Slashdot Mirror

I think he was saying the /. editors' members were thin fuzzy lines.

As I believe the /. editors are in no way resembling the The FSM (Blessed be His Noodly Appendages), I think the correct expression should be
he was saying the /. editors' limbs were thin fuzzy lines.
But anyway, this is quite OT.

http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/

The Flying Spaghetty monster did it. Space does not expand, He just adds a bit each time He recreates it. It will appear to shrink again when He decides to remove stuff again (or the space between stuff).

but the statistics clearly reflect the good that is done by this initiative. Road fatalities have fallen by 2/3!!!

Yeah, and the number of pirates is affecting the global temperature. Correlation != causation.

Before junkfood and TV we were getting regular exercise and eating appropriately, yet life expectancy was much lower.

Correlation is not the same as causation. Please see this for a similar comparison between the decline in pirates and increase in global temperature. My guess as to why life expectancy is higher might be the advances in heart surgery, cancer treatment, overall disease diagnoses and treatment. But that is just a guess.

And in cosmetic testing, the animals DO suffer. Crack a book some time and read about it. I would also suggest reading up on how beef, chickens and pigs are now raised compared to 50+ years ago.

Can I subscribe to your newsletter - I am going through a difficult time with my faith in the FSM atm, so I am desperately seeking the real truth. Someone sent me this as a present, and I still have nightmares that these things will haunt and eat me. Please help - I am at my wits end. :(
http://www.venganza.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/cupcake1.jpg

Piracy and global warming are directly correlated! So, with more piracy, we'll finally see the global warming trend reverse!

http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/

God, in the sense that I was using it, is really a placeholder word for anything that might exist outside our perception (preferably breaking logic as we know it).

That's a pretty foggy description... So it isn't necessarily "the creator", as many would say? Is it omniscient? Omnipotent? None of the above?

Other less likely possibilities include the tea set formed on its own, or that a god placed the tea set there, but since we haven't observed any tea sets occurring in nature, or any divine tea sets handed down from any deities in odd places, we can conclude, with a reasonably strong degree of certainty that the tea set does not exist.

But wait, replacing "tea set" with god in the above quote, does your argument not still hold?

What if we replace the celestial teapot with the flying spaghetti monster -- does this still fall under the realm of "observably" unlikely situations?

Yes.

Huh? Originally, you said:

Well, we haven't seen him, and nobody we know has seen him, but given his scope, he could be literally anywhere, in (or even outside) an extremely expansive universe.

What evidence do we have against his existence? Well, about as much as we have for his existence. All we know is that, if he exists, he is thoroughly outside our sphere of perception.

Given that the FSM and his noodly will is outside our "realm of perception", we cannot in fact conclude that he is any less likely to exist than the god you speak of (by your definition). Actually, given the evidence, I would say it is much more likely that he exists than your amorphous blob. Oh, before you object, remember:

It is not valid to hold a belief, simply because no one has yet proven it false.

Why?

Your argument for the non-existence of the celestial teapot should be equally applicable to the non-existence of god. If you throw that one out the window, and feel it valid to hold a belief to be true simply because it hasn't been proven false, then you should remain equally agnostic to the idea of the FSM -- of course, you apparently aren't.

Let's see a graph of how their earnings went up during the attack.

Here's one they made up earlier:

http://www.venganza.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/hq-graphcopy2_800.jpg

They should have incorporated the FSM into their god squad logo :)

I think you need properly dressed pirates.

Time for Venganza to write an Open Letter to the Livingston, LA Board of Education!

Bring on the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and my His Noodly Appendage touch you all! Ramen!

Satirical counterprotests of Fred Phelps are getting a bit boring, aren't they? That's basically what everyone does these days when they show up.

It's good to see the UofC is upholding its tradition of free markets, free speech and quirky behavior. Maybe the scavenger hunt needs something Phelpsian...

Well good but up the page:

The father of a Marine whose funeral was picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church says an order to pay the protesters’ legal costs in a civil claim is nothing less than a “slap in the face.”

