You'd think the most amazing thing about
Tom Blumer's rant at PJ Media about a "smear" of recently-deceased anti-abortionist John C. Willke would be the long and bizarrely intense display of anger toward the
Cincinnati Enquirer with which it begins ("recruiters often appear in local grocery stores, desperate to almost give away three-month 'trials'... This once respectable full-throttle newspaper, which now looks as if it was cobbled together and produced at FedEx/Kinko’s on the fly..."). But then Blumer starts to pick apart the alleged smear. He quotes the
Enquirer:
Willke’s view on abortion didn’t come without criticism. Willke, who was a retired general physician, believed the stress of rape caused the female body to inhibit conception. Former Missouri congressman Todd Akin also touted that idea, saying victims of “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant. The 2012 comments caused a media sensation and national debate on the subject.
Willke first put forward that theory over 30 years ago and in 1999 he said rape “can radically upset (a woman’s) possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing a pregnancy.”
So, Willke didn't say this, and shouldn't be associated with Akin's famous disaster? Oh, no:
Willke didn’t just “say” it in 1999. He fully documented his reasoning in an April column that year. Emilie Eaton and others obsessed with diminishing Willke should actually read it. Using a set of reasonable assumptions based on data available at the time, the doctor estimated that there were perhaps 450-740 potential instances per year of forcible rape-related pregnancy (as opposed to instances involving statutory rape) nationwide.
You think at first it can't be happening, but --
Willke’s (and Akin’s) naysayers often absurdly assert that there are 32,000 “rape-related” pregnancies per year, over 100 times greater than Willke’s midpoint estimate... The correct number, if it could ever be determined, is far closer to Willke’s [450-740] than it is to 32,000.
If it could ever be determined?
...Akin’s comments didn’t spur a national debate. They spurred a national smear. Almost no one is any smarter on this subject as a result of the press’s coverage of Akin’s failed 2012 U.S. Senate campaign. More than a few people, though they feel really smart, are instead quite a bit dumber.
So, Blumer's argument is: Todd Akin was right. The dream will never die!
Standard RWNJ. When you're wrong, double down. When shown that you're shitass stupid quadruple down and stick you're fingers in you're ears and yell liberal fascism.
ReplyDeleteYou gotta admit, anyone dumb enough to taken Akin seriously got a bit dumber by listening to him ... peak dumbitude is an elusive concept.
ReplyDeleteWhen you're demonstrably a racist pro-police state shit ears, scream "Democrat the real racits! Libety! Tranny!"
ReplyDeleteAnd also too. Fuck yourself with a rusty spork. Who should I believe the CDC or some asshole from pj medidiot.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/sv-datasheet-a.pdf
Exactly.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet: it works.
~
I still haven't seen libety on urban dictionary, so maybe there are secrets at CPAC.
ReplyDeleteIt's fascinating in a car-wreck kind of way how these all-thumbs rhetoricians believe that there's some magic number of pregnant women that's close enough to "zero" that their right to an abortion can be taken away, but they howl like branded calves when asked to give up even one more dollar in taxes to support a single mother and her children.
ReplyDeleteIn a SF book I read, women had the ability to "bring on their period" and thereby cause a miscarriage. If only! Dear me, imagine the howls and screeeeeees!
ReplyDelete"Well shure; what kinda idiot worships Ents?"
ReplyDeleteMore than a few people, though they feel really smart, are instead quite a bit dumber.Pssst! We already noticed, you stupid misogynist little shit.
ReplyDeleteTo paraphrase Roy: Does this guy even know any real women?
ReplyDeleteHey, if some rats can do it why not women?
ReplyDeleteThe dark side of "The Simpsons" s Comic Book Guy.
ReplyDeleteEmilie Eaton and others obsessed with diminishing Willke should actually read it.Yeah, because Lord knows, there are enough hours in the day to carefully weigh the crayon scrawlings of innumerate physicians who don't understand biology.
ReplyDeleteThe correct number, if it could ever be determined, is far closer to Willke’s [450-740] than it is to 32,000.My God, I somehow missed the import of this the first time. We can't really know the actual number, but Wilkie's number is correct, and the critics' number is wrong. All inside one sentence. I'm not sure whether to be grudgingly impressed, or just to resume headdesking.
He fully documented his reasoning in an April column that year.
ReplyDeleteYes indeed, his reasoning. Not any actual research, like that which resulted in the 32,000 estimate.
Argumentum ex ano is the basis of surprisingly few medical protocols.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a term generally in use with the urban dictionary crowd:
ReplyDeleteOh, I think the howls and screes would be exactly the same. Because what are abortion and contraception if not escapes from the tyranny of sperm?
ReplyDeleteTeach the controversy!
ReplyDeleteI vote Tranny.
ReplyDeleteWell, using thought experiments and back-of-the-envelope calculations always works for libertarians...
ReplyDeleteI love the other sign. I can't imagine why this person has been unable to find a job, given the impressive display of skill.
ReplyDeleteBoth of which would be steps up for Wilkie.
