I’ve been neglecting you, readers! This has been a killer meeting in Orlando, with the schmoozing starting at 8am and then non-stop talks and then everything dribbling away into exhaustion somewhere north of 11pm. And the wireless sucks. Ophelia has been posting brief dispatches, but I’ve been buried so far.
I give my talk today, and then fly off with a long long travel day…and my flights got juggled about so I’m not even sure when I’m leaving yet. So I figure I better leave you with something good, so here it is: a moment of awesome transcendent beauty.
Squee, sir; I must say with great reverence, squee.
(Episode CCCVI: Why Sean Bean gotta die?.)
This “Partnership for a Drug-Free America” needs to be put out of business. They are now running commercials clearly against the practice of insisting that if your kids are going to get drunk they should do it at your home.
Cool stuff.
Grumps @697: Great find with that video. I had forgotten about the IQ Squared stuff, it got lost in the mental shuffle of regular day BS. I appreciate when people point out new stuff in TeT because I often forgot about sources of ‘cool new things’ because there’s so much of it around now that it’s hard to keep up with. I just wish we didn’t have the need for some of it, since most of the pointers and links from TeT are to inform us of people fighting one form of ridiculous or another. I can’t remember who it was that said common sense has become very uncommon, but it’s certainly a QFT expression.
Oh Bill I was wondering about your thoughts on the relative danger of Santorum rather than Romney, considering Santorum’s apparent advantage in the midwest. (Silver has Santorum winning the primaries in OH, OK, TN, and WI.)
From Previous Thread:
The problem is, the idiot basically owns his own broadcast company — EIB Network (Excellence In Broadcasting (how’s that for irony?)) — so I don’t think he can drop himself.
My favourite cheap beer. I can get a six-pack of their lager for a little over four bucks.
Sally: The training works pretty damn well. I sold them for a summer (is it still Vector Marketing?) and averaged around $20.00 per hour, including driving and phone time, in commissions. And this was back in the mid-80s. I still have a couple of those knives.
In our office, there was one guy in his mid-40s (which seemed ancient) and he, because of his contacts, was our top-seller. He also exuded confidence and maturity which probably helped.
I think that one of the difficulties selling Cutco now would be the ready availability of other really good knives at relatively low prices. I picked up a Henkel Santoku at a dicsount store for $12.00 and it is every bit as good as the Cutco knives. Back in the 80s, good knives were as rare as hen’s teeth, so Cutco was easier to sell.
And another part of my childhood shot to hell.
I was always a fan of Mr. Green Jeans. Of course, my Dad was a Park Ranger and always wore green trousers (as I do, now), so I think that is understandable.
I don’t know about saddest, but it may be the slowest. We’ve been on this thread through an entire bout of flu.
Ah. I see it is still Vector Marketing. Thirty years ago they were a weird bunch, but you could certainly earn far more than minimum wage.
=========
This Thread:
I guess they figure that if what they have done so far doesn’t work, they need to keep finding new places to shove their message and maybe it will magically start to work.
Nobody’s sure, but it was a common expression in 1836. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Common_sense
For those of you aren’t Facebooky, here’s the conversation with my brother the rape apologist from the previous thread in convenient WordPress format:
http://aceofsevens.wordpress.com/2012/03/04/a-long-facebook-thread-dump-on-promiscuity/
“After I send a tornado to wreck your town, I’m gonna make it snow so you can’t even stand to sleep in your the car. Thus saith the LORD.”
(Not me, I’m alright. But damn.)
The other big problem is that common sense to one peron is utter idiocy to another.
I know theists who think that belief in a personal, all-powerful, all-loving god (or gods) is common sense. I know people for whom slashing taxes, no matter the effect it will have on services, is common sense. So, yeah, common sense is uncommon. In others.
That was me! I thought that Spinoza’s god was perfectly obvious to anyone who really thought about it. I know Spinoza’s god doesn’t come with omnibenevolent packaging, but I melded it with the Christ thing of my upbringing.
I think the way to combat this is to directly contront the alleged necessity of a creator, and it’s the “who made God” line of reasoning.
LM: That’s about what I would expect from a neo-Prohibitionist organization. Same mentality that opposes making sex safer “on principle.”
Og:
I am to please.
Unrelatedly, I can’t believe a progressive blogger is wringing his hands over this Planned Parenthood campaign. Oh, wait, I guess I can, given how many “progressives” have a stick up their ass when it comes to sexuality. Fuck the idea that PP should be all meek and mild to retain the “moral high ground” post-Komen. It already had the moral high ground. We all need to be unapologetic about the fact that people have sex in ways the fundies don’t like, and, so long as it’s safe and consensual, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.
Sam Brownshirt again.
I like Andrew Baumann, who is on C-SPAN right now. He pushes back against the “both sides” BS.
[Tap, tap, tap. Taptaptatp.]
FAO British readers – please sign this petition
Ms. Daisy Cutter:
That is disgusting. No real surprise, but abso-fucking-lutely disgusting!
Does she have any recourse through, say, the FBI or the DOJ? This sounds like people using their government positions to harrass a private individual.
Oops the formatting went wrong. British readers please sign the following petition – c4em.org.uk
Huh – I’ve tried posting a link to an article critical of cutco knives twice now and it won’t go through. I’m guessing something about the URL is catching in the filter (or my cache is messed up and I’m now spamming the thread). The site is onlyknives dot com, and the article is titled “cutco cutlery knives kitchen knife review”, and itself has a few links to other discussions about cutco.
Good lord, Ace – that’s an overly-long discussion. I’d ask him why he’s so invested in wanting to call women sluts without anyone criticizing his word choice that he’ll spend hours arguing about it.
Thanks for the feedback on FMA – I don’t why I hadn’t thought about it being Anglified from the source. I guess pointless localisations have made me oversensitive.
I’ll get the volumes from England, then.
McCthulhu, now with Techroline and Retsyn #3
There is so much stuff to keep up with isn’t there? And that’s without (as you say)the everyday (more important) getting on with life BS.
I love TET for its links and the horde-banter. I’m not a frequent commenter, but I do love this community… I’ve learned so much here and some regulars have been kind to me once in a while.
I’m glad you liked the link. If and when I find more that I think might be of interest and, I hope, a little uplifting I’ll be sure to post them on TET.
because that’s the thing – he doesn’t want to just call women sluts; he can do that and just brush off whatever you’re saying and ignore you. What he’s trying to do is convince you that he’s still a good guy and try to make you think that he’s right in calling them that. No dice. He gets to call women sluts, you get to call him a sexist asshole for calling women sluts.
Sorry, I hate snails.
I have no idea what place they have in the ecosystem, but I’d still happily flip the switch that made them all go away.
Not caught up. However, last I checked in others were hating on Gastropoda in a way that would not have been excusable if it were directed at rabbits.
I am the Snormax and I speak for the snails!
Gastropods are incredibly important. Without gastropoda, relative age of marine deposits would be even more difficult. So, at the very least, snails are good for dating.
(And there is a sentence you most likely rarely hear in normal conversation.)
According to Mitch Daniels, it was MOTHER NATURE, not God who sent the tornado. ( http://niftyatheist.blogspot.com/2012/03/mother-nature-not-god-chose-to-slam.html )
Snow on top of that…ugh that must be miserable for so many people. I am glad you are OK, love moderately.
Ms. Daisy Cutter, that linked story is chilling. Seriously, WTF?
People should not anthropomorphize Nature. She hates that.
Any thoughts on how one can warp Limbaugh’s last name without it coming across as ableist? Of course one could start refering to him as Mush, since that’s what his show is.
Just a random thought, but has anyone else noticed that when bible-thumpers want to credit something good that has happened, it is credited to gods (for Christians, presumeably male), but anything bad (Eve and the apple, mother nature and a tornado with a snowstorm) somehow it becomes the fault of some woman?
How about Asshole. Or Shit-for-Brains. Or Asshat.
I’ve heard him referred to as Lush Rumball.
QFT heh Some days, I almost wish there were gods, because I’m thinking Mother Nature could/would kick misogynist Yaweh from here to kingdom come – (heh)
Oh yes, once or twice. Whenever something really bad happens, or something really squicky, or in the middle of hurricane season, or, you know, if it is a day of the week at all…
Does anyone know how to (or if it is possible to) change the little avatar picture in our comment posts?
Sec. Panetta, Get Rush Limbaugh Off Armed Forces Radio NOW! No tax money for abusive, divisive, insulting language.
Hi there
Tom Wyrme
I’m sorry about your dog and I hope things turn out allright, but I think you will be legally reliable.
In Germany, for example, you are reliable for whatever your dog does. If your dog runs into the street, you have to pay the damages for the car crash.
A larger pet, much like a car, is considered to be a potentially dangerous thing.
Even though I believe everything you say about that dog, the problem is that you can’t expect each and everybody to know how to interact with a dog.
It might well be that the person who was bitten did all the wrong things in regards to your dog, but since it was your dog you are the one who’s responsible to avoid such situations.
Every dog can bite. It’s a natural instinct and reflex.
*hugs, chocolate and doggy biscuits are coming to your USB-port nevertheless*
Sally Strange
Sorry about the strange Ex.
Selling knives sounds good. Only I’d never buy knives that would last for a life-time. I love buying knives too much. Lately I’ve fallen in love for those ceramic knives.
me, me, me, don’t read on if you don’t want to
And I’m not going to apologize this time.
I had a very shitty very good weekend. I feel like shit, I can’t eat a decent meal and it’s good.
I thought in the beginning that I had a problem earning my college degree, now I’m beginning to understand that there’s just not enough “me” left to do so.
I have turned myself into a non-person over the years.
Oh, I’m still a mother, a wife, a daughter, a teacher, an activist, a good friend, a talented crafter. I wear all those identities, I wear them with ease, I’m actually pretty good at those things.
I just suck at being me.
This weekend has been filled with thoughts and I think the pieces are falling into place now.
I have constantly devalued everything that had only to do with me.
Vaccinations? Everybody in this family is up to date except me.
Check-ups? Same thing. Haven’t seen my gyn in two years.
This 60lbs of extra-fat I’m carrying around since #1 was born? Not long ago I told you that although I don’t like them and know that they’re not good for my health I couldn’t bother doing anything about them right now.
I haven’t been to the hairdresser in over three years and I would tell everybody that I just don’t like going there.
Sure, I had “help” in this, like my dad demonstrated beautifully yesterday.
Truth is: I wasn’t worth myself shit. If it didn’t interfere with any of my other roles, it was simply not worth any effort because it was just about me, and my degree fits into this perfectly.
For years I never felt bad. I was sick, or tired, I was angry, I was worried. I never felt bad, I hardly ever cried. At least not for my own sake.
Thinking back, for years my body yelled at me. I react physically because I never allowed myself to react psychologically. Actually, this whole journey started when the name, logo or even just street of my university made me throw up.
For years, I was oh so strong and capable. I’m the friend you can call at three am. If there’s an accident or a crisis, you want me to be there, I keep my calm and manage things. I am completely reliable. I care. If you call me and ask for help, I’ll drop whatever I’m doing and come
Which are actually good qualities.
Only not when there’s nothing else left. The thought that I might actually not be that strong and capable scared me to death, because there was nothing else left.
But must they be so flamboyant at being cuttlefish?
Glen Davidson
So I took a look at Fullmetal Alchemist, or rather Hagane no Renkinjutsushi. I’m impressed. Great story-telling, fascinating scenario and interesting characters.
It does look like a Japanese take of a pseudo-English steam punk medieval Europe plus modern technology superimposed on it (a little bit of the Dragonball feeling there). There is a character named Shou Takka, probably shoulda been Joe Tucker…
I really dig how the main character is nonreligious, and one of the villains is a religious fanatic, and how the alchemy seems to be rule-based, and thus ultimately could work without supernatural explanations.
Also, the author is a woman, that’s great. You wouldn’t know from the name, she lost her last character, like Chihiro in the anime, and made a male name out of it (a bit like J K Rowling I suppose).
荒川弘美
Arakawa Hiromi
Now chopping off the last character, which is read MI and is a typical suffix in female names (it also means “beautiful”), you get
荒川弘
Arakawa Hiromu
(BTW: English Wikipedia has it wrong. Contrary to what they claim, 弘 cannot be read both Hiromi and Hiromu)
But he doesn’t want to call women sluts. He wants to call them promiscuous in an insulting manner, which is totally different and harmless.
Glen Davidson
And here’s a shiny new internet for you
*snortle*
Giliell, I saw these and thought you might be interested, seeing as you have a machine embroiderer. Cool stuff. Back to work!
Ace of Sevens: Tell your brother he’s a douchenugget and I hope he gets punched in the throat by a woman when he dares to call her a slut. Or just get run over by a bus, whichever tickles his fancy. (not in a merciful mood so far today)
———————————————–
Re: Partnership for a Drug-Free America: If they want the country to be totally drug-free, please go after the meds that people need to control their symptoms of depression, ADHD, bipolar disorder, and other such afflictions. I’m sure they’d have a wonderful, workable alternative in mind. /heavy sarcasm
———————————————–
Gillel: just take the weekend to wallow. Maybe it will help a bit and you’ll feel a bit more ready to do what’s to be done tomorrow. Don’t forget to eat if you feel like you can keep food down, and drink plenty of water (or a little booze if that helps too). Go easy on yourself.
Calling a woman a slut is just humor and fighting absurdity with absurdity. Just ask Rush Limbaugh.
Look at that, Rush thinks that is it absurd that we are talking about sex. And how does he point out the absurdity, does he go after those who brought it up?
No.
He mocks the woman who tried to protest it.
What clearer case of the incoherence of Rush Limbaugh can there be.
NPR’s Fresh Air program has produced a very nice podcast and summary of the issues associated with SuperPacs, Citizens United, 501(c)(4) organizations, and, for humorous levening, Stephen Colbert’s take on the whole issue.
Colbert’s lawyer, Trevor Potter, concludes that if the situation remains as it now is, individual citizens’ votes will no longer count for much. The details Potter provides are sobering.
Excerpt:
And yet he absolutely relished discussing Bill Clinton’s ‘personal sexual recreational activities’ on the air. And helped push for his impeachment which led to, you guessed it, ‘discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress.’
How does his head notsplode?
@pelanum
I am glad more people here are discovering Fullmetal Alchemist. It is pretty much one of my favorite anime out there. And yeah, the protagonist is an atheist, which is awesome.
@Ogvorbis
They are conservatives. Their greatest superpower is mental compartmentalization.
How about Limbaugh? I can’t think of any greater insult.
I agree with the second part, but I really have to disagree with the first part. I know they call themselves conservatives, but they are really corporatists.
For the last 30+ years, the GOP has been pushing the most radical reorganization of the United States since, well, since ever. Even during the heyday of laissez-faire economics the amount of political power controlled by corporations was never anything close to what it is now. Even ‘liberal’ Presidents, like Clinton and Obama, have bought into corporatism — what is good for the wealthy is good for the country, what is good for corporations is good for the economy, what is good for the stock market is good for the corner market.
The question becomes, then, just how far down the road of corporatism, government by, and for, the corporations, will my country go? We already find ourselves arguing over whether it is better to extend unemployment benefits, or continue tax breaks for corporations. We debate whether making much of the world unfit for human civilization is an agreeable price to pay for fossil-fuel company profits. We question the necessity of safety, health, pollution, and monetary regulations which both make the world a better place and cost a few percentage points profit. And again and again and again, we, as a country, come down for the radical changes needed to make the world safer for millionaires and billionaires, and more profit for corporation while making it less safe for workers, children, families, the environment, the poor, the middle class, unions, and 99% of the world’s population.
And yet the ones who push this radical agenda, this untried experiment, claim to be the conservatives? Edmund Burke is now spinning in his grave with sufficient velocity to power most of London.
I came up with “Rash Scumbag” about 20 years ago, but that might be stretching things.
His notpology was certainly precious, wasn’t it? “I used bad words, but I’m right about the real issue.”
Fucker.
I went to post at my blog about it, but somehow, AND I SWEAR I DON’T KNOW HOW (wink), I had a copy/paste accident and mixed up all his quotes from the last week.
The cuttlefish video is far too short.
pelamun
When you have a moment, if you would be so kind…
In Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses one of the characters is teaching another to be more polite.
She suggests substituting:
“None of your business!”
with:
“In this matter you need not concern yourself on my behalf.”
Is this a real stock phrase?
Is there something equivalent in 日本語?
(google translate is it’s usual hilariosity in this matter)
Aww, how cute.
That video, man. Whoa. :-D
Love the colour changes.
1st, cloudy white: “Nothing in this egg, move along”
2nd, speckled: “Honestly, I’m just a patch of sand”
finally: “Fooled you! I’m a nudibranch, and you know they not as tasty as baby cuttlefish. Which I’m completely not, in any way *cough*”
This is fantastic. I apologize if it’s been posted and I missed it. I’ve been watching all of Parks and Rec for the last couple of weeks, so it’s particularly amusing.
A song about a creationist loving a paleontologist, by Megan Mullaly and Nick Offerman.
@ogvorbis
Yeah, they have no principles at all. Things they have supported in the past are all of the sudden evil because a)a democrat is president (despite the fact that in some issues, he goes farther than George Bush ever did) and b)they can be bought very cheaply by corporations. Seriously, when you see some of the figures of the bribe, I go thinking “you are that cheap?!” Seriously, considering the return in investments the corporations get for the bribe, if I were a corrupt politician, I would ask for higher payments.
I love it when two blogs that I read crash together.
The Comics Curmudgeon on Language Log.
Bonus: “PREGO PORN”
The “15 places to take your kids” once again has the Creation Funhouse at the top of the list.
The Laughing Coyote
Yeah, dinosaurs do seem to get all the attention, which is a pity. I mean, dinosaurs are awesome, but so was a lot of the even older fauna, like the pelycosaurs from the Permian and the giant arthropods and primitive tetrapods from the Carboniferous (and that’s just the terrestrial creatures).
I too am a bit of a Darren Naish fan.
The horde looks away for one minute and the fundies manage to pull this shit. I suspect trying to change the results is a lost cause. It’s much harder to vote against a result than to vote for it when there are so many options.
I feel the same way when LL talks about comics I read, dr AZD.
Hey, look what we made today!
http://technic.lego.com/en-us/Products/Speed/8068.aspx
Fiddly, but fun.
Rush Limbaugh, riffing on same:
Rush Dimbulb
Gush Dimbulb
Rash Scofflaw
TLC, via pentatomid: “OOooh, the Carboniferous!”
And now, doing my research, I find that the “Carboniferous spiders as big as a small dog!” of my youth, weren’t, in fact, spiders.
Still cute though.
Hi, I just had this racist bile arrive in my inbox. I’d like to craft a considered, factual reply, (not necessarily lengthy) and send it to the sender with the request that they might like to forward this alternative point of view to everyone else they’d sent it to. And I’m flat-to-the-boards with no time – so any suggestions would be welcome, and I’ll be checking when I can.
OK, LET’S SEE IF I GOT THIS RIGHT!!!
IF YOU CROSS THE NORTH KOREAN BORDER
ILLEGALLY YOU GET 12 YEARS HARD LABOR.
IF YOU CROSS THE IRANIAN BORDER
ILLEGALLY YOU ARE DETAINED INDEFINITELY..
IF YOU CROSS THE AFGHAN BORDER
ILLEGALLY, YOU GET SHOT.
IF YOU CROSS THE SAUDI ARABIAN BORDER
ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE JAILED.
IF YOU CROSS THE CHINESE BORDER
ILLEGALLY YOU MAY NEVER BE HEARD FROM AGAIN.
IF YOU CROSS THE VENEZUELAN BORDER
ILLEGALLY YOU WILL BE BRANDED A SPY AND YOUR FATE WILL BE SEALED.
IF YOU CROSS THE CUBAN BORDER ILLEGALLY
YOU WILL BE THROWN INTO POLITICAL PRISON TO ROT…
IF YOU ENTER AUSTRALIA OR NEW ZEALND ILLEGALLY YOU GET ;
A JOB, A DRIVERS LICENSE,
SOCIAL SECURITY CARD, WELFARE,
FOOD VOUCHERS, CREDIT CARDS,
SUBSIDIZED RENT OR A LOAN TO BUY A HOUSE,
FREE EDUCATION, FREE HEALTH CARE,
BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS PRINTED IN YOUR LANGUAGE
THE RIGHT TO CARRY YOUR COUNTRY’S FLAG WHILE YOU
PROTEST THAT YOU DON’T GET ENOUGH RESPECT
AND, IN MANY INSTANCES, YOU CAN VOTE.
I JUST WANTED TO MAKE SURE I HAD A FIRM GRASP ON THE SITUATION !!!
PLEASE KEEP THIS GOING……FORWARD TO ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS & FAMILY
IT’S TIME TO WAKE UP AUSSIE’S AND KIWI’S.
(Apart from anything else, the massacre of grammar is horrible – unsurprisingly.)
Good Rock Beyond Belief promo video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6kJ_EwwnD4
The promoters have really upped their game in getting this done. Rock Beyond Belief is coming soon — March 31.
changeable moniker
Yeah, the BBC’s Walking with monsters had a giant spider. Originally, it was supposed to be Megarachne, but then they changed the name to Mesothelae when it was discovered that Megarachne was in fact a Eurypterid. The animation for the episode had already been done, so it was too late to leave the creature out.
