Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
5 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,821 Year: 3,078/9,624 Month: 923/1,588 Week: 106/223 Day: 4/13 Hour: 0/2


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   Anti-theist
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 595 of 895 (894419)
05-15-2022 3:55 PM
Reply to: Message 594 by ringo
05-15-2022 3:00 PM


Re: Prayer For The Universe
"The Bible is true, even when it contradicts itself."
quote
"Especially when it contradicts itself."
--- paraphrasing Garak (see Especially the Lies , YouTube, 2:00)
 

This message is a reply to:
 Message 594 by ringo, posted 05-15-2022 3:00 PM ringo has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 609 of 895 (894480)
05-17-2022 12:25 PM
Reply to: Message 606 by Percy
05-17-2022 10:25 AM


Re: Prayer For The Universe
You do realize that the accounts they're referring to that you're calling fake come from the Bible?
Maybe he's finally coming over to the other side and becoming an atheist.
Unfortunately, his entire life he had been lied to about what atheism is, so we're going to have to weather through his making an ungodly mess of ... Ungodliness.
Christian atheists must be the worst kind of atheist because they have all the wrong ideas of how to do it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 606 by Percy, posted 05-17-2022 10:25 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 691 of 895 (895257)
06-18-2022 5:26 PM
Reply to: Message 690 by Dredge
06-18-2022 5:03 PM


Re: Prayer For The Universe
Paradoxically, most of Satan's servants on earth don't even believe he exists.
Actually, I've found that most of Satan's servants on earth do believe that he exists, but rather mistakenly believe that they do not serve him.
Exampli gratia, creationists who serve "their god" through lies and deception despite Christian doctrine clearly identifies the god so served as being Satan.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 690 by Dredge, posted 06-18-2022 5:03 PM Dredge has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 693 of 895 (895259)
06-18-2022 6:49 PM
Reply to: Message 692 by AZPaul3
06-18-2022 6:27 PM


Re: Prayer For The Universe
That's right buckaroo. When physics speaks even your gods cannot resist my commands.
Test for the True Believer: in an experiment in which an heavier-than-air object is to be released to fall to the floor, pray your greatest and most powerful prayers using your greatest and most powerful rituals to keep that object from falling at the rates predicted by physics. What will the effects of those prayers and rituals be?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 692 by AZPaul3, posted 06-18-2022 6:27 PM AZPaul3 has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 694 by Dredge, posted 06-18-2022 7:13 PM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 695 of 895 (895261)
06-18-2022 7:23 PM
Reply to: Message 694 by Dredge
06-18-2022 7:13 PM


Re: Prayer For The Universe
So what's your results, asshole?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 694 by Dredge, posted 06-18-2022 7:13 PM Dredge has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 708 of 895 (895475)
07-02-2022 11:33 AM
Reply to: Message 706 by Phat
07-01-2022 3:20 PM


Re: Giving It ALL up to Whom?
As for helping family, neighbors in need, and people in general, I could do. What puzzles me is how you claim on the one hand that Jesus wants us to give it ALL up and yet reassure me that I wouldn't be homeless. It takes money to pay rent.And would Jesus not allow us to have a car?
Well, what did Jesus have to say about that? Christians believe that the Gospels do report what Jesus actually said (don't they?), so from Matthew 6 (King James Version -- quoting the full passage in order to preserve context):
quote
6:24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate
the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one,
and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
6:25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life,
what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your
body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and
the body than raiment?
6:26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither
do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father
feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
6:27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto
his stature?
6:28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies
of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they
spin:
6:29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his
glory was not arrayed like one of these.
6:30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field,
which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, [shall
he] not much more [clothe] you, O ye of little faith?
6:31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat?
or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
6:32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for
your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these
things.
6:33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his
righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
6:34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow
shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto
the day [is] the evil thereof.
Which master do you serve, God or Mammon? Despite your repeated protestations that you believe in and serve Jesus and that He is your personal friend, you clearly serve Mammon.
If you did actually serve God and believe in Jesus (wherein "believe in" implies having full trust in God and in Jesus), then you would give no thought to nor lust after worldly goods. Instead, you would trust in God providing for you, exactly as Jesus himself said in Matthew 6:24-34.
Or don't you believe what the Bible clearly says? Don't you trust God and Jesus to keep their word? Do you in truth not actually believe in God and Jesus?
"O ye of little faith"! (Matt 6:30)
Of course, we atheists do not put our trust in the gods (AKA "we do not believe in them"). We atheists recognize reality and plan accordingly. Just as you persist in doing in direct conflict with your professed religious beliefs.
Does that mean that you are secretly an atheist? A closeted atheist? Why would you want to pretend to be a Christian? Come out of the closet!
 
