The endless thread apparently turns one year old today. What the heck have you people been talking about?
Anyway, you know the drill. Comments on the old post closed, commenting resumes here. Are you planning to keep it up for another year?
May your conversations continue to blossom.
YAY! Our Threadmas gift from the Overlord!
On a serious note, I just want to second those who said that any suicide threat should be taken seriously. It’s hard to tell if someone might actually attempt suicide, and it is better to err on the side of caution.
I love that video.
Who else made wishes on dandelions as a kid?
Lynna, OM | February 24, 2010 9:11 PM:
Godddamnit! I should have known! He’s been pretending to be gay in order to win over the ladies! What a cad! I wish I’d thought of that!
We’ve crossed over into the next annual dimension of Teh Thread! Merry Threadmas Day Pharyngulistas!!
You’re a damned poopyhead PZ. I was in the middle of a post, when you killed the thread thereby forcing me to retype my html tags.
Do you all remember that drive by troll Age of Enlightenment? Well he just left his shit at TWO
I found Pharyngula via Wikipedia. It was an article on the criticism of New Scientist’s “Darwin was Wrong” article.
Bears
There was an article on polygamists families in the US on NatGeo I believe.
My own grandmother struggled with severe depression after the death of my mom. She, too, was a strong, self-sufficient type. She, too, confided in a friend that she was so lonely and so upset that she felt like “taking a bunch of pills and going to sleep and not waking up anymore.” The friend told my uncle, and my uncle did something rather perceptive, given that he is far from being a perceptive man… he bought her a tiny white kitten. My grandmother did not feel like living for herself, but she could not die and leave her kitten to be found alone. I know, it’s weird, but I’ve felt the same way… if something happened to me, who knows what would happen to my kitties.
Anyway, my uncle did take her to the doctor, and she got a re-evaluation of her existing meds, which proved to be contributing to her state of mind. With different prescriptions and dosages, and a gentle antidepressant, she was able to turn things around and function. It all happened gradually, and she had a few bad days before she was well. The kitten helped take her mind off of her troubles.
Grandma now laughs at herself for being depressed… well, she was always very hard on herself, a terrible family failing… but at least now she is laughing and not crying.
Ah, isn’t that sweet! PZ is not telling us to get a life this time!
Let’s start this off with some more good news! Md. attorney general: State to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere
So, how ’bout that Watchmen movie, huh?
Damn straight.
Admittedly, it does depend on what’s being discussed. Sometimes it’s not to my tastes; other times it’s exactly what I’m in the mood for.
Then, of course, there are the times like today where I’m just feeling weird from too little sleep and I have to express myself somehow or I’ll end up running around the streets trying to convince people I’m a time-travelling space zombie from the future.
I love how the stamens wave around after anthesis!
What did the stamen say to impress the pistil?
You’ve got style!
Har! Botany Wednesday rocks almost as much as drink coffee and fsck around Sunday.
Thank you, Mr. Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler Sir, for setting the whole thing up.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
A gem from Jack Gilbert, whose most recent collection, REFUSING HEAVEN, won both the National Book Critics Circle award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for poetry.
Getting Away with It
We have already lived in the real paradise.
Horses in the empty summer street.
Me eating the hot wurst I couldn’t afford,
in frozen Munich, tears dropping. We can
remember. A child in the outfield waiting
for the last fly ball of the year. So dark
already it was black against heaven.
The voices trailing away to dinner,
calling faintly in the immense distance.
Standing with my hands open, watching it
curve over and start down, turning white
at the last second. Hands down. Flourishing.
About REFUSING HEAVEN
Heck, no… Some of the nicest people I know are traveeling space zombies from the future.
I actually just saw it the other day. I feel very blah about it.
Many of my friends are time-traveling space zombies. I let them use my bathroom, too.
(/… also, they can’t type either.)
Happy Threadiversary!
Trying to link to Dr Michael White’s “Give It Up (Gypsy second Line),” to no avail.
:(
Happy Threadiversary everyone!
I did. Used to call them wishes. They are a favourite subject of mine to photograph.
Well I for one, welcome the new year of this endless thread. Type away people. I just lurk on these things. I can’t keep up.
strange gods,
All I can suggest is that suicide is more often planned than performed on impulse (source), although how one goes about determining the characteristics attendant to either mindset, I am not sure – and would not dare speculate.
Everything I learned in life I learned at Pharyngula.
I had a childhood friend who was a time-traveling space zombie. I lost touch with him until just last week, when I met him again for the first time.
Sabai Di Thread
Everything I learned in life I learned at Pharyngula.
1. Life evolves. Deal with it.
2. Troll stomping is good fun.
3. But if your arches start to cramp, a roundhouse kick to their gut is also a good option.
4. Nothing makes your point like RANDOMLY capitalizing WORDS in your ARGUMENT.
5. Or randomly marking it up in illegible secondary colours.
6. There will always be someone wrong on the internet.
(/7. And it will always be your job to correct them.)
SC OM, this is the first time I’ve ever heard of Gogol Bordello.
Fucking amazing. Yay!
AJ Milne,
awesome!
Enjoy Threadmas guys and gals. I’m off to bed.
I’d like to see a graph of the number of days to fill up each iteration of the endless thread. Say N (where N is which iteration # of each version, starting at zero for the original) as a function of the number of days iteration N was active. Then we could fit a curve to it. Exponential? Linear? Periodic? Something weird? Then we could do all kinds of fun things with it.
Somebody should make that happen…
(PZ deleted my FAUST POST. I thought I was being cleverly annoying, but no, apparently not clever.)
I’m going out for the night. I’m probably going to visit my friend tomorrow, and if so I’ll find out who her health insurance provider is, so we can start looking for therapists who accept that provider.
continuing AJ Milne @25:
8. You cannot kill this thread.
9. Nerd of Redhead will always demand evidence and never get an answer.
10. The stupid is always weapons-grade, and it always burns.
The same thing happened to another OM a while back (link). There be no gettin round it.
Oink!
Moo?
Ok, Ill finally post in the endless thread for the first time.
I have a question for all the OM members. Once you receive the honor, do you feel obligated to continue posting? Once so recognized, is it your duty to protect your personal philosophy in small comment boxes? And do you get any badges? Or perhaps an embossed document?
Im a sporadic poster. As work permits, Ill get the chance to dive in conversations here and there, then race off to avert my companies next disaster. In all those in and out dashes, I’m amazed at the stamina of the small group of dedicated posters who make this their daily routine. I cant blame them, and I’m a bit envious. I relish the days I get to spend sparing with the sharp foils of word play.
Ah well, enough purple prose.
This is probably their best known:
Enjoy!
Numbers added.
1) No obligation – but it kind of feels good to know people like reading what you write. But many of the OMs are no longer regulars here – sadly.
2) Size does not matter.
3) Not that I’m aware of.
4) See 3)
Happy Threadmas all.
Carry on.
I deliver the gift of music. Here is some Richard Thompson.
Oop! I Did It Again!
Vincent Black Lightning 1952
When The Spell Is Broken
Happy Theadiversary!
Thread start:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/science_of_watchmen.php
I thought I’d jump in here right at the top and say that I really like the SciBlogs discussion thread model. Seriously.
Specifically, I like that it doesn’t nest or hide replies the same way a traditional “threaded” discussion board would, forcing me to at least glance at the tangent discussions that are going on. I also like that it loads the entire thing into a single page, which, IMO, improves the flow and continuity. If I want to see whether someone has already said what I’m about to post in a thread, I just have to search the page for relevant terms. (This also keeps me from posting that often, since somebody has usually said what I’m going to say, more eloquently.)
TL;DR: SciBlogs unique discussion format causes the discussions to happen differently than some other format might, and I like the difference.
I’m interested to hear what other people think —
p.s. If they could make the threads better handle 1k+ posts, I’m all for it, but that may just be the price we pay for this thread model.
pcarini @ 42:
The format is fine. I’d dearly like to be able to edit though.
Dang, that was a weird, wasted trip. A little snow on the road, a little falling, no problem to an ex-Yooper. But not to the area drivers. Eventually we are crawling along the Edens at 10-15 mph, and the snow is giving almost white-out conditions. I’m not even half way there, been traveling an hour, and traffic is getting even slower. So I bailed not knowing quite where I was. Cleaned off the car in a Border’s parking lot, got my bearings, and headed east. Eventually ran into a familiar north south road, turned north. Meanwhile, it stopped snowing, and the roads were plowed. No traffic to speak of, and no more snow, semi-pleasant drive home. Total travel time, about 2.5 hours, which is a normal down-back time. Just checked the Doppler radar, and the main storm is over downtown Chicago where I was headed. The Redhead will catch a train, and I’ll pick her up at the station. But I won’t get to bed until 1:30.
As would I. See “… but that may just be the price we pay for this thread model.”, that may really should be a might.
Also: Holy crap! It’s been a year of these threads ?!? How often are they being filled up now, every day or two?
re Editing your comments: It should be allowed, but only if a history of the edits is publicly available. As much as I hate the idea of people seeing the mistakes I’ve fixed, I’d rather not have some troll get away with changing its original post and then accuse people of misquoting it.
Rey Fox | February 24, 2010 10:44 PM:
You know … I still haven’t seen it.
Happy Threadiversary to you,
Happy Threadiversary to you,
Happy Threadiversary Endless Thre-a-a-d (and commenters,)
Happy Threadiversary to y-o-o-o-o-ou!
Enjoy your very special day, Endless Thread.
And a Happy Monkey to you all, and to all a good night!!
Dylan Moran on religion
It’s nearly 50 posts in and no one has mentioned bacon? Happy Threadiversary everyone…
Wait, what? This thread moves too fast. I meant to go back to the last one, and note that I was a complete doofus, and have never in fact met Wowbagger. I was confusing him with someone else.
I’m pretty sure that by now no-one cares. Just in case, though – my apologies to Wowbagger.
Lynna, OM | February 24, 2010 10:44 PM:
Last paragraph from your link:
(Link added by me. Check out Don Dwyer’s left side bar links. See also Pam’s house blend.)
That’s right folks. This Christianist wants to impeach someone for standing up for people’s rights.
Janine etc. @ 40: Here is some Richard Thompson.
He’s making a new CD, recording it live, all new material. We spent last night at the Great American Music Hall listening to Take One, I guess, and (second set) older stuff.
Cost us some bux, a drive over the Bay Bridge in sideways torrential rain and wind and rush-hour traffic, and a longish walk through the Tenderloin where it was apparently Acting Out Night. Worth it.
That’s fine, Cath – it was the source of some fun conversation, which is worth the momentary confusion it caused.
It also made me wonder whether or not someone could (or would) ever attempt to pass themselves off in real life as one of the regulars here – and, if they did, whether or not it’d be appropriate to refer to them as fauxryngulites…
I’m curious which one you thought was Wowbagger*.
*if it indeed was someone at the Skeptics In The Pub
You guys might find this site funny:
http://www.jakearchibald.co.uk/homeopathy/
It fits religious thinking to a T!
1. No obligations — that’s the beauty of it
2. “personal philosophy” is still in development, so little or nothing to protect or defend
3. I have a breastplate, but it may or may not be official Order of the Molly attire (may have to check with Patricia on this)
4. We get an embossing via orgy, or is that an embossed orgy? Or is it only the female OMs that participate in embossure?
Not sure if the news had broken on a to-be-published-in-March sociology paper on atheism and liberalism. Or on what anyone had thought about it.
See how she is? Comes trundling in here, breasteses first, and expects everyone to just bow down to the Brass Bra. Well, I, for one, am not gonna take it anymore. Unless I get a die-cast replica of that breast-plate right fuckin’ now
Person at #53.
Do you mean this? The last time I saw him live was in 2002. Yeah, even under the conditions you are talking about, he is well worth it.
Dark End Of The Street
The Poor Ditching Boy
Caine | February 25, 2010 12:32 AM:
Me too. Then, when one of my arguments was refuted, I could go back and edit my post to contain a different argument. No more admitting I was wrong.
I saw it before it was deleted. LOLed.
llewely @52: Yeah, I saw that bit of chip-on-my-shoulder macho posturing by Dwyer. His mind is so narrow that he thinks only in two dimensions.
I can’t believe no-one’s commented on my coining the term fauxryngulites as the word for someone impersonating one of us.
C’mon! That’s a terrible pun; it deserves a response!
AJ Milne | February 24, 2010 11:08 PM:
If you SHRILL atheists weren’t so MEAN and RUDE, if you would only MODERATE your TONE, no-one would NEED to YELL!!
Groannnnn.
Mmm. . I’m making potato pancakes. I seem to remember some Pharyngulite hates them. . .
I’ll see what I can do, SpokesGay. It would be kinda like the Plaster Casters, only for boobs. The result might be decor-worthy.
I definitely don’t want to be allowed to edit. I spend too much time here as it is. And I don’t need to encourage my penchant for perfection — don’t feed the addiction.
And think about it — if we let trolls edit their comments, they’d go back and remove all the entertaining bits where they unwittingly revealed the astonishing depths of their ignorance.
And what about that time Bride of Shrek “pooped” her head in instead of popping her head in? Perfection is overrated.
Except when you add to our perfection, Lynna. Lower your breast plate, and prepare to be assimilated. Your biological and sartorial distinctiveness will be added to our own.
Comply.
/Locutus of Gay
Well, I’ve not seen mention of it, so here goes:
Saw this tidbit, it seems like a bizarre baiting article, I’m not sure what to make of it:
http://www.asanet.org/press/20100223/Evolution_and_Intelligence.cfm
Anyone have any thoughts, or is this old news?
…then of course there’s this article, saying basically that people have a link between the capability of being miserable and dying:
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/ucla-researchers-find-genetic-154129.aspx
…while some mutants don’t have this link, which makes me wonder what advantage or selection process was at work that made it so that undergoing stress meant you died sooner…
…additionally, this means “The Secret” would only work for mutants. But not really. It would only look like it did.
…personally I’m kind of hoping he looks like George Clooney. You see I KNOW what Rorscach looks like and I’m sitting between them at the GAC dinner.
I’ll be the chick surrounded by spunky atheists.
Covers of RT songs.
How Will I Ever Be Simple Again-Emmylou Harris
Strange Affair-June Tabor
Dimming Of The Day-Mary Black
Josh OSG
..see now I always thought with Locutus of Gay it would be “lower your codpiece”.
it’s the FSM’s way of telling you you need to smoke more pot :-p
as for the other article… wtf does “unnatural” mean? sounds like someone read too much EP and believed all of their stories… but, IANASociologist (yet?), so ignore my ramblings.
oh, and: “An earlier study by Kanazawa found that more intelligent individuals were more nocturnal, waking up and staying up later than less intelligent individuals.”
does that make me supersmart…? :-p
LOL!
Comply.
fauxryngulite
You may look like we do
Talk like we do
But you know how it is
You’re not one of us
Not one of us
No you’re not one of us
Not one of us
Not one of us
No you’re not one of us
BoSOM (hee hee) wrote:
Hmm, in the recent doppleganger week on Facebook I had to choose between the two celebrities I’d been compared to by others – Rupert Grint (who plays Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter series) or Christopher Walken.
Make of that what you will…
Happy Threadmas!
What goes better with the holiday: rosé, or Muscat?
(had a bout of spontaneity in the liquor store. I guess it could have been worse.)
Knockgoats, from the previous thread:
Don’t be absurd. It’s a very well-established economic phenomenon. You can choose to reject it, if you have a rational basis for doing so, but dismissing it as “magical” is just ridiculous. As Adam Smith put it:
All it means is that we derive benefits from others acting in their own self-interest. It’s common sense: if A produces something that B wants, and B produces something that A wants, then, by exchanging, they both benefit. Both are acting in their own self-interest, but the transaction is good for everyone. Where’s the “magical thinking” in that?
This is reassuring. Most of the time, I struggle to get out of bed before about 10 am – though this morning, I forced myself to get up at 7.30, on the basis that I have finals in a couple of months and need to actually do some work.
And I say good night with one of the most creepy songs I know of. At least now I know that no one can cut my telephone wire.
Happy Threadmas !!
You know, that really is scary !! And I guess we should thank PZ for allowing his commenters to have their own “forum” here for so long, I dont take this for granted at all.
Always trust Australians to be wary of changing times and social progress :
Senate votes down same-sex marriage bill
He better, got to have some glamour at your side !!
Lynna,
Ah yes.
I knew Cynthia PlasterCaster. I have seen the infamous Jimi Hendrix cast. Though my favorite is Ronnie Barnett of The Muffs. His erection went away while he was “encased” and the cast was a corkscrew. Also, in the nineties, Cynthia did start taking breast casts.
I’ve always been nocturnal. I ran on very little sleep when I was a kid, never could get to sleep when I was supposed to do so. It’s a good thing to be self-employed, I usually sleep from about 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Wowbagger
.. swoon, Christopher Walken. The thinking woman’s sex symbol. You look like him and I unequivocally, absolutely, unconditionally offer here, and now, to have your babies.
Strange Gods @ 617 Shatner-thread,
just seen this now.My advice would be to get her onto the radar of a community mental health team asap, or whatever is appropriate in your area, this is a worrisome situation that might require this lady’s few friends to become proactive to save her. She has a plan which she expressed to you.People need to keep an eye on her 24/7, and she seems to need treatment,this might even have to be involuntary to begin with.
My 2 cents from the other side of the globe, good luck mate.
Sorry, (No Longer A) Bride, but when I think of Walken, I think of that watch.
Walton,
The magical thinking is to believe that it applies to the real world, where there are constraints on the availability of critical resources. If both A and B strive to maximize their self-interest, without regard to the interest of the community (A+B), they’ll consume the limited resources much faster than is permitted (see prisonner’s dilemma for a theoretical approach).
And if they are allowed to consume from credit (like in the real world nowadays), it gets even worse and even faster into a dead end.
That’s the real problem in the real world, you know, on earth nowadays. It’s trivial, but apparently adepts of Adam Smith don’t get it.
Hey, there, BoS. Wowbagger here. I’m posting under a different nym to keep things discreet.