ReplyDeleteSeriously? You're in such a hurry to condemn the Cincinnati Enquirer's write-up that you offer "It wasn't really rape rape" as a defense?
ReplyDeleteShorter all conservatives: "Facts are inferior to principles. Because of this, facts can never prove principles wrong!"
ReplyDeleteBut, going on, as they will: "And I'll prove it, by dredging up issues that for the normals were settled in 2012 by the Akin defeat, and in 1925 by the Scopes Trial, and in 1865 by the Civil War, and in 1630 by Galileo..."
Now if the right-hand sign-writer had used Franklin Gothic Condensed, there would have been room for those missing letters. Typography is important, people!
ReplyDeleteDidn't Brecht write an opera about that?
ReplyDelete"This is a traumatic thing — she's, shall we say, she's uptight," Willke
ReplyDeletesaid of a woman being raped, adding, "She is frightened, tight and so
on. And sperm, if deposited in her vagina, are less likely to be able to
fertilize. The tubes are spastic."
"Fallopian Spasticity" would be a good band name, is all I'm saying.
You're think of "The Rise and Fall of the City of Trepagonny".
ReplyDeleteSo I shouldn't order the Wilkie book I hoped would lead me off the cobbled streets of mild petting and onto the full-throttled raceway of furious fucking?
ReplyDeleteI'm confused.
Okay, I looked up the article with Willke. It's...amazing. He tries to prove his thesis by ignoring all actual on-the-ground empirical facts and employing some amazingly fuzzy math. Really, really bad math.
ReplyDeleteYou can see the horrible step-by-step here, but I'm sure you've seen someone do something like this before. He starts with the number of rapes (or what he assumes is the number - he actually derives his own). Then he starts to divide it up - by the number of women and men who are sterile, on birth control, etc. Once you apply all his factors, you're left with either 450 or 740.
Okay class, can anyone point out what's wrong with this argument form? It is, of course, way too clean, assuming that each factor is totally independent of all others and determined by pure random chance. There's a great example right at the start. He starts by deriving number of rapes from the '100,000,000 females old enough to be at risk for rape in the United States." (Yes, he seriously wrote that) And then the first factor he applies? "Of the 200,000 women who were forcibly raped, one-third were either too old or too young to get pregnant." You're double-counting, asshole! You already brought age into this! Usually, this type of error is a little more subtle...
Some of the factors are really dubious, too. For instance, he insists on dividing by six because "A woman is capable of being fertilized only 3 days (perhaps 5) out of a 30-day month." Funny, in my 6th grade health class they taught us that "Well, she's probably not fertile" is a terrible assumption to make, but if the obstetrician says it's okay, then I guess we won't be needing these condoms after all. Hell, if you take the good doctor's numbers and apply them to consensual sex, then there's apparently only a 1.5% chance of getting a woman pregnant, so I don't even know why we bother with birth control.
But here's the best part. Near the end, he points out that it usually takes 5-10 months for couples to achieve pregnancy, so he divides his number by five. You can't do that! You can't just make up your own numbers! And then he does it again, deciding that well, the miscarriage rate is 15 percent, but this is traumatic, so let's call it 20 percent. So you're making up numbers, and double-counting (because he knocks off another 50 percent for "stress of rape" immediately below), and question begging?
This man was a doctor.
Seriously, how innumerate are pro-lifers that this is considered a convincing argument? A few years back, I saw a similar piece by a black woman trying to convince other black women to date white men by "proving" that there was a statistically insignificant number of "good" black men. Her comment section was full of people pointing out how bad her math was, which I suppose is a little promisining - at least some people don't turn off their brains when they turn on their computers. But apparently, the members of the politically significant pro-life movement are far less discerning than the readers of some random blog.
Sounds like a pre-teen sex myth, doesn't it? "If you tighten your tubes, they'll be too spastic for the sperm to go anywhere!"
ReplyDeleteDoes his "theory" also include saying "you can't get pregnant the first time you are raped"?
ReplyDelete"My theory is clearly right. After all, if there was any way to discover the truth, it would clearly be closer to my theory than yours. I dare you to find a flaw in this statement."
ReplyDeleteWillke didn’t just “say” it in 1999. He fully documented his reasoning in an April column that year
ReplyDeleteAs stupid as this argument ("but rape DOESN'T make you pregnant!") is, it's easy to imagine its appeal to wingnuts who wish they could live in a world where Malcolm X was never born.
I think it also doubles for that "Feminists exaggerate rape" belief that's held by a certain type of conservative that germinates under the floorboards and fills up newspaper comment sections.
ReplyDeleteE.O. Wilson?
ReplyDeleteIch bin eine arme verscheisskop...f
ReplyDeletethere's some magic number of pregnant women that's close enough to "zero" that their right to an abortion can be taken away
ReplyDeleteIt is a rubbish argument even for the purposes of the (ostensible) goal of changing abortion laws, because if the number of raped women wishing an abortion is vanishing small, there's no need to change the law.