I've posted this old joke before:
quote
One day while hiking through the mountains, a Christian falls off a ledge and is able to grab a tree root to stop his fall, but now he is stuck hanging there.
So he cries out to God to save him. The clouds part and a Divine Voice tells him, "Have faith in me and let go!"
Stunned, he thinks for a moment and then cries out, "Is there anyone else up there? I'd like a second opinion!"

This message is a reply to:
 Message 706 by Phat, posted 07-01-2022 3:20 PM Phat has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(5)
Message 718 of 895 (895498)
07-04-2022 12:28 AM
Reply to: Message 715 by Phat
07-03-2022 3:47 PM


Re: Giving It ALL up to Whom?
Got better ways to waste my time right now.
So then you, O solitary naked ape, can go out into the wilderness and survive all on your own? Really? Let's see you try it!
Furthermore, you have a family whose survival depends on you, O solitary naked ape? After all, evolution isn't about the survival of any individual, but rather about the survival of that individual's progeny. What are their chances?
Survival of the fittest! So what is fitness exactly? Is it the old poster:
quote
Lo though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil, for I am the meanest SOB in the Valley!
Nope, not even close!
Fitness is the ability to pass your genes on to the next generations. Homo sapiens has obviously proven itself an extremely fit species. So what is the secret to our evolutionary fitness?
Society! Our ability to form social groups in which we work together to ensure the mutual survival of as many members of the group as possible. Without that, we would just be easy pickings for any and all predators.
 
So then your big plan is for us to completely abandon our most important and successful survival strategy and revert to being solitary naked apes entirely on our own.
What a fucking idiot!

Edited by dwise1, : clean-up on quoting aisle


This message is a reply to:
 Message 715 by Phat, posted 07-03-2022 3:47 PM Phat has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 806 of 895 (897949)
09-16-2022 2:48 PM
Reply to: Message 803 by Phat
09-12-2022 1:28 PM


Re: Hatred Of Thinking?
My motto was that if you don't stand for SOMETHING you are liable to fall for ANYTHING.
[voice=Horshack]Ooh! Ooh! Ooh![/voice]
I know that one! It was featured in proselytizing/propaganda cartoon training materials for the Jesus Freaks circa 1970 (NOTE: basically, Hippies for Jesus which evolved into modern-day fundamentalism): "If you don't stand for something, then you'll fall for anything!"
But what about this permutation?: If you don't question anything, then you'll fall for anything.
quote:
I Thessalonians (KJV):
5:21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
Another translation: "Test everything; hold fast to that which is true."
If you stand for complete and utter bullshit, then you will get your reward (and richly deserve every miserable moment of it). But if you test and verify the bullshit that you are being fed, then you will be able to avoid ingesting it -- "You are what you eat." ("Man ist was man ißt.")
So is bullshit more valuable to you than the truth? You say that bullshit is more valuable to you? How very sad.
The skills which I avoided were falsification, critical thinking, and data. I steered more towards belief at any cost.
Again:
quote:
I Thessalonians (KJV):
5:21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
Another translation: "Test everything; hold fast to that which is true."
Oh, but that's just what the Bible is telling you to do! Since when have you ever cared what the Bible says?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 803 by Phat, posted 09-12-2022 1:28 PM Phat has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 807 of 895 (897950)
09-16-2022 3:12 PM
Reply to: Message 797 by Phat
09-11-2022 3:23 PM


