Slashdot Mirror

Well, yes. But the reason they get the headlines is not because they are either particularly common, or that they have a lot of support among women, but because it give men an excuse to disregard what women say more generally. Caricature feminists and then diregard them.

Christ, you thin skinned people give me a pain. BBT is hilarious! Sheldon, Leonard, Howard, and even Raj are extreme caricatures of my own personality (at least whe I was their ages) which is what is so funny. I suspect you guys hate it because you see yourselves in those characters as well, and cringe.

And it isn't just the nerds being made fun of, it's the normal and stupid as well. Look at that one boyfriend of Penny's who thought that the nerds doing an experiment shooting a laser at the moon would blow it up. Look at Sheldon's bible thumping mother. Look at Howard's stereotypical jewish mother. They make fun of everyone.

Of course, if you're incapable of laughing at yourself, you're going to hate the show.

(mcgrew here, can't log in on this machine. New Nobot chapter "Farmers" posted either tonight or tomorrow night in JE as proof of who I am)

The Koch brothers are not even big-time conservative Repubs... they are libertarian business guys (I think they are even pro-gay) but the left uses them as bogey-men because they have funded some Republican political activity (probably on the theory that a Republican is at least better for business than a Democrat rather than out of a deep love of the GOP)

George Soros, on the other hand, is one of the most vile pieces of excrement to ever walk the Earth and he is a big funder of nearly every left-wing Democrat think tank and web site out there. What makes him so vile? Well, unlike any other left-wing money man, George is one of the last surviving NAZI collaborators on Earth (yeah, those ACTUAL Hitler-saluting goose-stepping take-over-the-world-and-kill-all-non-aryans NAZIs of the WWII era, as opposed to some modern internet meme cartoon NAZIs). And George is not even a typical collaborator who in post-war years fell to his knees to beg forgiveness .... no, George says he is proud of those days, those days were some of the best of his life, and that his collaboration made him feel like a God. There. That's your modern Democrat funder.

The Koch brothers may be many things, BUT neither they nor any other human beings belong in the same category as George Soros. Traditional Democrats would not have sat at the same table with Soros and would not take money from him... but today's Democrat party is a radical caricature of its former past. Democrats of the JFK era were big on national defense, most were religious, most were pro-life, none were pro-gay-marriage, and many had fought against the NAZIs and their collaborators... JFK must be spinning in his grave...

So you're telling me that they didn't persecute Galileo because of an honest belief that his teaching was hereticial

Oh, the conviction was for heresy all right, or more accurately, a lesser charge: suspicion of heresy. Even under threat of torture Galileo swore that he did not subscribe to a Heliocentric view as opposed to a Geocentric one. But the reason for the prosecution is that it was Pope Urban VIII who initially protected him from prosecution, and when Galileo offended him, he lost that protection.

instead you're saying that God's infallible representative on earth threatened to torture an innocent old man because he was mildly offended at what might have been a caricature of him in one of Galileo's books?

"Papal infallibility" was not formalized until 200 years after Galileo's death. It's a strangely recent concept (that had its genesis during Galileo's time). Besides, infallibility is limited to only a small number of circumstances. It doesn't mean everything the pope does is right or that he doesn't make mistakes. Catholic doctrine would hold that there's only one person who never did any wrong.

The pope at the time was something of Galileo's friend, and was the one who defended him against the cardinals, who definitely didn't like Galileo's writing! Pope Urban invited Galileo to write a defense of heliotropism, and he wrote Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. We might think the pope is the supreme leader of the Catholic Church, but at least back then the church and Rome was filled with.. "court intrigue" is a polite way of putting it. Pope Urban feared for his life, growing more paranoid and was at a particularly low point in his life when the work was published (with a license from the Spanish Inquisition no less!). The pope was not a believer in Heliotropism and asked that his own views be published in the book. Unfortunately, the work was a dialogue between two philosophers, one of whom clearly parroted Galileo's views of Heliotropism, while the other was Simplicio, the defender of the Geocentric view (and whose name was suspiciously similar to "simpleton.") Pope Urban felt he was being mocked, and like all popes of the time, public ridicule was a no-no.

Pretty much everyone these days believe Galileo did not do anything out of malice and was blind-sided to the negative reaction. He was convicted of "suspicion of heresy."

