Diaphanitas

"Furiosae? O Miseras Infantulas!"
"Furious? Poor Babies!"

Yeah:

One Million Moms Furious ‘Beloved Superheroes Will Be Homosexual’

"Bellula!"
"Cute!"

Hotaru and Chibiusa:

( !!! )

"Novum"
"New Thing"

I made a Latin Memes Tumblr:

Mema Interretialia

YAY!

"Officiosa"
"Servicey"

Yeah:


loop by ~InstantFreak on deviantART

"Nova Derivativa Verba Latina, Pars Quadringentesima Tertia"
"New Latin Derivatives, Part Four Hundred Three"

Yeah:

quastrum -i m. "thing that shakes"
( Etymologia )

"Bellula"
"Cute"

Yeah:

( Read more... )

"Nova Derivativa Verba Latina, Pars Quadringentesima Secunda"
"New Latin Derivatives, Part Four Hundred Two"

Yeah:

quastrix -icis f. "shaker"
( Etymologia )

"Officium"
"Service"

Bewbies:

( !!! )

"Nova Derivativa Verba Latina, Pars Quadringentesima Prima"
"New Latin Derivatives, Part Four Hundred One"

Yeah:

quassor -oris m. "shaker"
( Etymologia )

"Excellens Analysis!"
"Excellent Analysis!"

Yes:

Analysis of a typical Facebook debate

"Nova Derivativa Verba Latina, Pars Quadringentesima"
"New Latin Derivatives, Part Four Hundred"

Yeah:

quatillare -o "to shake a little"
( Etymologia )

"Non Dicis!"
"You Don't Say!"

Yeah:

A sophisticated theologian claims that religion can’t be falsified

And a good comment:

Gilkey makes a major error in his statement. Religion doesn’t “ask” any sort of question, it supplies a ready made answer: God did it.

Right.

"De Bonitate"
"On Goodness"

Two thousand years ago, Seneca the Younger wrote, "Bonitas non est pessimis esse meliorem" ("Goodness is not being better than the worst"). In other words, if you want to show that something is good and acceptable, you should not be reduced to denigrating other things by dragging them below the thing in question, especially when the examples of the other things are the worst representatives you can find. Nowadays, when people do such a thing, we call it a Moral Equivalence Fallacy.

Arguments for the legalization of marijuana that go along the lines of "It's not as bad as [mundane substance x]" or "[mundane substance x] is worse than it" are perfect examples of arguments that appeal to the Moral Equivalence Fallacy. And for the "mundane substance x," I have heard things like peanuts and coffee. If you are in the position where you need to denigrate peanuts and coffee to make pot look good and acceptable, then you have problems. After all, are we not taught in grade school that it is not a good thing to think that you build yourself up when you put down others?

This is exactly the fallacy that came to mind while I got done reading this nugget of stupidity this morning:

Study: No lung danger from casual pot smoking

Sounds impressive, doesn't it? Well, let's read more of it:

Add one more data point to the decades-old debate over marijuana legalization: A new study concludes that casual pot smoking - up to one joint per day - does not affect the functioning of your lungs.

Weasel words, much?

The key phrase is "up to one joint per day."

In other words, 0-1. As in no joints to one joint.

In other words, you did not even have to smoke pot to be part of this study, since you could be one of the people who smoked 0 joints a day. I therefore could have participated in this study and they would have gotten the same results.

The study, published in the Jan. 11 edition of Journal of the American Medical Association, also offered up a nugget that likely will surprise many: Evidence points to slight increases in lung airflow rates and increases in lung volume from occasional marijuana use.

So, basically, "harm" here is being arbitrarily defined as "decreased air-flow rates or lung volumes"?

"And the data showed that even up to moderately high-use levels -- one joint a day for seven years -- there is no evidence of decreased air-flow rates or lung volumes,"

But would such a decrease be actual harm?

Unlike cigarette smokers, marijuana users tend to breathe in deeply when they inhale a joint, which some researchers think might strengthen lung tissue. But the common lung function tests used in the study require the same kind of deep breathing that marijuana smokers are used to, so their good test results might partly reflect lots of practice

In other words, exercise?

17 percent of participants said they'd smoked cigarettes but not marijuana.

See what I mean when I said, "you did not even have to smoke pot to be part of this study, since you could be one of the people who smoked 0 joints a day"?

On average, cigarette users smoked about 9 cigarettes daily, while average marijuana use was only a joint or two a few times a month -- typical for U.S. marijuana users, Kertesz said.

Yes, and eating one slice of pizza every few weeks is much better for you than eating nine boxes of donuts daily.

And here we have a statement that inspires people to use the Moral Equivalence Fallacy: "See? Pot is not as bad as cigarettes!" And yet, how exactly is little bit of pot sometimes particularly comparable to a bunch of cigarettes every day?

So, yeah, the tl;dr version of this article can be summed up thus: "Harm from pot" is "decreased air-flow rates or lung volumes," and no such evidence can be found, therefore, as the title says, no lung danger from casual pot smoking. And! Not smoking pot every day is not the same as smoking cigarettes every day. Well, I could have told them that.

"Sex Argumenta!"
"Six Arguments!"