If you’re still up for that baby thing, maybe we could meet somewhere?
and here I thought I was the biggest night-owl on pharyngula, but you go to sleep about 4-5 hours later than I do. self-employment is a life-saver for us nightowls, isn’t it.
I used to have your sleeping schedule when working closing-shift at starbucks in seattle: i’d get home around 1am, spend all night online, go to sleep at sunrise, and then get up around 2pm to get ready for work again.
Walton,
do yourself a favour (I mean it from the bottom of my heart, because you are, I think, a really good guy) : read COLLAPSE by Jared Diamond.
It’s easy to read and very passioning book, I’m sure you’ll like it.
“Essential reading…. Collapse shows that resilient societies are nimble ones, capable of long-term planning and of abandoning deeply entrenched but ultimately destructive core values and beliefs.” – Nature
Jadehawk, OM @ 91:
Yes, it is. The few times I’ve had to work for someone else, it was always day shift. Ugh. Made me incredibly cranky. Most people don’t get nocturnal types; there’s still a lot of bias.
I get you Caine. I’m nocturnal all the way.
definitely. not too long ago there was a thread on pandagon where people who didn’t get up in the early morning on weekends were declared non-adults. grr.
QFT (at 4:30 in the morning).
Josh, Official SpokesGay @ 94:
Ooh, baby. ;) It’s good to know. When you’re stuck in a world of day people, it can get you down.
Jadehawk, OM @ 95:
*Stares in disbelief* That’s past fucking rude. I’ll admit, I have a tendency to think of morning people as a bit on the obnoxious side, but I generally keep that to myself. Besides, anyone, nocturnal or not, should feel free to do whatever the hell they want on the weekend.
Feynmaniac @ 96:
Heh. 3:37 in the morning here.
I am far more likely to be asleep during the day than at night.
Not drinking alcohol will do this morning thing to me, up at 7 bright as a button, and then like, WTF am I going to do now, when by 930 you have already jogged, showered, done your shopping, read the paper and done the washing…..
Do that for 3 days in a row and you’re positively exhausted !
I’d rather drag my sad self out of bed at 1130 on days off, slump into the computer chair for 2 hours while rehydrating and reading this blog….:-)
Nightowls, unite! It’s us against the dayists. They think they’re soo superior with their paying jobs and such. We’re people too, you know.
/there’s nothing I hate more than a person who is chipper in the morning.
I have ALWAYS done my best work at night ( academically wise). I don’t think there’s a thing/paper/assignment I’ve ever, in my 20 odd years of tertiary study, not started and completed in the hours between 11 pm and 5 am. I love the quiet, the solitude and the peace ( not to mention the acceptable hours of alcohol consumption).
Altough I now have a day job I’m still quite able, comfortable (and normally do) live on 3-4 hours a night sleep, generally between 2 and 5 ish. Hasn’t killed me yet.
Rorschach @ 100:
In any season other than winter, I enjoy being out at sunrise with my camera. No matter if I have the best intentions in the universe, I can’t make myself go to sleep at an appropriate hour in order to get up. Being a nocturnal critter, I’m already awake before sunrise and can spend hours in photographic pursuit, then come home and happily hit the hay. It just works better all the way around for me. We all have to listen to our clock.
this seems appropriate
I hate mronings. With iron willpower, I forced myself to get out of bed at 7.30 am. It’s now nearly 10 am and I have achieved practically nothing. I might as well have stayed in bed. :-(
boygenius @ 101:
My husband’s nocturnal too (good thing, otherwise I would have had to kill him) and he’s recently had to do the job hunt biz after 19 years. He found a job, but it is 1.5 hours away. He told them straight out, I can’t work days. They offered him 4th shift (weekend nights) and he was delighted. Even so, they kept offering dayshift like it was a special prize.
oh eww, why?! did you have to be somewhere that early? because if not, there’s no point in getting up early. do whatever you were planning on doing when you’re actually functional.
It’s not so much mornings I hate, it’s going to bed early. I almost never go to bed before 1 or 2 am (apparently a huge fucking problem with my ex) but I generally rise at 5 because of the kids.
.. then again I also like to eat at what I consider normal hours ie dinner about 8 and it used to drive me insane that my ex wanted to eat at 6 and go to bed at 8.
Walton @ 105:
Urgh. If you’re not ready to function at that hour, yeah, you should have stayed in bed. Better to get up at an hour when you know you’ll be functional and productive.
oh yeah. the boyfriend is a nightowl, too. just applied for a job at the truck stop restaurant for the evening and graveyard shifts. the graveyard shift pays extra, so that’s an added bonus :-)
Having said all that, if I had a nanny to mind the kids and a hot bod to share my bed I’d friggin stay there until lunchtime.( Angelina and Brad have my life-bastards)
Bride of Shrek OM @ 108:
8!? Bed at 8? Holy, I just don’t grok that. I start doing my photo editing about that time; I don’t get into doing painting until midnight or so.
like I needed another reason not to breed… :-p
*Coughing fit out of nowhere*
Oh, yes that is so true !I hate it when I can’t stay up because of early start the next day, and unfortunately I don’t function too well if I don’t get my 8 hours beauty sleep.
Well, thank dog I can sleep in tomorrow…:-)
*wink with 300 year old giant tree*
Caine @ #112
Seriously. Bed at 8. He used to constantly give me shit that I was the weird one for not doing that. That’s half an hour after my 5, 4 & 3 year olds bed times.
Can you the feeling there’s a reason he’s an ex?
I’m lucky that my neighbors are far enough away that they can’t hear my power tools, etc. in the middle of the night. I have my most productive hours out in the shop in the middle of the night. Just me and NPR. And sawdust.
Bride of Shrek OM @ 115:
Oh yes. Yes, I can. I can’t even say just how hostile that would make me.
I don’t have anywhere I have to go today, except a lecture at 3pm, but I thought I should get up early and study, as I didn’t do any work yesterday, and finals are drawing ever closer.
(By way of background: my whole degree is assessed at the end. This summer, I have nine three-hour exams over the period of a couple of weeks, and this accounts for my entire degree: no coursework and no modular exams, just the final exams. So I have a good reason to be stressed, even though they’re a couple of months away.)
Yes well Rorschach
Some of us don’t have to do night shift anymore.
I fondly remember the days of the old 8-6 shift four nights in a row then on the fifth day having to back up (fuck with you body clock) to a 10-8 session after a whopping 2 hour sleep. Fortunately, after my time in the wards, I mostly worked in aged care homes so you could generally find a quiet corner in the dementia ward to catch an hour or so (bliss ****).
Having said that we were gernally short of staff so I routinely pulled a double from 8pm until 4 pm the next day. It was worth the extra money but I always wonder how many med rounds I may have fucked up!
I’m very rarely functional and productive. This is the major problem with my life.
so, again, why don’t you study when you’re actually functional? you do yourself and your studies no favors by being awake when your brain wants to sleep. just don’t waste so many of your productive hours on us and other distractions.
I have not posted much lately, occupied with a few other issues, but in playing catch-up Strange Gods” post about a potentially suicidal friend in Thread Shatner caught my eye.
I am far from an expert on suicide, but do have some experience. I would suggest moving quickly to seek help, but do not assume you can ease off once she is seeing someone. In my personal case everyone relaxed a bit when she went into therapy only to have her kill herself soon after. Therapy had seemed to work, she was more stable, happier. In some way the therapy may have contributed, i.e., the realization that her disorder was forever and might as well end it. Not knocking the therapist, he is in fact a friend of my shrink, and I think did everything he could. It was very hard to accept that there just may not have been a way to stop her from killing herself short of a 24 hour a day armed guard. What I took from this, and am making a hash of trying to say, is when/if your friend starts to act “better” you unfortunately cannot relax too much. Maybe after a few months of being better, but not at first.
Other thing, which you are doing right, is to keep contact with her. Two-four AM is a bad time to be alone. After my love’s suicide I was closest to putting a gun in my mouth or playing razor blade roulette in those small hours before the dawn.
Gads, just reviewed this badly written mess, but will let it stand. Still hard to write about these things and seem to make sense. Oh well, because I can, a favourite video below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zJdbpzfJMs or the live version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f837T8x0rUo
Ciao y’all
Uhm, this is well said.I have never failed a single exam in my life, and I think it is because I can focus when I have to, you just have to get your mind set on this one goal Walton, in this case your 2 weeks of exams, this blog and the United Kingdom will still be here after your exams, so be a bit more focused, set yourself goals in terms of how much stuff you want to study every day leading up to the exams, and only when you have done that, think about distractions.
Thgen come back and boast and drink Port, and realise that your life until then will probably suck.But it will feel good after !!
Walton
I don’t want to give you shit. But the above mentioned shift work hours I was complaining about was when I was a nurse.
Prior to that I had been a university lecturer in climatology but I became a nurse for one reason, because I could do night shift and earn money while I could attend uni during the day.
If I can work night shifts and still shift my carcass to attend five years worth of law lectures then you can get your arse out of bed to attend one 3 pm lecture.
..to add to my apparently self-proclaimed martyrhood can I can just add I did my finals 1 week and 2 days after my last baby was born (with also a 2 year old and a 13 month old). 8 * 4 hour exams and I wasn’t allowed to fucking leave to breastfeed my newborn. Years later and I’m still bitter.
Seriously Walton
Get your arse into study, if you need to leave Pharyngula for a while, whatever.
Your studies are way more important and we’ll all still be here when you get back and you’ve finished.
Then I can give you the shit you deserve as newbie lawyer and I can get all senior counsel on your butt.
would this be a good place to discuss the demise of the Richard Dawkins . net forum and where to hang out next?
No.
Try here.
Agi Hammerthief @ 126:
There’s a thread going about the event: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/i_so_do_not_want_to_get_sucked.php#comments
That said, this is an open thread. Discuss anything you like.
5:15 on a Texas morning, the first ray of dawn peeps around the corner of the door, holding a cup of coffee and wearing a bright smile…
GOOD MORNING EVERYONE!
[runs. fast.]
Badgersdaughter @ 129
Morning bitch, morning bitch!!!!
Gads, is it morning? How long have I been up? (flips though the litter looking for spoon, instant coffee crystals, lighter, and syringe) Ahh, time for coffee.
Credo elvem etiam vivere
@ 127 & 128
thanks
I go on vacation for a few days and see what happuns.
Hey, it’s 11:30 in Aberdeen. My boss is about to go to lunch.
Good morning, all! May the Threadmas hangovers not impede you too much this fine day.
This is old now, but:
Friendly Atheist has a kickass editing function that gives you a 5 minute countdown for editing after you submit. It’s enough time to catch typos and dead links, but then that’s it and you can’t go back after a dozen people tear what you’ve said apart (not that that happens there). I like that a lot.
Thanks for being understanding Wowbagger. I think I’ll decline to embarrass myself any further. After all, I hope to meet some of you in a couple of weeks, and not have to hide in shame. I have bad name/face recognition. I’m not entirely face-blind, but I do occasionally wonder if I am going to recognise my actual family members, if I haven’t seen them in a year. So far, so good though.
It’s like preview, except it malfunctions on older hardware. It’s noticeably slower than preview. Preview gives you unlimited time to re-write your post. The edit function at Friendly Atheist doesn’t. It’s inferior to what scienceblogs already has.
BoSOM wrote:
Hmm, I guess I’d have to say that it’s only that I look more like him than I do any other celebrity, so it’s kind of debatable – though it won’t be long ’til you’ll be able to judge for yourself; only two weeks to go before the GAC!
With that in mind I hope the recent RDNet kerfuffle doesn’t ruin the mood for all the Aussie RDNet people; I know there’s a bunch of them going.
Ha! Threadmas night is still young.
…but old enough for me to try to email someone about doing “mating experiments” and translate that into the equivalent of “mating attempts”. pffft.
You know … I still haven’t seen Watchman.
But I haven’t seen very movies lately.
The last movie I watched was Red Cliff.
The last American movie I watched was…
Hm…
Uh…
Shit.
Batman Begins? It’s the last I can remember at the moment, and my husband had to remind me about it a few weeks ago. Which is weird, because I usually can’t forget spending 90+ minutes drooling over Christian Bale.
I’m all against an editing function. If someone says something stupid, I don’t want to give them the option to change it after being called out on it.
Plus you guys would all miss out on my typos.
Well, not really.
Talk about Tenure !
It’s contagious, Rev. I now make them all the time, when I used to be a real nitpicker about it.
I guess I have only so many things I can work myself up about, and most of them are a lot more important than typos and other assorted grammar/spelling/punctuation goofs. I’ll only speak up about one if it confuses things too much.
In belated honor of this momentous occasion, I offer something from my personal wine cellar.
Hm. Could have been a good idea, but the trailer isn’t very inspiring. With the very first word they use improper construction that no one, much less a real English professor, would ever use (“Myself and the rest of the female faculty”??), there’s a really skeevy bit about how ha ha, it’s so funny to invade a woman’s privacy by spying on her while she’s changing clothes, the protagonist uses that stupid saying “remember, you’re the smartest person in the room” (which is usually never true, more knowledge =/= smarter)… it’s got all the people/plot theme to make a good movie, but I fear that it might not be one.
You should have put it in expensive-looking bottles. Then we would have enjoyed the wine much more.
4. We get an embossing via orgy, or is that an embossed orgy? Or is it only the female OMs that participate in embossure?
Definitely only the females.
*sigh* I miss orgies. *sigh*
Ah well, I just watched the whole thing and found it to be entertaining.But then, I tear up quickly these days anyway…:-)
Still haven’t gotten that damn Django music out of my head that David posted the other day, damn him.(*for you cannot spend your life regretting*)
You shouldn’t think I’d let you peasants at the good stuff.
Well, possibly Walton, who dines with the occasional viscount and so must have a decent palate.
Carrickfergus:
Aquaria | February 25, 2010 7:28 AM:
I see about 2 movies a year. I don’t find movies interesting enough to seek them out on my own. I usually just see the movies that friends show at their houses when I visit. Usually these are mediocre SF or comics flicks, like Hulk. And one weekend they picked The Core, easily the worst movie I have ever seen. Once I talked them into picking one of the few movies I really liked. 2001. They hated it.
Most movies, I have real trouble paying attention to for more than about 15-20 minutes at a time. (Longer with science documentaries, provided they’re reasonably well-made.) The few times I’ve watched a movie on my own, I’ve found I pause it about once every 15 minutes or so, and take about a 15 minute break. When I’m at a friend’s place, however, I’ll get out a book I’m reading, or get up and walk around for bit, or I’ll go to sleep.
And people wonder where attention deficit disorders come from…..
Seriously, I blame it all on television advertising and MTV.
:P
Rev. BDC:
I like the way it works at Cosmic Variance. You can edit your post for 15 minutes, and then it’s locked.
That gives you a chance to realize you fucked up, and fix it, before most people see it.
(Of course, in this thread, that may not be true, with people hitting refresh every few minutes to use the thing like a chat room… but you could set the timeout to 5 minutes and I think it would be a win. Even that would be enough to notice and fix most blockquote fails.)
Of course, with such a system it’s nice to have a social norm that if you edit a post substantively, you say so.
There are just too many tropes in the trailer for Tenure that bother me, especially since a trailer is supposed to be the cool thing that shows you all the best parts and makes you really really want to see it. That they had a howler like “Myself and the rest of the female faculty would like…” AND led with it? That doesn’t offer much confidence that they had any knowledge of or consultation on the script from academicians, and although that wouldn’t matter in most movies, in one that is centered around the lives of academics it’s a bit troubling. And then there’s the whole “bad researcher but the students love him” trope – that’s great, but sometimes the students love faculty because they’re easy graders, not because they’re actually good teachers. If being a good teacher is so important to a person, they can go be John Keating at a smaller less prestigious school where that’s valued – it’s not the small man against the system, it’s a plumber trying to get sympathy that he can’t do wiring correctly but should keep his job as an electrician anyway. Not that he probably is a good teacher, giving advice like “you’re the smartest person in the room” that is designed to create arrogant asshole teachers.
Then just from a feminist perspective, the whole thing is a big troubling. There’s the part with the “isn’t it funny that this lout is watching her change clothes” (which was considered enough of a highlight to make the trailer?). There’s a kind of unsettling subtext with the way they’re stalking and harassing her, which is exacerbated by how she’s made to look sort of tiny and twee and vulnerable looking the whole time (haircut, costume, demeanor). The trailer doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, which isn’t surprising, but it doesn’t give any hint that anything in the rest of the movie would either.
I don’t know why I’m being so picky – I guess because I got so excited by the title that it would be a fun movie about the kinds of things I deal with in my line of work, but then it managed to be so disappointing in just two minutes.
Rorschach | February 25, 2010 8:13 AM:
Well – I can’t be bothered to look them up now, but I’m nearly certain I’ve read a few papers that profess to show a weak correlation between TV watched during youth, and ADD. However I can’t blame TV for my own issues. I grew up with no TV at home until I was 15. Not having a lot of friends, I didn’t watch much TV at friends’ houses either. I’ve never owned a TV myself.
Most people don’t get nocturnal types; there’s still a lot of bias.
definitely. not too long ago there was a thread on pandagon where people who didn’t get up in the early morning on weekends were declared non-adults. grr.
I’m remembering why I never liked pandagon. Bunch of smug little wankers.
Besides the fact that it’s none of their fucking business what hours anyone keeps, that’s a really stupid and ignorant thing to say when there are millions of people in America who work night shifts–and night shifts on weekends to boot.
There is one Study I know of that has shown a correlation between toddlers watching Disney vids and delay in language development.
Disney didnt like it a lot
As former night-owl now by force day-person, I miss the days when I could stay up till 2-3 am, sleep till 10-12, go to work…repeat. Since I left nursing and joined corporate America I now routinely have to be up at 5 am so I am in bed by 10 pm or so. My body still prefers to be up much later, but I can’t get up at 5 am and function unless I am in bed earlier. I couldn’t get up at 5 am with as little sleep as BOS and function. Boo.
@BOS: I know what you mean about spouse times. The world comes to an end at my house if dinner hasn’t happened by 6:30pm at the latest. He needs less sleep than I do, though, so he could concievably stay up till 11pm or so and still get up and function(also at 5 am…he works days in a hospital…but he likes getting up early).
