7/13/2004: Baited bull

The Spanish bull running events are always publicized but what about this? This is bull baiting, where the bull is encouraged to run right into the drink. I don't think this is the same form thought to be cruel in the past...? (I guss the damp lassie pulling herself out of the water has baited a bull, if not this one, a previous one.)

Apparently it's not bad for the bulls, not as bad as getting a NASCAR number etched right onto their sides. They get pulled out of the water quickly after they jump into it.

If they aren't hurt I imagine it would be just hilarious to see this massive animal chasing you and then, running right over the edge and making a big splash.

I would have thought the biggest problem would be dropping in fast enough without jumping forward enough to have the danger of a couple of tons of angry animal with sharp bits landing on you.

I have got to go to this thing one one of these years.

This would be a hell of a lot funnier if the bull just happened to look at the camera right then.

bastards.

how can anyone get pleasure out of poor animals (whom from the pictorial evidence look to me in very bad shape, and cruelly branded) running around confused and frightned and then being tricked into plunging into the water. I love it when the bulls end up sticking people. serves them right.

bastards!

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Originally Posted by bluesdave Much like some members of the US government!

Last I saw the score it was Bulls 18, Humans 0, no fatalities in Pamplona.

Not everybody in spain...

Not everybody in Spain like bullfighting. In fact there is a LOT of people that hate it (like myself).

The bad thing about Pamplona is not the "encierro" in the morning (bulls wins in this one, two days ago, eight men hurted), but the same bulls are killed in the "corrida" in the afternoon.

And if you give your kid a puppy, is it funny if he pokes it with needles until it dies?

What exactly do they do with the bulls after they're killed? Is there a big BBQ afterwards or are they dumped somewhere to rot? Personally, I'd be happier to hear that they're put to good use after being killed.

"some fucking hippie"?

pdaoust you sound quite reasonable, it's just we get people like onyxcougar who feels the need to point out that evolution is clearly wrong at every given opportunity.

Personally I just love the phrase "every creeping thing that creepeth", I can't wait to work that into conversation somehow.

yeah, you're right. I was grumpy this morning. It's just that we've had that discussion several times, and it twists my nipples when people tell me that GOD said it because it's in the bible. God did not write the bible, man did. and the hippie thing was a joke, because I'm some fucking hippie. the dumbass comment was indeed a generalization, but it isn't neccessarily incorrect. dumbasses HAVE been regurgitating that line of thinking. There are several christians here that i completely respect, like smooth, OC, and mrnoodle?? (awol) but I think it's wrong for people to espouse the notion that we are free to do as we please to the other animals on this planet just because it says so in that book. If I were to believe in the christian god for the sake of this discussion, it would be my position that he'd want us to treat them with respect even as we eat them, or use their resources for clothing, etc. tormenting them and then killing them is NOT OK. I dont care if you're christian, muslim or martian. just common sense. I am tolerant of other religions. Intolerant of dumbasses.

As a non-xtian, but a student of people, language, and the mind, the word dominion makes perfect sense.

That was written at a time when there was a greater undestanding of the concepts of lordship and royalty. At that time dominion had more of an implied responsibility to whatever or whomever you had dominion over.

The concept "noblesse oblige" comes to mind.

Similar to the suberviant wife you're meant to do a very good job of making sure is happy I think.

Just to poke needles at the burning ljim:

The Qur'an came fairly directly. God -> Gabriel -> Mohammad -> people; a little while after the prophet croaked, they wrote it down. A few years later they standardized it into one authoritative copy. The society then (and its remnants now) had a strong oral culture: memorizing stuff thoroughly was commonplace. Is it this more justifiably the 'word of god'?

nope

:p Wasn't Christ the lamb of God?

TS, there is no e at the end of vitriol and you misunderstood me. I was being perfectly serious. I don't know the specifics (the only books I'd read that are that fat have Stepherson on the cover) but as far as I am aware the verses to do with the wife being subservient to the man imply the same thing - a level of responsibility for well-being that comes with power. It does indeed make sense in when you take into account the temporal context and everyone loves picking their favorite bits of scripture only these days.

I was simply pointing out the similarity in the misunderstanding of both bits, that's all. Yeesh, absent minded caustic posting, I should watch that.