Not bad:

Sean Carroll's List of 6 Arguments Used by Science Denialists

"Felicem Diem Matris!"
"Happy Mother's Day!"

YES!

"Officium!"
"Service!"

Boobies:

( !!! )

"Bellula!"
"Cute!"

Yes:

( !!! )

"Nova Derivativa Verba Latina, Pars Tricentesima Undequadringentesima"
"New Latin Derivatives, Part Three Hundred Ninety-Nine"

Another:

quator -oris m. "the state of shaking"
( Etymologia )

"Magna Imago!"
"Great Image:"

Yeah:

"Non Victor"
"Not a Winner"

Nope, I did not win the Douglas Gold Medal.

But I enjoyed writing the thing! And I have won the bragging rights of being the one person in recent memory to submit a Latin paper to the competition!

Here is a photo of the thing:

"Novum Regnum in Arbore Vitae?"
"A New Kingdom in the Tree of Life?"

Fascinating:

A new kingdom in the tree of life?

"Tribadoides!"
"EEKy!"

That's right:

( !!! )

"Nova Derivativa Verba Latina, Pars Tricentesima Duodequadringentesima"
"New Latin Derivatives, Part Three Hundred Ninety-Eight"

Yeah:

quatiblis -e "shakeable"
( Etymologia )

"Perizoma!"
"Thong!"

Buttular:

( !!! )

"Argumentum ad Famem"
"The Argument from Hunger"

Augh, Coyne found some grade-A nonsense:

More theological criticism of atheists: we’re not despairing enough

But Robert Barron, a Catholic priest, thinks I should feel otherwise. Watch the video of this seemingly genial fellow and see how many things you can disagree with in just a few minutes:

I watched it. Augh, again.

I find this the most invidious part of his spiel:

We have deeply ingrained in us a sense of the limitedness of this world that there is something more. In fact, our very wiring for God proves the existence of God. We desire something which transcends the limitations of this world means that we have within us a sort of participation in the eternal. . . Your hunger is not a sign that food is a projection, but your hunger in fact proves the existence of food—your hunger proves the reality of food. Right? It doesn’t mean that food is some kind of subjective projection or illusion. So that our desires are not misleading us: our desires order us to realities—so our desire for God.

That’s a new theological argument to me: The Argument from Hunger. Because we want something so badly, it must exist.  Readers might amuse themselves with refuting it.

So, if I really, really, really want a unicorn pony in my house, it exists there? Wow, I did not know it was that simple!

But seriously, this really is not different from other theological arguments that try to link the mundane with the supermundane. Just think of Paley's watchmaker argument. Arguments like these comprise two main parts:

1. Comparing two mundane objects or qualities linked in some relational situation, and whose existence is not in doubt (e.g. a built pocket watch and its builder -- builder in this relationship implies the watch, and built in this relationship implies the builder).
   
   
2. Comparing two ultramundane objects or qualities linked in some relational situation, whose existence is in fact in doubt, and just assuming that these ultramundane objects or qualities are in any way analogous to the mundane, often with the help of a mundane label (and yet both this and their very existence is the very thing being called in question).

People who argue things like this, whether they know it or not, use mundane labels for ultramundane concepts in order to make the old switcheroo between the two ontological levels.

When we turn our attention to this Argumentum ad Famem here, our hunger does not prove that our food exists. Food and hunger are relational concepts, and they together are part of a situation in which one has its contextual and semantic and logical coherency together with the other. Of course, someone could say that these concepts are free-floating "things" that exist in some Platonic realm, but if that were the case, I would have no idea what they are, and they would be, frankly, irrelevant to this discussion.

But neither the hunger nor the food say anything about the kind of divinely instilled hunger meant to "prove" the existence of a deity -- a kind of hunger referred to by the mundane label "desires." Not only do we not have to take the existence of the former for granted, we also do not have to accept that such things are in any way analogous to actual hunger and food. If they are analogous, then they are in a relational situation wherein one implies the other. But the "desires" idea mentioned above is laden with the theory of theism in the sense that it is held to be god-given implicitly. While the argument is trying to show that the deity exists, it needs to beg the question of that existence in order to show that the "desires" exist.

So, really, in order for the argument, or rather the analogy, to work, the existence of the deity and the existence of the desires have to be accepted at first just in the same way that the hunger and the food have to be accepted at first.

"Puella Bikinianata"
"Bikini Girl"

Yeah:

( !!! )

"Bellum contra Feminas?"
"The War on Women?"

Great articles:

The war on women

Wait, Consent Means WHAT?

"Nuda Hotarua"
"Nekkid Hotaru"

Yes:

( !!! )

"Nova Derivativa Verba Latina, Pars Tricentesima Nonagesima Septima"
"New Latin Derivatives, Part Three Hundred Ninety-Seven"

Okay:

quatax -acis "tending to shake"
( Etymologia )

"Tribadoides Puellae Bikinianatae!"
"EEKy Bikini Girls!"

Yes:

( !!! )

"Hoc Mihi Dicendum Est"
"It Must Say This"

Si viri fieri praegnantes possent, abortio sacramentum esset.