We come to the melancholy conclusion that the real purpose of the argument is to not care about rape.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/cf/e4/b6/cfe4b6b8492e2c6163e7e2a843487ec8.jpg
ReplyDeleteGotta love the sentiment though:
ReplyDelete"Where's my JOB you liar!" the conservative wails in childish frustration.
Maybe someone in the party should tell about the free market and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and not expecting government handouts and such.
Wanna bet he's a white man too?
It is a rubbish argument even for the purposes of the (ostensible) goal of changing abortion laws, because if the number of raped women wishing an abortion is vanishing small, there's no need to change the law.
ReplyDeleteHasn't stopped all the incessant yapping about "voter fraud".
a "smear" of recently-deceased anti-abortionist John C. Willke
ReplyDeleteThis actually sounds like a good idea. Perhaps down the side of a tall building.
Even better if his nickname was Pappy.
ReplyDelete"but they howl like branded calves when asked to give up even one more dollar in taxes to support a single mother and her children."
ReplyDeleteFew of them actually give a rat's ass about the "sanctity" of life. They just want to see those they resent properly chastised. Pregnancy is the comeuppance of sex for pleasure. Having to deal with the stress of a kid you can't properly care for just makes the punishment sweeter in their eyes. Eliminating any moral arguments for abortion will give them license to wallow in their contempt for those who don't toe their line.
So you see, it's actually all very consistent.
They're just sadists.
How innumerate are pro-lifers? I was once pointed at a discussion where a pro-lifer was claiming that acephelia (a 100% fatal birth defect) could be cured through prayer. Really. When all you really have is a conclusion that's supported by two bible verses and the feeling that abortion is icky, you have to throw out a lot of facts and reasoning, 'cause there's no other way to make it work.
ReplyDeletefemales old enough to be at risk for rape
Because I'm old enough to read the fucking newspaper, I know that there are sick shits out there that rape infants. And Wilke wants to pretend it never happened ever. There hasn't been the obituary written that could smear the useless woman-hating turd enough.
I prefer "dead-eyed christianists who don't trust God enough to let him punish anyone" but sadist is easier to type.
ReplyDeleteSure, but the only ones arguing for the 32,000 are the absurd naysayers. Or, if you want to be all official about it, the Centers for Disease Control.
ReplyDeleteVote? NO LIBETY FOR YOU.
ReplyDeletehate me
ReplyDeletedo it and do it Again
waste me
rape me, my friend
There are also men who rape little old ladies. And invalids, and fair maids of honor true...That's one of the things that our society struggles with, particularly the conservative elements. They really seem to believe that there's no fundamental difference between consensual sex and rape, so it's only sexy 22 year-olds at risk. It's nonsense. Rape is not just sex by other means.
ReplyDeleteIt ties in with that little nugget of Ben Carson wisdom that "prison sex" proves something about homosexuality. The concept that prison rape (which is what we're talking about) is about power wasn't something that even occurred to him.
According to well-known non-homosexual Dr. Ben Carson, sexual preference is a choice, demonstrated in the tightly controlled laboratories of our nation's prisons.
ReplyDeleteThereby rape is an activity demanding its own exercise yard.
they howl like branded calves when asked to give up even one more dollar in taxes to support a single mother and her children.
ReplyDeleteThe theocon perspective always has a bit of that Handmaid's Tale vibe where the women who bear the children aren't fit to raise them. I think the "ideal" is that all the knocked-up trollops give up their bastard seed to good, Christian households that will raise them right. Remember, in some of these communities, adopting a lot of children is a mark of status.
Also on the 3-5 day thing, he's apparently assuming sperm die immediately if they don't fertilize during that time, rather than surviving for several days. If she's raped before she ovulates, up to a week by some estimates, but easily another 3-5 days, those li'l bastards can still be viable enough to impregnate her when she does.
ReplyDeleteBen Carson, brain surgeon:
ReplyDeletehttp://youtu.be/M68GeL8PafE
Here's another oversimplification: He decides that exactly 15 percent of all men and women are naturally infertile. I've read a bit about infertility, and that's an awfully clean assumption. Some people have specific medical conditions that obviously cause fertility problems, but in many cases it's not that cut and dry. With most couples, it's not clear which one is infertile - if it even is one of them in particular. Human fertility is more of a spectrum than a binary - there are "subfertile" people who could produce children with partners of average fertility, but not with each other.
ReplyDeleteEmpiricism is for East Coast elitist eggheads.
ReplyDeleteThis is illustrative of something I believe about conservatives and fundamentalists. They have absolutely no understanding of the scientific method nor the kind of reasoning from observable facts us non-scientists do.
ReplyDeleteFor them it is all a debate. Whoever is the most convincing rhetorician wins. The funniest and most telling example I know is this: http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia:Lenski_dialog
Seriously, Schlafly is trying to lawyer a scientist!
Well worth reading for the haha factor but Imhofe's snowball is a good example.
This realization is why I stopped arguing with my conservative friends. They are nice people off topic but unable to admit error on anything near their obsessions.
I was waiting for a smear of well-known gynecologist Papanicoulaou.