Re: Hatred Of Thinking?
The only other thing I can think of is when you compare Jesus with Leprechauns. That is most definitely illogical.
Really? Is there some kind of ranking system for invisible friends? How does your Jesus invisible friend measure up against Hitler as Jojo Rabbit's invisible friend? (HINT: Jojo Rabbit won an Oscar)
One test is to notice how one's invisible friend hates the same people that you do and how it agrees with you most of the time. Or at least will always be ready to forgive you of anything you do wrong.
Of course, there's also the problem of one's invisible friend refusing to forgive one. I would think that that would be a sign of very serious psychological problems that would require professional help.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 797 by Phat, posted 09-11-2022 3:23 PM Phat has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 816 by Phat, posted 09-18-2022 10:31 AM dwise1 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 823 of 895 (898875)
10-01-2022 5:15 PM
Reply to: Message 777 by Phat
09-09-2022 9:35 PM


Re: How I feel about religion
NOTE (2022 Oct 01):
While this reply is long overdue, having been indefinitely postponed by other matters, its importance keeps becoming every more apparent because of Phat's persistence misunderstanding of what a Gish Gallop actually is.
[Ben Shapiro] is skilled at talking fast, providing points to back up his argument, and persuading those on the fence while preaching to his own conservative choir.
Ben Shapiro reminds me of a very heavily caffeinated chipmuck overdosing on meth cut with steroids. A constant torrent of words (word salad actually) which is meant to overwhelm any opposition and to keep anyone from responding effectively or even being able to get a word in edgewise.
Basically it's the old college student dictum: "If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance, then baffle them with your bullshit." A corollary practice is "snowing" (AKA "a snow job") in which you try to bluff your way through not knowing the answer by giving a long response having very little to do with the question -- name seems derived from being in a blizzard unable to see anything because of all the snow falling (I've been in a North Dakota blizzard: no wind, almost complete silence (in part due to the muffling effects of the mass quantity of snow floating down), near-zero visibility because of the mass quantity of snow floating down) and the most common use is in an essay exam.
Now where have we seen that before? Eg:
  1. Trump people (eg, spokespeople and supporters in Congress). For example, some had been on Bill Maher, like Kellyanne Conway and several others. On Bill Maher, they would invariably "respond" to a question by releasing a firehose ("Drink from the fire hose!" UHF) of voluminous verbiage under high pressure that changes the subject and diverts off into their bullshit accusations (eg, "But what about Hillary's email server?"). Despite Maher's repeated attempts to get them to answer the actual question, they would just keep going on and on streaming bullshit.
    Once they get started, you cannot stop them. Nor can you ever clean up the mess that they just created. And the discussion was sabotaged, so "Mission Completed" (MC). They achieved their disinformation goal (Putin would be so proud).
    For fun, watch again the photo-shopped take-down sequence from Daredevil in which Trump's and his hencemen's faces are photoshopped onto the characters being arrested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhD3I_AZJMY (would not embed)
    When the crooked journalist working for Kingpin is arrested, they replace her face with Kellyanne Conway's whose mouth never stops moving -- that is the reason for mention this video here.
    The original (eg, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO61TCgbMas ) is also worth watching, in part for the music which was Puccini's Nessun Dorma ("None shall sleep!"). Daredevil's greatest superpower: the law.
  2. Proselytizers, con-men, grifters, used-car salesmen. Rapid patter (always well-rehearsed, of course, though Shapiro may be a natural (but do not reject any preparation) ) . "Them fast-talkin' city slickers!" For examples refer to innumerable such characters being portrayed in movies and on TV. Phil Silvers is perhaps the best known example (for my generation and before, at least) always playing a fast-talking salesman or someone trying to pull a con; think "Sgt Bilko."
    Cultural note: When I worked in Villingen-Schwenningen, W. Germany, in 1973, there was a discount department store in the town center called "Bilko". I'm sure there was no connection with Sgt Bilko, but it did strike me as strange.
  3. Creationist debates. While such events should be an opportunity for presenting one's own side and getting answers to your questions to the opposition, creationists use them to further their own agenda of disinformation and deception:
    • The most effective exchange of information and ideas would be regarding a specific subject (eg, radiometric dating, fossil evidence for a specific transition), but every single time such a debate topic is requested, the creationist refuses it, especially if it's an experienced creationist (a rank amateur might make the mistake of accepting it, but will very quickly learn better). The creationist knows that his best tool is the ability to change the subject immediately so that he can dodge and avoid all direct questions, basically the same deflect-and-divert tactics used by Republicans.
      Keeping the topic vague also allows creationists to place unreasonable demands on their opponents who must become experts in everything while the creationist doesn't have to know anything. Their opponent is honor bound to be truthful and to present accurate information to the audience while the creationist can just make up whatever lies he wants to on the spur of the moment and he knows he will get away with it.
    • Creationists exploit the debate format in order to prevent their opponents from responding effectively to their claims and to respond unchallenged to their opponents with BS.
    • The time limits in the debate format also enables the Gish Gallop, named after its most notable practitioner, Dr. Duane Gish of the ICR.
      The basic strategy of the Gish Gallop is to wait for the 5-10 minute segments towards the end of the debate and use all your time to rapidly make a series of claims and "raised questions" that your opponent cannot possibly respond to in his own 5-10 minute allotment, even if he knew how to respond:
