Aaaaargh. Must curl up into a ball and weep for a bit. Here’s Karl Rove, Satan’s frotteur, declaring that the United States is not a Christian nation. The pain of being in agreement with that evil toad…
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Classical Cipher: Not really, but I look forward to reading it.
What I mean is, I don’t really have anything too creative to contribute. Professional wiki-style writing isn’t my strong suit.
I thought it was pathetic as fuck that s/he said “I consider PZ to be a friend.” Someone she doesn’t REALLY know from a hole in the ground. If that’s the definition of ‘friend’, then friendship means sweet fucking nothing.
My post isn’t showing up over there. Tried again without the OM showing, thinking most of the HuffPo’s know PZ’s rowdies. Apparently that wasn’t it.
She really shouldn’t have pissed off the knitters, 11 pages of ass roasting!
Correction: Apparently bluharmony hung out with PZ once. Mea culpa. *shrug*.
Waiting for the float-plane.
I’ll be home for a day and a half.
I have been at:
North 62°06’22.2″
West 112°36’37.1″
March: Referred by rheumotologist at Georgetown to new pain medication study for fibromyalgia at NIH. Apply for study.
April: Provide medical history to study doctor; am informed that I must be off all of my pain medication for a month before I can go to the screening.
May: Off all pain meds for a month. Complete preliminary questionnaire for study–including, key point here, a list of all current meds (15 daily; 3 PRN). Am advised I will have to stop 3 medications because there is a set number of medications allowed to participate (less than **15**). Agree to stop those 3 meds in addition to pain meds; inquire when screening will be scheduled.
Early June: Inquire again about screening schedule.
Mid June: Inquire again about screening schedule.
Late June: Inquire again about screening schedule; screening scheduled for late July. Inquire about preparation for screening; am told packet will be mailed with instructions.
Late July: Inquire about packet that was never received. Am told screening appointment was accidentally not actually scheduled. New screening appointment scheduled for August.
Today: Complete entire screening–bloodwork, exercise tests, EKG, 2 dolorimeter tests (pain measurement). Doctor then tells me I am ineligible for the study because my symptoms are too severe and because the study limits participants to **five** medications. Manage to refrain from crying in the middle of the NIH lobby.
Well, FINE. And FUCK YOU VERY MUCH.
*sigh*
Doc did say there are new studies coming up. Though I don’t know how likely it is they’ll have lower requirements for number of medications. Ironically, it was the asthma meds that were the biggest culprit–there are four of those, plus the migraine, RLS & other fibro meds.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I am going to drown my sorrows in the first pain pill I’ve been able to take in 4 months, 9 days, 6 hours and 55 minutes.
Fuck me, I’m taking a breather. That brainfart on the thread was fucking embarassing.
Oh, mine either *grins evilly*
*comes in from errands and stuff*
*strews shopping and groceries all over the kitchen floor*
*sits down to catch up with all the disgusting threads*
*gapes in awe at the deep, deep stoopid and the tireless work of the Horde in cleaning it all up, a Herculean task*
*runs to fridge, gathering beers of all sorts and stuffing them under arms, chin, etc.*
*runs back and pushes them one by one into USB port, hoping they get through*
*wipes brow*
Oh, Onion Girl. Hugs. Please. That’s just horrible.
We’re allowed to eat tuna?
Frying bacon.
Covered from neck to knees, and arms covered to about 4″ above the wrists. Somehow I still manage to get burned.
But oh boy, is it worth it.
#####
OG: *hugs*
*dumps every medication he owns into USB port, hoping something will help*
Still not caught up. So, one of the people who said they wanted to meet me in LA has e-mailed me. Are the two others on holiday or something? :-( Richard Austin, you commented here today…
*blink*
o.O
Yep, sounds about right. (Granted, there are exceptional children who get by on fewer parents, but they’re not common.)
Proof at last that we are truly living in a post-racist, post-sexist society, where everyone accepts even that most despised of minorities, the white bloke.
*tears of joy*
–o–
Well, he has superhearing, and he must be quite lusted after, so I think it’s a perfectly natural question.
Oh, onion girl :( *gentle hug* I’m so sorry.
I thought Mormons had magic underwear, not magic rings.
It’s nice to see, though, that there are groups more hate than atheists.
<hug>
<twisting onion girl’s hair around index finger and slowly pulling all the way through, again and again>
Cry all you want. Let it all out. Crying outright helps hormone-wise in the short term.
Too bad it’s not allowed to import lavender cookies into the USA. (Is it?)
The Redhead set off the smoke detector today doing that activity.
onion girl, we haven’t really met [extends hand, smiles] but oh I am sorry for what you had to go through. Unnecessary, unfeeling. Can you have a beer with your meds? If so, please take one of those I sent through a few minutes ago…
—–
Benjamin “I can has MacBook Pro?” Geiger: I’m sorry about the bacon burns. Do you have a microwave oven? Someone gave me this good tip: In a flattish microwave-safe dish, put several layers of paper towels, then the bacon slices, separated but overlapping if needed, then two more paper towels. Microwave on high to the degree of done-ness you like; in my microwave this is 10-13 minutes. The paper towels catch all the grease – no spatters.
Under the paper towels in the dish, there should be enough liquid fat so you can save this for other recipes, if you like. Nothing like a little bacon fat to add deep flavor to soup, stew, etc.
You can also bake bacon – another way to minimize the mess.
Bacon is worth the effort.
David Marjanovic: I can’t possibly see how a growing child could have too many people supporting and loving her/him. None of the people I’ve known have told me they wished fewer people loved and cared about them when they were kids.
Onion girl, I wish there was something we could do. Maybe the pain pills will have a better kick now that you’ve been off of them for so long? [/silver lining]
I know there are a lot of bike people here – what do you think of this? It sounds like it makes a lot of sense and I’m not sure why it hasn’t been tried before. (it’s a frame that is circular to dissipate road shocks)
Heee, off to the ex’s house to put together a baby gate and have some dinner.
You’ve misunderstood. I meant there are a few children who don’t need 3 or more people working hard for them (feeding, asswiping, playing, making them stop crying…) and keeping them under enough supervision that they don’t, like, pull furniture over so that it falls on them or try to climb on a table by pulling the handle of the well-filled hot teapot. That’s all.
Christ, this picture still makes me sad. At least there’s a happier followup comic.
Onion Girl:
I am sending some fudge through the USB. And some gentle cyberhugs.
Paging Sally Strange to the Bolivia thread.
You are being accused of libel for um, repeating someones words verbatim. (as far as I can tell)
Oh, Onion Girl! What a horrible thing to go through! :-(
Sending chocolate through the USB…
Gentle {{hugs}} for Onion Girl and a cup of non-med-reactive Grog to wash down the pain pills.
SGBM: Success! Beta4 works with my FF 6.0. I’m guessing I’ll be beta-testing 7.0 in the next day or so. If it doesn’t work, I’ll let you know. If you don’t hear from me, you can say it works through FF 7.0. So you know, I deleted beta3, closed and reopened FF before installing beta4, and I’m not using the custom CSS file.
RE: kids:adult ratio. I’m not sure about the kid’s perspective, but our family dynamics changed considerably when we went from 1:2 to 3:2. Having adults outnumber children is very handy.
Carlie,
Longer tubes flex more. Bikes are a stiffness critical item, so in order to maintain adequate stiffness, those longer tubes take much more material and add extra weight. There are certainly manufacturers playing this game, although not to the extreme shown at your link. What they aren’t doing is selling to performance level riders. I would be curious to see the same thing done in carbon fibre.
onion girl, I am so sorry! *hugs* and *boozes* and *chocolates* and *bacons* and *fluffy bunnies*.
–
Alright. :) But I might be yelling LA LA LA LA LA with my fingers in my ears.
+++++
Anybody still stuck? Patricia? Do you has Comic Sans now?
caught up.
*hugs* and chocolate grog all around
he said tube stiffness and tube
And performance.
Carolina Hardcore Ecstasy
Then she gave a pair of shoes to meeeeeee
Plastic leather 14 triple D
I’ll just put this… here…
“Religion used to dupe overstayers”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/religion-and-beliefs/news/article.cfm?c_id=301&objectid=10746285
shocker.
@ SGBM
Gumby is working! And Comic Sans. Thank you Strange Gods for all your efforts.
*hug*
I think I understand, it’s just that doing all that stuff is an expression of my love and support, know what I mean? But yeah… plenty of work.
