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Noisebridge Attempts to Teach Science To Juggalos

Posted by samzenpus on from the so-that's-how-a-magnet-works dept.

Working on the assumption that the Insane Clown Posse's song Miracles was indeed a tribute to the wonder of nature and not the cleverest troll ever, some folks from the hackerspace Noisebridge decided to try and educate ICP fans. Surprisingly, most of the fans seemed to enjoy the science lesson, but representatives of the band didn't seem to think it was funny.

31 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. More Juggalo research is needed by elrous0 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Someone should map out their career, using normal distribution. Here's a hint: = 1998.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:More Juggalo research is needed by RightSaidFred99 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Bah. More important than Jack in the Box, stupid people are here to amuse me. Leave them be, I say.

    2. Re:More Juggalo research is needed by spintriae · · Score: 2, Informative

      I can't see the use for trying to educate them; for one, it's a waste of effort...

      Especially considering one of the lyrics to the song is "I don't wanna talk to no scientist; ya'll motherfuckers lying and getting me pissed." They know there are educated explanations for rainbows and making babies--they may even know what they are--but it's just anti-religious elitism worth ignoring. Let them have their magical magnets. Any fans that take it that seriously probably weren't going to go on to be the next Gauss anyway.

    3. Re:More Juggalo research is needed by sumdumass · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Lol.. I think you are missing the entire point of the song. It's not about any religion or elitism, it's about appreciating the things in life without needing to boil it down to some boring explanation. A rainbow or the birth of your child is a special moment that should be enjoyed and cherished, not some technical bullshit that takes any subliminal meaning away from it. It's about events that are a power greater then you- like 75,000 people in a room acting as one. the miracle isn't something any god did or caused, it's about how something is greater then the individual or you and against the odds, it came about. It's about how we should be in awe over those things instead of having it dwindled away to light refracting in a certain way.

      I can understand why they didn't take kindly to a bunch of nerds who couldn't get that after being explained to them attempting to defeat the entire purpose of the song.

    4. Re:More Juggalo research is needed by h4rr4r · · Score: 3, Insightful

      If you can't have both you are defective. If the explanation of a rainbow makes it less good then you are the problem, not the man explaining it.

    5. Re:More Juggalo research is needed by Hognoxious · · Score: 2, Funny

      Did you learn what the preview button does?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    6. Re:More Juggalo research is needed by fbjon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You can very well know how something is created or caused and still see the magic in it.

      I think the point being made was that this song demonstrates all emotion and zero knowledge. A deficient song, in other words. Also, the example you gave is rather ridiculous.

      --
      True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
    7. Re:More Juggalo research is needed by thrawn_aj · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Obviously, a child's sense of wonder is different from a that of a scientist. We have not lost our sense of wonder. We have merely ... upgraded it. Interestingly, Nature (while being a sneaky bitch) is also quite bountiful in that for every puzzle solved by science, we are given many more that are much more fascinating than the last.

      Besides, the person in your example is just an idiot who cannot recognize a rhetorical question or an idle musing when he sees one. You are equating semantically challenged douchenozzles (or at the worst, science fanboys) with scientists - a common strawman in such debates. Also (thankfully), in this day and age, it is relatively easy to find men or women (as mates) who are not so flaky that they need to live in willful ignorance (which is different, mind you, from indulging oneself in whimsy every now and then) just to feel a false sense of wonder.

      Also amusing are the idiots who try to reverse this loss of pseudo-wonder with the common refrain, "Well, surely it can't be as mundane as all that. Surely, there's something more to life than just the physical world?" To them I can only say - the day you've exhausted the wonders of the physical world (aka "reality" - that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away*)

      Disclaimer: Not all of this was in direct reply to you. Some of it was a response to related misconceptions.

      _____________
      *Philip Dick

  2. Proverbs come to mind... by Walter+Wart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Making a silk purse out of a sow's ear
    Casting pearls before swine
    Never wrassle with a hog. You get muddy and the hog enjoys it

    But then I realize the comparisons are insulting to the pigs

    --
    The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
    1. Re:Proverbs come to mind... by dAzED1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      hogs don't actually enjoy it. I know it's just a saying, but it's a saying based on the false belief that hogs and pigs like to be dirty. When the only time you see a hog is in an unnatural environment...don't presume to know what it likes ;)

    2. Re:Proverbs come to mind... by db32 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually pigs do like rolling in the mud. Though it has to do with staying cool and keeping the sun off rather than liking the dirt.

      --
      The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
    3. Re:Proverbs come to mind... by dAzED1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      funny that someone thought to down rate me, someone who has raised hogs and has seen many of them in the wild, as "overrated" - and then uprate you for just repeating the same thing someone else said.

      "X!"

      "No, X isn't actually true" - overrate -1

      "X!" - insightful +4!

