told her (neutrally) that someone has posted a spam porn link to her Facebook wall. I wasn’t judgmental,freaking out or anything like that. This is her method of depressurizing.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven:
That’s no way to run a country! You have to milk the unfortunate for every penny!
bemused
Randi Rhodes fans: Randi will be on Stephanie Miller Show this morning, 2nd hour if I heard correctly. Stephanie Miller just said Randi has been writing a book since she left the radio biz for Costa Rica.
Another Holocene Human
@satby: Yeah that kind of stuff happens but the US has its own version of scary mountain, as when a coach bus operator drove off a flying overpass ramp in ATL, killing most of the passengers, or when a contractor decided to sekritly cheapen their safety railing design, killing drivers who veered off the road. (The state of VA is in a rumble with them now.)
satby
@Baud: It would be LOL worthy if measles didn’t have a risk of death and complications like pneumonia and encephalitis. What those anti-vax people think is beyond me.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: Heh. I loved the buses. Made going from one town to another a complete adventure. Not only were you unsure of living thru the day, you never knew who, or what, your traveling companions might consist of.
raven
@Another Holocene Human: That exit in Atlanta was really stupid. Fucking major interstate with and exit in the MIDDLE of the highway. I used to take it quite a bit on my way to Tech.
Botsplainer
@SFAW:
Dad had a TR3 when I was a kid. He totally misused that car as an inherently unreliable daily commuter, and failed to use it for its true, money-sucking pleasure purpose.
JPL
Katharine Lee Bates would be an ideal candidate for the ten dollar bill. America the Beautiful is a beloved song that was based on her poem. What would Erick the goat fucker say to that.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I took the regular bus from Mo Bay to Negril up through the Cockpit Country in 72. I could not figure out why I was so jumpy. Turned out it was the diesel smell, I thought I was back in a convoy.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: There was a bit of inter-breeding, IMO, but Neanderthals are quite different in morphology from Homo Sapiens Sapiens & it appears that modern humans have inherited almost none of their peculiar traits.
Another Holocene Human
@White Trash Liberal: The pointy hat is Mithraic drag. If you go to Roman sites (period of Classical Antiquity) the Mithraic temples are always larger and more fabulous than believed Christian worship houses.
SFAW
@Botsplainer:
Lucas wiring?
Too bad.
Germy Shoemangler
Another 19th-century fable from Ambrose Bierce:
Another Holocene Human
@JPL: That sounds like the sort of person who would go on that there funny Euro money.
Cultural significance. Pshaw.
But I’ll play. Sojourner Truth.
SFAW
@JPL:
Something stupid and assholish, of course. Exactly what? Who knows? But he always finds a way to be even more of a dick than he previously had been.
raven
@raven: It’s still there, I-75 and Northside Drive. It’s make way better but still.
Citizen_X
@Baud:
I know a place they can go where, for centuries, nay, millennia, big government has not been able to reach. Why? Because the populace is heavily armed, and willing to defend their traditional way of life.
It’s called Afghanistan.
JPL
@SFAW: There’s a nice article about her on boston.com.
The headline is A gay feminist badass from Massachusetts wrote ‘America the Beautiful’
Another Holocene Human
@raven: Did the families sue the engineer and the highway department?
Engineers cry about being sued all the time but I don’t think it happens anywhere near enough.
PARABOLIC CURVES SAVE LIVES. But “our construction workers” are “too resistant” (this means “stupid”) to lay them out. YOU CAN LAY THEM OUT WITH A STRING AND A BOARD YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS. FUCK. I know what this really means. Engineers are people avoidant and lazy. FTFY.
Botsplainer
@SFAW:
Yup, Lucas wiring. Constant trips to the mechanic on every part that moved. Rust, along with rust on top of rust on all metal surfaces, no matter how treated. The side curtains fit badly and any rain was guaranteed to soak you.
Thing was a looker though, that’s for sure.
Another Holocene Human
@JPL: Oo la la, Boston Globe. The WASPy going saucy.
Punchy
@satby: I’m quite certain I could never “get used to” cohabitating with poisonous snakes.
Gin & Tonic
@OzarkHillbilly: Not only were you unsure of living thru the day, you never knew who, or what, your traveling companions might consist of.
Not just buses. I’ve taken domestic flights in the former USSR that were like that. WWII-era airplanes held together with chewing gum, full of black leather-jacketed no-neck skinheads. Not much conversation, but lots of vodka.
raven
@Another Holocene Human: It was a college baseball team from Bluffton, Ohio
Another Holocene Human
@Botsplainer: Me, I draw the line at getting rained on.