I’m not remotely caught up.
Zotero’s great so far. I’m disturbed that it’s through George Mason U….
***
Has anyone posted about the guy kicked off the US ski team for peeing in a 12-year-old girl?
I guess it’s a good thing we’ve had some MRA and liberturd trolls this last week. The trebuchet got damaged in the move to our new digs. It’s still good for throwing a load of manure a few hundred feet, but not across the continent. We needed the element stupidium to strengthen the key structural components, which they have supplied in abundance. The good Rev. may get his hops in time yet. And ABQ is on our intercontinental test fire list.
SC:
“Has anyone posted about the guy kicked off the US ski team for peeing in a 12-year-old girl?”
I did a double-take at that.
Turns out it’s a little bit less disgusting, assuming this is the story you’re referring to: he peed on her. As in, he was too drunk to realize he wasn’t in the bathroom of the plane yet. Or something of that nature.
… and apparently he didn’t even do that. Her family claims it was a near miss.
Yikes! I meant “on”! Yes, that’s what happened.
Hey, Thethys.
Actually, the guy who showed up to bully me is the False Rape Society guy. My guess is he must have a google alert thing for “False Rape Society,” which I mentioned in my post. I emailed David Futrelle of Manboobz about it, and he said that Pierce had threatened him with libel also.
The guy is a professional rapist excuser. Read this post on Manboobz to get a sense of just how depraved he is. Or don’t if you don’t want to harsh your mellow. Either way, he’s one of the rapiest, creepiest doodz of the manosphere. I feel pretty honored to have been impotently threatened by him–I must be doing something right.
I’m a bit torn about it, to be honest. There’s a…poll.
I haz a sad: Some of you may have already seen me kvetching about this on other threads, but the web nanny bots at work seem to have figured out that FtB is a <gasp> blog site. So it looks like weekends and evenings only for me here on TET.
***
The Sailor:
Heh. My wife went to HS with a kid named Richard Rumplick… I shit you not! And to make him an even bigger target for peer derision, he was the principal’s son.
***
Squigit:
I take you at your word that the separation is for the best, so instead of condolences on the split, I’ll offer you wishes for joy in your life to come.
Sucks that your people are reacting hurtfully, though; for that, you get hugs!
***
Onion Girl:
Hugs to you, too… and try to at least enjoy the drugs.
***
Richard Austin (via DrDMFM):
I recall a fascinating Larry Niven piece about the difficulty (impossibility, really) of Superman successfully consummating a relationship with a human woman. Ah, here it is on the web: Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex
Patricia, OM | 19 August 2011 at 3:38 pm :
Poor fools. Even PZ bowed before the angry knitters.
D:
Where is it? I need it!
I found it.
Kinda better, in that it’s not so crushingly horribly sad anymore, but also pushes one of my personal non-rational unhappybuttons, so wah.
The problem with Torchwood (Miracle Day) is that the Doctor would have solved it in one episode, two tops.
At least Gerard had the grace to use a bottle.
Good day TET, flying visit to catch up (as if!)
Oh yes! Kudos SGBM for giving us back our Pharynguloid rights!
Now, the sun is shining and it hasn’t been raining so it’s time to tackle the hedge (or Hawthorn Forest, as it is known around here.)
@ oniongirl: bastards. To keep you waiting all that time, and not bother clarifying the no. of meds rules to all potential participants beforehand … ah, bastards. My OH has fibromyalgia so I have some faint shadow of a notion whereof you speak.
.
Incidentally, what (if anything) have you found useful for the fibromyalgia so far? My OH is on Amitriptyline and says it doesn’t seem to do all that much :(
.
No. of adults per child: DM and Katrina that is just what I mean! They move fast, and they are indefatigable (except when they’re tired … :). It’s good if you outnumber ’em (we didn’t). (I took precisely 3 days off work the first time, 10 days the 2nd time (which was also the last)) (well I work from home sitting at a desk, so it’s not all that. But finding time to sleep and work and do my share of childcare was … crowded). (This was a while ago now … 2 days ago daughterspawn got her A-Level results: she will go to the ball (biochemistry) in September … phew!)
.
I’ve often thought that in theory the extended-family set-up where there is a loose cloud of loving adults around supporting a small scattering of kids would be ideal. Of course that is not to say that this will actually work in practice …
Good Day to you
I hope yours is better than mine. That godsdamnfuckingstupidpieceofshit that is officially called Toyota Avensis is fucking up again and will soon be replaced by a nice car from people who actually know how to build them, i.e. a Citroen.
@Feminist crafters
I suppose cooking is out of question, too?
But I remember a lengthy discussion with my (sometimes rather arrogant) brother in law who is a really talented painter that his hobby is art, of course, while mine is only craft as if everybody could do it.
I prefer the village-to-raise-a-child option. It really helps not only to have another person who can take care of the child sometimes, it helps a lot if that person is in another house.
@onion girl
Fuck that’s bad. I hope there’s a study coming up that suits you *hugs*
OK, time for lunch now
1) All furniture that might fall over (except for chairs and stuff, obviously) should be fastened to the wall, wheter there are small kids around or not
2) Argh
Friends of mine have one of those little darling exceptions. Slept 6-8 hours from day one, never any feeding problems or colics, totally content to stay in her basket for hours. One of her mums told me she really had a bad conscience sometimes because she felt the girl should need more care.
At least the parents are sensible enough to notice that theirs is the rare exceptiion. There are few things worse than parents with naturally well-behaving, obedient or sleepy children who treat every average kid and their parents as a failure.
Most other parents can really relate to Tim Minchin’s Lullaby.
If you use Firefox, you need this.
Yesterday I stumbled on Almost Unreal on Youtube, and proceeded to download the Super Mario Bros movie and schedule a nostalgic viewing for someday next week.
I know that there’s a chance I won’t like it like I did as a child, but I have hope that it will be awesome, and I’m willing to drink quite a bit to make that happen.
Morning folks! Thanks for the hugs from everyone!
Hugs to you, Onion Girl. :(
Today’s the day we tell Son what is happening. I’ve been looking into some stuff on how exactly to talk to him about this, and I’ve come up with some things I want to focus on in our discussion. If anyone’s been through this or knows someone who has, you’re advice is welcome, as my parents are still together so I have no clue what to say or not to say. :/
After telling him that we are not going to be married anymore, I have to tell him that I”m moving away and that he’ll be staying here with his daddy. I want to try to make it as positive as possible, so instead of focusing in on the fact that I won’t be here, I want to focus on how much he will get to see me, that he can call me anytime, and that we can use ichat to talk so we can actually see each other.
I don’t want to constantly re-affirm to him that I “still” love him because I don’t want him to get the impression that at some point I didn’t love him.
Thanks again, everyone, for the words of support. It does help.
Good luck, squigit.
Hi Horde!
Anything exciting happening here in the last couple of hours?
Just got back from a concert: Jane Rutter, the flautist*. Had a lovely time, lovely show. She is not only very talented, able to play both classical and popular music apparently effortlessly, but also very kind. At one point a mis-aligned stage light behind the piano was turned on and practically blinded me; she moved across the stage so she was standing between me and the light and didn’t miss a note. And then proceeded to stand there every time it came on. What a lovely lady! =^_^=
Unlike the idiot sitting behind me who kept kicking my wheelchair. I complained in the interval and he left me alone in the second half.
At the end of the show, as I was leaving the auditorium, Jane approached me and apologised for the light and hoped I was alright and that she had stood in the right place!
She had a lot of CDs for sale in the foyer and hubby bought me her Gershwin one. She signed the insert ‘Lots of love from your light protector, Jane Rutter’
*The horde might like this: I had a brief pause when she introduced her accompanist. Fortunately, I was able to see his name spelled out on a CD after the show. The pianist David Mibus. With an ‘i’.
Morning/Afternoon/Night y’all, *hugs, booze and coffee as needed
I was actually up at 8:30 am on a Saturday today. I feel like a functioning adult member of society. Fortunately this is not a lifestyle I typically subscribe to and I’m sure i’ll be back to sleeping till 1 pm tomorrow. Grad school weekday hours = weekend narcolepsy.