ReplyDeleteAnd for any doctor fit to put his hands in a congressman's guts.
ReplyDelete... Akin’s comments didn’t spur a national debate ...
ReplyDeleteBlumer was right about that. Akin's comments spurred an avalanche of ridicule. Extremely well deserved ridicule.
...More than a few people, though they feel really smart, are instead quite a bit dumber ...
Well! Will wonders never cease? Blumer was right about two things ;-)
Most wingnut reproductive theory is of the "I got it from the toilet seat" variety. Which is probably where they got it...
ReplyDeleteBeat me to it, that was the thing that really stood out for me too. "He documented his reasoning" means that he demonstrated clearly that his arguments had all the points that he claimed they had. Like, that 32,000 estimate was probably wrong, because it didn't sound right. "I really said that and I can prove it."
ReplyDelete15% doesn't match CDC numbers. They say ~11% of women of child-bearing age are infertile. They also say just under 21% have been surgically sterilized... he never cites real numbers and consistently overestimates or underestimates to suit his purposes, and yet it's other folks' numbers that are absurd.
ReplyDeleteI'm from the Empirical State.
ReplyDeleteAnd the real purpose of that argument is pretty well known to all of us, as some Republicans keep inadvertently acknowledging.
ReplyDeleteFor reals? There are rats that can "shut that whole thing down"?
ReplyDeleteJust wow. That's what I call "fully documenting your reasoning". It's all there. Only the evidence is missing.
ReplyDeleteYou bet your ass, buddy.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theintegralworm.com/ratfink.jpg
Tach it up, tach it up, ratty gonna shut you down.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxXWjR6q5u4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SJp6uYD9So
ReplyDeleteThey ought to open up the market for chirurgery again. book learnin' is no substitute for thirty or so fuckups.
ReplyDeleteFew of them actually give a rat's ass about the "sanctity" of life
ReplyDeleteThis becomes very apparent when any legislative issues related to welfare come up. It is EXACTLY about punishment, aka failing to conform to the norms they expect of others (though not of their two-wetsuit dildoed selves).
Jeez, that's hard though. And beautiful too.
ReplyDeleteYikes.
ReplyDeleteI think Joel Gray tried to do a revival of Das Silbersee. I don't think a lot of people understand the significance of it. It was one of the last pretty things the Nazis had the luxury of shutting down before we got Weill.
ReplyDeleteso he made the rape equivalent of the Drake Equation
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised he didn't include, for 1% of the women this will be their first time, so they can't get pregnant, and 10% used a Coca Cola douche so again cgp
ReplyDeleteI think rabbits can also do the fetal-resorption trick.
ReplyDeleteAnother anguished cry of "Stop slandering me by accurately reporting what I said!" Except replace "me" with "this dead guy", etc. I tell you, that one never gets old.
ReplyDeleteGive me a few minutes and I can document my reasoning on why Mayor McCheese would kick the Grimace's ass in an MMA bout. Boom, scientifically proven. Where's my grant money?
ReplyDeleteAnd obviously you can forget pregnancy for the 2% who were standing up.
ReplyDeleteYes science really is beyond them. I think it was from the time of Galileo when they found out it was gravity not God's Breath.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit, the excerpts he puts up are quite helpful in diminishing Willke. So, thanks, I guess?
ReplyDeleteThat's one thing I learned from Watership Down.
ReplyDeleteThat, and rabbits can be fucking terrifying.
Only the white ones.
ReplyDeleteAt least Blumer can't fall any further.
ReplyDeleteWell he certainly makes my brain hurt.
ReplyDeleteThat's quitter talk!
ReplyDelete'100,000,000 females old enough to be at risk for rape in the United
ReplyDeleteStates." (Yes, he seriously wrote that) And then the first factor he
applies? "Of the 200,000 women who were forcibly raped, one-third were
either too old or too young to get pregnant." You're double-counting, asshole! You already brought age into this!
He may not be double-counting. It rather depends on where he set the limit on too young. But OTOH it looks like there were ~100 million women between 15 and 64 in the US in 2007, so I think you're right he is mostly double counting.
Also, how many women were non-forcibly raped?
well with a careful misreading one could make this become "The Lord said vengeance is mine. Yeah Me!!!11!1!
ReplyDeleteI don't think any cam girls accept bitcoin anyway.
ReplyDeleteYou must remember they are using The Price Is Right rules -- you can not go over the number and still win
ReplyDelete\when you are short of money for that last two board-foot of wood, a few consonants must go.
ReplyDelete"War on Women Goes Into Triple Overtime"
ReplyDeleteOdd. Usually, a game has to be tied for it to go into overtime. But if you loooooove Jesus enough, you can be down 142-28 and get extra time to - I don't even know, complain some more?
George Grosz -- I especially like Republican Automatons, which goes well with most any 21st Century-vintage Republican
ReplyDeleteWilkes seems to producing "statistics" about pregnancy like a Star Trek fan doing the SETI equation; i.e., "who the hell knows how much fucking takes place during the fertile period, or how many planets are in the habitable zone, so let's make up a number, string it together with some other numbers I've just made up, and voila! We have proved that rape rarely results in pregnancy, and that the galaxy is indeed full of Klingons and Ferengi!"