Happy Threadiversay. Oh, and Rev BDC: recently at the store I found THICK cut bacon, smithfield smoked. Haven’t had time to cook it yet but it’s on the agenda.
(Laughing hard at #129/130…)
… and further to discussions of marital combinations of larks and owls, if you are currently engaged, and you find yourself realizing this may be an issue, please check this out with your spouse to be, explain things to ’em, figure out just how big a pain it’s gonna be, etc.
See, I’m a fairly extreme owl. Very productive, if I do say so myself, in my own cycle, but getting me going in the morning with any speed basically requires yer standard shot o’ straight adrenaline through the breastbone…
My spouse, other way ’round. We are slowly reaching some sorta peace over this, and she is slowly grasping that yes, I really do need to prop my head up a few minutes, stare accusingly at the daylight before being any use whatsoever getting the kids going in the morning. I have found it helps a bit to remind her that in ten years of marriage she has yet had to deal with a single sheet or child change or vomit bucket duty or nightmare soothing thing after 8 pm, as this has always been entirely my domain. She’s comatose by then, anyway.
But it’s been a long road to that relative peace. Different metabolic clocks can build up to serious friction. Just sayin’.
Yesterday I had to go to New Haven for jury selection for a federal court case (the James Botti bribery case). There were 112 people called for the jury, I was juror #108, and they started with juror #1. At 3:20, after juror #54 was interviewed, they let jurors #72 and higher go.
I got a couple of hundred pages read in a book and had lunch with the Sewage Assessor for the town of Milford. She was an absolutely fascinating woman who explained how to assess sewage (no, I’m not being facetious, I found what she did to be interesting).
Most movies, I have real trouble paying attention to for more than about 15-20 minutes at a time. (Longer with science documentaries, provided they’re reasonably well-made.)
I can watch them all the way through if they don’t bore me, or worse, repulse me. American movies have a bad habit of doing one or both of those things. Most of the time, I feel like I’m watching a bag of stale cliches rot before my eye.
AJ:
Your domestic situation sounds much like ours. After nearly twenty years and countless time zones, there has been many a time when my husband was getting up as I was going to bed. Now, with three kids during the school year, everyone – including my husband – is asleep by 9 pm. I try to stay on their schedule, because I need that morning time to get up enough momentum to face the day. My husband has long ago accustomed himself to this, and often brings me a cup of espresso before I’m either fully out of bed or out of my wake-up shower.
The weekends are a different story, of course. ^.^
Aquaria, if you made it through Batman Begins, you really have to see The Dark Knight. It’s not free of cliches, but it has a good deal less than the average Hollywood blockbuster.
Plus there is a nice, lingering shot of a shirtless, bruised, battered Christian Bale tending his wounds…and he wants you to kiss them better!
Aquaria,
How about I just cut to the chase and give you the shirtless Christian Bale scene instead?
Nowhere near as lingering as I had thought, actually. Wonder what that says about me.
The Redhead is a night owl, often going to bed about the time I am getting up. When we were first married, she had this idea she had to get up and fix me breakfast. She hated that, and kept carping about my schedule. Eventually I showed her I didn’t need her for my breakfast, and she didn’t have to go to bed the same time I did if it made her unhappy.
JeffreyD @ 122, thanks for telling your story.
In my situation, the family member apparantly had long standing, possoble bi-polar with devestating depressions and long term suicide ideation. This was known only to the spouse, not even the grown children knew.
The suicide was long planned and caught everyone by total suprise except the spouse. Spouse just didn’t recognize how deep and serious the final depression was….
Since then I’ve learned to not take suicidal talk as just self pity fluff…but what to do about it or how to intervene, ah, that is the question. But I now think, intervene we must.
Hey Walton,
When in my last year at Uni my mottoo was, “Must get my priorities right.” Helped me put my school work first and other things after. It really helped. I owned a horse at the time and put him in a good stabling situation so he would be fine while I gave him less attention. My horse at the time could be a major time sink.
In my last semester, my father went into his final illness and died about halfway through. But my little ‘must prioritize’ motto really helped with that situation too.
Now that I’m back in the job hunt, reviving that motto might be a good thing! :-P
strange gods,
It might not be a bad idea to call them for some advice:
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/GetHelp/SuicideWarningSigns.aspx
Looks like they also have a forum.
(I don’t know anything about the organization, or even if it’s a Sc**ntology front. Not that I think it is – I’m just paranoid after learning that many drug/alcohol help sites are.)
Janine:
The last time I played that, my MP3 player was on random play, and we came to the line ‘to Box Hill we did ride’ just as I passed Box Hill. Coincidence? I think not. Shame that it was pissing down at the time, and the usual 2 or 300 bikes were nowhere to be seen. RT’s best stuff is on the CD ‘Action packed – best of the Capitol Years’. 19 tracks, and everyone a classic.
@68
For some reason I don’t feel quite like myself today … and my hair is styled, there may even be pomade.
Mr. Fire:
That’ wasn’t long enough at all, after seeing him run around naked in American Psycho. I wish there could have been another reason than being a serial killer for him to do that in a movie, but I’ll take what I can get.
Views on Miracle Mineral Supplement where the active ingredient is an industrial bleaching agent, NaClO2, used to ‘cleanse’ your (no fucking way mine) interior?
Anyone who knows about this and the double-strength fuckwit called Jim Humble?
shirtless, bruised, battered Christian Bale tending his wounds…and he wants you to kiss them better!
If Christian Bale wants me to kiss something and make it better, it’s gonna have to be somewhere lower than his chest. ;)
@83, John M., from your second link:
Janine, I am sooo envious of your being acquainted with a real Plaster Caster. The corkscrew is a telling detail. This is why we need to archive the endless thread. Otherwise, precious cultural information will be lost.
161 comments already… <facepalm>
Nice video. Fits this depressing dark-gray rainy day perfectly.
I’m not sure about that.
I’d do it anyway :-)
Repeated for truth.
You need something to make you…?
Wow.
Similar to what we did at the dig in Crayssac – we gently hammered at the limestone in the evening and again at night till 4 am, got home, went to sleep at sunrise (6 am), and got up at 2 pm again.
I have never felt adult, so this doesn’t touch me at all :o)
Oh yes. It’s scarily often that I get a sudden bout of productivity when I sit here in the lab at 9 pm and almost have to tear myself off at 10 (or 10:30 or 10:45 or 11:00 even), after having spent most of the afternoon being tired, reading Pharyngula, and the like…
(Did send my grant proposal today and even did some bureaucracy, though.)
See comment 109. Forcing oneself to get out of bed after too little sleep never makes you awake and functional for the rest of the day.
As I said a couple of subthreads ago… self-discipline is way overrated. I’m faring pretty well with hedonism so far.
3 to 4 h of sleep per night? That doesn’t make you tired enough that you go to bed earlier automatically? ~:-|
Go to bed at 8? Now that’s insane.
Oh, children are pretty different, and their inner clock doesn’t stay stable over years or sometimes even months (especially, of course, at the beginning). As long as you’re not alone with them…
Oh, and, don’t have one child per year like BoSOM. The distances between my siblings and me are 3, 5, and 10 years… the 2 years of distance between the first two of them were a bit hard (though much of that was because both of them cried so much, for different reasons); I didn’t notice firsthand how the 3 years between my brother and me were; the 5 years between my sisters were deliberately planned and (so I hear) stemmed from the fact that I didn’t grow up faster and required too much attention. – In contrast, the little sister was very easy to care for, hardly cried, was cute beyond all belief, and is still remarkably happy most of the time.
Not that I knew the rest of the story or anything… but… I’m surprised you managed to put up with that for so long.
That’s a plain lie. If it were that bad, you wouldn’t… I mean, you’re studying law at Oxford, for crying out loud. How would you ever have got in there if you were “very rarely functional and productive”?!?
When tired, sleep. When you sleep enough, you’ll be productive afterwards.
Do you even know how many hours of sleep you need per night? (And by “need” I don’t mean “how few you can occasionally get by with and still not run into trees or doorposts too often”.)
Are you a cuttlefish or something? Because you obviously aren’t human.
(Either that, or they have very strange universities in Germany, in addition to you being one of those rare marvels that sail through school unscathed. In Germany, what do you do at a university when you get a mark that you find unjust or otherwise bizarre?)
<headdesk>
That’s cruel to both of you.
:-D
Looking forward to it ;-)
I didn’t post the music! I posted the film! :-) (Well, two scenes from it.)
Also, it was last weekend… no, two weekends ago, I think.
Heh. Django is more into troubleshooting.
LOL!
BTW, the sun has come out several times since I started writing this comment, and is now apparently here to stay… except it’ll set soon. :-)
The stupid, it pretty literally burns. Even the French only use NaOCl* (eau de Javel) to wipe their floors and stuff, and elsewhere that’s used for hardcore applications like burning mold off walls. And then people are supposed to eat the one with the two oxygens**??? I smell a lawsuit.
* Sodium hypochlorite.
** Sodium chlorite. Not a “thing I won’t work with”, but still.
Davem, seeing that I bought every album RT made in the nineties; Rumour And Sigh, Mirror Blue, you? me?, us?,, and Mock Tudor, they were all on Capital, I did not buy Action Packed. I could not limit myself to only his nineties work. For a overview of his carreer, I would suggest RT: The Life And Music Of Richard Thompson, a five CD set of life takes; solo, with Linda, Fairport and his band from the mid sixties to about five years ago. Also, while, I have no need for it, I have most of his discography, I would send any interested newby to Walking On A Wire; Richard Thompson (1968-2009) for a comprehensive look at his studio career. I took a look at the four CD, seventy-one song, collection. Every song is a keeper.
and
The two quotes above are from Utah State Senator, Steve Urquhart. The first is from an interview aired on KSL, and the second is from his blog at http://www.steveu.com/blog.
From the KSL story:
Utah could change its slogan to “Come to Utah, Chlamydia Capital of the Wild West”.
The bill was defeated. But, finding an almost reasonable conservative voice in Utah politics gives me hope. Of course, the dude can’t recognize the anti-science aspect of ID without also bashing AGW. And even the bill that was defeated as being too liberal concerning sex education included provisions to encourage a focus on abstinence.
Someone needs to start a multi-level marketing scheme selling Morning After pills in Utah.
see, the primary reason I don’t and probably won’t ever have children is that I’m entirely unsuited to being a primary caretaker. So, before I can have kids, I need a wife. And since I’m neither a man nor a lesbian, such a creature might be a wee bit difficult to come by…
Tis @143:
OMG Perfect! LOL As long as they’re not made from Concord grapes!
I don’t know if this has been reported before but paleontologists at Brigham Young Uni have discoved the skulls from 4 sauropod dinosaurs. Skulls are amazingly rare because they had to be so thin and light so as to be capable of being held off the ground by long necked sauropods.
Video, pictures and text here:
http://news.byu.edu/archive10-feb-abydosaurus.aspx
Any comments David M?
. We’ve got a real problem here and we need to take a hard look at this.”
I think taking hard looks is getting these kids into trouble in the first place…
Utah could change its slogan to “Come to Utah, Chlamydia Capital of the Wild West”.
OMG
These people really need to stop eating so much lime jello with carrots. It’s rotting their brains!
Splitter! There is no Threadiversary, only Threadmas!
Death to the Poopyhead!
Long live the Thread!
Janine, Mistress Of Foul Mouth Abuse, OM @60:
Person at #53. That’s me, Ron Sullivan. It’s part of my campaign to become invisible at all wavelengths.
Do you mean this? (Link to Beeswing tour page)
Precisely.
The last time I saw him live was in 2002.
He gets better every year. Seize your next chance.
Did a set at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in Golden Gate Park a couple years ago wherein ” ’52 Vincent Black Lightning” coincided with a pair of redtailed hawks doing courtship dances over the stage. Well-balanced wonderfulness.
Yeah, even under the conditions you are talking about, he is well worth it.
Did I mention standing in line in the rain twice because the direx to pick up will-call tix weren’t clear? Also street-surfing on wet plastic bag. I’m getting old for that sport.
And you’re right: absolutely worth it.
Janine, I am sooo envious of your being acquainted with a real Plaster Caster. The corkscrew is a telling detail. This is why we need to archive the endless thread. Otherwise, precious cultural information will be lost.
Lynna, Cynthia was the one who came up the concept and the only one who stayed with the project. Most of the others were to, ahem, prep the subjects. It started as a school project, for an art class she needed to make a cast of something hard. (Yes, when she said it, the word was in bold.) She used this as an excuse to meet guys in bands that she loved. It was also a gimmick that made her stand out from the other groupies. The guys in Paul Revere And The Raiders were the first.
Since the eighties, she pretty much just did this for bands she loved, mostly indy band like The Mekons or Demolition Dollrods. In fact, I first met her at a Jon Langford (The Mekons) solo show. Here was a woman my mother’s age singing along to the show.
Interesting person, I miss no longer seeing her.
I wanted to give a special shout-out to the esteemed lurker known as Ken Ham.
Dear Ken,
I was churning random shit together in my head this morning, as I am wont to do, and while I pondered that the origins of this thread are now disappearing into the mists of time, I mused on how we as a species will someday do the same. A million years from now, our descendants – should they endure – may find themselves arguing over what really happened in the here and now. And then the thought occurred to me: A distant descendant of yours, if they think just like you do, might solemnly believe that you never existed!
Imagine your scion, with starry-eyed certainty, building a museum dedicated to the veracity of their holy text (compiled long after we have gone, and which does not account for us). See him wave away the counterevidence, such as when your very own fossilized bones are excavated and examined by the hard-working scientists of that era. Finally, witness the interesting twist, where he does not realize that a worldwide flood brought about by an intelligent agent (hint: us) washed your remains into some geological stratum where they shouldn’t be – from which observation he prematurely concludes that you are a hoax!
Thank you for allowing me to share these thoughts with you. I hope they brighten your day.
Mr. Fire
Ron Sullivan, I must have seen RT about ten times from the late eighties (When Clive Gregson and Christine Collister were part of the band.) through 2002. All were great but the best was an acoustic show at The Old Town in Chicago. It was just RT with Danny Thompson on the stand up bass. Lots of jokes about the rivalry between Fairport and Pentacle and I had front row seats. And anyone who been at a show at The Old Town can testify to what a great sound the place has.
Speaking o’ Threadmas, can we get, for the next War on Christmas ….
Keep “mass” in Christmas. It’s a Catholic holy day. You Protestants bugger off.
Ron Sullivan here. I keep forgetting I have to sign these things.
Janine @186, I think the dream bill with RT on it was a few years back at a winery in Hopland, with David Grisman and Beausoleil.* We’re both trying to remember when we saw Danny T with him; Joe thinks it was at the Warfield. We generally drag ourselves out whenever he shows up around here except for those unfortunate times he plays the Fillmore because we’re too damned old to stand on tiptoe for three hours.
Heard the Blind Boys of Alabama’s cover of “Dimming of the Day”? It sounds great of course but I think I kinda resent their turning it into some sort of devotional. Maybe I’m just touchy.
*Kw*kking: When you look at the cover of Beausoleil’s Live from the Left Coast, the pale blob on the stage-left balcony is us. Also at the GAMH.
Behold the Violent History of Saturn’s White Whale Moon
I think I’d better get some sleep. I saw Lynna’s first sentence in 189 as Behold the Violent History of Santorun’s Pale Moon.
SC OM @167
Poster from that concert I was bragging about. Good sound, long grass, shade on a warm day, and Oh yeah wine. Great gardens too. Pity they don’t do concerts there anymore, AFAIK.
Ron Sullivan
http://toad.faultline.org
Argh! Used <sup> instead of <sub> in comment 175! Now I gave it two charges but don’t tell if they’re + or –!
Anyway, the sun stayed out till sunset. It stayed cloudy, however, so the lower layer of clouds was dark bluish gray and the upper layer was pink…
Thought so. So let me slightly rephrase: as long as you’re not too alone with them…
And you’re sure you’re not a little bit sexist about this…? :^)
I still haven’t read the paper. What little I’ve read about it is of course impressive; Dan Chure in the video is (big surprise there) right when he says he can’t overemphasize how rare sauropod skulls are in the fossil record. Even isolated braincases or jaw fragments are very rare; as a result, we underestimate the weirdness and the diversity (…of weirdness).
<Kw*k>I’ll not even restrain myself from saying I know Brooks B. Britt personally – at the SVP meeting dinner 2 years ago, he ended up sitting next to me, said “Hi, I’m Brooks”, and we chatted a little.
(Also at that table: a Japanese student with a document family history of samurai all the way down to the 8th or 9th century or something, and a few tales to tell. They still have the blade of the family sword, too.)</Kw*k>
No such big bones in Poland so far; there, it ends at rhino- or hippo-size.
From the article:
Or perhaps the other way around – sauropods didn’t chew, so the skulls could afford to be lightly built, which in turn made insanely long necks possible. The article hints at this later:
The only problems with the article are in the last paragraph:
1) First things first – Apatosaurus and Camarasaurus belong in italics, too !!
2) John S. “Jack” McIntosh is a legendary figure; he did his paleontology on the side, in addition to his day-job as a Yale professor of high-energy physics!!! (I only read about this yesterday myself.)
3) Brontosaurus was sunk into Apatosaurus by Elmer Riggs in 1903… in a paper that appeared in a journal that few people read. It was later than 1903 that the American Museum of Natural History put up its “Brontosaurus” skeleton and thus cemented the name in children’s books for the next decades. McIntosh was apparently the one (I’m not that deep into history of science) who found out in 1975 that that skeleton was a chimera, consisting mostly of Apatosaurus but with the head and tail end of a Camarasaurus on.
McIntosh & Berman (1975) also found out that another skull that had been thought to belong to Brontosaurus since 1883 is from something else and suggested it could belong to Brachiosaurus – the real one, not Giraffatitan which has supplied the largest mounted skeleton in the world to Berlin, more precisely the Humboldt-Museum für Naturkunde (des Leibniz-Instituts für… whatever… der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin <pant> <pant>). The little drawing of that skull in the paper cited below looks a lot like those of Abydosaurus, though it’s part of a skeletal reconstruction, so it’s not detailed and may not be entirely reliable.