Awww.
They really should be called “cuddle fish”.
Dimbulb, Rash, Scofflaw…no, being a Limbaugh is still worse than all of those.
amblebury
That looks like the kind of shit the right wing political party Vlaams Belang keeps spreading here in Belgium. A horrible load of shit indeed.
I’ve seen those “illegal border crossing” e-mail forwards before too. Always odd to see people envying totalitarian states.
The “Mormon Mall” is set to open in Salt Lake City in about 3 weeks.
At least $2 billion has been spent on the project, some say more. It’s hard to get a real handle on the costs because the real estate arm of the LDS Church is involved and they have been faulted before for less-than-transparent deals. Also, it’s hard to tell what they are counting in the total cost: just the mall, or all the attendant condos?
Before you all go rushing off to Utah to get your fill of family-friendly fun, I thought I should warn you about some of the rules. Most of the City Creek Mall rules are standard for big retail spaces, but this new mall is in close proximity to the mormon temple, so it’s likely that rules will be enforced more strictly, and that a few in-your-face rules will startle some visitors.
Don’t let fly some casual cursing while you are there. Profanity is banned.
You can drink liquor at the mall … sort of.
The owners of the mall want you to know that the list of no-no’s is not “exhaustive” and that they can ban any activity of conduct that is not family-friendly. As far as I can see, they haven’t bothered to define the family they have in mind. The Pharyngula Family would fit right in. Right?
I’ve seen short clips of that fullmetal alchemist once, seemed like a great series but I have no idea where I’d get it. I quickly checked an online store (bo.com, quite big dutch online store), and it seems they don’t sell it. Not that I’m asking where one could watch these online, cause that would just be wrong.. >_>
oops. typo, there’s an l missing right in front of the .com in that address there. details..
Re: The neonate of the thread video: the purplish end looks like an orchid. Coincidence?!?!? It’s awfully cute.
Re: Riffs on Limbaugh’s name: Funniest one I’ve heard is: Lush Rimjob.
I’m guessing you greatly over-exaggerated what immigrants get in your country, just like how our conservatives do here.
That Australia and New Zealand treat its immigrants better than other countries should be a point of pride. It shouldn’t make you look to authoritarian regimes for ideas.
This day being the Sabbath will not stop the flow of slime coming from the christian godbotherers.
The left is so powerful and out of control that it can the serial monogamist to act against what is right. And what is right? That woman only have sex with their husbands.
In other news, the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland is talking shit about gay marriage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17249099
I had posted a comment there saying
but it was apparently too inflamatory and got removed.
David Limbaugh, Rush’s brother, is also a hack. Perhaps L*mb**gh is the best insult.
You did not show enough deference to religious authority. How else would we know what actions are wrong and harmful.
The abuse of apostrophes is, also, unforgiveable. ;)
Australia just takes in all people? That news to me. That country has left refugee boat people sitting in camp for years.
Giliell, I’m really sorry you have this to deal with. Obviously I don’t presume to know you, but this sounds like a case of that sort of insidious bullshit that so permeates the societies we live in, that it’s somehow selfish for a woman to do anything/take any time purely for herself; everything‘s got to be for or at least connected with family/doing things for others generally. It’s a massive guilt trip, and hard to avoid even if nobody is consciously trying to guilt you (which makes what your father is doing all the more delightful). I can only send you hugs and good wishes and the hope that your father gets whatever just deserts you think are appropriate.
niftyatheist: I think it got up above freezing today all through the tornado swath, so it should have melted anywhere it fell. :\
Well, Lush’s supporters aren’t taking the criticism of his slut comments lying down. They have started a snarky Facebook page called “Save the Georgetown Sluts.” Their mission:
“Every day a poor slut goes through life in need. Going to one of the most expensive colleges in the country can hurt a slut’s social life. But you can help. More than 99 cents of every dollar we spend goes to programs to benefit needy sluts. Won’t you do your part?”
More at http://www.facebook.com/SaveTheGeorgetownSluts
I think they need some more commenters!
Janine yes, sadly, we do. It plays well with the bigots. As you see.
“There is no evidence that there was a nylon coating on the late Precambrian ocean bottoms.”
http://books.google.com/books?id=so9ZU88OBrEC&pg=PA112
Fuck the dictionary.
I reject entirely the implied assumption that the left should simply accept the misogyny inherent in the common uses of the word “slut”.
If she was in fact “a promiscuous woman” (a claim the supporters of Rush have entirely failed to support) that is entirely her right, and the theocrats do not have the right to impose their personal religious conception of “morality” on her – a conception of “morality” which has been shown to be harmful to many people.
And fuck the bowdlerizers who asterisk the final letter of ‘slut’.
Rash Dimbulb.
Bryan Fischer, the writer of that quote, spelled it that way.
It would seem that while he will not spell it, he approved of what Rush said before he notpologized.
“Slu*”
Slue?
Slug?
Slum?
Slur?
Slut?
Not really the most efficient way to communicate.
Rush Limbaugh (via janine):
That’s a big part of the problem, right there: They think of sex as a “recreational activity,” instead of an integral part of human life[1]. Whatever is “recreational” can be relegated as unnecessary at best, and immoral at worst, and the people who actually care about it can be marginalized and/or demonized.
[1] In the aggregate, I mean; not presuming this must be true for any given individual.
***
SallyStrange:
Re selling Cutco: I dabbled with that during my college years (in the late 70s), and what I have to add to what everyone else has said is this: To make it work, you must be comfortable going into people’s homes and pressuring them to buy a (very expensive) product they haven’t necessarily asked for. The knives are excellent quality, so it’s not a scam: You just have to have the stomach for that kind of selling.
I very quickly learned I did not: IIRC, the only thing I actually sold was a single pair of kitchen shears (which are, BTW, awesome)… and that was a mercy purchase from my parents’ next-door neighbors.
I did, however, buy my samples… which I really couldn’t afford at the time, but which have served me quite well for more than three decades now!
***
love moderately:
I respect Silver’s analysis immensely, and I don’t pretend to anything like his data and analytical methodology. My gut, though, tells me that Santorum would still be an “easier out” in the general election: I think Santorum has laid down a set of extreme positions on social issues that will be — and remain, even if he never mentions them after the primaries — absolute deal-breakers for lots of moderate women and LGBT folk (I assume there are some queer moderates) who might otherwise be in play. Santorum may be more charming than the other Aging White Men® on the Republican menu, but at the end of the day, there’s no majority consensus for the positions he’s made his central ideas (and if that’s not true, especially in the context of the wider Republican War on Women/Queers/Choice™, then we’re all fucked in ways that extend far beyond who’s living in the White House).
Romney, OTOH, may have given lip-service to extreme positions, for the purpose of pandering to the right-wing base, I doubt anybody really believes he believes those things, so he’ll have an easier time tacking back to the middle in the general. Will the fact that doing so exposes him as an empty suit with no core values hurt him? I don’t think so: People already know that, and have for years, and have already factored it in to their impressions of him.
I think it’s moot, though, because I think Romney now has a much more secure position than he did on Feb 14 when Silver wrote the article you linked to. He won key primaries last week (though may or may not have split the delegates evenly with Santorum in one of those races), and the Santorum campaign seems to be running out of steam, not to mention organization.
Barring a nontrivial reversal in the economy, I now think Obama is well positioned to beat either of them in the fall. What’s currently keeping me awake at night is the possibility of someone else coming in late. It’s beginning to look like a brokered convention is increasingly unlikely, but I’m mindful of the America Elects effort, which seems on its way to getting on the ballot nationwide. Currently Ron Paul is the leading candidate there, and I think he’d hurt the Republican nominee more than the president… but what if Jeb Bush made a run at the AE “nomination”?
I’m wondering if the president’s supporters might not be able to “Pharyngulate” the AE poll and get Obama that ballot line? That would, IMHO, seal the deal, since it would give people a place to register a “protest vote” without actually electing a Republican.
Ogvorbis, rhetorical question way up the thread –
The head cannot explode when reinforced from the outside by a sheet of strong muscle, such as the rectum.
Back to catching up.
That guy is batshit insane. He has written that:
– Major League Baseball prevented another 9/11 because they started singing ‘God Bless America’ in the seventh inning.
– HIV doesn’t caused AIDS. It’s caused by drugs that 96% of homosexuals use to have hundreds and hundreds of partners.
– Obama wants to give back Native Americans land in order to become chief of a “revived Indian Empire”.
Given the amount that all the republicans have been spending on beating each other, hopefully by the time it comes to contesting the presidency they will have reduced their funding. (I know, one is filthy rich and others will be propped up by corporations, wonder if all this money they are spending trickles down anywhere useful)
That does not even begin to shown off the insanity that is the mouthpiece of the American Patriarchy Association. Check the blog, Right Wing Watch, for a daily update of his disconnect from reality.
Ariaflame, it is the filthy rich who are funding their campaigns. Romney has more money than just about all other past presidents combined while Gingrich and Santorum are funded by their own billionaires. The filthy rich will not drop out.
This is what they want!
Sorry. I forgot to account for the natural reinforcing mechanisms involved with cranial-rectal inversion syndrome.
#87: I seriously thought for a moment that your link was going to lead to some batshit-splattered page. Thank goodness. Interesting about the nylon netting experiment and the implications of it, however.
——————————————
I’ve given up any hope of Bryan Fischer making sense from start to finish. The guy’s like one of those street prophets wearing a sandwich board but less entertaining.
—————————————–
Hanging in there, Gillel? I still find it hard to believe that people think that a woman taking time to look after herself or do something for herself is a horrible idea.
—————————————–
A goose just honked outside. Huh, usually don’t hear them at all during the night. Maybe that one had to catch up with the flock.
—————————————–
Question: Can the thick protective layer of muscle over a fundie’s head withstand the force of a stick of dynamite? Just curious, it certainly seems impervious to everything else.
—————————————–
Taking bets on how much longer before the Republican party splinters into different factions.
Yeah. The numbers I’ve seen most recently show him with more than half of the delegates chosen so far–which means he’s on pace for a first-ballot nomination. Of the states mentioned where Santorum leads in the polls, all but Wisconsin choose delegates by some sort of proportional math, which means he likely won’t pile up any huge numbers there. And while those are going on, Romney will be winning big in Massachusetts, and maybe taking all the delegates in Maryland and D.C. although I haven’t seen polls for those. That’s pretty much Romney’s home region.
I’m not worried at this point about anybody coming in late–I’m worried about the V.P. selection, where Romney will probably offer a sop to the evangelicals much like McCain did. As my brother put it, a McCain win would have put Sarah Palin a cheeseburger away from the White House.
If I had to make a wild guess, I’d say Tim Pawlenty would be Romney’s choice–he has the born again bona fides, but he doesn’t have the baggage that Santorum, Perry, Palin or Bachmann do at this point. They’ve all been in the public eye too much not to see their warts. Pawlenty is more of a blank slate to most of us.
Of course they all suck.
Giliell, shoot me an email if you want at carliesinternet at yahoo. I’ve been in that same place before (and often am still there). It’s a hard place to be.
I was just thinking, if we are going to have religious freedom then churches should be able to do whatever they wanted. Same sex marriages. Polygamous and child marriages. Human sacrifices. Sharia law. Whatever.
Thanks. I just sent this off. I tend to find, because,(I guess) I’m middle-aged, middle-class and white, that middle-aged, middle-class white racists assume I must be just like them. Er, no.
Hi XXXX – I don’t know if your email address is still being used by that spam-bot thingy, ‘cos this arrived in my inbox this morning. You’re one of the kindest people I know, with strong ideas of right and wrong. If you do know where this came from, and you feel like sending them an alternative point of view, feel free to send the following on:
First of all, who would want their country to become more like Saudi, Venezuela or Iran? Sheesh. I think it’s a point of pride that NZ and Aussie treat immigrants with humanity.
Most often, undocumented immigrants are fleeing the most appalling conditions – they’ve been raped, tortured, seen family members killed, faced violence on a daily basis because of their sexual orientation, or endured terrible poverty. Migration for these people isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity. Who wouldn’t migrate, papers or not, if it was the only way to feed their family?
In Aussie, mandatory detention has been in force since 1992, people entering without a visa are jailed for years at a time – children included – and treated like criminals. For the effect that has on them have a look at this:
http://www.amnesty.org.au/news/comments/27826/
NZ doesn’t have mandatory detention, but perhaps because of our geography – it’s just too difficult to get here – it’s never been an issue. I hope it’s never an option, either.
Anyhow, why shouldn’t people move around the globe? This whole “immigrants are taking our jobs” shit is just like saying women who work are taking men’s jobs away from them. It’s baloney, and most studies show immigration actually boosts economies.
Anyhoo, <3 to you and yours,
Moi
And the thing is, they are! I wouldn’t doubt, sadly, if most same-sex marriages that have occurred have been done by a priest of some sort. But that’s just it, despite the rhetoric, marriage as it pertains to the government has nothing to do with religion. A church could not sue the state or federal government for violating the Establishment Clause because churches do not get to decide who is married and who isn’t.
Can’t wait to see the ‘splosion, Amble.
[Dons flak jacket]
“Intriguingly odd”…I like that!
*quickly popping out to alter ‘nym*
Not much of a story, I’m afraid.
The thing you have to understand about peas is that they are not food. They are entertainment, or, secondarily, ornamentation (though some (generally sound) thinking categorizes them as “biohazardous waste”). Yet there is a vast conspiracy (which I am reliably informed (don’t ask) is nutured on…material…originating with the Equine Community) to ram these little green horrors down the collective throats of humanity. It is nothing short of Interspecies Warfare (though entirely what you might expect from the soul-less hellspawned Horses), and it must be severely pruned, down to the very root-stock upon which it festers.
(And best wishes on the outcome of the matter involving your dog.)
–
–
Gynomorphize?
–
*hugs* and *chocolate* for Giliell. You seem plenty strong and capable to me.
–
Some good news. Advertisers (3 so far) have pulled their ads from Limbaugh’s show in part because of pressure from customers.
Ogvorbis, I really don’t know about recourse for Neuhaus through the feds. She’s got pro bono legal representation, although the law firm is requesting donations because her defense is costly.
Also, the bible-bashers don’t always blame Eve, Mother Nature, etc. Sometimes they blame buttsecks.
I understand the distinction you make between corporatists vs. conservatives, but I don’t think it’s a useful one. What conservatives seek to conserve is a hierarchical social order. How it should be conserved, or regained, is a mere detail.
She’s with her parents now: Girl orphaned by tornado dies
Does the Herald Sun of Melbourne, Australia, some goddist agenda, or why would it use such a headline?
Of course it’s a tragic event, I get it…
link http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/world/shes-with-her-parents-now-girl-orphaned-by-tornado-dies/story-e6frf7lf-1226289456609
Though in a completely atheist world, I’d accept phrasing it like that as kind of a poetic language, and I do think that in many secular countries this is already the case, but it’s hard to distinguish that kind of poetic language from the underlying Christian concept of heaven, and thus newspapers probably should avoid it, and otherwise put it in quotation marks (I assume it’s the girl’s relatives in Ohio saying that)
I have, in the fridge, a massive bowl of farfalle with sautéed garlic, steamed asparagus, roasted cherry tomatoes, dried thyme and fennel, freshly ground black pepper, white wine, and fresh mozzarella. I stuck it all in the oven for a bit to let the cheese melt.
I also have chili cooking overnight in the crockpot. A variety of dried beans; canned organic tomatoes; beef; fresh red pepper, yellow onion, and cilantro; and the spice packet.
And I had homemade bánh mì for dinner. Chunks of beef cooked nigh unto death in Korean BBQ sauce (yeah, I know, inauthentic), with fresh cilantro and julienned onion, on crusty french bread. Enough left over for another sandwich.
I hadn’t cooked at all in more than a week, and I’d been living off frozen organic burritos and a few other things. It’s nice to have a fridge full of healthy homemade food again.
Also, I’ve got organic canned chickpeas. I’m thinking of doing a chickpea salad later in the week, with chopped red onion, cilantro, and a bit of lemon juice.
R*sh L*mb**gh has lost seven advertisers.
Took them all long enough.
Panicked, Sweat-Covered Pope Reverses Longstanding Ban On Abortion
First off:
EEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!
Second, would all he have left is dust.
Thirdly, the idea of knowing the pope biblically?
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!
I need a flame thrower blasting in my ear to burn the image from my brain.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!
I also liked this:
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!
Oops! Sorry about that.
Ms. Daisy Cutter@ 113/114, Dang You’re making me hungry!
@116-118 AAAAND now I’ve lost my appetite, maybe permanently. Pass the brain bleach.
I’ve heard that Ratzi gives great head.
*shrug* Just what I’ve heard.
Hey all, I’ve been finalizing plans to attend the Reason Rally with a group from one of the places I work, I can’t wait to hear PZ and the other guests of honor speak! I hope to meet some of y’all (the Pharyngula Horde) there! *happy dance*
Are we all going to wear octopus hats or something? Is there anyplace besides TET where such things are being discussed and coordinated? I believe I’ve heard there is a facebook group, but I have not been assimilated into facebook yet (though I’ve heard “resistance is futile”). Inquiring/skeptical minds want to know!
I’ve only been able to keep up with TET sporadically the last few months and probably missed it if this has already been covered, sorry (so many comments, so little time). I’ll check back after I get some sleep, Thanks for any help or info.
G’night
I’ve heard that Ratzi gives great head.
Not with THAT hat he doesn’t!
Does the word “organic” have any real meaning in the real world?
Are there regulatory bodies anywhere that enforce … something about the use of the term “organic”?
Has anyone seen or heard any indication from networks/cable channels that the Reason Rally will be televised? Real life, as it is wont to do, has pooped all over any chances I could have to attend, but I hate to miss any of it. Comedy Central had to televise the Stewart/Colbert thingy, but the RR isn’t affiliated with any particular program or show host. If any channels were brave and/or rational enough you would figure the ads would be out by now, but I haven’t heard a peep.
I believe I’ve heard there is a facebook group, but I have not been assimilated into facebook yet (though I’ve heard “resistance is futile”).
—
The Onion presents a very good reason never to subject yourself to the evils of the Fecesbook:
http://youtu.be/cqggW08BWO0
I am on Facebook.
Everything in my Profile is a lie.
What reason is there for me to put my personal information where 7 billion people can read it.
let me google that for you
dobby:
Except that you’re forgetting something: “churches” – or people in churches – have every right to think whatever they like, but that doesn’t give them the right to do whatever they like. You have thrown together a rather eclectic list, you see – including some things which are or should otherwise be legal, such as marrying consenting adults (same sex marriage, poly marriages – as long as all the adults involved actually are freely consenting, obviously) and then adding completely disparate categories that are not or should not otherwise be legal, involving acting on people who are not freely consenting (such as human sacrifice, presumably, or women under sharia law – how many people do you know who voluntarily agree to be discriminated against without being subjected to massive social pressure?). Don’t forget that children too young to vote/manage their own financial affairs/live independently etc. are also too young to be able to consent to marriage.
So yes, the churches already can do legal things such as conduct same-sex marriages; but their right to believe what they like does not give them the right to do illegal things like conduct child marriage.
Some of the things on your list are not like the others.
@ Giliell
You have accumulated a huge stockpile of hugz on TET. Feel free to draw down on as many as you wish.
(To provide care to others you must first look after yourself. It may seem a bit counterintuitive but it works so much better than the alternative.)
The collected anagrams of Rush Limbaugh (drink red wine, read quickly):
Ok, I’ll slow down after this:
Rick Santorum (pour more wine, read quickly):
Ms. Daisy Cutter, pTET 612
Yes. I do think Natalie’s original post was an important one.
Back in my agnostic days, I used to think that while it’s unfortunate that Iran is so homophobic it’s great they recognize transpeople, even financing surgery. But that really doesn’t matter, it’s not up to religions to define morality (despite what UK bishops might say on the matter of marriage equality).
John Morales, 653
John, I tend to agree, but OTOH the team members do want to compete, but would be barred by their governing bodies to compete if they couldn’t wear some kind of head scarf.
Also, apparently the first article I cited was misinformed. A Jordanian prince proposed Velcro-based headwear as a compromise, and IFAB approved. They also finally allowed goal-line tech. However, FIFA itself won’t vote on these rule changes until July.
SallyStrange, pTET 663
*waves*. Sorry to hear about Strange-Ex.
Maybe one of these days I can join. Now that I had to get a Google+ account for Πέλα 문, I could maybe also get me a Facebook account.
Theophontes, 669
I don’t think Hetakoi qualifies as porn. It’s listed as a “romantic comedy manga” on the Japanese Wikipedia for example. I haven’t read the manga, but checked out the first story, and while it does have nudity (it is set at a bathhouse after all):
– the characters are more often clad than naked, and there is a plot which does not just consist of fucking
– when naked anatomic correctness is severely lacking, and thus also no black bars, which would be indicative of porn
TomeWyrm, pTET 671
Because I’m such a great fan: try to watch the Rachel Maddow Show from time to time. She has this laser-like ability to focus on all these outrageous things the Republicans are doing to the country, and she does it in a very competent and sometimes humorous way. And at all times her great passion for politics shines through, but she is also doing this “I follow all these right-wing scumbags so you don’t have to” type of public service.
pTET 675
Sorry to hear that, I hope it works out. But I think in most countries dog owners are considered liable for their dogs’ behavior. I was once bitten by a dog (coming out of a bathroom which was in a different apartment from the one I was staying at, yeah that’s called Altbauwohnung in Germany) and immediately saw a doctor, and he pressed me hard if I believed the owner’s assurances that the dog’s “vaccination passport” was up to date, and that was it. I never even asked them to replace my shirt.