That fallacy is a caricature, of course. With Copernicus, again look at the details. Copernicus got away with the science per se. What got him in trouble was defying church authority about how to phrase it. It didn't help at all that he put the pope's arguments in the mouth of his fool character in the dialogues. The Catholic church has a genuinely bad record about lots of things, but it is, for instance, one of the few to acknowledge plainly and officially today that evolution is genuine science to be taken seriously. It really is true that a large fraction of the early work in any science was done by religious people, who in a paraphrase of Augustine's words felt that they were "reading that other book written by God: nature". And also true that the idea that the world was governed by a single orderly scheme, which arose strongly in the monotheistic religions, was an important precursor of science. Fools there are, and fools there have always been. Most of the fools are religious whenever and wherever most people are religious. There is a genuine tension between the approaches taken by science and religion, of course, and the competition for loudest modern anti-science fools is between the religious right and the economic interests that urge them on. But the idea that the two must be eternal enemies is a new one and one I don't think is correct. The names I didn't have with me when writing an earlier post were John William Draper and Andrew Dixon White. They are largely responsible for the impression widely held today that science and religion must always be enemies. That was not a widely held idea before late in late in the 19th century. For this history, see p139 and the following section of Understanding Fundamentailsm and Evangelicalism, by George M Marsden ISBN 978-0-8028-0539-3. The Great Courses videos on "Science and Religion" offer much the same story. So what is a self-described "non-religious" person doing with all these references? I'm interested in religion as a phenomenon, and being a scientist I'm in the habit of looking at the evidence.

Again - everybody does that, and atheists not the least of them. That is a description that you could apply to any strawman you choose.

You seem to have missed the phrase "no demonstrable basis in reality."

No - I didn't.

All statements are not equally true, or else we might as well give up on logic and communication entirely and go back to being animals.

But people are not single points on a graph, and their beliefs are a set, not a single assertion. In that set, everybody has some assertions which are true (or will prove to be true) and some that are (or will) not. I do. And so do you. And so do group x, where x is the the particular caricature that we are choosing to despise at any one time - be it jews, blacks, gays, catholics, the irish.

There's no difference.

"The GOP hates people who aren't Christians, well, make that the right kind of Christians, the GOP isn't big on that Sermon on the Mount stuff."

HUH? There are many Jews, atheists, etc who are in the GOP and are celebrated for being there. House Republican whip Eric Cantor is a Jew as is well-known radio talker Michael Medved. Rabbi Daniel Lapin is a frequent guest at GOP events and always gets huge applause among Republicans. S.E. Cupp (author and pundit) is a well-known atheist who is popular with the GOP and many Republicans love Penn Jillette (atheist). Popular radio talker (and well-known lesbian) Tammy Bruce is in the Republican tent as well... and something tells me that your "Sermon on the Mount" comment is similarly disconnected from reality.... let me guess: you only embrace the big smiling "God is Love" caricature version of Jesus and think nobody should pay attention to the serious anti-sin stuff he said...

As to gun policy... Obama and the Democrats do indeed share the same policy GOALS as the Communists and the NAZIs... anybody aligned with and favored by "the party" could have guns and anybody the party did not want having guns would be unable to get them or have them. Hitler wanted all good NAZIs to have guns... but he did not want jews or gypsies to have them. Again, this is a common leftist theme and not surprising to anybody who has read enough history. It's idiotic, however, to try to equate either Obama OR Republicans with Hitler.

The problem was never scientific in nature but religious and political.

You know, I must have heard this defense of the church's actions re Galileo dozens of times and it's never made sense. So you're telling me that they didn't persecute Galileo because of an honest belief that his teaching was hereticial, but instead you're saying that God's infallible representative on earth threatened to torture an innocent old man because he was mildly offended at what might have been a caricature of him in one of Galileo's books?

How's that better, again?

Galileo wrote up his findings in the form of a dialogue. The pope felt Galileo had caricatured him as the character 'Simplicio.'

It also didn't help that Galilelo wrote it in Italian rather than in Latin. If he had written in Latin it would have remained an obscure intellectual debate. By writing in Italian, the laypeople could read it.

The Pope, and probably everyone else, didn't really care about what orbited around what.

