The endless thread seems to be all caught up in British electoral politics lately…they all sound like a bunch of parliament groupies.
Carry on.
(Current totals: 10,140 entries with 981,135 comments.)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Molecular genetics (which is/was essentially molecular biology although with the option to do a bit of population biology and other less lab based stuff towards the end)- I had the brick sized textbooks (and didn’t particularly enjoy having to leave them behind when I moved to the US, but when the choice is 2 textbooks or all your Pratchett, what can you do?) but never really had to learn to study in order to get through the course – not that I wouldn’t perhaps have benefitted from having ever learned to study
– knowing enough to get a decent pass, and knowing the subject, are two different things – and when the top of the class from 3rd year got ~1000 quid at the start of 4th year I kinda kicked myself for approaching 3rd year finals with the attitude that as it didn’t count towards the degree, and I only needed to pass the year, which required if I recall correctly an score of less than 20% (given that I had a high average coursework grade), then if I couldnt do that going in without opening a textbook then I might aswell go home) – one of the reasons I wish I’d been exposed to the real world for a year or two before going to University – and one of the reasons I am looking forward somewhat to the prospect of a Masters degree now that I have actually had to study, and have enjoyed doing so.
The John Barrowman story is on the Daily Mash (http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/) which is a bit like The Onion for UK news and which you should probably bookmark. Today’s photo caption: Peter Mandelson now only three miles from Louisiana coast.
Walton @474 wrote,
Why?
The requirements of military spending are based on the functions of the military, not the population of the state. A purely defensive military can have a much smaller cost than one used offensively. GDP and population have little to do with it.
I would make one point, however, as a veteran. For many, the American military is a path out of poverty. While I would personally prefer this path to be in something less aggressive, I think that the size of our military budget does, to some extent, reflect the fact that the military does take people from poverty level and give them a lower-middle class income and life-style.
It is the only societal safety net available which isn’t being attacked by conservative politics. It’s not a great safety net, and it certainly lends itself to abuse by our leaders, but it does act like one.
Of course, we could cut our military budget in half without affecting that safety net.
And, should we establish other protections in society like universal health care, a well-funded peace corp, or easier access to education, we would probably be able to cut our military budget by 3/4 without affecting the ability to perform defensive tasks.
Oh, and what Pygmy Loris said @496 too.
Gary Moore and Eric Bell–Whiskey in the Jar
Josh, Official SpokesGay #458 very funny clip, he is channeling Jim Carey from his in living color days
On that note :
Interpretation 1
Interpretation 2
justalurker #471 thank you for giving a detailed look inside current college funding programs. Working and getting aid is/was never a problem. An entitlement of a totally free ride is.
Oh yeah, the Austrian army. Armies are generally supposed to have the following purposes, off of my head:
1) Defending the country;
2) providing troops for UN peacekeeping missions;
3) providing lots of people for peaceful purposes wherever needed.
1) completely falls flat in the case of Austria. It’s surrounded by fellow EU members, except Liechtenstein and Switzerland, two exceptions which almost prove the rule; and it’s neutral, meaning it can’t join military alliances like the NATO (which would require massive increases in military spending).
(The NATO, BTW, lost its one and only raison d’être in 1991 and should have been dissolved in that very year. It couldn’t be any more obvious, and of course I expected that to happen any day now when I was 9 years old. But I digress.)
2) remains, as you note (UN mandates are considered to trump neutrality), but requires very few people. Furthermore, it doesn’t require a specifically Austrian army; this kind of thing should be dealt with on the EU level (…sometime in the future <sigh>).
3) encompasses a couple of more specific cases, for all of which an army isn’t the best option. Again off the top of my head:
a) Help after catastrophes (big avalanches and river floods happen in Austria, never mind elsewhere). But of all the army that only requires the pioneers; all the rest can contribute little but muscle force, and obviously not a single weapon is required. A bigger fire brigade would be a good alternative.
b) Currently, incompetent draftees are sent to the eastern border to catch illegal immigrants. This is considered assistance to the police and prolonged every couple of years. What more can I say? It really is the job of the underfunded police. Besides, the problem itself is disappearing now that the eastern neighbors have joined not just the EU but the Schengen treaty (the immigrants never came from the eastern neighbors themselves, they just passed through). And never mind the xenophobic immigration laws themselves, the insufficient help to the countries of origin, and so on.
What does reality look like? Fighter planes are bought for billions and billions, and that for an elongate country that measures 600 km along the long axis. TSIB. Naturally, it wasn’t the cheapest offer that was taken, and evidence for corruption in the deal has been mounting for years, as have reports of construction mistakes and other inbuilt stupidities in the planes.
To go back to point 1 for a bit, there’s a Cold War joke… “How long do the Russians need to overcome the Alps? – 1/4 h. 10 minutes for laughing and 5 minutes for climbing.” Defending Austria never was possible since WWII.
O RLY? How is peer pressure not intimidation or coercion?
Democracy: you’re doing it wrong.
Really, I don’t and must not care if you tell us you’ll vote one way, then vote another, and never tell us. Nobody must have a right to ever figure out how you voted.
“If you only love one, you’re cheating on all others”, sings Don Giovanni. That’s not my attitude to love, for the record, but as an attitude to politics I think it sounds very good. Take pride in lacking allegiances, take pride in being an independent pragmatic who will vote for whoever is the least evil at any particular moment. Make the parties compete for your attention (…erm, first you’d need to convince enough other people to become like you, but you get my point).
*giggle*
LOL!!!
Frankly, I don’t admire anything here. Instead, I am <pokerface>burning with hate</pokerface> at the politicians who made all that work necessary.
I mean, joining the army? For an education? How perverse. (Yeah, I knew it’s normal in the USA. Doesn’t make it the slightest bit less perverse.)
#493 David Marjanović
of course I got a free education. I have audited classes of many types of courses in unis of 3 different countries. I read 7 to 10 books a week. I miss being near a large public library like they have in the major metro areas so have to make do with mailorder. Education is ongoing and free.
Man, are you naive.
Totally off off off off…. off topic, but from today homosexuals are allowed to adopt children here in Denmark. makes me very happy for them. We have many homosexual parents among our friends. And excellent parents they are. (Better than a lot of the heterosexual ones)So hooray for the Danish administration/government/Folketing, that they decided in favour of this new law.!!!
…Then where is your problem?
@Trine:
That’s awesome news. Good for the Danish.
More Cold War humour: in 1961 JFK was trying to convince the Mexicans from declaring Cuba a threat. The Mexican ambassador said “if we publicly declare that Cuba is a threat to our security, forty million Mexicans will die laughing.”
That’s the main reason I joined the army. That, and I needed to mature a bit before I was ready for the Real World. I grew up in a logging camp in Southeast Alaska — I had no fucking clue what the real world was like. The army gave me time to figure it out, and paid me poorly to boot. And I got to rappel out of helicopters (which was surprisingly fun).
I couldn’t’ve afforded university without the VA benefits. I’m glad I had the military option.
If I had to choose between a society where everybody could get as much education as they wanted (and could accomplish), even if I had to pay some of it, or a place where the only people who got an education were the ones who could pay for it on their own, I know which my choice would be. Paying for other people to get an education is my investment in the future. So if you don’t think people are entitled to an education, well you can eat my shorts.
Carlie @491:
We went to private colleges. So no. No university.
Honestly, I’ve forgotten now what my point was last night, but I’m pretty certain it was in response to “you kids have it easy these days” type comments upthread.