Oh, someone left the Irony on

i think TS thought you were referring to his and ladysidhe's brief spat that made it up here

lumberjim, apologies for the angry post. Your second post put things more into context for me. I agree with you that it's abhorrent that people feel like they're free to do as they please to animals (and I'd include trees, waterways, soil, etc) because it 'says so in the Bible'... that's an example of people using their religious texts to sanction their own selfishness. Maybe it's because I was raised by hippie Catholic parents (a rare breed), but I think 'stewardship' is a much better, and probably more accurate, interpretation. I just can't accept that we would be allowed to screw up the earth.

Here's my opinion about the matter. Think about this for a sec: you give your son a car for his graduation gift. He says, "thanks, Dad," and proceeds to treat it like crap, bashing the hell out of it, putting diesel fuel in it, forgetting to top up the oil, running 80 km/h in second gear, etc. Aren't you going to pretty cheesed? If I were that dad, I'd start thinking I shoulda kept the car for myself. He obviously doesn't know how to take care of the stuff I gave him. (noblesse oblige, as TS said.)

So it's my opinion that environmentalism and friendliness-to-animals is an integral part of Christianity that Christians just can't afford to ignore. It makes me very angry when Christians say that environmentalism is somehow incompatible with Christianity.

wow, am I ever off-topic!

no problem. i don't think you were out of line. and it would seem as though you are certainly not one of the afforementioned dumbasses. i see that you've been here a while, but as it's the first I recall encountering you, welcome to the sphere of my awareness. yah hippie freak!

Hi--um, not to rock anymore religious boats but didn't the Qu'ran go through Abraham to? Isn't he the spiritual father of all three monotheisms? 'Course that doesn't help the little beastie, does it? I think it's fab that we started with a picture of a bull jumping into water and got to religion...way to go!

No bulls were injured in the creation of this thread.

thanks for the welcome, bluesdave---and I want to make it clear that I am hedging my bets on everything--I don't even like to say "agnostic"--BUT to play devil's advocate (all apologies to the "real" one!) nobody thought Troy was real, either. If you asked me to prove my own exsistence I don't know if I could! (but that's just me...)

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Originally Posted by bluesdave This often happens in the cellar. There are basically two waring groups. The Christians with their constant pushing of their ridiculous beliefs that have absolutely no scientific basis, and the atheists (or at least non believers), who strongly believe in the value of scientific research and analysis. I can feel the heat building up under my chair already...

"I think, therefore I am" is enough to prove one's own existence. But there's no way to prove one's own existence to another.

i think that if you punch them in the mouth, and they bleed, you've proven your existence. then they'd have to think about the blood running down their chin, and what caused it.

No blood letting! And I hope I don't have to have a Ph.D dissertation on anything because I don't have one. Shucks!

If I think, and therefore am, and I tell you that I did, in fact just punch you in the mouth.......you could argue that imagination point all day long. if the assumption is that anything could be a figment of imagination, then the only thing that is certainly real is your imagination. In any case, you are not in control of that imagination, so the difference between actual existence and imagined is irrelevant. You live in my reality, I live in yours. ~~I feel so close to you now....and all because I punched you in the mouth~~

I think Happy monkey said something like that in about 1/3 of the time....

Remember boy and girls, saying someone is noone is incurs a $500 fine these days.

yes, I know; I enjoyed the lovely layout and photos.

oh yeah, there were words there too; I didn't read them ^_^ sometimes I'll get way into a Nat'l Geo article -- but that night I was tired so I just looked at the pictures and read a few captions.

And I'm not ashamed.

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Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce I have 56 years of back issues you can read.

wowowowowowo

xoxoxoBruce: with pictures??? oh boy! ^_^

Just to totally derail the current flamewar...

Got any other pics of the girl in the water????

I object to the way Nat Geo presented it, essentially as the biggest Troll cover they've ever done, if they've ever done a Troll cover. It says "WAS DARWIN WRONG?" in shit-brown caps. Then if you look inside, there's more than a bit of venom as they basically state "No, dumbshit". If they'd just said something like "Darwin's Legacy" or "The Case for Evolution", that would have been better.

Well frankly, in an age where fundie nutters are pushing their agendas in schools (at least in the US, that particular brand of religious pestilence doesn't seem to have much of a footing this side of the Atlantic) someone needs to stand up and say it loud and clear. The fact it's a question that needs to be asked at all is the real worry.