I had intelligent, devout parents and grew up in a conservative religious backwater. Our pastor was a nominally Lutheran biblical literalist. I slowly pulled myself loose from the science denial of my church, and went on to become a scientist myself (Physics). My path would have been easier had I known then about Augustin and his kin who a millennium or more ago also had to pull themselves away from simplistic interpretations of the Bible. I ended up not religious myself, but I can respect my friends, including scientists, who are religious. The frightened religious conservatives we see so commonly in the US today are not representative of the best in the world's religious traditions, nor the best in Christianity, and they are not even typical of thoughtful Christians that we can see in a broad historical view. The supposed eternal conflict between science and religion is a late-developing meme, propagated in the late 18th century by a couple of folks (I do not have the reference here with me) for their own purposes as part of the professionalization of science, which had previously been an amateur's realm. im-thatoneguy may have had a bad early experience with Christians, as did the most virulently anti-christian of my friends, but he should keep in mind that the loudest Christians we hear today in the US are a recent anomaly, and are a caricature of Christianity. We need to look a bit deeper to see the real relation between science and religion, and our guest for the last two days has kindly pointed us into that deeper realm. I thank him for it, and I think that we all should do that.

No. Sometimes, they are statistical observation. Sometimes they are just confirmation bias.

Most of the time they're just a small group that distinguish themselves so clearly. For example if you asked me to mime an American, I'd probably go for a gun-toting Texan even though I'm perfectly aware that they're hardly representative of a country of 300 million. But those other people are a lot like other people found other places, so if you're going for the uniquely American they rise to the top of the pile. Same with almost every other stereotype I can think of, they're more like a mascot or caricature than reflecting reality.

At least those based on things like country, now people of the same profession on the other hand can actually be disturbingly like their stereotype. It's something to do with the personality of people attracted to the same line of work and the cultural conformity, like a friend of mine once said after speaking at a conference for county auditors. "I went to the conference thinking it would dispel the stereotypes I had, instead I found they were all true." People have an incredible way of adjusting to what they perceive as normal and that becomes the stereotype.

As much as I hate to go against the predominant "more is always better!" mentality, I have to say yes, Ms. Milani's tits are too big. I prefer my women to be proportional, not gross caricatures of what some immature boy thinks the perfect woman would look like. Kate Upton is proportioned just about perfectly.

You mean, like the (D) blaming (R) for sequestration, when the reality is it is just as much his (Obama's) fault as anyone else's?

Bull fucking shit, Republican (spit). Sequestration happened only because the obstructionist Republicans in Congress insisted on it as a condition for actually being willing to pass the spending bills needed to make the government function. Democrats gave into the terrorist demands as sequestration seemed to be the least harmful path to resolve the impasse. Now the butcher's bill for giving into terrorism is coming due, and unfortunately the terrorists are still in power in Congress.

Yes, terrorists. I went there. Modern congressional Republicans are all about saying "Nice country you have there. Do what we want, or we'll blow it up." How else can you explain such utter shit as the recurring debt ceiling fight, wherein Congressional Republicans keep threatening to not pay the bills they themselves previously rung up, using it as leverage and caring not one whit for the economic disaster they're courting?

All the "EVIL (R) want to pollute the air, and push grandma down a flight of stairs and kill puppies and eat kittens" crap isn't?

You mean to say Republicans aren't literally fighting to be able to pollute the air without a concern? (hint: they are) You mean to say Republicans aren't fighting tooth and nail to reduce the access of the poor to healthcare, which, while not being quite so explicit as a push down a flight of stairs, nevertheless results in real suffering and death? (hint: they are)

Stop lying to yourself about what Republicans are actually doing. Stop reducing all of their opposition to shrill strawman caricatures so you can dismiss their criticisms.

I mean, did you hear Maxine Waters last week saying that Sequestration will cost 178 Million Jobs (or whatever she said) ? What the hell do you call that? Honest error or stupidity?

Probably a mixture. It doesn't have to be exclusively one or the other, and people are often temporarily stupid while speaking in public.

Got any more false equivalencies to throw out there? What this (R) tool said re: biking not being Earth-friendly is a "mistake" of an entirely different magnitude. Nobody sane would deny that sequestration is going to cost jobs. The only question is how many, and Maxine Waters flubbed that number pretty bad, to the point where you don't even know whether she misspoke while trying to be honest or while trying to spin a tale of doom. (You can't tell which because 178M is absurdly high for either option.) On the other hand, claiming that biking puts more CO2 in the atmosphere than buses is no mere gaffe. You have to plan on lying (or on parroting bad ideas you ought to know are likely to be lies) to say that.

