I'm going to handle my female pokie Ornata, lacking confidence...

[miss moxie]

Did she call you chubby?

This time? No. Toxic, sarcastic, and disgusting but not fat. Finally an insult with some actual merit to it!

 

[Walker253]

Wish you would've said this sooner. I actually made an effort to reach out. Which is pointless now she'll not be reading it.

Haha, damn time zones. I was sleeping. Something tells me, she'll read the thread again.

Also, just because I made peace doesn't mean I up and agree with her. I defend my position, just in a nicer way. There's plenty of times in real life I'm called in to diffuse a situation. When I recognize everything going down the proverbial toilet, sometimes I try to salvage it and clean up the mess a little.

@Aaronsp10 hahahaha, you gave me a "face palm"! I love it! Put that supporter status to good use. Makes me want to plunk down the cash. There would be face palms all over the place. Clearly my favorite emoji.

 

[Trenor]

Now that people are not really trying to fix anything or help anyone I'm going to stop following this thread as well. Sitting about ragging on someone just to be doing it isn't my thing.

Later.

 

[Andrea82]

@Walker253 did the same here, maybe it actually works sometimes. Got a message as well.
@miss moxie I actually got a fairly nice message which I replied in kind. As long as she sorts out the care and enclosures, I don't care what she believes in.

I don't know why mods don't put a lock on this, especially since they seem to moderate the language.

Maybe it's best for everybody to just stand down now. There are a zillion other people who may need everyone's input. I'm checking out of this, everybody have a nice evening

 

[Tim Benzedrine]

Just so everyone knows, and @Andrea82, your effort was not wasted. OP is still reading this thread because she PM'd me to insult me in the comfort of my own inbox.

Hmm. I could have loaded her with a lot of useful links. None related to her spider, but ones that teach a person what "critical thinking" is. Like the Skeptic's dictionary. I don't generally cling to pile-ons very long, , but when somebody starts questioning established science that is as close to irrefutable as one can get, I get a little salty.. Science is solid but flexible. But only when repeatable results call for flexibility. There are probably thousands of junk-science web-sites out there and as many books spreading misinformation. When misinformation is proved to be actually correct information, science acknowledges that The opposotion, the woo-hoo demographic, will not do that, they play the "open-minded" card, and the "I'm enlightened, you are not, card and just hand-wave" reason aside.

Let's look at those "breatharians" I referenced earlier. For those not famuiliar with those kooks, they are ones that claim they can (and have) survived without eating food.. Some claim that they absorb their energy from the sun. I hve yet to see one that has not been shown to have cheated. Probably because the ones that tried it and did NOT cheat are dead.

Now, of course in the past, there were discoveries that were met with disbelief and some of the people who advanced those ideas were considered heretics to the church and so in. But we have much better tools for sifting out the wheat from the chafe today and anybody who discounts gravity or the fact that the earth is a sphere pretty deserves what they get, I'm not generous enough to humour them. Nor do I feel sorry for them if it is a case of just being air-headed and not mental-illness.

Maybe this thread should be moved to The Watering Hole since it has become not so much about spiders, but locking it for trying to fight ignorance will not win any battles in said fight. We've had blow-ups over handling tarantulas before, but this was a whole new breed. Attempts were made in making the OP see the pratfulls of both her reasoning and the impact such irresponsible attitudes can have on everybody else, but it fell on death ears. I don't personally care if she gets bit trying to play Spider-Godess, but if it fuels the anti-exotic crowd with ammo, Im ginna speak up on it. And I will always speak out against woo-hoo science. And I'm not even an academic, we have some of those and they were pretty much discounted.

Now, if you will excuse me, my pet clam is lonely and wants to play. It gets depressed when it doesn't get attention, and it...well, it clams up.

 

[boina]

Hmm. I could have loaded her with a lot of useful links. None related to her spider, but ones that teach a person what "critical thinking" is. Like the Skeptic's dictionary.

But it doesn't work and you know it. If a person has closed oneself off to science I've yet to figure out how to open that door again. Science is about logic and evidence - the evidence that can be tested and proved/disproved - and the moment you deny logic and just go by what you feel science has lost. There's absolutely no way to make people who live by 'I feel it's right, therefore it is right' even consider scientific evidence. Ironically, their mind is closed to actual evidence. It's actually the scientists, the ones who get yelled at for being 'closed minded', that are the open minded ones (mostly, at least), because they will demand data from different sources, compare data, and only will draw conclusions when convinced that the data stand up to scrutiny. Enlightened people usually don't even have data, just feelings, and you can't debate feelings.