Thought I’d weigh on on the No. of adults/child issue. I grew up in the nebulous cloud of extended family that opposablethumbs mentioned. My grandparents lived next door and my aunt and 5 cousins (3 blood, 2 step) were down the block. As a child I absolutely loved it, my 2 siblings were much younger than me and my cousins were closer in age so it was unending playtime forever. Summers we’d stay with my aunt or my grandparents every day, and my aunt also did daycare for 2 other children (I am not sure at all how she managed to have 8-10 children in her house at a given time. Looking back at this is frightening, although I suppose there was a 16 year age range so by the time she had the youngest of us, the older ones required less maintenance). As much as I loved this, I’m sure my mom was less than thrilled, since these were all my father’s relatives and she had moved away from her own large family. I’m not sure I would’ve been happy with that situation either.
I’ve been thinking about this issue a lot more lately because the SO and I are starting to think seriously about moving to Europe after the PhDs are done, initially as a temporary thing but I have a feeling we’re not going to end up coming back to the States. Basically the idea of having children without that huge safety net of extended family within driving distance sounds terribly daunting to me. It must be possible, since I know other people do it, but it sounds about a log harder at least without that support. Anyone else have any thoughts?
khops,
If you don’t have children yet, you would be starting at a two adults to one child ratio. There is support built in at that point. My partner and I have one child and no relatives on the same landmass, let alone within driving distance, who we could use for help. That aspect, at least to us, just means that getting out to see a movie together is harder.
It may be that we just have an easy kid, hard to compare, but it is not the case that we have trouble keeping up with his needs.
Well, I’m not sure.
I’m a family person. I love my family, I’m very close with them, both emotionally and locally, I love that extended family thing, too and grew up this way, too.
But I have had a hard time with my mum (and my stubborn dad) lately and I’ve really come to value my in-laws, both as helping hands as well as sympathetic listeners.
As an adult, I can see my family with adult eyes, both my family and my in-laws. My mum in law posesses qualities my own mother will never have. She has faults my mum doesn’t have.
So, unless you really know from your mum in person, I wouldn’t assume that.
As for your question: yes it is. Both harder and doable. Not that I personally knew, but I know from friends.
There are, in Germany at least local initiatives to make up “artificial” extended families, like apartment blocks that are designed for and inhabited by people who want to build up a comunity. And there are initiatives to “rent a grandparent”, where people who don’t have grandchildren (close by) but who are willing and able to fullfill that role team up with families who don’t have grandparents.
I would say that if you’re willing to do it, you can do it. My own family is less than ideal, too with Mr. being away Mo-Fr. I couldn’t do it without help and it is annoying to always get a babysitter for every thing I need to do without the kids like a visit to the dentist. But it was my choice to do so, I wasn’t dumped into that situation, so it’s my job to make it work.
Tigger_the_Wing: Awesome concert story. To be dealing with all the business of a professional concert performance and still have the awareness and panache to move into the path of the blinding light is pretty impressive.
Stoned Jesus – Red Wine
Ufomammut – Astrodronaut
Kittie – What I Always Wanted
Re: extended family – A lot depends on the family and the sort of environment they provide. I have 8 siblings and about 40+ in my immediate family, nearly all of them within 3 hrs driving distance of where I live. My husband has 1 sister who has 3 kids. We have one daughter. Though we are geographically close enough to see our family members often, we have chosen to generally stay away from our families because with the expection of one sister, they are conservative christians, tea partiers, republicans, bigots. They scorn our atheist, liberal, feminist household, and say so to our faces. They rejected my neice when she came out as a lesbian. They practically disowned her when she married. On one of our rare visits to another family household, our daughter was told she would burn in hell because she is an out atheist and an outspoken young feminist. AND her boyfriend has really long hair so what kind of a guy is he, anyway? Etc.
So, if your extended family shares your ideals, then yes, it can be great. Probably for a lot of us who are the ‘black sheep’ in the family (and proud of it), it would be a recipe for disaster.
We’ve made our own family with neighbors, colleagues, etc., who share our values. I am closer to them than to my blood relatives.
Quodlibet:
That’s an important point to consider. Not only whether you share ideals, but also whether you share common views about raising children.
There are (especially in Europe) religious people who will keep their religiosity mostly to themselves.
I mentioned before that I visit a play-group run by the catholic church, organized by a wonderful woman who has 3 children herself. She doesn’t judge people, she doesn’t prosletyze (I haven’t heard “god” mentioned there in any other way than “oh my god”) and I would be totally OK with leaving my kids with her.
But there are some non-religious people I wouldn’t ever leave my children with, because those people don’t agree with me on issues like age-appropriate movies, healthy eating and corporal punishment.
I’m quite jealous of the people with big close families. My father is not a very loving person, which shows in his relationship to his brother and sister. By his standards of love and affection, I’m pretty sure he adores his sister, which means that he might sound vaguely happy when she calls, but will never contact her. Or talk about her. Or talk about my cousins who I haven’t seen since I was three. His brother ceased existing when their mother (who brother was taking care of for years) died. On my mother’s side, we were more close, but that was mostly prompted by my grandparents. Now, mom doesn’t have much interest in staying in contact. I wasn’t really close enough with anyone so that it wouldn’t be weird if I visited alone, without my mother. Being all strange and introverted, I mostly interacted with older relatives when I was a kid (also, my grandmother didn’t have much patience for dealing with my younger cousins, and she was the one I spent my summers with). So, when some of the older people who we still regularly see die, I doubt I’ll hear much from my relatives. From either side. And, since I’m a single child, I’ll be pretty much alone. I know it sounds selfish, but the inevitability of my parents’ death eventually terrifies me because it will leave me completely alone in the world.
I’m still catching up on TET, but I came across the study hell that they’ve put onion girl through, and I’m just furious. You don’t fucking get someone off their necessary medication and pain management without making sure they fit some initial qualifications. What these fuckers did to you is unconscionable. Chocolate and whiskey headed your way. Also internet hugs if you want them.
khops, it’s very doable. Like everything about having children, you just have to adapt to the circumstances. Assuming you start with one child, you will have that child outnumbered. Depending on where you live, it may be possible to form a small “cloud” of helpful adults.
Because of the nature of my husband’s job, we move every few years. My oldest (only, at that point) was three when we moved overseas the first time. The twins were born while we were there. When we moved back “home”, we were on the opposite side of the continent from both of our families. But we were able to find some in our neighborhood that could help out.
We’re in that situation. Only several states away instead of a country, but we only see our families once a year (at best). Unvarnished truth for me: worse than feelings of loneliness and missing them was jealousy/bitterness towards other people who do have so much family around. Oh, you get to go out for dates every week and leave the kids with your parents for free babysitting? How nice. Oh, your mom watches the kids after school every day until you get home from work? How convenient. You actually have someone who can watch them when both you and your spouse are so sick you can’t move from bed without throwing up but the toddlers still have to be fed and changed and watched every minute lest they hurt themselves? Isn’t that special. And it’s even worse when applied to your own family – oh, Dad is renovating my brother’s kitchen in his spare time on the weekends? Lovely. I hate that about myself, but there it is. And when the kids were little, it was a pretty common feeling. I was bitter and felt like I had been dealt a bad hand most of the time. Thankfully, as the kids have gotten older and less physically needy, those feelings have diminished greatly.
The pain, well, that is more unpredictable, and comes on like waves crashing in when I don’t expect it, bowling me over. My son would come home telling me about the birthday party his friend had and how all of his cousins were there and it would hit. I’ll be at a school concert, with just my spouse and the other child and I compactly at the end of a row, and see the rest of it filled to bursting with grandparents and aunts and uncles, and it kicks me in the gut. I get a little pang in the heart every time I fill out a medical form for the kids and have no one to put on the “alternate emergency contact” line. And sometimes at night when I’m trying to fall asleep I’ll remember sleepovers at my grandma’s and think about how my kids have never and will never have that and I’ll cry.
I know a lot of people cope with it by creating their own “family” of friends in similar situations, and that works great, and I would think you could do that. We never did, because when we had them none of our friends were having children, and then when we moved we ended up in an area where other people with kids the age of ours had very tight cliques that we haven’t been able to crack into. So having friends with kids that function as an extended family, not so much. Thankfully I do have good friends now that I could rely on in a pinch; I would feel terrible about calling on them in an emergency situation for assistance, but I know I could and they wouldn’t mind.
So there are things that suck about it. But then I steel myself and get over it. As you said, people do this all the time. If nobody ever moved away from home, we’d all still be living in central Africa, right? And we have it better than millions of other people – we still have regular contact with our family, we still see them occasionally, unlike everyone up to the last century for whom leaving home meant for good, never to be heard from again. And there are advantages. All of those stories about conflict on how to raise the kids, parents meddling in your life, etc., we don’t have that. And when we do see our families, it’s always happy and a good time. My parents’ house is like the BEST PLACE EVER for my kids, because they get doted on the whole time they’re there.