ReplyDeleteYeah, due to the Lord's displeasure because they were probably dancing too.
ReplyDeleteJeez, I need to read down before typing.
ReplyDeleteWe have proved that rape rarely results in pregnancy
ReplyDeleteIn doing so, Wilkes tacitly accepted that it would be monstrous to force women to serve as incubators for their rapists' children... that is, he accepted that the rights of the women outweigh the potential, subjunctive-mood rights of a embryonic cell-mass.
But somehow it would be OK and non-monstrous to force only a few raped women to serve as incubators. Really, WTF?
All of the bitches that got pregnant, duh. "No True Rape Victim would get pregnant" is a common variant on the True Scotsman fallacy.
ReplyDeletedoh...frigging Discus
ReplyDeleteExactly. If the number of "legitimate" pregnancies from rape is virtually insignificant, then what's the fuss with helping those few unfortunates who got the unlucky roll of the dice?
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the proper response from one of these nuts is that, sadly, all the whores who lie about it so they can have the fun of an abortion just for the hell of it are the ones ruining it for the handful of dutiful wife-slaves who actually got their goods stolen by non-god-approved husband-owners.
Remember that these are people who are adamantly opposed to sex ed. So their knowledge of sex really does tend to be at about a third-grade level, with most of what they "know" having been handed down or across in fragmentary form.
ReplyDeleteTheir parents and friends filled them with misinformation, and they see it as their sole province as a parent to make sure their own children are equally misinformed.
My good-Christian friend does not believe scientists have proven the facts of evolution ("They're just guessing," he said) "That's part of the scientific method," I said, "where you make your guesses and then you test them." He also thinks radio-carbon dating is pseudo-science. Sigh).I told him I would send him a web link to the proofs, but I've decided against it. Why bother?
ReplyDeleteDidn't you hear? All the grant money is going to climate scientists, who are LIVING LIKE KINGS.
ReplyDeleteAmerica: Laughingstock of the Developed World.
ReplyDeleteLet me see if I have this right...
ReplyDeleteDoes the Akin and Willke argument esentially boil down to "Rape is allright by me, but abortion an atrocity?"
Or, "Sit back and think of England because the likelihood of pregnancy is low, low, low."
The only honest thing these guys acknowledge is that rape does in fact exist, though I am not sure in either case they consider it a crime...
...
The ones who were thinking of England?
ReplyDelete...
Lies!
ReplyDeleteDon't be so sure...
ReplyDeleteGILDA
ReplyDeleteWell, I mainly don't believe it because
I heard from my sister about this girl
who this guy jumped out of the bushes
and forced to have a baby.
MADELINE
(Smugly)
How?
GILDA
I don't know. I think he just said,
"Have a baby right now."
The Web is awash in pr0n, but pr0n is definitely NOT a sex-ed substitute--or even an adjunct. You can learn about a zillion creative ways to get your jollies (or be disgusted--YMMV), but you're not going to find a pr0n video that explains how female fertility works, or what STDs are and how to avoid them, or even things that confuse otherwise rational adults like can you have sex when you're already pregnant.
ReplyDeleteSo, yeah--lots of viewing available, but not much actual information beyond where to stick that thing.
Actually, no. From what I've read about these circles, adopting children from "poor countries" (which most Americans read as "Africa") is even better.
ReplyDeleteYeah, if they're not obviously adopted from the ranks of the "less fortunate," how will everyone immediately be able to tell how fucking righteous you are?
ReplyDeleteI was in a band with a guy who later became a snake flagger. He believed that if you lick the pussy, your spit kills the AIDS.
ReplyDeleteThey're all dumb motherfuckers.
Word. Grimace is obviously some sort of golem, and would totally wipe the floor with McCheese's bleached white flour buns.
ReplyDeleteThe bathroom goblin editor of our local white trash paper adopted a Russian boy. Gonna raise him as a confederate.
ReplyDeleteI see jail in that poor kid's future.
So can horses.
ReplyDelete(though not of their two-wetsuit
ReplyDeletebe-dildoed selves)
ftfy...
...
I should have put my /S tag at the end of my post.
ReplyDeleteI guess I'm mourning my still-fading belief from my teen years that things were just going to keep getting better, and every girl would get a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves at the proper time. Then the Rise of the Christianists fucked up everything.
This must be a corollary to the "never has a point been made with such care" rule.
ReplyDeleteIt has some of that Christian virgin worship stuck to it as well, because once a woman is no longer a virgin, the little slut isn't allowed to say "no". Damaged goods, etc.
ReplyDeleteIf the person doesn't grasp basic biology, nuclear decay rates and carbon absorption theory aren't going to be any easier.
ReplyDeleteStill, whether it's a lack of native intelligence or just sticking one's fingers in one's ears, the result is exactly the same. I find myself quoting an old math teacher frequently these days: "The inability to let go of a bad idea is the sign of a weak mind."