I used to work at a place with a fine fleet of gloriously handicapped INaccessible 1983 35′ Orion buses. The drivers hated them so much they had nicknamed them “Onions”.
The customers brought umbrellas and opened them inside the bus when it rained.
(It’s not that they loved transit so much it’s that many of them didn’t have a parking space when they got to work. Monopolies are sw33t.)
Woodrowfan
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I hope Sophie will be OK….
and yeah, we got soaked, again. My eldest dog HATES thunderstorms so had to take him to go sleep in the basement again last night…
Germy Shoemangler
@Another Holocene Human: I’m not sure if this is nationwide, but someone had the idea to put narrow rumble strips on the side of some major highways in my neck of the woods.
If you doze off and veer off lane, the shaking will definitely wake you up. I’ve also noticed them going in the center line of some smaller roads.
Saved my life about eight years ago. I dozed off on the highway and started to drift. I woke up suddenly when my car started shaking.
Whoever invented it deserves a macarthur genius award.
Uncle Cosmo
@Germy Shoemangler:
Mmm, more like “too busy on the back seat”–more precisely, the back cushion of the rumble seat–which appears to have been extracted from the vehicle & placed down in a suitably flat & secluded extra-vehicular place to facilitate “making whoopee” (so to speak). The couple in question being too distracted by said exertions to note the highway robbery afoot….
raven
@Another Holocene Human: You should go to google maps and look at this exit. It’s unreal.
Another Holocene Human
@raven: Wow, servicey!
Convenient that GA graciously limits itself to $3 million in liability, which is considerably less than rebuilding the exit would cost. Whew, no need to correct our course, steady as she goes, boys!
scav
@MattF: The fact that our drivers aren’t crossing themselves every time they venture over so much of our D- and F-grade infrastructure just proves how godless and homo-enabling a secular nation we have become!
MomSense
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Hopefully Sophie will respond well to the medication. How old is she?
MomSense
@Mustang Bobby:
I really like your parents!
raven
We had the most insane red sun this morning!
Another Holocene Human
@Germy Shoemangler: That is a great invention but predictably there have been lawsuits about that because I think there was a patent involved and some states didn’t want to pay so they just scooped holes without paying and yadda yadda.
I worked with a guy who wanted them on the median line. I pointed out that rather than draw someone off the road and away from other vehicles this would actually send the person careening into oncoming traffic, but he was unimpressed by my “physics facts” and “practical concerns”. Needless to say his “research” didn’t involve any test tracks or even simulations.
The emeritus professor at his defense (not his advisor, obvs) tore him a new one, though, so I was amused. He was a big fat dick to everyone and greedy and had it coming.
JPL
@raven: It’s cloudy here.
satby
@MattF: Blind curves and a road barely wide enough for vehicles to pass each other, and a sheer plunge down a mountain if someone miscalculates. Same in Haiti. Like I said: “hair-raising”. Most of us just focussed on talking to someone inside the bus so we wouldn’t notice what was going on so much outside.
The views when I had nerve to look were breathtaking though.
Another Holocene Human
@scav: I liked how a concerned member of the public was the one who sounded the alarm that the old Central Artery in Boston was totally falling down, you guyz.
TBF he was something of a concrete expert but yeah. There was supposed to be a bureaucracy that was supposed to be ON IT.
Maybe the insurance companies should try their own bridge squad thing. Save themselves from Pawlenty-order payouts.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Jesus did say to metaphorically ‘turn the other cheek’. Now, if the aggressor then whacked you again on that cheek, Jesus sad nothing about what you should do then.
Valdivia
No Cuba thread? I haz a sad.
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I hope Sophie is back to herself in no time.
Another Holocene Human
@Punchy: I seem to be missing the gene that makes you be scared of them, unless they move suddenly and startle me. (Got started a lot by garters growing up, but they were smarter; my next move would have been to try to catch them.)
ETA: okay, let me modify that, I’m not really scared of US snakes except maybe cottonmouths? I have seen snakes in the Reptile House that were scary-looking as fuck.
Another Holocene Human
@Valdivia: I heard the news. Yippee!!!!
raven
@JPL: That is what was so nuts. I drive to the bakery and walk back so the Bohdi only has to walk one way. I carried my camera this morning but left it at the house when I got back because it was so cloudy. When I pulled out of BCB and saw it I hauled ass home, grabbed the camera and got those shots at around the corner.
Another Holocene Human
@Paul in KY: I think he said you should be happy that you were being persecuted.