Carlie, Rorschach, and others:
No, I’m not clever (or paranoid) enough to put a fake birthday on my Facebook profile; it really is my birthday.
That’s right… I’m 50… 50 years old, and I like to kick, stretch, and kick!
@Bill Dauphin:
I have to add you as a friend.
KOPD @516: I definitely agree with you. (I guess this means I don’t have to eat your shorts.) I also appreciated Jadehawk’s comment up-thread @300. Funds used to help her get a degree are well-spent — and this comment comes from a person living below the official poverty level, and I’d still approve spending money on education. (Eating earthworms as a child seems to have raised Jadehawk’s IQ. Perhaps, in addition to backing her education, we could supply earthworms to elementary school cafeterias.)
Here’s some science news that creationists will twist to support their claims. Individual Nerve Cells Process Visual Input:
I do hope you won’t mind if I bring this UK poll, on whether prayers should be banned before council meetings, to your attention.
Should prayers be banned before council meetings?
Ice Cores and climate history:
In other news, Arnold Schwarzenegger was on NPR this morning, saying that he is reconsidering his support for off-shore drilling after seeing photos of the huge oil slick off the coast of Louisiana.
Also on NPR this morning, an interview with author Phillip Pullman:
There’s a podcast, plus text for the story, here.
So we have a candidate here for the stupidest thing said on Pharyngula this year (in the non–godbot category)?
Katrina – point taken, and I should have asked first.
Ol’Greg,
No, I voted by post in the local council election in my home area. I haven’t used my postal vote (yet) for the general election. My fault for not being clear.
Carlie,
:-D :-D :-D
David,
That would work, if it wasn’t for the fact that I’ve been an outspoken party activist for years, and have held positions of trust and responsibility in that capacity. It’s hard to go back on that without feeling a little bit guilty.
My metaphor may have seemed overblown, but I was being semi-serious; it does actually feel like cheating on a spouse.
Though admittedly the metaphor shouldn’t be extended too far; while I wouldn’t know, I’m informed by others that if one’s *ahem* marital activities remind you of distributing party election leaflets, one is probably doing it wrong. :-)
I’m with KOPD on this one. I know I said all that “we paid for it, harrumph, harrumph” stuff, but if there’d been any other way to do it, we surely would have.
My family was very much lower-middle-income. We owned a Christmas tree farm. We always had what we needed – but not much more. When I was accepted at a private college, it was a hardship for my parents – but they were more than willing to do that so that their daughter could have an education. I had a scholarship, but it wasn’t much. And we didn’t qualify for the Pell grant, though we tried every year. So we took out student loans. For years.
The choice of joining the military really had nothing to do with our educations. My husband and I made that choice for other reasons. Nevertheless, it was nice to have a steady paycheck with which to pay back all those educational loans.
So now that we’ve paid for our education, we’ve had to start saving for our children. We already know they won’t qualify for any financial assistance, so they’d better work hard for those scholarships. ;-)
@ Carlie: no worries. I’m on your side. :-)
Pharynguloids who caught Catherine Deveny’s stand-up at the Melbourne atheist convention might be interested to know that she has been sacked as a newspaper columnist after sending a couple of tasteless tweets from a TV awards ceremony.
Dunno what she was thinking or drinking. But, as my girlfriend was quick to point out, men in the media get away with worse all the time.
Why do you think you’re entitled to leech off taxpayer funds that pay university professors and keep libraries open, let alone buy the books provided therein? Auditing classes that people pay good money for? Reading books without paying for them?
Seriously, you’re a Glenn Beck fan aren’t you? “Socialism bad, learn all about it at the library, books are free”.
I see we’re still banging on about education, and how to pay for same?
Last night, I almost replied to the following from AnthonyK, but was too tired. In the rejuvenating light of day, it still bears saying:
Word up!
Regardless of how bright, skilled, or knowledgeable you might be in your own right, the discipline that accompanies serious academic work brings with it an intellectual maturity that is inherently valuable. Most high schools are not prepared to offer that experience, even to advanced seniors, and most kids in their early-to-mid teens aren’t ready to have it. In addition, any decent undergraduate college or university will expose students to a range of ideas, people, and social challenges that they won’t find in one place at any other time of their lives. Contrary to Ewan’s dismissiveness, it is at the undergraduate (bachelor’s) level that these benefits are greatest: Advanced studies become progressively more about what I’m going to be when I grow up, and less about the sort of broadbased intellectual training and maturity that the undergraduate years provide.
I am not at all a snob about the work people do: Serving drinks or digging ditches or hoeing a long row or even taking your clothes off onstage is all honest work, as respectable on its own terms as the brainiest or most highly skilled profession. But I think nearly everyone, regardless of their ultimate life’s work, could benefit from some form of post-secondary education.
And society benefits: The more thoughtful and well-rounded your neighbors are, the broader range of ideas they’ve been exposed to, the better off you are, and the better off all of us are, just because thoughtful, well educated people are less likely to behave like small-minded assholes. This, alone, is reason enough to treat higher education as a public good, and therefore worthy of public investments. Throw in the benefits of an educated people to political stability, economic competitiveness, and national security, and public funding of higher education becomes a slam dunk.
I have nothing respect for people who scrape and save and sacrifice and work multiple jobs to get an education, but the idea that that kind of toil and hardship should be the norm is simply insane. Struggle is not ennobling; it’s just struggle. It reduces the benefit of the thing being struggled for, and risks embittering the struggler. We optimize the social benefits of education by reducing the extraneous struggle involved and allowing students to focus on the value-added aspect of being in school.
So yeah… free college for everyone, if possible. And if it’s not possible, as much public subsidy as can be arranged. So mote it be!
Well, it does give one a nice feeling of accomplishment, I imagine. I had help with the first degree and haven’t finished paying for the second one, so I don’t know yet.
More science news.
Contextually I think my dismissiveness still works. My undergraduate level studies were more broad based than they would have been in England, but were still pretty narrowly focused. First year I took Biology, Chemistry and Statistics. Second year I took 12 units of biology (with the option to go 6 bio, 6 chem) 3rd year was I belive 6 bio units, final year was 4 bio units acceptable towards the molecular genetics degree plus a lab placement (molecular biology)and a dissertation (anything I could tie in to molecular genetics)
I honestly don’t see that this reflects a broadbased intellectual training. Had I entered into the English, rather than the Scottish system, you can cut first year out of there (or indeed if I hadn’t been such a lazy oaf at high school and had got straight A’s at A-Level (which already had me restricted to Chem, Physics, and biology – from age 16)
Not all education systems are built equally – initially I viewed the US system with disdain because it was so unfocused. With a little more maturity and hindsight I rather wish that the British system worked more along the lines of the US system (although maintaining its financial workings, or improving them in a direction away from what the US does)
KOPD:
No more so than paying off any other loan.
I was trying to make a point last night, and was – apparently – too tired to make it coherent.
Yes, we paid off our loans. Had we any other options, though, we would have gladly taken them.
And while my husband is an example of someone who went through his undergrad with a clear choice in mind, I’m a perfect example of someone who didn’t.
That doesn’t mean my education wasn’t important. I like to think that I’m a better person now for having gone to college, and that my contributions to society have more value as a result.
QFT
Toilet got slow. Snaked it.
Toilet got scratched. Painted it.
Toilet fine.
Toilet got clogged. Plunged it.
Paint came off.
:-(
QFT
Carlie (@479):
I don’t think anyone answered this…
…and, at the risk of exposing my ‘Murrican ignorance about British politics, I’ll take a stab at it (if only to provoke one of our resident Brits to correct me).