If you really, really believe all the shit about "they're both just as bad", you need to wake up. All politicians are bad, sure. But you can't just stop there. That's lazy thinking. The current Republican Party is actively toxic to the nation, whereas the current Democratic Party is mostly bad but is at least willing to do a halfway reasonable job of governance. Republicans are first and foremost for oligarchy, because the oligarchs of our nation have bought and paid for them. They're doctrinaire "ANY TAX (on the rich) IS TOO HIGH" zealots, because any who aren't get witch-hunted out of the party. They're anti-scientific theocrats, for the same reason. The undercurrent of blatant racism in their words and deeds is palpable. They aren't concerned with good governance in any sense at all. Their lunatic-fringe "base" of support controls most Republican primaries, so (R) politicians know they have to play to the "base" to have a chance at office. National Republican propaganda houses (Fox News, etc) are complicit or even active in promoting this state of affairs. Come general election time the party relies on useful idiots lik

Top Gear is not a factual/scientific car review show. It is an entertainment show, hosted by three stereotypical caricatures of "the male". Top gear is to serious car review shows what Blackadder is to history documentaries. The tongue in cheek point they were making is that their CHARACTERS were too stupid to cope with an electric car that required some forethought and planning with regards to charging.

Other antics on the show include Jeremy's toolbox consisting of about twenty very large hammers etc

So the whole country, including all it's people are "outright evil?"

When I say I love my country - I mostly mean many of the good people I meet who are my fellow citizens. But you have to narrow that down, like much of your other postings, to vary narrow black-and-white caricatures.

Further, there *are* good things this country has done, along with it's evil. I'm not sure our place in the standings of good/bad world forces is particularly higher or lower than any other. But as in much the rest of life - you applaud the good and work hard to mitigate or change the bad.

But go ahead - take the most absurd and narrow view and expand it to truly inane proportions.

And how long will it be until extremists design and assemble a lethal and unstoppable virus this way and trigger a global epidemic that wipes out humanity in the name of Allah?

Probably forever, because:

1. Wiping out humanity is the one thing anyone - including the extremists - ought to understand is guaranteed to royally piss off any creator god that might be behind human existence (or any being even remotely interested in humanity, for that matter).
2. Politically motivated terrorism doesn't exactly have many scenarios where actually ending the world would get you what you want either.
3. It's pretty hard to imagine that fundamentalists could outsmart biologists who, after all, also have access to this tool to make a cure.

Nice work, Omri; you've just handed them the tools.

On the other hand, idiots who think other people are cartoon supervillains and appeal to that caricature to argue against new tools are certainly capable of killing millions by hindering the War on Disease. You and everyone who modded you up ought to be ashamed of yourselves. You're just as bad as the anti-vaccine people, except you don't even have misfiring parental instincts as an excuse.

Wow! You got insightful for beating up strawmen by name-calling and using ALL CAPS! That's quite and accomplishment.

Now how about dealing with your REAL politcal opponents instead of your caricatures.

Except management has incentive to hire the staff necessary to do the job for the lowest wage while still meeting the business goals. If they don't, the market and the shareholders will respond accordingly. If upper-management runs a corporation into the ground, as you hypothesized, they likely won't hold a job at the level again. Such things don't look to good on the old resume. They are held accountable for their career like anyone else. You act like they get their golden parachute and make off like bandits. That's just a ridiculous caricature.

As a EU citizen (Belgian) I do agree with his views. Other countries in Europe (incl Belgium) have the same problem although not as profound as in France.

like the article already states:
"Bernard Accoyer, an opposition politician, said that while Mr Taylor's assessment amounted to a "mocking caricature", it was "not completely unfounded"

If I had to guess, you're probably just reacting to negative experiences. I find many self-ascribed "liberals" and "conservatives" aren't consistently liberal or conservative in their mindset, but are just adamantly anti-conservative or anti-liberal based on caricatures and stereotypes formed either through peer groups or personal experience. These are the people who find it easy to bring up the perceived wrongs committed by the other side, but will have a lot of trouble explaining their own positions without strings of platitudes and the fallacy of begging the question.