I know I can hold my own in any kind of logical, factual debate but I give up the moment feelings and beliefs enter the picture.

 

[Tim Benzedrine]

Yeah, I know. But you can't say I don't try.

 

[Python]

I feel like science has something to teach us and I believe I'll stick with it till something better comes along

 

[Tim Benzedrine]

Yeah but consider this...

It's so hard to believe in anything anymore, you know what I mean? It's like, religion, you really can't take it seriously, 'cause it seems so mythological, and seems so arbitrary; and then on the other hand, science is just pure empiricism, and by virtue of its method, it excludes metaphysics. – I guess I wouldn't believe in anything if it weren't for my lucky astrology mood watch.- Steve Martin

Why sad, boina? I think the quote fits this thread pretty well. Now THAT'S sad.

 

[boina]

Why sad, boina? I think the quote fits this thread pretty well. Now THAT'S sad.

Exactly.

 

[Abbio]

Never even occurred to me to look it up, but it seems you're right!
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/leave+well+enough+alone
I have to give it to OP, that is a neat name!

But shes not leaving it alone?!?!

 

[Tim Benzedrine]

But...but...you were given advice. You still seemed pretty insistent on ignoring it. You were advised NOT to play with your pokie, and given several VERY good reasons not to do so. You were given insight, YOU advanced reasons why that you thought it was a good idea even after acknowledging that you would be putting yourself at risk, and then began using junk-science as back-up. Given that, I 'm not so sure you were looking for insight as much you were looking for affirmation That's when you really crawled to the bottom of the pile on, as far as I could see. You decided to go on rather rambling tangents using junk-science and such as you platform.

Do you have any idea how many woo-hoo theories have been discredited over time? Here is an example- "Pyramid energy". There was a time that some people thought that pyramids, matching the dimensions of the Egyptian pyramids -but scaled down, of course - could perform some extraordinary fears. Preventing food from rotting, keeping razor blades from sharpening, silly stuff like that. It was kind of a fad in the 70's even. Some intrpreneurs even marketed hats one could wear to channel the miraculous pyramid energy.
Thing is, it really didn't take much science to debunk that. Set up a pyramid over food-stuffs and other items according to the claims and set up control items without the pyramids. As it turned out, there was no discernible difference. That's science working the way it is supposed to. In order to ascertain fact, you need to prove the theory, and with repeatable results. Otherwise, the theory is just junk. if you have never heard of "Pyramid energy" there is good reason. I suppose there could still probably be supporters of it around, but I think they would be a fringe.

Hey, I get it. The mysterious can be fun to contemplate. But you can't let enthusiasm compromise reason and logic.

I can't believe I am gonna say this, but I wish Poec54 were here to have seen the start of this. Trust me, he has probably owned more Pokies than you will see in a lifetime. If his ever exhibited the type of behaviour you claim yours does, I'd like to hear about it. And this may not be what you want to hear, but there is nothing SPECIAL about your particular Pokie. it is just like the rest of them out there, both in the wild and in captivity. So if a propensity to interact with humans as you describe WAS a thing, I'm pretty sure we'd have heard about it before you happened along.
This is me trying to be reasonable. I still haven't completely ruled out trolling, but I don't hate it as much as a lot of people do (depending on the nature of it) so can be a little more patient. Of course, that patience only goes so far before I get ornery, something I can be kind of good at... Ask anybody.

 

[NeptuneBlitZ]

Yeah and im sure a fish jumping out of water is really only wanting to be held.

 

[cold blood]

Yeah and im sure a fish jumping out of water is really only wanting to be held.

Ahhh, fish love being held.

See, its clearly smiling

I rest my case.

 

[Venom1080]

.
I can't believe I am gonna say this, but I wish Poec54 were here to have seen the start of this. Trust me, he has probably owned more Pokies than you will see in a lifetime. If his ever exhibited the type of behaviour you claim yours does, I'd like to hear about it. And this may not be what you want to hear, but there is nothing SPECIAL about your particular Pokie. it is just like the rest of them out there, both in the wild and in captivity. So if a propensity to interact with humans as you describe WAS a thing, I'm pretty sure we'd have heard about it before you happened along.
This is me trying to be reasonable. I still haven't completely ruled out trolling, but I don't hate it as much as a lot of people do (depending on the nature of it) so can be a little more patient. Of course, that patience only goes so far before I get ornery, something I can be kind of good at... Ask anybody.

Agreed.. doesn't seem to be on much these days.