Some Christians interpret this to mean that they should act like dicks so they can cry persecution when they get pushback.
Sherparick
I think these guys really get off on the parts of the Bible most of us find disgusting. http://trish-m.hubpages.com/hub/The-Destruction-of-the-Babies-and-Children-of-Amalek.
On the other hand, they never seem to get the point of what the Teacher was saying when he told the following story:
Luke Ch. 18, 9-14, “…He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ 13But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
By the way, they will have to make sure that their precious minds never get exposed to Voltaire or Mark Twain.
Another Holocene Human
@raven: So Google Maps and wikipedia are saying the coach went off the road on the opposite side from the HOV exit, so I’m wondering about signage being a factor?
They went right through a ped fence so possibly visibility as well.
Or the driver was really tired and saw vehicles entering/exiting on the other side–?
I seem to recall the road getting blamed at the time but I’m wasting time I should be doing something else so I will go do that instead of continuing down this rabbit hole.
Just going to close with NTSB, my go-to guide to everything in life. “Ladies, ladies, you’re BOTH at fault.”
“The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of this accident was the motorcoach driver’s mistaking the HOV-only left exit ramp to Northside Drive for the southbound Interstate 75 HOV through lane. Contributing to the accident driver’s route mistake was the failure of the Georgia Department of Transportation to install adequate traffic control devices to identify the separation and divergence of the Northside Drive HOV-only left exit ramp from the southbound Interstate 75 HOV through lane. Contributing to the severity of the accident was the motorcoach’s lack of an adequate occupant protection system.”
Frankensteinbeck
You don’t understand. The right to shit on other people is their most cherished right. Abusing others and forcing others to live by their standards (which they themselves often don’t follow), is a liberty. It is something they have been free to do to gays ever since they had to look for another victim than blacks. They care about their right to shit on other people. A lot. Every time we chop off a chunk of it, their rights have been reduced in a big, big way, and they are reacting honestly to that. Our reaction is rightly ‘fuck them, this is a right no one deserves because it interferes with the rights of others’, but don’t assume they’re making it up out of whole cloth.
EDIT – There is no snark in the previous whatsoever. It is utterly fucked up, but it is what they believe.
Paul in KY
@Another Holocene Human: That is one interpretation.
Paul in KY
@Sherparick: Jesus really castigated hypocrites. I find it funny that the most hypocritical bunch of goobers here in USA claim to follow his teachings.
raven
@Another Holocene Human: I’m sure signage was part of it. The ramp is in the middle of the interstate and you go up it and turn right or left onto Northside. They just kept going right over the bridge and back onto the highway.
PurpleGirl
@Botsplainer:
The ludicrous non-sacrifice of Christ (if you take the theology seriously) is the thing at the center, the thing that gets me the most, and why I can’t go and participate in liturgy.
Can you explain this for me? I don’t understand what you’re getting at.
(My own background includes being raised a very casual RC; joining a Lutheran congregation in my mid-20s and then leaving the Lutheran church in my mid-30s. BTW that congregation started our Missouri Synod but then they left and joined the merger with ALC and LCA to create ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a very liberal group). Sorry so much time has gone by, I took an unplanned nap.
Pappenheimer
I still can’t figure out how we outcompeted the Neanderthals in Europe. Those guys were stronger, had bigger brains, and were better adapted to cold temperatures. If Amr’s theory that Neanderthals were subsumed into our gene pool (which is not what the latest theories suppose, as other commentators have stated) was correct, it would lead me to the hypothesis that we were just better at f*****g. (Once you go Cro, you never go back…)
A Ghost To Most
@Baud:
“The closer we are to danger, the further we are from harm” – Peregrine Took
PurpleGirl
@PurpleGirl: A bit of background on ELCA: In the mid-1980s there was a schism within the Missouri Synod about how to view the Bible, which then lead to a feud in the political governance of the Synod itself. The official stance of the Missouri Synod was that the Bible is the unerring word of God, sort of like a dictaphone recording. The stance taken by a number of professors at one of the Lutheran seminaries was that it is the inspired word of God but it can be interpreted within the modern world but it shouldn’t be taken literally. A movement grew up around supporting the professors (Seminary in Exile) when Missouri moved to eject them from teaching. (I joined my congregation in the midst of this schism.)
There were two smaller synods — the American Lutheran Church (ALC) and the Lutheran Church in America (LCA) — which dated to different immigrant groups that the southern Germans who formed the Missouri Synod. Ultimately the internacine fighting led to the breakaway Missouri congregations and the LCA and ALC merging to become ELCA
Librarian
Ah, yes, Robert George. What a douchenozzle. What was that about Ivy League liberals again?