      1. Each gallop question could be rattled off in 5 seconds, some maybe as long as 10 seconds. That means that in just two minutes you could bombard your opponent with 12 to 24 questions, each of which would require far more than 10 minutes to respond to (that figure being extremely optimistic). Therefore, your opponent had little hope of being able to respond to just one of your questions, leaving 11 to 23 more that he couldn't even address in any manner. That presents to the audience the false impression that scientists have no answers to these questions (a false claim that I have frequently seen creationists make elsewhere).
      2. The other aspect of the Gish Gallop is that the opponent has to know how to respond, which he might not know. The primary reason is that creationist claims are all false with many of them claiming to refer to "scientific sources" which either do not exist or else actually say the opposite of what creationists claim. As Fred Edwords pointed out (quoting from memory):
        quote:
        You not only have to know your science well, but you need to know your creationism better! ... You can see that their claim is ridiculous, but you can't just say, "But that's ridiculous!" You have to be able be able to explain why it's ridiculous! And you need to be able to do that while engaging the audience.
        Again, while the opponent is bound to hold to the truth and honesty and to help the audience understand the subject, the creationist is operating under no such restrictions and is free to lie and make up stuff (especially since the audience understanding the subject is the very last thing that the creationist would want). So when the creationist has just made up some new lie, especially claiming a "scientific source" (which he has also just made up), the opponent has no hope of responding effectively with the severe lack of sufficient time making matters even worse.
        A prime example is what happened when Gish pulled that trick in the wrong place, on national TV (a PBS documentary) where he claimed that there's a protein that shows humans to be more closely related to bullfrogs than to chimpanzees. His mistake was that he allowed his opponents plenty of time to research his claim. In follow-up questions to him asking him to identify that protein, he "didn't have it on hand, but he definitely has documentation of it that he will provide" -- which he never did because it didn't exist. That became the infamous Bullfrog Affair scandal.
Therefore, your accusations against ringo in another topic (see Message 886) that he's "gishing you" are completely false and ungrounded since his replies to you do not fit the requirements for a Gish Gallop.
From Wikipedia:
quote:
The Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm their opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments. In essence, it is prioritizing quantity of one's arguments at the expense of quality of said arguments. The term was coined in 1994 by anthropologist Eugenie Scott, who named it after American creationist Duane Gish and argued that Gish used the technique frequently when challenging the scientific fact of evolution. It is similar to another debating method called spreading, in which one person speaks extremely fast in an attempt to cause their opponent to fail to respond to all the arguments that have been raised.
During a Gish gallop, a debater confronts an opponent with a rapid series of many specious arguments, half-truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies in a short space of time, which makes it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of a formal debate. Each point raised by the Gish galloper takes considerably more time to refute or fact-check than it did to state in the first place, which is known online as Brandolini's law. The technique wastes an opponent's time and may cast doubt on the opponent's debating ability for an audience unfamiliar with the technique, especially if no independent fact-checking is involved or if the audience has limited knowledge of the topics.
Generally, it is more difficult to use the Gish gallop in a structured debate than a free-form one. If a debater is familiar with an opponent who is known to use the Gish gallop, the technique may be countered by pre-empting and refuting the opponent's commonly used arguments before the opponent has an opportunity to launch into a Gish gallop.
That is clearly not what ringo do with you.
But what Ben Shapiro (and the Trump Republican s in particular and Republican spokesfools in general) do is much more akin to the Gish Gallop.
Liberals are frustrated that nobody that they send can "beat" [Ben Shapiro] in a debate.
Who could possibly have a conversation with a Gish Galloping firehose of BS?
Has a written debate been attempted? Though then Brandolini's Law would likely come into play:
quote:
Brandolini's law, also known as the bullshit asymmetry principle, is an internet adage that emphasizes the effort of debunking misinformation, in comparison to the relative ease of creating it in the first place. It states that "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."
. . .
In Economic Sophisms (1845, 1867), Bastiat expresses an early notion of this law:
We must confess that our adversaries have a marked advantage over us in the discussion. In very few words they can announce a half-truth; and in order to demonstrate that it is incomplete, we are obliged to have recourse to long and dry dissertations.
. . .
In his 1786 Letters on Infidelity, George Horne writes that:
Pertness and ignorance may ask a question in three lines, which it will cost learning and ingenuity thirty pages to answer. When this is done, the same question shall be triumphantly asked again the next year, as if nothing had ever been written upon the subject. And as people in general, for one reason or another, like short objections better than long answers, in this mode of disputation (if it can be styled such) the odds must ever be against us; and we must be content with those for our friends who have honesty and erudition, candor and patience, to study both sides of the question.
. . .
In 2005, Russian physicist Sergey Lopatnikov anonymously published an essay in which he introduced the following definition:
If the text of each phrase requires a paragraph (to disprove), each paragraph – a section, each section – a chapter, and each chapter – a book, the whole text becomes effectively irrefutable and, therefore, acquires features of truthfulness. I define such truthfulness as transcendental.
The Gish gallop, a term coined in 1994 to refer to creationism debates, is a rhetorical technique that relies on overwhelming an opponent with specious arguments, half-truths, and misrepresentations that each require considerably more time to refute or fact-check than they did to state in the first place.
The yoga scholar-practitioners Mark Singleton and Borayin Larios write that several of their colleagues have "privately" described their "aversion to public debate" with non-scholars because of Brandolini's law.
A rhetorical trick that would be worthwhile to become familiar with in order to better defend against it.
 