Michael P. Taylor*: A re-evaluation of Brachiosaurus altithorax Riggs 1904 (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) and its generic separation from Giraffatitan brancai (Janensch 1914). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 29(3), 787–806 (12 September 2009)
* Not to be confused with Michael A. Taylor who works on plesiosaurs.
Oh… McIntosh & Berman (1975) is a paper I haven’t read – Mike Taylor cites it:
I went looking for _Dimming_of_the_Day_, and nearly got my ears blasted off. I forgot I’ve been listening to The Trumpets of Jericho
by E Nomine. It has snarling in German, chanting in Latin, trumpets and drums. It may be religious, but it sure isn’t church music.
What? WTF did I open a blockquote in front of the citation of McIntosh & Berman ’75?
Win!!!
Here is something totally different.
I have collected bits of crinoids from the Silurian and the Carboniferous close (ish) to where I live. I have seen wonderful specimens in the Natural History Museum (S Kensington). I have studied pictures in books and on the Internet.
I have always understood that they had a cup made up of plates to which were attached feeder “arms”. The cup was supported on a long stem which was made up of circular or pentagonal discs. As a result, the stems were flexible and waved in the currents. Shortly after death the stem broke down to produce individual segments. I have a number of samples of crinoid “gravel” which is made up of individual segments cemented in a matrix of lime mud. Finally, the stem was firmly attached to the bottom by a holdfast so the whole thing waved about in the bottom currents.
Look for crinoids in Google Images and the first page will show modern crinoids from the sea bottom (benthic) as well as a variety of fossil crinoids.
But I have never read anything like this!
http://echinoblog.blogspot.com/2010/02/giant-floaty-swimmy-fossil-crinoids.html
This literally turns (at least some) crinoids upside down! Pelagic crinoids.
Giant crinoids attached to logs, apparently floating near the surface. Dozens of them attached to one log several metres long!! Other crinoids with gas balloons on the ends of stems. Crinoids which it is suggested drifted just above the sea bed and dredged the deposit surface.
Beautiful pictures and interesting text – crinoids as you may never have seen them before.
(Maybe this is old news. It’s new news to me!)
I decided to work from home today because of a doctor’s appointment that was going to break up the day anyway – then my kids’ school shut down for the afternoon and so did the college. Whee?
Heard the Blind Boys of Alabama’s cover of “Dimming of the Day”? It sounds great of course but I think I kinda resent their turning it into some sort of devotional. Maybe I’m just touchy.
You can find that on Beat The Retreat. That was a stunning cover. And, no, it did not really bother me. Many of RT songs are like prime soul songs, they cover the ground between love songs and devotionals. His album with Linda, Pour Down Like Silver, screams out his muslim faith. (And not just those cover photos.) It is also one of his best albums.
As good as this tribute album is, I like The World Is A Wonderful Place Better. The title song should have been released on a proper album but given the darkness of the song, it never would have gone anywhere. Christine Collister’s cover of How Will I Ever Be Simple Again is heartbreaking, Plainsong’s a capella rendition of Galway To Graceland is beautiful and Full Moon Fair (Henry Kaiser)doing Night Comes In is as stunning as The Five Bind Boys Of Alabama.
Gah! I’m swapmed! Much more later!
Crinoid vidz:
they are Cool
Wouldn’t work. The foot-soldiers of the MLMs are overwhelmingly Mormons in my experience.
Regarding sauropods: I have long thought it likely that the big guys with long necks did not feed from trees, but were made for an energy-conserving ground-feeding method. That consisted of shuffling a step, sweeping those long necks in a big arc to feed off a big area of ground, and shuffling another step. Which results in a lot of area for a little locomotion.
I had never seen any mention of this idea, but I just now caught a small reference to it while checking before writing about it here. Huh.
Didn’t mention yet… I had half a portion of cauliflower-broccoli soup in the cafeteria today. I don’t like cauliflower in general, but this soup was blended, and I had no alternative (other than skipping the entire meal altogether)… Surprisingly, it was a bit bitter, rather lacking in the usual cauliflower taste.
I only knew half of this. It’s deeply impressive, but read the comments, too…
Cool. Why did they shut down?
of course I am. this is a reference to a well-known, snarky answer to the question why women are so much less common in the upper echelons of high-stress, time consuming careers: it’s because, unlike most businessmen, businesswomen do not have wifes who take over all household management and thus free the businessperson to focus entirely on their career.
I’m in no way saying men can’t be primary caretakers. I am however saying that, since women are still automatically expected to do the housekeeping and child-rising, it’s hard enough to find men who will do an equal share of that work; finding one willing to do the majority of it would be even more difficult.
And since I’m not actually looking for one (having children doesn’t even register on the priority list), this just isn’t going to happen for me. Certainly, the current boyfriend doesn’t qualify as a “wife”, if only because neither of us seems capable of keeping this place clean. doesn’t matter right now, since right now only the mice eat off the floor; but with a baby, the floors would probably have to be cleaned more often than once every 6 months…
did I mention I’m completely unsuited for parenthood? :-p
:D
Yes, to be honest, I don’t either. Just showing off, even if there’s not much to show off.
Last Thread, someone (Janine? Lynna?) said that she would never walk behind somebody else. I like to walk behind others! It makes them feel all itchy between the shoulderblades.
(And if it doesn’t, they’ll soon find out why they should!)]
:D
Interesting, because it has been widespread in the primary literature.
It’s also controversial, though. For instance, it doesn’t actually save energy – for such a large animal, locomotion is relatively so cheap that growing and maintaining an endless neck instead would be a huge waste. The walking necessary to exploit the space such a neck can reach on the ground requires the energy contained in, like, half a bite of “fresh browse” for Giraffatitan, as was calculated in Paul & Leahy (1994) or Paul (1998). I don’t remember which one, but can supply references later.
There are also interesting differences between at least two types of long sauropod necks. Unfortunately they’re still not sufficiently understood.
Janine @184, you are just raising the jealousy stakes. Knowing Cynthia and going to concerts with her … awesome. I’ve never seen any of the casts of breasts. I’ll have to take some time and google the plaster casts of boobs.
Evangelicals interrupted a Voodoo ceremony, and now there’s video up of the interaction. There’s also a story that includes a declaration of holy war:
Loved the crinoid videos and news. I have some crinoid fossils — found at the southern tip of the Lemhi Range.
I clean up to once a week… in fact, I’ll come home “early” today, and I’m not catastrophically tired yet, so I should be able to do last weekend’s floor-wiping today… :-)
Snow day. The storm’s been forecast for a few days, but they were gun-shy about closing schools because as of this morning we had only gotten about 4-5 inches, not nearly what had been forecast. Then came the snow, and it’s still coming. I shoveled the driveway 4 hours ago, and now it’s got what looks like another 6 inches or so on top. Shutting down in the middle of the day is the worst case scenario for K-12 because of the after school care problems (they have to contact every child’s family to make sure someone will be there for them when they get home), but it was a pretty sudden “Oh crap it really is getting bad out there” kind of decision.
You’re right. Mormons can be duplicitous and hypocritical (especially when it comes to making money), but they can’t be openly duplicitous and hypocritical.
So, this means that a mormon management team needs to hire infidels and apostates to start up a black market in “morning after” pills. Such a thing might even already exist — headquartered in Mexico?
Can I post a Mormon joke or two that follow in this vein?
Q: How do you keep a Mormon from drinking all your booze at a party?
A: Invite two of them.
Q: How do you distinguish between the major Christian sects?
A: Protestants don’t recognise the authority of the Pope, Catholics don’t recognise the legitimacy of divorce, and Mormons don’t recognise each other at the liquor store.
#207 Lynna
Hi Lynna
Presumably you or your brother are aware of:
Structural Geology of Western Part of Lemhi Range, East-Central Idaho
U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 1659
http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/p1659/p1659.pdf
#201 & #206
Well, there was always the Lawn Mower dinosaur (Nigersaurus):
Now there’s a dino
designedadapted to a life of low-level browseing!(Yes, I know there was no grass – would you prefer “fern mower”?)
#201 & #206
This is how they lived and ate – we have video of it:
Alan B @212: I think Steve has that document, but I’ll ask him to be sure. I remember reading it once when I was looking for info I wanted to incorporate in Backcountry Roads, but I found it a hard slog. It’s too technical for me. I need to go back to school.
As for the Gertie the Dinosaur cartoon, I note that dinos ate rocks and swallowed trees. Seems right.
NCAA yanks Focus on the Family ad amid concerns
#215 Lynna
Gastroliths! Sauropods did at least.
(Sorry – only Wiki but it gives a flavour)
Argh. I had to chair a debate this evening. It went quite badly.
Also, I have to stay up tonight and finish my work, and I really, really want a Diet Pepsi. But the vending machine only accepts coins, and I only have 50p in coins (I need 60p). How can I possibly finish this work without more caffeine?
(OK, I’m now officially using the Endless Thread as a substitute for Twitter.)
I don’t get to read much serious literature these days, sadly. I was just proud that I came up with the idea on my own. Thanks, David and others, for links and info.
:-)
that was more than 160 characters… ;-)
Nigersaurus was indeed quite obviously a grazer, but one of the features that make this obvious is its (for a sauropod) extremely short neck.
Aaaaah. The classic. =8-)
That would make sense, but that’s not what sauropods did; their gastroliths don’t look like it, as a recent series of experimental papers by Oliver Wings shows. This makes it a very good question what the fuck they did with their gastroliths. Perhaps they just used them to stir their food around in the stomach.
You had to?
You got up at 7:30 and still have to stay up? Either your studies are really cruel. Or you were too tired today to do much of anything. Or, of course, both. :-(
Keith Olbermann talks about “death panels”, the entire health care debacle, and his father’s experiences with the health care system. Olbermann swears at Sarah Palin, and generally makes a very strong statement. Long, but worth watching.
Walton #218
The perversity of the universe tends to a Maximum
This morning things went well.
Got up at 6.45, shit, shower, shave and shampoo (in the correct order). Took Miss M her tea in bed, made and ate breakfast, made my lunch and packed it into my tastful (lime green decorated with frogs) lunch box. Kissed Miss M, drove to work and parked neatly. Self congratulation was evident even to the blackbird singing in the tree.
Then I noticed I had forgotten my lunch box.
Ther’s always somthing to bite your ankle.
Have you facepalmed enough today? No? Then go here.
X-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D
Perfect. :-)
Y’know, if I don’t have a Snow White-style duet with some passerines in the morning, I just know I’m doing somethin’ wrong…
(/Like forgetting the ‘shrooms I usually stir into my omelette, say…)
I’d love to fulfill my daily facepalm quota, but you borked the link
I’m very cautious about posting here, because I believe in the vernacular of this strange little world I’m a troll?
But strange Gods posted about suicide, and no one has really given a clear picture of what to expect. Typically, patients in deepest depression will not take their lives until they begin to emerge from the depression. The emergence provides them with both the energy to follow through and the stimulus to avoid “ever going back there again.” As others have posted, just when they are on the mend they are at greatest risk.
In terms of medications to watch for in her age group, I have found beta blockers to be very fatiguing to the elderly. They are also commonly prescribed but have a worse side effect picture than the newer drugs, which are more effective.
I have also found elderly patients resistant to the internet as a “social group.” They tend to do better in face-to-face interactions, like the “red hat” society. But statistically, a church group of some kind (I know, heresy on this site, but I’m already a troll) is what that age group best responds to. The Unitarian Universalists are a group that are widely available and do not have a fixed religious doctrine.
With family members I have found beginning the discussion of “when should mom be in assisted living?” has prompted changes in living arrangements, either to assisted living or to live with a child. In either case, mom feels more part of the social fabric.
The fear of leaving home and new things is also typical. I have found that supplementing with the essential amino acid tryptophan (I already said I was a troll) is helpful in easing anxiety and supporting sleep. It has the advantage of being fairly non-toxic and being available over-the-counter so she doesn’t have to get another prescription. It may interact with any other anti-depressant, but it’s cross reaction to other medications is minimal.
Because I know I’m a troll, but I’m still determined to help, I have posted various studies on depression under the “What Do I Treat?” section of my website: http://www.maloneymedical.com
From one person who’s lost dear ones to you.
Christopher Maloney, N.D.
You’re not a troll unless you’re trolling.
Everybody is welcome in the Thread Everlasting, but everyone is also exposed for argument or criticism.
I not only clean the floors but I do the dishes as well. My plates are so clean you could eat off of them.
Some folks around here are habitually too quick to apply the “troll” label, IMO.
STFU, troll.
‘Tis Himself, OM @ 229:
Would you like to be my 2nd husband?
<facepalm> I did. Second try. You’ve probably already seen it, it’s in the Top 5 Most Active…
No, that term has a fairly strict definition: a troll is someone who deliberately throws an infuriating remark in and giggles at the predictably infuriated responses. It’s remarkably common that trolls openly admit to trolling after a couple of comments, as a kind of power game (“see, you all dance to my tune”).
Besides, you didn’t actually advocate any naturopathic or otherwise untested remedies… :o)
And yes, I can easily imagine that a UU community would help. After all, these aren’t people who desperately wrestle with the fact that their moral compass is better than their god’s. (Barb, now banned, was such a specimen that is to cry for.)
@Christopher Maloney: Those are generally good ideas, and true. Most depressives don’t have the energy to commit suicide until recovering (as wrong as that sounds, at least that’s what they taught us in nursing school; the biggest suicide risk is as they begin recovery). Community of ANY type is helpful, if the person can be encouraged to get involved.
Your comment this time wasn’t trolling; however, I did NOT go to your site to read what you have there. Your comment here was generally appropriate, although blog self-promotion is not usually appreciated.
you’re right, I have. I read Dispatches daily :-)
We’ve actually been bereft of ‘real’ trolls over the last few days – in my time zone, at least. But I think we’ve become more accustomed to not having anyone to stomp. Last time we went this long without a knock-down-drag-out certain people seemed to want to start fights for the sake of it.
Heh. I only use one, and that only for soups, so I can simply lick it clean… then there’s one pot which I almost never need to clean because I only cook the same 2 to 3 things in it (and it’s easy to empty just about completely with spoon and teeth)… the other pot I only use for noodles and for heating water for tea; both are very rare occurrences, so it hardly matters that it needs to be washed when I had noodles and want tea. Currently it’s been standing around unwashed for 2 weeks, I think, if not 3.
My milk mug needs to be washed every couple of weeks, too. Using it twice per day does leave deposits over longer timespans. The tea mug never needs to be cleaned.
</TMI>
Oh yeah?! Did not! Post proof or retract! Jerk!
(/Mandatory/obvious…)
No, you’re a quack.
I used to, till I noticed there are only 30 hours in a day. :-(
Trolls, creationists, lots of groups of people have become very rare since PZ made registration obligatory in order to get rid of the spambots; he didn’t have time to delete their hundreds of comments per day anymore. (The ScienceBlogs overlords, you see, are too stupid to implement a Captcha or anything.)
I tried in comment #231, but Sven’s not biting. He must be chicken.
HaPpY hApPy !!!
Quackalicious #227
One problem is you’ve been outed as an anti-rationalist. As a group the Pharyngula regulars are either scientists or interested in science. We think of ourselves as rationalists. Dealing with SIWOTI is one of our favorite pastimes.
There’s the further problem that you’ve come across as something of a whiner. Both of these problems are things you’ll have to overcome.
Our standards are high, particularly on the never-ending thread, which has a high percentage of OMs (Order of Molly).
Anyone can post here. Just be warned that you may be called upon to support any statements you make and that you’ll be insulted. We discourage ad hominem attacks. Consider the difference between “You’re wrong because you’re a fucking idiot” and “You’re wrong because of fact A, you fucking idiot.” The former is ad hominem, the latter is a legitimate response to a claim coupled with an insult. I guarantee if you post here for any length of time you will be insulted.
My leave has been approved for the GAC, so all I have to do now is organise accommodation.
indeed :-)
incidentally, I use the same cleaning method as you when I’m living by myself and/or don’t feel like cooking for extended periods of time. however, actually cooking requires the washing of various pots, pans, cutting boards, utensils, etc.
I still keep on reusing the same dinner plate, though… I think it probably gets washed once every 4-5 meals on average.
yeah, the world is evil that way. so much information, so little time to absorb it!!
You can help by stopping offering quack treatments as an means of therapy.
David M. and Jadehawk: Are you serious? I would never reuse a dinner plate without washing it up first. Nor, usually, a coffee mug (I don’t drink tea). The only things I keep using without washing them are cups/glasses for Diet Pepsi (it doesn’t taste so good if you drink it straight from the can). And I thought I was a lazy student…
David Marjanović #224
Reminds me of The Great Loyalty Oath Crusade (Catch 22) somehow..
First read that about 1965. I still remember how my ribs ached.
I sometimes read ‘General Dreedle’s Nurse to Miss M.
She still needs a strong cuppa to recover.
absolutely serious. but then, you’d probably be utterly grossed out by my living standards anyway. I’ve given up the fight for sanitary living conditions a long time ago. as long as it doesn’t make me ill, i can no longer be bothered to care.
and have i mentioned i have mice? and not as pets, either.
What about tea stains in the mug? Being British, I’m very particular about my tea: is it correct to add the milk before the tea and bleach or after them?
Argh. International law. ILC Draft Articles on State Responsibility. Nottebohm. Barcelona Traction. UN General Assembly Resolution 1803. Need… more… caffeine…
(Ignore me. I’m just venting.)
I see our Qwack stopped by so show he is an amoral fool without any science backing him. Which we already knew. And blogwhoring can be considered a crime, depending on how much PZ’s dental work is hurting him. What a loser.
Venting? PLASMA?! Bridge, we’ve got an emergency down in engineering! I estimate three minutes to a warp core breach!
Damn! Our last dilithium crystals are still in the draining rack. Jadehawk refuses to clean them during her watch so I have to clean hers and mine both.