Kristine
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Good thoughts headed your (and Sophie’s) way.
catclub
@OzarkHillbilly:
Humility is the first virtue, and pride is the first sin, but you would not know it from some so-called Christians.
JPL
@raven: They did put up additional signage, in order to help prevent further accidents. Of course, they didn’t have the money to build a new exit.
Botsplainer
@PurpleGirl:
Sacrifice is something permanent. By Trinitarian doctrine, Jesus was fully God and fully man, but was only dead from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning – neither God nor Jesus lost anything more than about 36 hours.
Plus, if God had the power to raise all human souls from death, then what’s the point about the drama with Jesus? Wasn’t as if that death conveyed new power.
Elizabelle
@OzarkHillbilly: More about Obama and the Girl Scouts campout (which turned washout — spectacular thunder and lightning storm around midnight drove them indoors, to an office building conference room): WaPost:
the Conster
HA HA HA Macy’s just dropped Donald Trump. Wouldn’t a Trump presidency be an exciting thrill ride? He’d be firing half the country, suing the other half and getting in twitterwars and real wars with everyone, including our soon to be former allies. #WINNING
Librarian
And the very fucking idea that they can start a Tea Party-style movement against gay rights- what the fuck planet do these people live on? How delusional can you get? He’s right about one thing, though- Robert George is just like Santelli- they’re both hacks, frauds and charlatans.
PurpleGirl
@Botsplainer: Thanks for your reply. Now I have something theological to think about.
What ultimately drove me from religion was my developing belief that man created God to have someone to blame for all the bad things and credit for good things in life. To give a meaning and reason for things they couldn’t otherwise explain. This train of thought began when I was around 11 or 12 as I began reading about ancient history and anthropology.
Kent
This isn’t really going to cause any bigger split between conservative fundamentalist religionists and secular society. That split is already as wide as it can possibly be. What this recent Supreme Court case is going to do is drive a giant wedge right down the middle of a whole lot of mainstream and conservative denominations and cause giant rifts inside many denominations right and left.
We already saw that with the Episcopal church which has split right down the middle over ordination of gay bishops a few years ago. Same thing is going to happen all over the place in dozens of different denominations as the younger more progressive wing and more progressive denominations start endorsing gay members and performing same sex weddings while the older more conservative churches and members grasp tightly to their bigotry. My parents are Mennonite and they are undergoing that same split right now in their denomination and it is really creating a civil war within their church to the extent that Mennonites can actually have a civil war in their own passive-aggressive manner.
Basically it’s time for non-Christianists to get out the popcorn and watch the implosion. Because there are going to be melt-downs right and left, even within conservative denominations such as Southern Baptist over this issue. Mark my words.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@TheMightyTrowel:
IIRC, there was a longstanding assumption that the native people of Australia had somehow sailed there directly from Africa because of their physical similarities in skin color, hair texture, etc. but when their genome was examined decades later, it was discovered that they’re actually one of the most distantly related populations and are primarily Polynesian (I think).
Which goes to show once again that deciding someone’s “race” by looking at their physical characteristics is a mug’s game.
Linnaeus
@Iowa Old Lady:
They still do that.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Paul in KY:
I can’t remember if it panned out, but there was one theory that red hair was a remnant Neanderthal trait.
Paul in KY
@Pappenheimer: We were probably better at sneaky killing, making them think we were their friends & then butchering them, etc. It’s the Homo Sapiens Sapiens way!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@MomSense: She’s nine-ish. We got her when she was about a year old. She was found as a stray in WV and we adopted her locally. We thought she was part kangaroo when we first got her – she could bound about 15 feet when she was in the mood. :-)
Now she’s got several of chronic issues (weak hips, sebaceous cysts, maybe a stiff spot in her lower spine), but she’s a real trooper. She’s also incredibly goofy at times. She’s on the September page of the calendar – look for the shepherd mix with the big floppy ears.
Thanks all. Much appreciated.
Cheers,
Scott.
Paul in KY
@Mnemosyne (tablet): Interesting!
Elizabelle
@Kent: I like my popcorn with Milk Duds.
And it’s time to drag a lot of congregations into the 20th century, never mind the 21st.
May Pope Francis live long and prosper. He’s the best thing to happen to the Catholic Church in centuries.