      Hogs don't like being in mud in the first place. The only reason they are, is because they were *put there*. They are naturally a fairly clean animal; if well kept in a humane way, they'll always poop in one place, as far away from their food as they can. What 99.9999% of the population has seen, or heard described, is instead a nasty pen that the hog finds extremely depressing. They get into a cycle where they try to clean themselves off, but instead get dirtier. Sometimes, in a large open area, they'll do what elephants do - they'll cover themselves in a light layer of dirt/mud as a sort of natural sunscreen. They don't do this because they enjoy the process, they do it because they're in the sun and have no shade.

      Now, go find a feral hog and instead you'll find a relatively clean animal (sans the snout itself) that looks nothing like his hog-farm kept brothers. And that's the point - hog farms are un-natural, and hogs are known to be extremely depressed at hog farms. To presume that you know what someone "enjoys" because of their behavior when they're at a cruel place they obviously don't want to be at, is silly.

      Even sillier is presuming that hogs like it when their fleeing in terror at a rodeo during some sort of pig wrestling event. I suppose the bulls enjoy the rodeo too, and that's why they're so happy and pleased to give the rider such a fun time?

    4. Re:Proverbs come to mind... by dAzED1 · · Score: 2, Informative

      you're mentioning something that you're then not even considering; there's another factor in play here. Remember, correlation does not equal causation ;)

      The hogs that had mud to roll around in were then able to move about within their pen without being affected much by the sun. They'd merely need to roll around in the mud again once they started getting hot.

      The other hogs had to sit in one particular area, not moving around, otherwise they got hot.

      It's the ability to be mobile that matters in this case. I propose that if you will see the pattern emerge if you create 2 new sample groups. For the second set, put them both in the shade. In one shade group, allow them just enough room to roll around in mud, but make that as little room as is necessary for that action. In the other group, allow them no mud at all, yet give them a large pen. At this point you'll see more clearly that "able to move around" is what is actually causing the increased happiness (or decreased depression...) and that for those hogs in the sun, the mud merely facilitates this. Given their druthers (ie, in a shade where they don't need to get muddy) they'd actually prefer to be clean.

      That could be tested with a 5th group that has a pen 4 times larger than normal, half in the mud, half dry, half in the sun, half in the shade, such that it makes quarters. I suspect you'll tend to find the hogs in the shaded, dry area...which will in the end be the more accurate test of what they prefer ;)

      PS - if you had any hogs at all that "radiate[d] contentment" then wow - that's major, considering the extreme prevalence of depression among swine at farms.

      PSS - I had hogs as well when I was younger, as did several generations of my family before me (I was the first generation of my father's line to not actually grow up on a farm).

  3. Jobs... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Fucking Jobs, how do they work?

    1. Re:Jobs... by dmacleod808 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Prostitution comes to mind... I think it is a pretty standard transaction.

      --
      There Can Be Only One...
  4. Snarkified by cosm · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think the reason Miracles was so infamous is due to a couple factors, as follows,

    A. Many people hate ICP.
    B. Many people are on the internet.
    C. ICP made a video metaphorically referring to some phenomenal (yet understandable) facts of nature (albeit explainable, to an extent) as miracles.
    D. Said intertards took them literally, espousing their hate on a fantastical new platform.
    E. Or it was an epic trolling, and 2,000,000+ got got.

    Point to take away: people like to criticize, act snarky, and show disdain towards those they dislike. ICP is no different. The real miracle is that 2,000,000 cumulatively made fun of about an ICP video.

    And as an aside, I highly doubt many of the critics of that video on the net could fully understand electromagnetism, such as the fact that relativistic transformations of transverse EM waves can swap the E & M field, for they are two sides of the same coin depending on the Lorenz transformation, or perhaps give a full analysis of Lenz's law and its implications.

    --
    'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
    1. Re:Snarkified by Lord+Ender · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Just because we have the vocabulary to describe something does not mean we "understand" it.

      --
      A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
    2. Re:Snarkified by DJLuc1d · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And as an aside, I highly doubt many of the critics of that video on the net could fully understand electromagnetism, such as the fact that relativistic transformations of transverse EM waves can swap the E & M field, for they are two sides of the same coin depending on the Lorenz transformation, or perhaps give a full analysis of Lenz's law and its implications.

      While that might be true there is this thing called 'google' and I'm told it can help you find information, rather than be content in releasing a song where you espouse idiocy and insult the very people who uncovered the answer to your query. I believe 'Violent murder-dick' or whatever his name is accused 'scientists' of some sort of deception, rather than 'googling magnets'

    3. Re:Snarkified by nametaken · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The noise over Miracles wasn't about internet trolls getting uppity just for fun (though it is fun). These guys didn't say, "hey these things are amazing" when they called them miracles. They suggested that these various natural things were no less than god's direct intervention in the physical world and implied that they couldn't be satisfactorily explained by science. Then they said they don't want to hear from any scientists about any of these subjects because, "[those] motherfuckers lyin'". Yeah, scientists of the world are part of a giant conspiracy to lie about where rainbows come from... fuckwits.

      That's not simple awe for amazing things, that's straight-up mental retardation painted in makeup to match. Oh and I almost forgot... yes, they're some of the shittiest rappers in history.

