Post a picture, argue with me!

Tanglebones wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
sometimesdee wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:

I am quite curious as to how the kids taught from these curriculum will cope with required college science credits.

Depends on the college.

BJ University isn't even accredited as a college is it?

And the award for most ironically initialed higher learning institution goes to..

Thank you, Tangle, I was worried no one else would notice.

Does the USPS have a bias against godless shoes?

IMAGE(http://www.atheistberlin.com/skin/frontend/atheist/default/images/usps.png)

Think that made its rounds in the Athiesm thread, but yeah, that is messed up. >.< Gotta love how the USPS is just doom and gloom with bad news and how much they need help to survive... then let their employees' politics get in the way of business.

I don't believe the USPS itself has a bias, but I can easily believe individual USPS employees have enough biases and lack of ethics to ignore or otherwise not promptly process a package that says "Atheist" on it. And if you've enough of those employees it means they're, for all practical purposes, bias.

When I asked if the USPS has a bias, I didn't mean that the (quazi) government agency had an official bias. I meant the individual workers.

sometimesdee wrote:

When I asked if the USPS has a bias, I didn't mean that the (quazi) government agency had an official bias. I meant the individual workers.

Oh. Then yes, I imagine the statistically older government(?) workers of the USPS don't like atheists or atheism all that much.

That said, I've always been confused as to that infographic if only because why would I want atheist-made and -branded shoes? The idea of supporting others who don't believe in a god/gods/aliens/sky fairy because I don't believe in the god/gods/aliens/sky fairy either seems a strange bit of solidarity. Plus I find it tacky when people announce their faith as clothing or bumper-stickers so I find it equally tacky to do so myself regarding my lack of belief. I've got a personal totem in the symbol of the Invisible Pink Unicorn but it stays beneath my shirt generally.

bnpederson wrote:
sometimesdee wrote:

When I asked if the USPS has a bias, I didn't mean that the (quazi) government agency had an official bias. I meant the individual workers.

Oh. Then yes, I imagine the statistically older government(?) workers of the USPS don't like atheists or atheism all that much.

That said, I've always been confused as to that infographic if only because why would I want atheist-made and -branded shoes? The idea of supporting others who don't believe in a god/gods/aliens/sky fairy because I don't believe in the god/gods/aliens/sky fairy either seems a strange bit of solidarity. Plus I find it tacky when people announce their faith as clothing or bumper-stickers so I find it equally tacky to do so myself regarding my lack of belief. I've got a personal totem in the symbol of the Invisible Pink Unicorn but it stays beneath my shirt generally.

If it's a proper totem, it doesn't matter if it is beneath your shirt or not. It's invisible!

bnpederson wrote:

Plus I find it tacky when people announce their faith as clothing or bumper-stickers so I find it equally tacky to do so myself regarding my lack of belief.

The shoes themselves only seem to have the branding on the soles (and seriously, who notices the soles of your shoes?)

Also, does this mean you don't like the Flying Spaghetti Monster decal?

Anyone think to report this to the postmaster general?

KingGorilla wrote:

Anyone think to report this to the postmaster general?

Atheist Shoes wrote:

For those wondering what USPS have made of this, we still await a response, though we have asked them if they would like to assist us in replicating / extending the research. It would be really cool of them if they did help us with that, as they only stand to benefit from a more expansive study.

Whether they specifically contacted the Postmaster General, I do not know.

sometimesdee wrote:
bnpederson wrote:

Plus I find it tacky when people announce their faith as clothing or bumper-stickers so I find it equally tacky to do so myself regarding my lack of belief.

The shoes themselves only seem to have the branding on the soles (and seriously, who notices the soles of your shoes?)

Also, does this mean you don't like the Flying Spaghetti Monster decal? :(

Yes, and I'm also not fond of the Invisible Pink Unicorn decal, the Darwin fish decal, the Christian fish decal or any other decal out there, really.

Hmm. that Invisible Pink Unicorn decal is actually pretty stylish. I may have to reconsider my position vis-a-vis unseen, yet brightly colored, horned equines.

sometimesdee wrote:
bnpederson wrote:

Plus I find it tacky when people announce their faith as clothing or bumper-stickers so I find it equally tacky to do so myself regarding my lack of belief.

The shoes themselves only seem to have the branding on the soles (and seriously, who notices the soles of your shoes?)

Also, does this mean you don't like the Flying Spaghetti Monster decal? :(

I find this part brilliant.

complexmath wrote:

What kind of school would have that as a quiz for a science class? Looking at that photo just makes me want to cry.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/arti...

We homeschool our son, so I am far too aware of the insanity that's out there.

Just so I am clear. Reddit viciously attacks people. Joshua was doing what now?

You should be able to resize pictures freely in the free Picasa picture editor.

Edit: Thanks LarryC! your post reminded me that I have about a dozen different image editors I could use to resize the images.