Satirical counterprotests of Fred Phelps are getting a bit boring, aren't they? That's basically what everyone does these days when they show up.

What's most astonishing about this is that the linked article states that Larson's analysis has two problems. The only way I can figure you'd stop at two is that one and two are the only numbers you know. Or perhaps more astonishing is the fact that nowhere in this list of flaws did the author of the article see fit to point out that this is a completely meaningless analysis. Instead the author of this article, who obviously has even less experience analyzing and undertanding data than this Larson fellow, focused on two very peripheral and arbitrarily chosen points. If you want to see this kind of analysis done right, visit http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/.

For the benefit of the exceptionally clueless, let me just point out that this article failed to mention the most obvious and devastating flaw with this kind of analysis -- the critical assumption that no other factor could possibly have influenced pedestrian fatalities since 2000.

Hey, they're helping to fight global warming!

You do know that followers of Islam are not supposed to eat any port products right?

Woosh, that was part of the joke. Jews aren't supposed to eat pork either, but go to any buffet in Vegas and try counting all the people eating bacon and wearing yamakas. And Muslims are allowed to eat pork if no other food is available anyway (cite: The Quran 2:173). Technically, Christians are not supposed to eat pork either:

The pig also because it is a splitter of the hoof but there is no cud. It is unclean for you. None of their flesh must you eat and carcass you must not touch. " Deuteronomy 14:8

Fortunately, I'm a Pastafarian, so I can eat wtf I want. And while I won't get 72 virgins, there is a beer volcano and a stripper factory in our heaven.

Now go look at the changes in the human condition since the scientific method was created in the 17th century and compare the evolution in these 400 years with the 40000 years that preceded it.

In fact, if you graph "human condition" vs "prevalence of scientific method" the shape of the graph looks something like this.

http://www.venganza.org/2008/04/14/somalia/

a flying spaghetti monster? Is this the proof the church has needed? Maybe this will cause disheavel and split the followers into the flying slime camp vs the orthodox pastrafarians.

It may be anti-climactic, but how about anti-climatic? Are anti-pirates good or bad for global warming?

Well, since the number of pirates has gone down as the temperature has gone up (or is that the other way around?), I assume that as the temperature goes down the number of anti-pirates would climb. Or are anti-pirates caused by pirates, and not by global cooling or warming?

Not only *good*, the pirates are some of the chosen few touched by his noodly appendage, which would make them the equivalent of *saints*!!! http://www.venganza.org/.

Hogwash, next you'll tell me that global warming isn't really caused by the decline in pirates since the 1800s.

Clearly it's the decrease in the number of pirates So says our the great noodle in the sky.

I have that graph stored in one of my C:\logo.sys files; I see it every time the computer boots for the lulz.

The other good news is that being a pirate allows you to do your part in combating global warming, since, as this graph clearly shows, an increase in the number of pirates will decrease average global temperature.

Hmm, I was worried about this with "Global Warming" happening at the same time as all the Somali Pirates, but it's working out now. They've changed the term to "Climate Change" and it's been a lovely, cool Summer here in Melbourne. None of this 45 Celcius junk they were having before these pirates got going. May his noodly appendages continue to move in their mysterious ways.

The other good news is that being a pirate allows you to do your part in combating global warming, since, as this graph clearly shows, an increase in the number of pirates will decrease average global temperature.

Presenting multiple contrasting theories with discussion about both would seem to be beneficial.

That is why this was written. The whole concept of "alternate theory to evolution" is not science and does not belong in a science classroom. ID or FSMism is not a theory in scientific terms.

Science is the teaching of facts and accepted theories. No science class teaches the alternate theory of anything. You don't learn about alchemy in chemistry classes, you don't learn about astrology in astronomy, you don't learn about reiki, natural healing, voodoo etc in biology / med school.

The Internet is a great place to let people know God is real.

True. Before the Internet, how many people had even heard of the one true supreme being?