"This man was a doctor."
ReplyDeleteDo MDs (et al) have to take an introduction to statistics class? Not that you'd need one to do better, but I'm curious ...
"and 10% used a Coca Cola douche"
ReplyDeleteDon't forget the ladies who prefer Pepsi
Goddamn it. Why won't you take this fine rapist's word over that battered raped woman's for once? where is the justice!!?? You always blame the rapist!!! Fascist!
ReplyDeleteRepeat ad infinitum...........
I'll be damned if I'm Googling the term "snake flagger."
ReplyDeleteComic Sans, bitches!
ReplyDelete"Sometimes, Eartha, the bunnies bite back." - me, to my cat.
ReplyDeletebut they don't even know who's in the team
ReplyDeleteIn the 80s it would be The Spastic Tubes, is all I'M saying.
ReplyDeleteI assumed he meant the "don't tread on me" flag, but now you've got me worried.
ReplyDeleteMaybe his spit did.
ReplyDeleteIt's a State Job in Georgia and parts of Alabama...if you don't flag 'em, how do folks know which of the road kill is fit to eat?
ReplyDeleteYes the L in the equation is completely unknown. As in how long did the rape last? We don't know and we didn't witness it. Q.E.D.
ReplyDeleteConsidering duck mating habits, that's fitting.
ReplyDeleteWould that be a turn of of the screw?
ReplyDeleteAs long as they manage not to abuse them to death through Christian-endorsed discipline.
ReplyDeleteIn general, it's "let your masterful servant-leader man-lord [father|husband] make all the decisions for you and get in the kitchen."
ReplyDeleteActually, that's a question that the Right Wing usually goes with PJ Media as an answer.
ReplyDeleteWho would ever have thought politics would get so nutty in this country that the C fuckin' DC would be branded libtards?
They just can't stop talking about rape, can they? It's like some sick compulsion with them.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, that. I figgered it wasn't something highbrow like "cork-sniffer," or "book-learner."
ReplyDeleteTo people like this, science is the bad idea. Genesis is the good one. There is no reasoning . . .
ReplyDeleteI think "unable to admit error on anything near their obsessions" is a fairly common human trait regardless of politics. These folks just have very broadly defined obsessions.
ReplyDeleteHorses: Bunch a neigh-sayers.
ReplyDeleteOr give then to a Christian sexual predator:
ReplyDeletehttp://wonkette.com/578427/lets-meet-justin-harris-the-arkansas-houses-godly-child-abandoner
"recruiters often appear in local grocery stores, desperate to almost give away three-month 'trials'... This once respectable full-throttle newspaper, which now looks as if it was cobbled together and produced at FedEx/Kinko’s on the fly..."
ReplyDeleteThis can be said of all print papers; it's the nature of the biz in 2015.
It can ESPECIALLY be said of wingnut welfare publications. Hey, when's that NRO cruise, again?
Not just liberal, but tools to be used at Obama's fascist whims. Remember the ebola frenzy? (They don't!)
ReplyDeleteI'm reminded of a time when, after listening to shrieky Mark Levin going off on contraceptions, I realized that he didn't actually know how they worked. As in, he thought the pill was something you took each and every time you had sex. So if you have sex a lot, you have to take a lot of pills and JOE TAXPAYER'S GOTTA PAY FOR THAT, YA SLUT.
ReplyDeleteOn national broadcast radio, he's admitting that he has an 11-year-old's understanding of sex. With pride.
Wingnuts are people who either gave too many wedgies in high school or themselves received too few. In a just world, Levin would be pelted with spitballs and thrown into a locker. These people need to be bullied.
Using facts to counter anti-choice spew is the *real* rape. Also something something welfare is like the plantation and also Robert Byrd.
ReplyDeleteSo the argument, even if one accepts the absurd method for determining it, is that hundreds every year is just okey-dokey, a non-event. I see...
ReplyDeleteThat is quite a stunning takedown. I'm amazed that Schlafly allowed it to be posted on Conservapedia, except he is probably too stupid to know how thoroughly he just got humiliated.
ReplyDeleteThat was true of Rush Limbaugh as well. The entire attack on Sandra Fluke was based on a confusion between the Pill and Condoms.
ReplyDeleteD. Johnston's (courageous) account of the actual argument reminds me of nothing so much as those guys who spent years trying to prove the holocaust didn't happen because the numbers didn't add up.
ReplyDeleteIn the course of the film Leuchter goes so far as to state frankly that he could not believe in the gas chambers because he could not himself conceive of their mechanics, although he makes it plainly evident that he knows very little of the history in which these arose. He suggests a series of options (hanging, shooting, and explosives), most of which the Nazis had in fact attempted (shootings and explosives) before determining that direct, ongoing, and extensive SS involvement would not be sufficient to achieve the genocidal objectives they set for themselves after earlier forays into mass murder, such as Einsatzgruppen and Babi Yar. Leuchter similarly appears unaware of the T-4 Euthanasia Program and the history or science behind small-scale gassings directed by Hitler's Reich Chancellery and then the SS. In a rather direct sense, the film offers that the Holocaust is fundamentally inconceivable, if not impossible, in Leuchter's mind.