I don’t think he actually can vote for “higher-level” candidates, because I don’t think there are any higher-level candidates to vote for: If I understand correctly, Britons vote for members of Parliament (i.e., members of the House of Commons), and the Prime Minister comes from among the MPs… the leader of either the majority party or the party that’s able to form a majority coalition government.
Thus, if I’ve got it right, British voters don’t have the opportunity to directly vote for any higher ranking office than the House of Commons (roughly equivalent, I think, to our House of Representatives).
Your question points to one of the reasons I prefer our presidential model of the parliamentary scheme: Here it is at least conceiveable to vote for a representative based on that person’s own merit, or on important local priorities, without necessarily being bound to that party’s platform at the national level.
In practice, of course, I’ve never split my vote that way… but at least I theoretically could, if I had a representative I really liked who was from the “wrong” party.
Kevin:
Yes, please do friend me on FB. Just make sure I know who you are (even assuming your real/FB first name is Kevin, you’re far from the only one!).
Paul (@529):
Yah, I, too, was bemused by broboxley’s hypocrasy in railing against education subsidies while bragging about auditing classes for free. Nothing wrong with auditing, of course (as long as he’s doing it on the up and up), but does he really think nobody’s paying for those classes? Just as with the “free” healthcare poor people get at emergency rooms, somebody else is paying for broboxley’s “free” education. That’s fine with me, as far as it goes; I just want him to recognize the benefit he’s receiving.
Fungi and animals are a hell of a lot more closely related than either is to plants, or (any kind of) algae, and we know of a recent case of gene transfer from a green alga to a seaslug. Tunicates picked up cellulose-synthesis genes from bacteria. I’ve always wondered about the genes for synthesizing chitin, which makes up the cell walls of fungi and the exoskeleton of arthropods (as well as parts of mollusks and annelid worms).
Bill I think that about nails British politics actually – another interesting divergence with US politics is that we don’t really have very much in the way of lower offices to vote for – as far as I recall the only other elections are for local councils – whereas in the US you appear to get to elect practically everyone (judges, comptrollers, chief of police, trashman) and vote on practically everything also rather than just leaving it up to your elected official (at least at a local/state scale)
@Bill Dauphin:
Yes, my real name is Kevin. It’s a boring name, but it’s the only one I’ve got.
Arrrgh!
Cleanup on Aisle 537!
“…I prefer our presidential model of the parliamentary scheme…” should’ve been “…I prefer our presidential model to the parliamentary scheme….”
Also, “…hypocr
aisy….”<sigh>
I completely forgot. Today is Star Wars Day.
May the 4th be with you.
KOPD – you have a painted toilet?
Cue 20 pharyngulites making a “Kevin from Pharyngula” account and all friending Bill at once. Not that I’m trying to give anyone ideas. :p
Carlie,
I tried to paint over the scratches with an oil-based paint. It turns out Google led me astray on this. I am consulting the oracle again to search for another solution. May just say to Sheol with it and just replace it in a few years when we move.
KOPD – I was imagining something like this. No one would notice the scratches. :)
@Carlie:
Ahah! But I’ll be the only real Kevin. Bill will be able to tell. He seems smart enough to tell a Kevin from an impostor. Now, if that said impostor is also a Kevin… then we may be in trouble.
In case it wasn’t clear, my position is the same as yours. My issue was purely with the hypocrisy his position seemed to entail. I admit I am not familiar with the intent of the “audit” process itself, although I did put myself through college to get my Bachelor’s in Computer Science (3 jobs and 16 units concurrently, woo!).
I join with others at being horrified that military service is seem as a reasonable way to “pay” for higher education. I am also all for putting more tax money towards subsidizing higher education.
By the way, Walton, when you were showing the difference between US and UK spending on the war, you didn’t take into account that for the year you were looking at, an obscene amount of the war costs didn’t actually go through the budget process. I am not sure if this is something that goes on in the UK, but it was pretty bad during the Bush years. Obama made noise about war spending going through the budget process, but I haven’t followed up. Don’t want to just assume he did what he said he would, as he does have a pretty bad track record of following up words with actions (see: FOIA exemptions going UP relative to the Bush years, both in absolute terms and adjusted for the difference in number of requests, even though he made a lot of noise about making government more transparent. Or, anything to do with civil liberties more generally.).
Carlie,
As interesting as that is, I don’t think my wife will go for it. Plus, I apparently suck at getting paint to stick. Or she’s dangerous with a plunger. Best not to dwell on that.
KORP,
Painting? As a long-time DIYer I’d have never thought of using paint. The best you could do, as far as I know, is to use an acrylic and even then you would probably get chips and peeling pretty quick. Maybe if you sanded (or sandblasted) the toilet first, or etched it with a strong acid. You’re basically trying to paint glass. Not easy.
What you want is to re-glaze the toilet, which isn’t an easy DIY job. I think I’d consider replacement.
Ewan:
Yah, I wondered about that. Since the UK isn’t a federalist system like the U.S., I assume there’s no equivalent to U.S. state governments? I’m guessing what you call local councils are equivalent to city/town council’s in the U.S.?
I’m not so happy about electing judges (in particular), police chiefs, sheriffs, and other professionals who could presumably be selected/appointed based on demonstrated merit, but I’m glad that we elect (for the most part) legislative bodies and heads of government at the state and local levels (and in many states, though not my own, at the county level as well). Lower-level U.S. political units are governed in a manner that sensibly recapitulates our national scheme of government, and in broad terms, I think that’s a Very Good Thing™.
Flex (@549):
And, just to add to your point, replacing a toilet is a relatively easy DIY job: Even I can do it! ;^)
Replacing is what I’ll probably do. But not now – it’s not on the budget. For now, I’ll just go ahead and replace the fill valve (I forgot to mention that after I turned the water back on when I was done painting over the scratches, the fill valve has gotten very stubborn and doesn’t want to shut completely off). Nope. I’ll just add replacing that toilet to the list of things to do before selling the house in a few years. Along with replacing the shelves in the coat-closet-turned-pantry with ones that don’t look like they were done by a clueless git.
Groupies come in all forms, whether they be parliament groupies, Christian groupies or atheist groupies. A-week is a great example. [URL]http://cuddlyatheism.com/2010/05/03/effin-as-and-internet-atheists/[/URL]
You should come up with a secret codephrase and post it here so he’ll know it’s you.
Does the recipe sub-thread take requests? I’m in dire need of a generically useful stir-fry/simmer sauce that I can make myself that isn’t just a load of soy sauce or coconut milk. I’ve been on a rice and vegetables kick, and am getting tired of buying jars of goop for three bucks each. Ginger, miso, curry, whatever.
One quick, dash-in-dash-out tip: cornstarch paste is going to be your best friend.
Well, this makes me feel good, since I just had a cup of steamed broccoli for lunch:
@Lynna:
I love broccoli.
@Kevin:
And broccoli loves you.
Ffffffff
I hate this state!
No really, I do. Virginia is a horrible state now with our uber-Conservative AG and Governor. Cuccinelli is trying to drag Michael Mann through the dirt because Mann is an AGW scientist. There’s blatant homophobia and discrimination.
We’re being dragged back to the 19th century, and I can’t beat a quick retreat because I’m stuck here for another year.
Tell you one thing, I’m swiftly going to look for residence in Maryland when my year lease runs out.
Happy Birthday, Bill!
Oh yeah. Happy birthday, Bill!
I apologise; it’s just bullshit.