Origuy
There’s a theory that “turn the other cheek” means to cause the assailant to demean himself. In Jesus’ time, a backhanded strike on the right cheek was how one asserted authority over an inferior. If you offered the left cheek, they would have to use the left (unclean) hand.
Alternatively, it means to give someone a second chance. If they strike the other cheek, they don’t get a third chance.
Sad_Dem
I read some of those rants on the Opus Dei magazine site. One well-situated academic compared his situation to that of a prisoner in a Soviet gulag, except the punishment for speaking the truth here is loss of job and income. So, I guess he’s out of a job now? Can I get hired as professor of English at East Coast U.? ‘Cause I’d like that.
Those people are really really lacking in self-awareness, aren’t they?
ruemara
Good Lord. You know, christobitches, the Deities say “Bye, Felicia”.
WereBear
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Sounds like you are doing all you can. Good luck to all of you.
Rand Careaga
@Pappenheimer: College anthropology was forty-five years ago, but as I recall it, one possible factor was that whether or not those significantly larger brains conferred any cognitive advantage, they might well have had the Neanderthals laboring, if you will pardon the expression, under higher mother-infant mortality rates. This would likely have put them at a long-term disadvantage vis-a-vis “modern” humans as a competing population.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
@Paul in KY:
Nope. Pretty sure this has been debunked.
From a 2012 Internet Q&A:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/green-neanderthals.html
There has been rethinking about Australia’s peoples. The wavy blonde hair and other traits turn up in populations in India, New Guinea, the Philippines.
mr_gravity
@SFAW: RWTM? Redundant Wavelet Triangle Mesh? Royal Windsor Tapestry Manufactory?
Google fails me.
Brachiator
@the Conster:
Trump’s entire con is based on the idea that he is such a successful business tycoon. And yet his empire seems to be crumbling all around him as he becomes increasingly toxic with every stupid word that comes out of his big mouth.
As Ross Perot might say, “Now, that’s just sad.”
Kent
@Elizabelle:
I actually waver between wanting to drag them into the 21st century and wishing they would just go away. That’s what comes from growing up in a conservative christian family with a father who is a minister. I see well-meaning people trying to reform denominations from within to move past all the bigotry and conservative nonsense and I applaud them. But then I also suspect there is something about the conservative group-think in Christianity that means it will never become the liberal force for good that it should be and on balance will always be a retrograde influence in our society. But in the end, I suspect same-sex marriage is going to drive a giant wedge through a whole lot of denominations in this country and the fireworks are going to be pretty spectacular for those who follow that sort of thing.
Peale
@Librarian: I have to laugh about the idea that there isn’t already an anti-gay Tea Party. I mean, please find the identified Tea-party members of congress who aren’t ultra-conservative on all other conservative social issues. Yeah, it was all about “banking reform” and concern with the stimulus.
KithKanan
@Another Holocene Human: I’ve started seeing them in the median line here in CA, at least in some places — usually on rural highways in areas that can get heavy fog.
opiejeanne
@Germy Shoemangler: The rumble seat is also known as the mother-in-law seat, and it was a small, cramped seat that folds out from where the trunk would be.
I can’t imagine anyone getting busy there no matter how inspired.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@mr_gravity: Right Wing T… Machine. Tantrum maybe?
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Pappenheimer: Crazier things have happened. White European settlers were weaker and less healthy than the indigenous people they met in the Americas, less well-adapted to the local climates, and surely no smarter, and the first ones to arrive didn’t even have that much of a technological advantage because they were so out of their depth… but their filth contained disease germs that they had more evolved resistance to than the indigenes did, so they took two continents pretty much by default.
SFAW
@mr_gravity:
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Right Wing Treasonous Motherfuckers. I think it’s more appropriate/accurate than “RWNJ. ”
Redundant Wavelet Triangle Mesh? What is this, Finite Element land?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@SFAW: But MF should be MF, nicht wahr? As in BMFH. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
opiejeanne
@Another Holocene Human: Are you an engineer? Just asking because I’m married to one and I know that he and other engineers we know have done battle with contractors over shoddy practices in the field.
opiejeanne
@Sherparick: there is an amusing “missing the point” story about that ber parable that I heard in Sunday School. The teacher in the story turns to the kids and says, ” now aren’t we glad we aren’t like that first man (or Pharisee)?”
M. Bouffant
Thanks. I knew there was a reason I comment obsessively there.
P.S.: It’s Shakezula. (The mic rula!)
SFAW
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
“Gut” ist was einem schmeckt.
ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©
@M. Bouffant: Didn’t know this. I comment here every once in a while.
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