See, this is exactly why I specified a crystal washer or at the very least a double sink, but do those hyperspanner-monkeys at Utopia Planitia ever listen to the people who are actually gonna use the damn ship? Oh no-o-o-o-o-o-o!
Hey – why is it always ‘down in engineering’?
aren’t we being just a bit engineeringist here?
Shelterbox Update
http://www.shelterbox.org/news.php?id=252
Mrs Tilton has been sighted in the 10 latest comments.
Chicken chicken chicken
(And don’t think it’s repetitive. Watch it all the way to the end. And then maybe download the pdf, even!)
<hug> ^_^ ^_^ ^_^
Sorry, couldn’t restrain myself :-)
When I, sir, lick a dinnerplate clean, it’s clean and dry, and indistinguishable from a washed-up & dried one. Same result for less time, less effort, and less waste of good food.
Basically, what I need to wash up is where my tongue doesn’t reach! =8-)
Mice are nice.
Yeah, what about them? :-| What about tea stains in the tea mug? Will they make the tea taste of tea?
<sigh> Yes, but Christopher Maloney, Negatio Doctoris, hasn’t done any that far. Linking to one’s blog in one’s name is normal. In fact, it’s what I have to pretend to be doing just so that I can comment here at all (I don’t have a blog, the link in my name doesn’t lead anywhere).
That’s like crossing the streams, right?
* * *
And now I’m off to wipe the floor :-) :-) :-) I’m so proud of myself :-) :-) :-)
(Given my dust allergy, and the dirt on my shoes, I should wipe it every weekend. Doesn’t happen, somehow.)
Have you been there? Depressing place. Total bringdown. Hence…
Been There??
I practically fucking live there!
But then what do I know? I’m just an Ignorant engineer
Ugh! *retches* Please tell me you’re joking. Seriously.
Anyway, I’m going to bed now, having just about got my head around the ILC Draft Articles on State Responsibility (which would actually be very interesting if I were less tired).
Because on the Enterprise, in all its various incarnations, engineering was always on a lower deck than the bridge. (On the NCC-1701-D, engineering must have been located in the part of the ship containing the nacelles and the battle bridge, since engineering contained the warp core, and the saucer section was meant to be separable from the nacelles but could only travel on impulse power. I remember a couple of non-canon novels in which the saucer section was separated, though I can’t recall if it happened in an episode.)
Wow. I should not be displaying my geek status so flamboyantly in a public forum. I blame sleep deprivation.
Actually, I should mention that I didn’t even come up with “mice are nice” on my own, though I… hopefully could have. It’s from a Tom & Jerry film. “Roses are red, violets are blue, mice are nice, and so are YOU, KID!!! [in huge red letters that I don’t want to reproduce here]”…
My brother and I communicate mostly in citations from the classical literature, as if we were Confucian scholars, or those Star Trek weirdos with their “entirely metaphorical language”. Only our definition of “classical literature” is a bit different: it consists mostly of the German version of this…
Well, as I said, I’m off to wipe the floor. :-)
David Marjanović @ 233:
Yep. Mine will get rinsed if I get rushed and can’t finish my tea, but that’s all.
Walton, I guess this is one forum where your geek status won’t a problem.
Isn’t separating your saucer and engineering sections in battle now famous as the Picard Manoeuvre?
And to prove it here I am in that
‘Depressing place. Total bringdown’
http://picasaweb.google.com/108761785989910513889/Work#
Doh. Yes, of course it is. I forgot that.
Evidently I’m not even a good geek (not while sleep-deprived, anyway).
I really need to go to bed, but can’t summon the energy to move away from the computer. Please shout at me (in ALL CAPS) if I post again before tomorrow morning. :-)
Absolutely not. When I write “clean & dry”, I mean it. The trick is to have your lower lip follow your tongue closely so it presses against the plate in a watertight manner. In general, I do a lot of “licking” with the lips only – of knives, for instance, and of ice cream most of the time when I can’t eat it with a little spoon (I don’t like wafers, you see).
Most of the floor is wiped. Especially the part between me and the light switch. I’ll need to perform acrobatic maneuvers to be able to go to bed… Last time I actually thought of this and opened the blinds; there’s a street lamp in front of the window, which is plenty enough light to wipe the floor, go to bed, and close the blinds again. <sigh>
It looks like the Picard Maneuver is using a burst of warp speed to make it appear as if there are two vessels, confusing the enemy and leaving them vulnerable. The saucer separation battle tactic was dreamt up by Commander Shelby and employed by Riker with a twist to capture Locutus of Borg.
Holy crap, SteveV! That’s ‘Men at Work’? Which one is Colin Hay?
Because in ships engineering is always below the main deck. Look at this ship and this one and even this one. You don’t see boilers and turbines and mechanicy stuff hanging around in the open air? Of course not. If you want to see an engine room you’ve got to go down.
Done. Next to my 3 pairs of shoes I had left enough unwiped that 3 steps and a knife were enough to switch the light off. :-) Also, there are 2 street lamps in front of my window, not 1. Good night, Walton.
#198 Posted by: Janine, Mistress Of Foul Mouth Abuse, OM | February 25, 2010 1:54 PM
You can find that on Beat The Retreat. That was a stunning cover. And, no, it did not really bother me. Many of RT songs are like prime soul songs, they cover the ground between love songs and devotionals. His album with Linda, Pour Down Like Silver, screams out his muslim faith. (And not just those cover photos.) It is also one of his best albums.
Have ’em both, and y’know I’d forgotten what album DotD was on. That one is a knockout; “For Shame of Doing Wrong” has always grabbed me too. Left me more kindly disposed toward Sufism than I might be otherwise.
We heard the BBofA sing “Dimming” at the Fillmore, the night we decided we were too old to go there again.
As good as this tribute album is, I like The World Is A Wonderful Place Better. The title song should have been released on a proper album but given the darkness of the song, it never would have gone anywhere. Christine Collister’s cover of How Will I Ever Be Simple Again is heartbreaking, Plainsong’s a capella rendition of Galway To Graceland is beautiful and Full Moon Fair (Henry Kaiser)doing Night Comes In is as stunning as The Five Bind Boys Of Alabama.
I couldn’t name a favorite, myself, but yeah we have both and I concur with your assessments there. We saw Full Moon Fair live, which meant something like 126? strings (no piano) on the old Freight’s teeny little stage. I know we have a recording of the Mekong Delta Blues set somewhere but I’ll be damned if I can find it and Joe’s doing an interview so I can’t ask him where the hell he filed it.
Looking for that, I found we have a CD of that winery concert, too: From Scotland to Hopland.
Where the hell’s Watching the Dark?? OH, maybe we only have the LP. I was thrilled when we found Henry the Human Fly on CD because LPs don’t work so well in the car and that’s great staying-awake music.
Damn, we need another re-org here. We do have that big old five-CD RT collection and a bunch of “official bootlegs.”
Ah. Joe’s off the phone and found the Henry Kaiser CD Hope You Like Our New Direction with that Full Moon Fair track; also, RT’s “Annihilation in Allah”, speaking of faithey stuff.
I find I often enjoy stuff in languages I don’t understand ‘cuz often I’d rather not, ya know?
Pee Yes: #273 was me, Ron Sullivan, the Queen of Forgetting Things.
There …are …two lights!!!
I suddenly have a strong urge to send David one of these, but to each his own. As long as he doesn’t invite anyone over for dinner.
I’ve met several people who swear by the patina formed in coffee and tea mugs, and think that washing the mug totally ruins months to years of effort to build it up.
If you think what’s been described in this thread is nauseating, Walton, you really need to read – if you can get it in the UK – He Died with a Felafel in His Hand, a slightly fictionalised account of student sharehousing in Australia in the late 70s/early 80s.
Utterly, utterly brilliant – while slightly horrifying in terms of living conditions (and drug use).
I’m probably slightly more hygienic than Jadehawk and DM, but not by much. I tend to rinse and reuse things once or twice and do the washing up maybe 2 or 3 times a week.
Also, I learned while at college that a tannin-stained mug is far less likely to get stolen from the communal kitchen than a nice, clean one. As a result mine only gets washed very slightly; to try and scour out the stains would take far more effort than I’m prepared to put in.
as long as they don’t mix them, it’s all good. tea out of coffee mugs, and coffee out of tea mugs both taste horrible. this is even true for thermos bottles, even ones that are actually cleaned, so my mom always had two: one for tea, one for coffee.
Bronian #270 Guy second from left played guitar, but could not be decribed as either Austraaalian or Colin.
I’ve just noticed – don’t we all look bloody smug!
Bronian? Bronian?
Deepest apoloigies
I will now deploy excuses 27 & 42
Ahem
‘Shakespear couln’t spell either’
‘It’s well past my bedtime’
@279: Guys looking smug in little blue suits (and little blue hair coverings)– well, it’s a skill, isn’t it?
Here’s an awesome service from LDS Rankings. They have ranked all the apologists and the apologetics websites so we only have to read the highest quality of bullshit.
They begin by helpfully offering a definition:
[you may begin facepalming and headdesking now]
Here are some choice excerpts:
[Don’t you just love the use of “evidences” instead of “evidence”? — mucho more serious that way … and believable.]
This last one is at http://www.fairlds.org, and the site offers an “Ask the Apologist” feature. So, if you like, you can go there and pose questions.
‘Tis Himself, OM #271
This is as close as I get to ships
I apologize to Jadehawk and to David M. for washing my dishes. I can’t help it.
I spent over four years in this ship. :-P
‘Tis, at one time we had a cGMP trainer who had a photo of his ship at the North Pole. You do anything like that?
I found out by chance yesterday that the Professor of Emergency in my organisation, the, like, ueber-Doctor,a strictly suit and tie type who at work is as funny as a dead rat, is a total utter Star Trek geek, every episode archived, little models on the walls, goes to conventions, the whole shebang.
It was quite the shock.
*Nods*
:P
Oh, and look what the cat dragged in !
Baloney @ 227,
What do you mean by newer drugs ? That work like betablockers while not being betablockers?Or newer betablockers?What do you mean by fatiguing?And does this happen to every elderly person, or just a select few, and how do you explain this?And what side effects are you talking about?
I find your statement to be of mind-boggling generalisation and little substance.
Rorschach,
*Nods*Nerds.Fixed it for you :)
Pikachu, some days ago you linked to a lovely rendition of lao duang deuan, a choral arrangement, I think. I wanted to let you know that I went and bought the sheet music and I’m utterly confounded as to pronunciation, but I love the song, Westernized as it must be for someone trained as I was trained. Thanks for sharing.
Lynna – All breastplates are OM worthy, brass or not. *smirk*
Thank you all for the suggestions on the last thread. We continued the discussion but those four men weren’t there, so I had no use for your advice, unfortunately. (It may interest you to know that one of the men also stated that Haiti’s problem were due to their own personal failings, that poor people are at fault because the “chose” to live in undesirable areas, and that he goes on to evangelical missions to “save” these people.)
P.S. Is my moniker comprehendible? I have a feeling that few people knows what Apolipoprotein E is.
Patricia! Great to hear from you. Unfortunately, we haven’t got any trolls for you to smite, but there’s still good times to be had.
How are things?
Wowbagger – er, Janine has kept my secret…but, since you asked… I’ve been asked out on a date.
Good for you, Patricia! Have fun!
TimeCube!
Six Sides!
= = = = = =
6^3 = 216
216 * 3.0833333333333333333333333333333 = 666!
666 = Evil !
Time Cube!
happy Blogiversary, Endless Thread!
/Psychotic
For Chrissakes, somebody get windy some raw taspar eggs already!
This is getting too close to a ship.
Patricia, Ignorant Slut OM @ 293:
Don’t forget your breastplate!
Damn. I wish that happened to me!
OK, this is long, but bear with me while I indulge in what passes for humor in some circles:
A long-time atheist approaches the end of his life, comfortable with his beliefs and the end of his earthly existence. (He had begun life as a Calvinist but as the years went by he had realized that the tenets of said faith were totally illogical.) As the end approaches he senses darkness and begins to relax and feel his body shutting down. Suddenly he sees a bright light approaching, as if at the end of a tunnel. “I know what’s happening,” he thinks to himself, “this is purely a neurological phenomenon.” As he reaches the light a sense of wonderment & joy engulfs him. “Yep, more neat neurological stuff going on,” he says to himself. His body begins to feel lighter and he begins to rise. “Man, dying isn’t really all that bad,” he realizes. “I wonder if evolution has selected for these effects at the end of consciousness or if it’s all just a byproduct of consciousness. . .”
Suddenly he pops through a gap in the clouds and is face to face with an enormous set of gates, with a definite pearly iridescence, and an attendant at a desk barring entry. “Oh, shit! It’s not supposed to be like this!”
The attendant smiles, gestures him forward and says “We’ve got a few formalities here as a part of the admissions decision. “Name?” “Date of birth?” No problem so far. . . “Religion?” Our new arrival, possibly honed by years spent debating creationists online, stand defiantly erect and says “None! And bald is not a hair color!”
“Relax ,” says the attendant, “you’re in. All you atheists get uptight when I ask that question. The only reason we ask is to help figure out the best neighborhood for you to start out in. Step through the door and, before you ask, no harps, no choirs, unless you’re into that kind of stuff. There’ll be a guide inside to help you with rookie orientation.”
Our friend enters a paradise. Food, drink, great conversation & companionship, kick-ass web connections, everything he’d ever wanted. And truly heavenly bacon. He turns to the guide and says “I guess I’d better apologize to someone for turning away from the truth. How can I speak to John Calvin?”
The guide responds slowly and carefully: “I’m afraid you’ll have to request a pass and get a fireproof suit. Mr. Calvin isn’t here.”
Before our atheist friend can respond he is shocked almost beyond words when Richard Dawkins walks by. All he can do is point and say “What?? When?!?” The guide laughs and says, “Take a deep breath – it’s no big deal. Richard is perfectly healthy and alive on earth. That’s God – he just likes to pretend he’s Richard Dawkins.”
Don’t know why this came to me today. . .
Caine – Never! Breastplates or required garb at garden shows.
Sorry Wowbagger, all that deep water makes it hard for me to ask you out on a date to go riding. Taking for granted you like Harley’s. *smirk*
Ah, good. I just needed confirmation from the expert. [fist to breastplate, salute]
Woo-ee. Patricia on a date. Well, enjoy yourself dear lady.
Patrica, how nice to hear (or read) from you again. Congratulations on getting your social life going.
Hour shoveling, third time today….such heavy snow….cars buried….a foot and a half at least since this morning…
Argh. Usually when we get this much it at least has the decency to be lake effect snow that’s easy to shovel. This stuff has the whole region shut down.
Oo, Patricia has a date! Have fun! :)
I’ve only got one question to ask regarding our new requirement of breastplate wearing
are we talking nipple-less, a la Michael Keaton, or nippled (as gloriously demonstrated) by George Clooney?
Gosh, thanks everyone.
Carlie @ #305
As someone who spent a childhood dodging coconuts and crocodiles I am naively igorant regarding snow cleaning policy and/or etiquette.
Out of curiousity though, isn’t there some other method apart from physically shovelling the stuff …hot water, flamethrowers, lots of dogs with full bladders urinating on the stuff?
Carlie, I understand what you mean. In dah UP, we had a lot of fluffly lake effect snow. Much easier to shovel than the stuff we usually get in this area. Although, last night’s snow was the fluffy stuff.
Bride of Shrek OM @ 307:
I want mine like Angua’s* but with nipples. Gotta have nipples.
*Werewolf in the Watch, Discworld.
Actually, while I like motorcycles (in principle – I find them fascinating from an aesthetic/mechanical perspective), riding pillion scares the living crap out of me. It would have to be a choice between life and death (or, at the very least, serious inconvenience) before I’d willingly go on the back of a bike.
NoR #285
No, my boat never went there. However if you read Sherry Sontag & Christopher Drew’s Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage my old sub the Gato is mentioned several times. While I was aboard her we had a collision with a Soviet submarine that was rather exciting and classified INCREDIBLY SECRET-BURN BEFORE READING for years.
About depression: beta blockers are, actually, proving useful in relieving anxiety, specifically ancient beta-blockers like Propranolol.
They’ve been used to help chronic phobias, folks with PTSD, and general anxiety attacks.
They apparently work by shutting down the response to adrenaline, this is only speculation, but this may blunt the reinforcing effects of reliving or experiencing the same trauma or anxiety.
Since childhood episodes leading to PTSD-type symptoms (those who were abused) have responded to this treatment, as have some with wartime PTSD, it would appear that a refutation might exist for our ND’s position, given that PTSD is one of the means of acquiring a condition that can lead to major depression and higher risk of suicide.
How would this help a person who is depressive? Depression is only one of the symptoms, and general anxiety can prevent a person from reaching out to any groups at all, including the phenomenally benign Unitarians. Anxiety can also lead to episodes of rage, guilt, feelings of low self-worth, which combined with depression eventually can lead to attempting.
Beta-blockers can desensitize the emotional component of traumatic memories, one of the features in depressives that reinforces feelings of low self-worth.
Bride – nippleless if you have bacon for wrapping.
Bride of Shrek OM @ 309:
That doesn’t help, just get lots of frozen yellow patches. We got a snowblower this year, but it’s still a lot of physical work.
BoSOM, for more snow removal, try one of these…
As long as you aren’t wiping your floor down with your lips and tongue, DM….
Of no particular relevance to anything…relevant, but in playing the thread-heading video, I notice that all of the roses expand their petals outward, then at a certain point contract them slightly, just before they almost explode outward in their final expansion. Neat!
Apolipoprotein E | February 25, 2010 9:11 PM:
Buck up. Here at Pharyngula, you’re required to have a low opinion of those who aren’t willing to google something they don’t know.
Gotta have nipples.
Wowbagger, I think your twitter thingy is compromised, you just sent me a message with a link to a Vi*gra spam page…:-)
Off to work !
It’s not that hard to find out about Apolipoprotein E is.
And just in case folks might think (as a newcomer) I might be talking out of my hat without any notion of backing it up (claims of propranolol helping with anxiety and traumatic memories):
http://www.neuropsychiatryreviews.com/march02/ptsd.html
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=28479&cn=1
A large number of additional references may be had by googling “beta blockers ptsd” or combinations of “propranolol” and “anxiety traumatic memories.”