This message is a reply to:
 Message 777 by Phat, posted 09-09-2022 9:35 PM Phat has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(3)
Message 846 of 895 (906471)
02-12-2023 12:51 PM
Reply to: Message 843 by Phat
02-12-2023 1:55 AM


Re: Feb 12: Celebrate The Day
Maybe we should have an Edisons Day, a Michaelangelo Day, and a George Washington Carver Day! Heck, Elon Musk could even sponsor a Tesla Day!
Somewhere there must be a list of commemorative days. At times, it seemed that the only thing Congress could do was to declare new commemorative days like National Doughnut Day (first Friday of June).
Don't forget Towel Day, 25 May:
quote:
The importance of the towel was introduced in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy original radio series in 1978. The follow-up book explained the importance of towels in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy universe in Chapter 3, using much of the same wording as the original radio series:
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you — daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitchhiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost." What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Towel Day website is at Towel Day - Celebrating the life and work of Douglas Adams
I just learned that 25 May is also an international Geek Pride Day which originated in Spain as Día del Orgullo Friki ("Pride Friki", "friki"/"friqui" from English "freak" is a geek (modern usage, not as per Nightmare Alley)):
quote:
En 2006 el bloguero Señor Buebo organizó la celebración del primer Día del Orgullo Friki a través de Internet.7 El evento tuvo buena acogida y, desde entonces, cada 25 de mayo los frikis conmemoran mediante diversos actos el estreno del largometraje Star Wars de George Lucas, coincidiendo con el Día de la Toalla (en honor a Douglas Adams, autor de la Guía del autoestopista galáctico) y con el glorioso 25 de mayo, día de la rebelión en Treacle Mine Road, calle muy conocida por los fanes de la saga Mundodisco, de Terry Pratchett (léase Night Watch, editada en español como La guardia nocturna). Sin embargo, algunas personas rechazan radicalmente la celebración de este día, por considerarla una celebración que muestra un estereotipo equivocado de los frikis.
El primer día de conmemoración se celebró en toda España y en Internet, después de que varios medios de comunicación, como los diarios El País y El Mundo, dieran a conocer la iniciativa, aunque el apogeo fue en la plaza del Callao de Madrid, donde se grabó una de las escenas más importantes de la película El día de la bestia de Álex de la Iglesia, y donde un grupo de personas disfrazadas se concentraron para celebrar su día, entre cánticos y un pac-man humano.​ En 2008, la celebración llegó hasta los Estados Unidos y México, y en 2009, a Canadá.
Desde 2009 también se celebra el Frikoño, la Semana Friki de Logroño, coordinada cada año por Tarilonte.
That linked me to Frikipedia (English page at La Frikipedia - Wikipedia ):
quote:
La Frikipedia was a Spanish-language parody of Wikipedia. Frikipedia can be translated into English as The Geekpedia or The Freakypedia, since the title comes from the anglicism freak. It is also called "the extremely serious encyclopedia" or the "useless encyclopedia". It currently has more than 8,000 articles. The Frikipedia is under the GNU Free Documentation License. In early 2006, the head of the Frikipedia decided to close the site after a complaint by the SGAE. It reopened on October 20, 2007.
25 May is also the day commemorating the works of Sir Terry Pratchett. I wonder why so many choose 25 May.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 843 by Phat, posted 02-12-2023 1:55 AM Phat has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 847 of 895 (906476)
02-12-2023 1:14 PM
Reply to: Message 843 by Phat
02-12-2023 1:55 AM