Eating leftover rice
If you don’t know it already, may I suggest a trip to the Japanese store if there is one near you, and trying Ochaozuke. You put it on your leftover rice, pour boiling water over it and voilà you have a meal.
ibyea, 681 pTET
it was in the post-game to the Feb 29 show, I believe. Some comments seemed to indicate that he is mistaking atheism to only apply to Dawkins 7/7 type of atheism, but of course I’d like to hear it in his own words.
Therrin, 687 pTET
Good point, thanks. Put your links to work on my blog.
Rush Limbaugh
No he can’t drop himself, but I believe radio stations could? Also, if enough advertisers leave him, that would make it harder for him to operate too, I believe.
Ogvorbis, 5
I hope you’re well now. BTW, what’s your take on the Grand Historian Sima Qian?
Ms. Daisy Cutter, 12
Dr. Ann Kristin Neuhaus
Is that the doctor Rachel Maddow always mentions when covering Kansas? (Sadly enough usually when she mentions Kansas it’s about the pro-life wingnuts)
Giliell, 35
Hang in there!
ibyea, 46
Though I understand there are significant differences between the manga and the anime? I usually prefer reading manga over watching anime.
Two interesting (to me) FMA-related translation tidbits:
Fuhrer in Japanese is 総統, which is the title King Bradley has in the manga (大総統). In Chinese however, this is the calque for president, which apparently is used in the Chinese translation. So when Fuhrer Bradley becomes President Bradley, something does get lost in translation.
human sacrifice I understand that the term人柱 hitobashira is translated as “sacrifice” in the English version (at least that’s what the internet says). Its literary meaning is “human pillar” and refers to the quaint practice of building humans into the pillar of a great building or bridge as a sacrifice to the gods. The manga clearly plays with both meanings here.
chigau, 51
Hard to say. I don’t think there are stock phrases as such. But it’s just considered more polite to more indirect. So instead of
So instead of saying you will do X, you could say you will receive the favour of being made to do X (sasete itadaku)
This is especially common in the service industry (“we will now receive the favour of being made to close”, to which the customer would react, WTH, did YOU ask me?), so there is an expression called sasete itadaku symptom
Also, in Japanese you can drop pronouns all the time, to the point that using a second person pronoun of any kind has come to be regarded as too direct.
Chinese tends to be more direct than Japanese, but the same principles still apply, in fact they apply to English too.
Open the window!
is less polite than
Could you please open the window if you don’t mind.
There’s also that story how Suharto never told his vice president that he expected him to step down with him together because telling him so with a direct command simply would have been too impolite..
Chinese:
either 別管閒事 bie2 guan3 xian2shi4 or多管閒事 duo1 guan3 xian2shi4. Xiánshì means leisure, and the first phrase would mean “don’t mind the business (of others)” and the second “mind business (your own) more”. But either phrase is a direct command and of course that’s rude. So saying something like “you needn’t worry for me” would be a more indirect way of saying it. Her novel hasn’t been translated to Chinese yet, so no published translator has tackled the question yet.
In Japanese you’d say 余計な世話 yokei na sewa “unnecessary concern“. While not a direct command, calling the actions/words of others unnecessary of course is rude. Though you can use it depreciatively referring to your own actions/words. Probably more polite would be to just
気にしないでください ki ni shinaide kudasai. You could “honorify” this to o-ki ni nasaranaide kudasai. ki ni suru basically means “to worry”, so these would be variants on “please don’t worry” (“on my behalf” implied from context)
sumdum, 74
If you understand Chinese or Japanese, that’d be easy, the only you’d need to do would be to find out the Chinese name of the anime in question, in this case it’d be gang1 zhi1 lian4ji1shu4shi1 This works for anything that is popular in China.
gravityisjustatheory, 78
It’s not up to government to define morality
Why would it be up to organized religion? This arrogance coming from millennia of religious privilege is just nauseating.
Chas, 125
There are all these rumours about this young (read 50 year old) German Jesuit pastor living with him and being his paramour.
Caine
Thanx for the link. I saw them on the blog (btw, did you see me there? ;)) already. Unfortunately but understandably the artist doesn’t sell the design, only the finished bowls. But I’m not even sure they are actually digitized, my guess would be that they are free-style embroidery.
Ms. Daisy Cutter
Sounded good until you mentioned the fennel
++++
Thanks for the support.
This has been an incredibly hard weekend. It still is intense, I’m still shaking, I still can’t eat much, but I think it’s what needs to happen before it can get better.
See, that’s my problem. I am strong and capable when it comes to anybody else.
I’m the person who put my oral surgeon at ease when she removed the second wisdom tooth. I was always so calm and cheerfull. Only that I wasn’t.
I’m the person whose midwife almost missed the birth of my second daughter because I was really not showing any signs of distress or pain.
You know what’s probably the nicest thing anybody ever said to me?
“Sit down, I’ll get you your lunch”. Sure, I was suffering horribly from a nasty strep B infection at that time…
@carlie
Thanx, I’ll start writing now.
Pelamun, you think the FIFA dress code is problematic?
(See this and weep)
Giliell, may you never forget this epiphany, and may you have the courage to act on it.
(Amen)
Just thought I’d pop in here and say hello to everyone. I’ve been lurking here for years, but I decided to uncloak over the weekend in order to have a nice little chat with our recent Hovind fanboi. I thought I’d have a crack at him, since, as a fellow South African, I stood a half-decent chance of deciphering his odd ramblings and translating them into English. Sadly, I underestimated his sheer density… but at least there was good fun to be had.
Here’s a quick thank you to all the regulars I’ve interacted with so far for making me feel welcome here, and an even bigger thank you to all the regulars for the entertainment and education you’ve provided to me over the past few years. I love the way the regulars mercilessly hone in on people who try to get away with lies and deception – it helps the rest of us to fine-tune our bullshit detectors, and that’s bad news for all religions everywhere.
So anyway, I may just stick around. Do you have any room for a Depeche Mode fan who sometimes uses the name “David”?
John,
I know, I also seem to remember something about women’s boxing.
But as far as the FIFA dress code was concerned I was focusing on the issue of religious privilege, which as you might have noticed, is one of my hobby horses… But one has to be careful that one doesn’t lose track of other issues by overly focusing on one issue…
I think the compromise is a good one, the safety concerns have been addressed and the Iranian women get to compete.
CapeTownJunk,
welcome. Good work you did there on the dikvel thread..
Hey CapeTownJunk. Welcome and all that.
I see what you’ve done there. ;)
And yeah, we do.
(What, you want even more stroking from me?
Earn it!)
“This has been a killer meeting in Orlando”
I’s been done already. In Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” there was a big conference for serial killers with participants from both sides of the Atlantic, plus at least one bona fide demon. BTW, did the Corinthian show up in Orlando?
— — — — — — —
“…the idea of knowing the pope biblically”
See Templesmith’s “Wormwood”, volume 2. U-uulp. But the four horsemen riding Segways was cool.
Thanks, Bill.
Almost any Republican on the AE ticket is going to pull more votes from the Republican side. Jeb Bush would be a good thing, except I don’t think he’d accept it.
Obama can’t work as the AE nominee, because the nominee is required to pick a Vice Presidential candidate from another party. Joe Biden isn’t going to leave the Democratic party to maneuver this, and Obama isn’t going to pick any true non-Democrat.
If AE changes their rules such that they can simply assign a VP candidate, and they end up offering, say, an Obama/Paul ticket, it’ll cause chaos for us because it’s not obvious what happens if Obama/Biden gets fewer votes than the Republicans but Obama/Biden + Obama/Paul would amount to more.
Paul looks like a likely nominee for the top of the ticket, but honestly I don’t think he’ll accept the nomination anyway. He’s a lot more loyal to the Republican party than his followers like to imagine. He will not want to be a spoiler.
So far the only person who is keen to accept the AE nomination is Buddy Roemer. He’ll probably pull more from the Republican side, but I’m still wary of him since he used to be a Democrat.
Really our best bet is to put the furthest right-wing candidate possible on the top of the AE ticket, who’ll then pick a nominee from another right-wing party. There is just no way in hell that AE can win the presidency — too many voters are loyal to the parties themselves — but they’ll split the vote for whichever side their nominee seems more associated with.
So Kurt Cameron was on Piers Morgan and made his typical stupid and vile comments.
Zach Graf who used to be on Scrubs responds
Lots of other good responses here.
*growing pains reference
Oh, I forgot to mention this. AE’s bylaws (see the appendix) indicate that if their ticket doesn’t win but they get some electors, they might hold another vote after November 6, to decide how their electors should vote. It probably won’t matter but they’re prepared to be kingmakers if they get the chance.
So this morning I woke up when my alarm went off, performed my morning ablutions, dressed, fed the cats, fed the fish, packed my lunch, walked out to the car, started it up, drove to the top of the hill, stopped at the stoplight, turned left, and got T-boned by an idiot in an AMC Concord. And I woke up when my alarm went off, performed my morning ablutions, dressed, fed the cats, fed the fish, packed my lunch, walked out to the car, started it up, drove to the top of the hill, stopped at the stoplight, turned left, and got T-boned by an idiot in an AMC Concord. And I woke up when my alarm went off, performed my morning ablutions, dressed, fed the cats, fed the fish, packed my lunch, walked out to the car, started it up, drove to the top of the hill, stopped at the stoplight, turned left, and got T-boned by an idiot in an AMC Concord. And I woke up when my alarm went off, performed my morning ablutions, dressed, fed the cats, fed the fish, packed my lunch, walked out to the car, started it up, drove to the top of the hill, stopped at the stoplight, turned left, and got T-boned by an idiot in an AMC Concord. And I woke up when my alarm went off, performed my morning ablutions, dressed, fed the cats, fed the fish, packed my lunch, walked out to the car, started it up, drove to the top of the hill, stopped at the stoplight, turned left, and got T-boned by an idiot in an AMC Concord. And I woke up when my alarm went off, performed my morning ablutions, dressed, fed the cats, fed the fish, packed my lunch, walked out to the car, started it up, drove to the top of the hill, stopped at the stoplight, turned left, and got T-boned by an idiot in an AMC Concord. And I woke up when my alarm went off, performed my morning ablutions, dressed, fed the cats, fed the fish, packed my lunch, walked out to the car, started it up, drove to the top of the hill, stopped at the stoplight, turned left, and drove all the way to work where I am now writing about how weird my morning was and fully expecting to hear my alarm beepbeepbeeping to wake me up so I can perform my morning ablutions, dress, feed the cats and the fish, and head for work.
This day has got to get better.
Oh. Wait. It just did (assuming (of course) that I am actually awake right now)! I’m heading for Maine visit my parents and won’t be back to work for a week!
The factions are already there. The courting of the religious right was a conscious tactic to encourage the poor and middle class religious voters to vote against their own economic self-interest and for the corporations. What is now biting the GOP on the arse, and biting it hard, is that the corporatists have been using this tactic for so long that it is no longer a tactic, it is now their strategy. Lots of politicians, lots of religious right politicians, have been coming up through the ranks of the GOP. They don’t have the top leadership positions, but they, and, more to the point, their followers, are pushing the GOP in a direction that really worries the corporatists.
I really think that, with the strength of Santorum’s campaign (despite funding problems, organizational problems, and the antipathy of the corporate leadership of the GOP), we very well may see the GOP split into its natural components — the theocrats and the corporatists. And the corporatists are going to discover that, without the theocrats, they really are only 1%.
And I borkquoted.
Which means I really am awake.
@ CapeTownJunk
As long as your initials are not “DM” :/
Welcome to the choir!
@ Brogg
{Theophones sets out scrabble tiles, takes large slug of grog to suppress gag reflex}
Rick Santorum … Rush Limbaugh … {another mouthfull, gargle, spit}
theophontes:
You are good. And brave. Or, at the very least, very good at suppressing your gag reflex.
And I never would have thought of using Scrabble tiles to do the figuring. Which is weird, considering how often Wife and I play Scrabble.
No only am I awake, when I got to work it looks like this is going to be a paperwork catch-up day (happens every few weeks). First things first. Take care of the chore for the real boss (where’s those cards?).
@ Brogg
Scrabble scores:
Rick Santorum = 20
Rush Limbaugh = 23
Rush wins!
@ Brogg
GO TO HOBBS RIVER :
AGREE A MANGA RENT.
OH NO! THE PEST!
Janine: “R*sh L*mb**gh has lost seven advertisers.” Hooray. He’ll probably just wind up on satellite radio — his moronic fans such as those lambasting Citrix on their FB page will pay for it — but it’s an improvement over having him on the public airwaves.
More radio shitbags who should be kicked off the air:
Pelamun, re Neuhaus, I honestly don’t know; I like Maddow but I don’t catch her show that often.
Giliell, it’s hard to change deeply ingrained habits and attitudes. I hope you become able to shift some of that strength and capability to yourself over time.
CapeTownJunk: I commend you for your efforts and patience in the Hovind thread. Welcome. (Though I should mention that the word “boi,” as in your usage of “fanboi,” has specific connotations that differ from those of “boy.” I was corrected on this myself by a close friend a few months ago.)
PTI and Ogvorbis: The factions do exist, and I wish I could hope that your scenario, Og, will come to pass… but, I don’t know, authoritarians have an amazing ability to fall in line when told to, and there’s such rabid hatred of anything that smacks of “the left,” not to mention so many marginalized groups. Meh. Perhaps I’m pessimistic because I’m just worn down from the last however-many years.
As for the definition of “conservative,” again, what they seek is a rigid social hierarchy with The Right People at the top. This has always been the case with conservatives. Whether to achieve it with literally conservative or with radical and revolutionary means is a quarrel of strategy, not values.
Holy cruising crocoducks, Batman! http://ohnotheydidnt.livejournal.com/67063775.html
Count me shocked that another uberreligious dude is caught with men.
Kurt = Kirk
And i fully typed Kurt on purpose. No clue why.
At least something interesting has emerged from his bout of homophobia, Rev. BDC.
Yeah not sure what to think of that though. Is that some fake “outing” or is that based on something factual?
I dunno, though it would be an interesting first time naming from the blind item factory.
Yeah I don’t know anything about that, maybe that’s my apprehension.
So, what is the best way to relate to people from Tennessee?
Mitt Romney has the answer.
Recite the theme of a fifty five year old television show.
One might as well cite the lyrics of The Night Chicago Died to appeal to me.
I am pet-sitting for my parents who are out of town for the next week and half. They dropped off their beagle and (currently*) four parrots on Thursday night and I’m alternately overwhelmed by too many creatures and charmed by soft cute critters.
My dog is shooting us dramatic tragedy beams from her eyes and spends probably a third of her time pouting that others have invaded her house. (And then she and Bonnie romp around playing and having a fantastic time.)
We’re still hand-feeding the birds which are transitioning into eating more solid foods on their own. Their mother has mostly stopped feeding them, although the father bird still feeds everyone else and is starving constantly. We have spent the last several days getting covered in small bits of liquid baby bird food flicked by all four parrots which we feed in the morning and evening.
This morning we have discovered that the mother (who I’m beginning to think is deeply stupid) has laid yet another egg. If her previous pattern holds, she’ll lay at least two or three more; we will have to shake them up to prevent development as soon as they come out. But this is nuts. Her previous group is only just starting to eat on their own and it’s way too soon to lay another clutch. And she’s already had too many this year anyway: this will be her fourth clutch! (Two sets of babies, and a previous set of eggs that were removed.)
I’m rather frustrated there is no way to fix parrots. This is ridiculous. (Although it does make me happy we have one quiet snuggly parrot rather than a pair in super-mate mode.)
* My parents’ accidental mated pair of conures currently have two fledging babies that are adorable and sweet. The baby stage of parrots is incredibly curious and friendly.
Howdy, CapeTownJunk; welcome in. :)
You’ve been giving good comment so far. I approve.
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Havent, and can’t, read/respond much atm.
Giliell: *offers internet hugs from the basket*
Y’know, putting one’s own oxygen mask on first and all that.
Libby Anne linked this a few days back, via Brokendaughters: Learning to be selfish
also, I was on a fan trip with some pro hockey players once, and surprised to find that they get lots of sleep and take naps every afternoon as part of their rough-tough-endurance training. Morale is a real thing with real, measurable effects on performance.
—
sumdum, re Fullmetal Alchemist:
Funimation (here in Dallas) has the rights to FMA and streams complete episodes off their site. I haven’t checked but I think ALL the eps are there. Funimation’s great folks who believe in keeping their fans happy.
http://www.funimation.com/fullmetal-alchemist-brotherhood
The case against Amendment one, NC’s anti-gay marriage amendment.
JuggaloBook
uh
Dammit, Chimpy! I am trying to live a Juggalo free life!
Funny!
So, is that Romney trying to get Santorum to Romney some Santorum over himself?
Does anyone want to see the hosing off?
The Republican race has gotten so scatological.
Ew, Juggalos.
ICP has to have THE worst, THE most obnoxious, THE stupidest fandom I’ve ever seen.
It’s not just that the overwhelming majority of ICP fans or ‘Juggalos’ are violently stupid and rabidly misogynistic, though that doesn’t help.
It’s that they all seem to take ICP and their ‘juggalo’ identities DEAD seriously. If you dare imply that “Shaggy2Dope” and “ViolentJay” are anything less than musical geniuses and absolute humanitarians in front of them, they will literally start flinging their waste at you.
I’m not exaggerating either. This is a pair of performers who put on clown makeup and rap about Faygo and killing people, and their fans treat them like messiahs.
I’ve seen a lot of bizarre fandoms, many I consider weird, some I consider stupid and/or creepy, but by far ICP fans are the WORST.
I dunno, there’s one regular here that you might want to be wary of.
*falls over backwards from ‘hee’ing*
Yet an other example of “Sexism is so funny!”.
Remember when women had to beat dirty clothes with a rock at the riverside? The is when women were real women!
You know, who needs Poes when you have Republican controlled legislatures? For example, today mine was so concerned that creating a special license plate honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would inevitably lead to teaching abortion. So they amended the bill proposing the new plate to state that abortion is not a human right.
I really have a strong urge to light my representatives on fire some days. It’s often a struggle to write cogent sentiments about them rather than just spewing strings of profanity. I was almost amazed that in 2000 words talking about them lately, I only used “fuck” once.
Yeah….
Note: If you have trouble with your name being associated with fecal matter, probably not a good idea to have an ad featuring mud slinging.
Just for that, you have to love Dan Savage. What is really funny is that it seems that some people have no idea where that meme came from.
R*sh L*mb**gh is still spinning his notpology.
This, coming from the man who popularize the word “feminazi”. He had nothing to descend to, he has been and always will be a bottom feeder.
Which could explain his love for Santorum.
Wonder when we’ll see a notpology for stuff like this:
Any minute now!
* * *
Paging raven and Brownian if you’re here (and so inclined): an exchange you had recently on this thread sent my little gears spinning into overdrive this weekend, and I wrote about it here.
I’m genuinely interested in your thoughts: I agree and disagree with both of you to some extent — and I probably make a convoluted mess of things in the process. I realize it’s a lot to ask — it’s unconscionably long — but hopefully not… painful.
The Astronomy Picture of the Day for today is really cool. It’s a video taken from the International Space Station flying over the Earth at night.
I skipped the last week’s episode of The Walking Dead, so I’m watching it now, before the today’s one is on.
And I had to stop because…
(possible SPOILER if someone hasn’t watched the last week’s episode yet)
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“The men can handle this on their own. They don’t need your help.” (Lori to Andrea, about not doing proper women’s work)
Really, Lori? Really?
Go get eaten by a zombie.
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vrdkgfrnthjegvndsf
Other delights:
Huh?
Typed description of a headkeyboard. Or a dissociative episode.
@Ms. Daisy Cutter #154:
Ah, I was not aware of that meaning – I just assumed it was a spelling variation. Thanks for the heads-up (and the kind welcome, of course!).
Natalie alluded to this shitstorm in passing in one of her recent posts, but I hadn’t heard about it yet: Smith College alumna writes a pissy letter to the student newspaper complaining that she and the other wealthy matrons of Westchester and Fairfield Counties (NY) highly disapprove of all the poors (and lesbians and foreigners) Smith is letting in nowadays.
You see, to the demographic that can wipe its collective ass with $100 bills, “Smith is a safety school,” and all these undesirables are tarnishing its cache. Obviously, admissions couldn’t be looking at SAT scores, because poor kids of color don’t do well on the SATs. “This is an acknowledged fact.”
Here’s the really special part:
Those days have been over for decades, madam. Amherst went co-educational before she even graduated (1984), and Smith has been pretty liberal for about as long.
Many Smith alumnae, who actually have consciences, went ballistic over this. The letter writer told her local newspaper, Greenwich Time, that her letter was supposed to be a “personal note” to the college newspaper’s editor-in-chief, and the printed version lft out “context.”
