My responses to Michael Shermer

[aggle-rithm]

I always thought the pinkness of the IPU was an article of Faith, whereas the invisibility property was considered self-evident.

To use a quasi-C.S. Lewis type argument:

Everything with the property of pinkness has a corresponding reality. Since the unicorn is pink, it must exist. The same goes for invisibility.

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

But the point I am making is this. I get in a time machine and go back to 1790 I am going to see less religon in public and particularly government life, correct? And if I stop every ten years or so I will see how the republic started out with less overt religion in public life than today and how it has gradually been forced upon us by evil fundimentalists?

You're assuming linear growth, which may, or may not, correctly model the situation.

Consider though, "under God" was not added to the Pledge until 1954.

 

[Jekyll]

The IPU is invisible because it is a concept. It is "pink" because someone picked the word "pink" instead of blue, red, green, or PMS 458, yet we all know that concepts have no color as color is most widely defined.

Just for you (and randfan).

Invisible green dots.
http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html

 

[ranson]

I can't find 190 proof Everclear anymore. I last time I looked I could only find it somewhere around 150 proof (I don't remember the exact proof).

LLH

A lot of companies adjust proof to meet local regs. West Virginia, for example, allowed the 190 stuff, while Virginia outlawed it. Since it's just grain alcohol, it's easy to dilute down to whatever the local legal maximum happens to be.

[/liquor subthread]

 

[LordoftheLeftHand]

A lot of companies adjust proof to meet local regs. West Virginia, for example, allowed the 190 stuff, while Virginia outlawed it. Since it's just grain alcohol, it's easy to dilute down to whatever the local legal maximum happens to be.

[/liquor subthread]

Yeah that is what I was going to do with it. My girlfriend needed lots of 100 proof alcohol for a project and I was trying to figure out the cheapest way to get it. I was thinking about just watering down 190 proof alcohol, but they didn't have it. I eventually just bought cheap 100 proof vodka.

LLH

 

[valis]

You're assuming linear growth, which may, or may not, correctly model the situation.

Consider though, "under God" was not added to the Pledge until 1954.

Well I admit in that quote I am using an example that implies linear growth. But from what I understand that is what people are complaining about. The religous folks want to now push religion into public life contrary to the historical seperation of church and state. Maybe I am wrong but I find this highly suspect. At what period was there LESS religion in public life? Not in my lifetime. I am 44 and I can remember prayer time in public school. For that matter I can remember evangelical groups being allowed to conduct assemblies in my public elemntry and middle school.

 

[Spektator]

I always assumed that the unicorns were infra-pink, a shade of pink beyond the realms of pinkness that we know on Earth. Perhaps the pink known to the unimaginable inhabitants of the dread planet Yuggoth.

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

I always assumed that the unicorns were infra-pink, a shade of pink beyond the realms of pinkness that we know on Earth. Perhaps the pink known to the unimaginable inhabitants of the dread planet Yuggoth.

I thought the Mi-go had hunted the IIPU to extinction...

 

[The Bad Astronomer]

Here's the blast. You have no idea why I wrote what I wrote.

That's an interesting admission. If someone didn't understand why I wrote something, I would take it as meaning I didn't write it very well.

 

[Ducky]

That's an interesting admission. If someone didn't understand why I wrote something, I would take it as meaning I didn't write it very well.

I don't understand.


Why did you write that?

 

[blutoski]

(erased, as it was posted prematurely during a system crash)

 

[blutoski]

Well I admit in that quote I am using an example that implies linear growth. But from what I understand that is what people are complaining about. The religous folks want to now push religion into public life contrary to the historical seperation of church and state. Maybe I am wrong but I find this highly suspect. At what period was there LESS religion in public life? Not in my lifetime. I am 44 and I can remember prayer time in public school. For that matter I can remember evangelical groups being allowed to conduct assemblies in my public elemntry and middle school.

I think it depends on how far back you want to go... the First Great Revolution was in the early 19th century.

 

[catbasket]

The spokesunicorn for the fifty three invisible pink unicorns who claimed to be tap-dancing naked on my dining table has now stated that they were in fact fifty three visible pink horses in fancy dress pogoing fully clothed on my dining table.

In light of this factual update I still assert that T2 is assuming more.

 

[Chris Haynes]

I can't find 190 proof Everclear anymore. I last time I looked I could only find it somewhere around 150 proof (I don't remember the exact proof).

LLH

HA! It is not even available in my state! Which means I cannot make a drink that my dad used to make around Christmas, Eier Likor (there are supposed to be two dots over the "o"). You beat 5 egg yolks with 5 oz. (7 Tbs) of sugar, then add 1 pint of Half%Half milk, 1 tsp of vanilla and 7 oz. of Everclear. Stir until mixed, and chill in the fridge.