So I’d say you do need to stop and think about how much you rely on your family and how important that is to you, but it shouldn’t be thought of as a deal-breaker for moving away. I know a lot of people who did stay put due to those fears of moving away from their family network, and some of them are bitter in the other way of feeling trapped and stifled. As long as you go into it knowing what your challenges will be, you’ll be ok.
Carlie,
That makes me so sad. It also makes me feel a little guilty because a dominant thought in our decision to move full across the country was that we felt that kind of super-family involvement stifling. I am sorry that you find it hard to be without.
Carlie: Our sitch is the opposite. My mother-in-law and her best friend moved in with us. The upside is that they are always around. The downside is that they are always around.
FWIW: My wife and I haven’t been out together (like the way that grown couples sometimes go) since we went to a funeral in April. The ladies can’t handle our daughter with regard to bed-time. They need 8-10 hours of sleep each night, refuse to exert authority over the kid at all, and the kid is disinclined to sleep voluntarily. SO they are more or less unwilling to help much after 7PM. They agreed to watch her tonight. We are going to see The Rise of the Planet of the Apes…I don’t care if it’s any good at all. I am determined to enjoy it.
Also: We are both going to Texas Freethought Convention. I give not one shit about Camp Quest. The kid stays at home.
In celebration of the new gumpies, I would like to present the following Monty Python sketch: Monty Python and the Freemasons – The Architect Sketch. I have a very similar presentation to go to on monday.
(PS: The freemason handshakes gave rise to the mormon handshakes which are even more silly.)
Good morning Thread.
Sorry to hear about the horrible medication-leading-on that the study did to you, oniongirl. I hope those meds kick in good now!
squigit, so sorry your relatives are being crappy. I feel you on the torture that is parting (and my friends/relatives are being supportive about it). I am thinking of doing something similar myself and don’t even have the additional responsibility of a young one involved. It sounds to me like you are doing the very best you can for your kid!
On a related subject, can I complain to y’all about the social legitimacy that is the marriage certificate? although the few people I have told of my problems are supportive, I am convinced not a one would be urging me to stay and work harder on this (not abusive, but still draining) relationship if we weren’t married. We had declared how it would last forever before the marriage and that damn piece of paper hasn’t helped in the least except making me feel trapped (which I have gotten over now).
On family support- I am nervous about having to move farther away from my family someday just for a job and not having the local support even for watching my canine one. Or for when I’m sick. Much less for kids. But I’ve been told so many times by people that I need to move FAR FAR FAR away because it is Good For Them and Thus Good For Everyone!!
Some days I just hate humans and what we do to one another. Le sigh.
David Marjanović, thanks for the internet chocolate last thread. :-)
Aladegorrion,
I wish more people could see things that way. Marriage as a presription for further action rather than a description of past experience galls me. I hope you can make your way through your troubles without too many throwing that shit your way.
I sent Robert H. Frank, Henrietta Johnson Louis Professor of Management and Professor of Economics at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University a request for clarification of something he said when he was interviewed on a TV news show.
He was kind enough to reply, and it’s an excellent take-down of the Rethuglican approach to creating (or not) jobs, and to addressing the issue of unemployment in general. Though he didn’t name names, nor even political parties, I think Frank’s take on this soundly supports putting people back to work with some government help, like building infrastructure.
Here’s the email Frank sent to me:
I like the improved log in.
on a metaphysical note: why do the ads I see keep switching between evolvefish.com and an on-line prayer site?
Is someone trying to tell me something?
Apparently PETA has decided that merely objectifying women from time to time isn’t enough. They’re actually launching a porn site.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/19/peta-porn-site_n_931509.html
Too bad I’m not a vegan, otherwise I’d give it up right now in protest.
Morning All,
Log in went like a breeze, no comic sans. A prompt for Fire Fox 5 showed up, but I’m not sure it’s better. Maybe the Poopey Head is working on comic sans behind the curtain. I’t doesn’t show up on the google intertubes either.
Thanks to everyone that went over to the HuffPoo and did some stomping. The knitting world is ablaze today. *smirk*
Oh, btw, can somebody tell me how to change my avatar?
Haven’t found out yet (yeah, mousepusher, me)
@Carlie
Although I have the family here, I know how you feel. It’s how I fell every time hubby tells me about how his sports class was, that they’d decided to have a beer afterwards, even that he went to a friend to watch football (I hate football).
@Aladegorrion,
it’s stupid, isn’t it?
I was amazed how much my status changed by getting married.
Sometimes people think we aren’t because of different last names and their behaviour is noticably different…
Giliell – I got my avatar through the Gravatar site, and a jpeg I had stashed in my pictures file. Somebody posted a link to it on this thread, or the one just before. Word Press picks up the avatar automatically.
(We’re having a wren version of a roman bath orgy out back, now I know where The Patrols ™ water is going.)
Link for Gravatar:
http://en.gravatar.com/
(I hope)
I’m sure I would too; it’s a grass-greener-over-the-fence phenomenon, most likely.
Out to help change fluids in my new bike. Can’t ride until Tuesday, thanks to my fuck me with a blow fish test.
Later!
Patricia, woohoo!
+++++++++++++++++++
Lynna, I find it remarkable but not unusual that he replied to you. I’ve wandered into schools on campus and asked a question. The next thing I know I’m taken on a tour by the chair of the department. It’s just amazing how much these people want to share their knowledge.
Weed Monkey,
Kitty, nice. I will be on that all day.
Giliell, when you create the account at gravatar.com make sure to use the same email address you use commenting here. That’s the mechanism they use to identify you.
So yesterday’s adventure in fondant was a success. I think it may have been easier if I had started with a simple round or rectangular cake to start with rather than jumping right in to a shaped cake, but I’m pretty happy. I’ll have pics up sometime after tonight’s party.
Chemical Elements Song
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Hah-vahd
There may be many others but they haven’t been dis-cahv-ahd.
LOL
Periodic Table Rap Song
Like my new gravatar? I have another one I want to break out too, of this image, which I think y’all will appreciate:
http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/5061/howtotrainyouroctopusby.jpg
I found it a while ago when PZ linked to a whole page of cephalopod-related graphic art.
</twisting onion girl’s hair around index finger and slowly pulling all the way through, again and again>
</hug>
I’ve read parts of the Hoggle thread, especially from comment 700 to the end. Now that’s amusement! CC, I badly want to see your spiked polka-dot waders ;-)
Yes, of course. It’s still, if nothing else, time-consuming, fun though it can be.
It doesn’t sound selfish, it sounds horrible. *pounce* *hug*
Hugs for Carlie, too. (I need more tentacles.)
Trying the other gravatar
@Sally Strange
Yes, I had moused over his nym after his ridiculous post. No way am I clicking on something that links to false rape society, but I did click your link to manboobz.
I find your posts to be uniformly well-written and well sourced. The fact that they piss-off MRA’s is a bonus, and provides me with a great deal of entertainment.
Hopefully the “skeptics” who read the story and immediately jumped to OMG Mennonites = gassing hoax = Ugandan gay scare got their consciousness raised by having their asses handed to them.
I’m still trying to track down some census information for the colony. Assume that a population of 2000 is approximately 1/2 female, and Mennonites tend to have large families thus a large percentage of the population will be children.
My back of the envelope calculation gives me the horrible statistic that about 30% of the women have been victimized over a 4 year period by less than 1% of the men.
I linked this a while back: Daniel Radcliffe reciting The Elements.
Top comment: 10 points to Gryffindor!
I had a sudden urge for a rum and coke.
So a went out and bought a bottle of CocaCola™.
It turns out I did not want that, at all.
What a foul concoction.
I’m back to rum and rum or rum and water.
chigau, maybe a slice of lime would help your rum & coke? But there’s certainly nothing wrong with plain old rum, or maybe rum with hot water/tea and some sugar*. Yarr!
*Rommitoti or a hot toddy. That’s what I drink when I’ve caught a cold. No way it would help me get well faster, but it surely makes being sick much more fun.
1 Min, 16 Secs
Meh. Coulda been better.
^_^ ^_^ ^_^
*facepalm*
Well, at least that might end the prejudice that veganism is for girls. </dark humor>
How stupid of me not to have thought of this myself!
Interestingly, it’s inconsistent. It’s “Hah-vrr-dǝ” and “dis-cah-vrr-dǝ”.