A couple of good things came out of this: A new Smith alumna blog called Pearls and Cashmere, to which alumnae have been submitted photos of themselves wearing said items and tell-offs of this überprivileged asshole:
And another cold burn from Smith’s president:
No problem, CTJ.
Ah.
Sorry.
G’bye, all. I’m heading up to Maine to visit relatives and will be sans internet for about a week.
Have fun, Og.
Giliell (35) Dog liability
First, it’s TomeWyrm (I wish I could make that quit bugging me).
My hope is that the family doesn’t seek damages, or that the investigating officers (and if it comes to that the judge, or jury) realize that someone almost had to have provoked him deliberately in order to get bitten.
I’ve read up on the liability laws, and like almost everything else in the legal arena that involves people, it’s up to them how they feel about the issue. If the victim’s family hates dogs, we’re screwed. If the officers have seen unjust treatment of the victim in dog bite cases recently, we’re screwed. If the jury doesn’t have people that have dogs of their own, we’re screwed. If the judge, well you got the idea already.
I already know I’m fighting an uphill battle thanks to the cultural and legal environment. Like so many laws I’ve noted recently, it’s not actually about justice for the victim, it’s about punishing someone. In this case it’s about sucking money from somebody else.
Nothing Left of Yourself
That you noticed it now, means there’s something left and it finally got through to the rest of you. I agree with everyone else that’s given their support and advice so far. Good luck, and hang in there!
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pelamun (136) Rachel Maddow Show suggestion
Thanks, but no. I avoid the news on purpose for many reasons. Among many others; it’s rarely enjoyable or enlightening, they cover topics I really don’t care about, their biases disgust me, their focused topics are uninteresting and/or irrelevant to me, many journalist have personalities or partake in practices that I find repugnant. Besides, if it is important, someone that can actually tolerate our great newsertainment engine will let me know.
I might eventually reverse my opinion, but I try to avoid things that piss me off while delivering mostly useless fluff instead of meaningful reporting. Also there’s a giant list of things I’d rather be doing than putting up with the 14th “THERE IS A CAT UP A TREE!” story that day.
My dog
Thanks for the well-wishes, I know I’m fighting against the tide, and that’s precisely what has me worried, because injustice is the default state in this case. It really shouldn’t be, and we can’t afford the fees/damages/penalties. So almost no matter what happens, this entire experience will be shit. I’m just hoping that the shit will be minimized.
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In much more frivolous news, I’m going to the Mass Effect 3 midnight launch event from 03:30 to 08:00 (GMT) with a friend. This might be fun, if not for me attending the event itself, than at least for my friend having a blast.
Those damned unattractive women. I don’t know why we allow them to live. If they would just have the decency to remain invisible …
As for the highly attractive Rush Limbaugh, radio was established so that no one would have to look at the likes of Mr. Dimbulb.
@Lynna, I thought I’d tell you I seem to have convinced spouse to risk taking the more meandering middle route camping in the desert. I’m super excited even though it’s not for a while. First camping trip of the year will be awesome.
Good evening
*yawn*
Who made it evening yet?
Tomorrow my sister’s coming over for a talk. That’s good.
TomeWyrm
Sorry about the nym, I’ll pay attention in the future.
I think the problem is with “deliberately provoking” the dog. It might just be that the person bitten was clueless.
I remember a scene some years ago where we were walking home from the zoo through the woods. Our daughter was sitting in her stroller and from the opposite direction came people with a dog without a lead.
The dog, a Bernese mountain dog ran straight towards us and the stroller. The owners never bothered to call it back because it’s the sweetest dog in the world.
Now, I know dogs. I could see that the dog was approaching in a friendly “wanna play” manner. Only that of course that is still dangerous when such a calf bounces on a toddler.
My husband doesn’t know shit about dogs. He was anxious about his daughter and started to behave aggressively towards what he considered a threat.
Luckily I was there, so I told Mr. to take a step back, moved to the front, apporoached the dog, grabbed its collar and patted it.
If anything had happened of course my husband would have provoked the friendly dog by his aggressive manner, but could you have blamed him?
As much as I feel for your troubles and for your dog, your dog is your responsibility.
Have fun up there Oggie!
p.s. While you’re gone, can I take your comment @177 to the prom? I’ll have it home by 11, I swear sir!
O hai! I r threadrupt as usual!
Goodness! Even toothy goodness if you have access or beg the right people for the pdf.
Just got back from supervising events at my local Science Olympiad regional. I’m going to have to make the tests easier again. The average was 12% on one of them… If these are the best these schools have, I worry about the future of science education.
Morning all! I have just had a good night’s sleep for the first time in a week, and what a difference it makes. Brought to you by Buscopan™! All hail Lord Draconis Zeneca and the great pharma conspiracy!
Hugs for Giliell. Welcomes to CapeTownJunk, who is clearly a very naughty boy. Just don’t mention any French prophets. (Seriously, the name is booby-trapped.)
Hey, CapeTownJunk. Welcomes are f{our,if}thed.
Don’t forget we have a Deep Rift™ though. ;)
Catching up …
Limbaugh: “I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities.”
No-one ever asked them to.
—
Can’t you eat them? (Sorry, too much? Someone I know grew up in Malaysia. They had a parrot. One day a python wandered out of the jungle and ate the parrot. So they ate the python. “It was delicious” — direct quotation.)
—
David M, referencing: “We announce a series of discoveries of Tournaisian-age localities in Scotland”
Where in Scotland, dammit? Where? WHERE?!! (*preps hammer* *curses paywall* *consults Google Maps*)
I’ve had quite the evening- I went to get an STI screening after work and had to get that awful swab, plus a lot of blood drawn. Went to have dinner with my mom and stepdad, and stepdad gave me a nice bottle of Bavarian ale that he waited until I was finished to tell me was 12% alcohol. So now I’m pretty tipsy and having to pretend not to be, just because I don’t want to get into the discussion with my mother about why I had blood drawn.
I’ll probably not be going back to that particular clinic for anything sex-related, either, because they asked me way too many times why I was having the screening done. I told the practitioner the first time that I just wanted to be sure, and no I’m not worried about any particular thing, and no I don’t have any symptoms, I’m just getting the test done for a new partner. She didn’t seem to believe me and asked me four more times after that, as if having the tests done is ridiculous unless you’re presenting visual symptoms. Ugh.
Things I like: When I’m over on the Sikivu causes discomfort thread and the ad is for cupcakes.
No thanks I’m full
@changeable moniker,
While I suppose one could eat the tiny conure eggs, it really doesn’t seem worth the effort it would take to do so. Plus, while I’ve happily eaten duck eggs, I have no idea what tiny fertilized parrot eggs taste like. What if I go to all the effort to get the contents out and they’re awful?
We’re planning on taking them out and either shaking them up or blowing them out, filling them with plaster of paris and using them as a sort of interrupt in her obviously broken egg laying cycle.
I am enjoying the infinitely curious babies though. They’re very cute. The more green headed baby is more bold and is fascinated with my glasses.
Thankfully Beaky hasn’t gotten too jealous that we’re lavishing attention by hand-feeding. I’ve tried more than once to snap decent close-ups of him, but he always moves at just the wrong time, so he comes out a bit blurry.
@Predator Handshake, that is deeply unprofessional and I don’t blame you at all for writing the clinic off. What the fuck is wrong with people?
Predator Handshake
Sounds like the experience one of my friends had. The short of it was that the “professionals” were incredulous that she was a virgin at 18, initially misdiagnosed her STREP THROAT as an STI, got her uptight, excitable, puritanical mother all bothered about her daughter having sex (not believing her when she maintained she was still a virgin), and finally backed down when the labs came back in.
I’m slowly trying to undue the phobia of gynecologists that bumbling opinionated fuckwit instilled in her.
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Giliell (192) Responsibility for Dog
I do perfectly understand what you’re saying, and legally you’re completely right. I just don’t think it makes sense that my dog managing to make a new escape hole should make me liable for someone else’s lack of education about animals or intentional provocation of my dog. It’s not my job to do a full fence inspection, or even join my dog outside in the yard. I check the damn fence weekly, which is a lot better than most people I know or see.
If I had been there, it wouldn’t have happened. Unfortunately for me and everyone involved in this fiasco, my dog escaped despite the containment that was sufficient up until that moment (one of the dogs unburied the section of fence underneath our porch. They don’t dig normally).
My whining about it won’t get anything done, so I’m just going to drop it. Doesn’t mean anyone else should, though. I’m just abstaining from it personally.
@slignot, cute birds! (We have an elderly budgie. He’s obviously no good for laying, but he has a penchant for biting your fingers when you change his food.)
—
HOWEVER! The kitty (remember her?) arrives this week. Excitement!
The budgie doesn’t know yet. :-/
I sometimes wonder how many women have incredibly unpleasant first experiences with a gyno that color their reactions for years. I know that I will never, ever feel comfortable with a male gyno after a painful experience as a kid in high school.
@changeable moniker, I’ve always liked little budgies, although I opted for a bit larger size parrot. Hooray for new kitty (she’s gorgeous)!
Well, I’m off to get liquor on the way home.
Rev BDC:
http://oxymoron.com/
Christie May Replace Free-Lunch Count as Measure of Poverty
$$ quote:
Please accept my apologies in advance for being OT (if that is possible in this thread).
I cannot find any administrator email address or forum to ask a for help on an admin matter.
Here’s the problem: I want to change the email address for my FtB account, so I edited it on my profile page. I get my confirmation email successfully and click the link. I then get this error message:
Hmmm. Permissions problem in the WordPress installation, perhaps? Anyone any ideas or redirects to the appropriate forum?
Thanks in advance
And if Paula Deen wasn’t annoying and obnoxious enough, how about some sexism and racism?
Yes, I think there’s a WordPress misconfiguration somewhere in FreeThoughtBlogs.
I faintly remember seeing something like that myself. I think I manually edited the link.
Did you get something like this?
freethoughtblogs.com/wp-admin/profile.php?newuseremail=
[a hex string]I think I may have changed that to:
freethoughtblogs.com/wp-admin/user/profile.php?newuseremail=
[a hex string]PharynguWiki’s Stephen Bishop page has suddenly become “popular” again. Okay, popular by PharynguWiki standards.
Three comments! Woohoo!
Dear fellow Pharyngulites,
Our squidly tentacled
Overlordpoopyhead will be celebrating his natal day on Friday. If you’d like to help celebrate by donating to a godless worthy cause, go here: http://tinyurl.com/pzbday!And spread the word!
(I lack the sufficient organizing skills ATM to try and do this secretly. So PZ will just have to pretend to be surprised. ;)
@owlmirror: Thanks a million – that worked perfectly. Problem solved.
I’d never heard of that, save perhaps as an (apocryphal?) mediaeval punishment for unchaste daughters of noblemen. Interesting.
Just curious, do women in the US usually see a specialist gynecologist for their pills and paps? GPs are the usual port of call here – I’ve always had my pap smears and contraception from a normal GP visit. STD clinics are also usually staffed by nurses and GPs, though you might need a specialist for some specific results. For most women here, their first encounter with a gynecologist is later in life, such as seeing an Ob/Gyn when they get pregnant.
pelamun #135
ありがとうございました.
Informative, as always.
Fucking extroverts, how do they work?
I’d forgotten what it’s like to be around REALLY REALLY outgoing people when I don’t know them yet. It makes me even more shy than usual. Which is frustrating when I might have something to say and can’t get a word in edgewise.
Oh well. I had two large-group type things to go to today, and one went well. It could have been worse.
I
♥extroverts.Meant to respond to love moderately about presidential politics, but had to go out with the fam instead to celebrate: My spawn just got accepted to George Washington U’s PhD program in American Studies! 5 years fully funded!
Being the cockeyed optimist that I am, I never doubted she’d get in, but we’re ecstatic to get the news. And now she can take a deep breath and enjoy the rest of her senior year.
Mebbe I’ll get around to the political stuff tomorrow…. </ProudDad>
Bill Dauphin (I just bought a big lump of mouldy blue fromage)
*hugs* for your Spawn! and 5 years fully funded!!!!
(What’s American Studies?)
chigau:
Per GWU’s website…
Spawn’s undergraduate major is History, and her area of emphasis is gender and sexuality. Depending on the details of the program (e.g., faculty areas of emphasis), she applied to departments of History, American History, and American Studies at various grad schools. The Senior Thesis she’s currently working on is (I think; I haven’t seen a draft yet) related to the history of periodicals for/by transvestites and transsexual people.
not about anything in particular
just sayin’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phatic_expression
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aizuchi
just sayin’
Bill Dauphin
re: Spawn’s studies
wow.
By the end of her program will she be able to explain America to the rest of us?
(only the mildest of irony intended)
@ chigau
IIRC, They ™ say that 80% of all our conversation is phatic.
1. I would be surprised if the percentage really is that low.
2. 80% smacks too much of the Pareto Principle.
3. I’m just trying to nudge you into commenting more.
@ Bill
I’d also like to say “Giant Conga Rat Elations” to Spawn Dauphin.
theophontes
Somehow I have managed to have missed that Pareto thing, the Pfft article is kinda creepy…
I first encountered “phatic” in a bit of fiction that equated the polite “yes”, “quite so” mutterings of humans, to other primates sitting around picking bugs and skin flakes off of one another.
I like it.
Congrats to your spawn, Bill Dauphin!
@ chigau
I have known about “phatic conversation” for a while now. It is the kind of conversation that is meant to keep open channels of communication without any real exchange of information, so is essentially just social glue.
Link to PDF.
What Malinowski perhaps failed to notice at the time of writing, is that his comments may apply equally to people of both sexes. We may consider this interesting extension of his work, henceforth, under the name of “Theophontes’ Corollary”.
theophontes
To be charitable, we could believe that Old Bron meant “human”.
I will go with the “Theophontes’ Corollary”.
—-
I am having SEVERE difficulty with FtB tonight so I’m outie.
@Bill Dauphin, great news – many conga-dancing rats to DaughterSpawn!
@TomeWyrm, I really feel for you; you do your damnedest to be a responsible dog-owner, but it’s always possible for something to happen since you’re not present 24/7 and other people may not have (and of course can’t be expected to have) the least idea of How Dogs Work. (speaking as one who lives with a nervous rescue dog which is steady most of the time … but emphatically not all the time).
Of course everyone is entitled to dislike or fear or just not particularly care for dogs/any other animal, and equally of course it’s the owner’s responsibility to take all reasonable measures to ensure nothing untoward happens. But (and this is in general now, not my dog in particular) it’s amazing how it never even occurs to many people that hey, they could just try leaving the animal alone (instead of going up to it and demanding it interacts with them on their terms).
Well, it’s referring to Japanese customs. FMA while ostensibly depicting a western world, is of course only a Japanese take on a western fantasy world. (The author once got asked if the characters in FMA would celebrate Christmas and Valentine’s Day. She answered: No, because neither Christianity nor the Chocolate Industry Conspiracy exist in the FMA world)
Apparently these stories of people being buried alive in order protect buildings from the wrath of the gods are more legends rather than historical fact, but it’s based on folk legend that can be traced back to Shintoist beliefs on spirits. There is a legend of one of my favourite Japanese shrines, the Itsukushima Shrine on Miyajima). More recently a tunnel constructed in 1914 did contain human remains of laborers who were allegedly buried alive in the construction site because they couldn’t afford treatment.
Check this link out I found in English.
China has had similar customs, which are called 打生樁 da3 sheng1zhuang1. There are legends that hundreds of laborers were buried alive with the Great Wall of China so their spirits could stand guard against the intruders. (A Chinese news report claims that the Chinese custom then was adopted in Japan, as if claiming ownership for such practices would be a positive). For bridges it was common to bury a boy alive in the bridge head and a girl in the bridge tail to ensure that the bridge would never collapse.
In Hong Kong of the 1930s and 1940s parents used to scare unruly kids with stories of 打生樁. In 2006 after flooding occurred in the Ho Man Tien area a lot of infant bones were found leading many Hongkongers to believe that these came from 打生樁 sacrifices (but probably just a combination of HK’s high population density and the higher than average number of cemeteries there)
Also an interesting tidbit on Hitobashira: it’s Japanese internet slang for “beta tester”…
@ pelamun
Most people have heard of the Great Wall. But how many have heard of the extensive underground tunnels and fortresses under the Great Wall. I have had the good fortune to visit one such. It is also completely awesome in its own right.
(As people could – quite literally – live for months down there, perhaps burial stories could start with passersby watching armies disappear into the mountain “never” to return?)
Now I am reminded of a story…
[A general working on building the Great Wall of China is summoned to heaven in a dream where the August Personage of Jade appears to alter the plan for the location of one of the walls]
(from Bridge of Birds, by Barry Hughart)
Bill Dauphin – congratulations and respect for your daughter. That’s a huge achievement.
CapeTownJunk – hellooo! Always nice to have another from the southern hemisphere – I kind of visualize a glowing down below.
Or something.
@ John Morales
But of course!
@ John Morales
Sorry, cross-posted. The above (and thereby this) comment is redundant.
@ Owlmirror
The Great Wall itself is a dragon. There used to be a head (or at least a giant statue dragon’s head) facing out to sea at Lau Long Tou. Sadly it has long since fallen into the sea and crumbled.
slignot (206) male gynecologists
Yeah, that something I expect to fight against a LOT. The opinions, rumors, and stories I’ve heard about male gyn’s (being one, becoming one, and going to one) are horrifying. They are some of the factors that are making me want to take the easy way out and just get a Comp Sci degree. Unfortunately for me, I find women completely and utterly fascinating; also I’d feel like I was wasting my talents if I didn’t help heal people. I’d also kick myself if I didn’t at least try to shoot for my dreams.
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In other news, the Mass Effect 3 Midnight Release party was… lackluster. There ended up being a grand total of 27 people in line, of whom 15 showed up in the first half of 23:00 local time. The 8 who weren’t in my party trickled in somewhen between 21:00 and 22:00. Me and my three friends were there at 19:00… My feet now want to stab me with rusty electrified sporks. I should have worn my other shoes.
«•»
Also my brain is strange. Those abortion avoidance “information” bills with the forced ultrasounds? I wonder if you could give the patients earplugs… I need to re-read some of them to see if the doctor has to explain to the patient and get feedback, or can simply present the information. Because you could also do it in a language the unfortunate patient does not speak.
LauLao (old)Lao Long Tou. (Sadly sans head.)
TomeWyrm, I have had very positive experiences with male doctors in the last decade or so, including sensitive things like pap smears and a urethroscope. Perhaps you can join them in making a difference. Go for it.
Except that it does. Intentional provocation aside, it is your dog, so it is your responsibility.
As Giliell noted, other people may not know how to interact with your dog, or with any dog at all. While your dog may be the friendliest dog in the world, it is still your responsibility.
Which doesn’t mean that I don’t feel for you or that I don’t hope that you and your dog will be reunited soon and that you and your money will stay as united as possible. Good luck!
Those who actually know Chinese history might well be bothered by Hughart’s stories, since he is self-admittedly extremely casual about accuracy with regard to history. Although some (many?) of the details do have sources in actual Chinese works.
@theophontes:
That’s a nifty little detail.
I wonder if Norse traders travelling to the East brought back stories of that and turned it into the Midgard serpent?
/Random speculation
I love Hughart. [bragging]I own the signed anniversary edition of all three Master Lee novels [/bragging].
And, well, at least my editions were prefaced by the sentence: Stories from an ancient China that actually never existed like that.
Since he’s self-admittedly very casual about this I don’t see any problem with it. I only hate “historical novels” that are historically speaking fantasy but act as if they were accurate.
It’s like “A Knight’s Tale”: the opening scene tells you “don’t take me serious, I don’t” and that makes the whole movie fun to watch.
Most people here have probably heard about that monstrous woman called Helen Ukpabio and know that she’ll be visiting the USA. I’m not in the US, but anyway, please sign the petition at:
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-president-of-the-united-states-deny-entry-to-the-usa-for-helen-ukpabio
Or support the facebook group Stand Against Helen Ukpabio: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Stand-Against-Helen-Ukpabio/300276600023391?sk=wall
(Seen on TYT)
Barack Obama’s nanny in Jakarta is a transwoman
cue the transphobes to come out of the woodwork on the American right….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2110437/Revealed-Barack-Obamas-gay-transgender-prostitute-nanny-cracked-trying-mothers-lipstick.html
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/05/obama-had-transgender-nanny-in-jakarta-report/
This entire weekend has been bad for me. I get the requisite amount of sleep, but absolutely no rest. I wake up more tired than I go to sleep, and it sucks. I’m still feeling it, and I have to be at work today cause I don’t have the hours to take sick leave. I spent a good portion of the day yesterday asleep.
I dunno what it is, but it sucks… tremendously.
@Pelamun:
*sigh*
Cracked is awesome again:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-things-rich-people-need-to-stop-saying/
Bridges have tails?!
Interesting. I suppose similar ideas have been around in the Europe. Serfs as burial offerings were not uncommon, I think.
But I would think that most people in the last couple of centuries would use the brurial of children as an explanation for why a bridge collapsed. Breaking windows and un-brickable holes are common superstitions explained as having to do with deals with the devil. (We had one around the corner where I grew up.)
In the novella Der Schimmelreiter, the man responsible for building the new dyke stops people from burrying a live dog and people say that they used to bury a child.
