Category: “Teh Stoopid”

Attention on deck!  Now hear this!  Per a linked article from WUWT, the human race may become extinct… or something.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/28/spermpocalypse-now/

“The study, “Temporal Trends in Sperm Count”, published in Human Reproduction Update, reports “a significant decline in sperm counts…between 1973 and 2011, driven by a 50–60% decline among men unselected by fertility from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.” By “unselected,” the authors basically mean young men who are screened for military service or college who are unlikely to be aware of their fertility status. (For example, the Danish military subjects its recruits to a compulsory medical examination that apparently includes measuring their sperm count and testes sizes.)”

There may be something to the idea that dumber-than-average people are becoming part of a growing population group.

We have, after all, seen how many reasoning, smart people do NOT show up for noisy, destructive protests and demonstrations, haven’t we?

Well, this drop in sperm count may explain it. The smart guys (like you all) are staying where they belong – out of that crap, serving their country, having families, doing normal stuff – and the dumb guys and gals are making loud, angry, stupid noises, destroying property, leaving trash behind them in the streets and breaking stuff, not wanting to have families, expecting support from cradle-to-grave caretakers, because they’re too infantile and stupid to do anything else.

I think the study referred to in the WUWT article may have found the answer to some of those unanswerable questions you’ve had, such as ‘how dumb can you get, and still walk upright?’ and ‘do they have any idea how ridiculous they are?’

It does explain why none of them see the connection between crude oil and the synthetic fabrics they cling to, as an example, and why they have useless degrees that only qualify them for traffic direction jobs in PyongYang, Norkiland.

or elsewhere in the Caribbean, maybe you should find somewhere besides one of the local lagoons to take a leak. Apparently the local crocodiles sometimes take offense.

A CROCODILE bit the arm off a tourist as he took a WEE in a Mexican lagoon.

The man, believed to be an American tourist, was relieving himself in the Nichupte Lagoon in Cancun, a tourist hotspot in the south-eastern Mexican state of Quintana Roo.

Yes, a crocodile.  The Nichupte Lagoon is a known habitat for the American crocodile – and the Cancún region also is habitat for a second, smaller (but still dangerous) crocodile species:  Morolet’s crocodile.

American crocodiles are found in most of the Caribbean – along with northeastern South America, most of the Pacific coast of Mexico other than Baja California, central America, and even parts of south Florida.  Mature American crocodile males often range between 13 and 18 feet long; they prefer brackish or salt water, but can also live in fresh water. Morolet’s crocodiles can reach nearly 10 feet in length and are a freshwater species.

The incident happened earlier this week.  The man survived the attack, but is in critical condition. It’s unknown at this point whether he’ll survive.

Per the linked article, this isn’t the first crocodile attack in a Mexican seaside lagoon. An earlier attack damn near killed a guy from Texas.  Attacks are rare, but happen periodically.

Why this guy thought it would be a good idea to take a leak while (presumably) standing in or near water known to be a freaking crocodile habitat is beyond me.  Then again, apparently some people ignore posted alligator warning signs, too.

Situation awareness, people.  Conditions in other nations – and even in other parts of our own country – generally ain’t exactly the same as “back home”.

Wait, what? Fox News is reporting the Maine State Legislature has voted to lower the minimum wage, after raising it last November, because the restaurant service staff lobbied for it. Seems the minimum wage for tipped staff is half of the state’s $9.00 minimum wage, known as a “tip credit” rule. This allows the managers to take up a 50% credit from employees’ wages, with the idea the employee will earn the remaining minimum and perhaps more in tips. If tips and credit don’t meet the minimum, the managers must make up the difference.

In a referendum, Maine’s House raised the minimum wage by $1 a year through 2024, and removed the tip credit altogether. High fives all around, everyone feels great, here’s your participation award.

“State Senator James Dill, a Democrat who initially voted to raise wages, told the Washington Post that after the Nov. referendum passed, he received “hundreds” of calls and emails from servers who were worried about their livelihood.

As a result, Dill threw his support behind a Republican measure to return the “tip credit” rule. After passing through the Senate on June 7, the bill was brought before the House on June 13, where it passed with a vote of 110-37.”

The new law will go into effect 90 days after the Legislature adjourned.

“As the Washington Post reports, servers were worried about the ramifications of the new laws for two reasons: first, that it would force employers to raise prices on their menu items, which could affect their current tips; and second, and perhaps more importantly, that employers might be forced to cut servers’ shifts as a result.”

The usual suspects are in denial. A Dave Palmer, representing Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, says, “We do not believe what we see in Maine is representative of the majority of workers. There’s no other industry that gets away with not paying their workers because customers can,” he later added. “This is bigger than any one state.”

Tell it to Seattle, Dave.

 

There seems to be some misconstrued perception  of the intrinsic value of the peer review process, prepublication or otherwise. In fact, peer review is not a requirement for publication under any circumstances. It is fascinating to observe people with presumptive and uninformed notions tumble all over themselves, and trip themselves up, over the preposterous notion that peer review is a requirement for validity or for publication.

In an effort to clearly demonstrate the lack of real-world, hard-nosed value of the peer review process, two authors engaged themselves in the time and effort required to produce an article for prepublication peer review.

If you take the time to read their article, which was published after peer review, you begin to understand why that phrase conjures up a vision of two guys at a urinal discussing football scores while they gaze at the tiles on the walls instead of engaging in penis measuring.

The article to which I refer was titled ‘The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct’. Their report on the valueless process of peer review is at this link.

http://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/conceptual-penis-social-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/

These two post-doctoral operatives were kind enough to archive a pdf of the article itself, for your enjoyment.

http://www.skeptic.com/downloads/conceptual-penis/23311886.2017.1330439.pdf

Note that the entire article was, in their words, ‘stuffed full of jargon’, nonsense, pejorative slang for genitals, and so-called ‘red flag phrases’, which was essentially a collection of contemporary buzzwords and vocabulary quickly and easily recognized for their alleged ‘trigger-reactive’ misusage. They used every possible means of distortionate vocabulary available in the English language to achieve their goal. Some examples include ‘toxic hypermasculinity’, ‘man-spreading – akin to raping the environment’, etc.

The abstract for the hoax paper is as follows:

Abstract: Anatomical penises may exist, but as pre-operative transgendered women also have anatomical penises, the penis vis-à-vis maleness is an incoherent construct. We argue that the conceptual penis is better understood not as an anatomical organ but as a social construct isomorphic to performative toxic masculinity. Through detailed poststructuralist discursive criticism and the example of climate change, this paper will challenge the prevailing and damaging social trope that penises are best understood as the male sexual organ and reassign it a more fitting role as a type of masculine performance.

It was a hoax, created with the sole intent to expose the idiocy embedded in the misperception that peer review adds true value to publication.

Since peer review is a prepublication courtesy, not a requirement, it is plain to anyone with a working brain that the process of peer review has acquired the precise value of my previous example: two guys chatting each other up at the urinal.

This is a prime example of the lack of value of so-called peer review.  Where it should have some conscious value as a feedback mechanism, it is, instead a joke on the ignorant and uninformed twits who are now in a feeding frenzy over the ‘not peer-reviewed’ status of a study on wage levels and resultant economic impacts in the Seattle, WA, area.

Obviously, in the title to this article, I intentionally pursued the use of polysyllabics, whether or not they were correctly employed, simply as a means of pressing home the point, that peer review is becoming overrated, in many instances being nothing more than a brief perusal of a submitted paper. Some people are easily impressed

Maybe it would have more value if peer review was a dick-measuring contest.