That said, your comment @387 contained strains of libertarianism (“get a job you leeching fuck”, “of course you lot never want to fucking pay for anything you use, just demand services”) consistent with some of your comments on other threads.
As has been pointed out already: no. And even if this was somehow universally true, so what? It doesn’t mean people should stand for that now.
Her ‘sense of entitlement’ was justified. Ewan R had implied that her type of degree was somehow inferior, and that she should pay to offset the damage she was causing to his degree by the association. Jadehawk rightly objected to that, and called it ‘elitism’.
You seem to be under the impression that Jadehawk is somehow demanding to be paid for nothing, which would be a total strawman, and/or a total failure at reading comprehension.
I find that your train of thought is often impossible to parse properly. Could you please use more careful syntax and grammar when you make comments? This is not intended to be an ad hominem: I have no intention of avoiding your points. I just don’t want it in the form of a confused mess that looks like something the editor of Ulysses discarded.
Happy birthday, Bill.
Well, my wasp in flight shot was highlighted, which helps make up for the gray, cold and *windy* weather. Winds around 40mph today.
*Grumbles*
Caine,
That wasp shot was pretty damned cool. Sometimes I get jealous of you folks that can do stuff like that and show it to the world. When I get creative, it’s in the form of some piece of code, like a function pointer in a recursive function (ie., something slick and efficient that nobody understands).
Bill, I have requested you as friend
KOPD, thanks. Without people like you and your creative pieces of code, I wouldn’t be able to mess around on the internet like I do, so it’s seriously appreciated. I couldn’t write code if my life depended on it.
Google tells me today is 40 years since Kent State.
Thank you, Caine. It is nice to be appreciated.
Writing code comes rather naturally with my kind of personality. I’m very much about breaking things down into discrete units and a series of steps. Once you get the hang of that, writing code is just a process of mechanically translating those steps and units into a specified language.
Happy birthday, Bill!
(Bad timing/reading. Please insert this as comment #569.)
Caine, first chance I’ve had to stop and see your work. Very very nice. I just missed a chance at a gorgeous shot of a sharp-shinned hawk sitting in my dogwood. Unfortunately, my camera wasn’t ready, and I’d forgotten that.
This is the second time I’ve seen that sharpie, so I’m pretty sure I’ll get another chance.
Right now, there’s a ring-necked pheasant out there who thinks that cleaning up under the bird feeders is his responsibility alone.
Your degree is cheapening the value of mine = your kind is taking jobs from my kind of people? They seem to relate pretty well. Something ugly in that.
Anyone care to call me a “shark licker” or tell me to blow them? WTF is a “shark licker” anyway?
In my area of study there was no quantifiable amount of work that one could say gets a piece of paper. Your work is either good (it gets shown, your papers get published, you are recognized), or your work is weak (you may get a grade but you’ll probably be pressured into switching to an education degree so you can teach grade school)… the degree is totally worthless unless you mean to get your Ph.D. and attempt the rocky road towards becoming a professor. The only reason you were expected to be there was to learn and do the work you had committed to, to learn to think about just that.
Yes. This is very true. It was hell for me and took me almost 6 years to get through undergrad. In grad school I could not take classes because they might fall on days I had to work. I often slept every other day and dropped so much weight I caught pneumonia twice in a year (and am still prone to it even now). You know what suffered? My education.
But I wanted to finish and I couldn’t stand the thought that I couldn’t do it whether it was any fault of mine or not.
That kind of drive is called insanity.
That being said I’m softer now and I care less what other people think of me.
I did end up taking a loan out for grad school (yes, working, loan and still that poor because my long hour requirement for my degree meant I could only work part time) and am within months of having it paid of entirely. It’s a good feeling, but not a good good feeling.
It, I imagine, is a good feeling the way that having part of your colon removed would feel good if it had been leaking shit into your belly for three days. More like: thank the motherfucking hole in the sky that’s over!
Noble? Fuck noble. Fuck nobility too.
Oh and WOW Caine, really great photos!
I think I already explained that this wasnt remotely what I implied – you can go back and check it so long as you ignore the general thrust of the arguement and just read the bits where I’m explaining that what I was saying wasn’t that people without the funding to go to university aren’t devaluing degrees….
So many long interesting threads today, so little time… at least I probably got the cover letter and the illustrations for that manuscript to the point the whole thing can be submitted for publication tomorrow… that leaves plenty of bureaucracy for tomorrow, and two more manuscripts.
But don’t think I’ve stopped procrastinating. =8-)
Ol’Greg: That’s horrible.
In many ways, I’m starting to feel rather guilty about the kind of sheltered, easy life I’ve led – and about the kind of clueless, judgmental attitudes I used to hold. I hope I’ve changed in that respect. But I can certainly now understand why some people got irritated with me when I first arrived here: I was a privileged twit whose understanding of reality came exclusively from books and facts and figures, not from any experience of real people’s actual lives. And I said plenty of stuff that made sense at the time in light of political theory and hypotheticals, but that, in light of actual reality, I now think was wrong.
Katrina, thanks. Oh, a sharp-shinned hawk, pretty! The birds of prey around here tend to keep a long, high distance. Generally, it’s vultures I get closest to, although the last one was upset with my stalking, as I was interfering with his investigation of squarshed jackrabbit. I did get good shots of a Nighthawk once, who took refuge in my Juniper tree during a storm.
Pheasants are so gorgeous. I manage shots of them when out and about, but they are extremely wary as they get shot at for a good portion of the year. Pheasant season ended not so long ago, and they’re still pretty spooky. My husband got some nice shots of a Northern Harrier hunting. I don’t have that sort of luck.
Ol’Greg:
That’s an excellent description of how getting an education goes in the U.S. more often than not. It’s beyond absurd that obtaining an education is so fucking difficult and it explains a great deal about the amount of backward thinking in the U.S.
Thank you very much. I was bragging on stuff I have on my moblog; I have been terrible about updating my Zenfolio. Now I’ll shut up about all that. ;)
Happy Birthday, Bill!
I worked my way through college. It took me five years instead of four, and I was never able to give the course material my full attention. It was not good. It was just necessary.
I feel like the whole world should be clapping for you just this instant Walton! But perhaps it’s just me that wants to cheer…
You have had and will continue to have your own struggles of course. I can’t imagine that you got as far as you have without being dedicated and hard working anyway.
Empathy is a learned skill I think.
Nice Harrier. If I can find a good place online to upload some of my bird pics, I’ll let you know.
We live right between some woods and a golf course, so we get a really interesting mix of wildlife. I strategically placed most of my bird-feeders not only within view of my office window, but also within ideal range for my 100-300mm zoom. And then, of course, my desk is turned to the window. It’s a good thing I’m a touch typist.
Oh, by the way Walton… never feel guilty about whatever good things happen for you please.
Rather just try not to be unkind or hateful and those good things end up being equally fortunate for the people who may benefit from what good you, yourself, can do.
Just out of curiosity, Walton (I’ve pretty much given up believing you’ll ever have some sense beaten into that little head of yours), what would your response be to a little old lady who insists on voting Labour because her dad was a miner?
I also think, in light of some other people’s experiences, that there is a real hidden problem with class-elitism in British universities.
In theory, all British universities (except the private University of Buckingham) charge the same tuition fees; all have funding for low-income students; and they are, in theory, equally accessible to people from all backgrounds. But it doesn’t always work that way in reality.