The internet is a fantastic place to demonstrate that Jesus never existed and that hell and paradise are immaginary places.
Most religious psicotics are Blaise Pascal thinking folks. The world would be so much better without various religious bibles advocating antisemitism, homosexuality hate, woman degradation, and the "world is flat" and other absurd theories and beliefs.

Let's start here:
hell is make believe. If you take a look into the gospels you'll find "The Valley of Gehenna"
Read up folks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehenna
Its a phisical location near Jeruselemme in which "bad people's" bodies were thrown into (Jeruselemme's burning garbage dump). This place was instrumentalized during midevil era for the fabrication of the immaginary place they now call hell.

Have a beautiful day,
dr. who

The Internet is a great place to let people know God is real.

True. Before the Internet, how many people had even heard of the one true supreme being?

Um...No it is most definitely not

Bah, norse nonsense... it's clearly His Noodly Appendage...

As Bill Gates tries so save humanity now, he should invest in this to stop global warming.

...As we all know, there is a statistically significant inverse relationship between pirates and global temperature. So if you want to stop pirates, increase Global Warming! Go outside right now and run your SUV full throttle in support of Somalian cargo ships! http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/

And new waters for Somali Pirates. This will solve global warming problem.

The style seems familiar... have you sent a lot of hatemail here by any chance?

Of course there is only the one true Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster ..

Everyone knows that the real cause of global warming is the decline in the number of pirates. Global Temperature vs. Number of Pirates

Okay, maybe I can't tell if you're just having fun... but the Flat Earth Society is a tongue-in-cheek type of joke. It's like the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Of course, maybe I'm just too daft to see your double tongue-in-cheekiness...

Screw you! The Flying Spaghetti Monster is real, and I'll sue you for implying that he might not be!

That one http://www.venganza.org/ ?

Venganza.org

This is so obviously a case of God himself reaching down and dividing these species

Once again the scientists and the Christians collude to hide the truth. Here, there is a conspiracy to conceal the almost certainly true factoid that significant traces of oregano and Parmesan were detected in these birds' habitat: clear evidence that these species were divided by the mere touch of His Noodley Appendage.

Ramen.

Anybody want to come and picket a Pot Noodle factory (the blasphemers!)

I believe in change. I'm hoarding every penny because I'm gonna need it. I'm a rich fat bastard and will be taxed accordingly so with change Icanhazcheezeburgers http://icanhascheezburger.com/ at http://www.mcdonalds.com/ then will come the evil that I will do in the name of Cthulhu http://www.macguff.fr/goomi/unspeakable/vault298.html to feed his insatiable appetite and my lust for power. But I will secretly worship http://www.venganza.org/ his noodly appendage and court disaster if the slimey idiot finds out. I will bow to the holiest president ever or suffer damnation by http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0drwfnGlF_E having to watch that. I shall covet weapons of massive destruction at http://www.schlockmercenary.com/ and I will dwell in the house of oblivion forever! http://www.elderscrolls.com/home/home.php

I will eat your process servers, rape your thugs and gnaw out their hearts and feast! FEAST! I say!

Flying Spaghetti Monster unimpressed.

If the goats are pirates, that should offset any impact they have on Global Warming.

- RG>

It's scientifically proven that there is a direct inverse correspondence between the number of pirates and global warming. As the number of pirates decreased global warming increased. Now that piracy in Somalia has gone up the ice in that one tiny spot in Antarctica. It'll surely compensate for the rapid flow of glaciers in the West Antarctic icesheet as they flow unimpeded into the sea now that more of the iceshelfs are gone. All hail the Flying Spaghetti Monster in his infinite wisdom for making that happen. He was none to happy about Obama killing those pirates.

First the pirates, then the stockmarket, then sunspots. Is there anything that global warming doesn't affect?!

Uh, in the case of pirates, you have the relationship backwards. Global warming does not cause pirates; it's a lack of pirates that causes global warming.

Hey, man, what about us pastafarians?