Isn’t boobquake in May or so?
Just saying.
:-o
I was going to be publicly impressed by his memory, but I suppose that’s what professional actors are like…
He forgot the paht about Hahvahd, though, and his pitch range is remarkably narrow. :-/
It is just me, or is golf like the most privilege-based sport ever? Huge, high-maintenance, water-hungry playing areas in some of the most pristine areas. Zero tolerance for bad weather conditions. Major expense for equipment, from shoes and shirts through clubs and even specially designed cars.
(I’m in a waiting area with a golf tourney on the tv. I’m doing my best to ingore it, but I just had to comment.)
chigau:
Rum and Coke isn’t particularly good. It tastes kinda like a batch of Coke with poor quality control, like they dumped a little too much sugar* into it.
* HFCS, yeah, whatever.
Whiskey and Coke is sublime, though. It’s sweet, but not too sweet. (I tend to order mine in a tall glass; it slows me down and keeps me a bit more hydrated.)
Hi y’all.
Just a quick drive-by to tell you that there’s a gibbous moon tonight!
Oh lordy, now I can die in peace, having been able to use the word ‘gibbous’ in an actual sentence once in my lifetime is enough =)
It’s a waning gibbous moon, and I can also see the Milky Way stretching across the sky.
Weed Monkey: is it the same up there in J-kylä?
Alas, the nights are getting darker and colder; the summer is coming to its end, and we have to start preparing for our return to the big smoke. At least we will be taking back enormous amounts of home-grown veggies, herbs and berries, plus two extremely well fed kittehs!
Reminds me of the Kellogg’s® Cornflakes® that I once ate. Ooh, they’re the real thing, and they’re expensive, so they must be better than no-name plagiates, right? Wrong. They’re half as sweet as Frosties. I looked what it said on the box, and sure enough, chock full of sugar.
When I want Frosties, I want Frosties, and when I want cornflakes, I don’t want the sweet stuff!
It’s not just you. And please e-mail me so we can start planning for meeting!
Oh, and while I’m at it, I’m proud to tell that we have a huge patch of Amanita Vaginata growing at the edge of our garden. It’s a perfect compliment to my exploding bush.
Weed Monkey
I think the problem was the Coke™.
The rum seems fine without it.
——
golf, meh.
We used to play croquet wherever we were.
Wickets were set up in any configuration that included interesting terrain.
Uphill, downhill, water hazards, anthills …
Often after dark with candles to show the location of wickets.
Yes. Alcohol was involved.
Oh my god I loved this one. RotPotA was excellent. I wouldn’t call it much of a ‘Planet of the Apes’ movie, from what I know of the series, but it’s fucking great just as a movie about some apes. I could go on forever about how much I liked it, but I’ll just say one thing: My favorite character is definitely the orangutan.
Can’t wait for it to be on DVD.
PETA. I love sex and sexuality just as much as any other person, but there’s always been something that bothered me about their nudie protests… a sort of “Yeah, the ethics of how we treat animals are a very complex and interesting set of issues…. but you’re too stupid to think about all that! HERE’S SOME BEWBS! GO VEGAN!” message being spewed. An attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Anyone who’s been reading my endless comments knows, I’m a natural born carnivore, and that would of course put me at odds with any person or organisation trying to force me to give up meat.
There’s also the statistics I see on petakillsanimals.org , but I often wonder how true they are. Still, it’s not like I needed another reason to distrust PETA.
Richard Austin:
“The manly sport of golf, where you can dress like a pimp and no one will care.” [NSFW for language and laughter]
“I want the guy who does Mexican soccer to do golf one time.”
You need the phases of the moon app in your sidebar so it will tell you “95% of full” and so on. You might have to start a blog just so you’ll have a sidebar to put it in.
Everyone: tune in to Montreal Sept. 19 when Dennis Markuze should be back in court with a psychiatric evaluation.
I like rum and Coke. ‘Course, our coke uses sugar and tastes better than that southerly stuff.
DDMFM @ 604:
Consider yourself emailed. Or, rather, consider yourself to be in the process of receiving an email; phrased the other way, you might save on air fare but I’d be worried about luggage and attachment limits.
@Markita Lynda, admirer of roadkill… as a fellow roadkill-admirer, may I point you to this blog?
http://arsanatomica.tumblr.com/ (Some images graphic, all are awesome.)
Dhorvath:
Yeah, you may have sugar-coke, but we have high-octane Mountain Dew.
Oh yeah, we don’t do caffeine in clear pop.
Oh, I live on Mountain Dew. I can drink it warm and flat if I have to, so it’s great stuff to stash.
Pteryxx: That’s an awesome blog. I have a few skulls I’ve collected myself. Also good to see you again.
Yes.
They’re trying to tell you that they want your money.
–
I came across this article at treehugger, and thought of the horde.
Bacon candle
They also have some great slide shows on insects, animals, and galaxies.
The current ad is offering me:
an ACCREDITED PASTORAL MINISTRY DEGREE online.
hmm
interesting
Minnie @ 607 “Oh, and while I’m at it, I’m proud to tell that we have a huge patch of Amanita Vaginata growing at the edge of our garden. It’s a perfect compliment to my exploding bush.”
Wow, your husband must be a fun guy.
+++++++++++++
chigau, Cuba Libres are not for everyone. I like rum, fresh pineapple juice 50/50 with fresh orange juice with a squeeze of lime and freshly grated nutmeg. If you don’t have the rest of the ingredients rum will substitute.
Court won’t stop teacher from challenging religion
The Sailor:
Ugh.
What’s the difference between that guy and someone spouting Jeebusism in class?
Oh Benjamin, it’s the difference between spouting religious nonsense and saying it is nonsense.
The teacher made fun of creationism in a college level course at a high school. this kid had his beliefs challenged by facts. and chose to sue. and set up his teacher by recording them for a court case. and edited them.
If the kid can’t stand reality he should write a paper explaining why the his beliefs fly in the face of facts. Fuck him and his parents for trying to impose their beliefs on the rest of the students.
Please note that this kid was represented by a not-for-profit law firm that would never support any other religion.
The Sailor:
I don’t buy it. If it was just mocking creationism, then that’d probably be okay… but he (from what I read) was explicitly endorsing atheism over theism. That’s a huge no-no from a government entity.
####
I lol’d.
@Benjamin
You must’ve read a different article than the one you posted. I didn’t see any mention of atheism in the article you posted.
Instead of stand and delivering a reasoned response the kid chose to restrict his teacher’s free speech rights thru a lawsuit. Even the possibility will chill actual free speech rights.
You make a common mistake, atheism is not a religion, it’s not a belief, it’s the difference between delusion and reality.
Benjamin, the teacher was teaching an AP history course. Did you expect the teacher to teach ‘both sides of the controversy?’?
Good news!
Guess who’s joining FTB.
…
…
…
Ophelia Benson!
“Instead of stand and delivering a reasoned response the kid chose to restrict his teacher’s free speech rights thru a lawsuit. Even the possibility will chill actual free speech rights.”
How many times have we cheered here when a teacher gets sued for promoting Christianity in class? The same standard applies here.
Government organizations (and this includes public schools) must remain neutral with regard to religion. They’re not allowed to promote or denigrate religion.
The Sailor:
His opposition to creationism isn’t the problem. His opposition to theism in general is the problem.
They’re not allowed to promote or denigrate religion.
clarification:
they are now allowed bias towards a SPECIFIC religion. Not allowed to say things like “Xianity is the bestest!”
it’s perfectly fine to talk about religion as a class of behavior in general.
“The evolution of religious behavior in humans might be little more than the evolution of group dynamics and selection for group control for mating rights.”
nothing about the lemon law says you can’t speak in general terms.
now->not
Also Greta Christina!
And Jen McCreight!
ichthyic:
By that standard, then, atheism becomes a ‘religion’. The government is not allowed to promote religion over the lack thereof, or vice versa.
Ophelia, Greta, and Jen blogging here? Awesome.
Hip, hip, hooray…
Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!
Hi Thread. I’m back. I wanna see my spiked polka-dot waders too…
That’s not all. Quoting myself not because I’m just that freaking awesome but because I don’t need to type it again:
By that standard, then, atheism becomes a ‘religion’
I’m not following how that is the case.
the lack of color is color?
not stamp collecting is a hobby?
there was nothing in what the teacher said that attempted to establish non-religion as an official stance of the school.
not one thing.
he criticized ideas.
if you remove that, you might as well remove all education.
you really need to rethink your position on this, because you’re simply flat out wrong about how the first amendment works and is interpreted.