Re: Feb 12: Celebrate The Day
Maybe we should have an Edisons Day, a Michaelangelo Day, and a George Washington Carver Day! Heck, Elon Musk could even sponsor a Tesla Day!
Not much time. Need to get ready for my monthly Atheists United breakfast meeting -- last week was Backyard Skeptics.
Wikipedia has a list of holidays. Most of the lists are religious holidays for various religions, but at the bottom we get lists of secular holidays:
International
  • All Hallows' Day – (1 November in the United States, Canada, Mexico (where it is known as the Day of the Dead), and other countries). A day of remembrance and honour of all the Faithful Believers who have passed, been canonized, and gone to Heaven.
  • Asteroid Day – (30 June, global). Founded in 2014 (initiated after the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor air burst) and recognized in 2016 by the United Nations to mark the June 30, 1908 Tunguska event and raise awareness about the hazards of asteroid impacts.
  • Halloween – (31 October, especially in the UK and former British colonies, including the United States, Canada, and Australia). Also called All Hallows' Eve, it is a highly secularized outgrowth of Christian All Hallows' Day on 1 November, and pagan Celtic Samhain (halfway point between autumn equinox and winter solstice).
  • International Men's Day – (19 November in Canada, Australia, India, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, United Kingdom, Singapore, South Africa, and Malta)
  • International Women's Day – (8 March, particularly in Australia, former Soviet bloc countries and mainland China)
  • May Day, Labor/Labour Day, or International Workers' Day – (1 May in many European and South American countries. The United States and Canada both celebrate on the first Monday in September)
  • Saint Nicholas Day – (5 or 6 December in the Netherlands, Belgium, Lebanon, and other countries)
  • Saint Patrick's Day – (17 March in Ireland, the United States, Canada, and other countries by people of Irish descent or heritage)
  • Saint Valentine's Day – (14 February in the United States, Canada, and many other countries as a day to celebrate love and affection)
  • Thanksgiving Day – (4th Thursday in November in the United States, 2nd Monday in October in Canada). Generally observed as an expression of gratitude, traditionally to God, for the autumn harvest. It is traditionally celebrated with a meal shared among friends and family in which turkey is eaten. In Canada, since the climate is colder than in the US, the harvest season begins and ends earlier.
Regional {DWise1: not enough time this morning so you'll need to look it up yourself; sorry}
Unofficial holidays, awareness days, and other observances
  • 420 (20 April) (Day celebrating cannabis culture)
  • April Fools' Day (1 April)
  • Bicycle Day (19 April)[1]
  • Black Friday or Buy Nothing Day (Day after Thanksgiving Day in the United States)
  • Bloomsday (16 June based on James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses)
  • Festivus (23 December)
  • Friendship Day (First Sunday in August)
  • Galactic Tick Day (Occurs every 633.7 days, starting 2 October 1608)
  • Giving Tuesday[2] (Tuesday following Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States)
  • International Talk Like a Pirate Day (19 September)
  • Marathon Monday (Local name in Boston for Patriot's Day)
  • Mischief Night (30 October)
  • Mole Day (23 October)
  • Monkey Day (14 December)
  • National Cancer Survivors Day (First Sunday in June)
  • National Gorilla Suit Day (31 January)
  • National Hugging Day (21 January)
  • No Pants Day (First Friday of May)
  • Opposite Day (25 January) (Day where you do everything opposite)
  • Pi Day (14 March)
  • Record Store Day (Third Saturday of April)
  • Singles Awareness Day (15 February)
  • Star Wars Day (4 May) "May the Fourth be with you"
  • Super Bowl Sunday (Day of the National Football League championship)
  • Sweetest Day (Third Saturday in October)
  • Tax Freedom Day
  • Towel Day (25 May) (Tribute to the author Douglas Adams)
    World Backup Day (31 March)
    World Peace Day (21 September)
"National Gorilla Suit Day"? And don't ask about "No Pants Day".
Also, "Pi Day" is based on the date, 14 March, which only works in the US because of our backwards way of writing dates (month-day instead of the normal day-month), so 3-14 only works in the US, but nowhere else.
Gotta run!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 843 by Phat, posted 02-12-2023 1:55 AM Phat has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 848 by AZPaul3, posted 02-12-2023 1:55 PM dwise1 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 893 of 895 (913184)
10-15-2023 12:12 PM
Reply to: Message 892 by Phat
10-15-2023 6:10 AM