Please label it, because it thickens and starts to resemble mayonaise. My mother made the mistake of spreading it on bread when she made her lunch one day.

By the way, I've noticed some people do get "whatever country they live in" centric. It is unfortunately natural.

Oh, I've been meaning to ask: Diamond, are you still looking for a job that will let you live in Hawaii permanently? Because if you are, you might want to try Panama. My dad always liked it better... similar terrain and weather, but much cheaper. Though now you have to deal with the more interesting politics (something with the fact that it has a Spanish Empire legacy versus a British one... at least the latter had a Magna Carta). There is still a large contingent of ex-USA folks (but also Canadian and other countries). You might like it... or try other places nearby surrounded by warm water like the Virgin Islands, Trinidad and Tabogo (or is it Tobago... one of which is in Panama, I keep mixing them up), Cayman Islands, the Bahamas or Bermuda.

 

[Hastur]

At what period was there LESS religion in public life? Not in my lifetime. I am 44 and I can remember prayer time in public school. For that matter I can remember evangelical groups being allowed to conduct assemblies in my public elemntry and middle school.

All right, let me break this down for you:
In the 19th century, there were no public schools; they were set up by Protestant determinist churches (Methodists and Baptists for the most part). Prayer was part of those schools' education cirricula. As far as most Christians were concerned at that point in time, everything was fine. They were giving people an education to bring along the Second Coming and the government was not going to stop them. There were no Patrick Robertsons or James Falwells creating Christian Coalitions to lobby Congress.
Fast forward some years and American begins receiving evangelical Catholics from Europe. These Catholics do not want their children being brought up in Protestant mores so they begin their own religious schools (the predecessor to modern-day parochial schools).
Fast forward again to the 1930s-1940s. The government is running its own public school with a secular curriculum. There has also been an influx of Jews from more theocratic countries (mostly eastern Europe and Russia) who fear that level of government encouragement of religion. At the same time, the Catholic schools are asking the government for financial aid equal to what the government gives the Protestant schools. This goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Justice Hugo Black, a Christian, member of the Ku Klux Klan, and an exemplar of what the modern lawyer is NOT supposed to be, is faced with a quandry: He could allow those "evil" Papists to have equal access to government financial aid (he can't just disallow them or the government is establishing a national religion) and allow them to spread their message to the masses, or he can just cut off all financial aid to all religious schools. It's throwing the baby out with the bathwater but its still keeps those Papists poor.
And that is how the evangelicals got howling mad at the government over church and state. It wasn't because separation didn't exist; they always posited it did, at least in the Christian ethos of "give to Caesar what is Caesar's . . . " and they were to avoid Caesar as much as they could.

 

[petre]

I'm a bit nervous about the FSM and IPU becomming so popular. What if 2010 years ago someone tried using the same rhetoric style and said, "Suppose I say something totally against how we know the world works, like there's some guy that was born from a virgin, and that he died and came back to life..."

 

[catbasket]

I'm a bit nervous about the FSM and IPU becomming so popular. What if 2010 years ago someone tried using the same rhetoric style and said, "Suppose I say something totally against how we know the world works, like there's some guy that was born from a virgin, and that he died and came back to life..."

Then

T1 is 'A doesn't exist' and T2 is 'A might exist', it actually seems that T2 is assuming more.

Which, I think, was the point.

 

[blutoski]

I think it depends on how far back you want to go... the First Great Revolution was in the early 19th century.

Sorry, I was on crack when I wrote this. I meant: First Great Revival.

 

[moopet]

Why use dye at all? No dye = no expense.

Because choosing a blank white flag as the symbol of your country may convey the wrong meaning?

 

[moopet]

OK, catching up quite late, I have to say something regarding the US-centric argument against Shermer's commentary:
People focussed on whether he should have written an article that was important only to Americans. Well, as has been said before, it's important to everyone - people who care about their American friends and people who care about the knock-on effects around the rest of the world. Of course he should write about what he knows, what's on his mind, etc, provided it's reasonably on-topic. It's been said before by a thousand people, it's hardly news, but it's still important opinion.
The problem is that when Randi writes, he writes little snippets about all sorts of different places and nobody cares - he says, "Meanwhile, in England, someone has done something completely trippy", and that's the rub. "In America" would have worked for everyone. "This is America" looks bad to anyone who isn't in America, and some will get offended, because he's a professional writer who knows he has an international audience yet alienates them, either by choice or by laziness.
It's a tiny turn of phrase but it will set anyone with any kind of misgivings about American attitudes against the remainder of the article, and make them notice things in the OP they probably wouldn't have otherwise.

It's very common on the Internet to see Americans being "patriotic" and making statements assuming all their readers live on the same bit of turf, and I don't know whether it's because they're the majority, but to my subjective eyes it appears that people of other nationalities don't have this tendency. In itslef, changing it might go some way to stopping more and more people from hating the US.