*bounces off the walls* So cool!
I was at a family reunion today. I’m currently expected to be socializing, I think, but I’m really worn out from being hugged by complete strangers (nrrrrrr), smiling vaguely at people who seemed to expect me to know who they were, and generally tolerating the presence of my fellow humans. I don’t really want to do anything but put in my ear buds, hang out on Pharyngula, eat some dark chocolate, and watch Angel. Speaking of which, I ran into a family today who seemed to have two children named Serenity and Angel :) I thought it was pretty freaking awesome.
SallyStrange:
If it helps any, I just shared a huge platter of bo ssam (Korean-style pulled pork) with my wife, my daughter, her roomate, and their gentlemen friends.
We didn’t know it was a protest, but I’m happy to call it one after the fact. Mmmmmm… pork!
DrDMFM:
Re Daniel Radcliffe’s singing: I saw him live in How To Succeed in Business, and he really can sing pretty decently. I think he was just nervous about remembering all the elements.
Ooh! I knew about GC but not about Jen McCreight. More good news!
ichthyic:
“there was nothing in what the teacher said that attempted to establish non-religion as an official stance of the school.”
Doesn’t matter. Again, what would you say if he were up there with insulting claims about atheism?
“he criticized ideas. if you remove that, you might as well remove all education.”
If that’s how you think things work, then why are you opposed to teaching Intelligent Design? It doesn’t refer to a specific religion, either (officially, anyway).
Benjamin…
note something about the history of this that is touched on in the article:
why do you think that is?
what do you think would happen if they were?
Doesn’t matter.
yes, it does.
suggest you actually read the first amendment and the SCOTUS interpretations of it sometime.
Again, what would you say if he were up there with insulting claims about atheism?
that’s what doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t refer to a specific religion, either (officially, anyway).
I don’t. I don’t object to criticizing ID as a bad idea in a classroom, other than it is a waste of student’s time to even bother.
what did the teacher criticize, EXACTLY?
go look at the article again.
you’re being willfully obtuse.
ichthyic:
“suggest you actually read the first amendment and the SCOTUS interpretations of it sometime.”
I have.
“Again, what would you say if he were up there with insulting claims about atheism?
that’s what doesn’t matter.”
Oh, but it does matter. It matters because it’s exactly the same situation, but I’m certain your reaction would be the exact opposite if it wasn’t your set of beliefs being supported.
“what did the teacher criticize, EXACTLY?”
I quote: “When you put on your Jesus glasses, you can’t see the truth.” Sounds to me like a pretty clear specific condemnation of Christianity.
“go look at the article again.”
No, you go read the court documents, like I did.
“you’re being willfully obtuse.”
That’s a mirror. I’m over here.
I have.
then your reading comprehension is really bad.
It matters because it’s exactly the same situation
but it’s not. You should know this by now.
it’s a lack of beliefs, btw.
you’re very, very confused about what atheism is.
When you put on your Jesus glasses, you can’t see the truth.”
quotemine. what was it in reference to?
do I need to go back and grab it for you?
again…
what do you think it means that:
NOBODY HAS EVER BEEN HELD LIABLE UNDER THE FIRST AMENDMENT FOR CRITICISM RELIGION IN A CLASSROOM.
do you even understand why?
Oh, but it does matter.
no, it doesn’t.
one, atheism isn’t a religion.
two, general statements are not held liable to the current interpretation of the first amendment
three, you seem to have entirely forgotten the part where the state has a compelling interest involved here.
is this a religion class we’re talking about, or a science class?
and, again, I ask you:
what do you think would happen if all teachers were held liable for criticizing personal beliefs?
I think you have what the 1st amendment stands for entirely backwards!
fucking scary.
let’s flip this on its head, shall we?
Looking at it from the student’s perspective…
does the student have a 1st amendment right to assert creationism as being a viable alternative to evolution in a science classroom that is run by the state?
nope.
if you don’t believe me, check out the ruling in Tinker v Des Moine, and the ones that followed. I think there’s even a wiki on it.
so, are any of this students rights violated by critiquing the idea of creationism in a science class?
nope.
this is what the court ruled here as well, and it is entirely consistent with the first amendment and the current SCOTUS interpretation of it.
it appears it’s your interpretation of it that is flawed.
“I have.
then your reading comprehension is really bad.”
Apparently better than yours.
“It matters because it’s exactly the same situation
but it’s not. You should know this by now.”
How is it not the same situation? Teacher promotes a specific worldview in a public school and gets in trouble for it. What’s different, other than the fact that you agree with the worldview being promoted?
“When you put on your Jesus glasses, you can’t see the truth.”
quotemine. what was it in reference to?”
It’s in reference to people’s tendency to ignore reality when they’re being led by religion.
“NOBODY HAS EVER BEEN HELD LIABLE UNDER THE FIRST AMENDMENT FOR CRITICISM RELIGION IN A CLASSROOM.
do you even understand why?”
… because nobody’s had the brass so far? Because school districts have deeper pockets? Because most atheists are smart enough to understand the parallel between evangelizing Christianity in classrooms and evangelizing atheism in classrooms?
“is this a religion class we’re talking about, or a science class?”
It’s a history class.
My views are known—porn is exploitative when produced for reasons other than fun; PETA exploits their young volunteers, PETA should be avoided in favor of Friends of Animals—and summarized.
That website is not reliable, though. It is a product of the Center for Consumer Freedom, who got their start working for Philip Morris to tell you that tobacco is safe. CCF also works against labor unions, including the UAW and the American Federation of Teachers.
PETA’s exploitation of their volunteers is unethical, but activists should find ethical ways of appealing to the lowest common denominator. If atheists want to win the future, we’ll have to settle for having some people who become atheists because Daniel Radcliffe is an atheist—by all means we should also try to give them better reasons, but we’ll have to settle for some who don’t care for anything better.
It’s very unlikely that you would, though, because if you were vegan you’d probably have reasons other than pleasing PETA.
Had I been alive and a socialist during Stalin’s reign, it’s very unlikely that I’d give up socialism in protest, though I may well have cut off any economic and political associations with the Soviets.
If I were to eat animals in protest against PETA, it would be on ethically similar grounds to having a bad day with humans then coming home and kicking the dog.
Apparently better than yours.
wait, so your argument is… “I know you are but what am I”?
right.
fuck you sideways for wasting my time.
“How is it not the same situation?”
I already explained this several times, you refuse to listen.
“Teacher promotes a specific worldview”
you mean, science?
“… because nobody’s had the brass so far?”
LOL
you really haven’t ever bothered to examine this issue.
go take a look at the history of court cases involving this someday.
maybe you’ll get a clue.
It’s a history class.
same difference, really.
…as an addendum:
there is also no 1st amendment right for a student to sue their teacher for denigrating holocaust denialism in a history class.
and with that, if you really can’t see that this issue is the same, I hereby proclaim you an utter waste of time.
go and create your authoritarian state in your wishful thinking land that doesn’t exist.
those of us who know and value what the first amendment actually protects will get along just fine without your ignorance.
Because school districts have deeper pockets?
the plaintiff was being represented for free.
you fuckhead.
“does the student have a 1st amendment right to assert creationism as being a viable alternative to evolution in a science classroom that is run by the state?
nope.”
But the government doesn’t have a compelling interest in a history class.
“‘Apparently better than yours.’
wait, so your argument is… “I know you are but what am I”?
right.
fuck you sideways for wasting my time.”
Nope, just using your own ‘argument’ against you, since your entire schtick seems to be “since you disagree with me, obviously you’re stupid”.
““How is it not the same situation?”
I already explained this several times, you refuse to listen.”
Oh, I listened. And I realized just how fallacious your answers are.
“there is also no 1st amendment right for a student to sue their teacher for denigrating holocaust denialism in a history class.”
Holocaust denialism isn’t a religion. The Constitution doesn’t protect Holocaust denialism.
“and with that, if you really can’t see that this issue is the same, I hereby proclaim you an utter waste of time.”
It’s not the same. The analogy I proposed, however, is the same, and you refuse to acknowledge it.
you’re a waste of time, benji.
you haven’t done ANYTHING to support your case.
not one fucking thing.
“you’re a waste of time, benji.
you haven’t done ANYTHING to support your case.
not one fucking thing.”