The real danger to depressive persons would be from standard anxiolytics like Valium and others (specifically benzodiazepines): they have a rather severe rebound effect, and become very addictive very quickly. Going one dose without can cause symptoms far in excess of any original ones they were meant to treat, and even some they were not meant to treat (many are used as anti-seizure medicine, and even if one is not taking them for seizures, you get seizures if you stop abruptly).
Wowbagger – Oh, no – I have three Harley’s, a chopper, a bagger, and my little old iron jugged Snortster, your choice. Besides, I never let anyone ride behind me…there’s only two places they want to hang on to. *smiles innocently*
‘Tis Himself, OM @ 320:
That works.
Disco Dead and I Don’t Care!!!
NSFJ!
Speaking as someone who grew up in the lower midwest with scrappy icy heavy snow, I think lake effect snow is magic. The first time I saw it I was amazed that there was actual snow in the world that looked like fake snow; I had always wondered why fake snow (the sparkly cottony stuff in displays) looked nothing like the “real thing” that I was used to.
I don’t like shoveling this heavy stuff, but my favorite winter moments now are cleaning out lake effect snow at night, with big fluffy flakes drifting slowly and glinting in the light from the streetlamp, all quiet except for those soft snowflake landing thumps that are half there and half imagined.
one-third man @ 323:
Don’t worry about it. The person yakking about beta-blockers is a Quack that PZ wrote about a little while ago:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/christopher_maloney_still_a_qu.php#comments
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/do_not_harass_the_quacks.php#comments
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/02/andreas_moritz_is_a_cancer_qua.php#comments
lol, I had the exact opposite experience. Having grown up with the soft, fluffy stuff, I never quite understood how igloos worked (I think I probably thought they were made of ice blocks).
Now I know. There is such a thing as snow hard and solid enough to cut bricks from.
——-
Also, have fun on your date, Patricia!
Methods of dealing with snow not technically involving the use of shovels:
— for smallish quantities at temperatures that aren’t too far from freezing, sometims you can sprinkle a bit of salt on it. Makes it melt, turn to water, run off the surface in question. But this really only works at around 1 cm or less, when, seriously, it ain’t like you even need to remove it that badly. And for large surfaces, that’s a lot of salt, which generally isn’t so nice for vegetation. More generally, salt is more used to prevent ice formation on roads and sidewalks, and to melt away junk that’s already formed on sidewalks and the like before you chop it away.
— a few neighbours of mine, I kid you not, actually have heated driveways. I don’t know what these cost to run. Somehow, the whole notion seems a bit excessive to me anyway. And probably, these, too, only work for relatively light snowfalls and are more meant to keep ice buildup off after you remove the bulk of the stuff by more mechanical means.
— you can pay someone to show up in a plow and/or skidsteer to deal with the stuff using hydraulics ‘n all.
— for uneven walks, like one of my rock walks, that has thyme between the stones in the non-fun season we call summer, screw removing it–or at the very least, don’t bother removing it all. Tramp it down, put sand on top when it turns to ice.
— in the same vein, you could, I suppose, also ignore it entirely, and just drive and hike over it into your house. You’d need good snow tires, mebbe snowshoes in heavy winters… But around here, you need the former, at least, anyway, if you merely wish to live.
(/But eventually, following this approach, I’d imagine, the mail delivery people would start to get annoyed. Those guys are such wimps.)
Carlie, do you see the Northern Lights in your area? It certainly adds another bit of magic seeing the colors up in the clear sky.
AJ Milne @ 330:
Pfffft, getting mail delivered. Soft, I tell ya! We have to retrieve ours from the post office.
And a little nipple action for the girls/gays:
Great nipples
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/17/shirtless-celebrity-men-w_n_281349.html?slidenumber=12#slide_image
Awesome nipples
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/17/shirtless-celebrity-men-w_n_281349.html?slidenumber=4#slide_image
Soft indeed! Why out here in Orygun we have to hitch 12 pullets to a sledge and mush out into a clearing just to see smoke signals.
Goddammit. How the hell does that happen? I’ve changed my password; can any of you internet-knowledgeable people confirm that this should stop the problem occurring again?
Patricia
Why don’t you just teach one of those evolutionary screw-ups how to fly then you could send your mail by carrier-chook.
Don’t wimp out on snow removal equipment. Get yourself a real snow plow or snow blower.
:D:D:D:D
I can just see the home-made knit snow shoes on the pullets…
Time for bed after last nights adventure.
Bride *wink* *wink* – You aren’t supposed to tell that the girrrls are like Gelflings.
Goodnight you naughty darlings, I’ve got a bacon and yukon gold chowder to set up for the ol’ crock pot, before I get to the serious business of burnishing up the brass bosoms for my date.
Night, night Nerd.
Patricia, Ignorant Slut OM @ 340:
Have much fun! I’d dearly like the recipe for that chowder. Pleeeaaase?
Gelfling references make me happy. :)
Nerd, I’m way too far south – northeastern US.
Jadehawk – too funny. I had an experience similar to your igloo conundrum when I first tried to go play in the fluffy snow; the stuff wouldn’t make a snowman no matter how hard I tried.
I think I’ve made most of the possible snow removal mistakes by now – not going out in the middle of a snowstorm before it piles up too much, not keeping the integrity of the side banks so that it doesn’t avalanche down or encroach on the driveway too much, letting it build up too much next to the car tires, not leveling off the top of the banks so they don’t get too tall to throw more snow on, not hitting the snowplow pack first before getting too worn out, looking outside and thinking “oh, it doesn’t look that deep” and then not going out early before work to be sure.
Geeze all this talk about nipples on men. Sorta arousing.
adgersdaughter,
You’re welcome. It is a pretty version, I also have an instrumental rendition in traditional instruments.
‘Tis@284 Just giving a shout out to a fellow bubblehead. I spent four years on the Patrick Henry.(SSBN599).
I don’t know how you feel about them, but cats are excellent for tackling a mouse problem. Having mice around can be harmful to your health, and cats are wonderful predators. If you get a cat though, try to get one that was born and lived for a little while (at least a couple of months) as an alley cat or barn cat. Both of our cats came in from outside, and they are wonderful mousers. They kill and eat the mice without leaving anything behind.
Carlie | February 25, 2010 11:06 PM:
When the sun moves into its next active period – probably peaking around 2012-2014 or so – start watching the Aurora forecasting sites, and keep your eyes open – you may well get a chance. I caught a glimpse of them in 2003 in Utah, despite terrible seeing conditions. Some people saw them in Texas. Here’s a podcast with some tips.
Random musing:
I used to work in marketing, specifically in an editing and creative production capacity, so some part of my brain tends to have a vague “radar” for marketing gaffes, inadvertent humor, missed market targeting, and the like.
Anyway, today on the radio I heard an advertisement for a training program for bartenders. It sounded like a normal occupational training program advertisement, mentioning things like length of time (“Learn in just weeks!” that sort of thing), as well as the incentives pitch (“Make great money!”), and so on. I wasn’t paying too much attention to the ad, but then they got to their final pitch line just before the ad closeout.
“You’re already going to the bars, might as well get paid for it!”
lols
Still learning,
Robert
Desert Son, OM @ 347:
Hahahaha. Conveniently leaving out that working in a bar isn’t quite as fun as going to a bar. :D
Patricia,
I hope your date went well and you are having a good time. It’s good to see you around again.
Also, congratulations to Patricia, have a great date.
‘Tis, glad to have you with us. A submarine collision is the stuff of nightmares. That line from Jaws where Brody’s wife is talking to Hooper about Brody’s fear of water, asking, “What’s that called?” and Brody interrupts, saying, “Drowning,” has resonated heavily with me since a near-drowning incident when I was 12.
*shudders*
Still learning,
Robert
we’re not allowed to have pets, and the boyfriend doesn’t feel like breaking that rule.
I have been kicking them out whenever I catch one, but they aren’t easy to catch and there seems a never ending supply of them
But of course!
And with that in mind:
What the ads say, what the ads mean.
Have a good weekend, everyone.
Still learning,
Robert
I’m all for kill traps for mice; if you let them go, they’ll come right back. But I did read an interesting no-kill trap idea on Lifehacker: get a toilet paper tube, put bait at one end (something like peanut butter), then balance it on the edge of a counter with a tall trash can underneath. Mouse goes through tube to get the bait, as it gets to the far end it tips the whole thing off the counter into the trash can, mouse is stuck until you do something with it.
Hi everyone. I’m going to be totally off-topic again to thank everyone who suggested history reading material for me in the “full of Guinness” (around Feb.6th) part of the endless thread. First I’m going to read stuff I can get at the library (found 11 of the many books recommended), and possibly buy books if I’m REALLY interested. Now back to lurking.
Desert Son, OM @ 352:
Hahahaha. Perfect!
Jadehawk,
Bummer. They (mice) do multiply like mad! I’ve never been able to catch the mice myself, but the cats can get back into the closets and see under the cabinets where the mice are. I think it’s so cute to see one of them staring at the space between the buffet and the floor, crouching for hours waiting for the mouse to make its move.
Have you asked your landlord about a cat? My lease initially said no cats, but I told the landlord that I had a mouse and I wanted a cat to make sure mice didn’t become a problem. He was cool with that, but he’s a pretty cool landlord for the most part.
My cat does spend most of his time at the boyfriend’s house, but I wanted to make sure he could stay with at my place too.
LOL! They have a homing instinct! They can return from a mile away after being hauled out at night in a cardboard box. You have just been giving them exercise.
BS
Carlie,
Cats are the ultimate kill trap for mice :) I don’t like kill traps because I’m always afraid I’m going to hurt myself when I set them. Cats, OTOH, set themselves.
keep in mind that this is the landlord who was trying to get me to spend all winter with a hole in my wall because he took out the broken AC in October, but didn’t want to put a new one in until Spring.
And I can’t kill mice. having a cat do that is one thing, but i can’t do it myself. I have live traps and the mice get kicked out by the river, but with as much gunk as there is in my apartment, they’re not all that motivated to go into the traps. I guess someday I might get motivated and clean out everything so the only food they’ll find is in the traps. but if i could do that, i wouldn’t have mice to begin with
Damn. Don’t you live up north where it’s devastatingly cold? My own landlord doesn’t necessarily fix things in a timely manner unless it’s costing him money (like a running toilet) or I freak out a bit at him, but he is working on replacing the windows now that I told him how much it cost me to heat the place to a very modest 64 Fahrenheit in the winter.
I like my landlord because he’s nice about the important things. He doesn’t care that it looks like a tornado tore apart an archive inside my apartment, he’s unconcerned about holes in the walls, a couple of years ago I forgot to pay the rent one month and he just left a very nice message on my voice mail asking if I had paid it and he lost it or did I forget to pay it.
I’ve had some nightmare landlords who complained if they came in to fix something and the place wasn’t cleaned up, or freaked out if rent was one day late even when the lease had a grace period of five days (I had to mail my rent at that time and it was hardly my fault that he moved, so it took a couple of days for my check to get forwarded).
Pygmy Loris @ 360:
I am so glad my landlord days are well behind me. I’ve had good ones, but more nightmare or indifferent ones.
Caine,
I really like being able to call someone else and say “the hot water heater quit working, someone needs to fix it” and then it gets fixed and I don’t have to pay anything! One day I want to own a home, but I have no idea when I’ll be able to do that, especially since I want some land to go along with it.
Pygmy Loris @ 362:
It helps to have a partner/spouse who can do a lot of those things. I can do a lot of that sort of stuff myself. Still, having your own house does mean you have to do it or get it done, and there isn’t anyone to blame if stuff doesn’t get fixed. And naturally, shit always happens at the worst possible time.
Cainee,
I’m not unhandy, but cost is a big factor. I guess I’ve never been financially stable enough to have much of an “emergency fund” so knowing that if something in my home breaks, I don’t have to pay for it contributes to my peace of mind.
well, I’ll only have to live here for one more year. after that, we might just buy the sort of noisemaker that’s supposed to keep rodents from liking your place. and actually, if all our plans work out, we will be able to get a rodent-eating pet, instead. though my boyfriend is more partial to this than to a cat.
Pygmy Loris,
Oh I understand fully. Whenever something does decide to break down in the house, it’s almost always the wrong season and at a time when money is a problem, to say the least. I’m still learning to think ahead in terms of house maintenance. I’m not that used to it (We’ve owned our place for almost 6 years now) and you can never be prepared for every eventuality. Owning your own place definitely has its downsides. I was 46.5 when we decided to buy, so we definitely waited a good long while.
Jadehawk,
Aww, that fox is so freaking cute! I’m a pet person in general, but I do love cats!
Caine,
Just remind yourself that you can paint the walls whatever color you want and hang pictures and such without complaints about holes :) Over the last few years I’ve realized that money is always an issue unless you’re independently wealthy, so I’m trying to make the best of it and pay off my debts before I plan anything new.
Do you suppose Patrica will see this when she gets home from her date? Not the onion!
BS
Pygmy Loris @ 367:
Oh, no problems there. I paint paintings directly on the walls in some rooms:
http://moblog.net/view/157109/kitchen-bizarre
Caine @ 369,
I love that! Wow.
Joke for Lynna, from Utah Phillips:
I got good news and bad news.
Bad news: The aliens have landed.
Good news: They eat Mormons and piss gasoline.
Hey
Home owners v renters
Stop derailing the thread, can we please return to the important discussion about Christian Bale’s nipples.
Seriously though our tenancy laws in Australia are much different to what I seem to see as the norm in the US so generally it sucks to be a tenant. You do get good landlords but essentially it was the greatest day of my life when I stopped paying off someone else’s mortgage and started paying mine. Of course now I own investment properties so I think I’m the world’s greatest landlord.
Thanks again to everyone who’s given their advice regarding my friend. I spent the afternoon with her, and she is feeling somewhat better lately, which is at least preferable to feeling somewhat worse. She has a high opinion of therapy, having had good experiences with it in the past (lucky!). I think she is just having a hard time finding the motivation to get started. I did learn who her health provider is, and I will start looking for a therapist and lower that hurdle for her. I cannot allow involuntary treatment, as I believe people have the right to end their own lives for their own reasons, but I will be looking into everything else recommended here.
I am especially glad that folks have brought up the issue of heightened suicide risk near the beginning of therapy. I was aware of such risk near the beginning of antidepressant use, but I thought it was just a chemical issue limited to that context. I’ll warn her about that after we find a therapist she likes. She wants to live more than she wants to die, and her cry for help was explicit rather than implicit.
Pygmy Loris @ 370:
Thank you! The fridge died not long after the paint job. I still have to do up the replacement fridge.
Bales of Christian nipples? WTF? Is this like the hill of foreskins in the Old Testament?
It may stop it this time, if you were a victim of simple phishing. If you have been infected with a virus, it won’t be enough.
Regarding simple phishing, you can only understand the problem and be careful. I generally type out URLs myself every time I want to visit a site that has a user login, instead of following links or bookmarks. It isn’t a very big deal to type out “twitter.com” or “gmail.com” and you’ll get used to it. I notice also that Twitter has an SSL-encrypted login available at https://twitter.com/login but they don’t advertise it very well. This protects you more from man-in-the-middle attacks, though, which really aren’t related to your problem today. SSL is a side issue.
But worse than simple phishing, you may instead have the Koobface virus, so just in case you’ll need to update your antivirus software if possible and run a thorough boot-time scan (if you can’t figure out how to do a boot-time scan, ask here and tell us which antivirus you’re using). For the future, you can probably protect yourself from Koobface through careful use of NoScript.
In the long run, complain to Twitter that they haven’t implemented Extended Validation. Maybe you can start a Twitter campaign of angry users demanding EV.
Damn these time zones.
Keep your eyes peeled during the next active period, Nerd. I have seen – just once and faintly – the Aurora from about 54 degrees N. A lack of light pollution helps.
Tis Himself, did you get a chance to read Incredible Edible Todmorden? Not nagging, sir, just curious!
Pygmy Loris and Caine,
Regarding the renting vs. owning thing;
After having rented 4-5 places and never getting my damage deposit refunded regardless of whether I damaged anything or not (in one place I refinished the hardwood floors, re-painted the entire unit (including cabinets) and replaced all the plumbing fixtures and still didn’t get my deposit back), I said “fuck it”.
In my next apartment, I painted a four foot diameter Steal Your Face on the living room wall. Sure enough, when I moved out the landlord kept my security deposit to pay for re-painting the living room. Two months later, I was sitting in a club talking to some folks and they started raving about the apartment they just rented that had a “bitchin’ Steal Your Face” on the living room wall. Bastard didn’t even paint the wall, just kept my $800 and re-rented the place to some other Deadhead.
I know that some landlords are fair (my father is one) but most are sketchy. And don’t even get me started about property management companies!
BTW, Caine; you can come paint on my kitchen walls anytime! I own this house.
Trying to get back into reading and responding. This place is still good therapy. Cast is off, family issues settled and able to travel, so plan to so do per below.
Bits and pieces for now:
Patricia, wonderful you have a date. Hope it is fun.
Walton – hope you are still in bed at this point. In any case, returning to the UK to work on my books and there till summer. Once you finish finals, making a final offer to meet for a drink.
Knockgroats – per above, returning to the mother country. Do you have any plans to visit the south or do I need to make the trek up the far north for a drink? Well, at least you have good malt up there.
Dust – a wave and a hello and thank you.
Quack – you do not make it to troll status, just a space filler.
Strange gods – please keep us advised about your friend. Fingers crossed.
Lynna – hope all goes well with you, let us know how things turn out with tests. Also, do not hesitate to ask for further aid.
Credo elvem etiam vivere
JeffreyD
After having rented 4-5 places and never getting my damage deposit refunded regardless of whether I damaged anything or not
After having 11 apartments over 19 years, in 4 states, after moving all my things out and spending as many days as apartments touching up walls and scrubbing and mopping and vacuuming before turning over keys–
I can say that I got exactly one deposit returned. The last one, here in San Antonio.
I almost framed that check.