He's perpetually confused between the Rusty Universe and real life.
ReplyDeleteUpvote for sheer balls.
ReplyDeleteThe War on Women? Sorry, can't sign up. I signed a separate peace about 25 years ago. Been under marital law since then.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think it'd be a Dr Pepper douche. The more medical-sounding name would make for a better urban myth...
ReplyDeleteRemember also too, "What do you call the guy who graduates medical school with a C?".
ReplyDeleteI never cared much for this line of attack, as Limbaugh et al really didn't make the mistake that liberals think they did. The logic is something like this: If method A costs X / month, and method B costs 0.01X / use, then the only way A could be cost prohibitive is if one were having sex so many times per month that B > A. It's dumb - not the least of which because Fluke wasn't actually talking about birth control - but I really wish liberals would drop that "conservatives think you have to take the pill every time" line because it's simply not accurate.
ReplyDeleteIt SHOULD occur to him, since Rightwing authoritarian types frequently use metaphors that imply forced sodomy. As a matter of fact, it's extremely common.
ReplyDeleteFor example, Rush Limbaugh frequently describes government regulations on private industry as being forced to "bend over and grab the ankles." I've heard businessmen talk about being "bent over a barrel," and even more explicitly, saying "I really took it up the ass on THAT deal" when they don't profit as much as expected.
(sorry to be so graphic, but that's the way they often talk.)
Just curious... what instrument did he play?
ReplyDeleteI don't think that is accurate: Limbaugh definitely argued that Fluke's supposed demand for birth control amounted to a demand for large amounts of money in order to have large amounts of sex. The amount of sex you have (the frequency) has nothing to do with the cost of the pill or other female contraceptives. You pay the same amount on a monthly basis regardless of whether you are having sex or not. But Limbaugh specifically and literally--because I read the transcripts--argued that the cost she was incurring was related to the frequency of the sex act. He also compared the cost of the pill to the cost of condoms and argued that women should need no more than the cost of a condom rather than expensive pills unless they were such ravenous sluts that the condoms would also cost a lot of money.
ReplyDeleteExactly ... you can "disprove" any sufficiently complex real-world phenomena by such methods. Given the motivation and a few tools you can demonstrate that birds aren't actually flying, but that fairies exist and are out there, flying.
ReplyDeleteEspecially considering the old "friendly pepper up 'er" jingle.
ReplyDeleteWe were in a prog band together in college and he played keyboards then. It was an odd blend of Happy the Man and Peter Hammill.
ReplyDeleteThen much much later he played guitar in an alt rock pop group we formed once recording equipment became affordable. We made the usual old men record. It sounded like Beatles and Stones and a little XTC.
He was a decent musician, just thick.
What good is being best buds with Teh Creator if there's no perks involved? RHIP, dammit!
ReplyDeleteWell, they take it for granted *their* spawn would be raised right, but the brownie points in that pale in comparison to raising up a member of one of the heathen races, plus there's the whole not-having-to-spend-nine-months-all-knocked-up-again thing, too. Orientals are very popular these days, I hear. Probably because they have the advantage of not being as not-White as some others...
ReplyDeleteSome men are convinced eating it will bring on teh gaii. I once overheard two laborers on a construction site--the Astrodome in '88, in fact--talking about it, and one repeated what his coach told him: "If you suck a hole, you'll suck a pole!". Dr Who dismissively referring to Danny Pink as "P.E." makes more sense now...
ReplyDeleteAbove all else, it's their hallmark, and ties to their other hallmark, hypocrisy. Over and over, it's "those touchy-feely lefties", but if you try to argue one of 'em with facts, all you get back is tradition!, core principles!, common sense*!
ReplyDelete*Like Davros' original Daleks, that black day on Skaro, the archetypes of all oxymorons to come...
In Canada, the National Post (the "anti smokers are Nazis" newspaper) is giving copies away at the local mailbox/copier stores.
ReplyDeleteKangaroos too. In response to unfavorable environmental/food availability conditions IIRC.
ReplyDeleteWell, if there are frogs that can suddenly decide to bat for the other team, hey, why not?
ReplyDeleteThis also works for conservative economics. They both love power and pretend it has no effect on the transaction
ReplyDeleteNot in most med schools.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a Jolt.
ReplyDeleteI read an article online years ago about some Holocaust denialist who claimed the gas chambers weren't gas chambers because the doors used on them were actually bank vault doors, or some shit, with model and serial numbers, 8x10 glossies with circles and arrows and everything. It takes an ironclad belief to even start down that road, much less actually reach the end...
ReplyDeleteIf you've already consented to having a penis in your vagina, how could you object to an ultrasound probe?
ReplyDeleteAnd nobody would ever think of using multiple independent forms of contraception?
ReplyDeleteIt's a hypothetical, not a statistic.