My own university, Oxford, does not really allow any flexibility when it comes to completion of the course. Students are expected to be in residence and are not usually allowed to do paid work in termtime (except bar shifts and a few other things). Most colleges also don’t let you defer completion of the course unless you have medical or other compelling reasons to do so, and part-time options are not usually available (except through the Department of Continuing Education and other special programmes). Because of all these things, it just isn’t possible to “work your way through” a degree at Oxford; realistically, to meet the requirements, you have to have the financial resources to complete the course. And so the whole system favours middle- and upper-class students over those from poor families – especially when you take into account the admissions process, which, being based largely on interviews, tends to favour those who can afford “interview coaching” and/or who went to good schools. As such, it’s not surprising that around 50 percent of Oxford undergraduates went to independent (private) schools, compared to around 7 percent of the general population. And even those who, like me, went to state schools tend to be from relatively affluent middle-class families.
So, in some ways, perhaps our problem is worse than that in the US. In the US, it’s no secret that the Ivy League colleges are elitist and ludicrously expensive, and that they favour the rich – but they also have much more endowment money to splash around than their British counterparts, so that those with real talent, like Bill’s daughter at Yale, get scholarships or financial aid. In Britain, the classism in higher education is less obvious, but it’s still there, and – because of its more covert nature – harder to do anything about. And it’s probably going to get even worse in the future with the inevitable substantial rise in tuition fees.
Pheasants? In front of the window. :-) You can’t actually walk up to them, but they’re not that shy either, because they’re not shot at.
Walton? You’re almost apologising again. Stop it :-)
I should add to this that the interview process is actually, in itself, very fair, and in my experience most colleges do a good job of selecting people on merit. So I’m not alleging any sort of actual bias.
But it’s still very true that someone’s performance in an interview inevitably depends, in many respects, on factors such as personal confidence, which are affected by how privileged, or otherwise, someone’s education was, and how much coaching he or she has received. And because the interview process intimidates a lot of people, many from less privileged educational backgrounds simply don’t apply in the first place.
Yeah, consciousness sucks. On the other hand..
I’m going to procrastinate tomorrow.
Tonight, I’m not not up for it. I’m anti-crastinating.
Pope not Catholic? Oh, wait…
Phew! You little cock-teaser, you had us there, didn’t you? Of course you have to vote Conservative – your genes, at one point say “CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC”
Well, now that the spectre of doubt has been frightened by its own shadow, and too many people here have been complaining (um, why?) about those of us lucky enough to have a college education, I’ll tell you my lottery fantasy: studying History of Art in Florence.
There, that’s it. And to anyone who doesn’t like it: yes, I will have fries with that.
I have no idea. That kind of allegiance isn’t really something one can argue with. :-/
Why do you ask? And in which area am I allegedly lacking “sense”?
There are things that should be done on the national level, like whether it’s possible to defer completing a course.
(Over here, lectures do not have compulsory attendance. You have to pass the exam, that’s all, and you can take the exam at whichever of the offered dates you want. Lab work and similar courses have compulsory attendance and are “examination-imminent”, but you can take the entire course whenever you want. The only restriction is that sometimes having passed a particular course is a prerequisite for another – at least for the exam about another. All this is nationwide, no matter that the University of Vienna dates to 1385.)
How big will the protests be?
(going back upthread)
I am sorry though, Katrina. I was a little too trigger-happy there. Tuition and funding is a really sore spot right now given that my campus is undergoing some pretty painful cuts (thanks, state legislature!). Not nearly as bad as some others have it, but it’s still not fun. We’re quaking in our boots at the prospect of having to rely more on just tuition costs.
Fuck, you’ve got your own university? And it’s Oxford?
Katrina:
*Nods* My front windows open right onto the deck, that’s where I put out abundant seed and suet, I get great shots with my 300mm. I also feed right outside my studio windows.
Moblog accounts are free, you can subscribe if you wish, but there’s no time limit on free accounts. It’s a good community there. I’ll have been there for 4 years this month. I do subscribe, but it would be poor form for a moderator not to do so. ;D I also started a group there specifically for bird shots: http://moblog.net/thebirds/
Not really. I don’t come from a Conservative family, nor do I have any kind of tribal allegiance to the party.
It’s just that I’ve been active in the party for a while, have a lot of good friends in the party, and am finding it hard to contemplate publicly changing my allegiance, given that it will disappoint some people. I thought I had explained this adequately upthread.
It’s now essentially too late to send in my postal vote, so I will have to vote in Oxford East. I think I will probably cave to my no-longer-so-secret desires and vote Lib Dem. But I might end up voting Tory. I’m not yet sure.
broboxley,
Perhaps you did not see my post at #460 where I gave detailed information about the increased cost of higher education since 1972, using Colorado University, Boulder as an example. I offered the evidence you asked for, referencing the median income of the two points in time and using inflation to demonstrate that higher education is more expensive in both real dollars and in the proportion of income it takes to pay for a year of university. Are you going to reply or simply ignore me because I have facts whereas you have only a faulty memory and asinine bluster?
Rorschach wrote:
I haven’t bought anything yet – but I’m not buying one with Linux already installed; I’m going to stick it on myself.
Will most likely get an Asus from this place unless I can find one cheaper locally.
Hi everyone, I…
oh…
it’s about Walton? again?
*smiley thing to indicate good humo(u)r, and all that sort of rot. what?*
Somewhere around your academic demesne in Oxfordshire.
What’s round on the ends and ‘hi’ in the middle?
If you don’t have time to catch up with Teh Thread, don’t contribute to it.
Ok, this has nothing to do with anything but I seriously need to vent some steam. Long story short: I spent some time debating stupid people (which I generally do since its good practice) and I got mad. It’s going to be a rant so no one has to read it if they really don’t want to.
I was debating on what would seem to be a not so infuriating topic but which became one: international adoptions. Namely, whether they are bad for the mental health of the adoptees. More namely so if this is caused by them being of a different race than the adoptive parents.
So here I am, all fired up, proving (with nice sources and citations to) that this is not the case. And what happens? The mf I’m debating starts claiming that “academia has nothing to do with reality” and that “actions speak louder than words” (my primary source had been used by my government to suggest increased support of foster care for children in their native countries which STILL had nothing to do with race)
And people start AGREEING with him. I know Europe is hit hard by Xenophobia but REALLY. You’d think the guy actually being able to prove his points would get the most credit. Oh no he didn’t. And this isn’t actually an anti-scientific forum at all, it just proves that being smallminded in one area (foreigners) is just as good an inroad to pseudoscientific thinking as woo. It just proves my preconception – if xenophobia get’s a good grip on Europa we´re done for. I’m not even sure where to migrate to either anymore. Perhaps we truly are heading for a new dark age. Sigh.
Rant over. Just needed to get it out of my head and onto something else, Pharyngula seemed as good a place as any. Carry on.
Sorry Sven, I call rabbit.
Walton (@585):
Well, yes and no: I’d say the Ivies¹ are “elitist” in the sense that their admission standards are high, and it’s certainly true that many of their students come from wealthy backgrounds… but I don’t think it’s fair to say they “favour the rich” in any direct, structural sense. And they don’t give any scholarships.
Let me clarify that point: Yale has needs blind admissions, which means that admissions decisions are made entirely without reference to a student’s ability to pay, and meets need financial assistance, which means that Yale covers all costs over and above the student’s family’s calculated ability to pay. Essentially, admission itself is the only merit-based award the school gives, and everyone who’s admitted gets as much financial aid as they need.