Re: AZPimpkin3
I think that I saved that pumpkin avatar and shared it with my adult son.
I think I saw it in my phone's "news feed" (which is mainly just click-bait) that a restaurant or club offering unlimited mimosas also charges a $50 "vomit fee".
In re: "the new journalism", in jr. high journalism class (c. 1965) we were taught that that first paragraph of a newspaper article must summarize the story, answering the six questions of "who, what, where, when, how, and why?" (which I can still rattle off from memory). That way, the reader can know whether he wants to continue reading the articles for the details of the story.
Now it's reversed where the headline tricks you in promising information that's buried at the bottom so you have to wade through the whole thing and still not always find that info.
For that matter, in a recent class on assessing medical news we learned that headlines are written by editors who use sensational headlines as clickbait that often makes claims contrary to what the article actually says.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 892 by Phat, posted 10-15-2023 6:10 AM Phat has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 894 by Phat, posted 10-15-2023 1:53 PM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 895 of 895 (913186)
10-15-2023 2:44 PM
Reply to: Message 894 by Phat
10-15-2023 1:53 PM


Re: AZPimpkin3
I don't think that they're actually trying to get you to believe something. There's no real agenda (in general), but rather they are just capitalists trying to make money.
Those "articles" are filled with ads. For every view (AKA "click") they get money from their sponsors. It's like the Neilsen TV ratings, which tracked how big an audience a particular show has which was then used to sell time for commercials during that show. The higher a show's ratings, the more they could charge advertisers.
In that business model, the more eyes/clicks you can get the more money you make. Therefore, they will pander to as large an audience as they can. When QAnon or MAGAt or large fan base gets large enough and more likely to click on certain types of headlines (actual content doesn't matter, since it's the headline that gets the clicks), then you will see more stories pandering to those groups. The same goes for any large enough special interest group to get you the ratings.
Cherchez l'argent! Follow the money!
 
ABE:
It used to be that TV networks' news departments were able to operate independently as a "loss leader". They were expected to lose money, so no effort was made to pander to any special interest group, to whore themselves for money. We also saw that with all kinds of special content cable channels carrying arts and entertainment (A&E), history, science, educational content, travel, etc. But then they all became ratings whores which subverted their good programming with "reality" shows, contrived competitions, paranormal stuff, etc. Basically, lowering the standards of their programming in search of a larger, frankly cruder and less sophisticated audience. How it's surprising to find actual history programs on History or actual educational content on Discovery or The Learning Channel.
And, of course, we have also seen the growth of "news" channels (though FOX News officially describes itself as "not news but rather entertainment") that cater to specific audiences, such as the elderly planted in front of a TV all day waiting to be frightened and enraged by the "news" presented.
Capitalism at work!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 894 by Phat, posted 10-15-2023 1:53 PM Phat has not replied

  
Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024