      But yes, this assumes it wasn't an intentional showboat of unbelievable stupidity on their part to get some attention for careers that went down the toilet over 10 years ago. If that's the case, then shame on them for misleading the young trash of America down the science-hater path so they can desperately try to make their next mortgage payment.

    4. Re:Snarkified by sumdumass · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, as long as your attempting to quote the l;lyrics to prove your point, lets put some more in there to make that point valid.

      Lets see, the song starts off with :If magic is all we've ever know
      Then it's easy to miss what really goes on

      SO what do you suppose that means and how does it put the rest of the song- more specifically your point into context?

      But wait, the song goes on and says But I've seen miracles in every way
      And I see miracles everyday;
      It lists some shit perceived as miracles and in that list it includes : UFOs, the pyramids, Everything you believed in as kids. It goes on to end the verse with: And music is magic, pure and clean You can feel it and hear it but it can't be seen.

      How does that put what you cited into context? I mean they lists things that are obviously man made, pyramids, music, and things that are works of the imagination, UFOs (because it's no longer a UFO once it's been identified) and the things you believed as kids. So what do you think they are attempting to say here? and how does that reconcile with your comment?

      Or is it that they insulted some precious belief by making some stupid statement in the middle of other stupid statements and you are now all offended like the church lady or something. Don't take one or two lines out of context with the rest of the song.

  5. ICP by IMightB · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is a band for idiots, morons and the wilfully ignorant. I met Violent J at a Station promo back ~95/96 in the Toledo area. Just a complete dick. Their music is crap. Their fans are worse. They are the only band that would be known in an Idiocracy style world.

  6. Ignorance. by Xoltri · · Score: 4, Insightful

    How ignorant to you have to be to be proud of your ignorance?

    --
    -Xoltri
    1. Re:Ignorance. by mujadaddy · · Score: 4, Funny

      I don't know.

      --
      Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
      "Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
    2. Re:Ignorance. by couchslug · · Score: 2, Funny

      "How ignorant to you have to be to be proud of your ignorance?"

      That's Ignorance on a Biblical scale.

      --
      "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
  7. Tactical Mistake by ianm.phil · · Score: 3, Informative

    I think this group should skip trying to teach them science, it's a lost cause, and instead provide instruction on birth control and distribute free condoms. Only you can help control the Juggalo population!

    1. Re:Tactical Mistake by Red+Flayer · · Score: 3, Funny

      That won't help. It's not genetic and it's not a learned behavior. You're either born liking ICP or you're born disliking ICP

      So if it's not genetic... and it's not learned... and you're born with ICP+ or ICP-...

      You're saying that the ICP+/- trait is developed in utero due to either random chance or fetal environment?

      Are you saying that children of drug users grow up to be fans of ICP?! If so, that's a pretty powerful disincentive for expectant mothers to do drugs... you may have hit upon a miracular sociological prevention tool... think of the countless lives you have improved and/or saved!

      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
  8. I'm sorry but no by JoshuaZ · · Score: 4, Insightful
    The original song has the lyrics:

    Fucking magnets, how do they work? And I don't wanna talk to a scientist Y'all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed

    That's unambiguously anti-science. Any attempt to say they weren't being literal is simply stupid. Insane Clown Posse is stupid and supports willful ignorance. Pretending otherwise to try to get a small amount of science education done might help a tiny bit but at the end of the day, let's not kid ourselves about what this crap band stands for. The fact that when the band found out about this event they tried to actively prevent it shows what they really care about. These are the worst sort of ignorant fucktards possible, the sort of ignorant fucktards who not only take pride in their own ignorance but actively prevent other people from trying to educate. The fact that then had their security goons try to take away the camera is simply one more aspect of how absolutely despicable ICP is.

  9. Everything you wanted to know about Juggalos by axl917 · · Score: 3, Informative

    but were afraid to ask can be found at ED; http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Juggalo

  10. CD collection by jollyreaper · · Score: 3, Funny

    Someone asked me if I had ICP. I said only if it's cold out.

    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  11. Do you know how magnets work ? by bugs2squash · · Score: 4, Funny

    I mean I gather it has something to do with quantum spin and relativity and symmetry breaking and virtual gauge boson force-carriers. But I'm somewhat uncertain on the details (and I don't mean in a Heisenberg way). Perhaps the band is just voicing their frustration that there seem to be so few entry level texts that cover the subject in lay terms.

    --
    Nullius in verba
  12. Further update by JoshuaZ · · Score: 2, Insightful
    If there were any doubts about ICP's attitude on this matter, one of the ICP members brags about how they had their security get rid of the scientists on their twitter feed http://twitter.com/bigviolentj/status/15541954268

    Corp, Dougie & Sugar Slam ran those scientist haters off and we had a fuckin' amazing ass concert. 2500 Los rocked the building's foundation

    In almost any other context I would have thought that the phrase "scientist haters" would mean people who hate scientists, not scientists who are haters. Ah well.