It works out (and I’m doing this from memory) that anyone from a family with total income less than about $200,000 gets at least some financial aid (IIRC, that’s slightly more than half the student body), and anyone from a family with less than $60,000 pays nothing (including not only tuition and room and board, but also books and reasonable incidental expenses). There are also no athletic scholarships, per se, though athletes get financial aid on the same basis as any other student.
It’s still true that students from economically deprived schools in economically deprived communities will have a harder time compiling the sort of academic resume (i.e., including extracurriculars, Honors/AP coursework, etc.) that appeals to the Ivies, but there’s no specific bias against poorer students. The student-host who led the tour on our first visit to campus was from rural Kentucky, IIRC.
BTW, similar to your comments about Oxford, the Ivies are set up based on the assumption that students come straight out of high school and finish within 4 or 5 years (it does occasionally happen that students take a year off, often for medical/emotional reasons). There’s little if any accommodation, at the undergraduate level in any case, for part-timers, older students, or married students, and little opportunity to work other than at on-campus work-study jobs or internships related to academic work.
OTOH, many many U.S. colleges and universities go out of their way to cater to part-time, night, and older students, so the opportunities are there in the larger system.
¹ Note that my comments are based on our experiences with Yale. AFAIK, the other Ivies have similar policies, but I don’t know that from direct experience.
*perhaps a raised eyebrow*
and there’s no need to apologize for the Jefferson Airplane! to me! “gets you there on time” if you know what I mean.
Now, see, that’s what I just don’t get. Different race? What, dogs, sea urchins? Um….
The internet is not a good place to go to calm down. Except maybe, sometimes, here. We hear your pain, brother, but ultimately, they’re only other people’s neurons.
Adopt away!
Testing to see if my sign-in works from a different IP and computer.
Sven – my favourite guitar solo, apart from Hendrix – MC5
Only happened because five of the government MPs defected for this particular vote.
We still exclude lesbians from getting IVF treatments.
Of course, personally, I want to see IVF removed from the NHS.
There is a very real danger with international adoptions that the system (not necessarily individuals) can fall prey to the “we’re so much better than them and therefore the babies are better off with us” mentality, as was seen in the recent debacle with Haiti. It’s a shitty world where people have to be forced to choose whether to keep their family with them or give them up to those nice people from another country who are much richer, and a really shitty world in which that is considered to always be the better choice. Can you quantify whether an orphan is better off with their own intact extended family who might be poor or better off if removed entirely to a different culture several continents away? It’s not just the mental health of the adoptees that is in question, but the whole milieu of “we don’t have enough babies here, so we’ll go take them from places that are poorer instead and they ought to be happy to give them to us”. Are there overcrowded orphanages and crappy systematic support and terrible living conditions in places? Sure. But there are also places where families are coerced to give up their children “to give him/her a better life”, and there needs to be a lot more policing of adoption practices everywhere.
ambulocetacean #477
I can’t let this bit of ignorance or stupidity pass.
ambulocetacean, do you know what laissez faire capitalism is? I’ll give you a hint, it hasn’t been found in the US for over 100 years.
In economics, laissez faire means allowing business to be free from state intervention, especially restrictions in the form of regulation and government monopolies. The phrase is French and literally means “let do”, but it broadly implies “let it be” or “leave it alone.”
Other than a few laws against fraud, most 19th Century federal government intervention in business was very strongly pro-business. For instance the Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 authorized both extensive land grants in the western US and issuing 30-year 6% bonds to the Union Pacific Railroad and Central Pacific Railroad (later the Southern Pacific Railroad) in order to construct a transcontinental railroad.
Federal government regulation of business really started with the passage of the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. This act required railroads to publicize shipping rates and charge no more for short hauling than for long hauling. Railroads were also prevented from practicing price discrimination against smaller markets. In 1890 the Sherman Antitrust Act limited cartels and monopolies. This was the end of laissez faire capitalism in the US.
Happy Birthday Bill. Had trouble with the computer at work, it would appear to complete the page but I wasn’t always signed in, so I couldn’t say anything earlier.
PZ, what’s with the map at the bottom of the thread?
Happy birthday Bill. And while you’re at it, GET OFF MY LAWN, KID!
I almost forgot!
Happy Birthday, Bill!
Back to steampunk for a moment, a handy flowchart
@ Bill:
(SpokesGay stumbles up to podium, sewn into a skin-tight sequined dress. Plumps bleach blond bouffant)
Now where is my god damned chloral hydrate? Anyone got a Miltown?
My favorite guitar solo from 4:57 – 6:30. Probably not going to be covered in my lessons.
@ Caine –
Lovely, lovely photographs. Just curious, do any of the birds in your area go in for lekking?
Kw*k you, David. Kw*k you hard. In the shower. With Cameron and Clog.
Apparently mrs Clog is a barrister – and a faithhead. That does sound disgustingly familiar, I have to admit.
I have all my pictures up behind a firewall at MyFamily.com and I could invite you there, if you like. Of course, if I do that, you’d probably end up wading through all the travel photos and family photos and whatnot. Most of the pics are searchable, but I haven’t tagged them all yet.
First, though, I think I’ll check out your bird group.
Either way works, just let me know.
Thoroughly unrelated to the current Thread topics:
A few days ago I sat down to solidify a few of my current stances on a few subjects. A few hours and a whimsical bout of pattern-delving later, I ended up with this curiosity. I’d like to get some feedback and some new perspectives. I’m a relative youngster and haven’t had as many opportunities as I’d like to refine and explore my positions based on input from others.
Anything goes! Rip it to shreds, ask questions, or tell me it’s the stupidest thing you’ve seen in ten years, if you feel so inclined. I may be a bit slow to reply — I’m dodging my last round of college exams this week — but I’ll certainly read any comments made and reply as time allows for as long as anyone is willing to discuss.
Here’s a birthday present for Bill (he’s the right age to appreciate it). Crosby Stills & Nash “Marrakesh Express”:
Josh:
Thank you. :) Some birds do, grouse and prairie chickens in particular. I rarely see prairie chickens and grouse are usually deep in fields, so it can be difficult to see the behaviour. The grackles here sometimes indulge a little, but it’s not common. They’ll feed in groups but keep a good distance from one another. They mostly hang out in the trees and puff up and whistle at one another.
It’s a trip seeing them whistle, they inflate like a puffer fish, their feathers ruffle, they stand on their tiptoes (so to speak) and then let loose with the whistle. I’m listening to the whistles and clacks as I type.
Katrina:
:D I’d love to see more people posting there. You do need a moblog and need to join the group to post. I’d be very happy to see you at Moblog, it’s a no pressure place. Some people (like myself) post a lot, some people don’t.
I’d feel a bit funny going through your family photos, and it would probably take me a long time, thanks to my crappy dial up. Thank you, though.
ddpej, meh.
You got one hit on your blog from me, but never again.
I believe you’re nothing special.
The map is just a widget I was trying out. It shows the location of visitors — the glowing ones are visitors in the last 10 minutes.
I’m keeping an eye on you all!
John Morales: Fair enough, though I’d hardly call a LJ account a blog. Thank you for taking the time to look.
Good choice, ‘Tis: I remember going with my father to buy that album when it was brand new. I may still have it somewhere, in amongst my dusty collection of vinyl LPs. Thanks for the blast from the past.
lol, apparently there’s a Pharyngula reader in Mongolia. Also one at the North pole.
ddpej @627, you’re welcome.
—
PS _ddpej.livejournal.com_ ain’t a blog?
Must be a journal or a diary, then.
(important difference, that :) )
As for your claimed ‘curiosity’, it’s an enumeration of a set of beliefs you profess.