I thought it was an amusing tweak of the current depressing trend in popular media of covering everything in a "balanced" way. If one side has evidence and the other has only assertions, they are still treated as if it were only a he-said-she-said, and no reporters are willing to actually report what the evidence shows.

I am one of those nutters, though not fundie. Change over time is inevitable given billions of years, I would never argue that. I'd like to see if it's possible to model how organic compounds suddenly generate self-replicating molecules. The building blocks of life litterally litter every nook and cranny of space, from asteroids, to comets, to recently dicovered free-drifting clouds of organics in deep space. Lipids will even form primitive analogs of cells walls if immersed in water, but I'd like to know how, and in what exact conditions life will arise.

If we've evolved from apes, so be it. It should prove that we are part of this planet and not above it. It should also be natural that we strive to transcend that basic beginning, and seek the divine.

We will always end up with more questions and dichotomies than answers, but we should never stop asking those questions. The price for enlightenment, as well as freedom, is eternal vigilance, and patience.

Ok, so it does happen, we find life some place else. What then? Kill it? Farm it? Eat it? What if it's badder than us? What if it's.....Muslim?

Oh come on. Nobody actually READS National Geographic. You take out the pull out maps, and then head straight for the bare breasted pygmy women photoessay.

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Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce Ok, so it does happen, we find life some place else. What then? Kill it? Farm it? Eat it? What if it's badder than us? What if it's.....Muslim?

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Originally Posted by Brianna I vote eat it. Unless it's got monster parts, then kill it. Watched NOVA last night. Apparently a true alien won't have a face like the faces we see here on earth (Two eyes, two nostrils and one mouth below) because if it does have a face like ours we must share a common ancestor--it's what the dude on the show said anyway. He seemed pretty sure of himself.

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Originally Posted by wolf Oh come on. Nobody actually READS National Geographic. You take out the pull out maps, and then head straight for the bare breasted pygmy women photoessay.

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Originally Posted by bluesdave Sparkie, those people are morons. You will never convince them of it, though. People with that mentality think that we humans are above all other life on Earth, and anything we want to do is OK. Much like some members of the US government!

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Originally Posted by bluesdave Very good Els, I like that. You do raise a good question. We know that Bush is human - no animal could be that dumb, but what about Rumsfeld?

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Originally Posted by Happy Monkey SNIP That's the thing about self-replication. If it's possible, and the universe is big enough, it WILL happen. Being surprised that conditions appear favorable is a bit like a puddle being surprised that it fits perfectly in the hole it's in, and concluding that the hole was dug with that puddle in mind. That would certainly be possible, but it is in no way necessary or implied.

I can't take credit for anything but the phrasing. I believe I first heard the idea from Dawkins.

But thanks!

::wonders why the 6.5-year resurrection::

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Originally Posted by Happy Monkey I can't take credit for anything but the phrasing. I believe I first heard the idea from Dawkins. But thanks!

omg great minds spexx. I almost posted Darryl 'Dunkin' Dawkins.

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Originally Posted by infinite monkey omg great minds spexx. I almost posted Darryl 'Dunkin' Dawkins.

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey
SNIP

"That's the thing about self-replication. If it's possible, and the universe is big enough, it WILL happen."

That's a big IF, scientifically speaking. Any evidence of non organic molecules coming to life?

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Originally Posted by spudcon That's a big IF, scientifically speaking. Any evidence of non organic molecules coming to life?

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Originally Posted by BigV Hence the vernacular: National Pornographic

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Originally Posted by infinite monkey Well, UG posts from time to time. I'm kidding, I kid.

it's thread rapture!

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Originally Posted by Pete Zicato Made me snort.

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Originally Posted by spudcon Any evidence of non organic molecules coming to life?

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Originally Posted by monster I smiled a little.... I have to ration my snorts these days

Heed what Pete says. You should take time to stop and snort the roses.

Snorting causes coughing causes failure to breathe causes potential dead monster.

Well, then by all means, don't snort!

Do you have water in your lungs from swimming or a bug or what?

Ok. Too obscure, I guess.

"short snort" = slang for having a drink.

I knew that!

Sincerely,

W.C. Fields

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Originally Posted by spudcon Originally Posted by Happy Monkey SNIP "That's the thing about self-replication. If it's possible, and the universe is big enough, it WILL happen." That's a big IF, scientifically speaking. Any evidence of non organic molecules coming to life?

