Psssh.
It's clearly a mogwai and nest of wild otamatones
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I'm more of a coin return man myself
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Lamarck moment
He was. He just didn't get the mechanism behind it right.
A crude way of explaining Lamarckian evolution would be to look at giraffes. Lamarckism suggests that because an animal that spends much of its life stretching its neck to reach food, it ends up with a slightly longer neck. This trait is then passed down to children, who might spend much of their lives stretching their necks, making them slightly longer. And so on.
He correctly identified that speciation occurs over many many generations, as a result of tiny incremental changes.
What Darwin did was to recognise the actual mechanism behind speciation - Natural Selection. Darwin was aware of and built on Lamarck's work.
Weirdly, within the last thirty years, we've realised that the truth is not so clear cut. Epigenetic changes do occur as a result of the environment and are hereditary. While genes are still the main drivers of evolution, these epigenetic changes affect gene expression.
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I think the biggest issue is that you've assumed everyone is the same and wants to be treated the same.
The world isn't black and white. People are telling you their personal preferences and you're telling them that they're wrong.
You're fighting other people's battles for them even when they're telling you that they'd prefer you not to - you're literally acting like the guy in the last panel.
If there's anything that we've learned over the last horrible year it's that getting all of your information off social media is a recipe for disaster.
Ellen - before she was a talk-show host, Ellen DeGeneres played the main character in an Emmy award-winning sitcom. The show had LGBT characters, with Ellen herself (both the character and actress) coming out later in the show's run.
I'm surprised I've not seen Will & Grace mentioned (I'm sure it must be here, but I didn't notice it). That show famously featured many LGBT characters, including a lesbian couple who were Will and Grace's main rivals.
Less specifically for lesbian characters, but featuring a gay couple as main characters, you've also got The New Normal, a fantastic show about a gay couple that was cancelled after one season, and, of course Modern Family.
I wouldn't say that this programme was good, but Brookside famously featured the first pre-watershed lesbian kiss on British TV (the watershed is the point, 9pm, where it's assumed that children will no longer be watching TV). This was in 1994, when we still had backwards Conservative Party laws about it being illegal to "promote public discussion" of homosexuality. For context, it's worth noting that even two years later, when Carol and Susan got married in Friends they didn't kiss.
I'm sorry it came to this, but this is clearly the behaviour of a deviant. Expect a visit from officers who will escort you to an undisclosed location for reprogramming.
What's your opinion on lengthening the word "no"?
I'm against it in all circumstances. Nothing ruins a dramatic moment in a comic than a character shouting "nooo!" - in my head it always rhymes with "moo".
Thanks for replying to this. This is everything I would have said, except in a far less exasperated way than I would have said it!
I'm going to draw a line under it now though. I honestly don't have energy to explain why a street-preacher who was active for a only a few years does not have the same quality of historical evidence as Cleopatra.
They're either stupid or a troll. A quick look through their profile shows a lot of posts in Danish, so I don't think they're stupid. Scandinavia, however, is famously home to trolls of all shapes and sizes.
Well, I'm certainly glad that I wrote out all that, for you just to reply to the first paragraph!
Anyway, you're wrong. Literally minimum effort required to dig these out, but I'll do it for you anyway.
Antiquities of the Jews by Josephus
Annals by Tacitus
Antiquities has two mentions, along with a rather grim description of what Nero was doing to Christians. Annals has one mention.
And I think you're fundamentaly mistaken about what the Bible is. It's just a collection of works. The Old Testament is pretty much the same stuff as the Jewish Tanakh, and predates Jesus fairly significantly. The New Testament is composed of works created after Jesus's death. This includes several letters by a guy named Paul.
"OK, and...", I hear you say.
He was absolutely a contemporary of the historical Jesus, carried out missionary work after his conversion.
I'll grant that there are no first-hand accounts - even Paul's accounts were second-hand from people who actually knew Jesus. But it doesn't mean anything - there are few first-hand accounts of anybody from before the early middle ages, let alone a commoner born 2000 years ago.