In the end the dyke breaks and he sacrifices himself to “make things right”.
Katherine
Get well soon
*hugs*
I bought “A Bridge of Birds” a decade ago. Sadly there is no Swedish translation.
— — — — — — — —
More books painting Obama as a socialist/radical black/muslim.
https://members.humaneventsonline.com/order.php?offer=2686
The president sucking up to the banks a socialist? Ha!
It is rather sad, the message was forwarded to me from a perfectly nice elder gentleman who spends a lot of time looking out for homeless cats and other animals but who has bought into the whole Echo Chamber business.
I don’t want to argue with him, it would be meaningless. I blame the likes of Breitbart, Limbaugh et al for spreading poison.
— — — —
Owlmirror, I think the Norse cosmological myths pre-date their long trading journeys, although some later myths may have been inspired by contact with Christianity.
Blarg, I’ve passed up posting responses to so many blog topics today cause I feel like I’m trying to be all “me-me-me.” Does anyone feel like I’m talking too much about myself and my transgenderism and throwing my opinions into topics too much?
Katherine
Taking my recent experiences as an example:
Don’t you dare stop talking about yourself!
You are important, your well-being is important.
Just occurred to me that the Third Threadiversary passed unnoted (by me at least).
The original Science of Watchmen post, later recognized as Ep 1 of the Thread Everlasting, was posted at 10:28 PM (EST) on 24 February 2009.
Because the FtB version of teh Thread bears a Central Time stamp, I reckon that the last comment of Year Three of teh Thread was this one here. Or possibly this subsequent one, I’m not sure.
I’ll have to compute the Count another time. Happy belated Monkey!
@Katherine:
It’s what blog comment threads are for. By all means carry on!
Kat,
What Giliell said.
Never shut up.
Onion Girl, why not list Planned Parenthood on that page?
Bill, congrats to your daughter!
Theophontes, quoting Malinowski:
Oh, look, another way in which I’m not “natural.” Not that I don’t engage in phatic talk. More that it drives me up the wall that most people can’t tolerate being alone with their own thoughts and have to fill the air with stupid remarks and shitty music.
Katherine, much sympathy from a chronic insomniac. I hope you can get some rest tonight.
Guess who is the worst enemy of the US.
Secular Jews.
Her concern is noted.
Sent to me by someone who was baptized by one of the two in the late 1970s and is, understandably, horrified.
Also, Jon Stewart on Limbaugh’s recent comments about Sandra Fluke:
One has to wonder, how many of the victims the person know over the years and seemingly have no idea.
The very definition of horrifying.
Giliell Been there – felt that. Feel free to ping privately if you want to chat. Email is below. I like Vienna Teng’s Tower . In some ways it really speaks to that for me.
Ray Oniongirl, and I, her trusty sidekick, are coordinating some Pharyngula meetups for the Reason Rally. If you can fill out the survey located here that would be helpful. Or you can email us. She’s oniongirlsays I’m museclio42, both of us use google’s mail service.
Can bronze be made to look bloated?
What’s really starting to annoy me about the Rush bust in the Missouri statehouse is that goldfish memory is taking over, and the impression seems to be that everyone’s just mad because he called someone a slut. That’s just the tip of the fucking iceberg, even for the Fluke issue.
Janine, I see that the house speaker’s justification for Limbaugh’s inclusion is:
If the sole criterion is a claim to fame for the state of Misery, why not just commission a bronzed diorama of a meth lab?
I really like this quote from that news story.
Ashcroft was a tool of the Bushies who lost to a dead man. As for Mark Twain, I doubt that anyone will be studying the output of the gas bag in the next century like people are now for Mark Twain.
In fact, I like to think that the gas bag would be one of Mark Twain’s favorite targets; the racism and false appeal of piety would just be too tempting.
So you can either be a foundation stone of American literature, stand up comedy, witticism and social commentary whose work is still relevant and controversial 100 years later, or you can be a republican?
Bleh.
I have been thread bankrupt for 2 or 3 days, and it seems I missed some fun.
There was a bit of fun in my place – I came home from work on Saturday afternoon to discover it raining in my kitchen. Apparently a pipe had burst. Fortunately, my building’s maintenance person was over in 10 minutes. He shut the water off immediately, then spent the next few hours finding the bad pipe and replacing it. So all is good (and dry) now.
Of course, Morgan’s perverse love of water showed up again. She thought the kitchen rain was the GREATEST THING EVER, rolling around in it and splashing. Sometimes I wonder if I accidentally brought a small dog home from the shelter instead of a cat.
Related Morgan (who is totally a cat, I promise) story: she likes going for walks. I bought a small harness for her (leashes + cat collars = no) and take her around the neighborhood. The other day, this happened:
Me + Morgan on a stroll around the neighborhood. Morgan is trotting along cheerfully, batting at snowdrifts, etc.
Person passing: Oh, what a cute dog! What’s his name?
Me: Her name is Morgan. And she’s a cat.
Person: A cat? I’ve never heard of that dog breed.
Me: Uh, it’s not a dog breed. She’s a cat.
*Morgan sits down and begins to wash herself in a very cat-like manner*
Person: Oh, she’s licking her ass! Isn’t it funny what dogs do?
Me: Yes, dogs are weird. However, she is a cat.
*Morgan meows*
Person: What a strange bark!
Me: That was a meow. She’s a cat. Cat’s meow.
Person: Oh! You must think me the stupidest person! I just realized that isn’t a dog! Silly me.
Me: *laugh*
Person: Well, you and your ferret have a good day now. *Walks away*
I am baffled.
Incidentally: In a few weeks, I’ll be meandering towards northeastern Ohio (via Buffalo and the northwestern corner of Pennsylvania). Anyone from the Horde there who wants coffee/etc, drop me a line.
Thirty years ago, for my sophomore english class, we had to read The Story Of The Good Little Boy. Would that be allowed now?
@Esteleth:
Well, obviously Morgan is a ferret, cause why would a cat reduce herself to being a dog?
Michele Bachmann is not judgmental, just ask her.
But you would be rude to do so.
Katherine, thanks for that. I laughed.
Yet another stupid poll. Please Pharygulate it!
http://blog.al.com/breaking/2012/03/poll_should_the_huntsville_cit.html
…so, since the 29th (when I last posted) and today, I put in about 80 hours of work. And now, just before 1 pm on a tuesday, I find myself with nothing to do.
The Bosses™ (all of them) are away at Big Mucking Important Conference.™
The way I see it, I could sit at my desk and
troll creationist websitessurf the net for the next 4 hours. Or I could leave, do laundry and play with the kitteh.I decided to try on a new ‘nym for style. I think I like it.
“God-frotting.” Tee hee.
Of course, Ophelia’s writing about Be Scofield.
I suppose for strategery’s sake, I should have voted for the FFRF option. I see that now especially that what I filled in the blank with on the “Other” option doesn’t seem to be displayed anywhere. I suggested that they just get down to business and start the damn meeting.
The Mr. sent me this with the subject line: “Do you think that this obit. might possibly, maybe, be hinting at something?”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9124613/Lord-St-John-of-Fawsley.html
It’s so very old-fashioned. Also, as Ms. Daisy Cutter said when I sent it her way, how do we know that “Colossus” nickname was so ironic?
@Esteleth:
The best part of that video is the total “oh shit” face the cat has before it starts to meow again.
Esteleth, that’s too funny! I just bought a harness and leash for my cat this weekend. Our previous cat would have nothing to do with being walked, but I think this one just might. She wants to go outside badly enough, and seems bored a lot, so it could work. Maybe.
The Reason Rally posts reminded me – Roy Zimmerman is performing in Schenectady in April, if anyone wants to meetup:
Saturday, April 14 – 7:30 pm
SCHENECTADY, NY
Live From the Starving Ear
Eighth Step at Proctors
432 State St
Schenectady, NY
$20 advance tickets, $22 at the door
Send me an email at carliesinternet at yahoo if you’re interested, and I’ll try to set something up for dinner beforehand or after (whichever works better with schedules)
This is a pretty awesome article about how health insurance isn’t a beneficent courtesy from employers, but part of one’s wages, and therefore nobody is “giving” anybody anything, written by someone from No Longer Quivering.
Excerpt:
Happiestsadist:
Anyone who gets an Oscar Wilde mention in the second paragraph isn’t being hinted at. Especially with a mention later of “several of his friends were caught naked one night in the Fellows Garden swimming pool” and, further down:
On Sunday, I poked myself in the eye with a stick. It isn’t getting better so I went to the doctor. When I told him what I had done, he asked “Do you know what kind of stick it was?”
My first reaction was “How the fuck should I know what kind of stick it was?” But then I remembered that I gave the stick a pretty good inspection with my undamaged eye. So I just said “azalea”.
AE – I assume he’s been a doctor long enough not to start off with “Why did you do that?” :D
Imagine there’s no liberals
It’s easy if you try
No black man to rule
Above us only sky
Imagine all the white people living for today
Imagine there’s no liberal media
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to complain for
And no marxists too
Imagine all the people living life in subjugation
You, you may say
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no Obamacare
I wonder if you can
No need to feed those who hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people taking all the world
You, you may say
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will live as one
Why, yes, I can see how this was like the murder of John Lennon.
Funny thing, Lennon knew that he was a violent asshole and tried to work on that.
Twain would fuck him up.
Richard Austin: Yes, the Mr. was being sarcastic there. It’s visible from space that the entire obit was “HE WAS GAYGAYGAYGAYGAY!”
AE, Mark Twain fucked up the likes of the gas bag decades before he was born.
Is it acceptable for a to-do list to have an item labeled “get shit together”? Seems a little too vague. But that’s what it feels like.
Richard Austin: It’s the Torygraph. The obit is a series of giant clue-by-fours to the head for most of us. It will go over most of the heads in their key demographic. Other regular readers may suspect, but, with no overt allusion to homosexuality in the text, they will be unable to complain.
Still more brilliance from The Onion: Voters Slowly Realizing Santorum Believes Every Deranged Word That Comes Out Of His Mouth
“I mean, with the other guys, you can dig into their past and find at least some shred of rational thinking, even if they’re cynically downplaying it now,” Gallardo continued. “But I get the sense Santorum is speaking nothing but his completely unfiltered thoughts. I know it’s weird to say this about a politician, but I sort of wish he were lying to my face at least a little.”
–
Bill Dauphin, *champagne* for Dauphin-spawn, and congrats.
–
TomeWyrm, the gynecologist who did my Hysterectomy With All The Trimmings™ was a man; I had absolutely no complaints about his performance whatsoever. He did seem a little surprised, though, that I wasn’t at all depressed about having the system uninstalled; I gather that this was a common reaction in hysterectomised women, in his experience. He was right in there with a reassurance that, in this case, wasn’t needed.
The way I see it, you have to judge them as you find them.
–
*hug* for Katherine; I know how you feel. I just got two solid 8-hour nights of sleep, yet I feel as if I’ve been dragged backward through a knothole.
I blame the pollen.
And:
I don’t. After all, you haven’t told me to shut the hell up about my stupid MRSA episodes, already. Fair is fair!
:)
–
AE:
Shit, now I’ve got “The Hand of the Almighty” back as an earworm, dislodging “Graceland.”
@cicely:
When an Onion article sounds like it could, indeed, be a true one from an actual news source, you know real life has become almost indistinguishable from satire.
Ms. Daisy Cutter
I have never heard that hymn.
It brought tears to my eyes.
All that rolling on the floor, laughing, hurts!
The Buchanan Brothers – Atomic Power
Of course, you may prefer the version by Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon.
Alright, I found make-work to do for 2 hours.
Enough.
I’m going home. I shall soon have clean laundry!
Tony Judt died recently. His wife wrote a memorial article in The New York Review of Books.
The article is more than remembrances of Judt as a man and as a husband, it’s sort of a review of Judt’s last books … and a meditation on dying, on religion, on fanaticism in politics, and more.
Excerpt:
[emphasis added]
Southern Culture on the Skids – Great Atomic Power
I don’t think the Louvin Brothers would have approved.
The Palaestinian ambassador to the US is a good sport. The Daily Show did a good job of highlighting the idiocy of the US IN veto.
(Incidentally, I’m more inclined to a one-state solution, myself, à la the late Ghadddafffi’s Isratina.
Good evening
I’m still feeling like shit and can’t eat, but I had a really good talk with my sister today.
Funny, I never thought we were that much alike.
Seems t be an inevitable result of being our mother’s dauhters…(i.e. personal property)
And I ordered Mr. to take two days off in summer to care of his kids while I go on a weekend-trip with my friends alone.
Babysteps, I know. But start I must.
Wooo! Have fun, Giliell!
Pity you can’t wait till October.
Katherine,
Sleep apnea. (Possibly.)
Happiestsadist: “how do we know that “Colossus” nickname was so ironic?”
If you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, highly unlikely.
I have a very stupid question.
Ahem…
Why do some people think that be criticized for what one says is oppression?
The latest example? The growing pain in the ass and friend of Boner and the banana man, Kirk Cameron.
His gay friends support his statements.
All his “gay friends” must be very self loathing.
*returning from the cracked.com thread*
Reminded me of this, which came up elsewhere recently.
http://www.cracked.com/article_15895_the-5-most-badass-presidents-all-time.html
So…
… Mass Effect 3 was waiting on my doorstep when I got home from work today. Woo hoo!
I’ll see you all in a few days, I guess. ;)
Ah, Milord St John of Fawsley, or Lord Cringe-on-all-Foursley as he became known, due to his oleaginous obsequiousness to said royalty. The only good thing I can find to say about him is that Margaret Thatcher sacked him.
Damn fuck hate smash kill all conservative legislators!
So that awful fucking bill to destroy Utah’s sex ed curriculum, cripple administrators’ abilities to aid teens and establish our own Anoka-Hennepin style neutrality policy to destroy LGBT kids?
It just passed the Senate in suspension of rules (no questions allowed, for example), so our only hope is that the state’s Republican governor will veto it. Doubtful.
Shitshitshit.
I worked so much today, I’m astounded at how far I got. Much farther than expected. Four thousand throats and all that, I suppose.
The downside is that this kept me awake. I’m no more tired than I usually am 2 or 3 hours earlier. Now it’s midnight, I’ll again miss the last bus and will have to walk the last bit, and I’ll again get up too late today to make it to lunch at a time when anybody I know is there or get to the bank without cutting into my work and Pharyngula time
tomorrowtoday afternoon! *howl*Update: the last bus is right about now, and it takes me easily half an hour to get to it.
…
:-o
That’s bad.
Awesome. :-)
and
I had no idea!
What’s the point of fortresses under the Great Wall?
[PHOTO]
Spider webs surround house in Wagga Wagga
Changeable Moniker: OK, it’s unlikely that Lord St. John ever had personal evidence that Boyson merited the nickname.
OTOH, Boyson is an outspoken homophobe. You know, like Ted Haggard, Larry Craig, Bob Allen, etc. in the U.S. He also earned the nickname “Minister of Flogging.”
He’s in a nursing home now, so we’re not likely to ever find out the truth. It’s entertaining to think about, however.
Janine:
And the lurkers support him in email, too!
Katherine (295) Talking too much about yourself
Keep doing it, never forget you are important. Blog posts, forums, IM conversations, chat rooms, comment threads, pretty much the entire internet where individual users can create some form of content? That’s what they’re there for, expressing yourself in some way. Whether that be your specific opinion on the topic at hand, a place to vent, or a place to share your particular creative or informative talents or experience.
You have to put yourself first, because if you can not care about and for yourself, you can not expect to for others. Besides, if you’re a pharyngulite, you have to be at least a little bit awesome to a group of people who are composed mostly of skeptical intellectuals, geek/nerds, and atheists. That’s got to count for something, right?
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(250) insomnia
If you snore heavily, do a lot of sudden starts/stops in snoring or regular breathing, or start to get headaches upon waking; talk to your GP. Sleep Apnea is deadly serious, and very simple and quick to treat; though not what I would call inexpensive. You could also just talk to them about the insomnia anyway, the good ones will not prescribe sleep aid drugs to start; they’ll try to fix it with simple lifestyle or diet changes, maybe some supplements like melatonin.
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Esteleth (271) Morgan the Cat (That’s a funny breed of dog!)
I have hope for humanity, and then things like that happen. Good for a laugh though!
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Phatic speech and text
Huh, so there’s a technical term for the stuff I suck at in conversations. Neat!
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Murphy isn’t giving me a break today
So I find out that it should be significantly cheaper to replace my xbox 360’s power cord than I first assumed, so I take it in and instead of 60 dollars, it was 5. I was happy.
We got the call from the Animal Control Officer, and we’ve got really good odds on getting our dog back with only the fee for rabies quarantine at $100. Which is awesome, most of my fears have been at least dampened. We still have to get the OK from the Chief of Police, and the kid was 13; which makes me nervous. Old enough to both have known better, and be coached on what to say… apparently they STILL haven’t talked to the kid. But now it’s more how vindictive is the family, rather than is the legal system a bunch of jerks.
Then I get home, and my smartphone is randomly restarting. Odd. I do a few different kinds of restarts, stick it in recovery mode, and the program errors. Which means that unless it miraculously fixes itself, I get to go BACK to the electronics repair shop and see if they can fix my phone!
Which just happened while I was typing this post. My phone is currently re-syncing all my data. So I lost my pictures I took this morning, oh well. Nothing important!
I just saw this ad on TV (this is in the UK, no idea what channel was on at the time; also I only saw the images and didn’t hear the soundtrack as I couldn’t find the remote in time).
.
It went like this:
.
young opposite-sex couple making out. He gets more and more physically insistent, she starts to look reluctant, it gets increasingly aggressive.
.
from the other side of a glass wall, a young man – the same young man – is watching them, getting more and more horrified, banging his hands on the glass and yelling at his other self to stop.
.
Caption at the end: “If you look at yourself, do you see a rapist?
If you have sex with someone who doesn’t want to have sex with you, it’s rape”.
.
.
I have never seen an ad like this on British TV before. I hope a lot of people get to see it …
Wait a minute… Cupcakes aren’t supposed to have brains!
“We spray pesky scientists with a unique anti-science dogma goo that will keep them quiet! That leaves scientists out of the media, and you safe and secure!”
@JM: Whoa!
One year I had a bazillion (oh shh! tech term) long-tailed tits pecking round my rickety old shed and its collection of spider webs. I assumed they were eating the eggs. Turns out they were after stuff to make their nests, which are a sort of inflatable Death Star.
I can’t imagine what they’d do with fields of the stuff. We’d be doomed. ;)
signot@192
Spring can be very nice in the desert.
I’m sure you know this, but I’ll issue a warning just in case. The nighttime temps can be very cold, with frost by early morning.
I take cactus-proof leather boots for desert hiking.
Don’t put your hands where you eyes can’t see (snakes, stingers and biters, etc.)
Enjoy the wide open spaces. You’ll probably see some spectacular sunsets and sunrises, not to mention awesome star gazing.
Having met Kat, I’d say “not bloody likely”. But there may of course be atypical cases.
Oh, and slignot, buy some deerskin gloves for yourself and for hubby. Buy the close-fitting, non-insulated kind. They’re very flexible and can be worn for setting up camp, etc. You need protection for your hands, protection that does not reduce dexterity (not much anyway).
@ changeable moniker 318
Someday I will see tits and boobies flying together … due to climate change …
… and the fact that I’m still 11 years old and trapped in an old man’s body.
Drat, that Cracked article makes me want to read John Dies At The End again. I saved it before David took it down of the website. At least I didn’t get sucked into the wiki-walk effect of Cracked.
opposablethumbs, I hope more people see that commercial too!
Now, off to re-install Mass Effect so I can beat it… AGAIN for my perfect play-through!
Cerberus for the win:
I don’t know how she can stand to wade through so much right-wing sewage, but I’m glad there are people out there (i.e., not me) to do so.
Psst, Sailor. Don’t mention the Phalacrocorax aristotelis. ;)
The genus Parus is not *quite* adapted to marine life yet, though. (Too fond of the peanuts.)
God’s Theme Park: 12 minute report on Ken Ham’s Creation Museum from Australian SBS TV’s Dateline current affairs program.
And lookit who gets a big link in the sidebar under “Resources” :)
I just listened to Gingrich, Santorum and now Romney give speeches.
Brainz!
Brainz!
Brainz!
drbunsen, possibly the funniest thing about your link was the byline:
(my emphasis)
PS may I say that, watching that footage, I find Kentucky to be a beautiful place.
so Romney still can’t wing it, eh. In Virginia he’s only competing against Ron Paul and gets a whopping 59%?
And Santorum wins OK, Tenn. (and maybe two more), Gingrich Ga….
Yeah a brokered convention, that’ll be fun…
I had an argument with an anti-vaxxer today. Typical poorly thought out arguments, lack of evidence etc. I crushed them with statistics, as per the normal procedure, but they kept going. They then proceeded to insults, then gendered insults. Rather like a real-life version of a Pharyngula troll. Anyway, does anyone know of a foolproof way of shutting them out besides the statistics, evidence, and awesome charts I carry in my wallet?
Is there something about this time of day?
(almost) Everyone is asleep and FtB goes nuts.
Good morning
Silli
Why October?
Anything special in October
TomeWyrm
You really, really need to let go of this idea that other people have to learn how to act around stray dogs. Really, nobody has to. There are no classes in highschool. They don’t educate kids about the rules in dealing with dogs like they do about traffic rules.