Big deal.
Ewan R @575:
I skimmed your comment @298 and came away with a certain impression, without reading your effort to clarify @304. I misrepresented your position and I apologise.
I remain critical of your overall approach to issue, and confused by where you think the problem lies (student? university? policy?), but these are discussions that have already taken place between you and commenters more capable than I.
Um, I saw no map until I enabled revolvermaps.
Cute, I might make the permission permanent.
Currently looks like the view from space should the USSR secretly return with an undetected mass nuke launch to win the cold war in one fell swoop.
That’s some pretty frickin impressive coverage though – missing anyone in Antarctica though, guess the Old Ones don’t buy into your whole thing =(
No reasons why there couldn’t be some in Mongolia. IIRC, there a lot of internet bars in Ulan Bator.
But the north pole might be a stretch.
I also see readers in Phuket, Bangkok, Vientiane, and Phnom Penh.
Fair enough. Hopefully, you’ll see me at Moblog. Though I must warn you, I’m not by any means on par with you. :-)
Josh OSG (@616):
Even a boring, vanilla het boy like me would pay to see the video of that. At least you didn’t call me “Mr. President”! ;^)
Katrina:
Pffft, I’m an amateur. Let me know if you set up, I’ll add you to my friends. :) One of the things I like best about Moblog is the wide range of photos people take, it runs the gamut, and there are people from all over the world.
Happy Birthday Bill,
Remember to take a shot for every years you’ve gained.
John Morales @ 630: I suppose it was something close to a journal originally, but I didn’t use it much. These days it’s mostly just an old account that I’ve kept around in case I wanted to comment here, since LJ accounts are accepted. If you want to consider that a blog (or journal, or diary), have at it. No skin off my back. =)
And yes, it’s a list of beliefs. I wasn’t raised on all of them and I formed a fair amount strictly philosophically. There are a lot of opinionated folks from different backgrounds with different ideas here, so the curiosity is genuine. Exposure to new perspectives and enhancement of personal growth and all that.
Much as I admired Catherine Deveny at the Atheist conference, I’m really unhappy with her destructive, public remark about Bindi. Nothing excuses damaging a child. Ambulocetacean makes a good point, it’s also true that men shouldn’t get away with worse.
Caine:
I’m up at “Katbird’s moblog”.
@ AnthonyK
Thanks man, I needed that. Debating with people you know disagree (vehemently!) with you is a break-down build-up process. You come out stronger from it but sometimes, the stupid… it burns…
As for the race-thing: the author used a far more complicated definition to describe that which made them “look foreign” but discarded the notion in her review of available research. It just couldn’t be supported by evidence. Not that the racists would have any of that of course.
@ Carlie: very well put, the review-article (very well written, I must say again, it impressed me so much that I sort of regret it not being available in anything other than Swedish) was used as a source for a suggestion from some ministry to increase funding and support for orphans in their home countries first hand, especially since the review concluded that orphans which are taken well care of before the adoption are healthier later on.
The Swedish government are actually surprisingly considerate with such things. Too bad the screaming mob are yelling at them for it – may no good deed go unpunished.
The sun never sets on Pharyngula!
I think think this how shifts generally work here:
0:00- 8:00 EST Australian Shift
8:00-16:00 EST European Shift
16:00-24:00 EST North American Shift
(Feel free to make your own adjustments.)
True, I just find it odd that anyone in Mongolia would be reading.
Taking a closer look it wasn’t the North pole just North Pole, Alaska.
Maybe there’s some context here that I don’t know about (all I know is what Deveny said, and that Bindi is an 11-year-old celeb of some sort), but I really can’t see what the fuss is about. Comedians routinely go “over the line” and say shockingly taboo and vulgar things – that’s part of what makes some brands of comedy funny.
Just exactly how was she “damaging a child?” Seriously. No one – no one, not even Deveny – is remotely suggesting that minors should actually be abused or raped. That’s so obvious I can’t believe it has to be said.
What am I missing?
BTW, thank you to everyone for all the birthday wishes (except for Gyeong Hwa @638, who appears to be trying to kill me by alcohol poisoning!).
I didn’t mean to turn this place into Facebook 2.0, but it’s nice to get all those strokes!
That map really is cool. It found me!
For those interested: its 0400 local time. Insomnia and a stomach flu joined forces to keep me up tonight.
Are you setting these up deliberately? I should get a medal for my patient forbearance, my refusal to go there.
Josh OSG (@647):
Just tryin’ to smoke out the twisted ones! ;^)
Bill
I’m-trolling-for-a-birthday-reach-aroundDauphin, #648 –With this crowd, it’d be quicker to smoke out the squares.
Darn, scratch that. The map doesn’t memorize referrals so everytime anyone click my link another dude pops up that isn’t. For future reference:
Beneath skies forever dark and starry, crossed by flaming aurora, among the vast forests of the Viking homelands known as Sweden, covered by the snow of nevermelt, lies the Fortress of The Goths, and in the top of the highest spire in that fort dwells that which is known as Ströh.
I get really good connections from there somehow. Probably elvish magic, never bothered to look into it more precisely.
There dwellst I. Were dwellst though?
Yes, especially considering that they’ve probably never heard of Pharyngula (with Mongolia being fairly isolated).
I never set forth a time span for you to take all those shots. :)
Happy Birthday Bill Dauphin!
My my, what great ‘staying power’ you have, Josh…
Katrina:
Okay, gotcha. :)
Ströh,
Nope, you’re using the present, not the past tense.
→ There dwelleth I.
Lovely …
Ain’t England supposed to be a civilised country? (And I’m not even linking the story detailing the Tory plan for a de facto coup that Goldacre also twittered.)
I haven’t heard of this happening here in Denmark, but of course we have ID cards and central registries of all citizens, so that’s prolly far too illiberal a solution for my British brethren (and sistren).
You can’t actually post postal votes either. One has to go to one’s civil registry office well in in advance of the election and present your ID before being giving a ballot. In the rare cases where one is eligible to vote while abroad it’s possible to follow this procedure at one of the Danish representations as well.
Str? h – it was Sweden they were arguing about? That’s…a far way from being related to the issues I brought up, I think. I guess I don’t see what their beef is then, either.
I see no map, even when I allowed that script. (?)
What did Deveney say? Bindi is the daughter of Steve Irwin, unless there’s another famous Bindi. I don’t think that specific children should ever, ever be comedian fodder – it’s too easy for them to find out what was said, and kids simply can’t process and understand that it’s not all that important what that person said and that they “didn’t mean it”. It’s just cruel, especially if they’re making fun of a kid whose dad died. And jokes were made far and wide about his death. And then her mom got vilified in the media. They’ve had enough grief from people.
Carlie,
Then they should stop using Bindi for promotional purposes and desist in their use of her for media exposure.
cf. Matthew 26:52.
So, I had a quick look on the site Wowbagger mentioned above, and decided to just buy the cheapest WinXP netbook available, it doesnt matter since the OS will get kicked out anyway.
So managed to stay under 400.- for some EeePC version with the faster Atom processor, this should be fun !
As to Catherine Deveny, I thought her tweets were tasteless, and unfunny, no idea what she was thinking.
Carlie, Bindi has her own tv show and line of products – she’s not just Steve Irwin’s daughter; she’s a media entity in her own right.
Yes, I think Catherine Deveny went a bit far in the sense of how she was ridiculing her – more in the sense that it wasn’t (to me) very funny than because what she said was ‘shocking’ – but I disagree with the people are insisting that she shouldn’t be ridiculed; she is a public figure who was appearing in her professional capacity at a media event – meaning she’s ‘fair game’ for pundits.