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Originally Posted by monster ::wonders why the 6.5-year resurrection::

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Originally Posted by Spexxvet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

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Originally Posted by spudcon Lots of might haves, maybes, hypothoses and theories, still no evidence.

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Originally Posted by spudcon Lots of might haves, maybes, hypothoses and theories, still no evidence.

The point is that Darwinists claim that they are right and Creationists are wrong because Darwinists are using scientific method. They aren't. Show me a duplicatable experiment that can prove life sprung from primordial goo. The question then becomes which "magic" you have as your religion.

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Originally Posted by spudcon The point is that Darwinists claim that they are right and Creationists are wrong because Darwinists are using scientific method. They aren't. Show me a duplicatable experiment that can prove life sprung from primordial goo.

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Originally Posted by Happy Monkey Abiogenesis is a separate proposition from evolution. Evolution has been confirmed repeatedly using the scientific method. As for abiogenesis, many of the requisite steps have been confirmed using the scientific method (see UT's post). There are steps we haven't confirmed, and there may be steps we will never know. And, even if we do demonstrate a possible path for abiogenesis, we very probably will never know exactly what path actually did happen on Earth. But this is a big part of where the scientific method differs from religion: No, part of science is to not assume that "I don't know yet" means "it was magic".

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Originally Posted by Undertoad http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%...rey_experiment

That's the whole thing: steel would never become life, because it's not a complex enough molecule!

What they've done is show that the basic building blocks of life could form. Not steel (precisely!) but the same components, the amino acids that form proteins, that make up you and I.

There is no steel in nature. God came to Bessemer in a Sheffield whorehouse, explaining how to mass produce steel, and make England rich.

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Originally Posted by Undertoad That's the whole thing: steel would never become life, because it's not a complex enough molecule! What they've done is show that the basic building blocks of life could form. Not steel (precisely!) but the same components, the amino acids that form proteins, that make up you and I.

I think it's more likely than god making a bicycle out of mud.

Geologists have no direct evidence for mountains, either, because the process of building a mountain is slow and we've never seen it directly. All we can do is examine what happens now, slowly, to try to understand how earth could move and shape over a period of hundreds of thousands of years.

We see earthquakes, we see erosion, we examine the types of rocks and how they are formed. Aha, says the geologist, these rocks could only be formed by volcanic activity; these rocks over here could only be formed by centuries of thousand pounds of pressure. This river erodes silt for centuries. And then there arises an explanation for the mountain and the valley.

And voila, the explanation is proven elsewhere. The scientist looks at western coast of Africa and the eastern coast of South America, and says, hey it sure looks like those two match up perfectly, like jigsaw puzzle pieces, and we notice this in other parts of the world too; what's up with that? Well the explanation for the mountains matches the explanation for the puzzle pieces, and matches everything we see today happening really, really slowly. The independent findings match and now the evidence becomes stronger.

Aha, says Darwin, these birds are almost exactly alike, but the slight differences they have are interesting. What's the explanation? Well, it turns out that all evidence, all explanations of all changes in every living being on the earth match Darwin's idea. The underlying explanation of why you have dark hair if your parents have it is genetics, and the process of genetics matches Darwin precisely. He didn't know a thing about it; but decades after he lived, it confirms everything.

So now the bar is set pretty damn high. In order to explain mountains without bringing in plate tectonics, you're going to have to explain why all the geologic processes we see today happen in some other way. In order to explain why evolution didn't create every single living being on the earth, you're going to have to explain why our DNA contains a blueprint for every living being, how combining our DNA creates near-duplicate beings, how chimp DNA differs from human DNA by a very small percentage (but one that would arise in about 5 million years if genes change at the same slow rate of changes we see in modern life.)

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Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce There is no steel in nature. God came to Bessemer in a Sheffield whorehouse, explaining how to mass produce steel, and make England rich.

But we can measure plate techtonics and mountain building now, slow as it may be. No one has ever seen any molecule, complex or otherwise spring to life. If it can't be duplicated, it ain't science. I'm not claiming Creation as science, and I don't believe evolution of slime into living organisms is science either. Change the definition of scientific method into "I think so," and then you can call it science. Right now, it's not even a theory, it's a hypothesis.

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Originally Posted by Spexxvet I think it's more likely than god making a bicycle out of mud.

We can observe evolution now, slow as it may be.

We can't duplicate Pangaea, but we can work our way back from current plate tectonics observations, and verify using matching strata and fossils.