That’s because dogs aren’t supposed to be running around alone and it’s their owners’ responsibility that they don’t.
Take responsibility for your dog
You know what might actually help in preventing a lawsuit?
If you stopped acting as if that stupid kid got hirself bitten out of hir own fault, showed a bit of compassion for a kid who has been bitten by your dog, invested 50 bucks into something 13 yo like and went there to apologize.
Because right now people are tempted to think that since you’re not learning on your own how to prevent your dog from biting kids in the future, they have to make sure you do.
BTW, my OB/Gyn is a man and the best one I ever had. He’s a great, gentle, compassionate professional who always gave me dedicated care. So is his son and as long as either of them is practicing I won’t look for somebody else.
The most opposition he seems to get is because his name sounds muslim. Which he actually isn’t, but we can’t let facts get into our way, can we?
++++
So, Santorum really likes freedom of speech.
He just doesn’t like the freedom to talk back.
@ David Marjanović
In Hebei at least. The statue I referred to as the “Old Dragon’s Head” sank into the sea here: 39d57m59s N, 119d47m44s E (You can enter those co-ordinates into Google Earth.)
Here are the co-ordinates: 40d06m54s N, 119d44m32s E I have taken a lot of pictures and will post when (if!) I can find them.
On the second site, you might be able to make out bird-mesh (you cannot see the tunnels or fortress obviously). That whole area is a giant aviary with thousands of birds from all over. In the middle of the aviary is a giant gong. For a small fee you can wack it and make an incredibly loud noise. (Of course I did not. I find the idea quite dreadful and cruel.)
Try googling for stuff like this: Linky.
“Katherine haunted by bats”.
Some links
So Bill Maher is still an asshole (though he is also used by Palin to defend Rush Limbaugh Frankly I also don’t get how Palin of all people could defend him, but whatevs)
(plug) Surprise, surprise: UK faith schools are less inclusive!
Furore over German “Brevik” shop
I haven’t had the time to respond more comprehensively, but whenever one is talking about the Great Wall of China, one has to ask the question: which Wall? It’s not like it is one monolithic concept.
Several walls were built in different dynasties, and it’s also “full of holes”. See map here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_Great_Wall_of_China.jpg
Whatever you do, don’t think it’s like the Wall in Songs of Ice and Fire XD
Thinking about phatic expressions reminded me of something from long ago on Pharyngula:
Windy:
@ pelamun
Yeah, the sites I linked to actually have two walls each. The older one was made of rammed earth and (amazingly) is in pretty good nick, all things considered.
(Now I really have to find my pics.)
I don’t know if you will have seen the book Courage & Rice. It is the story of how two somewhat crazy South Africans ran the entire length (?) of the Great Wall.
Giliell (333) Taking Responsibility for my Dog
Personally, I take offense to the idea that people shouldn’t learn about how to handle encounters with unfamiliar animals, because that’s dangerous; it should be part of the basic education like how to avoid drugs, how not to act around strangers, and other simple common sense tactics and strategies to keep yourself out of easily avoided dangerous situations. But that’s tangential to my point and my current fears. I AM taking responsibility for my dog’s actions, but that doesn’t mean I want to spend any of the money that I am not getting any more of for the foreseeable future paying for this. Right now I’m burning up savings that I probably should be hoarding for basic necessities. This worries me. Right now I fear that my dog will be euthanized for a first offense, because I love my dog. Right now I feel sorry for the kid that got bit, because that sucks, I’ve been there with all kinds of animal injuries, some of which were my direct fault, some were accidental, and some were from stupidity and lack of education. Unfortunately right now, as far as I know, we’re not supposed to know details about the case, so as much as I would like to bribe the kid (and giving them a present is just that, a bribe) to engender good will, it’s probably illegal and I can’t really afford it anyway.
As for not learning how to prevent my dog from biting kids in the future, that assumption makes me quite livid. My family raised dogs for a living, the younger of my two uncles trained German Shepherds for police and military K9 units, my grandfather raised Brittany Spaniels, my mother raised Old English Sheepdogs, and my grandmother raised Chihuahuas. We have our dogs fenced in, though apparently not heavily enough. Also my dog is one of the LEAST aggressive dogs I have ever known. I was raised while my family was running a professional dog kennel for crying out loud! We did not foresee an attack in any way, because in our experience, it should not have been possible. The dog has been socialized heavily since only a few weeks old, and adores new people. The thought that he might bite someone has never crossed our minds because the odds against it happening when considering his temperament were amazingly slim. Unfortunately we were wrong, and that worries me.
Are we doing absolutely everything in our power to make everything better for everyone involved and make this process go as smoothly as possible? No. We don’t have the money or time to enact most of the things we COULD be doing. What we are doing is being respectful to the authorities, hoping that we don’t have a string of rotten luck, trying not to make anything worse, and preparing to make our yard more escape proof. What I don’t want to do any more is talk about this subject, because I’d rather not get any more pissed off.
«•»
Thanks for the anecdote about your OB/GYN, it is appreciated. Very nice to hear that it’s not all doom, gloom, and constant uphill battles. Hopefully I’m well suited for the job, so all my patients feel half as good about me as you do about your doctor.
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Compelling Activist Cause
Found this video linked in the news post of one of my web-comics.
Figured someone in The Horde would want to know about it.
TomeWyrm,
even in the traffic law of many countries, injuries to children suddenly leaping out onto the street are to a large extent the liability of the driver, even if the kids should have known better. The side with the potentially dangerous vehicle/animal has to bear more of the liability. For instance, German courts have held for years that motorists always have to drive in a way that they could respond to situations like children suddenly jumping onto the street. Japanese courts always find fault with the “larger vehicle” as well, even if the smaller vehicle/pedestrian did not pay attention to traffic.
It’s a risk any vehicle/animal owner has.
That said, I hope everything works out for you.
Though I understand you don’t know yet what exactly happened right? Apparently even if you live in a strict liability state, provoking a dog by hitting it with a hand or stick usually makes you not liable for its behaviour. Though fencing does not matter.
rorschach, is that a joke? If not, I’m sorry….
frankboyd, renowned for his stupidity on many FtB blogs, has popped up on Greta Christina’s blog to lecture us that it’s people like us reposible for the fact that atheists are reviled across America..
Man, I just had the weirdest dream. I went to a colleague’s house to do some committee work for a scholarship, and then after I sat down at the table with them they started talking about what was coming up in the next few years for the scholarship, and I realized that somehow I had time traveled because it was the 1980s based on the dates they were using, and then I realized that meant that I was there because I was applying for the scholarship, not on the awarding committee. And then the final actual committee member came in, and it was a young PZ Myers. Then I woke up. Odd.
Oh, I posted before reading anything. Rorschach, I’m so sorry.
TomeWyrm:
Speaking as someone who was bitten by a dog at the age of three…. agreed.
I also speak as a pet owner who has had to strongly warn a child away from my frightened cat at the vet’s office, because one nip could have meant my very good-natured Kitteh being put down as a “vicious animal.”
I do think that if your dog gets out accidentally, the legal burden is on you, but you’re taking responsibility for it, as you’ve said.
Was never a big Smiths or Morrissey fan, but I did play my fair share of Super Mario Bros.
Super Morrissey Brothers
Cats scratch rather more than bite. Even while playing in a friendly way, they can draw blood. They don’t know that us two-leggers lack protective fur.
— — — — — —
Planets everywhere, hundreds of them Earth-size
“Kepler releases new catalog of planet candidates” http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-kepler-planet-candidates.html
Aliens? Naah, more likely plenty of lichen, or bacterial mats.
— — — — — — —
“Vegetarian cutlet” http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-vegetarian-cutlet.html -If the cost can be made competitive with meat I will be all for it.
— — — — —
What corruption looks like:
“Iowa Moves to Keep its Factory Farms Shielded from View” http://motherjones.com/tom-philpott/2012/03/will-agribiz-tied-governor-keep-iowas-factory-farms-shielded-view
Excerpt: ”The bill passed both chambers of Iowa’s legislature, winning overwhelming support among Democrats and Republicans alike. There’s no puzzle as to why—the agribiz industry weilds massive power in Iowa. Gov. Branstad is a case in point. The AP article mentions his “strong ties to Iowa’s agricultural industry, which has supported the measure.” I did a little digging into the nature of those ties, and quickly found some. The governor’s 2010 election campaign received more than $40,000 from the agribusiness lobbying group the Iowa Farm Bureau Federation. And the Iowa-based blog Bleeding Heartland has a well-documented post on how the governor recently stacked the state’s Environmental Protection Commission with four prominent agribusiness advocates.”
-Bury them to the neck in pig manure.
As if we needed another sign that the base of the republican party is made up of morons, Joe the Plumber won the 9th distr. Ohio Congressional Primary.
TSA scanners at airports are completely useless:
http://tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com/
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
“Joe the (not) Plumber won the 9th distr. Ohio Congressional Primary”
Wouldn’t it be fun if the Nazi candidate also got nominated? Personally, I like that the GoP get up-front about having lost it.
Pearls Before Swine has started a little funny thing on Newt Gingrich. One of the Crocs (the one with a wife and son) is campaigning against Newt “becuss amphibians beegest liars ever. One day dey has gills. One day dey has lungs. Dey like evil magicians.” I knew we couldn’t trust him. Let’s be like Croc and “No u vote heem.”
(starts here)
rorschach
Dayum. o.O That sucks? I’m sorry that happened.
***
Giliell, about your 35:
I can completely relate, and can only congratulate you on taking those first, difficult steps towards finding out what, indeed, is left. That takes a lot of courage (and maybe some day I’ll get there too!), so although the process is incredibly hard, I’m very happy for you that you’ve taken those crucial first steps.
***
TomeWyrm
I have no advice on the dog situation, but good luck with that.
About the Ob/Gyn thing, I can honestly say that I would happily go to whatever Ob/Gyn, male or female doesn’t matter, if xe’d listen to me. Especially with pregnancy-related things. I mean, I know I’m not a medical doctor and all, but I do know that despite my small stature (I’m 5’1) I am perfectly able to push a child through my “birth canal” (I did it three times, with relatively large babies, the biggest was 3.8 kgs, and I don’t know what that is in pounds and I’m too lazy right now to look it up ;p).
I don’t need a C-section just because I happen to be small!
Sorry for the rant, but every. single. Ob/Gyn I went to, I had to fight this battle. Every. Single. Time.
I understand that your insurance is high and that you’re trying to cover your ass, but C-sections, in normal, low risk, absolutely problem-free pregnancies, like mine was, actually has worse maternal and neonate outcomes than vaginal births, especially if the interventions on the VBs can be kept to a minimum. So an Ob/Gyn pushing a C-section on me out of fear that my body won’t do everything perfectly and kill the preshus babby without listening to my own autonomous, informed decisions and psychological scars and, just, well, ME, the living, breathing person sitting in front of you? Not cool. And every single ob/gyn I’ve been to did that.
Rant ahead with gross, personal things. Here be dragons, be warned.
Yes, I am biased against Ob/Gyns. That would be because of my first labour. It was a cluster fuck from the beginning, since my water broke at 37 weeks and there was slight (VERY SLIGHT) yellow-tinged meconium staining, but the heart-rate was normal, so I agreed to an induction with the Pit which led to a hypertonic uterus since no one would LISTEN when I said it’s on too strong and I’m tiny, and very sensitive to drugs, and they all just kept jacking it up and up despite having already established good contractions and well-within normal dilation. I’d drilled into the ob/gyn over and over and over again that I will not, under any circumstances, consent to an episiotomy. I even wrote that on the blanket consent form they make you sign. So when the pushing started and I felt him injecting something in my upper thigh, I shouted at him “NO EPISIOTOMY!” and he said “Of course not, dear, this is just to numb the area so you can push better”. I was strapped into stirrups with two nurses applying fundal pressure (which meant they were basically pushing on my uterus from the fundus, the top of the uterus, with all their weight) and I couldn’t get away, so I could only watch in horror as he grabbed the scissors and cut an episiotomy WHILE he was telling me he wouldn’t.
I should mention, during *none* of this did the baby’s heart rate show any decels, it never fell outside of 140-160 bpm, so she was doing fine. Her apgar at 1 minute was 7 and at 5 was 10.
And then, afterwards, he kept lecturing me about how I should have listened to him and have a C-section because I had such a horrible labour and the baby almost didn’t make it because of my selfishness in not listening to him and not going for the c-section!
So yeah, after that, I find it hard to trust Ob/Gyns, but not only male ones. The women are just as bad about lying to you to get you to do what they want.
Rant over, it’s safe nao.
So, as long as you don’t do that kind of thing, you’ll be doing a great service to the profession of Obstetrics and Gynecology which I honestly believe is a very important and noble field that’s just often ill-served by egomaniacs with god-complexes (look! *I* delivered your baby! Praise and thanks are in order, now!).
So I wish you the best of luck with that.
CapeTownJunk
Welcome, from a fellow godless South African. I’m stuck in the North West, so I’m sure you can imagine how many god-bothers we have up here, pushing their agenda into every single public school. I swear, if I had the patience and didn’t work full-time, I’d homeschool, but sadly it’s not an option so I have to deal with kids singing religious songs all day and try to field their questions about what’s real and not with as much honesty as possible.
Anyways, welcome.
***
Something astounding but incredibly wonderful happened to me the other day. I was in a class about the physiological action and effects of sedatives, mostly Benzodiazepines but the other classes as well, which includes the “date rape” drugs like Rohypnol, and the lecturer, who is from what I’ve seen quite conservative and god-bothering, gave a lecture to the class about date rape.
Here’s the good part: she said explicitly that she didn’t want to talk to the girls about this, since they are the innocent victims. She wanted to talk to the guys, and proceded to tell them that this sort of thing is NOT okay and if they ever thought about it, or did it, or even dreamed about doing it, they needed to get help and they needed to let their other guy friends also know that this shit is NOT COOL.
I almost fell out of my seat with pleasant surprise. A rape prevention lecture, aimed at university students, talking about date rape and drugging, BUT targeted at the MEN? OMFSM, AMAZING! Best moment of my year up till now.
Which is kind of sad, but we take what we can get.
@my 353:
Larry. That’s the Croc’s name.
Why is this man still finding newspapers willing to buy his cartoons? I’ve seen some vicious ones by Gary McCoy on the Planned Parenthood Komen thing, but this vile Sandra Fluke cartoon is just ..arghl beargh. Don’t click it if you get angry easily..
Birger, cats bite as well, and their bites can be extremely dangerous.
Gen Fury, holy shit, I’d have sued the fuck out of that ob/gyn. That kind of patronizing disregard for patients’, especially women’s, wishes is why I stick with the practice I’ve been a patient at since the mid-’90s, even though it’s a considerably longer drive there than it used to be. I know I can trust them.
I agree both that the lecturer deserves major kudos, and that it’s sad that we live in a world where saying something that obvious earns one major kudos.
Pelamun, most newspapers in the U.S. lean conservative, and a lot are blatantly wingnut. That cartoon is disgusting, and I can easily see it appearing in any number of fishwraps across the country.
How come no one bitches about this blatant diversity hiring? This is blatantly saying that this person is not hired because of insight or art or talent, but because the paper felt the need to balance liberal and conservative.
Hey how about you just get some cartoonists that are actually witty and up to date on current affairs and let them speak for themselves. Reality doesn’t need you to hobble it for the sake of fairness.
Ms. Daisy Cutter,
Do you have any statistics? I’ve always been confused about this, because so many different allegations are being made (and maybe I did successfully avoid all the conservative newspapers in the United States). For instance this is an utter mess http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias_in_the_United_States
Found via The Mary Sue, here is The Doctor and Sherlock in a mash-up to Anything You Can Do. I normally find mashups silly, but this one is very well-timed with well-chosen clips. And, you know, it’s a lot of Matt Smith and Benedict Cumberbatch, which can’t possibly go wrong.
Ing,
I’m not completely sure. MSNBC only has one cartoonist on staff, the blog author, Cagle, as their cartoonist. But Cagle is connected to PoliticalCartoons.com, which features 75 cartoonists and sells their work ($3.50 for personal or classroom use). (The postal address for the PoliticalCartoons.com website is at Cagle Cartoons, Inc, so I gather Daryl Cagle started that sales website)
Phrasings like “our conservative cartoonist” or “one of our strongest conservative cartoonists” have suggested to me in the past that conservative cartoonists are a tiny minority on that PoliticalCartoons website (which calls itself the biggest political cartoons sales site on the internet).
Though if Cagle is so disgusted by the Fluke cartoon and is indeed connected to that website, maybe they should consider dropping the guy..
Pelamun, if you don’t mind a five-year-old study:
I can’t imagine the percentages have shifted that greatly in the last five years.
This does not make me happy. Out of all the over hyped TV chefs I actually kind of enjoy Mario Batali.
Lush Rimjob has a new target: A young white woman who has the temerity to be single, educated, and the author of a book.
Note that she’s anything but privileged. If she were (a) a man and (b) conservative, Limbaugh would be hailing her as an example of “pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps.”
well it makes me happy they paid out, but the whole thing is lame on his part.
http://aceofsevens.wordpress.com/2012/03/05/147/
Part 2 of my argument with my brother the rape apologist where Sally Strange drops in and tries to help and has about as much success as I did.
Mrs. Daisy check out the one star amazon reviews. Pretty telling where they come from.
I saw those already, Rev. The one in ALL CAPS!!! had me totally convinced.
My best friend would have turned thirty today, but she up and died for reasons that are still unknown as Pennsylvania apparently is in no hurry to release the autopsy results. A friend of hers recently quit taking her Risperidone and now thinks my friend was poisoned and she’s next. I really wish she were here to help me talk her into going to the ER as it seems the police can’t do anything and community mental health can’t even listen to me describe the problem.
Ace of Sevens, I’m so sorry about your best friend.
I don’t know what to recommend w/r/t her other friend.
Anthony McCarthy shows up on Be Scofield’s latest pile of dreck to whine about atheists who dare voice their opinions online. Natalie Reed and Ophelia Benson are “would be intellectual monitors who are an increasingly annoying on the internet.” WON’T ALL THE ATHEISTS GET OFF THE INTERNET AND MAKE ANTHONY FEEL SAFER, KTHX.
Posting this here because I know a lot of folks read/have WordPress blogs:
30K WordPress Blogs Infected With the Latest Malware Scam (/.)
Original Source (Networld)
I am struggling to think of a LESS EFFECTIVE alert method than a loud blatting noise followed by an electronic voice saying shit like, “Alert #16 in Zones 1-4.”
I have no fucking clue what an alert #16 is. I also don’t know what zones are which. Durr.
I mean, you’d think that this information would be included in say, new employee orientation, or prominently posted somewhere, but NO.
I should not have to spend 5 minutes searching HR’s website to discover that there is a non-hazardous spill in Pediatrics.
Esteleth #377
That sort of alert system would have me fetching my purse and coat and heading for the emergency muster station (read: the nearest bar).
From way upthread, Morgan must be one ugly cat ;)
For all your vomiting pleasure
http://www.istandwithrush.org/
Chigau,
I know. I’m glad that the situation turned out to be non-dangerous (but, like, can they just say “Paging Building Services to Pediatrics”???) – what if that alert was a fire or some other major emergency?
Bah.
Morgan is totally not ugly! Here’s a pic of my cute cat, who 100% does not resemble a dog OR a ferret.
Esteleth
They probably need a secret code to inform Security that Terrorists have taken over the cafeteria without causing a panic about the loss of access to coffee. Then everything gets a secret code.
Morgan is very cute and unferretdoglike!
We use standard color codes – blue for cardiac arrest, grey for violence (grey adam for “with weapon), pink for child abduction, red for fire or smoke, orange for hazmat, etc. – combined with the building name (since the campus has been built piecemeal from donations, every small section has a different name).
Which means that we at least know what’s going on, even if we can’t remember whether “Northwest” is actually in the north-west, or over on the east side of campus (where it actually is).
Oh, totally. There are alerts for “Armed intruder,” “Bomb,” “Hazardous Spill,” and (because this is a hospital) “Unruly Patient.” That’s in addition to “Fire” and such.
That said, when they need to page the Trauma Team, they just fucking page the Trauma Team to wherever. They don’t get a code.
I’m also baffled about the tendency, once or twice a day, to just read a name over the PA system. No message, just “Jane Doe, Jane Doe.” I do hear “Will John Doe please return to Radiology [or wherever], please” every now and then, which does make sense.
I do get irritated by the daily “There will be an interfaith worship service in the Chapel at 12:15. All patients, staff, and visitors are welcome to attend.” message. You’d think that (1) staff would know that there’s a daily worship service and (2) the chaplains could see to it that patients and their families are informed. That, and in my (admittedly limited) experience, interfaith worship services are so carefully inclusive that they degenerate into pablum and incomprehensible gibberish.
Oh, big hospitals. Never change your baffling, baffling management of the PA system.
Rev, I misread that as “Island with Rush,” as in “stranded on a desert island with Rush.” Which is even worse than what it actually says.
Daisy, I read that as “I stand with thrush,” which made me wonder why (1) it is good to brag about having a fungal infection and (2) why you should be standing around when you have the aforementioned fungal infection, instead of say, getting treatment.