ReplyDeleteAt least a drake would be unlikely to commmit a screw of the tern.
ReplyDelete(However, an IgNobel prize went a couple of years ago to the scientist who documented the first known case of duck-on-duck homosexual necrophilic rape. So you never can tell.)
Thanks for the citation. I saw the exchange a long time ago but lost track of the source. Now, thanks to Conservapaedia, I have a permanent link for it (and thanks to Pinboard.in, which didn't exist in those dark old days).
ReplyDeleteBTW, what's a conservative Amurrican publication doing, with that Brit spelling? Don't they know we won that war? Don't they know those guys have SocialiSed medicine?
Waitaminnit, the Show Me state isn't on any coast at all.
ReplyDeleteDammit. I so missed that. Tern of the screw.
ReplyDelete"Willke, who was a retired general physician, believed the stress of rape caused the female body to inhibit conception."
ReplyDeleteHow about we rape him (please step forward and take a straw from the hat), see if he gets pregnant? If he does, he apologises to us. If not, it means he was asking for it, and we just keep right on rapin'. I know it seems like a cunningly constructed scheme to extend the suffering of a rape victim, like a court, or newspaper, but it's really about a culture of life.
There's a pop-up to get PJMedia's FREE PLEASE DEAR GOD WON'T YOU SIGN UP newsletter as soon as his damn article loads.
ReplyDeleteThere are two things going on here. First, conservatives really are more than a bit confused about birth control. They don't understand it very well, but that seems to be due to the fact that they do not understand female anatomy or biology very well (and that includes a not-insubstantial number of conservative women).
ReplyDeleteThe second thing, of course, is that the long game is to ban birth control altogether. Slut shaming is such a permanent and necessary part of their world that they want to take us back to the halcyon days when sex was always fraught with danger--danger of pregnancy, danger of disease, danger of death. And banning birth control is the surest way to get there. (I wouldn't be surprised if there are more than a few Christian conservatives who would ban single mothers from receiving obstetric care just to make sure the sluts learn from their mistakes my dying in childbirth.)
What? You don't want unsolicited emails offering you gold ingots, survival rations, one-weird-trick stock tips, and warnings about the coming Black takeover of America?
ReplyDeleteOOH. I bet there would be a market for sexy ed videos... "the porn that makes you smarter!"
ReplyDeleteGoes right to your head, so to speak.
ReplyDeleteWho doesn't?!! But he doesn't get to sneer about any other media organization for doing the same thing without looking like a complete assho... Never mind.
ReplyDeleteBut fetal resorption is a whole different thing than Akin is describing. Rats and bunnies and kangaroos and horses and unicorns are killing their babies from the get-go, whereas according to Akin, raped women shut that whole thing down by heroically flexing their tubes and marshaling their feminine mojo so that the sperm never gets there. Fortunately for the animal queendom, no one has yet threatened to imprison or execute their abortionists. Talk about thinning the herd. Even the idea of a rat auto-de-fé gives me the creeps. Not that I'm in favor of bubonic plague or rat overlords. This is all very disturbing.
ReplyDeleteKind of OT, but if you want to read a memoir of a really great cross-cultural adoption story (and a small child survival story), I recommend A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley. He was born to a very poor family in east India, and at the age of five, accidentally got separated from his family (he got on a train and fell asleep), was eventually adopted by a wonderful Tasmanian couple, and then began to look for his Indian family.
ReplyDeleteExcept for the riches that are bestowed upon fruit fly scientists and volcano scientists. Get a real job!
ReplyDelete(checks name tag)
ReplyDeleteMedical school can be surprisingly unscientific. It is rooted in science, but the scientific method isn't really necessary to be a doctor unless you go into research. It is one of the reasons many clinical studies are flawed and the data doesn't hold up over time. Things like an MD/PhD double degree came into existence to deal with problems like this.
ReplyDeleteYeah most graduate schools make a B the passing grade. The true effect of this is to simply reduce the resolution of the grading system compressing the normal A-F into A-C.
ReplyDeleteYour comment prompted me to go back and read Fred Leuchter's wikipedia entry; I'd seen Mr. Death back in the day, but forgotten (or maybe it wasn't in the doco) a lot of the more seamy details about his work.
ReplyDeleteThere are also some resources that are present to some degree in most (but probably not all) medical schools to aid research:
ReplyDelete- Institutional Review Boards, which concern themselves mostly with reviewing the ethics of proposed studies.
- "Biocommunications" or "biomedical communications", which are often part of medical libraries in medical schools or research institutions, which basically are there to help people in the institution get published, whether it's by assisting with background research, preparing graphics of just about any sort, or navigating the publication process.
- The general concept of evidence-based medicine (or the more general term, evidence-based practice, which is not only a way of evaluating the existing evidence and applying it to your practice, but also a guide toward standards for research going forward.
Even with all of these, though, you do get med students, residents, and even attendings who are more than a little shaky WRT what they need to know to conduct research or even evaluate what's already there.
...why, yes, I'm a medical librarian, why do you ask?