Dearest Pot, I received your recent missive on the subject of my hue…
Dearest Pot, I received your recent missive on the subject of my hue…
NAME ONE COURT CASE THAT SUPPORTS YOUR ARGUMENT.
or stfu.
moron.
Benjamin is correct about this—so the question is moot whether or not atheism is a religion according to the courts—and it may come to be relevant in the Supreme Court’s decision on whether to hear the case.
(My opinion on whether this crosses that line would be underinformed at this time, so I won’t trouble you all with it.)
Kaufman v. McCaughtry, for one.
Quibble: it does, but under the free speech clause, which is heavily circumscribed already with regard to public schools. It would probably be possible to remove a public school teacher for Holocaust denialism in the classroom.
What’s at issue here is the establishment clause, which is much more broadly interpreted than the free speech clause regarding government employees in the classroom.
And, actually, it turns out I’m misinformed.
The original ruling threw out the “Jesus Glasses” bit; the only part that went to appeal was the “religious, superstitious nonsense” line (and I support the appeals court’s finding on that one).
So, yeah, we’re arguing about something unrelated to the case (but thrown in by the article’s author).
no, he’s not.
you’re reading the words, but not the interpretation of them.
here, I’ll show you:
define religion as a general concept.
now tell me, after you have done that, how the state would even begin establishing “religion”.
no, it has to be a specific TYPE of religious concept.
likewise, atheism is not a religion, but a lack of one.
you can’t establish THAT either.
if you clowns can’t see that criticizing an idea DOES NOT INTERFERE WITH YOUR RIGHT TO EXPRESS YOUR SPECIFIC RELIGION… then you’re all morons.
seriously.
this will not go to Scotus, because it has been there before, many times before.
don’t be ignorant about the history of this shit; it’s not like it’s hard to look up all the court cases involving the 1st amendment and religion.
there’s fucktons of sites out there detailing the history of the cases involved.
Linky for the original court finding.
“don’t be ignorant about the history of this shit; it’s not like it’s hard to look up all the court cases involving the 1st amendment and religion.”
If that’s the case, then it shouldn’t be hard to provide links to some of them.
Ohh, Evian, Evian…
Ohh, j’ai besoin d’Evian…
Actually if it’s a public school I imagine the state DOES have an interest in history class.
Creationism and biblical literalism also runs contrary to history…need to read the article but I can imagine situations where the need to go contrary to this belief would arise for the sake of proper education.
Philosophy aside, if a public school teacher gets up in front of the class and says “there is no god, and you should all stop going to church”, such practice is likely to get hammered down under the establishment clause.
Somebody Up There don’t like him:
http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/20/7427524-thunderstorm-forces-pope-to-cut-speech?gt1=43001
Yes, so there’s hypothetically a lot of criticism of religion(s) which would pass the Lemon test.
It matters not only what the teacher says, but for what purpose they say it.
Kaufman http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-7th-circuit/1467028.html
«Without venturing too far into the realm of the philosophical, we have suggested in the past that when a person sincerely holds beliefs dealing with issues of “ultimate concern” that for her occupy a “place parallel to that filled by ․ God in traditionally religious persons,” those beliefs represent her religion. Fleischfresser v. Dirs. of Sch. Dist. 200, 15 F.3d 680, 688 n. 5 (7th Cir.1994) (internal citation and quotation omitted); see also Welsh v. United States, 398 U.S. 333, 340, 90 S.Ct. 1792, 26 L.Ed.2d 308 (1970); United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163, 184-88, 85 S.Ct. 850, 13 L.Ed.2d 733 (1965). We have already indicated that atheism may be considered, in this specialized sense, a religion. See Reed v. Great Lakes Cos., 330 F.3d 931, 934 (7th Cir.2003) (“If we think of religion as taking a position on divinity, then atheism is indeed a form of religion.”). Kaufman claims that his atheist beliefs play a central role in his life, and the defendants do not dispute that his beliefs are deeply and sincerely held.
The Supreme Court has recognized atheism as equivalent to a “religion” for purposes of the First Amendment on numerous occasions, most recently in McCreary County, Ky. v. American Civil Liberties Union of Ky., 545U.S. 844, 125 S.Ct. 2722, 162 L.Ed.2d 729 (2005). The Establishment Clause itself says only that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” but the Court understands the reference to religion to include what it often calls “nonreligion.” In McCreary County, it described the touchstone of Establishment Clause analysis as “the principle that the First Amendment mandates government neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.” Id. at *10 (internal quotations omitted). As the Court put it in Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 105 S.Ct. 2479, 86 L.Ed.2d 29 (1985):
At one time it was thought that this right [referring to the right to choose one’s own creed] merely proscribed the preference of one Christian sect over another, but would not require equal respect for the conscience of the infidel, the atheist, or the adherent of a non-Christian faith such as Islam or Judaism. But when the underlying principle has been examined in the crucible of litigation, the Court has unambiguously concluded that the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all.
Id. at 52-53, 105 S.Ct. 2479. In keeping with this idea, the Court has adopted a broad definition of “religion” that includes non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as theistic ones. Thus, in Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488, 81 S.Ct. 1680, 6 L.Ed.2d 982, it said that a state cannot “pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against non-believers, and neither can [it] aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs.” Id. at 495, 81 S.Ct. 1680. Indeed, Torcaso specifically included “Secular Humanism” as an example of a religion. Id. at 495 n. 11, 81 S.Ct. 1680.
It is also noteworthy that the administrative code governing Wisconsin prisons states that one factor the warden is prohibited from considering in deciding whether an inmate’s request to form a new religious group should be granted is “the absence from the beliefs of a concept of a supreme being.” See Wis. Admin. Code § DOC 309.61(d)(3), cited in Kaufman v. McCaughtry, 2004 WL 257133, at *9. Atheism is, among other things, a school of thought that takes a position on religion, the existence and importance of a supreme being, and a code of ethics. As such, we are satisfied that it qualifies as Kaufman’s religion for purposes of the First Amendment claims he is attempting to raise.»
From the article it seems that he covered his ass by saying he was going to be argumentative to foster discussion. It seems the “Jesus glasses” was in reference to discussing the idea of religion versus science. It’s interesting, and right of course, but that may cross some line that I’d think most would avoid. MHO of it is that he zeroed in on the common notion that the church was an overall positive force in society and wanted to challenge that. The story doesn’t give enough context for me to decide whether he crossed some line into avocation or not, but (and I may be biased here) I’m going to presume that the context was somewhat exonerating if the court sided with him.
I think there is an important interpretation to the ruling: Remaining Theologically neutral does not mean throwing out facts that would challenge a religion.
could y’all please blockquote???
I am soooooo sick of this caching shit
good night
Let’s go back to the beginning.
A previous (science) teacher at the Capistrano High School, John Pelloza, had sued the school back in 1993 because he was a creationist who refused to teach evolution in his science class and wished to be exempted from that curriculum requirement. Corbett tangled with Pelloza at that time about Pelloza teaching creationism.
Fast forward a decade or so. Corbett is teaching, among other things, AP History. In his history class, he has some lessons about the history of science in the USA. In that context, in 2007. one of his students asked about the old conflict with Pelloza – and Corbett replies that he had disagreed with Pelloza being allowed to “propagandize kids with this religious, superstitious nonsense.”
Now the little asshole Farnan who had snuck a tape recorder into Corbett’s classroom in the hopes of trapping Corbett in some wrongdoing supplied about twenty examples of statements that Farnan claimed violated his religious rights. All of them – except the one quoted just above about creationism being “religious superstitious nonsense” – were ruled by Judge Selan to be appropriate for education discussion, and to be in accord with the Lemon test. In addition, Selna ruled that Corbett did not have to pay attorneys fees to the Farnan asshole because Corbett was granted qualified immunity. The school district retained Corbett as a teacher.
This indicates that Farnan’s case was extremely weak and not at all the slam dunk our Benjamin thinks it is. IF Corbett had repeatedly and intentionally violated a student’s religious rights, as Benjamin seems to think, then Corbett would have been found in violation for more than one of the twenty or more statements. He would have been ordered to pay attorney’s fees. And the school district would have taken action against him even while the case was being appealed.
Corbett appealed because he wanted that single statement to be cleared for a clean slate. The Farnan assholes team appealed because they wanted all twenty or so statements to be ruled as First Amendment violations, and of course they wanted Corbett’s qualified immunity lifted so he would be forced to pay them their costs.