"Excellens Podcast!"
"Excellent Podcast!"

Not bad:

http://starspotpodcast.com/

"Optime, Fredericopoli!"
"Very Good, Fredericton!"

Thanks for keeping it classy, Fredericton!

Someone from away might very well think that, in Fredericton, 1) there is a grocery store where you can buy kitten meat, and 2) there is a restaurant where you can order bear meat.

"De Verbo Spiritual"
"About the Word Spiritual"

One can say that one particular activity or some other one evokes experiences and feelings that have been called "spiritual." Such experiences and such are real. When people describe what is "spiritual," they use vague descriptions like "feelings of unity" and "feelings of oneness" and "feelings of awe." Yet all of these descriptions always sound to me, frankly, like euphemisms for feelings of self-importance, justified or not, and warm, fuzzy feelings meant to tickle one pink.

The debate about the word spiritual has overwhelmingly been nomenclatural or linguistic in nature. People debate about whether spiritual has too much religious baggage for secularists to use. The use of words is one thing, but my problem is with the concept itself. The way I see it, lumping all of these feelings of awe and togetherness into one unified whole is theonormative, that is to say, the issue is still framed in a religious or theistic context. Even if the most secular of us have perged theism and religion from their worldviews, they may very well still conceive such feelings in a way that is typical among religionists and theists: experiences and feelings singled out as quasi-mystical and somehow different from "mundane" ones.

For me, I do not need a word spiritual, either linguistically or conceptually, because I do not separate such feelings and experience from the totality of the human condition. The distinction between "spiritual" experiences and regular experiences is completely irrelevant to me.

For all I care, so long as other people want to frame the issue in that theonormative manner, they are perfectly free to complement that by continuing to use a theonormative word like spiritual.

"Magna Episodia!"
"Great Episodes!"

That's right:

http://www.equestriadaily.com/2012/05/my-little-pony-royal-wedding-episode.html

Do want!

"Nova Derivativa Verba Latina, Pars Tricentesima Nonagesima Sexta"
"New Latin Derivatives, Part Three Hundred Ninety-Six"

Yeah:

suppeditorculatualitas -atis f. "the state of pertaining to the office of a small person who farts quietly"
( Etymologia )

"Excellens Pellicula!"
"Excellent Video!"

Yes:

http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/05/01/guest-post-another-brand-of-accommodationism/

"Nova Derivativa Verba Latina, Pars Tricentesima Nonagesima Quinta"
"New Latin Derivatives, Part Three Hundred Ninety-Five"

More:

suppeditorculatualia -ium "the festival of the office of a small person who farts quietly"
( Etymologia )

"Officium!"
"Service!"

That's right:

( Officium! )

"Nova Particula!"
"A New Particle!"

That's right:

Big Bang Machine Discovers Brand New Particle

"Nova Derivativa Verba Latina, Pars Tricentesima Nonagesima Quarta"
"New Latin Derivatives, Part Three Hundred Ninety-Four"

More:

suppeditorculatualis -e "pertaining to the office of a small person who farts quietly"
( Etymologia )

"Attractivae Sunt!"
"They Are Attractive!"

Yes:

http://www.chilloutpoint.com/misc/the-most-attractive-manga-girls-youve-ever-seen.html

"Nova Derivativa Verba Latina, Pars Tricentesima Nonagesima Tertia"
"New Latin Derivatives, Part Three Hundred Ninety-Three"

Yes:

suppeditorculatus -us m. "the office of a person who farts quietly"
( Etymologia )

"Maximus et Philosophia"
"Massimo and Philosophy"

Great article:

Lawrence Krauss: another physicist with an anti-philosophy complex

Excellent lines:

(Dawkins still appears to be convinced that religion will be defeated by rationality alone. Were that the case, David Hume would have sufficed.)

Yes.

And then of course there is the old time favorite theme of philosophy not making progress. I have debunked that one too, but the crucial point is that progress in philosophy is not and should not be measured by the standards of science, just like the word “progress” has to be interpreted in any field according to that field’s issues and methods, not according to science’s issues and methods. (And incidentally, how’s progress on that string theory thingy going, Lawrence? It has been 25 years and counting, and still no empirical evidence...)

Nice.

"Nova Derivativa Verba Latina, Pars Tricentesima Nonagesima Secunda"
"New Latin Derivatives, Part Three Hundred Ninety-Two"

Yes:

suppeditorculum -i n. "small thing that farts quietly"
( Etymologia )

"Hotarua Bellula!"
"Cute Hotaru!"

Great:

( Imago! )

"Chrysallis Regina Praeclarissima Est"
"Queen Chrysalis Is Really Famous"

Yeah:

http://www.equestriadaily.com/2012/04/drawfriend-stuff-402-chrysalis-edition.html

60 images in on day! Wow!

"Nova Derivativa Verba Latina, Pars Tricentesima Nonagesima Prima"
"New Latin Derivatives, Part Three Hundred Ninety-One"

Yes:

suppeditorcula -ae f. "small person who farts quietly"
( Etymologia )

"Dies Telluris!"
"Earth Day!"

Wowsers!

"Bellula"
"Cute"

Yes:

( !!! )