Sorry - you're wrong in this.
There are non-Biblical contemporary accounts of a historical Jesus of Nazareth, the travelling preacher who was crucified under Pontius Pilate. It's generally accepted that he was a real person.
As for the magical side things attributed to him - the immaculate conception, the miracles etc - well, that is a matter of faith.
To use another historical figure, look at William Wallace. There is contemporary evidence that he was a real person, but we don't have much at all. Most of what we have is works created long after he died - legends and stories that have fashioned him into the person we think of. He was a real person, but Braveheart isn't a true story.
If you want another example of how distorted things can get over time - just look at the current "American" version of Jesus.
The Biblical Jesus was a Jew who said people should look after the poor, love our neighbours, respect cultural differences, and that nothing God has made is unclean. He said pursuit of money is the root of all evil and, angered by the commercialisation of the temple, flipped over the tables of the money-changers.
The American Jesus is a white Christian who hates foreigners and their ways, hates gay people and hates atheists. Conversely, he loves billionaires, mega-churches and capitalism.
Historical Jesus is probably real, but that doesn't mean the Bible is an accurate account.
Is that Lindisfarne?!
I used to read this when it just started, back on AOL dial-up. Wow - I'm both super happy that it's still going, and a little sad that it hasn't become bigger. It was a really nicely fleshed-out world.
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Appreciate the info! Thank you.
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I don't want to put you out, but if you've got actual links to him saying dodgy stuff, then please could you show me?
I'm about ten minutes into reading through his Reddit comments and he's not even said anything political. One of the most recent comments was him replying to an accusation of creating the federated wiki alternative for right-wing purposes, which is confusing me even more.
He's specifically telling people which instances they can join that block lemmygrad.
He doesn't seem that extreme. If you can provide something, it'd really be appreciated, because from looking at his posts so far, he seems a nice enough guy.
Edit - never mind, I think I've found what you're referring to. I'll look through them properly in a little bit.
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Is possible, just maybe, that you've been talking to trolls posing as communists, rather than actual communists? Because that's what it sounds like.
Ah, ok. Thanks for that.
I've got even more questions now, but I won't press on!
I'm also getting the impression that I accidentally caused you to dredge up unpleasant stuff from your past - I promise it wasn't my intention. Sorry if I did.
Hope I've at least shown a side to the thing that isn't the insane/angry side that you know.
Or, and please hear me out, because you're not going to like it.
The Republican party are directly responsible for putting Trump as the nominee.
The people who voted Republican are directly responsible.
The Democrat party are indirectly responsible by presenting such a poor-looking alternative. "We're not Trump" is not enough.
The people who chose not to vote are the least responsible of all.
You're directing your anger in the wrong direction. It's the corruption within the system you need to be tearing down, not some poor sod on the internet.
What's the plan - to scare them into voting the way you want in the next election? To argue with and win over the millions of extra voters the Democrats needed?
The problem isn't with the people who saw that both sides were bad options - it's with the Democrat party for being a bad option.
Absolutely.
For the avoidance of doubt, atheism is not a religion.
The whole issue is about definitions.
But, before we finish up, I do have a question for you, if it's ok?
You probably noticed that several people have jumped on the same thing. Where do you guys get these identical discussion points? In particular the whole "atheism is so different from any religious belief, world view, or philosophical position that I'll have online arguments insisting on specific word usage". Is it just from other online commentators?
It just seems strange - even when there's no ambiguity, any topic that mentions atheism will have someone pop up arguing that you can't use certain common words because atheism is different. You need to use special words like "deprogramming" instead.
I mean, this behaviour has to come from somewhere. I'm just genuinely curious from where.
I can't see the video without an account, but the house in the thumbnail looks really good.
For DnD, my orcs all lived in a Tabletop Scenics Orc Barracks, but now I'm very tempted to try something like this for next time.