Fast forward two more years. A three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court has just unanimously ruled that
Note that the appeals judges have (deliberately) sidestepped the question of whether or not any of Corbett’s recorded statements violated government neutrality, because:
So, Benjamin, sorry, even if you’re right, you’re still wrong. It is not actually analogous for a teacher to proselytize for Christianity in the classroom (for which teachers can be and have been disciplined in many cases) compared to “criticizing religion”. Criticizing religion is (at best) a protected activity because teachers must “challenge students to develop their critical thinking skills”, or (at worst) is merely allowed because two+ centuries of legal precedent have not provided any examples of the majority Christians successfully imposing liability upon those who criticize religion, and therefore the courts aren’t about to start imposing unprecedented liability now.
What’s that you say about “activist” judges ? I’d say that conservatively following two+ centuries of legal precedent is the exact opposite of “activist”.
hotshoe:
1. Go back and read what I wrote.
2. Stop putting words in my mouth.
“IF Corbett had repeatedly and intentionally violated a student’s religious rights, as Benjamin seems to think, then Corbett would have been found in violation for more than one of the twenty or more statements.”
Not at all, since only one of the 20+ statements had to do with religion in general, and not with creationism in particular.
“What’s that you say about “activist” judges ? I’d say that conservatively following two+ centuries of legal precedent is the exact opposite of “activist”.”
You’re the first one to talk about “activist judges”, so that comment has nothing to do with the discussion other than to poison the well by forcing me to specifically deny it.
SGBM:
It goes without saying, I am very much against unnecessary cruelty, and think the way we raise food currently is completely unethical. I used to work on a commercial egg farm complete with battery cages, and it is pretty horrible for the animals.
However I also believe there’s an ethical way to be a ‘carnivore’, and disagree with being called a ‘murderer’ when I’m just participating in the dance of life and death that’s been going on since life began. That and the exploitation are my major issues with PETA.
Bad ambassadors for a (sometimes?) good cause.
Benjamin:
I may be wrong, but I read that as a rhetorical “you,” not that hotshoe was implying you personally argued against activist judges.
A few things to note, from the Background section of the court opinion:
If this is correct, then most likely Corbett wasn’t teaching or establishing atheism in the classroom. He was being critical of religion. There is a difference, and there is a lot to be critical about.
A course description, again according to the opinion:
LOL! Or with a prior case!
Ferchrissake, Benjamin, get your act together and use blockquotes like you’re supposed to. Don’t be a troll and an incompetent idiot !
Jayzus, Benjamin, don’t be so fucking paranoid and egocentric. Not everything has to do with YOU personally.
My final paragraph in that post is just general political comment which you, Benjamin – and every other informed person in the USA – should recognize as a satire of the typical right-wing screed against activist judges. YOU, Benjamin, are the silly egotist who has blinded himself to the “activist judges” reference because of your paranoid assumption that I threw it in to “poison the well” against you. You missed their delicious irony in establishing themselves as hide-bound conservatives here.
You, Benjamin, owe me an apology for fucking wasting my time with your stupidity.
Now grow up and quit feeling sorry for yourself just because you, Benjamin, happened to be wrong about your uninformed opinion of the law compared to three judges of the Ninth Circuit and all two-hundred+ years of precedent they used to guide their decision.
P.S. Just so you, Benjamin, don’t think you can accuse me of ignoring a paragraph of yours:
total disinformed garbage.
Several of the 20+ statements “had to do with religion in general” and/or “creationism in particular”. But each of them were ruled by Judge Selna to either be religiously neutral, or to have a legitimate secular purpose (that is, of education) except for the one specific quote that Pelloza should not be allowed to “propagandize kids with this religious, superstitious nonsense.” Judge Selna said he could not find a legitimate secular purpose for that one.
(Objectively, Selna was wrong about that – in fact, given the Dover verdict, Corbett is objectively correct to state that Pelloza can’t defend creationism on school time, and the reason he can’t is because courts have found that creationism is indeed religious nonsense with no place in a science classroom – and Corbett’s secular purpose could easily be seen to be that of reinforcing his students’ grasp of the principles of science education in context of a student journalism article specifically about Pelloza’s teaching religion instead of evolution)
Look, Benjamin, you linked to Selna’s decision. Did you, Benjamin, even bother to read what you linked before you spouted your disinformation ? You, Benjamin, don’t have your facts right about the original case; the one place where you agree with the original judgement is the one place where Judge Selna was objectively wrong, and then you foolishly place your uninformed opinion on Constitutional law above that of the Ninth Circuit Court (one of the best in the USA).
You’re 0 for 3 here. Take your ball and go home before you make it 0 for 21.
Good Morning
Well, PETA should be avoided on account of them being fucking idiot homo-sapiens-phobes and also very fond of the extinction of domestic animals. There’s nothing ethical about an organisation that claims to “rescue” pets from “bad” (any) owners in order to kill said pets.
I would eat any day in order to protest them.
I do eat meat, I enjoy eating meat. I’m very concerned about animal welfare and try to make sure that the animals I eat have been raised and slaughtered in good conditions.
That’s, alas, another reason why I dive into the whole organic farming thing: They’re the only ones who guarantee this.
But until somebody can demonstrate that a cow does have a sense of being deprived of some years of life, I’ll happily serve Spaghetti Bolognese.
Ahh, and we’re having another wonderful example of very stupid German legislation:
We have to hand in our 2010 tax declaration be October, being threatened with fines.
Only problem is that the law concering when various other people have to hand us relevant documents states that they only have to do so by January 1st 2012…
So, if they ever fined anybody and this went to court, the whole thing would be taken down, but until that day, they keep buggering us with threatening letters, wasting everybody’s time and our money.
Thanx for the gravatar-link
@Sally Strange
As much as I like the idea of the picture, the picture itself isn’t really well done, I think :(
The poor woman is lacking several ribs
@lots of awesome people joining
Cooooooooooooooool
consciousness razor:
Hey, thanks – I was so sure that the rhetorical meaning would come through that I was absolutely dumbfounded that Benjamin could twist it into a disagreement. Glad to hear you did read it as intended.
Well, don’t thank me. It didn’t take much to understand that it was commentary on why the court made its decision: because there was a lack of precedent to suggest he violated the Establishment Clause, not because Benjamin had said anything about activist judges. So, it certainly is relevant to the discussion of the case, if you’re paying attention.
“Ferchrissake, Benjamin, get your act together and use blockquotes like you’re supposed to. Don’t be a troll and an incompetent idiot !”
Fuck you too.
“My final paragraph in that post is just general political comment which you, Benjamin – and every other informed person in the USA – should recognize as a satire of the typical right-wing screed against activist judges.”
But every other paragraph is directed at me, and somehow I’m just supposed to know that that one paragraph isn’t?
“You, Benjamin, owe me an apology for fucking wasting my time with your stupidity.”
I’m sorry you’re a fucknugget.
“Several of the 20+ statements “had to do with religion in general” and/or “creationism in particular”.”
You got my statement backward. Only one of the statements (that I saw) dealt with religion BUT NOT creationism.
“Look, Benjamin, you linked to Selna’s decision. Did you, Benjamin, even bother to read what you linked before you spouted your disinformation ? ”
Read this, dumbshit.
“You’re 0 for 3 here. Take your ball and go home before you make it 0 for 21.”
Nope. You’re grading me on the wrong answer key, numbnuts.
I’ve a golf story.
Harry, one of the oldest members, was in the clubhouse bar waiting for his mates, the oldest members, to complete their round. They were the last pair out and seemed to taking a very long time finishing.
Eventually, Dick comes into the bar and slumps down.
“You look all in old man” says Harry. “Where’s Tom?”
“He’s out on the 18th green – he died out on the 9th and I had to carry him all the way back” replies Dick.
“Good God” cries Harry ” It’s a wonder you didn’t croak yourself, carrying him all that way!”
Dick took a deep swallow of his G&T.
“It wasn’t so much the carrying that was the problem. It was putting him down, playing my shot, picking him up, playing my shot……”
I’m going out now.
How the hell did “Fotheringay” come to be pronounced “Fung-ee”?
(This question brought to you by two episodes of Jeeves and Wooster.)
… not to mention the (in)famous Cholmondeley (Chum-lee) and Featherstonehaugh (Fan-shaw), Marjoribanks (Marsh-banks) and Dalziel (Dee-ell), and that’s without even getting started on the place-names …
Gee thanks, gravatar. o.o
What do you know, NEW THREAD.