This post was originally meant for the post a picture of your silly purchase of the month thread, but I decided that the second part was a better fit for this thread so I cut it for my post there, and decided to post the unedited version here.

My amazon purchase of the month.
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/tEdybCm.jpg)
Not all that silly if you ignore the fact that I already owned digital versions of all those Arcade Fire albums, but I wanted better sound quality and it gave me an excuse to upgrade to the deluxe edition of The Suburbs. What I didn't expect however was to open the book and find this example of early twentieth century racism.
IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/kLLDih2.jpg)
In case you're wondering why I bought the book in the first place, the author of the book Andrew Loomis is (by my understanding) one of the most important art instructors of the last century, and this book in particular is for beginners and uses caricatures so as to avoid the uncanny valley effect that so many beginning artists find disheartening. Which is fine in the rest of the book where he has you drawing old white people, which is all that I saw in the amazon preview. In the end there's only two pages of this stuff in the whole book (not counting some of the women he has you draw but at least with there there's some variety, the image above seems to be the only example of someone of african descent in the entire book), plus Andrew Loomis has been dead since 1959 and I can't imagine that his family is particularly proud of this image, so I'm not going to turn down all of the good advice that I have been told is in the rest of the book. But I'm still a little shocked to see this sort of thing in a book I've heard nothing but good things about.

That's (one of the reasons) why that's probably the worst of Loomis' books-- caricatures rely too heavily on stereotypes. While Loomis was always a good teacher no matter what the final product of his demos, I would rather have a beginner start off with something like Figure Drawing for All It's Worth or Three Dimensional Drawing. While it can be discouraging for a beginner to fall into the uncanny valley, you're not going to get out of it without practicing. Also, I'm of the mindset that if you can draw from life well, you'll have caricatures in the bag, as you'll have already established a demonstrable understanding of human form, action lines, and proportions, and thus you'll better understand when and where to push those aspects for stylized art.

That said, Fun With A Pencil is still a good book, for what Loomis set out to do with it.

WipEout wrote:

That's (one of the reasons) why that's probably the worst of Loomis' books-- caricatures rely too heavily on stereotypes. While Loomis was always a good teacher no matter what the final product of his demos, I would rather have a beginner start off with something like Figure Drawing for All It's Worth or Three Dimensional Drawing. While it can be discouraging for a beginner to fall into the uncanny valley, you're not going to get out of it without practicing. Also, I'm of the mindset that if you can draw from life well, you'll have caricatures in the bag, as you'll have already established a demonstrable understanding of human form, action lines, and proportions, and thus you'll better understand when and where to push those aspects for stylized art.

That said, Fun With A Pencil is still a good book, for what Loomis set out to do with it.

I've had a chance to look through more of the book and it actually seems to vary between outright caricatures and more basic exaggeration. So what I'll likely do is stick with Fun With A Pencil until I feel like I've gotten what I can from it, and then move on to my copy of Figure Drawing for All It's Worth (which I've had for a while and found a bit overwhelming, which could just be because that I haven't had the time I'd need to really dedicate myself to it) which looks like it will do a better job of teaching me what Fun With A Pencil is trying to teach in the back half anyways.

And thinking about it, I'm not all that surprised that something like the above image would be in a book from that time period. Just surprised that none of people who recommend Andrew Loomis' books (people like Norman Rockwell and Alex Ross, neither of whom I practically like as artists but are certainly well respected) found it worth mentioning. Though to be fair the only books I remember being specifically recommended are the ones you mentioned.

The highest-paid public employee in your state is most likely a coach.

IMAGE(http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/18n60kp6w6189png/k-bigpic.png)

Dick Umile's the highest paid public employee in New Hampshire? The people there are not getting their money's worth.

A hockey coach? That's adorable!

The Florida football coaches are going to be pissed.

Rahmen wrote:

The Florida football coaches are going to be pissed.

So far as I can tell, college football coaches rarely excel at the pro level, and NFL owners are not courting college coaches-remember what a disaster Steve Spurrier had with the Redskins or Nick Saban with the Dolphins? The same is true of baseball. Basketball coaches though, they tend to move up to the pros quite often with a lot of success.

I'm willing to bet that "football coach" for Colorado is the football coach at CU Boulder. Bleh.

Rahmen wrote:

The Florida football coaches are going to be pissed.

There's been recent turnover in football at all of the major Florida schools and Billy Donovan (who I assume is the highest paid) is a very good basketball coach. If Bobby Bowden was still coaching, I would assume he would be the highest.

I am more shocked that Geno Auriemma is making more money than Jim Calhoun in Connecticut.

KingGorilla wrote:

I am more shocked that Geno Auriemma is making more money than Jim Calhoun in Connecticut.

I have to agree with you there.

IMAGE(https://fbcdn-sphotos-c-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/395654_277578808974865_26672895_n.jpg)

I lol'd.