The real miracle was creating chocolate chip cookies 1,908 years or so before they were invented.

Are you for real, man? Can you really not let this go? Let me break it down for you:

I don’t think Mythbusters should have used human skulls, you disagree. That’s it. It’s that simple.

How about this: you win! You’re very smart and we’re all proud of you. There is nothing wrong with using human bones for entertainment science. Adam and Jamie are real scientists. I was wrong about everything, it just took like 5 replies for me to realize it. I promise to print out your replies so that I can study them by candle light even if my power goes out. Thank you for helping me to understand such a complicated issue.

Now leave me alone.

Hard science is science that uses systematic observation, experiments and sometimes mathematics to get knowledge. In hard science, experiments have to be reproducible (if the experiment is done a second time, it will have to produce the same results as the first time).

https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science

My opinion is that Mythbusters is not science, but science themed entertainment, and as such, does not justify the use of human remains. I further contend that they do not treat the human remains with sufficient dignity, and that their use is disrespectful.

It is also my opinion that you will continue to reply/argue with me until one of three conditions is met: 1. You continue to argue semantics until one of us expires from old age. 2. You whittle me down and I give up. 3. The actual heat death of the universe.

It’s looking like option #2 is the front runner. Because at this point I’d rather get my own skull crushed than to continue going back and forth with you.

The priority on Mythbusters is always entertainment first, not science. It’s not best practices, it’s what is visually appealing. It’s not data driven, it’s shooting schedule. The skulls are not necessary tools, they are props. Adam Savage himself states that the goal is to “replicate the circumstances, then duplicate the results”, or in other words, create a spectical. Which again, is fine, but is not hard science. If you can’t tell the difference between hard science and television I don’t know what to do for you.

But I suspect you understand this already, and are motivated more by the excitement of eliciting a response by adopting a posture of “enlightened” objectivty, blowing the minds of us lesser beings, us superstitious cave dwellers, than by legitimately considering the finer points of profiting off of human remains or the needless destruction therof.

Is the problem that they’re filming it instead of publishing the skull fracture patterns of knapped stone clubs in the journal of archeology?

The problem is that “what happens when a superhuman being with a ring on punches you in the forehead” isn’t exactly an important question to answer.

This really isn’t any worse than, say, seeing how long it takes for human remains to fully liquefy when sealed in plastic and subjected to various conditions (more importantly, the rate at which organs decay while submerged in that soup). Is it worse than melting regions of a body with acid to test a theoretical new skin-grafting technique? Flaying their skin and muscles from the bone then macerating it to a homogeneous mixture to test for microplastic distribution rates in the 35-40 Indonesian Female demographic?

Again, yes. As it is not for science, it is for entertainment. Adam and Jamie are not scientists, they are special effects artists. And they are not conducting experiments, they are staging entertainment. They are not in a lab, they are in a special effects warehouse. They are not publishing their findings to Nature, they are editing them for a television audience. Mythbusters is not hard science, it is science themed entertainment. Which is fine. But these skulls belonged to real people and there is a power dynamic involved in where they come from, and who buys them, and what they’re used for.

I don’t think it’s an “incredibly romantic” position to wonder if it’s disrespectful or scientifically necessary to wrap a human skull in pig skin and then punch it with a robotic fist until it collapses for television.

The key distinction here is your will. The will of these people is unkown. Their consent is unkown. If you’re looking at the skulls for sale on the bone room for example, they don’t even know the specific age of most of the skulls and are forced to guess within a range. If they don’t even know how old they are how can they know with any certainty the circumstances of their death? Where in the world can you just find an unclaimed skull to sell? What are the chances that these skulls aren’t the skulls of poor people, or otherwise disenfranchised people? It doesn’t take much imagination to draw the conclusion that the ethics surrounding the buying and selling of human skulls, and then destroying them for no other reason than the momentary entertainment of of the global 1% is at the very best a grey area.

They do. They even go to a specific shop in one of the episodes: The Bone Room.

The Bone Room was famous - within its niche - around the world. Featured on Mythbusters, as well as having several appearances on local news magazines, written up in articles in local and nationwide publications, and listed in guidebooks, The Bone Room was a destination for travelers and one of the must-see places for locals to bring their visiting friends and relatives.

I rewatched Mythbusters recently. It’s pretty disturbing, especially in the early seasons, how often they use actual human remains for what is essentially light entertainment. Like, they’ll destroy an actual human skull for shits and giggles. They had disproved the myth on setting off an airbag with a slim jim and firing it into the head of a would be car jacker, but still had to replicate the results, so just shot a slim jim into an actual human skull, cheering and laughing as it’s decimated. That was an actual person’s skull. How they sourced it, and where the source acquired it, who knows. I’m fairly certain there is a family somewhere though that would be mortified.

Even better, it’s for iOS only. So I don’t qualify even though I have pro.

Hell yeah.

Gute nacht!

I’ll do it, Chicago has terrible taste in food. Deep dish is preposterous, Malort is an abomination, and despite how you feel about ketchup, relish should not look like the ooze that creates ninja turtles.

I’m not a huge Biden fan by any means but I would argue he conquered his limitations where as Trump is defined by his.

The difference between persuasion and force. Or on the other end of the spectrum, the difference between mere arrogance and unabashed malice.

Is this particularly bad? To my novice eyes this seems ok?

We can just go ahead and put “society” at the bottom.

Just for reference, thats like a $200K watch. Patek Nautilus, ref 5980.

Amusingly, I left a comment about 8 hours ago that sort of applies to this photo. Someone compared the behavior of republicans to toddlers, to which I replied:

Toddlers eventually learn though, and progress. Trumpy people a more like dogs: They can appear clever, but only up to a certain threshold. They may even perform useful tasks and tricks for their handlers. But ultimately they need someone to feed and supervise them otherwise they’ll eat something they shouldn’t and get sick. That same contented trot, and look of purpose you see on a dogs face while their owner walks them is what a republican gets when they’re getting walked by fascists. Both the dog and the republican think they’re part of a pack. Both the dog and the republican will be euthanized by their masters when they become too burdensome or they’ve outlived their usefulness.

Huh?

Only just now?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_boarding_schools

We’ve had freedom of religion perhaps, but never freedom from religion. Christian gobbledygook is baked into America’s DNA, and deviation from that has always resulted in a paddling.

Take Trump for example. A dyed in the wool contrarian. The walking talking embodiment of cutting off ones nose to spite their face. Refuses to acknowledge any authority but his own, often at the hazard of himself and others. And even he feigns to bend the knee to religion, and play act at being a Christian. That’s how truly compulsory it is.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_affiliations_of_presidents_of_the_United_States#List_of_presidents_by_religious_affiliation