Just wanted to get a “Happy Birthday” in for Bill Dauphin before the day’s end. Happy Birthday!
Rorschach wrote:
Can you let me know how it goes? I’m going to get order mine in a week and a bit; I’ve got two weeks off while my play is on so I’ll have the free time to play with it – I can’t get it now because I can’t afford the distraction when I need to be learning my lines!
@ Carlie
Oh sorry, I didn’t give you the right background:
Here it is. I’m Swedish and debated on a Swedish forum around whether a documented elevation of risk to develop later psychological problems could be connected exclusively to difference of the adopted. That is, them being of a different appearance than the general population. My source claimed no, other causes are behind that.
All the things you brought up are perfectly relevant: we are still discussing adoptions by Swedish parents of third-world babies. Especially the point of “we being better then them” shone though strongly with the author behind the review citing specifically that children adopted by high-earners often presented with problems which could be tied to the pressure of high-achieving parents. I imagine this is especially true for celebrity adoptions.
Wowbagger,
yup I let you know, delivery should be early next week.
Love the map gadget…:-) Whats that island to the left of North America, in the middle of nowhere?
@ Bill Dauphin
This is one of my biggest complaints about the current US education system, which has a remarkable obsession with preparing kids for careers and a bizarre notion of what such preparation entails. The kids I see in summer camps are a fair cross-section of public and private schools in our area, and they have decided that learning is something that one only does if some adult is poking at you with a fork and telling you to learn. I try to combat this by explaining that learning is the most pleasurable activity that human beings engage in. The kids, mostly tweens, look pretty shocked at the semi-naughtiness of the statement, but since my other motto is “if you’re not learning, you’re probably dead,” by the end of the week they have have a broader view of what learning actually is. Our educational system would be better if we could keep stuff like music and art and get kids to read real books instead of just textbooks.
OTOH, I think you underestimate the homogeneity of a lot of educational settings. It’s not just a problem for homeschoolers (despite the image of that group) – a lot of formal educational settings are pretty homogeneous and do just fine at producing small minded assholes. Sad, but true.
@KOPD
I have to admit that I’ve never thought of inspecting my toilet bowl for scratches. They’re probably there, but life is too short to do anything about them. Just add the toilet to the replace-before-sale list and do what knitters do when they see a mistake – announce in a confident tone of voice “Isn’t it wonderful? It’s a design element
@Kevin
I don’t know where you work, but I highly recommend Prince George’s County – I live in the southern part of it, and it’s 25 minutes from Alexandria and maybe 35 from downtown DC by car during non-rush-hour conditions. Public transit stinks, but if you can flex your hours, it’s great. Plus it’s not as horridly overdeveloped as Northern VA or Montgomery Co.
@David M
The Endless Thread is why it’s good to have a Blackberry and insomnia (except when husband wakes up and decides that his wife is now officially around the bend).
@Stroh
I remember hearing a radio program about transracial adoptions in the US and a young woman of African ancestry was complaining about how her white parents were always terrified of her hair and talked about how unmanageable it was. This was horrible for the kid, but I remember thinking that the difficulty wasn’t that her parents were white, it was that her parents were idiots who didn’t think of calling up a black friend or hairdresser and asking “OK, how do I take care of my kid’s hair?”
@Anthony K
I’m finding that this site is making me a lot more pissed off and verbal in my real life, which is terrific. It’s so nice not to care so much about offending people, particularly since the people who offend me most seem to think that a magical being has specially commanded them to commit their offensive actions and commanded me to remain totally silent. Plus I’ve discovered that a lot of my real-life friends are pretty anti-magical-being themselves – 3 separate members of my knitting group asked to borrow my audiobook of The God Delusion when I was done with it. Who knew that my knitting group was a den of atheists?
On that note, today I announced that I categorically refused to do any educational programs for schools that requested programs with the caveat (and this is a quote from the program reservation that sparked my announcement) “NO EVOLUTION, no ‘millions of years,’ natural selection OK.” I got a milquetoast “Well, if we have the right to talk about evolution, they have the right to refuse,” response. I am so looking forward to setting this ridiculous institution up for a lawsuit…
@Carlie
And a lot more formal post-adoption support for families. A lot of kids have serious attachment issues, because of pre-adoption experiences and/or the adoption itself. Many parents simply have no idea what they are getting themselves into, and are surprised when it turns out that forming family bonds is a long slow process.
@PZ
The map widget makes an excellent homeschool geography resource – my daughter and I were having a lot of fun with it this afternoon. (Atheistic homeschoolers are probably not your target audience, but it’s still great.)
One more thing that I love about this blog – I have always worked at writing reasonably thought-through and coherent emails, comments, etc. and have generally been tremendously disappointed by the quality of reasoning and writing produced by others. This seems to be a lot less common here, which is nice, if a bit intimidating at times.
Rorschach,
Hawaii?
Ah yes, that must be it ! Commenters from Hawaii, cool…
And I didnt realise Hawaii was so far from everything else !
Even for 40year old dumbos like me haha…
I was more surprised by the Pacific Fleet apparently being stationed somewhere off the Atlantic coast of Africa.
Cool. Since I’m going to be doing pretty much the same thing (bye bye Windows, hello Linux – well, Ubuntu to be precise) to mine it’d be handy to know if you experience anything that I might find helpful.
I’ll shoot you an email at some point next week.
I’m pretty sure that’s Hawaii.
Might as well jump on the bandwagon.
Happy birthday!, Bill, if that is indeed your real name.
@ Rorschach
Education continues forever – welcome to homeschooling!
I don’t want to start a debate here, but I think homeschooling should be the last resort, if you’re in the bush and there’s no school for 300 miles around, fine, even then there’s phones and the net one can use to have classes, but to just keep your kids at home and teach them stuff is not something I find good.
School is also about social skills, interaction, making friends etc., and you dont get that sitting at home.
Anyway, just my 2c…
Bill, in regard to you not wanting to turn the thread into facebook 2.0, I’m so glad for all the Happy Birthdays! because it reminded me to order my husband’s bday present, which I just got done. I actually remembered this year, so that rates a serious yay! and thanks. :D
Catherine Deveny got sacked from ‘The Age’ today after twittering some stuff that some folks found offensive.
‘The Age’ is running a poll to see whether readers support the sacking.
It should be pharyngulated.
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/what-a-day-boned-20100505-u8yx.html
Rorschach wrote:
Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to help you. [Runs away in fear from onslaught of pro-homeschoolers]
MATTIR (@664):
It’s a bit late at night to dive into the debate about education in the U.S., but just for clarity’s sake, keep in mind that the lines you quoted from me were in reference to post-secondary education, which is something of a different kettle of fish. Indeed, I was arguing that continuing one’s education beyond grade school was one key to avoiding small-minded assholishness.
‘Night, all; thanks for all the candles!
Rorschach:
In a lot of cases, I’d agree, as in the seriously religious types, but that doesn’t cover everyone. There are more people who are highly educated themselves who are turning to homeschooling as an alternative to very bad schools and it can be done and done extraordinarily well by dedicated parents who instill a love of learning, which lasts a lifetime, rather than learning by rote.
Most homeschoolers have extended social activities with other children, it’s not lacking in their life. Good parents who homeschool are very aware of the importance when it comes to social skills, etc.
Uh-oh. Time to close this thread and shuffle you all off to a horrible incident.