Then I wondered if it was about the bird.
Ahem.*
* Fair warning – Saki wrote in the early 1900s and wrote from the perspective of upper-class Britain, which means there are very not-nice undercurrents – or even overcurrents(?) – in some of these stories.
I’ll add that “change of thrush” has become slang in my circles for any time one feels like one is irrationally or unreasonably irritated by some minor change. E.g., you feel like you’re being ridiculous, but you still feel annoyed. As in, “The new paint job on the front office is a change of thrush.”
I’m not seeing a reference to this story, so I’m either breaking something here or very late to the party.
Has anyone else seen this bit about a district in (I believe) SC
requiringsuggesting GOP candidates sign a non-adultery pledge?I don’t have a link, and I’m working from memory, here, so…
If I can find this, and actually remember how to post a correct link to it, I’ll do so.
y u want me clik on that? y?
Esteleth, I’d call Rush Limbaugh a fungal infection, but that would be an insult to our good friends the mushrooms (both the edible and the psychoactive kinds).
Anri, here ya go. Not just non-adultery, but non-premarital sex and non-porn.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/06/2678172/south-carolina-gop-says-purity.html
Miami Herald link.
Anri,
Mano Singham had a post
https://proxy.freethought.online/singham/2012/03/06/are-you-a-real-republican/
Thanks, pelmun – just so it’s getting noticed.
I have this image of the SC State GOP running around hissing “Not in public, you idiots! Not in public!”
Incoming gay joke:
What happened to Michele Bachmann’s hair? Did Marcus take up hairdressing?
Ms. Daisy Cutter #365,
Thank you. That is indeed appalling. The only solace being that taking circulation into account the picture looks a little less dire…
Okay, I admit, I ain’t right.
However, if the Obama administration is going to defrost all those “snowflakes,” I hate to think of all that delicious tender veal-like meat going to waste…
Giliell, not to be confused with The Borg
7 March 2012 at 1:26 am
Rhinebeck!
The white zone is for loading and unloading of passengers only. There is no parking in the red zone.
@Esteleth:
Eeeee. Morgan’s so cute.
@Carlie:
The red zone is for loading and unloading of passengers only. No parking in the white zone.
Are Tornadoes a Result of God’s Wrath?
Katherine – the white zone has always been for loading and unloading of passengers.
@Carlie and Katherine:
The white zone is for deliveries, the red zone is for ambulances. People arriving and departing by car should use the green zone, and then mill around uselessly in the blue zone, under the big-ass signs saying “Lobby” that point in opposite directions.
People who successfully navigate the signs can congregate in the yellow zone, where there is complementary grog dispensed Hot Young Things™ for your pleasure.
Toothy goodness.
Snoopy badness. Illegal, I bet.
Frozen goodness! Biomechanist can has blog nao!
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Dogs: I’m with comment 333. Kids suddenly jumping onto a street are a lot more predictable than stray dogs!
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~:-| Why? Did you look that far up her nose?
*lightbulb moment* Obesity isn’t the only risk factor, you know.
:-) :-) :-)
Why am I not surprised.
One of Baby Sister’s first sentences was Entschuldigen nützt nix! – “Apologizing doesn’t do anything!”
*hugs*!
Also, the normal answer to “how are you” isn’t “fine” in Russian, it’s “normal”. If you say anything like “good”, they’ll probably ask if you won the lottery.
:-o Fuck.
I’m with comment 360.
Beautiful.
And it’s awesome!!!
Except for the commenter who insists that, no, newts are reptiles after all. *Hulk smash*
…He called you “dear”?
Am I, just, like, culture-shocked, or did he simply say out loud what he was doing — treating you like a baby that not only can’t make informed decisions of any importance but can’t speak at all?
What I just said about the Hulk and smashing.
What on earth do colour-blind people do?
Well, my university changed building numbers a few years ago.
Somehow they figured out that numbering buildings chronologically according to when they were built doesn’t make sense in the long run
…don’t start up with that white zone shit again.
Giliell,
Color-blind people are expected to understand that the little square sign hanging from the ceiling that says “Y/J/A” indicates that they are in the Yellow Zone, while “G/V/V” indicates the Green Zone.
DUH.
Building designers are stupid.
I had to go to the main office at my local high school today. Although I’ve been there many times, I’ve never been to the main office. So I go in the main parking entrance, the one with the huge sign, and park in the big front parking lot. Then I am faced with a huge entrance on the left that I know is direct to the auditorium, a huge entrance on the right that I know is direct to the gym, and an open space in the middle with some stairs. I go to the one near the gym, and see a sign that says “Visitors must use the cafeteria entrance on the north side of the parking loop”. Hm. I’m on the big main parking loop, so north is… the auditorium entrance? No, but maybe up the stairs is the cafeteria entrance on the north side, since I know it’s on the second floor. I go up the stairs, to find… a door on a hallway on the north side, and another one on the south side, neither of which are marked. At that point a hallway monitor sees me outside and ushers me in, and says that nobody can ever find the main office. Turns out that there is an entirely separate entrance FURTHER down the road from the main entrance (you get to the main one first if you are coming from any major direction), that has a tiny little sign, that leads to an entirely separate parking loop in the back of the building that I always thought was overflow/maintenance parking, that is the door that visitors are supposed to go to, which is only marked “attendance entrance” and not anything having to do with visitors. I couldn’t design a more counterintuitive way to situate the main office and visitor’s entrance if I tried to on purpose. And none of the signs on the front of the building had something like, oh, AN ARROW pointing one in the right direction. Everything that screams “come in here” from all design standpoints is not where to go, and everything that indicates “back entrance for people who have the secret code and reasons to be here only” is the place visitors are supposed to go. I just don’t get it.
Oh really, Vernon? Why pretend, we both know perfectly well what this is about. You want me to have an abortion.
–
you people have obviously never listened to Frank Zappa
Is this about the abortion?
Damn, cicely beat me to it!
*collapses in giggle fit anyway*
Yes. Seems Santorum is dead against it.
In any zone at all.
–
And regardless of whether it’s done therapeutically or not.
–
Surely there must be something you can do.
It’s not a design problem, I bet. It was probably a perfectly adequate design back in the day. It just wasn’t designed to deal with the heightened security necessary in this crazy modern world of ours.
I do agree that, having retrofitted a security entrance, they could have put up a few helpful signs though.
Jim Parsons? The next Dr. Who?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=fvwp&v=zUVUTxAIgj8
If they haven’t got the courage to cast a woman then Jim Parsons would be great… a Texan Dr. Who…. imagine…
Worst building design ever?
this one, the University of Limerick Main Building.
What you can see on this map as “Plassey House” is a wonderfull Victorian building, but they added two horrible glass and steel bridge/tunnels to connect it with the main building so the president doesn’t have to walk on the lawn.
One of the toilets next to the cafeteria is constructed in a way they had to saw out part of the door down where the bowl is so it could be opened and closed.
In another area there are tow gents’ toilets on one floor and none for ladies, which meant that when I had to pee during an exam an extra supervisor had to take me by the hand and walk me one floor up…
Chas – good point; the two main entrances are the ones that most people outside the school would be using for events, so if that was primary I can see there would then be problems figuring out where to put the main office to still be accessible. But signage! Signs are pretty cheap, even.
Hey, it’s weird. After writing “imagine” in my previous comment (419) I had a weird, very vague, hazy kind of flashback to Latin Class at Crewkerne Grammar School, 1970. I did Latin for two terms (semesters?) as a twelve year old, and had thought that all I could remember from those days was Amo, Amas, Amat, Amamus, Amatis, Amant. But then I re-read my comment (419) and remembered this…
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Latin/Lesson_1-Imperative
..well sorta.
I know more than I know I know! Ain’t the memory amazing!
Anyway
@Giliell:
Tch, I got a worse one for you.
FBI Headquarters!
Not only is it aesthetically the most ugly building in Washington DC, but its schematically the worst building in Washington DC. You got hallways that don’t go anywhere, an elevator that doesn’t go anywhere, and if you get to the top floor from the wrong side you gotta go back down and back up if you want to go to the other side.
It’s horrible.
If you can tolerate Kunstler, this part of his website is fun.
http://kunstler.com/eyesore_201112.html
@ my 419
‘though maybe he (Jim Parsons) does look a bit too much like The Master
http://www.observer.com/files/2011/08/jim-parsons.jpg
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/underwire/images/2009/04/03/s3_13_wal_26.jpg
He doesn’t look a bit like The Master.
Rorschach, that sucks. How did it happen?
====
Ace of Sevens, that sucks as well. Don’t know what to say.
====
Giliell, sounds to me as if you need to learn how to be selfish (but in a good way). Good luck!
Also, a lot of people here talk about themselves, but you seem to feel the need to apologize for that — beforehand, even.
Sorry Rey, I don’t get it. What has a photo of a Frank Zappa impersonator got to do with anything?
Kitteh is here! She’s had dinner, found the litter tray, discovered a couple of hidey-holes to hang out in, and purred pretty much constantly since she came out of the catbox.
Kid #1 is smitten. The rest of us are not far behind. ;)
Quite. Biology building of the U of Vienna: mostly metal with a bit of glass. Winter: stupid heating costs. Summer: stupidly hot. And the building doesn’t even belong to the university, it’s actually rented or leased or something, so nothing can be changed. *headdesk*
…hang on a minute while I put my exploded head back together…
It’s all deliberate, it’s supposed to confuse the terrorists !!
Bad news, worse news. Perhaps good news with a bit of Pharyngulation.
A new ‘trendy’ bar in Copenhagen has launched a contest offering breast enlargement as the prize. Many people are obviously up in arms over this, but that doesn’t stop desperate women from joining in.
Worse: a mtf woman threw in her lot, but was removed from the voting page. Explanations have so far gone through “never happened”, “mistake”, “she cheated”. I think she may be back up now, but not on the main page, and the 900 votes she’d accumulated are gone.
So … does the Faceryngula Faction want to go vote for one of the three (I think) transwomen in this obnoxious context?
http://www.kostbar.dk/Login.aspx
I assume the competition lies behind the “Konkurrence” link on the left.
*smitten*
Oh! The names to look for are
Malene Lang Hansen
and
Vibe Grevsen
I think, but there may be others not mentioned in the article:
http://ibyen.dk/natteliv/article1562703.ece
What has a photo of a Frank Zappa impersonator got to do with anything?
The Master would not approve.
One more
Michele Nielsen
http://ibyen.dk/natteliv/ECE1561528/transseksuel-udelukket-fra-konkurrence-om-gratis-bryster/
Giliell:
Nowhere near.
(The similarity to Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated is coincidence, I’m sure.)
Why is there a discussion of gawd-awful building design here with nary a mention of Frank Gehry?
Limbog, Limburger, Dimbulb?
RevBDC (@366 & 368):
Re the Batali settlement… it’s only a brief article (and now, I didn’t go try to read the court documents), but it’s hard for me to understand the difference between the tip “skimming” in this case and tip pooling, which I had thought was a commonly accepted practice in the industry.
But then, not frequenting restaurants that even have sommeliers, I have no real sense of how they normally get paid. Can somebody ‘splain me what Batali has done wrong here? Enquiring minds want to know!
Commiserations to Rorschach and Ace for the bad news, and to Giliell for the bad feelings; hoping for better things for all y’all.
***
Daze:
Dang! I think I’d happily promise my vote to a candidate who swore xe had had premarital sex, and who promised to look at a little porn every day, and who was in favor of… well, not adultery (which implies personal betrayal), but perhaps ethical nonmonogamy, eh?
I am so sick to hoary death of the sex-negativity of this so-called culture we live in!
***
Sili (@431):
So let me get this straight: They want to give away breast enlargement to a woman… but not to a woman who might actually have a medical need for it? Did they also exclude breast cancer survivors? </ToothGrinding>
Does it make me a decent human or just a chump that I’m not outing a Facebook friend (and old HS girlfriend) whose Facebook presence as a mouthpiece for right-wing talking points belies the fact that I know for sure that she got pregnant (not by me!) and had an abortion when she was a teen?
This really makes me sad: I remember her as a smart, kind, human young woman, and when I saw her recently at a mutual friend’s wedding, she still seemed that way in person… but on Facebook, she could just as easily be a Faux Noise talking head. Obviously, I don’t judge her for having had an abortion, nor for having been sexually active when she was a single teenager; I just can’t understand how she’s become this person who would judge her own younger self so pitilessly… and how it can be that she doesn’t seem to remember that younger self.
Fucking sigh….
Dear major community college known for its science and technology courses,
Why is your website straight out of 1997 with bad organization and access? Why is none of the most important information about enrolling available from the front page? Why is there not a comprehensive menu or sitemap? Why are links inconsistent and unclear?
Why can I not receive official email from the school at the email address of my choice? Why do I have to use a separate, primitive and counterintuitive “portal” to access those emails, some other information, and duplicate information from the main site? Why do you assign me a difficult-to-remember username, plus a student ID number, plus a PIN and then require me to create an impossible to remember password with three different kinds of characters?
I hate you, you pants-on-head-stupid assholes.
At my Uni, the designers weren’t stupid, it’s the stupid implementers that were stupid.
Why would you put the main offices on the higher floors? When strangers walk in the 1st thing they should see is the admissions, students, Dean’s offices. Make it easy for people who have never been there before.
And while I’m ranting about Uni design, put walkways where people walk, and stop complaining about the paths they groove in the swards when they cut across. Where people actually travel? Yeah, pave that.
Bill D. – my thought, you don’t out people that do not want to be outed. She has not made the information public and it is hers to so do. For whatever the reason, I just find it rude to take it upon yourself to give a public airing to information that is not your own. If you do not want to judge her, then do not judge her.
On the other hand, I am constantly rude so YMMV.
I thought this was well-known? Desire lines.
Thanks changeable moniker! I had never heard of that term. I like it in so many ways. How can I count them?
That…is some pretty impressively ugly stuff.
–
*snerk*
When I was an undergrad, the admin spent who knows how much money building fences and putting up signs asking people to NOT come down the steps of the campus center, enter a lawn (that the steps END IN) and then continue across said lawn in the shortest path to the library.
Someone suggested maybe a proper path? Maybe, alternatively, building a structure between the aforementioned campus center steps and the aforementioned lawn?
NO, OF COURSE NOT.
Instead, they hung signs that (I shit you not) said “PDWOTGIYAGA.”
JefferyD:
I expressed myself poorly: I have absolutely no intention of publicly calling my old friend on her hypocrisy, nor even privately reminding her of her past. I would never do such a thing!
I just sometimes feel like a bit of a chump for arguing with her in good faith (on my side) when she defends Lush Rimjob’s slut-shaming.
Also, I feel deeply sad that the good person I remember is now in the thrall of such hateful ideas. IMHO the cheerful teen who got pregnant while “sleeping around” was much more moral and admirable than the person she now plays on Facebook.
Ah, understand, Bill. Apologies if I jumped on you.
Bill:
No, you didn’t.
(But your deferential apologia towards JeffreyD is noted, not to your credit)
John, I was actually happy for the opportunity to “revise and extend” (as they say in Congress) my original comment; if that loses me some points with you, I ‘magine I can bear up under the shame.
Bill: You didn’t need any “opportunity”, you could have revised and extended as you saw fit.
(That you acknowledge your shame is something, though)
Dear kristinc,
As a former web-implementer for a very small section of a university website, I am qualified to answer your question.
The answer is multi-parted:
* The smart people you want to study with did not do it.
* An admin person, or research assistant, or other human low on the totem poll did it.
* Marketing made us do it that way, on pain of no access to university servers for you!
* We have no choice but to use their templates. They explain with with words like “corporate presence”, “branding”, “professional image”, “communications paradigm” and “cheese-moving”
* Marketing know nothing about computers, the internet, principles of web design, e-commerce standards, principles of web accessibility, or the difference between their arse, their elbow and a hole in the ground.
You may wonder what Marketing actually do for their salaries. It depends on the university, but in my personal experience, marketing’s sole purpose is not to allow the word ANUS to appear anywhere in the ANU’s marketing materials.
HTH,
Love,
Alethea, who doesn’t do that any more.
Bill D,
How does something she did, or how she thought, change the arguments that she makes now? If they are crappy arguments, they are crappy arguments. I get that you are frustrated, but I am inclined to see it more as being so because who you remember is not who you engage with now.
My son just called me. During his lunch break–second shift at work–he’d gone to pick up stuff from the store. He arrived at the register to be 5th in line. The woman behind him offered him a religious tract, which he politely refused.
She asked him about his faith, and he said, “I don’t discuss that in public, ma’am.” She went into the “going to hell” monologue interspersed with sharper and sharper repetitions of “Are you listening to me?” as he ignored her.
During all this two people had finished their transactions so that he was 3rd in line. Both remaining customers in front of him waved him ahead of them, and as he thanked them and moved up, they STARED deadpan at the woman, who immediately shut up.
And we’re in southwest Alabama. Next thing you know, we’ll have enough out atheists to host PZ in Mobile. Ha!
kristinc, 445
Wow, you’d almost think you were applying to [Canadian university I attend].
Parallel evolution, I guess.
LEROY JENKINS!
The Idiot Task Force is out in full swing, Slush is still spewing his bile, and a pox and a decaying porcupine on all who seek to turn the US into a theocracy.
Oh, and a string on my guitar broke. Fuck. I’d fix it, but this new one doesn’t have the bridge where you can insert a string into a slot, pull it taut, and wind the other end around the tuning peg. I’ll be taking it in to get fixed, maybe they could show me how to fix it myself in case I’m in a location too far from a repair shop.
Thank you Janine.
Ing: here are the PDFs of some papers you cited the other day.
+++++
TomeWyrm:
It’s not generally illegal to bribe people; there are only specific circumstances under which it becomes illegal (usually involving government employees, and sometimes in private business). I’ve never heard of this sort being illegal. However, I have heard of such gifts (and apologies) being construed by a civil court as an admission of liability.
Sorry to hear that.
Fun with radiation:
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-02/boy-who-played-fusion?page=all
Also note the total inability of the TSA to notice radioactive stuff in checked baggage:
“We land in Reno and make our way toward the baggage claim. “I hope that box held up,” Taylor says, as we approach the carousel. “And if it didn’t, I hope they give us back the radioactive goodies scattered all over the airplane.” Soon the box appears, adorned with a bright strip of tape and a note inside explaining that the package has been opened and inspected by the TSA. “They had no idea,” Taylor says, smiling, “what they were looking at.””
athyco | 7 March 2012 at 9:17 pm
http://ffrf.org/uploads/fttoday/2011/HypatiaRecap.pdf
It’s not Mobil, and PZ wasn’t there, but Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor were there.
And it’s a regular event.
I still think “Limbaugh” is the worst thing you can call him. Don’t call him “Rush” either, there’s a perfectly decent Canadian rock band that gets slandered every time that happens. I already have to suffer through my musical hero Beck sharing a name with that other media douche.
Who the hell names their kid “Rush”, anyway? Can I name my hypothetical child “High”? “Buzz” is a bit too nineties kid-show-edgy for my tastes.
John:
Your snark detector is as badly fucked up as all the other social tools you keep reminding us you don’t have. If you had had something of substance to add to the exchange between me and Jeffrey, it would’ve been welcome, but since all you seem to want to do is give me gratuitous shit about the manner in which I chose to communicate with somebody else, well then…
“Your Highness, we beseech you on this day in Philadelphia to bite me, if you please.”
***
Dhorvath:
It doesn’t affect the crappiness of her arguments one whit, of course; it does affect the moral ground on which we’re arguing: I know not only that her arguments are crappy and wrong, but also that they’re coming from a place of dishonesty… yet I must either treat them as if they were honestly made arguments or ignore them (and thus fail to refute them), unless I’m willing to behave like a shitty person myself.
Mostly it just made me sad; I had thought this would be a reasonable place to come vent about that.
Automated password guessing software is widely available, and highly effective. A public facing university website is guaranteed to be attacked.
Any password you don’t have to either store securely, or work your tail off to memorize is vulnerable.
There are better possible standards; they could have randomly generated a sequence of dictionary words totaling at least 20 characters, and require you to use what they generated. That would be less difficult to memorize (because it’s all words), and yet more secure (because it’s much longer). But it wouldn’t be easy to memorize, and it would be a pain for those of us who already have a ton of passwords memorized. Another alternative might be to require 20 characters of any sort, and provide the words as a suggestion.
And requiring you to type it in only twice is a joke; you ought to have to type it in 10 times on initial setting, followed by a once weekly email reminding you to go type it in another 10 times. But there is no easy way out.
Perhaps the worst error of the way passwords are asked for is that the user is expected to provide them quickly, and without advice, when in fact it takes a lot of work, and a certain know-how to memorize a good one.
pelamun (342) Dog bites
As far as I can tell, my state, county, and town are “one bite” not strict liability. My research was conflicting, but the officials involved are encouraging. You would be correct in assuming that I do not know with significant accuracy what happened. Just the basic facts; the apparent victim is a 13 year old male, someone reported a dog bite and accused my dog, the boy had broken skin so they have to quarantine my dog for 10 days in case of rabies, my dog did escape that morning.
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Gen Fury (354) Doctors that won’t listen
I hear you about the MD’s that won’t listen. Pregnant women are not made of porcelain! It’s like they don’t believe the body can possibly take care of itself. How else do you think nature worked before the medical profession came around? That system has been tested innumerable times throughout the ages, it probably works pretty damn good. Let the body work, and don’t step in until stuff goes wrong.