110 more comments overnight… I’ll start reading them soon. When I couldn’t sleep anymore, I got up, finished wiping the floor, and downloaded the Abydosaurus paper, which is open-access, all seven Supplementary Information files included! :-)
My cat, having been raised in the cushy confines of home life, thinks that mice are cute little squeaky toys. She’s a little too old to catch them now, but she used to catch them, then carry them around a bit, then drop them and bat them around. Sometimes we’d wind up finding them dead later, but could never figure out if they had internal injuries or if she just scared them into having heart attacks. That was how we first found out we had them in our current house, in fact – we had some suspicions, but had never dealt with mice so weren’t sure. That is, not until she went trotting past with something in her mouth that made squeaky sounds. I am glad that she doesn’t eat them, because I don’t need random mouse leftover parts around. The husband once accidentally stepped on a mouse. That…wasn’t fun to clean up.
So, Patricia, how did it go?
Please explain. No useful results on the 1st page of Google results.
:-D
Cyclic guanine monophosphate??? I only know cAMP. ~;-|
I don’t quite understand it, but it sounds interesting…
:-D
<headdesk>
I’ll just put it bluntly: what, actually, do you have a boyfriend for? The very least he could do would be to motivate you to clean the apartment together with him…
#382
Done the same this morning – not sure when I’ll get time to read them but they’re in the bag.
No, current Good Manufacturing Processes. FDA/pharma speak. And the gotcha is in the current. That keeps changing.
My condolences to Walter Koenig who lost his son yesterday.
President Obama is actually going to have a face to face talk with secularists of the Secular Coalition for America. SCA’s bulletin here; news item here. It is times like this that make me realize how much better the Democrats are compared to Republicans and how important it is to not throw up my hands in disgust over all the political posturing (not that my vote has ever counted for anything as a Democrat in Republican lands so far for my entire life).
Jadehawk OM #359
Had a similar problem. A friend suggested I try chocolate as bait – worked!
Great! I’m not a troll, and we prefer the term quackalicious to quack.
In response to the beta blocker discussion, I realize its being used for the anxiety, but according to the Cochrane database, it’s not effective. Since it slows the heart, I’ve found it leads to fatigue and elderly patients tend to assume they are “just getting old” rather than dealing with drug side effects. The fatigue makes it too difficult to think about activities.
Here’s the Cochrane info: Expert Rev Neurother. 2008 Feb;8(2):235-57.
Pharmacotherapy for social anxiety disorder: a systematic review.
Another lie, you are just a woomeister troll. Nothing intelligent here, just idiocy. What a loser. You are nothing but a Qwack, Quack, Qvack. Get a real job that doesn’t involve conning people.
Bride of Shrek OM:
Snowblowers (it doesn’t count as “physically shovelling” if your back doesn’t ache afterwards). Ugly, noisy, smelly, but effective. Most fun on a gravel driveway. Will launch gravel (and cats, and small children) into the air.
You know, I looked at him on the news and thought “shit, we’re getting old” !
jeez with the real life shit.
but: SNOWDAY!!!
Morning-mood Dead (NSFJ)
Road salt is also turning out to be a big problem for amphibians.
Guy I knew in Boston had big plans for inventing a solar-powered driveway-heating system.
But of course this depends completely on exactly which bars are being compared. Also varies somewhat night to night.
Warning: mice can jump much, much higher than you think they can!
Ha!! Love it! Some of my deadheaded college buddies had a similar wall, but it was in opposite colors (i.e. green, black & orange for RW&B)…ow my eyez
Ha! No, Nerd uses the same acronym (even capitalization convention) for something very different. But I am surprised at your evident surprise about cGMP sensu biochemico. Guanylate cyclase is very commonly used for all kinds of stuff: NO-induced vasodilation, for example (including erection), phototransduction for another. H,LMGIFY
*shakes head slowly from side to side w/ wry grin*
If only it was true that Walter Koenig read the Thread!
28442
David Marjanović | February 26, 2010 6:55 AM:
here or here and here.
You needed to google “There … are … four … lights”.
Yeah, no kidding. *sigh*
It was as close as I could get in threadspace to the William Shatner subthread.
Current show count: 15 – saw one wretched and one superb show this evening. The former a terrible production of The Servant of Two Masters; the latter a comedy troupe called The Sound and the Fury with their tribute to noir, Private Dick.
Am trading comedy and theatre for rock music tomorrow; I’m skipping the Fringesanity and heading to Soundwave to see the likes of Placebo, Jane’s Addiction, Paramore, Jimmy Eat World and – best of all – Faith No More.
They a) are an awesome band, and b) have an inspirational name.
Guanine monophosphate my ass! Would be guanosine monophosphate! <headdesk>
Anyway, here’s a bit of non-Mormon madness. It’s non-religious madness, even (at least there’s no evidence that religion was involved, and no reason to think it was). I tried to find the Agence France Presse reportthis (in German) was based on, but I can’t find it at afp.com, and neither can Google. I found the original article in the Folha de São Paulo, but my reading comprehension of Portuguese isn’t that good (…never even tried to learn it…), so I’ll summarize the German third-hand report:
In Ivinhema in Brasil, a woman was about to give birth and wanted a caesarean section. Instead of doing something, the two physicians started quarreling. They rolled on the floor together while the woman shouted at them to stop. After 1 1/2 hours, a third doctor came in to perform the section, but by then the baby had already been born dead (…the original seems to say that an emergency section was performed, but was too late). The husband says the baby had been healthy up to then (“minha filha estava saudabilíssima” in the original, which also names names). The police is investigating…
“surreal e inimaginável” indeed!
btw, re cGMP, this is the mechanism by which Vi*gr* works
one of Bobby’s best IMO:
Donna-haters can fucking bite me
@David Marjanović: The report in Portuguese is as you describe.
All else being equal, jumping height does not depend on absolute body size. It is directly proportional to leg length (itself proportional to body length) and to muscle cross-sectional area (itself proportional to body length2), and indirectly proportional to body mass (itself proportional to body mass3)… these factors cancel each other out.
Of course, all else is never equal, but in terms of leg anatomy and the like, mice are probably better built for jumping from a stand than we are.
In hindsight, so am I. I distinctly remember learning about its role in the vertebrate retina; I think I’ve even repeatedly lectured creationists about it right here on Pharyngula.
Ah, thanks a lot. I’ll watch the videos later. :-)
* * *
I got an e-mail that looks like the usual 419 scam and was probably written by professional 419 scammers, but… it’s not a 419 scam.
Sven DiMilo | February 26, 2010 8:35 AM:
You know, every time someone tries to explain Star Trek I to me, it makes even less sense than before.
FYI if no one has seen the Ken Burns series on the National Parks that PBS is currently running with weekly installments, please take time to watch it.
It’s fantastic. His Jazz series was my favorite and I haven’t seen the Baseball one yet (kicks self) but this one is high quality and has given me a new respect for some of the players in the creation of the National Parks system that I knew (John Muir, Ansel Adams, FDR, Theodore Roosevelt) and some who I didn’t (Harold LeClaire Ickes).
Well worth the couple of hours a week that it is on.
Oh, FFS. We had scary high winds last night, and I just looked out the window to find that a big chunk of fence blew off and smashed a dent in the rear door of my car. Damn it.
Oh and for Jazz fans (I’m looking at you Sven) Dave Holland is starting to release live shows from his website for a buck each. Not too shabby.
Say no more. *drool* For some reason, their music has grown on me to the point where I reflexively crank up the volume whenever they play on the radio. I would love to see them perform live.
Linky to the PBS National Parks show page.
Say no more. *drool* For some reason, his music has grown on me to the point where I reflexively crank up the volume whenever I play him on the CD player. I would love to see him perform live.
Me too. His music is so new compared to a lot of jazz that’s out there.
That should have been, “Sounds so new”
and I missed aratina’s post before yours….
Stumbled across this awesome website/page.
http://www.johnkyrk.com/evolution.swf
Have to admit that Dave Holland is pretty good too from the samplings. There is a free download of “Mr. B” offered at the top of the website linked to by the Rev.
And you can listen to that whole show there online for nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Bagel. Doughnut. Zip.
Free as in Beer.
Oh and speaking of beer, anyone coming to Charleston this weekend?
First UPDATE of Year Two. What a pain in the ass with subThreads every other day. Can’t we all just shut up a little bit?
Hello, all.
Longtime lurker, first-time poster from the same finishing school as ‘Tis and bullofthewoods. (My ride was SSBN 617). I like xkcd, college basketball, Brian Eno and bacon. Pleasedtameetcha.
Jeffrey @380
Thanks for asking, Jeffrey. I was hoping to get images of pulsing arteries from the luscious Blake (Registered Cardio Sonographer) that I could put up for viewing as part of the announcement of the results. However, Luscious Blake has not come through with a CD, as promised. (I’ll call him today and ask if the digital files are forthcoming.) So, sorry to say, but here are boring, but reassuring results, with no pictures: The cardiologist reviewed the test and sent an analysis to my doctor, who then called me in and summarized the whole deal, “Your carotid arteries look really good.”
This eliminates one possible cause for a brain-offline event (January 15th, for those not tracking Lynna’s medical history). The next step is to get a CT Angiography, with contrast, to eliminate other possibilities, like a brain tumor, or groups of neurons picketing for higher wages and increased oxygen. I have about half the cost of that test saved, and I also was able to pay for a visit to the doctor. I’m getting there, bit by bit.
I think it was Jadehawk who postulated earlier that I could have the necessary tests and still not know what the hell is wrong with me. I guess I would prefer not to die from something preventable.
I identified with Keith Olbermann’s rant about the health care system, and the idiotic opposition to reform.
As for the joke up-thread about aliens eating mormons and pissing gasoline, my neurons LOLed … then they demanded coffee.
Word of Wisdom: Pharyngula goes well with coffee in the morning and beer in the evening.
Patricia in her burnished brass breastplate, riding a Harley … now that’s good stuff.
The more submariners the merrier.
better
Sven @419/420:
Namor is a great guy–he fended off an annoying Giant Sea Serpent and pulled us out of miles-deep marine trench one day, long story–but he needs to work on his interpersonal skills. (And don’t play poker with him.)
I had a landlord once (many moons ago) who kept damage deposits as a matter of course. I didn’t realize he did that until after I had cleaned and polished until the apartment was in far better shape than when I had moved in. When I protested, he suggested that I could take him to small claims court, knowing that I couldn’t afford a lawyer nor the time to do so. Turns out that the scumbag landlord was a regular in court, kept a scumbag lawyer on his payroll and considered that the poor folk deserved whatever they got. He also thought he was enlightened, as in almost-a-guru, and that the very laws of nature supported him — which neatly explained all his unearned cash. The parting comment from this little, crowing rooster of a man was him telling me that I should be ashamed of myself for “playing the victim” and not realizing that “business is business”.
Damned good excuse to pull out some of my favorite Eno.
Lay My Love
St Elmo’s Fire
Remake/Remodel
Baby’s On Fire
Miss M, a respectable atheist of a certain age, is, as I write, engaged in a sit-in, protesting the closure of a Day Care Centre founded by Catholic Nuns and supported by the faithful of Penzance.
Oh, the ironies that Politics creates!
Tell me, did you turn his testicles into earrings, or just chuck them in the waste ?
Right on, Janine! Fripp’s work on “Baby’s On Fire” is my candidate for Greatest-Ever Guitar Solo.
Sorry, menckensghost, I linked to 801. That is Phil Manzanera on guitar. I do hope it is satisfactory.
Molly Ivins is dead?
For three years?
Fuck. I just started reading her!
fukfuckfuck
I wish I could do that HTML stuff.
fuck
Mr. Manzanera will most definitely do.
Ha! I never understood the animosity some people have towards Donna. Sure, she was off-key on occasion but when she was good, she was very good.
I saw her play a small club (Terrapin Station) in Boise last year with the Zen Tricksters backing her up. She can still sing the hell out of a song (although the between-song banter was a little godbotty).
An aside; the club was having plumbing issues that night so the restrooms were out of order. Instead, there were two Porta-Potties out in the alley behind the building. Donna kinda threw a fit (though I don’t blame her)and demanded that one of them be reserved exclusively for the band only. So… long lines waiting for one Porta-Pottie that was standing right next to an empty, unused one.
Oh … so GMP isn’t Good Manufacturing Practise in this case … I was trying to figure out what the “c” stood for in this case.
I’ve been reading to many job ads. Bugger.
Welcome, menckensghost! Always good to see new faces in the Thread Everlasting.
Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
oh …
nevermind
I really should read all the comments before commenting, but then I’d post even less than I do now.
Thanks for the explanation, NoROM.
have I mentioned yet that he’s a redneck punk? have I also mentioned he currently works 70 hours a week?
I have absolutely no desire to spend the one day a week we have together on cleaning.
yeah, I figured out that’s how it works after the 2nd apartment. now I don’t even bother cleaning when moving. this apartment has several dents in the walls, stained and dirty walls, bleach and other stains in the carpets, and all sorts of damage to the kitchen cabinets. and that’s precisely how the landlord is going to get it back. he can clean it all himself if he likes.
Sheesh, what a jackoff.
Near the end of one lease, I found a note under my door. My landlord claimed that I had made an oral contract, at the beginning of that year, to leave some number of days early (though he had no written proof, gave no reminders, nothing). He had tenants ready to move in that day. So my then-girlfriend and I had to pack up an entire apartment of shit and move it out to my dad’s place in less than 24h. He also took a chunk out of our security deposit, claiming costs for putting the new tenants up in a hotel. Fucking rat.
The girlfriend and I were teetering at a breakup then, but our combined hatred of him helped keep the relationship sputtering for another two years.
Stories like this make me want to don a superhero outfit and wreak terrible vengeance upon the unrighteous. (I don’t because I find spandex unflattering.)
Back in August I received my full damage deposit back for the first time in my life. I was worried about this one too, because the apartment had been bought by some company that seemed a little money-grubbing, and I was sure they were going to ding me for the mould and mildew in the bathroom (It had been there since before I’d moved in, thrived on bleach and other noxious cleaners, and had finally taken on the smirking attitude of a streetwise lichen–and y’all know what lichens are like.) I took a day and a half off of work and scrubbed that place as clean as I could, only to have the owner sweep in, take a three-second look around the place, and then interrogate me for leaving. Turns out they needed to renovate the suite anyway and I was one of those tenants who pays the rent, so she was very disappointed to see me go and happy to see there were no holes in the wall or anything. (Oh, and she didn’t know it but I’d stand next to an open window in my room to smoke pot, unlike some of my neighbours who thought the hallways should smell like hotboxing for everyone’s benefit.)
But more often than not I get the situation where the building manager augments his or her income by charging outrageous cleaning fees on move-out. One BM complained that I’d left streaks on the windows and charged $100 to clean them for three hours. (A typical Edmonton 4-storey walk-up has 28 suites and three to four windows per suite depending on the number of bedrooms, so the only way it should take three hours is if you’re using David M’s tongue method, in which case I don’t expect to see a receipt for Windex on the bill.)
Anyways, this last damage deposit actually came with a little note thanking me for being a model tenant. I almost cried.
For strange gods,
I have a little experience with this, being someone who’s struggled with low-level depression for most of my adult life and five years had an episode so severe it required four years of meds and group CBT.
I am so glad she’s therapy-positive. It’s a hard road and by no means a magic bullet, but for most people therapy carries the best long-term prognosis. The motivation will be a factor, but you may be able to get the ball rolling by actually piling her in the car and bringing her to wherever she needs to go once she gives the okay. People with depression often have little interest in doing things for their own sakes but are very sensitive to the thought of burdening or disappointing others, which you can use to your advantage: if you think she’s likely to bail out, say something like “promise you’ll call on Fridays and tell me how your Thursday session went” or “promise you’ll call me for a ride if you don’t think you can manage the bus to the therapist’s” or whatever. Use your discretion.
For Edmonton readers dealing with similar issues: most counselling and therapy services are not covered by Alberta Health & Wellness, but the University of Alberta Hospital psych department offers a whole host of outpatient treatment services that are covered. I’ve been through the process myself and have assisted a number of people as well, so I’m happy to offer more specific details on what to expect if anyone would like.
Here in the UK Landlords holding onto deposits when tenants left a property became such a problem the Government introduced a law requiring that the deposit be held by a third party, and that the Landlord could only gain access to all or part of the deposit on production of evidence of either damage to the property, or financial loss owing to the tenant breaking the terms of the letting agreement.
boygenius, Aquaria, Lynna and Brownian,
One of the nice things about where I live is that it is not only a college town, but a college town where college students get free legal advice and help from the university. The main issue the university legal advisers deal with is landlords. As a consequence, most decent landlords around here give you a piece of paper to record all of the existing damage to an apartment when you move in, which they will then go over with you to make sure. Both you and the landlord get a copy of this document (I started supplementing mine with photos of damage 2 apartments ago). The landlords I’ve had also provided me with an itemized list about a month before move-out day of how much it would cost to clean/fix things that I had not done myself.
As a result, I have received my entire deposit back from the last two places I rented. Out of the other four landlords I’ve had (two were in another town) I’ve been charged for oven cleaning because I simply forgot to do it, in my last town I didn’t receive my deposit back at all, but I had moved to another town so I just didn’t deal with it at all. The other landlord in my last town gave me the entire deposit back, too.
What I learned is that if at all possible, do the last walk-through with the landlord. Have your copy of the pre-move-in damage report on you at the post-move-out walk-through. If they say you damaged something, argue. Have a lawyer you know on speed dial just in case.
I’ve never lost a dime of my deposit to a landlord. The trick is to document, document, document. I take one bazillion digital images on move-in, and submit a letter to the landlord documenting the damage, and also mail a copy of the letter (with photos) to myself without opening it (the post-mark secures the date). I have had two landlords try to keep my deposit. I explained my system of documentation and the fact that in the state that these events took place (OH-IO!) a landlord sued for wrongful witholding could be charged up to three times the amount of the deposit. They both wrote checks immediately.
The Seleucid King does not take shit from the man.