*snort* I loved the god complex bit at the end of your comment.
«•»
That lecturer is awesome! It certainly is a sad state of affairs where things that should be “no duh” are instead major points of amazement and congratulations. Incidentally, I’m strange. I read that and one of the first thoughts out of my brain was: Wonder what the experience of taking that large a dose of GHB or Rohypnol is like. When it’s taken in a controlled setting, with your prior consent, not getting spiked in a club. Then again I also want to sleep in an isolation tank (sensory deprivation tank), and take a polygraph just to see how hard it is to beat.
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Those are some seriously ugly and hard-to-use buildings!
Campuses are cobbled together over time, which means they rarely make any sense. I never thought about that in relation to a hospital before though. That has got to be annoying!
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love moderately (465) Bribes not illegal
I didn’t know that, though it does make sense. How else would politicians get their mind numbingly large amounts of money for not doing their jobs properly, if bribes were generally illegal?
Just saw an ad for a book called “201 Organic Baby Purees”.
They’re doing it wrong. Don’t they know babies are supposed to be barbecued?
Nutmeg
My teeth are really bad.
Purée sounds OK but we could call it Pâté.
Nutmeg:
I think baby puree is what atheist babies eat; they’d choke on barbecued baby ribs!
Bill:
“Does it make me a decent human or just a chump that I’m not outing a Facebook friend”
→
“For whatever the reason, I just find it rude to take it upon yourself to give a public airing to information that is not your own.”
→
I expressed myself poorly: I have absolutely no intention of publicly calling my old friend on her hypocrisy, nor even privately reminding her of her past.
JeffreyD clearly misread you, yet you tugged your forelock by your claim that you were unclear (you weren’t) to appease his opprobrium.
(I guess it worked… on him)
FML. I have not slept well in 3 nights. I crawled into bed at 6:45 p.m. my time and probably drifted off around 7:15. I woke up at 11:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep.
I’ve just had a small bowl of pasta — if I’m awake for too long in the wee hours, I begin to feel hungry, which will help keep me awake — and chased it with a cup of herbal tea with ashwagandha. I hope to be asleep again within the hour.
Chigau: Baby pâté would go well on communion wafers.
TomeWyrm:
First, it generally is illegal for politicians to take bribes (and no, campaign contributions are not bribes). That’s one of the exceptions love moderately was talking about.
Second, you’re trading in a cynical and destructive stereotype: Most politicians neither get “mind numbingly large amounts of money” nor do they “not do[] their jobs properly.” I have some level of personal acquaintance with politicians ranging from the members of my town’s Town Council and Board of Education right up through the one of my state’s U.S. Senators (not to mention the person who I fervently hope will replace the other one) and my state’s governor. Without fail they are hardworking and dedicated, and their pay ranges from nothing (in my town, the only elected municipal officer who gets any pay is the mayor, whose stipend was just this week raised to the princely sum of $30,000) to modest part-time pay (at the state legislature level) to the modest, but unspectacular, pay of the U.S. Congress (rank-and-file members get $174,000; leadership gets a little more). I would bet my left nut that not one of these people has taken a bribe.
Virtually everyone I know in public office is serving at some significant personal cost, both in terms of their personal lives and the “opportunity cost” of what they could be earning in the private sector instead (and don’t kid yourself: anyone who can get hirself elected to Congress could make vastly more than $200k on the open market). It’s no more a lazy person’s get-rich-quick scheme than being a public school teacher is.
There are obviously a few high-profile counterexamples, but the vast majority of people who could fairly be described as politicians are dedicated, hardworking, self-sacrificing public servants!
I don’t mean to rant at you, personally, about this, but I think the “all politicians are lazy, greedy scum” meme is corrosive to our hopes for better (i.e., more progressive) government in the future: How can I knock on your door and ask you to vote for better politicians if your friends and neighbors have already convinced you that none of ’em is any damn good?
John:
The real question is why the fuck do you care?
What I did was the conversational equivalent of saying “pardon me” after bumping into someone, without worrying much about whose fault the bumping really was. It’s a social nicety… and while I recall that you don’t really grok those, I don’t grok why you would begrudge them to others. In this case, you were neither the bump-er nor the bump-ee… so WTF?
The only guess I can make is that you have some unpleasant history with Jeffrey (I can’t be arsed to keep track of others’ fights), and therefore found my “deferential” approach grating. If that’s it (and if it’s not, I’m truly mystified), just get the hell over it,’mkay?
Does politicians’ pay include their electoral allowances and campaign donations?
(The functions and banquets they attend are obviously not to be considered)
Bill:
The surreal question is why the fuck do you care whether I care?
Poor guess; I have virtually no history with him, pleasant or otherwise.
The fact is that you lost brownie points with me, by your craven social nicety (nice euphemism). It could’ve been anyone, it has nothing to do with him.
But you can live with that, right?
After my first comment, I have been responding to you. :)
Ms. Daisy Cutter #480
I remember communion wafers as being like a spoonful of uncooked flour.
I wouldn’t waste my precious (preeeshuuusss) baby pâté.
Have you tried vigorous exercise for your insomnia?
I find physical exhaustion to be quite soporific.
(Wait. I don’t remember what condition your condition is in. Still, vigorous is relative.)
John, you’re being mean again for no apparent reason. I wish you wouldn’t.
—
My work isn’t hard enough to justify my utter refusal to do it. This is very silly. When I finish my translation I can go to bed. That should be enough motivation.
[meta]
<sigh>
CC, thanks. I desist forthwith.
John:
Morbid curiosity, at this point: It’s an utter mystery why you chose to take a drive-by crap on my head over my mode of address in a conversation that had fuck-all to do with you, and the actual substance of which you have apparently no interest in.
I don’t give a rat’s ass what your opinion of me is… but what quantum fluctuation caused you to actually have an opinion in this particular case is a bit of a puzzle, I must confess.
All that said, I can’t think of a single reason I should deign to answer a serious question from you… except, perhaps, that I happen to be interested in the subject:
I’m not sure what you mean by “electoral allowances.” You’re in Australia, right? Are “electoral allowances” some form of public campaign financing?
In any case, in the U.S., campaign funds (from whatever source) are not counted as pay because they don’t accrue to the personal benefit of the candidate (aside from helping them get elected, that is). It varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction (aside from the constitutional provisions for federal office, election laws are generally state laws), but essentially you can use campaign funds to campaign, and in some cases you can hold them in reserve for future campaigns or donate them to other campaigns (candidates in safe seats often donate from their own campaign treasury to those in close races), but the money never simply goes in the pocket of the candidate/official. Campaigns are pretty carefully audited to make sure this doesn’t happen.
More often, candidates take money out of their personal funds to spend on their campaigns (see also Mitt Romney, or here in Connecticut, former professional wrestling executive Linda McMahon).
Some elected officials do get reimbursed for certain expenses, and at some levels, they get a budget with which to hire staff and run an office (my congressman, for instance, has an office in DC and two constituent service offices in his geographically very large district), but those things don’t count as pay, either, anymore than staffing budgets or reimbursement for legitimate business expenses do in the private sector.
I’m sure they occasionally get to do cool stuff, but for the most part, I suspect they consider all the functions, banquets, etc., they have to go to while campaigning (not to mention the similar stuff that’s an unofficial part of the job once they’re elected) to be Bugs, Not Features™. I know my congressman’s schedule of travel back and forth between CT and DC, combined with his presence in congressional sessions and committee hearings, his visits to constituent sites (schools, businesses, nonprofits, municipalities, etc., affected by his legislative work), his office hours, and his campaign work would make most men weep. I’m pretty sure it does make his wife and kids weep.
It really isn’t the life of opulence and leisure than many people seem to think it is.
Thanks, John. See, I didn’t wildly overreact at you this time!
CC, :|
(I needed that!)
—
Bill,
(First, thanks for recognising this was a separate matter)
Yes, I’m in Australia, and this is a specific example of that to what I refer: Members of Parliament – Entitlements
Good morning
Ms. Daisy Cutter
Hope you’re sound asleep by now.
Bill D.
Sounds like the “pro-life” version of the violent ex-smoker.
TomeWyrm
Please don’t go there.
You’re heading for the naturalistic fallacy there.
First of all, in no area of medicine do we “let the body work and don’t step in until things go wrong”.
You brush your teeth, you get vaccination.
In all areas of medicine do we accept that prevention is the best care.
Secondly, pregnancy isn’t unicorn poops and rainbows. Pregnancy always puts a woman at much greater risk of death than she usually has. The only reason that you and I are not much aware of this fact is precisely because of modern obstetrics. Recently even the WHO had to admit that their “no more than 15% C-sections” is not based on any evidence or research.
I don’t know how familiar you are with the works of Austen and the Brontes, but if you are, try to remember how many young widowers there are, how many motherless children. They aren’t there for dramatic effect but because that was reality.
Thirdly, we’re not living in “ancient times”. Many interventions that are necessary nowadays are due to our modern times. Women are older when they have children, women are bigger, obese, their children are bigger.
Fourthly, interventions aren’t bad. Many of them are simply a woman’s choice. It is actually another form of misogyny, albeit a very sugar-coated one. Epidurals, Picotin, C-sections, fetal monitoring etc. There’s nothing better in having an unmedicated natural birth. Actually, it is often worse.
Imagine, would you act like this in any other field of medicine? Would you waive away medical options because “you don’t step in until things go wrong”, instead of preventing them from going wrong (or simply making things easier for the patient)?
No, it’s only in pregnancy and childbirth that many people feel compelled to tell women that “there’s no reason to speed things up so she shouldn’t have Picotin”, or that labour is “pain with a purpose and therefore good for her”.
I agree, what happened to Gen Fury is bad, but going for the other extreme is to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
What we need is science-based obestetrics that treats women as capable agents and not as necessary evils.
We don’t need naturalistic “hands-off” woo that sugarcoats pregnancy and birth as an “ancient, tested system”.
For the few that haven’t seen it, original clip (almost 30 million hits).
I GET EMAIL :
Does anyone in the US know anything about these guys ?
And I have asked PZ to remove all comments wrt my employment woes from this TET, not to further complicate matters.
Therrin #492
Thanks. (I think)
http://aceofsevens.wordpress.com/2012/03/06/i-care-a-lot-about-bigotry-but-only-bring-it-up-when-someone-else-cares-about-bigotry-too-much/
Blogging advice. I realized after my first response that this was my girlfriend posting in the comments. How do I set her straight without compromising my access to free sex?
Never heard of ’em. Their party platform suggests they are effectively a new Green Party. I have no objection, except that they’ll never be elected dogcatcher.
But if anyone’s looking to donate money for secularism in the USA, the ACLU and Americans United already exist, have the experience necessary to put that money to efficient use, and will surely outlive this upstart.
Oh, wait. This is really stupid:
It’s an insignificant issue which they propose to address with a steamroller because media-amplified selection bias has offended their aesthetics.
“Hard cases? Let’s make a bad law!”
Bill, John – what a tempest in a tea pot.
Bill made a comment. I replied with unsolicited advice, less smoothly than I should (do not post when tired). Bill clarified, I apologized for jumping on him, something which was not my intention. Simple, easy, and, I hope, non confrontational. While I only know Bill through this blog and FB, I think we have enough comment history for this to have been settled by our exchanges and the matter then dropped. Manners do grease society to a large extent.
Ace of Sevens: How the hell should anyone here know about retaining your “access to free sex”?
Damn your access, I say. Your GF is wrong on several levels, spelling being the simplest to address and the least egregious. Start there and work your way down the tributaries of wrong that seem to be flowing into the river of fail that is the comment in question. Speak your mind. Otherwise, what’s the point of even having a blog?
Giliell/Chigau: Thanks. I got at least eight and a half hours total last night. I feel a lot better.
I’ve been taking walks again now that the weather is improving, but I haven’t found exercise to correlate much with how well I sleep. Before bedtime, I use chamomile, ashwagandha, kava kava, and once in a while an antihistamine, alternating them to minimize dependence.
Prescription drugs are out of the question. I tried Ambien once… that was enough. Two words: Rebound insomnia. I feel grateful I didn’t sleepwalk.
Ace of Sevens:
If you were going for a joke there, it failed. Miserably.
We’re up to almost $500 dollars!
Please spread the word!
If you missed it earlier, here’s the information:
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Our squidly tentacled poopyhead will be celebrating his natal day on Friday. If you’d like to help celebrate by donating to a godless worthy cause, go here: http://tinyurl.com/pzbday!
And spread the word!
Ogvorbis, 146
Well, I took Chinese studies as a minor, and we were introduced to him like this: OK, the greatest Chinese historian of all time, wrote the Shiji, and when asked to choose between castration and death, he chose to live.
Fullmetal Alchemist
I said I usually don’t watch Anime, but if I did, should I watch the first series, which deviates from the manga, or the second which follows it closely?
‘Tis, 179
Thanks for the tip. I’ll put it onto my “personal newspaper app”.
FreethoughtBlog technical question
So how can you change your gravatar? I’ve looked at the dashboard for some time, but couldn’t find anything…
chigau 218
I also discussed this with a Taiwanese friend. There are some more, even ruder expressions, but they depend on the exact context. We had some quarrel about how to best say “don’t worry on my behalf”, but we ran into the context problem again.
They also said that novels by Chinese Americans sometimes do end up exoticising Chinese culture (though I pointed out that that wouldn’t make their experience as Americans of Chinese descent in America any less genuine)
theophontes and chigau, 230
Yes, the phatic function of language, one of the six functions of language, the others being referential, emotive, conative, metalingual and poetic.
Thing you learn in Ling 101. We also called it “language as social lubricant”
Whenever a taxi driver on their blog (in the German blogosphere, there are like six or seven popular blogs written by taxi drivers) complains about customers asking taxis waiting in line, “are you free?”, they misunderstand the function of language here.
theophontes, 236
about the Great Wall: Pics, or it didn’t happen XD
I recently wrote this about the question if the use of Chinese Wall could be offensive to Chinese and/or Chinese Americans.
Regarding Norse speculation
Historical dates make it rather improbable that the Norse myth was influenced by the dragon heads:
– the Younger Edda was written around 1200
– The dragon head presumably went up during the Ming dynasty, which began in 1368
– Also I’m not sure if the Norse traders would have come so far north as Hebei (but I don’t know much about Norse traders in China, did they take the northern route through the Siberian coastline? If so then perhaps)
– Also dragons play rather distinct mythological roles in the West and the Far East. The Serpent in the Norse myths is evil, while the dragon guarding the wall was benevolent.
Writing “au” instead of “ao” is not so much an offence (indeed in some romanisation systems that’s the preferred way of writing the diphthong) as not writing proper names as one orthographic word: Laolongtou Also, consider adding tone marks: Lǎolóngtóu /nag
Owlmirror and Giliell, 237, 246, 247
Caveat: I haven’t read Hughart’s book, and have to reserve my judgement somewhat, but the little bit what I read in Owlmirror’s excerpt alienated me already a bit (Number Ten Ox? What kind of name is that supposed to be??).
And I vehemently disagree with Giliell’s statement. Putting a caveat in your preface does not make the act of exotisation OK. Orientalism has contributed to the image westerners have about the Far East, and I don’t think Hughart’s works are an exception here.
I have read a satirical book by a German author, called Letters into the past, where a Chinese scholar from the 10th century time travels into contemporary Germany. I know it’s a literary device and all, but why couldn’t the author just use an alien or something? Might have spared us the effect of exoticising Chinese culture.
So yeah, if you need a fantastical China, why not just create a fantasy world? If you need to write a novel about the Far East, be accurate even if it is fiction.
Katherine, 250
Hope you feel better know. Hang in there.
And never shut up.
Sili, 252
I’m no expert in ancient Chinese bridge building, but apparently they had two terms, 橋頭 qiáotóu and 橋尾 qiáowěi. No idea what the difference was, but maybe they started on one side of the river, that was the head?
Giliell, 253
Ah yes thanks for reminding me of this story. Great morale too eh…
October
Is a get together in the works again for October?
pelamun, 336
Apparently the crypto Neo Nazi store is now changing the name. Giving it a name suspiciously similar to a Neo Nazi mass murderer was too much, apparently.
birger, 352
Joe the Plumber might have been one of the crazier primary stories out of Ohio, but Dennis Kucinich losing his seat was definitely one of the sadder ones out of the state.
Katherine, 353
Pearls Before Swine is good stuff. Too bad the Houston Chronicle got rid of its Comics Engine, now I have to go find those strips all by myself /nag
Richard Austin, 376
This is mostly relating to wordpress powered blogs on wordpress.org, right? I have a blog or two on wordpress.com, but I don’t think that’d apply to me…
Rush Limbaugh
Anyone from Missouri here? I heard Chris Matthews talk to Claire McCaskill how she voted to name some building after his grandfather etc. Apparently his family is some kind of Missouri nobility?
Building designers
I remember spending some time at the University of Düsseldorf, which had a very strange numbering scheme for its buildings and class rooms. The student helpers in charge of running things could not understand how other people would just not get it where the rooms were, I mean isn’t it self-evident?
Grumps
+1 for Jim Parsons
Grumps, 422
Six years of high school Latin here. I don’t get your comment though? You remembered the present tense indicative conjugation correctly, what’s that got to do with the imperative?
Sili, 431
transphobia sucks.
Bill Dauphin, 444
In the German LGBT movement (and I believe there have been ideas like
that in the US too, or maybe the Germans got the idea from the US), the idea was to out only those who were actively harming the cause. But this is about gay men (I think these are usually men) furthering homophobic ideas from their positions of influence while staying inside the closet themselves.
But I do think this is something only someone affected directly (i.e. a member of the harmed community) should do, and also I don’t know how much a Facebook account would actually count. (I’m also aware that you didn’t have the intention of outing her anyways).
Also, congrats on your daughter! If she doesn’t already, here’s a blog of a professor there, whom I admire (and have met in person before!!): http://www.margaretsoltan.com/
TomeWyrm, 475
So I take it there is no “vaccination passport” regime like in Germany then? because when I was bitten I could check their vaccination passport and just not go ahead with the emergency regime (So the boy was emergency vaccinated? When I had that done preventatively in the US, it cost $150 per shot)
Bill Dauphin, 481
Full ACK. Many politicians entered politics out of idealism and really do work their asses off. The media like to focus on their privileges and all, but most people in power have a lot on their plates.
National Atheist Party
Yeah some of it would probably better handled by the ACLU and others.
I still have this dream that the Tea Party Movement will lead to a split of the GOP, and the US will evolve into a three party system. A daydreamer can dream, right?
Ace of Sevens, 495
the last bit was with borkquote. The last paragraph is mine. Also I agree with Ms. Daisy Cutter that the joke was poor. But I personally couldn’t be together with a bigot, so that’d be Andrew Ti’s advice here. He just uses more colourful language. (I could be together with a theist if they weren’t bigoted though)
Breaking news
German civil union partnerships now de facto equal to marriages.
The biggest complaint of the German LGBT movement of the civil union partnerships was that it didn’t have the same tax rules as for married couples (it’s akin to a joined tax return in the US I guess).
While the conservative-led federal government has insisted efforts by its smaller liberal coalition partner to amend the tax law, the tax agencies of all the states (in Germany the states are tasked with the execution of federal law, including tax law) have agreed on treating civil union couples the same way they do married couples. (There had been some tax court cases that were pointing in that directions already)
This is a major step!
(I’m surprised though that no newspaper seemed to have reported on this, except for a conservative newspaper. It’s a shame these issues don’t get more attention)
resisted, not insisted..
@Pelamun:
Watch Brotherhood. It’s got a satisfying ending, it doesn’t throw in weird stuff, and it makes sense in the end. Also it has better (and more) characters!
pelmun – Yes – I can be pretty sure we’ll be doing the great Rhinebeck meeting of the Horde in October again.
Argh – pelamun, I found this missing a wandering about my keyboard. Please insert above.
@Muse:
Yay, Rhinebeck again! That trip was so much fun :D
Bill D,
I am failing to comprehend your reply to me, which is I suppose a central impediment in my being able to provide any support for the conflict you are having. I am sorry that I have made matters worse, there was no malice involved. My curiousity should not trump your discomfort.
Please do NOT post on Kent Hovind thread.
Lurking is fine.
I preferred the second series (Brotherhood) as well. It went further in explaining what was going on (haven’t read the manga), but IIRC it skimmed over some topics that were covered more in-depth in the first.
That is quite a temptation. Almost irressistible.
I need more arms…
pelamun
I understand the problem of Orientalism, having my focus on Transcultural Anglophone Studies, but maybe part of your problems with Hughart’s work stems from the fact that you don’t know it and I explained it probably poorly by using “A Knight’s Tale” as an example.
Hughart’s work is fantasy that, to my understanding, digs into Chinese mythology a lot, and, to a very small part, history.
Would you be more comfortable with a fantasy world that reminds you of Chinese mythology in every other sentence but that acts like it has nothing to do with it?
Or would you say that Western writers should never make use of the myths, legends and tales of non-western people?
How do you see movies like Hero or House of Flying Daggers in this context, that come from within those cultures but certainly are about as historically accurate as Kingdom of Heaven is about the Crusades?