Antiochus Epiphanes,
Great plan! I hadn’t thought of mailing copies of the photos to myself. I usually have them printed at Wal-Mart where they print the date you had them processed on the back of the photo.
Lynna @222:
Awesome. I don’t know how he held it together. I lost my dad in a slightly similar situation last year, and I certainly couldn’t have finished that script. Thankfully, the NHS and the Hospice movement here in the UK did a wonderful job. I can’t imagine what it would have been like being asked for money.
but: SNOWDAY!!!
Yes it’s laying on a bit thick here, too. But I don’t think we get actual snow days.
Walter Koenig!
Ah, I see up-thread that people smarter than I am simply assumed from the start that the landlord-and-renter relationship would be adversarial. And they took precautions. I, on the other hand, assumed that my having to clean the apartment, removing years of filth, before I could even move in, and then leaving it in excellent condition would earn me gold stars.
davem @440, yes! Olbermann nailed it and he nailed it perfectly. A mix of hard facts and personal experience. I am one of those people who does have to worry about money while in the throes of the stress caused by illness. If you are one month late on a payment, most providers will simply send a collection agency after you. They won’t be quite that cruel themselves, but they will hire someone else to be cruel for them. Hence the huge number of bankruptcies in the USA caused by medical expenses.
:-D
Does “zilch” actually mean anything?
Are there enough victims for a class-action lawsuit…?
:-S
I retract everything and express my condolences to both of you.
We do the walkthrough (inspection report) on moving in and moving out too. It’s better in the age of digital cameras than it was when I first moved out of Chez Mom & Dad, but I’ve still encountered landlords and building managers who’ve said things during the move in inspection like, “Oh, that little mark? That’s nothing. Look, the more anal you are filling this out now, the harder the landlord is gonna be on inspection when you move out.” It’s an easy enough ruse to see through now, but this is also a college town and I shudder to think of the number of young and international students who get screwed because they don’t know the culture or their rights. I’ve taken foreign students apartment hunting, mostly because many landlords won’t even show you a suite for rent if you’ve got an African accent, even if you offer to pay a year’s worth of rent in cash up front. I feel for many landlords who have to deal with abusive, non-paying tenants who understand the law well enough to know how to effectively squat without getting legally evicted, but the power is more often in the hands of the owners.
Wow, now I’m all impressed with myself. Joe and I have had every cleaning & security deposit refunded since I met him. The landlord of the ap’t he had when (and where) we met in 1973 needed some courtly persuasion, but you don’t need a lawyer for small-claims court here in California.
It was an adventure, kinda, involving me as process server (since the LL didn’t recognize me and I had no formal connection to the suit) and a trip down to his house in San Lorenzo in a huge old gas-hog in the times of alternate-days gas-rationing. LL was in the habit of making a fast sweep of the place to collect rent checks and, if anyone had a complaint (e.g. the guy who’d fallen through the rotten upstairs deck), why, LL’s wife waiting for him out there in the car would suddenly go into labor and he’s have to rushoff’byenow. I swear that woman must’ve been stuffing Junior back up there every month.
She was still pregnant when I put on my innocent face and walked up to their car with the summons. Such an innocent face that he just rolled down the window and took the “something for you” from my hand.
The only real complaint he managed to write down for the court was “having to scrub cat smudge from outside wall under window.” The judge actually snickered. Joe and roomie got their money back.
There’s a law here now that landlords must pay interest on tenants’ deposits every year, btw. Ain’t much but it helps keep them honest-ish.
Ron Sullivan
http://toad.faultline.org
boygenius @ 379:
Something similar happened to me once. A duplex I rented had a double door closet in the living room. I painted a section of weeping willow on the doors, spanned the whole thing. People used to see it through the window and compliment me all the time. When the landlord saw it, he bitched, moaned and complained. I shrugged. When it was time for me to move out, I offered to pay him the cost of the doors, I wanted to take them with me. He refused, then complained about having to have them sanded and repainted because he wouldn’t be able to rent until he did. I found out later he doubled the rent for the next people because of the doors and the kitchen. (I had custom painted the kitchen, and put up quotations all over the walls and cupboards.) Asshole.
Hee. Thank you! I painted larger than life naked wimmin on my husband’s office walls. It was interesting, taking people on house tours not long after we moved in. ;D
No, nothing.
Please tell me that was five years ago and not for five years.
What kinds of CBT exercises were most helpful to you, if you don’t mind me asking?
Concern about the University of Wyoming Geological Museum has been voiced on Pharyngula before (especially galling was the comparison of funding for Ken Ham’s Creation Museum, which is not even a real museum, with the lack of funding for the Geological Museum). Here’s an update on the status of the Geological Museum:
hee.
Walt’s a pal of one of my ex-wives.
[/kw*k][if Kw*k had an ex-wife][let alone 2 of ’em]
Huge sauropod skull found!!!
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/02/100224-new-giant-dinosaur-species-skulls-utah/
Which brings up a question (where’s Lynna). I might sound a bit ignorant here, I had thought that BYU is Mormon college and that many Mormons reject ToE, but I’m surprise to find they have a palenotology department. Why is that?
Gyeong Hwa Pak, Pikachu &cetera…
It may come as a surprise but there are more than a few good evolutionary biologists at BYU, and at least two that I know of are Mormon.
whew that almost had my office mates checking on me
lynna at #418 – Thanks for the update. You have my email, write if you need anything.
Strange gods, thanks for the update on your friend.
Credo elvem etiam vivere.
Actually, it shouldn’t have come to a surprise to me. I’m over-generalizing things. headdesk
Both, actually. An unhealthy long-term relationship that I still don’t understand–though I think I agree with friends who think I was being emotionally abused–ended just over five years ago, and the breakup devastated me. For four years I was on meds and being treated. This most recent October marked the one-year anniversary of my being out of therapy and off SSRIs.
As for exercises, we didn’t do any. We’d just talk about whatever, and the idea was that through interacting in that setting people would naturally start repeating the behaviours that were causing the problems, which could then be identified, the root causes understood, and the pattern slowly broken. We’d meet once a week for 2.5 hours under the guidance of a therapist. Usually someone would start off by talking about something that had happened over the week and everybody would discuss it. It was a strange process, unlike anything else I’ve encountered. One of the first things newcomers to the group would learn is not to try to diffuse tension. If someone was on the verge of tears, not only would you not try to lighten the atmosphere with a joke (one of my mechanisms) or words of comfort, but you’d actually pick at them until they broke down, if you could. As cheesy as it sounds, this scene with Matt Damon and Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting shows the type of thing you’d actively try to achieve. Generally, the less comfortable you felt in any given session, the more likely you were doing good work.
The first signs of improvement weren’t immediately obvious. I didn’t feel either my anxiety or depression actually lessen, but I started to notice I was walking a little more confidently without thinking about it. Or I’d I have some sort of interaction with a friend or girlfriend in which my reaction was very normal and appropriate, and later it would occur to me that the same interaction five years ago would have sent me spiraling into feelings of worthlessness, or whatever.
What was especially difficult for me was in accepting and dealing with emotion. I tend to over-intellectualise things, and could easily ferret out and understand how some certain behaviour I engage in was related to some traumatic pattern of events in my childhood, but the thing that still gives me trouble is feeling sad over those events, grieving and moving on. If I ever completely figure it out, I’ll be sure to let you all know.
Vincent Motorcycles in song
and another Vincent
Pikachu @451, The question of BYU and the Theory of Evolution cannot be clearly answered. This is because one of the strategies of the General Authority and of The First Presidency is to present such a blurred picture of mormon doctrine and theology that most people give up and just “allow the Holy Spirit” to guide them. This leaves the geriatric leaders free to be expedient when it comes to earning money, rules of tithing, rules of behavior, accepting the conclusions of science (or not), and pretending to be knowledgeable.
A couple of decades ago, leaders were more willing to make definitive statements. And even further back in time, especially in Brigham Young’s time, scoffing at the Theory of Evolution was the norm.
As far as the actual students and professors go, I can give you one telling detail: A geology student goes from geology class to religion class. He finds the two conflict when it comes to a description of reality. He questions his professor of geology, and the professor says (paraphrasing here), “I teach my subject and stay out of their way.”
Here are a few comments on the subject from Steve Benson:
For Steve Benson’s more complete presentation, see http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon173.htm
And here is another take on the troubled interaction of BYU with the science of biology: http://www.exmormon.org/whylft35.htm
There’s still a large and active contingent of mormons who are young earthers. One of their current heroes is Rodney Meldrum. We have discussed Meldrum’s dishonest “documentary” before: See this comment
And also see comment #106 on the same thread linked above. That was the thread in which we also discussed Josh the geologists toenails and the injuries thereto — so in case you missed that fascinating discussion…
llewelly:
Ah. Easy explanation: there were a whole lot of Star Trek junkies jonesing for a fix. That’s money!!! So, buff up the ol’ Enterprise, give an old, used episode plot a quick lick of paint, dry out the actors, and there ya go.
It may help to think of it as a gold-plated dog-turd.
And I was one of the junkies who paid to see it. Twice.
The utterly unsurprising truth about Abydosaurus, as acknowledged in the comments by one of the authors.
SteveV, sex and drugs and rock and roll is all me brain and body needs. Favored.
The comment to which David M. refers @460:
And here is the review to which Dan Chure refers in the blockquote @462, and to which David M. refers as the “utterly unsurprising truth”
This is odd. Greg Laden’s blog doesn’t link to Pharyngula in his blog roll. Am I missing something?
BS
His apology to Salty?
Oh, can we discredit all those fossils found in China as “Maoist” propaganda?
Bold:
<b>FUCK</b>
FUCK
In color:
<span style=”color: #ff0000″>FUCK</span>
FUCK
In a large font:
<span style=”font-size:300%”>FUCK</span>
FUCK
In bold, with color and large font:
<span style=”font-size:300%” ><span style=”color: #ff0000″><b>FUCK</b></span></span>
FUCK
Don’t you know Mao put all those fossils underground to deceive naive Western scientists? I swear, if it wasn’t for cultural relativism, that would be obvious to everyone.
It has occasionally been mentioned that the current lack of creationists cyber-here, caused by obligatory registration, has made this a more boring place. I happened to find this comment again and am severely tempted to accept the offer…
Shortly thereafter, I was informed that my epic compilation of New Testament contradictions from the two lists at http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com had received a refutation (pdf linked to from here). I said I would “check it out sometime” and never have. I have now finally downloaded the pdf, took a short look, and already found a few mistakes, arguments from ignorance, and arguments from assumption. I’m itching to post a rebuttal. But this whole thing is so long I have no idea when I could find the time for it… perhaps in May… almost certainly not this weekend… :-(
Or should I try it piecemeal?
Instead of spelling out the hexadecimal number, you can in this case just say “red” (without “#” in front). Of course this gives you access to a much smaller palette, but it’s a lot easier to remember :-)
Are creationists generally incapable of figuring out how to create a TypePad account and log in?
Half step, Mississippi uptown
toodelooo
“What’s the entry fee?” I asked the desk-man.
“Two fifty,” he said.
“What if I told you I had a Vincent Black Shadow?”
He stared up at me, saying nothing, not friendly. I noticed he was wearing a .38 revolver on his belt. “Forget it,” I said. “My driver’s sick anyway.”
His eyes narrowed. “Your driver ain’t the only one sick around here, buddy.”
“He has a bone in his throat,” I said.
“What?”
The man was getting ugly, but suddenly his eyes switched away. He was staring at something else . . .
My attorney; no longer wearing his Danish sunglasses, no longer wearing his Acapulco shirt . . . a very crazy looking person, half-naked and breathing heavily.
“What’s the trouble here?” he croaked. “This man is my client. Are you prepared to go to court?”
I grabbed his shoulder and gently spun him around. “Never mind,” I said. “It’s the Black Shadow — they won’t accept it.”
“Wait a minute!” he shouted. “What do you mean, they won’t accept it? Have you made a deal with these pigs?”
“Certainly not,” I said, pushing him along toward the gate. “But you notice they’re all armed. We’re the only people here without guns. Can’t you hear that shooting over there?”
It stops the drive-bys; they have to really want it. The lazy ones just pass it by, looking for another easier target to crash.
SC @#519 from the last subThread (sorry for late reply):
This, I think, is at the crux of our ideological disagreement.
In the end, people produce different amounts of wealth. Some people have more skill, talent and education than others. And people who are successful seek to pass on to their children whatever advantages they have gained in life. People are, in short, naturally unequal. I presume you wouldn’t disagree with this, since it’s plain fact.
With this in mind, I do not think that wealth automatically belongs to the whole community. Some wealth does, but not all. A person who produces wealth owes a certain amount to the social infrastructure that allowed her or him to produce that wealth: education, police protection, transport infrastructure, the courts, and so on. And it is right that individuals should pay reasonable taxes for the upkeep of that infrastructure. But this does not mean that all the wealth a person produces belongs to the community.
Of course, it is ultimately up to the community, as a whole, to delineate property rights and the rules governing contracts and transactions – to decide who owns what, and how they may dispose of it. But I would argue that, in granting such rights, the community should allow productive individuals the freedom, within certain limits, to enjoy the fruits of their labours. In the end, humans are largely self-interested creatures; in order to ensure continued productivity, and consequent wealth-creation, we need to have a society in which more productive people enjoy more wealth and reward.
This doesn’t mean that the current capitalist order necessarily serves this goal. Land ownership in much of the world, for instance, has its historic roots in various waves of historic land theft and violent coercion (as you have pointed out, correctly, on many occasions), and there is therefore a strong argument, for instance, for high inheritance taxes and duties on land, to redistribute the benefits of land to the whole community. But there is a big difference between land, which is not produced through human effort, and those goods and services which are produced through human effort. The latter, I would suggest, should be commodities sold for the benefit of those who produce them.
Strange Gods, I would like to second Jeffery D on the thanks for the update on your friend.
When I needed a mental health provider for a depression a few years ago I went to my insurance website and printed out their lists of care givers and took the list to my GP and said “Who on this list is worthwhile?” and she gave me some suggestions.
But otherwise, I was stumped on how to find one. Any other suggestions for finding good mental health providers in the USA?
I miss Hunter.
me too
My cousin who lives in Aspen was at the funeral/explosion/celebration. I wanted to be there, but couldn’t swing it.
I have no intention of butting in to this conversation, but I just wanted to interject the following as food for thought.
Walton said:
Define “produce”. Define “wealth”. Take into account what these things mean in a village where there is not much in the way of cash. How would, say, the friends I made among the indigenous population of Guatemala define those terms, and how might they be different/similar to your own?
This, too, is relative to circumstances. Is the stock trader more skilled, talented, and educated than his mechanic? Conventional wisdom would say yes, and certainly the salary differential would seem to indicate which position is the more valuable. But if the stock trader’s job depended upon him getting to work every day on time, and his car broke down…
There’s playing within the rules of the game, and then there’s understanding that the rules of the game have very little bearing to anything more than a contrived reality, established by the rulesmakers themselves. And how did they get to establish the rules? “He who has the gold…”
Would it not be nobler to pass on to their society whatever advantages they have gained in life?
People are naturally different. That does not render them unequal, in any way that should matter.
Just throwing out my two cents. Just thinking aloud.
Bobber: Feel free to participate; conversations on the endless thread are hardly “private”. I’ll reply to you in the morning, as it’s 2am here and I’m trying to force myself to read just a few more pages of my criminology textbook before going to bed. :-)
Blind Squirrel – Thanks for the link to the chicken sweaters, what a group of kind hearted knitters!
Actually, y’ll my date is Saturday. If any of you Oregon or Washington pharyngulites will be at the Portland Home & Garden Show I’d be happy to meet you there. *back to polishing up the bosoms*
Oh, Patricia, it is good to see you! Many of us were wondering how you were. Here’s to a fabulous date tomorrow.
xxxoooo
Josh
walton, just want to say that there’s absolutely no benefit to reading at 2am. Unless you have a gun to your head, it’s a bad habit to get into
Thanks Josh. Janine checks on me when I fall into that black hole of grief. I owe her a tango dip and a kiss. ;)
Francosaurus. No one wants to hear your opinions. Go away.
sgbm, that’s “fuckasaurus,” don’t forget.
fuckosaurus, no one here cares about your anti-nightowl sentiments. as a matter of fact, the middle of the night is the only sensible time to try to read anything without distractions.
Thank you, sistah. Can I get a amen up in this piece?
But isn’t he a homophobe?* If so, fitting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Spain#Repression_under_Franco.27s_regime
(That’s not even a tiny portion of the horror.)
*Am I confusing him with someone else?
All signs point to yes:
Comrade, wouldn’t you agree that worker-owned cooperatives — of the type that exist now even in capitalist countries, where only the workers at a particular business own the business, not a universally-owned dictatorship of the proletariat — meet this requirement?
And wouldn’t you agree that to the extent self-interest can be harnessed to organize commerce, such cooperatives function efficiently?
(Perhaps even more efficiently, since in comparison with a sole proprietorship, a greater number of people at the business are being rewarded with a larger proportion of the value they created through their labor?)
mmmm….. roleplay…..
No trolls?
Surely we can’t have eaten them all. *snort*
.. well for a while there I was keeping one in a box under my bed so I could get it out every now and again and poke it for amusement but PETA got word of it and I was forced to release it back into the wild.
Weirdly on it’s way out the door it stole a camera.
Geez, do you really dispute the value of a good night’s sleep?
and thanks for digging that up, strange gods. Is this going to be another one of your sulk sessions?
I dispute you anti-nightowl assumption that people who read at night don’t get “a good night’s(!) sleep”.
Bride are you going to the atheist meeting down your way?
Roger that!
Sure am Patricia
I’m expecting a good old fashioned, skirt-twirling time joined by Wowbagger, Rorscach, Cath the Canberra Cook and Deb in Oz plus a multitude of others ( 67 for dinner to be exact but many more at the drinks planned for Friday arvo)
[email protected], it’s always good to meet a fellow atheist and bubblehead.I mostly lurk because anything I usually think to say is already covered by those who are far more eloquent than I.
Oy. Don’t you get it? No one here cares about a thing you say. Be gone before someone drops a house(or a ton of bacon) on you.